Robert Sawyer - Watch

She went straight for the swivel chair in front of her computer. Her mother came in from her office across the hall. “Caitlin, what on earth’s going on?”

“Webmind is being attacked,” she said. “Webmind, send text to my computer, not my eye.” She cranked the volume on JAWS and set its reading speed as high as she thought her mother and Matt could follow. Webmind had been flashing more words in front of her eyes, but Caitlin hadn’t been able to follow them while she ran up the staircase. “—twenty-seven percent success rate,” said the rapid-fire synthesized voice.

“I missed that,” Caitlin said. “Start over.”

“I said, ‘Software has been added to the routers at a major switching facility in Alexandria, Virginia. They are examining each packet, and verifying the functioning of the time-to-live counters. Those that fail the tests are being deleted. So far they are only managing to delete mutant packets with a twenty-seven percent success rate.’ Continuing: however, this is also surely only a first attempt; doubtless the success rate will improve.”

“Damn,” said Caitlin. “How’d they know that’s what you’re made of?”

“I don’t know.”

“What percentage of packets could you lose and still retain consciousness?” Caitlin’s mom asked.

“I don’t know that, either,” Webmind said. “Early on I was cleaved in two when China cut off almost all traffic through the seven major fiber-optic trunk lines that connect the Chinese portion of the Internet to the rest of the world. I survived that as two separate consciousnesses—but that was before I had developed sophisticated cognitive functioning. If I were to lose that much substance again, I doubt I’d survive.”

While Webmind was speaking, Caitlin looked over at Matt, who now had an expression on his face that made his deer-caught-in-the-headlights one look positively normal. No doubt he’d only half believed Caitlin about her involvement with Webmind.

“Who’s doing it?” asked her mother. “Hackers?”

“I think it’s the American government,” Webmind said. “Although the switching facility belongs to AT T, it’s been co-opted by the National Security Agency before.”

Caitlin said, “Can’t you—I don’t know—can’t you tell your special packets not to go through that facility?”

“Packets are directed by routers; I have limited control over them beyond changing the final destination addresses.”

“I’m switching to websight,” Caitlin said. She pulled her eyePod from her pocket, pressed the switch, and watched as the cyber-landscape exploded into being around her. She was relieved to see the background shimmering the way it normally did; the vast bulk of Webmind’s cellular automata were apparently unaffected, at least so far.

“Take me there,” she said.

One of Webmind’s distinctive orange link lines shot into the center of her vision. She followed it to a small green site circle, then another orange link shot out; she followed that to a yellow circle.

In the background she heard her mother’s voice: “I’m going across the hall to call your father.”

Caitlin was concentrating so hard on following the links she wasn’t actually sure if her head moved when she tried to nod.

Another orange link line; she followed it as quickly as she could.

And another.

And one more.

And—

“The switching station,” said the mechanical voice.

Caitlin’s jaw dropped. She knew that what she was seeing was only a representation, only her mind’s way of interpreting the data it was receiving, and that the symbolism was imposed upon the images as much by her imagination as by anything else.

And her visual centers had been rewiring themselves like crazy these last several days as she learned to see the real world. There was still so much she hadn’t yet seen, and every day had shown her a thousand new things. But this was the first new thing she’d seen with websight since gaining worldview—the first new cyberspace experience she’d had since seeing reality—and she was doubtless interpreting it in ways she never could have before.

What she was seeing was frightening. The background of the Web had always seemed far, far away. Although she knew intellectually that the ghost packets that made up Webmind were no more remote than any others, she’d visualized them as being removed from the ones that were in active use by the Internet. But now that distant curtain was distorted here, puckering toward her, and—

No, no: not toward her. Toward that large node in the center of her vision, a circle that was a deep, deep red, like the color she now knew blood to be. Streamers from the background—intertwined, twisted filaments of shimmering pale blue and deep green—were being sucked into the dark red circle.

“Shit,” Caitlin said.

“What do you see?” Matt asked, his tone astonished.

“They’re pulling in the lost packets.”

“And,” said Webmind, “checking each one for the mutation that keeps them from expiring, and deleting those packets that have the mutation.”

Soft footfalls, and then her mother’s voice. “Your father is on his way.”

“This is clearly only a test run to see if their technique works,” Webmind said. “It’s employing only one facility, albeit a major one, and so it can only scrub those packets that happen to pass through that facility. But if the same technology were deployed at sufficient major routing hubs worldwide, I would be severely damaged.”

“No,” said Caitlin.

“What?” said her mother and Matt and Webmind simultaneously.

“No, I won’t let that happen. Not on my watch.”

“How will you stop it?” asked Matt.

“What was that quote, Mom—the one about the other cheek?”

Her mother’s voice: “ ‘Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ ”

“Hmm. No, not that part. What comes after that?”

“ ‘And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.’ ”

“Right! It’s not about just giving them what they ask for, or even more of the same thing they’re asking for—it’s about giving them other stuff, too.”

“Yes?” said her mother. “So?”

“Okay, Webmind,” Caitlin said. “Where did you put it?”

“Put what?” asked Matt.

“Follow me,” said Webmind.

And another orange link line leapt into Caitlin’s field of view. She cast her attention along its length. It seemed longer than any such line she’d ever followed before, an infinity of geometrically straight perfection, and—

No, no—not perfect. It was—yes!—almost imperceptibly at first, but then, after a moment, without any doubt: it was curving, bending down, the way links from Webmind did when she tried to follow them back to their origin, her brain’s way of acknowledging that the source was outside her ability to perceive.

“I’m losing you,” Caitlin said.

And suddenly the link rippled and waved, as if by an effort of will—hers, or Webmind’s, she couldn’t say which—it was being pulled taut. She continued to slide her attention—slide her mind—along its length.

It was unlike any perception she’d had yet in the real world. As she zoomed toward the shimmering background, the individual pixels—the individual cells—did not grow larger. Rather, they remained almost invisible, just at the limit of her ability to perceive. She imagined if she ever did get to take her trip into space, hurtling up into the night sky would have the same sort of feeling: the stars might be getting closer, but they wouldn’t ever appear as anything more than tiny pinpoints.