Robert Sawyer - Watch

Oh, my God!

The other pulled out what she suddenly realized was a gun and aimed it at the first man, ready to blow his head off if he didn’t launch the missile, and—

And the opening credits—something she’d heard about but had never before seen—began to appear. She was hooked.

The film turned out to be about an initiative to take humans out of the loop in launching missiles; instead, the decisions would be made by a computer at NORAD headquarters. But Matthew Broderick’s character accidentally hacked into the system and, thinking he was playing a game, got the computer to prepare to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union (yes, the movie was that old!).

It was definitely a message film, Caitlin thought. Broderick and the chick—Ally-something—tracked down the original programmer of the NORAD computer, and, with his aid, they tried to teach the computer that nuclear war was as futile as tic-tac-toe. After a gorgeous series of graphic computer simulations—a light show that reminded Caitlin of her own glimpses of webspace—the computer spoke to its creator with a synthesized voice, not unlike the one JAWS produced: “Greetings, Professor Falken.”

The Ally character had observed earlier in the film that the programmer, Stephen Falken, was “amazing-looking.” She hadn’t meant that he was hot, but rather that he had a captivating face… and he did, Caitlin thought, at least in her limited experience. She’d often read the phrase “intelligent eyes,” but had never known what it had meant before. Falken’s gaze took in everything around him.

He typed his response to the computer, and also spoke it aloud. “Hello, Joshua.”

The computer replied: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

The text was shown on a big computer monitor in the movie, and again in the closed-captioning box: The only winning move is not to play.

The ending music—which, surprisingly, was mostly a harmonica—played as the credits rolled, but they were in red text on black in some font that Caitlin couldn’t read at all.

“What did you think?” her dad asked.

Caitlin was surprised that her heart was pounding. She’d listened to many movies before, and read tons of books, but—my goodness!—there was something special about the rush of visual images.

“It was incredible,” she said. “But—but was it really like that?”

Her dad nodded. “My father had an IMSAI 8080 at his office, just like the one Matthew Broderick had in the movie, with eight-inch floppy drives. I did my first programming on it.”

“No, no,” said Caitlin. “I mean, you know, living in fear like that? Afraid that the superpowers were going to blow up the world?”

“Oh,” said her father. “Yes.” He was quiet for a time, then he said softly, “I’d thought all that was in the past.”

Caitlin, of course, had heard the news about the rising tensions between the US and China. She looked at the screen and listened to the sad harmonica play.

After watching WarGames, Caitlin and her father went up to her room to see how Webmind was doing; Caitlin’s mother was talking separately to Webmind across the hall.

Did you follow along with the movie? Caitlin typed into the IM window.

She turned on JAWS so her father could listen in, and—now that Webmind was a he —she switched it to using a male voice. “Yes,” came the immediate reply.

What did you think? Caitlin typed.

Webmind didn’t miss a beat. “Best movie I’ve ever seen.”

Caitlin laughed. Has Dr. Kuroda managed to let you watch online video yet?

“Yes. Just eight minutes ago, we finally had success with the most popular format. It is astonishing.”

You’re telling me, Caitlin replied.

She opened another chat window and used the mouse—she was getting used to it!—to select Dr. Kuroda. Webmind says you’ve got it working! W00t!

Hello, Miss Caitlin. It was tricky but, yes, he can now watch video in real time, as well as hear the soundtrack; he can also listen to MP3 audio now. Who’s that singer you like so much?

Lee Amodeo.

Right. Well, send him a link to an MP3 of her. Maybe he’ll become a fan, too.

Will do. And—say, can you make him able to hear what I hear?

Already done. If you activate voice chat with your computer, Webmind should be able to hear you.

Caitlin slipped on her Bluetooth headset and switched to her IM session with Webmind. “Do you hear me?”

No response.

It’s not working, she typed to Kuroda.

It can’t do speech recognition yet, Kuroda wrote back, but it should be picking up the audio feed.

Are you hearing sounds from my room? Caitlin typed to Webmind.

“Yes,” said Webmind.

OK, good, Caitlin typed. She went back to Kuroda. What about when I’m not in my room?

I’ve been thinking about that. It shouldn’t be hard to add a microphone to the eyePod. Could you ship it back to me for a couple of days?

Caitlin was surprised at how viscerally she reacted to the notion of being blind for an extended period again. I wouldn’t want to be without it.

To her astonishment, her father tapped her on the shoulder. “Tell him I can get one of the engineers at RIM to do it.” RIM was Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry; Mike Lazaridis, one of the founders of that company, had provided the initial $100 million funding for the physics think tank her father worked at—not to mention a fifty-million-dollar booster shot a few years later.

“That would be fabulous,” Caitlin said. She typed a message to that effect in the IM window.

The eyePod is valuable, Miss Caitlin. I’ d really rather make a modification like that myself.

“Tell him I’ll get Tawanda to do the work,” her dad said. Tawanda was a RIM engineer who had attended Dr. Kuroda’s press conference; Kuroda had spent a lot of time showing her the eyePod hardware then.

Oh, he replied, after Caitlin had passed on her father’s message. Well, if it’s Tawanda doing it, I suppose that would be all right. It must be almost midnight there, no? I’ll work up some notes for her, and email them to you.

ty! Caitlin sent. That’s awesome!

Caitlin’s mother came into the room and stood leaning against a wall, with her arms crossed in front of her chest. “I’m beat,” she said. “Who’d have thought you could work up a sweat typing? ”

“What did you and Webmind talk about?” Caitlin asked.

“Oh, you know,” her mother said in a light tone. “Life. The universe. And everything.”

“And the answer is?”

Her mother’s voice became serious. “He doesn’t know—he was hoping I would know.”

“What did you tell him?”

She shrugged. “That I’d sleep on it and let him know in the morning.”

“I’m going to send an email to Tawanda,” her father said abruptly, and he headed downstairs. By the time he’d returned, Caitlin’s mom had gone off to take a shower.

“You’re still having trouble reading the Latin alphabet,” her dad said to Caitlin in his usual abrupt manner; whatever segue between topics had gone through his mind had been left unspoken.

It took her a moment to get what he was saying—the Latin alphabet was what English and many other languages used—but when she did get it, she was pissed. Her dad was not big on praise—even when Caitlin brought home a report card with all As, he simply signed it and handed it back to her. She’d learned to accept that, more or less, but any criticism by him was crushing. For Pete’s sake, she’d only just begun seeing! Why did he have to say still having trouble as though she were making poor progress instead of remarkable progress?