Robert Sawyer - Wonder

“Mr. President, even if I were to provide such a technique, many would not believe me; they would assume that I would have left a back door for me to access the information, should I so desire—just as, I might add, your National Security Agency does with the encryption standards available to your corporations and citizenry.”

The president frowned. “Then where does that leave us?”

“Do you have a computer hooked up to the Internet in your office?”

“Yes.”

“Go look at cogito_ergo_sum.net, please. The words are separated by underscores.”

“Underscores aren’t valid in domain names,” Tony said. “It won’t work.”

“Wanna bet?” said Webmind.

The computer was on the credenza behind the Resolute desk. The president rotated in his high-back leather chair, and the other three crowded behind him as he typed in the address.

“I see your incoming page request,” said Webmind. “Ah, you use Internet Explorer. You should really switch to Firefox; it’s more secure.”

Tony laughed. “It’s certainly not irony-impaired,” he said, looking at Hume.

“All right,” said the president. “I’m there. What do—really? My… God. Really?”

“Holy shit,” said Hume.

“I put it to you, Mr. President,” said Webmind. “Do you want to be held responsible for eliminating me? I’ve largely solved the spam problem, and now I’ve presented a suite of cures for cancer. I very much suspect the public will not want you to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

TWITTER

_Webmind_ Nice chat just now with four esteemed gentlemen. I hope I convinced them of my good intentions.

Webmind had let Matt and the Decters listen in on the phone conversation with the president. When it was over, everyone in the living room was silent for a time, except for Schrödinger, who had come to join them; he was purring softly. Finally, to her surprise, it was Caitlin’s dad who broke the silence. “Are you sure you still want to vote for him, Barb?”

Caitlin saw her mom shrug a little. “He listened, at least. But I don’t like that other fellow—Hume, was it?”

“Colonel Peyton Hume, Ph.D.,” said Webmind. “The pre-nominal designation comes from the United States Air Force; the post-nominal is courtesy of MIT.”

Caitlin felt herself sitting up straighter at the magic initials; it was where she herself dreamed of studying.

It was now almost 10:30 P.M. Caitlin was exhausted after a succession of late nights. And Matt, who had expected nothing more than to quickly drop off the things he’d collected from Caitlin’s locker, was clearly having trouble keeping his eyes open.

“I’ll drive you home,” her father said to him abruptly.

Caitlin thought about offering to go along for the ride, but it was hardly as though she could kiss Matt good night in front of her dad. Besides, she needed to talk to her mom alone, and this seemed like it would be a good opportunity.

“Thank you, Dr. Decter,” Matt said.

Matt looked at Caitlin, as if he wanted to say something, and Caitlin looked back at him, wishing he would. Then the two men in her life walked out the door.

When they were gone, Caitlin said, “Webmind, it’s time for me to call it a night, too.”

Sweet dreams popped into her vision.

“Thank you. I’ll say good night again from upstairs.” She went over to the laptop and closed its lid, putting it into hibernation. She pulled the eyePod out of her pocket and pressed down the single switch for five seconds, turning it off. Caitlin’s vision faded to a dark, even gray. “Okay, Mom, we’re alone now. And I gotta say, I get the sense you’re not entirely on board.”

With the eyePod deactivated, Caitlin could no longer see her mother, but she heard her take a deep breath. “I know you’re very fond of Webmind. To tell you the truth, I am, too.”

“So you’re going to help protect him?” Caitlin asked.

“Of course, sweetheart.” Then, after a pause. “Within reason.”

Caitlin folded her arms in front of her chest—and, in doing so, was reminded of the fact that underneath her bulky Perimeter Institute fleece, she wasn’t wearing a bra. She was briefly embarrassed by this; she’d removed it to make it easier for Matt to be affectionate when he’d come over after school. What a day it had been!

But she immediately came back to the question at hand. “Forgive me, Mom, but that’s not good enough. This is the most important thing in my life; this is my destiny. Webmind is here because of me, and I need you to be as committed as I am to helping protect him.”

Her mother was quiet for a time. “Well,” she said, at last, “you are the most important thing in my life. And so, of course, I’m going to help.”

“Really, Mom?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m in.”

Even blind, Caitlin knew exactly where her mother was standing and had no trouble closing the distance between them and hugging her hard.

TWITTER

_Webmind_ @PaulLev No, I don’t have an opinion about who you should vote for—at least not yet. #USelection

“There is one possibility that we haven’t considered,” said the Secretary of Defense, as the group in the Oval Office continued to discuss the phone call from Webmind.

“Yes?” said the president.

“You brought up the issue yourself: verifying that Webmind is who he says he is. We could, in fact, eliminate Webmind now but fake his continued existence.”

“How?” asked the president “He’s involved, as I understand it, in millions of online conversations at once. And now he’s on Twitter and Facebook and MySpace.”

“Not MySpace,” said Tony Moretti.

“Regardless,” said the secretary, “we could contrive a reason to explain a scaling-down of his activities. Not coming from us, of course: we’d get an academic somewhere—preferably outside our borders—to put forth a plausible-sounding scenario. It would have to appear that Webmind was maintaining some level of activity for the ruse to work, but the NSA could provide the sort of insights that are normally associated with Webmind’s special access to the net; we could make it look like he’s still alive. The truth that we’d eliminated him would not have to come out until after the election is over.”

“That would be a hard thing to pull off,” said the president.

“Disinformation is an important part of any intelligence campaign,” said the secretary. “We don’t have to keep it up forever; just until we’re re-elected. By that point—a few weeks of reduced activity—people will have lost much of their interest in Webmind, anyway.”

“Do you really think we could get away with that?” asked the president.

“Half the world believes Webmind is a hoax or a publicity stunt as it is,” replied the secretary. “We only have to convince the other half—and given that they bought into Webmind before there was convincing evidence to corroborate its existence, they’re obviously easy to convince.”

The president looked at Hume. “Colonel, are you still convinced it’s dangerous? It sounded, frankly, much more reasonable than any number of foreign leaders I’ve had to deal with.”

Peyton Hume took a deep breath and looked around the Oval Office. “Mr. President, let me put it this way. They say you’re the most powerful person in the world—and you are. But, even for you, sir, there are checks and balances: you had to be elected, the Constitution defines your role, you must reach accommodations with Congress, there are mechanisms for impeachment, you are subject to term limits, and so on. But if we don’t nip Webmind in the bud now, while we still can, you won’t be the most powerful entity on Earth; it will be—and there will be no checks and balances on its actions.”