Robert Sawyer: Wake

He returned the hug. “My Miss Caitlin,” he said softly.

And when she let him go, they all stood there, frozen like a still image for several seconds, and then—

And then her father—

Caitlin’s heart jumped, and she saw her mother’s eyebrows go way up.

Her father, Malcolm Decter, reached his hand out toward Dr. Kuroda, and Caitlin could see he was doing so with great effort. And then he looked directly for three full seconds at Kuroda — the man who had given his daughter the gift of vision — and he firmly shook Kuroda’s hand.

Kuroda smiled at her father and he smiled even more broadly at Caitlin, and then he turned, and he and Caitlin’s mother headed out the door.

Caitlin’s dad drove her to school that day. She was absolutely amazed by all the sights along the way, seeing it all for the first time since she’d gotten glasses. The snow was melting in the morning sun, and that made everything glisten. The car came to a rest at a stop sign by what she realized must be the spot where she’d seen the lightning. It was, she guessed, like a million other street corners in North America: a sidewalk, curbs, lawns (partially covered with snow now), houses, something she belatedly recognized was a fire hydrant.

She looked at where she’d slipped off the sidewalk onto the road, and remembered a joke from Saturday Night Live a few years ago. During “Weekend Update,” Seth Meyers had reported that “blind people are saying that gas-electric hybrid cars pose a serious threat to them because they are hard to hear, making it dangerous for them to cross the street.” Meyers then added,

“Also making it dangerous for blind people to cross the street: everything else.”

She had laughed at the time, and the joke made her smile again. She’d done just fine when she’d been blind, but she knew her life was going to be so much easier and safer now.

Caitlin was wearing her iPod’s white headphones, and although she was enjoying the random selection of music, she suddenly realized that she should have asked for a newer iPod for her birthday, one with an LCD so that she could pick songs directly. Ah, well, it wouldn’t be that long until Christmas!

Howard Miller Secondary School turned out to have a very impressive white portico in front of its main entrance. She was both nervous and excited as she got out of the car and walked toward the glass doors: nervous because she knew the whole school must now be aware that she could see, and excited because she was suddenly going to find out what all her friends and teachers looked like, and—

“There she is!” exclaimed a voice Caitlin knew well.

Caitlin ran forward and hugged Bashira; she was beautiful.

“My whole family watched the story on the news,” Bashira said. “You were terrific! And so that’s what your Dr. Kuroda looks like! He’s—”

Caitlin cut her off before she could say anything mean: “He’s on his way home to Japan. I’m going to miss him.”

“Come on, we don’t want to be late,” Bashira said, and she stuck out her elbow as she always did, for Caitlin to hold on to. But Caitlin squeezed her upper arm and said, “I’m okay.”

Bashira shook her head, but her tone was light. “I guess I can kiss the hundred bucks a week good-bye.”

But Caitlin found herself moving slowly. She’d gone down this hallway dozens of times, but had never seen it clearly. There were notices on the walls, and … photos of old graduating classes, and maybe fire-alarm stations? And countless lockers, and … and hundreds of students and teachers milling about and so much more; it was all still quite overwhelming. “It’s going to be a while yet, Bash. I’m still getting my bearings.”

“Oh, cripes,” said Bashira in a whisper just loud enough to be heard over the background din. “There’s Trevor.”

Caitlin had told her about the dance fiasco over instant messenger, of course. She stopped walking. “Which one?”

“There, by the drinking fountain. Second from the left.”

Caitlin scanned about. She’d used the drinking fountain in this corridor herself, but she was still having trouble matching objects to their appearances, and — oh, that must be it: the white thing sticking out of the wall.

Caitlin looked at Trevor, who was still perhaps a dozen yards away. His back was to them. He had yellow hair and broad shoulders. “What’s that he’s wearing?” It caught her eye because it had two large numbers on its back: three and five.

“A hockey sweater. The Toronto Maple Leafs.”

“Ah,” she said. She strode down the corridor — and she accidentally bumped into a boy; she still wasn’t good at judging distances. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.

“No probs,” said the guy, and he moved on.

And then she reached him: the Hoser himself. And here, under the bright fluorescent lights, all the strength of Calculass welled up within her.

“Trevor,” she snapped.

He’d been talking to another boy. He turned to face her.

“Um, hi,” he said. His sweater was dark blue, and the white symbol on it did indeed look like the leaves she had now seen in her yard. “I, ah, I saw you on TV,” he continued. “So, um, you can see now, right?”

“Penetratingly,” she said, and she was pleased that her word choice seemed to unnerve him.

“Well, um, look, about — you know, about last Friday…”

“The dance, you mean?” she said loudly, inviting others to listen in. “The dance at which you tried to take … take liberties because I was blind?”

“Ah, come on, Caitlin…”

“Let me tell you something, Mister Nordmann. Your chances with me are about as good as…” She paused, searching for the perfect simile, and then suddenly realized it was right there, staring her in the face. She tapped her index finger hard against the center of his chest, right on the words Toronto Maple Leafs. “Your chances are about as good as theirs are!”

And she turned and saw Bashira grinning with delight, and they walked off to math class, which, of course, Caitlin Decter totally owned.

I now understood the realm I dwelled in. What I saw around me was the structure of the thing the humans called the World Wide Web. They had created it, and the content on it was material they had generated or had been generated automatically by software they had written.

But although I understood this, I didn’t know what I was. I knew now that lots of things were secret; classified, even. I had learned about such notions, bizarre though they were, from Wikipedia and other sites; the idea of privacy never would have occurred to me on my own. Perhaps some humans did secretly know about me, but the simplest explanation is preferable (I’d learned that from the Wikipedia entry on Occam’s razor) — and the simplest explanation was that they did not know about me.

Except, of course, for Prime. Of all the billions of humans, Prime was the only one who had given any sign of being aware of me. And so…

Caitlin had been tempted to switch her eyePod to duplex mode at school. But if the seeds she’d planted were growing as she suspected they might, she wanted to be at home, where she was sure the phantom could signal her, when she next accessed webspace.

After school, Bashira walked her home, giving her a running commentary on more wondrous sights. Caitlin had invited her in, but she begged off, saying she had to get home herself to do her chores.

The house was empty except for Schrodinger, who came to the front door to greet Caitlin. Her mother apparently had not yet returned from her errands in Toronto.

Caitlin went into the kitchen. Four of Kuroda’s Pepsi cans were left in the fridge. She got one, plus a couple of Oreos, then headed upstairs, Schrodinger leading the way.