Robert Sawyer: Watch

“Then what is it?” her mother asked.

Caitlin took a deep breath, blew it out, then: “It’s a… consciousness.”

“A what?” her mom said.

Caitlin spread her arms. “It’s a consciousness, an intelligence, that’s emerged spontaneously, somehow, in the infrastructure of the Web.”

Caitlin still had to parse facial expressions piece by piece, and then match the clues to descriptions she’d read in books. Her father’s eyes narrowed into a squint, and he pressed his lips tightly together: skepticism.

Her mother’s tone was gentle. “That’s an… interesting idea, dear, but…”

“Its name,” Caitlin said firmly, “is Webmind.”

And that look on her mother’s face—mouth opened and rounded, eyes wide—had to be surprise. “You’ve spoken with it?”

Caitlin nodded. “Via instant messenger.”

“Sweetheart,” her mother said, “there are lots of con artists on the Web.”

“No, Mom. For Pete’s sake, this is real.”

“Has he asked you to meet him?” her mother demanded. “Asked for photographs?”

“No! Mom, I know all about online predators. It’s nothing like that.”

“Have you given him any personal information?” her mother continued. “Bank account numbers? Your Social Security number? Anything like that?”

“Mom!”

Her mother looked at her father, as if resuming some old argument. “I told you something like this would happen,” she said. “A blind girl spending all that time unsupervised online.”

Caitlin’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I’m not blind anymore! And, even when I was, I was always careful. This is as real as anything.”

“You didn’t answer your mother’s question,” her dad said. “Have you given out any personal numbers or passwords?”

“Jesus, Dad, no. This isn’t a scam.”

“That’s what everyone who is being scammed says,” he replied.

“Look, come up to my room,” Caitlin said. “I’ll show you.”

She didn’t wait for an answer; she just turned and headed for the staircase. Her breathing was ragged, but she knew she wasn’t going to accomplish anything by being pissy. She took a deep breath, and a memory of an animated cartoon came to her. She hadn’t seen it yet, but she’d always enjoyed listening to it, after Stacy back in Austin had explained what was going on. It was a Looney Tunes short called “One Froggy Evening,” about a frog who sang and danced for the guy who’d found it, but just croaked when anyone else was around. Eyes closed, steps passing beneath her feet, the frog’s favorite song ran through her head:

Hello! ma baby

Hello! ma honey

Hello! ma ragtime gal

Send me a kiss by wire

Baby, ma heart’s on fire!

Her parents followed her. Caitlin sat down in the swivel chair in front of her desk. She had an old seventeen-inch monitor hooked up to one computer, and the new twenty-seven-inch widescreen monitor she’d received that morning as an early birthday present connected to her other computer. Her mother took up a position on her left, arms crossed in front of her chest, and her father stood on her right. The chat session with Webmind was still on screen, with her brb as the last post. Things she said were in red letters, and Webmind’s words were in blue.

She couldn’t see her father—she was still blind in her right eye—but in her left-side peripheral vision, she saw her mother shoot him another look.

She typed, Back.

There was no response. The IM window—a white rectangle parked in a corner of her big monitor—showed nothing except an animated ad at its top. She shifted in her chair. Of course, Webmind knew she wasn’t alone. It watched the datafeed from her eyePod, and certainly could see her mother.

She tried again, typing Hello.

Still nothing. She turned to look at her father—and realized that might have been a mistake, since Webmind could now see that he was there, too. She faced the screen again and drummed her fingers on the stonewashed denim stretched across her thigh. Come on, she thought. Send me a kiss by wire…

And after six more seconds, the blue letters “POS” appeared in the instant-messenger window.

A startled laugh burst from Caitlin.

“What’s that mean?” demanded her mother.

“ ‘Parents over shoulder,’ ” Caitlin said. “It’s what you write in an IM when you can’t talk freely.” She typed: Yes, they are, and I’d like you to meet them. She looked at her father, so Webmind could see him, and she sent, That’s my dad, Dr. Malcolm Decter. And she looked the other way, then added, And my mom, Dr. Barbara Decter.

Webmind might have wrestled mightily with what to do next—but its response appeared instantaneously. Greetings and felicitations.

Caitlin smiled. “It’s read all of Project Gutenberg,” she said. “Its language tends to be dated.”

“Sweetheart,” her mother said gently, “that could be anyone.”

“It’s read all of Wikipedia, too,” Caitlin said. “Ask it something that no human being could find quickly online.”

“The Wikipedia entry on any topic is usually the first Google hit,” her mom said. “If this guy’s got a fast enough connection, he could find anything quickly.”

“Ask it a question, Dad. Something technical.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if wondering whether to go along with this nonsense or not. Finally, he said, “Are heterotic strings open or closed?”

Caitlin started to type. “How do you spell that?”

“H-e-t-e-r-o-t-i-c.”

She finished typing the question, but didn’t press enter. “Now, watch how fast it answers—it won’t be searching, it’ll know it.” She sent the question, and the word closed appeared at once.

“Fifty-fifty shot,” said her mother.

Caitlin was getting pissed again. There had to be an easy way to prove what she was saying.

And there was!

“Okay, look, Mom—my webcam is off, see?”

Her mother nodded.

“Okay, now hold up some fingers—any number.”

Her mom looked surprised, then did what she was asked. Caitlin glanced at her, then typed, “How many fingers is my mom holding up?”

The numeral three appeared instantly.

“Which ones?” typed Caitlin.

The text “Index, middle, ring” popped into the window.

Her mother made that round-mouth look again. Caitlin had Webmind repeat the stunt three times, and it got the answers right, even when she made the devil’s horns gesture with her index and baby fingers.

Caitlin’s mother sat down on the edge of the bed, and her father crossed the room and leaned against one of the blank walls, which, she had learned, were a color called cornflower blue.

“Sweetheart,” her mother said, gently. “Okay, somebody is intercepting the signal your eyePod is putting out. I grant you that, but—”

“The eyePod signal is just my retinal datastream,” Caitlin said. “Even if someone was intercepting it, they wouldn’t be able to decode it.”

“If it’s somebody at the University of Tokyo, they might have access to Masayuki’s algorithms,” her mother said. “There are con artists everywhere. And, honey, this is exactly how a certain type of Internet crook works. They find people who are… misunderstood. People who are brilliant, but don’t fit in well in the regular nine-to-five world.”

“Mom, it’s real —really.”

Her mother shook her head. “I know it seems real. The standard ploy is to come on to such a person in email or a chat room saying they’ve noticed how clever and insightful they are, how they—forgive me—how they see things that others don’t. One version has the scammer pretending to be a recruiter for the CIA; I have a friend who had her bank account cleared out after she gave up information supposedly for a security check. It’s exactly what these people do: they try to make you feel like you’re special—like you’re the most special person on the planet. And then they take you for everything you’ve got.”