Robert Sawyer - Wonder

Caitlin laughed again. “I think it’s a good sign when you’re more worried about the apes taking over than you are about Webmind.”

“Well, it’s easier to say, ‘Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape’ than it is to say, ‘Get your—um, your intangible hyperlinks off me, you damn dirty… world-spanning ethereal… thingamajig.’ ”

“Exactly!” said Caitlin. “But Hobo—that’s the ape—he’s not going to take over, either.”

“I dunno,” said Stewart. “I bet if Gallup took a poll on this, Hobo’s approval rating would be higher than that of either presidential candidate.”

“Well,” said Caitlin, feeling very pleased with herself, “he’s certainly got the swing vote.”

Stewart laughed his good-natured laugh and leaned back in his chair. “But about Webmind’s speech today. I saw it, and—speaking as a professional broadcaster, I have to say, the whole talking-happy-face thing was… well, I’d have loved to have been in the room to hear that pitch.” Stewart affected a New Jersey accent: “ ‘See, whatcha wanna do, Mr. Supercomputer, you gotta speak to the United Nations, you go in there looking like a video-game character, cuz that’s all nonthreatening-like. But you can’t do Super Mario, cuz that’ll offend the Italians. And you can’t do Frogger, cuz that’ll offend the French. So, I’m thinking Pac-Man—who’s that gonna offend? Bunch of freakin’ ghosts?’ ”

Caitlin was sure her grin was almost as big as Dr. Theopolis’s. “Or maybe compulsive eaters,” she said. And then she made a nom-nom-nom gobbling sound.

“True,” said Stewart, switching back to his normal voice. “And I’ve gotta say, Webmind’s speech sounded good to me. But, then again, I believed all the things the president said he was going to do, too. Just think—if we had really gotten Canadian-style health care, and since I already can see, maybe I’d now have X-ray vision.”

“Well, if you did, you’d see this chip in my head isn’t doing anything but helping me see.”

“You’re referring to the interview with ABC you did on Sunday.”

“Yes. That guy was…” She trailed off.

“This is cable. It’s all right to call him a douche bag.”

“A total douche bag!”

“Was that you or Webmind talking?” asked Stewart.

Caitlin grinned. “Me. Webmind is much more diplomatic.”

All right, Peyton Hume thought. Webmind is probably onto me. And, more than that, Webmind probably knows that I’m onto it. Which meant there was no need any longer for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. He pulled out his new cell phone and simply called the next hacker on his list, a man in Takoma Park who went by the name Teh Awesome—a guy almost as good (or bad!) as Crowbar Alpha or Chase.

“Hello?” said a male voice after the phone stopped ringing.

“Hello. May I please speak to Brandon Slovak?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Slovak, I’m—I’m with the Washington Post. I was just wondering, what’s your opinion of this Webmind thing?”

“God, it’s incredible,” Slovak said. “I was just talking to him when you called. I thought I was Teh Awesome, but he’s the shit, you know?”

“Yes,” said Hume. “I do.” And he snapped the phone shut.

Malcolm Decter was hard at work in his living room, dealing with what had become an ongoing irritation: the inability for me to be present unless one of the Decters brought a laptop into the room. After some trial and error, he had managed to hook up his netbook computer to one of the inputs for the big-screen wall-mounted TV. He’d then placed the netbook on top of the low-rise bookcase, between (as I saw through the netbook’s webcam as he carried the unit across the room) a framed photo of him and Barbara on their wedding day, and a picture of Caitlin as an infant in Barbara’s lap; when she’d been that young, Caitlin’s hair had been blonde instead of the dark brown it was now.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Please turn the netbook eighteen degrees to the left,” I said; my voice was now coming through the external home-theater speaker system.

He had a good eye. But, of course, he was Caitlin’s father, and had her same gift for math—eighteen degrees was five percent of a circle.

“Thank you,” I said. “And if you could close the screen a further ten degrees.” He did so, which had the effect of tipping the webcam so that it would easily be able to view people sitting on the white leather couch.

“Perfect,” I said.

He didn’t reply, but that was normal for him. He turned and was clearly about to head back down the corridor to his den. “Malcolm?” I said.

He stopped without looking back. “Yes?”

“Have a seat, please.”

He did so. The couch was a little low to the ground for him, and his knees made acute angles.

“I was intrigued,” I said, “by your response to Caitlin sharing what some might consider a compromising photo with Matt.”

“How do you know what I said?”

“Barb was holding Caitlin’s BlackBerry when the two of you discussed this, and the device was turned on.” His face was impassive, and so I went on. “You spoke quite passionately about how we shouldn’t be afraid of people knowing who we really are.”

Again, no response. Although I knew Barb loved him, I also knew she sometimes found it frustrating dealing with him, and I was beginning to understand why. Earlier today, I’d spoken about how different the realm I’d been born in was—but humans and the Internet both wanted their signals acknowledged. Malcolm just sat there. I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but extrapolating his eyeline, and knowing the layout of the room from seeing it through Caitlin’s eye, it was a wall calendar they’d presumably brought with them from Texas, as it showed a picture of the Austin skyline at night.

“And on the issue of who one really is,” I continued, “it’s difficult to gauge the number of people like you worldwide. Official estimates have ranged from 2.5% to 3.8% of the planet’s population. But studying what people actually say in email or in other documents they have created and looking at the traffic on websites devoted to this topic leads me to conclude that the true incidence has been vastly underreported—most likely out of fear of discrimination, social stigma, or persecution.”

Good scientist that he was, Malcolm said, “Show me your data.”

I sent a summary to the big-screen TV and watched as his eyes scanned it.

Peyton Hume was determined to try at least once more. Consulting the black-hat list, he decided Drakkenfyre looked like the next-best choice. Her real name was Simonne Coogan—one of the few women on his list. The conventional wisdom was that there were fewer female than male hackers, but really the very best hackers of all had never been caught or identified, and so who knew what the real gender split was? Maybe female hackers were better at eluding detection.

Drakkenfyre had never been arrested or charged with a crime. She was a programmer for a computer-gaming company called Octahedral Software, based in Bethesda; their game based on Allen Steele’s Coyote novels was a cult favorite. WATCH had detected her hacking into systems at both EA in Redwood City and Ubisoft in Montreal, but thwarting industrial espionage was not their mandate. Still, the dossier on her noted her incredible sophistication and subtlety, and—say, look at that! It had been prepared in part by Tony Moretti, who’d added, “Might be worth recruiting.” But apparently no one had taken him up on that suggestion—at least not yet.

No time like the present.