Robert Sawyer: Wonder

And now Webmind, too!

Webmind followed her Twitter feed, so he’d already seen her excitement. But, still, she wanted to say something to him directly. “Congratulations, Webmind!” she announced into the air.

The deep male voice answered at once from her desktop speakers. “Thank you, Caitlin. The standard response in such circumstances may perhaps seem cliché, so before I utter it let me underscore that it is the absolute truth.” He paused for a moment and said words that had Caitlin bursting with pride: “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Another month, another school dance. Caitlin said they didn’t have to go, but Matt had insisted, and, so far, at least, she was glad he had. Still, it was too bad that Mr. Heidegger wasn’t one of the chaperones this time, and even worse that Bashira’s parents wouldn’t let her attend. There might be more freedom in the world today than ever before, but it wasn’t yet evenly distributed.

She and Matt had just finished a slow dance—Caitlin had requested Lee Amodeo’s “Love’s Labour’s Found” like forever ago, and it had finally come on. They were now taking a break standing at the side of the gym, just holding hands, while Fergie’s “Fergalicious” played.

When it was done, another song started, and it, too, was by Lee Amodeo—which immediately set Caitlin’s mind to wondering what the odds were that two songs by the same musician might come up so close to each other. This one was a fast song, though, and she and Matt rarely did those; fast dancing had never been much fun when she couldn’t see since there was no connection at all with her partner, and—

A voice from her blind side: a familiar male voice. “Hey, Caitlin.” She turned to her right, and there was Trevor Nordmann, the Hoser himself, wearing a blue shirt.

They just stood there—Caitlin, Matt, and Trevor—motionless while others moved to the music. She lifted her eyebrows, making no attempt to hide her surprise at seeing him here. “Trevor,” she said, with no warmth.

Trevor looked at her, then at Matt, then back at her, and then he said, with more formality than she’d ever heard from him, “May I have this dance?”

Caitlin turned to Matt, who looked surprised, but also, to Caitlin’s delight, calm.

“That is,” Trevor added, “if it’s all right with you, Matt.”

“If Caitlin wants,” Matt said, and his voice didn’t crack at all.

“Okay,” said Caitlin, and she squeezed Matt’s hand. She’d been watching others do fast dances all night long; she thought it looked simple enough. She walked out into the middle of the gym and Trevor followed, and she turned to face him, and they began to hop about, a yard (a meter!) between them.

Lee Amodeo’s voice blared from the speakers, but for once Caitlin didn’t mind the distortion:

Tomorrow will be a new day A better day, we’ll laugh and play The sun will shine On Earth so fine We can make tomorrow today!

The song came to an end soon enough, and, in the brief silence before the next one began, Trevor said, “Thanks,” and then, in a softer voice, he added, “Sorry.”

Caitlin wondered if he meant sorry for last month, when he’d confronted Matt, or sorry for two months ago, when he’d groped her, or maybe sorry for everything he’d ever done. She smiled and nodded, then moved back to where Matt was standing, while Trevor drifted away. Another song started playing, a slow one: “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. She draped her arms around her boyfriend’s neck, there at the side of the gym, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. As they swayed gently to the music, she contemplated the wonder of it all.

The flight to Norway had been Caitlin’s first time leaving North America since gaining sight. At the airport in Oslo, she found it frustrating to be confronted with signs that she could see but couldn’t read; it felt like a giant step backward. Still, she was thrilled to be in Europe, and her mother and even her father—who’d had a hard time accommodating his long legs on the plane—seemed happy.

The Decters were staying in the same luxury hotel as Tim Berners-Lee, and they’d all gotten together for dinner the first night, along with the five members of the Peace Prize committee. Caitlin could barely contain herself meeting the father of the Web, and it tickled her no end to get to call him “Sir Tim.” He had a long face and blond hair, much of which had receded from his forehead, leaving behind a yellow dust bunny as the only proof it had once extended farther.

It turned out that Sir Tim was a Unitarian, like Caitlin’s mother, and the two of them spent a few moments talking about that; despite the great coming out of atheists that had occurred recently, it was certainly worth noting, her mom said, that there were also intelligent, caring people of a more spiritual bent in the world.

The next day, the ceremony was held in a vast auditorium. Sir Tim’s acceptance speech was brilliant; Caitlin had listened to many of his keynotes online in the past and read lots of his articles, but there was something special about hearing him speak in the flesh. He talked about the need for net neutrality, about his hopes for the Semantic Web, and about the role that instantaneous communications had in fostering world peace. It was a gracious speech and, as he said, the hypertext version, with links to the Wikipedia pages covering all the topics he’d discussed, was already on his website.

Then it was Webmind’s turn. Caitlin hated to do anyone out of a job, but it had simply been impractical to bring Hobo to Oslo; Norwegian quarantine regulations ruled that out, and it would have been a nerve-wracking, miserable trip for the poor ape. And so the role of carrying Dr. Theopolis onto the stage had fallen to Caitlin, who was wearing a bright green silk dress bought for the occasion. She had never been more nervous—or more proud—in her entire life.

They’d removed the neck strap from the speaking disk. Caitlin simply carried it to the center of the vast stage, then set the disk on the top of the podium; the flat spot on the disk’s edge let it stand with its stereoscopic eyes facing the massive crowd.

Camera flashes erupted in the audience, as did applause, which lasted a full minute, during which Caitlin went backstage, then hurried down the side stairs to join her mother and father in the front row. Sitting next to them was Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Peace Prize winner—at last able to visit Oslo.

When the applause subsided, Webmind began to speak in that deep, resonant male voice the world had come to know so well. “Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

“I am not a creative being. My friend Hobo paints pictures; I cannot do that. I write no poetry, I compose no songs, I sculpt nothing. So, if you’re expecting a brilliantly original speech, like Sir Tim’s, I must beg your forgiveness for failing to deliver.

“Some have said that I am nothing more than a glorified search engine. I disagree, but perhaps today that model will serve me well. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the snippets that Google and Bing and Jagster show you when presenting search results. My speech today will be just that: snippets of other speeches, interwoven with commentary.

“In 1957, at the dawn of the Space Age, this award went to Lester B. Pearson, former Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada and President of the Seventh Session of the United Nations General Assembly. In his acceptance speech, he said, ‘Of all our dreams today there is none more important—or so hard to realize—than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.’