Lucas hasn’t felt this way since he launched Shamerican Sykosis. The first game he developed, &Co, had been a bust. That was when he did all the coding himself. And he knew, before he’d even brought it to market, that the game wasn’t up to his standards, that it didn’t match what was there in his head.
With SS it was different. He had more capital to work with and he’d learned how to outsource. He still controlled the product from concept to specs. Lucas knew he’d succeeded the first time he tried the demo helmet and walked through the dummied-up augmented New York, where rainbow halos ringed the tops of buildings, and the leaves on trees glowed uranium green. Lucas felt a powerful sense of electric connectivity, like that time at Yale when he tripped on acid in a rainstorm, and each lightning bolt pierced the shell of his skull.
And even if that feeling was psychosomatic, well then wasn’t that the beauty of this product anyway? At Yale, he’d studied the Western philosophers, all those dead white boys debating whether a reality exists beyond what we can see. Capitalists understood the question’s irrelevance; a product and its perception are the same exact thing. Lucas has that feeling as he stands before the mirror and, like the acid trip, and that first walk around Shamerica, it’s enhanced by the knowledge that, for now, it’s his alone.
On the upper closet shelf, above the space reserved for The Suit™, lies another prototype. This one’s an AR helmet that differs from previous models in two essential ways. The first difference is its appearance, which was designed to appeal to a larger demographic than the 6.4 million users who already log in, daily, to Shamerican Sykosis; to appeal to people who aren’t superhero fangirls or fashion-agnostic gamers. The second difference is that this new helmet, alongside its capacity as a portal to Shamerica, was designed to work in symbiosis with The Suit™, relaying data-prompted consumer suggestions to the wearer in real time, which, unlike texts, banner ads, and marketing emails, can’t be deleted, ignored, or marked as spam.
To be clear, The Helmet 2.0 won’t be requisite for wearers of The Suit™, just as The Suit™ won’t be required for participation in SS. They are separate products that function adequately on their own. Wearing The Helmet 2.0 in conjunction with wearing The Suit™ is simply an option. But there will be incentives for those who choose this option, and Lucas knows that those incentives will be hard to resist.
The Helmet 2.0 is all black, and looks exactly like a motorcycle helmet, but for a small antenna on its rear. Lucas takes the elevator down to the lobby. He carries the helmet with two hands against his stomach, as if the item were a boxed and ribboned gift.
“Nice night,” says the doorman. Lucas nods and makes his way to the bike parked out front, a 1968 BMW R69S in white with chrome piping and black leather trim. He revs the engine, straps on The Helmet 2.0, and enters Shamerica.
Behold a hodgepodge of architectural styles, from Lucas’s own Versailles-modeled condo, which a neighbor spent six hundred hours fabricating in CAD, to the rest of the block: a building-sized subwoofer blasting Biggie, a note-perfect replica of the USS Maine that explodes and reconstitutes every half hour, and, on the corner, a townhouse-cum-cloud-scraping-oak-tree that starts black at its roots and moves up the color spectrum through many gradations of blue, green, and blond, until, high above, it explodes in white leaves that shine gold in the sun and at night light the sky in incandescent silver.
Lucas turns down Ninety-Sixth Street and crosses the park, stifling his instinct for speed. He admires the crop circles mown into the playing fields and glittered with space-dust. Barnyard topiaries oink and neigh as he cruises past. He exits the park and heads south on the FDR. Some cars look like fighter jets or fire-breathing dragons, while other, subtler vehicles—Ferraris, Porsches, midlife crisis Batmobiles—shine with the faint glow of augmentation, the all-but-imperceptible sheen of that which can’t rust, fade, or take on dirt.
Once he’s passed Thirty-Fourth Street the voice ads begin. For some reason, they don’t work in midtown, a programming kink that will soon be ironed out. Now they come as he continues south, though fairly infrequently, research suggesting that people are only susceptible to a limited amount before becoming annoyed and opting out.
“You are hungry,” whispers the voice, an accurate simulacrum of Lucas’s own. The idea is for players to hear the voice as an extension of their inner monologues. As people spend more time in these helmets, it will become harder to tell which is which.
Lucas peeks at the tablet mounted to his dashboard. The prototype is right; his blood sugar’s low. Soon, when they roll out the product complete with paid sponsors, the voice will remind the user about the slice place on Twenty-Eighth Street he hit after seeing Taylor Swift at the Garden. He gave it 4.5 stars. For now, the voice says, “You are hungry,” and Lucas agrees, removing a protein bar from his inner coat pocket. He unwraps and eats it while stopped at a red. His blood sugar rises to normal.
12.
Both detectives ordered bagels. Perhaps they’re trying to refute the stereotype. Then why suggest a donut shop? They said they had questions, but, so far, all they’ve done is look at their phones. Michael imagines this is what dating’s like these days: mumbles and carbs, a slight aura of shame. He bites into his Boston cream donut. A dollop of filling spouts onto the table.
Detective Ryan eyes the dollop like he wants to lick it up. Michael asks about Broder.
“Right, that guy,” says Ryan. It’s clear that Ryan’s partner, Quinn, hasn’t heard the name before. It occurs
