Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Smart App
    The Smart App
    The Smart App
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    The Smart App

    By Roy Raymond

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    New technologies can change everything. Three computer science undergrads come up with the next big thing. Will their creation help the world or enslave it? Techies want to emulate it, IT companies want to buy it, the government wants to stop it. It might make the creators rich but it might also get them killed.

    In his latest novel, The Smart App, Roy Raymond explores the coming of the next big thing in computer technology; an App that makes your smartphone just a little bit smarter. Maybe it’ll take 10 years for the real thing to come along – maybe it won’t. Raymond comes up with a story that is outrageous, shocking and entirely credible.

    As Raymond was finishing his novel, the world experienced an Arab Spring and a tussle over Blackberry censorship after the London riots. What’s going to happen next? Read the book......

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoy Raymond
    Release dateMar 27, 2012
    ISBN9781476287652
    The Smart App
    Author

    Roy Raymond

    Roy Raymond works in the high tech industry as a consultant and business manager. He has also written for and produced theatre and worked in publishing and the arts. He currently lives on an island moored somewhere near Sydney, Australia, with his wife and three children.

    Related to The Smart App

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      I'm Ready

      Nov 5, 2020

      I'm Ready
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Rise of Déjà Zoom

      Dec 2, 2021

      The Rise of Déjà Zoom
      5 min read

    • Article

      We Know Less Than We Think

      Mar 9, 2021

      We Know Less Than We Think
      2 min read

    • Article

      Dentistry’s Problem Children

      May 8, 2017

      Dentistry’s Problem Children
      11 min read

    • Article

      My Son, the Nonreader

      Jun 19, 2018

      A few days after the funeral, my older son, Josh, now 30, went on a shopping trip with my wife. He brought back a liter of Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon. I thought about it for a few seconds and said, “You know, I think that’s the

      7 min read

    • Article

      Absurdist Dialogues with Siri

      Feb 12, 2018

      Absurdist Dialogues with Siri
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Great Exam Failure

      Mar 6, 2024

      Whenever my daughters say, ‘I was sat’ (which is frequently), I ask them who exactly plonked them there. I am becoming a dreary, Canute-like pedant, fighting a long-lost battle, given there is hardly a broadcaster on Radio 4 who seems to know the dif

      3 min read

    • Article

      Language Barrier

      May 30, 2021

      Language Barrier
      7 min read

    • Article

      Here To Make Friends

      Feb 25, 2018

      Here To Make Friends
      7 min read

    • Article

      Date A Hollywood Actress

      Apr 10, 2023

      Date A Hollywood Actress
      5 min read

    • Article

      Date A Hollywood Actress

      Apr 10, 2023

      Date A Hollywood Actress
      5 min read

    • Article

      Miss Cole

      Oct 21, 2020

      Miss Cole
      2 min read

    • Article

      Gigantic

      Feb 1, 2022

      Gigantic
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tim Blake Nelson Brings Hollywood to the Page

      Feb 20, 2023

      Tim Blake Nelson‘s sprawling debut novel, City Of Blows, examines the power dynamics of Hollywood through the lives Tinsel Town movers and shakers. City of Blows follows legendary producer Jacob Rosenthal, who enlists a filmmaker named David Levit to

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fatal Distraction

      Jun 5, 2022

      Fatal Distraction
      13 min read

    • Article

      Phoning It In

      Feb 2, 2020

      I hate the phone. I yearn for the day that talking on the phone, at least for pleasure, is considered a quaint Victorian hobby along the lines of croquet and tightlaced corseting. It was only necessary before we invented texting; now there’s really n

      4 min read

    • Article

      Not Half Bad: Remembering My Friendship with John Goulet

      Jul 16, 2018

      1. He walked into the room, leaning hard on a cane, and hung his leather jacket on the back of his chair. He was big at the middle; buttons on his sweater vest hung tough across his belly, and he wore a T-shirt under his vest, which I thought was fun

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Write Stuff

      Jan 8, 2023

      The Write Stuff
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Smart App

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Smart App - Roy Raymond

      The Smart App

      By Roy Raymond

      Copyright 2012 Roy Raymond

      Smashwords Edition

      Table of contents

      1.

      2.

      3.

      4.

      5.

      6.

      7.

      8.

      9.

      10.

      11.

      12.

      Author contact

      1.

      There it was; a fleck of blood on his shoe. Jon was surrounded by screeching tyres, gunfire and screaming but it was the evidence of some inconsequential spillage of blood that fixed his gaze. He scrunched his body low and twisted in the passenger seat. He held his arms to his ears and he shook with death-row fear.

      Thank god the university dropout wasn’t driving. That task fell to Beanie Smith. Beanie – long-time Kenyan truck driver – manoeuvred the flatbed truck at insane speed through the streets of downtown Nairobi. If anyone could survive this it was Beanie, but the crazy-arse pursuers had a souped up SUV and guns. They were military trained too. And the guns didn’t pop like a drug dealer’s, they puffed like something better funded and more reputable.

      The ‘lethal gunfire’ zinged near their ears. The ‘apprehend gunfire’ had taken out one of the rear dual tyres and would soon knock out a second, making any chance of escape extremely slim. All this over a fucking phone.

      *

      Nine months earlier, Pittsburgh

      There are two things that most people would not guess about Holly Stevens. First, given that she is a freakishly talented computer science undergrad it’s odd that she’s really not having a good time at Carnegie Mellon. And second, given that she is freakishly clever it’s odd that the recently opened Computer Science building leaves her entirely confused.

      Twin buildings actually; a modern marvel of architecture connected at every level by bridges and walkways but with no two floors on the same level. There are dramatic atriums, asymmetric walls and carpeted ramps. There is green space on the roof and a wetland rainforest at its base. There are designated quiet spaces, there are collaborative café clusters. The clusters are no salve for Holly’s solitary journey at America’s premier high tech university.

      Skilled at social camouflage, Holly’s most notable physical feature is her hair; an extremely large mop of impenetrable brown ringlets. It’s a feature that manages to hide most other features she may or may not have. She might be considered reclusive, but recluses have an assertiveness that maintains their status. Holly can easily be buffeted out of her reclusion.

      Holly. Hi. How was your break? Jon Kepper, in the building with no corridors, had to walk quickly to catch Holly going nowhere.

      Ok. I need to get to class.

      Are you heading to Phone Apps 2? How’s the app project going? Zakowski’s a hard-ass, but it keeps the focus, hey?

      Holly kept walking, nodding, hoping Jon would go away, and hoping she could get her bearings.

      You know Holly, this semester we’re supposed to team up. I know a bit about your app. I think it’s a good match up with mine. What’s say we…

      No. Thanks.

      In truth, Holly would have given the same reply to anyone. She wanted to work on her app alone and she didn’t want to be waylaid with anyone else’s. It didn’t count that she was mildly suspicious of Jon. The thing that she’d noticed in first semester was that Jon is a good few years older than most others in the class. He had paper-thin brown hair that was scruffy in an unfashionable way. He had a ruddy complexion and a stubble that hinted at a much different life away from study and routine. In class discussions he was silent, or if he did speak it was usually something off-mark or technically clumsy. As others stealthily pulled their sliver-thin macbooks from their laptop bags, Jon would be fumbling for a pen in a plastic bag.

      But the things that put Jon on the outer also made him a little intriguing. He was happy to chat with anyone, sometimes about computer stuff, but mostly about sports, or music, or beer brands. Maybe he didn’t get around to it, but he never mentioned that it was his elderly mother that was paying for his time here at Carnegie Mellon.

      Holly and the rebuffed Jon now entered room E473 via a blue carpeted ramp. One hundred seats, slightly raked, a screen installed at the front, a lectern at front left. At five past the hour Professor Glen Zakowski entered without making eye contact and took his place at the lectern.

      Zakowski may not have been the most talented computer scientist, but he made up for it by giving uncontested priority to vocation and career. His circle of acquaintances was all academic and business connections. He’d reflected, once, that maybe this wasn’t the best way to lead a life, but he dismissed the thought. He was a senior academic at one of the nation’s premier CS institutions and that was enough.

      Academic ambitiousness did not mean that Zakowski was dour. On the contrary, with colleagues he was often impish, cheeky and annoying. He would regularly have side-splitting laughs in the staff rooms, but it was usually at his own jokes and his laugh was always more raucous than that of the listener. In the office next to Zakowski’s was Sanders. It was Sanders who, mostly for reasons of geography, was the main recipient of Zakowski’s humour. For Sanders there was always a little awkwardness when Zakowski came to his door to share a joke or a story or some random deprecation of one of the students. This was because Sanders would see no humour in it at all, but also because he knew that Zakowski would invariably double-over with laughter and leave himself in a breathless wheeze, and then, most nauseatingly, wipe the spittle from his bottom lip. Every time.

      He had a much more disciplined demeanour with his classes.

      You know it amazes me how this institution, and this faculty are so heavily in demand, and yet here we are at lecture number one and the room is half empty.

      Zakowski recognised Jon sitting in the second row next to Holly. On the other side of Holly was Robbie Nguyen. Zakowski liked to start his class repartee with the outcasts.

      Jon, I’m so glad to see you back in this class. No, really. It’s reassuring that a lack of aptitude is no bar to choosing whatever course you want here at Carnegie. Competition is such an analogue concept after all. Welcome everybody. My name is Zakowski, your lecturer for Phone App Development 2.

      He then rattled through a long list of course requirements. The listeners, fresh from term break, made promises to themselves to work harder and submit assignments on time. New semester resolutions are exactly like new year resolutions, only more numerous and less enduring.

      Contrary to my advice, the faculty has permitted some of you who did not satisfy all requirements of Phone Apps 1 to continue with us this term. That will not be happening again let me assure you.

      Jon anticipated an accusing glance from Zakowski and got one.

      "If you have any questions please visit my web page first to see if the answer is there. If you still can’t find the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1