Robert Sawyer - Wonder

“Need more,” said Chase.

Hume frowned. “Money? I don’t have—”

“Not money, man.” He waved at the row of monitors. “I need money, I take money.”

“What then?”

“Wanna see WATCH—see what you guys got.”

“I can’t possibly—”

“Too bad. Cuz you right: you need me.”

Hume thought for a moment, then: “Deal.”

Chase nodded. “Gimme seventy-two hours. Sky gonna fall on Webmind.”

Even though it was a Saturday morning, Caitlin’s father had already left for the Perimeter Institute. Stephen Hawking was visiting; he did not adjust to different time zones easily and wasn’t one to take weekends off, so everyone who wanted to work with him had to get in early.

Caitlin and her mother were eating breakfast in the kitchen: Cheerios and orange juice for Caitlin; toast, marmalade, and coffee for her mom. The smell of coffee made Caitlin think of Matt, who seemed to be fueled by the stuff. And on that topic…

“I can’t spend the rest of my life a prisoner in this house, you know,” Caitlin said. She was learning the tricks of the sighted: she pretended to study the way her Cheerios floated on the sea of milk but was really watching her mother out of the corner of her eye, gauging her reaction.

“We have to be careful, dear. After what happened at school—”

“That was three days ago,” Caitlin said, in a tone that conveyed the time unit might as well have been years. “If those CSIS agents had wanted to come after me again, they would’ve already—they’d simply knock on our door.”

Caitlin used her spoon to submerge some Cheerios and watched as they bobbed back to the surface. Her mother was quiet for a time, perhaps considering. “Where do you want to go?”

“Just down to Timmy’s.” She felt all Canadian-like, calling the Tim Hortons donut chain by the nickname the locals used.

“No, no, you can’t go out alone.”

“I don’t mean by myself. I mean, you know, with, um, Matt.” Caitlin didn’t want to spell it out for her mom, but she could hardly have a relationship with him if they were confined to her house and always chaperoned.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, baby,” her mom said.

Caitlin looked full on at her mother now. “For Pete’s sake, Mom, I’m in constant contact with Webmind; he can keep an eye on me. Or, um, my eye will let him keep up with me. Or whatever.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s not far, and I’ll bring you some Timbits when I come back.” She smiled triumphantly. “It’s a win-win scenario.”

Her mother returned the smile. “All right, dear. But do be careful.”

TWITTER

_Webmind_ Question: where are the movies that portray artificial intelligence as beneficent, reliable, and kind?

Malcolm Decter sat listening to Stephen Hawking. It was amusing that Webmind had a more-human-sounding voice than the great physicist did. Hawking had long refused to upgrade his speech synthesizer; that voice was part of his identity, he said—although he did wish it had a British accent.

It was also intriguing watching Hawking give a lecture. He had to laboriously write his talk in advance, and then just sit motionless in his wheelchair while his computer played it back for his audience. Malcolm wasn’t much given to thinking about the mental states of neurotypicals, but, then again, Hawking surely wasn’t typical—and neither was Webmind. Malcolm rather suspected the great physicist was doing something similar to what Webmind did: letting his mind wander off to a million other places while he waited for people to digest what he was saying.

Behind Hawking, here in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, were three giant blackboards with equations related to loop quantum gravity scrawled on them by whoever had been in here last. Hawking was denied many things, not the least of which were the physicists’ primary tools of blackboards and napkin backs. He had almost no physical interaction with the world and had to conceptualize everything in his mind. Malcolm couldn’t relate—but he suspected Webmind could.

A break finally came in Hawking’s lecture, and the audience of physicists erupted into spirited conversation. “Yes, but what about spinfoam?” “That part about the Immirzi parameter was brilliant!” “Well, there goes my approach!”

Malcolm fished his BlackBerry out of his pocket and checked his email; he’d never been obsessive about that before, but he wanted to be sure that Barb and Caitlin were okay, and—

Ah, there was an answer from Hu Guan. He opened it.

Malcolm, so good to hear from you!

I do know the person about whom you ask. Sadly, he is no longer at liberty. It took me a while to locate him. I’d expected him to be in prison, but he’s actually hospitalized; the poor fellow’s back has been broken.

Since the authorities now have him, I suppose there’s no further danger to him in mentioning his real name. It is Wong Wai-Jeng, formerly in technical support at the paleontology museum here in Beijing. It will perhaps be a comfort to him to know that his brave efforts were noticed half a world away.

For a second, Malcolm thought about forwarding the message to Webmind, but there was no need for that. Webmind read his email—he read everybody’s email—and so he already knew what Zhang had said, and presumably whatever he wanted to do with this Sinanthropus fellow was under way.

Amir Hameed was sitting next to Malcolm. He gestured at the stage. “So, what do you think?”

Malcolm put his BlackBerry away. “It’s a whole new world,” he said.

Caitlin’s mom had gone up to her office, leaving Caitlin downstairs, walking around the living room. Just looking at things was fascinating to her, and it seemed every time she examined something she’d seen before, she was able to make out new details: seams where pieces of wood joined on the bookcases; a slight discoloration of the beige wall where the previous owners had hung a painting; a manufacturer’s name embossed but not colored on the television remote. And she was learning what different textures looked like: the leather of the couch; the smooth metal legs of the glass coffee table; the roughness of her father’s sweater, draped over the back of the easy chair.

She walked to the opposite side of the room and looked down the long corridor that led to the washroom, and her father’s den, and the utility room, and the side door of the house. It was a nice straight corridor, with nothing on the floor, and it had a dark brown carpet running its length—the shade was about the same as Caitlin’s hair.

She’d visited other kids’ homes often enough when she was younger, and had frequently heard the same thing: parents telling their children to stop running in the house; her friend Stacy had gotten in trouble for that all the time.

But Caitlin’s parents had never said that to her. Of course not: she had to walk slowly, deliberately; oh, she hadn’t had to use her white cane in the old house back in Austin, or in this house after the first few days, but she certainly couldn’t go running about. Her parents were meticulous about not leaving shoes or other things anywhere Caitlin might trip over them, but Schrödinger—or his predecessor, Mr. Mistoffelees—could have been anywhere, and the last thing Caitlin had wanted to do was injure herself or her cat.

But now she could see! And now that she could see—maybe she could run!

What the heck, she thought. “Webmind?”

Yes? flashed in her vision.

“I’m going to try running down this hallway—so don’t do what you just did. Don’t pop any words into my vision, okay?”