Robert Sawyer - Wonder

But he was keeping a secret—a huge secret. He knew how Webmind was instantiated; he knew what made it tick. And if Mohammed wouldn’t come to the mountain…

His first thought was to pull into a public library, sign onto a computer there, and just start posting everywhere he could what he knew about how Webmind worked. But Webmind was monitoring everything online—jumping into countless conversations, posting comments on endless numbers of blogs—which meant that no sooner had he posted the secret, Webmind would delete it, as if it were so much spam.

No, he needed to get the word out in a way that Webmind couldn’t yet censor—and fortunately, for a few days more at least, there were still some ways to practice free speech.

Back on Sunday morning, a driver had come to pick him up, and he’d been tired enough to not really pay attention during the trip. And so, for the first time in days, he turned on his car’s GPS. As he waited for it to acquire satellite signals, he typed in the name of the place he wanted to go. Once the GPS was oriented, he headed on his way, smiling slightly at the irony of a flat, mechanical voice giving him directions to freedom.

Wong Wai-Jeng never thought he’d see the inside of the Zhongnanhai complex—the inner sanctum of the Communist Party. But now he had a cubicle here! He was one of dozens of programmers charged with probing the Great Firewall, looking for weaknesses so that they could be plugged before others could exploit them. He missed the IT department at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and felt guilty that he’d left so many tasks incomplete there; he wondered how kindly old Dr. Feng was making out without him. Of course, once he’d been arrested, somebody else had been hired to do his job; no one had expected him to be seen in public anytime soon.

He was doubtless being watched here: he’d spotted one of the cameras and had no doubt there were others. He was also sure they were using a keylogger to keep track of every keystroke and mouseclick he made. But although Sinanthropus had been silenced, and his freedom blog was no more, maybe he could still do some good here in the halls of power. A word in the right ear at the right time, perhaps; a gentle suggestion here and there. Maybe even, after a year or two, a bit of authority to actually change things. As Sun Tzu had said, only he who knows when to fight and when not to can be victorious.

Wai-Jeng shifted uncomfortably in his rust-colored padded chair. His leg was still in a cast. Before Dr. Kuroda had left for Tokyo, he’d had him sign it, a string of green Kanji characters. But it would mend, and although he’d thought he’d never be able to do such things again, soon he’d be able to run, and dance, and jump, and—

He hadn’t done it for a decade, not since he’d been a teenager. He could walk the Changcheng—the Great Wall—again.

But all that would have to wait. For now, Wai-Jeng had work he was required to do. He tapped away at his keyboard, doing his masters’ bidding.

Peyton Hume stood on the threshold of WNBC, the Washington NBC affiliate. He took a deep breath and ran a freckled hand through his short hair. If he did this, he might well be court-martialed, and he’d certainly lose his security clearance. But if he didn’t do this—

It was a warm, sunny October day. A young African-American woman was coming down the sidewalk, pushing a stroller with a baby in it. Two small white boys came running down the sidewalk in the other direction, their exasperated father trying to keep up. An Asian-American teenage girl and a white boy passed him, holding hands. Some Italian tourists were chatting among themselves and pointing at the sites. A Sikh was standing near him, talking and laughing on a cell phone.

It was their world—all of theirs. And he was going to make sure it stayed that way.

Besides, all he was going to do was practice a little transparency—and wasn’t that all the rage these days? He pushed open the glass door and entered. As before, there were display cases with awards—including what he recognized as an Emmy—and posters of local and network personalities on the walls. But the receptionist—young, pretty, blonde—was different from the one who’d been here on Sunday. He strode up to her desk.

“Hello. I’d like to see the news director.”

She’d been chewing gum—a fact that had been obvious when he entered but which she was now trying to hide. “Do you have an appointment, Colonel?”

He smiled. So many young people today had no idea how to read rank insignia. “No,” he said, handing her his Pentagon business card. “But I was a guest on Meet the Press this week, and I have a news story that I’m sure he’ll be interested in.”

The woman looked at the card, then lifted a handset. “Ed? Reception. I think you’ll want to come out here…”

“What are you doing?” Caitlin asked as she came into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the small table there.

“Filling out my absentee ballot,” her mom said.

“For the presidential election, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But the election is weeks away.”

“True. But I’ve heard horror stories about Canada Post. And it’s not like I’m going to change my mind.”

“And you’re voting Democrat, right?”

“Always do.”

“How does that work? I mean, where is an absentee vote counted?”

“In Texas—it’s counted in your state of last residence.”

Caitlin opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice, which delighted her in being now both a flavor and a color to her. “But Texas is overwhelmingly Republican. Your vote won’t make a difference.”

Her mother put down her pen and looked at her. “Well, first, miracles do happen, young lady—your sight is proof of that. And, second, it makes a difference to me. We’re trying to transition to a new world in which mankind is not the brightest thing on the planet, while keeping our essential humanity, liberty, and individuality intact. Every time we fail to assert our liberties, every time we fail to express our individuality, we lose a piece of ourselves. We might as well be machines.”

“Colonel Hume,” said Edward L. Benson, Jr., as he entered the lobby; Hume remembered the news director’s full name from the business card he’d been given on Sunday. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” Benson was black, early forties, six-two, on the high side of three hundred pounds, with hair buzzed short; he was sporting wire-frame glasses and wearing casual clothes.

“Thanks for making time for me,” Hume said, shaking Benson’s large hand.

“Not at all, not at all. Listen—sorry about those comments on our website about your appearance on MTP. Webmind’s got a lot of fans out there, it seems.”

Hume had been unaware of the comments, but he supposed they had been inevitable. “That’s okay.”

“For what it’s worth, I thought you made a lot of good points on Sunday,” Benson said.

“Yes, you said that afterwards. That’s why I’m here. Do you have time for a quick walk around the block?”

Benson frowned, then seemed to get it. He looked at his watch. “Sure.”

They actually walked for the better part of an hour, never stopping long enough to let any pedestrians’ open cell phone overhear more than a few words of their conversation.

“We don’t normally use live interviews, except with our correspondents, on the evening newscast,” Benson said.

“This has to be live. It has to be live, coast-to-coast.”

“That’s not possible. There will be time-zone delays. We’re live here on the East Coast, but delayed three hours on the West Coast.”