Robert Sawyer - Wonder

Caitlin watched her mom as she thought: her eyebrows drawing together, her eyes narrowing. When she at last spoke, it was accompanied by a nodding of her head. “Yes,” she said, “I am indeed saying that.”

“Webmind says, ‘Interesting thought.’ ”

They drove on through the darkness.

Carla Hawkins, the mother of the hacker known as Crowbar Alpha, sat in her living room, her eyes sore from crying. She’d felt sad when her husband Gordon had taken off two years ago—but she’d never felt lonely. Devon had always been here, even if he did spend most of his time hunched over a keyboard in his bedroom.

The fact that she would have been left alone, she knew, was one of the reasons the judge hadn’t sent Devon to prison after his virus had caused so much damage. But now he was gone, and—

God, she hated to think about it. But he would not have run away. His computers were here, after all, and they were his life. She’d learned the jargon from him: overclocking, case mods, network-attached storage devices; taking his data away on a USB key wouldn’t have been enough for him.

The police were still searching, but admitted they had no idea where to search; they’d already gone over all Devon’s usual haunts. When that redheaded government man had shown up earlier, she’d allowed herself for half a second to think they’d found him.

She reached for a Kleenex, but the box was empty. She tossed the box on the floor and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Yesterday at work, they’d all been talking in the break room about this Webmind thing. She hadn’t paid much attention, although the news about it had been impossible to avoid over the last several days, but…

But Keelie—one of the other cashiers at Wal-Mart—had said something that was coming back to her, something about Webmind finding somebody’s long-lost childhood friend. And if he could find that person…

She didn’t have a computer of her own; on the rare occasions she wanted to look something up online, she’d used one of Devon’s. She got off the couch and, as she did so, she happened to see the old wall clock. My goodness, had she really been sitting there crying and staring into space for over two hours?

Devon’s room had posters from Halo, Mass Effect, and Assassin’s Creed on the pale yellow walls, and there were various gaming consoles scattered about—thank God for the Wal-Mart employee discount! And, on his rickety wooden desk, there was an Alienware PC with three monitors hooked up to it. It was still running; another sign that Devon had intended to return.

She sat down on the chair—a simple wooden kitchen chair, which Devon liked but was hard on her back. No browser was currently open. The police had gone through his email and Facebook postings, looking for any sign that he’d arranged a rendezvous with someone or bought plane or bus tickets, but they’d found nothing. She opened Firefox and typed into Google, “How do I ask Webmind a question?” There was, of course, an “I’m feeling lucky” button beneath the search box, but she wasn’t—not at all.

But the first hit held the answer: if you didn’t have a chat client of your own, simply go to his website and click on “chat” there. She did just that.

She’d expected something fancier, but Webmind’s website had no flash animation, no frenetic graphics. It did, however, have an easy-on-the-eyes pale green background. The simple list of links on the front page was more impressive than any design wizardry could be. It was labeled “Most Requested Documents” and included “Proposed cancer cure,” “Suggested solution to Bali’s economic crisis,” “Notes toward efficient solar power,” and “Mystery solved: Jack the Ripper revealed.”

And beneath that there was indeed a box that one could use to chat with Webmind. She pecked out with two fingers: My son is missing. Can you help me find him?

The text reply was instantaneous. What is his name and last known address, please?

She typed, Devon Axel Hawkins and their full street address.

And there was a pause.

Her stomach was roiling. If he could do all those things—cancer, solar energy, economic solutions—surely he could do this.

After what seemed an awfully long time, Webmind replied, He has had no identifiable online presence since 4:42 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. I have reviewed the police files and news coverage related to his disappearance, but found no leads to pursue.

Her heart sank. She thought, But you know everything, although that seemed a pointless thing to type. But after several seconds of just staring at Webmind’s words, that’s exactly what she did put in the chat box.

I know many things, yes, replied Webmind. And, after a few seconds, he added two more words. I’m sorry.

She got up from the chair and headed back to the living room. By the time she reached the couch, her face was wet again.

Peyton Hume woke with a start, soaked with sweat. He’d dreamed of an anthill, of thousands of mindless, sterile workers tending an obscene, white, pulsating queen.

Next to him in the darkness his wife said, “Are you okay?”

“Sorry,” he replied. “Bad dream.”

Madeleine Hume was a lobbyist for the biofuels industry; they’d met four years ago at a mutual friend’s party. He felt her hand touch his chest. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“They just don’t get it,” Hume said. “The president. The world. They just don’t get it.”

“I know,” she said, gently.

“If I push much harder, I’m going to get in trouble,” he said. “General Schwartz already sent me an email, reprimanding me for my ‘incendiary language’ on Meet the Press.”

Madeleine stroked his short hair. “I know you‛re a chain-of-command kind of guy,” she said. “But you have to do what you think is best. I’ll support you all the way.”

“Thanks, baby.”

“It’s almost time to get up, anyway,” Madeleine said. “Are you going to go back to WATCH today, or heading into the Pentagon?”

He hadn’t been to his office in the E-ring for three days now; it probably was time he made an appearance again. But—

Damn it all, the test they’d conducted at WATCH had been proof of concept. If he could get someone to craft a virus that would eliminate Webmind’s mutant packets, the danger could be scoured from the Internet. Yes, yes, such a virus might screw other things up—maybe even crash the Internet for a time—but humanity could survive that. And survival was the name of the game right now.

But Hume needed a hacker—a genuine Gibsonian cyberpunk—to pull that off. He’d tried last night to contact three more names on the black-hat list. He’d been unable to get hold of one—which could mean anything, he knew; another was indeed missing, according to her devastated boyfriend; and the third told Hume to cram it up his ass.

“Yeah, I’ll go into the office,” he said. “And I’ll check with the FBI again, see if they’ve got any leads. The guy I talked to yesterday agreed it was a suspicious pattern—maybe even a serial killer; he called it the ‘hacker whacker.’ But the only blood at Chase’s place was his own, and there’s no sign of foul play in the other cases, they say.”

She snuggled closer to him in the dark. “You’ll do the right thing,” she said. “As always.”

The alarm went off. He let it ring, wishing the whole world could hear it.

It was now Thursday morning, October 18—one full week since Webmind had gone public. Caitlin wanted to do as much as she could to help him, and so today she started another pro-Webmind newsgroup, although thousands of those had already cropped up.