Robert Sawyer - Wonder

Perhaps we can discuss possibilities? Can we set up a video conference call between you, me, and Webmind?

“Well-behaved women rarely make history.”

Astonished, Shoshana fumbled for her mouse and clicked on the reply button.

Barbara Decter was sitting alone on the couch in the living room at 7:30 on Monday morning, reading the latest International Journal of Game Theory, when she happened to look up. Just outside the window there was a tree branch that still had some of its autumn leaves on it, and perched on the branch was a beautiful male blue jay.

For years, the Decters’ Christmas cards had always featured one of Barb’s photos, and this looked like it’d be perfect—way better than the picture she’d taken last month of the St. Jacob’s farmers’ market. But her SLR was up in her office, and she knew if she got up, she’d startle the bird.

Ah, but Caitlin’s little red BlackBerry was still right there on the coffee table. She slowly reached over and picked it up. Although Caitlin’s was a different model from her own, she had no trouble figuring out what to do. She aimed the device and snapped the picture—just before the jay took flight.

She used the little track pad to select the photo app so she could check the picture. The app showed thumbnails of two photos—the one she’d just taken and… and maybe a pair of cartoon eyes?

No—no, that wasn’t what they were. She selected the thumbnail, and the square screen filled with a photograph of a pair of breasts.

What on earth was Caitlin doing with a picture like that? Barb wondered, and then, after a moment, she realized that the breasts in question must be her daughter’s own.

And if Caitlin had taken the picture, she might have sent it somewhere. She selected the outbox and—

And there it was: Caitlin had appended the photo to a text message she’d sent to Matt yesterday. God!

Caitlin was still in bed—and, given how little sleep she’d been getting of late, Barb wasn’t about to wake her just yet. But Malcolm hadn’t left for work. Still holding the red BlackBerry, Barb marched down the corridor to Malcolm’s den. He was staring at his monitor, typing away, Queen playing in the background. As always, he didn’t look up.

Barb stifled her first impulse, which had been to thrust the incriminating picture in his face and say, “Look!” After all, he really didn’t need to see his own daughter topless. But she did wave the BlackBerry around as she spoke. “Caitlin is sending naked pictures of herself with her phone.”

This did get Malcolm to look up, at least for a moment. But then he lowered his gaze. “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

Barb couldn’t believe her ears. “Doesn’t matter? Your daughter—your newly sighted daughter, I might add—is sending nude photos of herself to boys, and you say it doesn’t matter?”

“Boys, plural?”

“Well—to Matt. She sent him a picture of her breasts.”

He nodded but said nothing.

She was flabbergasted. “This is a girl who wants to get into a top university, who wants to work somewhere important. Things that get online take on a life of their own. This will come back to haunt her.”

Malcolm was still looking down at his keyboard. “I don’t think so.”

“How can you be so sure? I know you like Matt; so do I, for that matter. But what’s to stop him from plastering this photo all over Facebook, or wherever, if he and Caitlin have an ugly breakup?”

Malcolm just shook his head again. “It’s the end of Victorianism—and about time, too. Many members of Caitlin’s generation are saying I don’t care if you’ve seen me naked, or know I smoke pot, or whatever.”

“Caitlin is smoking pot?” Barb said, alarmed.

“Not as far as I know.” He fell silent again.

Barb stared at him, exasperated. “Damn it, Malcolm—this is your daughter we’re talking about! This is important. We have to deal with it as parents, and we can’t if you don’t participate in the dialog. I need your—” She sought a word that might resonate for him, then: “—input on this.”

He looked down at the desktop, with its perfectly neat stacks of paper, and the stapler precisely aligned with the edge of the desk. His shoulders rolled slightly; she’d seen this before—seen him gathering himself into professorial mode, the only mode in which he could speak at length. And then he looked up, and ever so briefly met her eyes, his own perhaps pleading for her to understand that the way he was didn’t mean he loved Caitlin any less than she did. And then he focused on a spot on the gray wall a little to Barb’s right, and he spoke in rapid-fire sentences, wanting to get it all out as quickly as possible. “The point is that all the things we used to let society hold over us—my God, he got drunk in public; good Lord, she actually has sex; wow, he’s experimented with drugs; gee whiz, sometimes she doesn’t look perfect; holy crap, he’s had a few minor runins with the law—none of that garbage matters, and Caitlin and most of her generation are saying so. They just don’t care about it; they don’t care about it now, and they won’t care about it when they’re the ones in power, either.”

Barb was astounded but knew better than to interrupt him; if she turned the water pump off, it wouldn’t run this freely again for days. And, she had to admit, what he was saying did make sense.

He went on. “What’s the biggest fear the world has right now? It’s whether we can survive the advent of Webmind—survive the coming of superintelligence, survive being dethroned from our lofty position as the smartest things on Earth—survive all that with our fundamental humanity intact. But the way our generation lived our lives— hiding who we really were, fretting over what the neighbors might know about us, letting peccadilloes embarrass us, living in fear of being shamed for nothing more than doing what almost everyone else was doing anyway—well, as Caitlin would say, that is so over.”

He seemed to have said his piece and was looking again at his desktop, and so Barb said, “But… but they could blackmail her.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. The feds, maybe.”

“Well, first, Webmind said he’s made our BlackBerrys secure. And, second, I’d love to see that headline: ‘US government has naked picture of underage girl.’ If anything, Caitlin could blackmail them: ‘Federal agent tries to coerce sixteen-year-old with topless photo.’ Attempting to kill Webmind might not cost the Democrats the next election, but getting into the child-porn business certainly will.”

“Porn!” said Barbara.

“It either is or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then who gives a damn?”

Barb frowned, remembering back to when her marriage to Frank, her first husband, had been falling apart: she’d been mortified that people would find out about their difficulties, that strangers—or, even worse, friends!—might overhear them fighting. “Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly.

“I am right,” he replied, and again he focused on the wall next to her. “We’re trying to preserve humanity in this new era, and yet we’ve spent the last century or more pretending to be perfect little robots. Well, I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. Caitlin isn’t perfect. So what? You’re divorced, I’m autistic, she used to be blind—who gives a damn? If you’re a good person, hiding who you really are is just another way of saying that you’ve decided to let others establish your self-worth. Remember how pissed you were when you found out the university was paying you less than they were paying me simply because you were a woman? It’s only because we shared that information that you were able to lead the fight for pay equity at the campus. Keeping things private empowers others to take advantage of your ignorance, to hold things over your head.”