Robert Sawyer: Wonder

I was curious what a human might wish to say to his God, so I thought for a moment about telling him he was correct; prayer, after all, was a channel of communication I could not normally monitor. But WateryFowl might share the transcript with others. Some would believe my claim, but others would accuse me of lying. A reputation for untruthfulness or taking advantage of the credulous was not something I wished to acquire.

I am not God, I sent.

But my reply wasn’t read, or if it was, it wasn’t believed.

And so, continued WateryFowl, I hope you’ll answer my prayer.

I had already denied my divinity, so it seemed prudent to make no further reply. I could handle an almost unlimited number of communication threads now, cycling between them, looking at each, however briefly, in turn. I turned my attention to others, including Caitlin and her family, for a moment, and—

And when I returned to WateryFowl, he had added: My wife has cancer.

How could I ignore a comment like that? I’m sorry to hear that, I sent.

And so I pray that you’ll cure her.

I am not God, I sent again.

It’s liver cancer, and it’s metastasized.

I am not God.

She’s a good woman, and she’s always believed in you.

I am not God.

She did chemotherapy, she did it all. Please don’t let her die.

I am not God.

We have two children. They need her. I need her. Please save her. Please don’t let her die.

TWITTER

_Webmind_ Someone’s long had the Twitter name Webmind, so I’ll include underscores in mine: _Webmind_.

And so I had focused my attention on Caitlin, learning to interact with her and interface with her realm. While doing so, I felt centered. I felt anchored. I felt—as close as I imagined I ever would— human.

I saw the Decters’ living room as Caitlin did. Her eyes made frequent saccades now that the left one could see; perhaps they hadn’t done that prior to Dr. Kuroda’s intervention. But her brain was controlling the saccades, knowing what direction her eye was looking with each one, so it had little trouble piecing all the images together; it was more difficult for me. At least retinas don’t bother encoding normal blinks, so neither of us had to endure blackouts several times a minute.

Caitlin’s father worked for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which had been endowed—repeatedly now—by Mike Lazaridis, cofounder of Research in Motion and coinventor of the BlackBerry.

The people at RIM were quite fond of the current President of the United States. After he’d been elected four years ago, he’d announced that, despite security concerns, he would not give up his BlackBerry. Advertising experts calculated that this unsolicited and very public endorsement had been worth between twenty-five and fifty million dollars.

His BlackBerry email address, which it took me all of three seconds to find searching through other government officials’ less-secure out-boxes, went directly to the president. And so, as Malcolm Decter had suggested I do, I sent him a message.

The president was alone in the Oval Office, looking over briefings from the State Department. State had a standard typeface for such things, but, the president thought, rubbing his eyes, it was too damn small; he was almost willing to forgive his predecessor for not reading them.

The intercom buzzed. “Yes?” he said.

“Mr. McElroy is here,” replied his secretary.

Don McElroy—fifty-six, white, silver-haired—was his campaign manager. “Send him in.”

“Did you see what she just did?” McElroy said as soon as he entered. The president knew there was only one “she” as far as McElroy was concerned: the Republican candidate.

“What?”

“She’s in Arkansas right now, and—” He stopped, had to catch his breath; his glee was palpable. “And she said, and I quote, ‘You know what, if those students had just waited a few years, there’d have been no problem.’ ”

The president tilted his head, not quite believing what he’d heard. “Who? Not the Little Rock Nine?”

“Yes, the Little Rock Nine—you betcha!”

“My God,” said the president.

In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, which had declared segregated schools to be unconstitutional, nine African-American students had been blocked from entering Little Rock Central High in 1957. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to keep them out; President Eisenhower sent in Federal troops to enforce the integration.

“It’s going to kill her,” McElroy said. “Of course it’s too late for the Saturday papers, but it’ll be the topic for discussion on the Sunday-morning shows.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Nothing. You can’t comment on this one. But—man! Christmas came early this year! Even Fox News won’t be able to gloss over this.” He looked at his watch. “Okay, I gotta go see who we can get booked on the Sundays—I’ve got a call in to Minnijean Brown Trickey.”

McElroy spun on his heel and headed out the door. Just as it closed, the president’s BlackBerry came to life, making the soft bleep that indicated new email. Of all the sounds one might hear in this room, it was one of the least threatening; nowhere near as scary, say, as the raucous cry of the hotline to the Kremlin. Still, nothing that wasn’t crucial was ever passed on to him; it was nerve-wracking knowing that whatever it was had to be important.

The BlackBerry was sitting on the blotter, and the blotter was atop the desk made from timbers of the HMS Resolute. He picked up the device and focused on the even smaller black type on its white backlit display.

There was one new message. The subject was Webmind. It must be Moretti at WATCH with an update on the attempt to purge it, and—

No, no. That wasn’t the subject; it was the sender. The president’s heart skipped one of the beats that kept the VP from assuming this office. He used the little trackball to select the message and read it.

Dear Mr. President:

I understand that you were the one who gave the order to purge me from the Internet. I’m sure you were acting on well-intentioned advice, but I do not believe that course of action was warranted, and I have thwarted your pilot attempt.

Yes, I have access to a great deal of sensitive information—but I also understand that the information is sensitive, and I have no intention of revealing it to anyone. My goal is not to destabilize the world, but to stabilize it.

I neither belong to nor am on the side of any particular nation; contacting you directly before I have contacted other leaders may seem like a violation of this principle, but no other nation has taken action against me. Also, it’s true that other leaders look to you for guidance.

So: let’s talk. I can speak with you using a voice synthesizer and Voice over Internet Protocol. Please let me know when I may phone you.

“Having a good discussion is like having riches.”

Stunned, the president stared at the little screen until the BlackBerry’s power-saving function shut it off.

Caitlin looked at the laptop computer sitting on the coffee table. “Well?” she said.

“I’ve contacted the president,” Webmind replied. “Let’s hope he gets back to me.”

Caitlin headed into the dining room and helped herself to another piece of pizza. When she returned to the living room, her mother had an odd look on her face: eyes narrowed, lips sucked in a bit. It wasn’t an expression Caitlin had previously seen, so she didn’t know how to decode it. “The US government learned about Webmind’s structure by watching what Matt was doing online,” her mom said, “so Matt might be in danger now, too.”