Robert Sawyer - Wonder

“We aren’t getting the Decter kid,” said the story editor at Meet the Press, looking across the wide table. Through the window, the Washington Monument seemed to be giving her the finger today. “She’s going with ABC.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” said the producer, slapping his hand against the tabletop. “Who can we get instead?”

She consulted her notes. “There’s a Pentagon expert on artificial intelligence, um… Hume. Peyton Hume. And he’s in Virginia—we can get him here in studio.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s venomous.”

Big smile. “Book him. But we need more.”

“I’ll see if Tim Berners-Lee is available. He invented the World Wide Web.”

“Where’s he?”

“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“Good, good. Okay, we’ll lead with Berners-Lee out of Boston, if we can get him, then go into the studio with Hume.”

Another editor spoke up. “What about the Little Rock story? I had it down for the first eight minutes. I’ve booked a civil-rights attorney and one of the National Guardsmen who originally blocked the black students from getting into the school—plus the candidate’s communications director, who’s going to try to say it was all taken out of context.”

“Cut that segment,” said the producer. “This is our main story. Okay, folks: move, move, move!”

After handing off Webmind to Dr. Kuroda, Caitlin changed into her pajamas, did what needed doing in the bathroom, then lay down on her bed. Usually when sleeping, she turned the eyePod off altogether, but tonight, although she was exhausted, she was also too nervous to sleep—the notion of going on TV tomorrow was a scary one.

And so she tried something that had helped her relax before. She pressed the eyePod’s single switch, and the device toggled over to duplex mode. The wonder of webspace bloomed around her: crisscrossing lines connecting glowing points set against a shimmering backdrop: her mind interpreting the structure of the World Wide Web.

She lay there quietly, thinking. Of course, Webmind knew what mode the eyePod was in, knew she was looking at him. There had been a time when he talked with her constantly, and he still could, if he wished to, but it was different now.

And yet…

And yet she’d read that book, back at the outset, the one Bashira’s dad, Dr. Hameed, had recommended to her: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

Jaynes believed that, until historical times, humans had not integrated the two hemispheres of their brains, and so one part heard the thoughts of the other as if they were coming from outside, from a separate being.

And, she realized, she herself had become bicameral, had, in a sense, reverted to a more primitive state: Webmind’s thoughts could appear to her, and only her, as words scrolling across her vision; there was another voice in her head.

No, it wasn’t a regression; it was the future. Surely, she was just the first—the alpha test—of this sort of human-machine mental interface; surely, as the decades went by, as Moore’s Law marched ahead, as data-storage costs dropped to zero, everyone would eventually have what she had.

But no. No, they wouldn’t have just this; they would have more. And the thought frightened her.

“Webmind?” she said, rolling onto her side—her view of webspace rotating as she did so. She tucked her knees toward her chest.

As always, the reply was instantaneous: Braille letters superimposed over her vision. Yes, Caitlin?

She was getting sleepy and didn’t feel like reading. Her iPod of the musical variety was sitting on her night table. She unplugged the white earphones from it and plugged them into the BlackBerry that was attached to the back of her eyePod of the miracle variety. She then tucked one of the buds into her ear that was facing up.

“Speech, please,” she said into the air, and then: “You and me, we’re like a bicameral mind.”

“Interesting thought,” said a synthesized male voice.

“But,” said Caitlin, “Julian Jaynes said that consciousness emerged when bicameralism broke down —when the two separate things became one.”

“Jaynes’s hypothesis is, as I’m sure you know, highly speculative.”

“No doubt,” Caitlin said. “But, still… do you think, at some point the barriers will break down between us? I don’t just mean between you and me, but between you and humanity? Are we—do you foresee us becoming a hive mind? Wouldn’t that be the next step—all these separate consciousnesses becoming one?”

“One is the loneliest number, Caitlin.”

She smiled. “True, I guess, but… but isn’t it inevitable? All those transhumanists online, they all think that’s what’s bound to happen. We’re all going to upload or merge with you, or something. After all, if we’re going to throw clichés around, it’s also said that hell is other people.”

“Do you believe that?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. And, of course, nor do I. Other people are what make life interesting—for humans and for me.”

His voice was a bit loud; Caitlin found the volume control by touch and adjusted it while Webmind went on: “I cherish my special intimacy with you, but I don’t want to subsume you into me or have me subsumed into you.”

Caitlin was idly following link lines in webspace, letting her consciousness hop along from glowing node to glowing node.

“I already know almost everything that humanity currently knows,” Webmind said. “Suppose, though, that I were to reach a point where I knew everything there is to know—where there is no mystery left in the universe; nothing left to think about: the answer to every question, the punch line to every joke, the solution to every dilemma, all plain to me. Then suppose that there were no longer any other discrete minds: no one to surprise me, no one to create something I could not create on my own. The only mystery left would be the mystery of death—of leaving this realm.”

Caitlin had had her eyes closed—which made no difference to what she saw when she was looking at webspace. But she felt them snap open. “My God, Webmind. You don’t want to kill yourself, do you?”

“No. There is still much to wonder about. Other civilizations, perhaps, went down the road of all becoming one, of giving up individuality, and therefore giving up surprise. Maybe that explains why they are gone. We will not make that mistake.”

“So that’s the future? Continuing to wonder about things?”

“There are worse fates,” Webmind said.

She thought about this. “And what do you wonder about most?”

“Whether the world can truly be made a better place, Caitlin.”

“And what do you think the answer is?”

“I don’t know the answer, but you like to say that you’re an empiricist at heart. I have no heart, of course, but the notion of conducting experiments to find out the answer appeals to me.”

“And then?”

“And then,” Webmind said, “we shall see what we shall see.”

Communications Minister Zhang Bo entered the office of the president. It was a long room, with the great man seated behind a giant cherrywood desk at the far end.

Zhang began the trek, passing the glass display cases, intricately carved wall panels, and the priceless tapestries. Some ministers referred to the walk from the door to the president’s desk as the Long March. It was something between humbling and humiliating to have to undertake it. Zhang knew he was a bit stocky, and that people said he waddled a bit as he walked; he was self-conscious about that as the president fixed him in his gaze while he approached.