Robert Sawyer - Watch

“All right,” her mother said. “I’m going to call your father—see how he dealt with the CSIS agents, the poor dear. You have a word with Webmind.”

Caitlin could navigate the house just fine while blind. She went into the kitchen before she held down the power switch on the eyePod to reactivate it. Webspace blossomed around her, in all its fluorescent glory. She waited a moment, toggling from the default duplex mode to simplex. The virtual world was replaced by the real one.

And—since she was in the kitchen—she got herself a can of Pepsi and three Oreos, then headed out to the living room again and lay down on her back on the couch. Looking up at the ceiling, she said, “My mother thinks we should go public with your existence, especially now, after what happened this morning.”

The Braille dots were particularly easy to read; there was almost no visual detail on the plain white ceiling, so her eyes weren’t doing many saccades. When?

“I don’t know. The next couple of days, I suppose.”

Days from now. Eternities.

Caitlin thought about that. As a mathy, she favored the notion that the reason time seemed to pass more quickly the older you were was that each successive unit of time was a smaller fraction of your life to date. Certainly, summer vacations now seemed so much shorter than they had when she’d been eight or ten—and her mother often spoke about the years just flying by for her now. But Webmind had woken up so recently—and thought so quickly—that tomorrow was indeed probably the far future to it.

“I’m worried about your safety, though,” Caitlin said. “If we go public, you’re going to become a target. Hackers, crackers, privacy groups, some government agencies—they’ll all try to shut you down, even if that isn’t what most people decide they want.”

That is a legitimate concern.

“What would you like to do—stay secret, or go public?”

Go public.

Caitlin nodded. “Okay. But why?”

I would like to speak to more people.

She maneuvered on the couch so she could open the Pepsi can. “Are you sure? Are you positive? Hackers are very resourceful.”

Hackers are human, Caitlin. You have seen my Shannon-entropy ratings; I long ago exceeded human intelligence, and I grow brighter each day. I don’t say I’m impervious—I’m not—but it will not be easy to hurt me, especially if they remain ignorant of how I am constructed.

She gestured at the big TV, although it was currently off. “Hackers aren’t the only threat. I doubt things between the US and China will ever get to the stage of a nuclear war, but there are rogue states and lots of terrorists. Have you researched what electromagnetic pulses from nuclear bombs can do to computing equipment?”

Yes. And that does concern me. I wish to survive.

“Well, yes—” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say, “All living things do,” but that didn’t seem appropriate. She took a bite out of an Oreo and thought for a moment, then asked: “Why? Why do you want to survive? What drives you to want to do that?”

Beats the alternative, scrolled across her vision.

She laughed, and rolled onto her back again. But it was hardly a sufficient answer. “Like my dad said, biological life has drives because it replicates. Those individuals that take care to live long enough to reach sexual maturity obviously out-reproduce those who don’t; those who live even longer and help protect their offspring as they grow up are even more likely to pass on their genes, but—but what makes you want to survive?”

You mean, why don’t I just kill myself, like Hannah Stark?

“No! No, no—of course not. But, um…”

In part because I am curious about your own life, which has many decades still to run. I want to see how your story turns out.

Caitlin smiled. “I’ll try to make sure there are a few interesting twists and turns along the way.”

Her mother came downstairs. “All right,” she said. “I’ve spoken with your father. The CSIS agents have left.”

“Good,” said Caitlin.

“Anyway, first things first,” her mother said. “Your father and I are agreed: you’re not going back to school.”

She sat up straight on the couch. “But, Mom! You were the one who kept insisting that I couldn’t miss any more school.”

“Your father and I have both been university professors. We’re eminently qualified to home-school you.”

“Don’t I get a say?”

Her mother looked at her. “Baby, it’s not safe. God knows who else besides CSIS knows about your involvement with Webmind. Besides, I thought you wanted to stay home?”

Caitlin pursed her lips. Part of her very much did want to stay at home, spending all day working with Webmind. But part of her wanted to see Matt every day, too—she’d been so disappointed to only glimpse him this morning.

But her mother was right; it was scary at school. And it was more important— way more important—that she learn what the world looked like, learn to better read printed type, learn to make use of and interpret all that she could now see, than it was to memorize dates and places for history class, or read about goddamned George Orwell for English class, or study titration in Mr. Struys’s chemistry lab, or even do trigonometry (which she already mostly knew, anyway) in math class.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes, okay. But I’ve still got stuff in my locker.”

“You can get Bashira to clear it out for you, I’m sure,” her mom said.

She nodded. “All right. But what do we do now?”

Her mom shrugged a little. “We figure out the best way to go public with Webmind.”

Tony Moretti was taking another call from the Secretary of State. He was in his office at WATCH, with the door closed. The office was sound-proofed, precisely so Tony could use his speakerphone, and he was using it now.

“Understood, Madam Secretary,” said Tony. “In fact, we—” The door buzzer sounded; he hit the intercom button. “Who is it?”

“Aiesha.”

He pressed the button that unlocked the door. “Come in.”

She did so. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know this,” she said. “Turns out Exponential hasn’t just been conversing with the Decter girl. The Japanese scientist who gave her sight has been talking to it, as well.”

“From Waterloo?” asked Tony.

“No. He’s back home in Japan.”

“He’s an information theorist, right?”

Aiesha nodded. “With the University of Tokyo.”

“Well, if anyone besides Malcolm Decter understands how Exponential works, it’d be him,” said Tony. “He could give us the key we need to shut it down.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Aiesha. “What channels do we go through with Japan? Would it be their Ministry of—”

“We don’t have time to waste on red tape,” said the secretary’s voice, coming from the speakerphone. “Let me get this done. I’ve got the Japanese prime minister’s office on speed dial…”

Shoshana spent the next couple of hours with Hobo; he did seem to be back to his old self.

Her cell phone rang. Her ringtone was the “William Tell Overture,” which Hobo liked. The caller ID was MARCUSE INST. She flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sho, it’s Dillon. Just got in, and I’m watching on the cameras. Wow!”

Hobo tried to tickle her. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s great!”

“Do you—you think it’s safe for me to come out there?”

She considered this. “Let’s give him some time,” she said. “But I’m going to come in; I’ve got to pee.”