Robert Sawyer - Wonder

But Chase had all those security cameras! Whatever had gone down would be recorded there. Hume hustled back into the house, and—

And man, he wasn’t much of a detective! Re-examining the front door, he could see now that it had been forced open. There was no visible damage by the handle, but the jamb was splintered higher up. Hume realized now that he shouldn’t further smear any fingerprints that might be on the knob, so he pushed the door, which had swung most of the way shut, open with his elbow.

He surveyed the room again. There’d definitely been a struggle here of some sort: scuff marks on the hardwood; Chase had been dragged away, bleeding.

Hume went over to the workbench again. He tapped the spacebar on the first of the four keyboards, to wake up the monitor, and—

Damn. It prompted him for a password.

He tried the second keyboard; same prompt.

The third—the one with blood all over it—also brought up a password prompt. And so did the fourth. Chase was very security conscious; he probably had each of the computers go into lockdown after a period of inactivity.

Hume got down on his hands and knees and looked under the workbench. Yes, there they were: the cables from the security cameras, leading into the back of one of the computers; whatever they’d recorded was inaccessible.

And, of course, the code for the virus Chase was working on was also locked behind a password. Hume swore.

The blood looked totally dry—and, considering its dark color, whatever had happened here probably occurred yesterday, if not the day before. That meant Chase could be anywhere by now.

Hume took a deep breath, and, with hands on hips, surveyed the scene once more.

If this were an ordinary day, his duty would be clear: call the police, report Chase missing, fill out forms.

But this was not an ordinary day. Or—more precisely—this could well be one of the last ordinary days humanity had left. He didn’t have time for that, and there was no way once a report went into the system that Webmind would fail to read it—and know that Hume was onto him. He thought about trying to wipe his own fingerprints from the scene, but that would take time, and he doubted he’d get them all, anyway, so he headed out the front door, pulling it shut behind him.

Once back in his car, he brought up the local copy of the black-hat hacker list he’d consulted before and looked to see who was the next best bet located near Chase’s house.

Ah, yes. The notorious Crowbar Alpha—just twenty-three miles away. He might even be a better choice than Chase.

Hume put the car in reverse, pulled out of the driveway, and roared down the street.

TWITTER

_Webmind_ Live video on my home page of my UN address at 15h 00 UTC today. I’m the one without the hair.

The General Assembly Hall—the room under the dome in the low-rise structure next to the giant slab of the UN Secretariat Tower—was the largest room at the United Nations and had seating for over 1,800 people. Each year, a country was chosen at random to take the left front position in the six curving banks of seats, and the rest of the countries were seated in English alphabetical order snaking around from that point; this year it was Malta in the starting position.

A twelve-foot-wide bronze relief of the UN emblem was mounted on the front wall, set against a vast gold backdrop. It was flanked by two thirty-foot-wide monitor screens. I’d had a sense of the room before Caitlin actually got there, from studying online photos. When Caitlin and her mother got a tour of it, and I saw the real thing through Caitlin’s eye, I knew my instinct had been correct. The screens were the largest things in the hall, and they loomed over the delegates from three stories up—forcing them to tilt their heads like supplicants to look at them. If I’d appeared only as some sort of representation on those giant monitors, it really would have seemed like Big Brother dictating to the world.

That tour had been an hour ago, with the chamber unoccupied. Hobo had been given a chance to stand on the raised platform in front of the dais, to get used to it before the delegates came in. The actual podium—fronted by a forbidding wall of black granite—was too high for our purposes; Hobo had to stand next to it, on the wide green carpet. He signed “sky room”—I could piece together what he was doing from the views through Dr. Theopolis’s forward-facing and upward-facing cameras. I understood: he spent most of his life outdoors, on a little island or inside the cramped clapboard bungalow that housed the Marcuse Institute. This cavernous hall was the largest enclosed space he’d ever been in. That it presumably wasn’t the least bit claustrophobic would probably help him face so many people once the assembly was in session—and I’d coached him to just look down at the display on the upper surface of Dr. Theopolis if he became nervous.

At last, it was time.

Barb and Dr. Marcuse took seats in the observation gallery, which was at the far left side of the massive room. A waist-high polished wooden barrier separated them from the nearest delegates, who were from Peru. Caitlin and Shoshana were backstage. The view from there was a narrow vertical slice between dark curtains. It showed the stage and little else, which Caitlin must have found simpler to parse than seeing the entire chamber.

Shoshana was fussing the way stage mothers did in movies: smoothing Hobo’s fur and making sure Dr. Theopolis was hanging evenly from around his neck, all the while saying soft, encouraging words.

The President of the General Assembly, a tall, elegant, white-haired man from Guatemala, stood at the podium and spoke into the microphone. “The world is changing rapidly—and we here at the United Nations must be nimble to keep pace, and to retain, and I hope even enhance, our relevance and effectiveness. It is fitting that the first live public appearance by Webmind, taking on a physical form for this most important occasion, is here, in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the planet Earth. And now, please welcome Mr. Hobo of the United States and Mr. Webmind of the whole wide world.”

As they’d announced they would, the delegates from the Democratic Republic of the Congo walked out, having stated that the presence of a chimpanzee at the UN was an implied criticism of their country’s handling of the bushmeat trade; they were followed by the delegates from Paraguay, who felt that the whole thing was beneath the dignity of this august body.

But the rest of the vast sea of delegates applauded as Hobo moved, just as we had rehearsed, to the specified spot on the raised platform. One of the stage crew had marked it with tape, so he had no trouble finding it again. The president, meanwhile, took his place behind where Hobo stood, on a dais that was faced with polished jade. His seat was next to that of the Secretary-General; the president, elected yearly, moderated the General Assembly, while the Secretary-General, who served a five-year term, ran the UN Secretariat.

I could make Dr. Theopolis issue a soft ping when I wanted Hobo to look down at the little screen, but he seemed content to be surveying the giant crowd. I could tell by the way the cameras were moving that he was swaying gently from side to side; I knew from reading about him online that he did that when he was relaxed.

Still, I played a looping video of the signs, “Relax. Friends. Relax. Friends.” When Hobo did look down, it’d be there to soothe him.

I spoke through the disk’s twin speakers—and, via a wireless connection the UN technicians had set up for me, through the room’s sound system. “Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, ladies and gentlemen, thank you,” I said, in Marc Vietor’s rich, deep voice. “It is an honor and privilege for me to speak with you today. In recognition of the significance of this occasion, I have suspended all my other conversations worldwide and have urged everyone I was speaking with to watch this speech. I am giving you my undivided attention.”