In this issue: A transport system that wants to cleanse London’s streets of the unscripted and the spontaneous is the setting for a first Protocolized story from Kannen. Also – the first episode of Bridge Atlas, our new salon series hosted by Christine Kim, just went live on YouTube. Episode 1 introduces lighthouse ideas to the series, provides a very short history, and kicks off the road to our full-day workshop at Devconnect on November 22. Featuring SoP Program Manager Timber Stinson-Schroff and Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation.
Mr Cork took a sip of his pint at The Victoria pub, near Paddington station. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he was a little nervous. It’d been years since he’d travelled down to the big smoke from his countryside village in Rugby. But London wasn’t exactly unfamiliar territory. Mr Cork and his wife had lived there for most of their lives. She passed away a long time ago though, and he’d swapped the big city for a quieter lifestyle, hardly ever returning. Now he was back, mainly due to a documentary he’d watched about the benefits of reconnecting with the past. In one scene, an old Korean woman who lived in New York was being interviewed. She stood outside the house in Seoul that she’d grown up in, pensively reflecting on her feeling of reconciliation upon revisiting the place, and all the while holding a spinning top she’d played with as a child. Mr Cork wasn’t an emotional man but the scene did linger with him – he had often wondered what it would be like to go back to the house that he and his wife had spent so many years in.
One evening Mr Cork mentioned the documentary and the idea of a visit to his daughter Violet. She was enthralled by the rare display of sentimentality. Violet encouraged him to go and like the Korean lady, to take something from the past with him – something that reminded him of Mum. His daughter’s enthusiasm gave Mr Cork the push he needed, although he struggled to think of what to take. Eventually, he decided on a can of condensed milk. His wife had loved making fudges and caramels, which the whole family in turn loved to eat. Their cupboards were always stacked with cans of Nestlé’s ‘Carnation’ condensed milk.
However, a more difficult challenge than choosing a memento presented itself: navigating the new London bus system to reach the house. When he’d lived in the city it was as simple as tapping an Oyster card – beep – and you were good to go. Violet had explained to him that things were different now.
“Dad, the new AI system is a bit trickier but much, much better. You’ve got to fill out a form on your phone before the journey, and make a payment, then when you get on you’ll pass through a scanner that recognises your phone. It basically means that the system knows who’s coming on the bus and works it all out to make sure there won’t be any issues.”
“Sounds fine, but isn’t that a bit boring? When I was kid, if you wanted to get a bus, you’d just jump on while it was basically already moving!”
Violet went out of her way to set him up with the TfL Move Free app so that he could fill out his Journey Resolution Form. Before he knew it, Mr Cork was on the train from Rugby to London, a can of Carnation in his pocket.
After finishing his pint at The Victoria, Mr Cork made his way to the bus station. He moved slowly while Paddington rushed all around him – everyone sipping coffees or distracted by their devices. The bus station was where it had always been, down on Eastbourne Terrace. And the bus stops were still characterised by what were, in essence, boxes on the side of the road. Only now there were several more of these shiny boxes lined up in unison, their red framings aggressively reflecting the spring-time sun and with loud holographic adverts trying to sell you timeshares and persuade you of the health benefits of wood milk.
Meanwhile all the would-be passengers formed unusually orderly lines from a designated point at each stop, superseding the jumbled loitering which used to accompany waiting for a bus. Even the young children, who typically would sprint in circles around the shelter or climb on the plastic benches, waited patiently next to their mothers for the arrival of the bus. One pregnant lady sat on the bench, undisturbed. Mr Cork wasn’t complaining. He recalled the many times he’d had to wrestle his way onto a busy bus to get to work.
The bus, with X10 projected on its frontage, eventually slid into view, red and gleaming, silent as a cat shifting between gardens. Unlike all the aging vehicles which roared and spluttered around Rugby’s countryside, here there was just a whisper of air as the bus pulled up to the stop. The doors at the front unsealed with a quiet hiss and a woman’s voice from nowhere politely invited everyone to, “Please enter the bus.” The queue shuffled forward, phones in hand. Mr Cork opened his TfL Move Free app. It took a moment before he could see the scanner built into the entry of the doorway. It was slim and silver, with a vertical ribbon of light passing through the middle. Mr Cork watched his fellow passengers carefully, as though taking notes for an exam. Yet each one walked on casually, as if it were nothing. They stepped on into the scanner’s light with their phones, and as the soft blue wash of the scanner turned green over their bodies, a quiet, permissive chime led them onwards. “Seems easy enough,” thought Mr Cork.
His turn came. Mr Cork stepped forward, phone pressed firmly to his chest. The light ran over him, from the crown of his bald head to the soles of his shoes. For a half breath it held steady. Then, without warning, it flashed hard red. His phone screen turned red too, displaying the message “Journey Resolution Form rejected. Entry denied.” As if he hadn’t gotten the message, the voice from nowhere said, “Vehicle stopped. Please exit the vehicle.” The quiet whir of the bus ceased and the strip-lights lining the cabin turned off. Mr Cork’s heart was beating quickly. The cacophony of red lights glowing against his skin, and the accusatory voice from nowhere made him feel guilty. Around him a suffocating politeness made things worse, as eyes were averted away and ears were blocked by earphones. He could feel the impatience of those behind him building.
“What the hell is this?” Mr Cork grumbled out loud, feeling his humiliation quickly transform into undirected anger. He looked toward the front of the bus, but of course there was no driver to release this anger on, only a blank pane of glass and the reflection of his own frustrated face staring back. From behind him came a soft voice. “Happens sometimes,” a young man in a suit called out, coffee cup in hand. “The system gets fussy if the form’s not validated. You might just need to refresh the app, or you can check with the staff over there why it was rejected. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
“I’ve filled out the form just like everyone else. They all got on without a problem.” Mr Cork moaned over his shoulder.
Before the polite young man could answer, someone further back in the queue called out. “Oh come on, mate, just step side, yeah? We got places to be. If it says no then it’s doing the rest of us a solid anyway.” So London does still exist, behind this orderly facade, Mr Cork thought to himself. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks and sensed a ripple of consensus travel along the line at the heckler’s intervention. He withdrew, recognising a lost battle.
“Load of nonsense,” he exclaimed, as he stepped off the bus and waved his hand in the air. The engine of the bus immediately came back to life, resuscitated by Mr Cork’s removal. “Vehicle resuming journey. Please mind the closing doors.” “Oh shut up,” Mr Cork muttered, glancing back at the passengers getting on as he shuffled toward the help desk, gripping the Carnation can in his pocket.
The help desk was a small glass booth at the far end of Eastbourne Terrace, with a projected sign above that read “Passenger Resolution Support.” Adjacent to the booth were sets of screens for self-help. There was no one else waiting so Mr Cork went straight to the glass pane. On the other side sat a woman who looked about his age. She wore a dark blue TfL jacket, with her blonde hair tumbling down by her shoulders and a cheery expression on her face.
“Hi, I’m trying to get to Finchley Road, but the bloody bus rejected me. What’d it do that for?” He sounded pitiful.
“Sorry to hear about your trouble there, sir. My name’s Leah and I’d be glad to help you. Could you please give me your name and Move Free ID?” Caught off guard by her friendliness, Mr Cork passively complied. “Right, let’s have a look.”
Her fingers skated over the screen of her computer as she pulled up his Journey Resolution Form. Side-by-side with it ran ribbons of data from the X10 scanner he’d just passed through – pulse rate, body temperature, gait and… alcohol levels. “Looks like the scanner flagged your stability index. Ahh, you’ve had a few drinks have you?” She gave a quick laugh.
“So you can’t have a drink and get on a bus these days, then? Do they want us driving cars instead?”
“No, of course not. You can drink and get on the buses. Otherwise we might as well close them down every weekend! Just depends where you’re going and how many you’ve had.”
“I only had two!”
“Yes, but you also put on your Journey Resolution Form that you’re ‘connecting with my dead wife’, and put the address of someone who I can see is a total stranger to you. The system had already given you a high non-validation risk from that, and then you walked on after a couple of pints. Between the drinking, connecting with the dead, and turning up at random people’s houses, the system’s given you too low a stability index score to let you on. That’s Move Free doing its job pretty well as far as I can see, Mr Cork!” Leah laughed loudly this time.
Mr Cork shuffled about on his feet and looked to the side. Not much to argue with when she put it that way.
“Alright fine, well what do I do now? I’ve come all this way down with this bloody can of condensed milk, I can’t go back without delivering it to where I intended.”
Leah looked at him blankly for a moment, wondering what he meant about condensed milk, then sighed.
“Well I’m not really supposed to do this Mr Cork, but we can try to refill the JRF form with another journey type that would work for your current situation. Where did you say that old house of yours was again?”
“About a 20 minute walk from Finchley Road. 22 Reddington Road.”
“Well since you can’t validate that you know who lives there, we’ll need another way round. Let me have a quick scan of the area to see what we can do.”
Leah scrunched up her nose and focused on her screen as she scoured Mr Cork’s old neighbourhood for a potential solution. Mr Cork looked to his left and saw a pair of young tourists leaning towards the self-help touchscreens with their phones out, laughing quietly as they fumbled through the options. The screen gave off a glow that lit their faces with yellow, as they conversed, in French, with a polite but unmistakably robotic voice.
“Ah! Here we go. I’ve got it!” Mr Cork looked back towards Leah in anticipation. “There’s a 65+ Yoga-Cacao Detox Class happening soon, very near to where you’re heading. Goes from 3 to 4pm, so you’ll be fine for your return bus journey coming back too. I’ll upload your train times back up to Rugby and that should work.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. My daughter Violet has been badgering me to do yoga for as long as I can remember. I’m starting to wonder whether she planned this whole thing out! I’ve not done yoga in my whole life and I don’t plan on starting now.”
“Well you don’t actually have to do the class, but you are going to have to book and pay for it to validate the journey. I wouldn’t let the opportunity pass if I were you though, Mr Cork, those post-yoga cacaos really take the weight off old bones like ours.” Leah beamed and rolled her shoulders back.
“Right. How much is the class then?”
“60 quid.”
“Jesus – I could buy another house in Rugby.”
“Look, Mr Cork, I’m giving you a way out here even though I’m not supposed to. You’ll likely get through the scanner alright this time, even on your two pints. The TfL system’ll take a paid-for class booking, especially a detox one, instead of your weird walking dead and condensed milk stuff. Your stability index score should normalise.”
“Alright, alright, let’s do it. Do you mind giving me a hand?”
Leah helped Mr Cork pay for the class, fill out a new JRF and upload all the relevant information into the TfL Move Free app on his phone.
“All done Mr Cork. Should hopefully get through without the police coming after you.” She laughed.
Mr Cork headed back toward the bus station and it wasn’t long before the X10 arrived. He stepped on with the trepidation of a boxer getting back to his feet after a first round knock-down. He flashed his phone and then stepped into the frame of the scanner once again. A few seconds went by as the blue light pulsed. Another rejection and Mr Cork was ready to head back to Rugby, Carnation can and all. But the blue dissolved into green, spilling across his jacket and painting his cheeks with freedom. His phone flashed with the same confident green: “Journey validated. Enjoy your journey.” A welcoming chime followed as Mr Cork stepped forward into the bus.
He almost laughed, but controlled himself and smiled instead, feeling a heady mix of relief and defiance coursing through his body. Inside the air offered cool relief from London’s unseasonably warm springtime haze. He reached out instinctively for a handrail but there wasn’t one. Replacing what used to be the only line of defence against falling face first as the driver accelerated away before you took your seat, was now a set of panels which felt clean to the touch. And in fact the bus didn’t jerk away at all. Mr Cork slipped into a place by the window and observed the rest of the passengers getting on, one by one. Instead of an impatient crush of elbows and bags, the space felt open and orderly, as his fellow passengers slotted into their seats with quiet ease. Even the seat he was in felt better than the lumpy foam he remembered. Only once everyone was seated, did the X10’s voice from above announce its departure and gracefully glide off again. Mr Cork felt… comfortable. Violet’s face and voice popped up in his head. “I told you so Dad!”
The bus cruised along noiselessly and Mr Cork watched the city in which he had once lived, worked and raised a family pass by. The neatly packed Victorian white houses of Maida Vale were now interspersed with modernist high-rises. Widened pavements hosted even more walkers than Mr Cork remembered, happily and busily strolling in the fair spring weather. All the shops, from the off licenses to the fashion stores, now had beaming screens to attract you inside. But the news stories of a homelessness crisis in London rang true. Amongst these walkers and shops were many cardboard houses and rough sleepers. It still saddened Mr Cork to see the wealth of London in stark contrast to its ubiquitous poverty. By the time they curved toward St John’s Wood, the green oval of Lord’s cricket ground appeared, hemmed in by a metal dome that now leaned protectively around it. Mr Cork felt the first ache of reminiscence since he’d travelled down from Rugby. He remembered long summer afternoons watching test matches, while his wife busied herself with the garden, occasionally checking with him what the scores were.
At Swiss Cottage, Mr Cork was jolted out of his reflective state by a band of schoolboys. They had done away with the bus stop queue and piled toward the doors, blazers hanging over their shoulders or tied around their waists. One of them, lankier than the rest, with tight black curls and his school tie ridiculously shortened, stepped on. The ribbon of light flared red in protest and the bus gave its warning chime as it came to a stop, shutting its engine off. This rejection which had so mortified Mr Cork less than an hour earlier provoked roars of laughter from the boys, who seemed to relish their rejection. Without a pause the lanky kid jumped backward onto the pavement as another howled out to him, “You’re never getting home!” Another burst of laughter was drowned out as the doors folded shut and the X10 slid on.
The bus announced its arrival at Finchley Road. Mr Cork rose with the others getting off and stepped down onto the sunlit pavement. He instinctively started to make his way towards Reddington Road, but he pulled out his phone and saw that the TfL Move Free app was directing him toward Breath and Bean, for his yoga class. It was just diagonally opposite to where he was. Dark green ivy tumbled down from the top of the windows and across the top of the building the words Breath and Bean were projected in curly script, alongside a crisp 3D logo depicting a lotus flower sprouting between two thin brown bars of chocolate. He thought of how much the class had cost, then of Leah’s gleeful advocacy of 65+ yoga and cacao. Mr Cork glanced at the time. He couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but felt a surprisingly genuine hint of curiosity at the prospect. “Well I have already paid for it,” he muttered to himself. The problem was that if he attended the class then he’d have to head straight back to the station afterwards, and wouldn’t end up visiting his old home after all.
Baffled by this unexpected quandary, Mr Cork stopped and looked around, only then truly realising that he had finally arrived at Finchley Road. Mr Cork had spent much time here with his wife. He took the can of condensed milk out from his pocket and observed the carnation displayed across its wrapper. He thought of his wife and what she would have said about all of this. After standing there for a while, and for the first time that day, Mr Cork felt a surge of happiness. He smiled. “She’d wonder what the hell I am doing walking to our old house with a tin of milk. And she’d much rather I do something daft like yoga and tell Violet about it later – icing on the cake for my battle with the bus.” With a deep sigh and still smiling, he walked over to a bin outside Breath and Bean and dropped the can inside with a thunk. Then without letting himself think too much, Mr Cork gingerly followed the scent of cacao through the sliding doors.
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