Robert Sawyer - Wonder

The disk’s top had been similarly flattened, and an LCD screen—from a BlackBerry Storm—had been installed there, so that Webmind could show Hobo strung-together videos of ASL signs, letting him talk to the ape. Next to the screen was another camera, pointing up; it would allow Webmind to look at Hobo; the device’s microphone was also located on the upper edge.

“It’s tied into the BlackBerry network,” Tawanda said, “meaning Webmind should be able to communicate with it just about anywhere. And we’re using the best new cells we’ve got here at RIM: the battery should last for two days of continuous use before recharging.”

Caitlin’s dad had said nothing beyond a simple hello when they’d arrived, but he was looking at the device with interest. Caitlin wondered if having cameras face him was as disconcerting for him as having people look at him.

“Thank you so much,” Caitlin said to Tawanda.

“My pleasure,” she replied. “So, you’re going to take it to New York yourself?”

“On Wednesday,” Caitlin said. “I’m going to hand-deliver it.”

Tawanda lifted her eyebrows. “It’s not on the list of approved electronic devices, you know. You won’t be able to take it in your carry-on luggage; you’ll have to check it.”

Caitlin frowned. “Is it fragile?”

“Well, it’s made to withstand the worst an angry male ape might throw at it, but as to whether it can survive airport baggage handlers—your guess is as good as mine.”

“Let me be sure I understand you, Mr. Webmind,” said the General Assembly’s protocol officer into his phone. “You want to bring a monkey into the General Assembly Hall?”

I replied, “Hobo is not a monkey, Miss Jong; he is an ape. But, yes, that’s what I want to do.”

“Why?”

I considered several possible answers, including “Because it tickles my fancy,” “Because, as a nonhuman, Hobo will not require the intrusive background checks others are put through before being allowed into secure areas,” and “Because he is my friend,” all of which were true, but the one I gave voice to was this: “Because, having looked now at millions of photographs on the Web, I have learned the value of iconic imagery. This will be a historic occasion, like the March on Washington, the first steps on the moon, and the knocking down of the Berlin Wall, and I want it to be visually distinctive so that, for all time to come, people will instantly recognize pictures from this event. This is one for the ages.”

There was a three-second pause, then: “I can tell you this: our media-relations people are going to love you.”

It was a short flight from Tokyo to Beijing, but any flight was uncomfortable for Masayuki; he had trouble fitting in airline seats. As he settled in, he was intrigued to note that Japan Airlines now offered in-flight Wi-Fi; even at ten kilometers above the ground, it would be possible to stay in touch with Webmind.

But he’d been spending so much time with Webmind over the last several days, he decided not to take advantage of that. A little isolation would be good for the soul. He always took an aisle seat; the person next to him was using a Sony ebook reader. Masayuki owned one of those, as well, but he’d grown a little tired of interfacing with technology. He closed his eyes, tilted his chair back, and settled in for some quiet time, alone with his thoughts.

Peyton Hume could feel the noose tightening. Everywhere he looked, there were security cameras, many of which were hooked up to the Internet; what they saw, Webmind saw. And everyone he knew carried a smartphone, likewise allowing Webmind to eavesdrop. The world was totally connected, and even the precautions he was taking—turning off his car’s GPS, for instance—probably weren’t enough. Cameras frequently caught his license plate, and Webmind had access to the same black-hat list Hume himself had used to locate Chase. If Webmind had guessed that Hume had wanted to meet with a world-class hacker, it wouldn’t have taken many clues to figure out which one.

But, still, Hume had to take what measures he could, and Chase, he knew, would be doing similar things at his end. There’d been no contact between them for almost two days: Chase had said, “Gimme seventy-two hours,” but Hume knew that was too long to wait; instead, they’d agreed he’d come by again at 4:00 P.M. on Monday afternoon.

And so, once again, Hume drove to Manassas. The two Battles of Bull Run had been fought near here, early in the Civil War; Hume hoped it wasn’t symbolic that the Confederates had won them both. He could almost hear the cannonade as he drove along, almost see Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson astride their mounts. That war had lasted four bloody years; this one would be over, one way or another, in a matter of weeks at most. But the wars did have one thing in common: both had been about the right of all people to be free.

As he drove along, he had the radio news turned on. There was the usual nonsense about the election, and a story about a mountain climber lost for two days, and—

“Three men with chemical explosives hidden in their carry-on luggage were arrested today at Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport prior to boarding a 757 bound for Athens,” said the male newsreader. “The men, each of whom had a long history of angry online postings railing against Turkey’s so-called ‘secular Islamic’ society, were thought to be planning to blow up the plane in flight. Authorities were tipped off by an unnamed source—although it’s widely believed to be Webmind—who had noted the men had placed online orders for over-the-counter chemicals that could be used in making the explosives, and that they had charged one-way executive-class tickets, something none of them could actually afford. Said inspector Pelin Pirnal of the Istanbul police, ‘It was clear they didn’t intend to be around when the credit-card bill came due.’ ”

Jesus, thought Hume. Didn’t people see that this was the thin edge of the wedge? Of course, the apologists would say Webmind wasn’t doing anything different from what WATCH and Homeland Security did, but their roles were narrowly defined. But today, Webmind was blowing the whistle on terrorists; tomorrow it might be outing embezzlers—then philanderers, then who knew what? Who knew how long Webmind’s list of objectionable activities would become, or whether what an AI thought was wrong would even remotely correspond with what humans thought was wrong?

Hume couldn’t help Chase with the programming—oh, he was a fair-to-middling programmer himself, but nowhere near Chase’s league. But time was of the essence, and he might perhaps be able to assist Chase in other ways, and so he stopped en route at Subway to get a couple of foot-longs and some Doritos; even taking time to prepare a meal might delay Chase’s work too much.

Bang on time, Hume pulled his car into the driveway—which he saw now in daylight was made of interlocking Z-shaped paving stones. He went up to the door, and—again, in daylight they weren’t hard to spot—noted two security cameras trained on him. He suspected there was a motion-sensor, too, so Chase probably knew he was here without him knocking. But, after thirty seconds of standing on the stoop, and upon failing to find a door buzzer, Hume rapped his knuckles against the door just below the frosted half-moon window at the top, and—

—and damned if the door didn’t swing right open. Whoever had last used it had failed to pull it all the way shut.

He held up the white Subway bag, sure yet another camera was trained on him, and smiled. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts.”

No response. He went into the room. Even great hackers had to take a whiz now and again; maybe Chase was in the bathroom, and so had unlocked the front door for him. Hume looked at the Raquel Welch poster, then walked over to the wall display of antique computer hardware; he fondly remembered his own suitcase-sized Osborne 1, with its five-inch green CRT screen, and wanted to look at Chase’s. But after a minute or two, he turned around and headed over to the workbench with the twelve monitors and four keyboards arrayed along its length.