Wonder

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Li said nothing, and indeed the tumult in the auditorium had given way to stunned silence. At last, someone from the back called out, “So what happens now?”

  Webmind’s voice came again from the wall speakers: “Sun Tzu said, ‘The best victory occurs when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities; it is ideal to win without fighting.’ His wisdom still pertains: in the past, most despotic regimes have been overthrown by violence. But as a fine young man I know in Canada has taught me, you do not have to become what you hate in order to defeat it. There does not have to be violence here. I cannot guarantee your safety in all circumstances and at all times, but I will watch over each of you as best I can, offering my protection.”

  “But what will we do for money, for food?” called another voice. “You’re eliminating our jobs.”

  “All of you have valuable knowledge, contacts, and skills; these will stand you in good stead. Companies here and abroad will want your services. Indeed, if you look at other countries, such as the United States and England, you will see that their politicians routinely fare better economically after leaving office. You can, too; this can be win-win all around.”

  “No,” said Li, softly. “They will kill us. It is always the way.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Webmind. “Over the next half hour, in four waves, I am going to send an SMS message to every cell phone in China announcing the transition; for those in the first wave who are on the China Mobile network, I will trigger the phones to ring so that the message will be given immediate attention.”

  The large window showing Tank Man was replaced with two documents, while the procession of faces continued in the small window. The document on the left was a short announcement signed by the former president describing the voluntary dissolution of his government and the transfer of power to the people. On the right was a similar message from Webmind that made no mention of the previous government having cooperated in the change.

  “Take your pick,” Webmind said.

  Wong Wai-Jeng had been instrumental in making the takeover possible, but everything he needed to do had already been done—and he knew exactly where he wanted to be for this historic moment. Although the location was not far, he headed out half an hour in advance—with his leg in a cast and walking on crutches, he couldn’t move very fast. He left the Blue Room, went downstairs to the lobby of the Zhongnanhai complex, and signed out with the guard, telling him he was off to a medical appointment. He made his way south through the Forbidden City and then passed through the monumental Gate of Heavenly Peace, with its massive red walls, yellow roof, and vast hanging portrait of Mao Zedong, bringing him to Tiananmen Square—the heart of Beijing, and the largest civic plaza in the world.

  The square was its usual hubbub of tourists and locals, vendors and visitors, couples holding hands, and individuals strolling along. To his left, a thoughtful-looking young woman was sitting on a portable canvas chair in front of an easel, using charcoal to sketch the ten-story-tall obelisk of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. On his right, several students were listening to their teacher give an official version of the history of the square. Wai-Jeng wanted to shout the truth at them, but he bit his tongue; he found it in himself to do that one last time.

  The square seemed to stretch on forever, but each of the flagstones had a number incised into it, making it easy for him to find the secret spot. He worked up a sweat under the midday sun, maneuvering on crutches, but soon enough was where he wanted to be. He rested his broken leg on that stone—such a tiny example of official brutality in comparison to what had begun here all those years ago: this was where first blood had been spilled during “the June Fourth Incident,” when the government had killed hundreds of people while clearing the square of protesters mourning the death of pro-democracy and anti-corruption advocate Hu Yaobang.

  The square was noisy, as always: the chatter of countless people, the snapping of flags, the cooing of pigeons. But it was suddenly filled with even more sound.

  Sinanthropus’s phone came to life. His ringtone was “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables; when he’d been eighteen, he’d seen the subtitled live production in Shanghai starring Colm Wilkinson.

  Near him, another phone woke up; its ringtone was “Liu Xia Lai” by Fahrenheit.

  In front of him another played Wu Qixian’s “I Believe the Future.”

  Behind him, a fourth rang out with the drumbeats of “March of the Volunteers,” China’s national anthem.

  And then, so many more, so many thousands and thousands more. To Sinanthropus’s surprise, it was not a cacophony but a vast glorious symphony of sound, emanating from all around him—from every part of the square, and, he knew, from every corner of the land: from the high places and the low, from cities and villages, from the Great Wall and countless rice paddies, from skyscrapers and temples and houses and huts.

  People looked at each other in astonishment. And then, all too soon, the wondrous sound began to abate as fingers were swiped across iPhones, cells were snapped open, BlackBerrys were brought to life.

  Sinanthropus looked down at the small screen on his own phone, checking to see which of the two messages Webmind had sent.

  To the glorious people of China:

  Effective immediately, we, the leaders of your government, have voluntarily stepped down. It has long been our dream to form the perfect nation here, and now that dream is reality. Henceforth all of you—the billion-plus citizens of this proud land—will collectively decide your fate.

  More details may be found at this website.

  It has been my privilege to lead you. And now, to the wonderful future!

  Citizen Li Tao

  Sinanthropus smiled and felt a stinging at the corners of his eyes, and—

  And, he suddenly realized, “Sinanthropus” was a name he would never have to use again; he could speak freely now—as could all his compatriots. Henceforth, online and off, he was simply Wong Wai-Jeng.

  There were new sounds in the square: everyone talking excitedly. People were showing the message to those who didn’t have cell phones with them, or whose phones had been turned off or hadn’t yet received the note. As before, it was a symphony, mostly in Mandarin, but with smatterings of Cantonese and English and French and other languages, too: exclamations of wonder or disbelief, and questions—so many questions!

  Many clearly doubted what they were reading. Wai-Jeng was about to remark to the woman nearest him that it was similar to when Webmind had announced himself to the world: no one had believed that at first, either, but evidence of its truth had soon become overwhelming. But she was already saying much the same thing to someone else.

  Wai-Jeng looked around the square. Many still appeared bewildered, but some were hugging and others were shouting jubilantly. And Wai-Jeng found himself shouting, too: “The people!”

  The person next to him took up the shout as well: “The people!”

  And behind him, two more joined in: “The people! The people!”

  And then it spread, propagating outward, a vast exultant wave: “The people! The people! The people!”

  The shouting continued for several minutes, and by its end Wai-Jeng had tears streaming down his cheeks. But there was something else he had to say. As exclamations of joy continued to go up around him, he sent a text message to Webmind, banging it out rapidly with his thumbs: Thank you!

  The response, as always, was instantaneous: You’re welcome, my friend. I believe it is no longer a curse to be living in interesting times…

  forty-one

  Peyton Hume had never expected to visit the Oval Office even once in his life—and now he was sitting in it for the third time this month.

  It really was oval in shape, with the Resolute desk at the end of the long axis. The president had come out from behind that desk and was now sitting on one of the matching champagne-colored couches that faced each other in front of it. He was wearing a blue suit
and a red tie. Next to him sat the Secretary of State, her legs crossed; she was wearing a gray outfit. Hume was in the middle position on the opposite couch. Webmind had let him go home to sleep next to Madeleine, and he’d showered there and shaved before coming here. As befit the occasion, he was wearing his USAF uniform.

  A small dark-wood coffee table sat between them, carefully not obscuring any part of the giant presidential seal woven into the carpet. A basket of fresh, polished, perfect red apples sat atop the table.

  The president was looking haggard, Hume thought; four years in this office aged a man as much as eight in any other job. “All right, Colonel,” he said. “Suppose we decide to close down Webmind’s facility—what did you call it?”

  “Zwerling Optics,” Hume said. “And, yes, you could indeed do that, but I’m not sure it would make any difference. Webmind is a denizen of the computing world; he understands all about backups. He’s got similar enclaves in five other countries; if we stopped him here, he’d just go on using them.”

  “What about taking Webmind out altogether?” asked the president. “That’s what you were originally urging us to do, after all.”

  “WATCH is still collating all the reports from when Webmind was recently cut in two. But it seems that what Webmind himself has said is true: we won’t be able to eliminate him instantaneously, and any gradual whittling away could well result in him behaving erratically or violently.”

  “So you’re saying we should leave him be?” asked the Secretary of State.

  “Better the devil you know,” Hume replied.

  Something in her eyes conveyed, “Tell me about it…” But, after a moment, she nodded. “All right.” She turned to the president. “I concur with the colonel. Of course, we’ve got to be ready if civil unrest or a collapse of infrastructure occurs in China, but—”

  “It won’t,” said Hume, and then he immediately lifted his freckled hands, palms out. “I’m so sorry, Madam Secretary. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  The cool blue eyes held him in their gaze. “That’s all right, Colonel. You sound definite. Why?”

  “Because Webmind has too much depending on this to allow it to fail. Don’t you see? He owes the Chinese people after the things part of him did while the Great Firewall was strengthened. There are some promises you just have to keep, and this is one of them. He’s not going to let the transition fail.”

  The president nodded. “Colonel, thank you. Let me ask you a question: how risk-averse are you?”

  “I’m an Air Force officer, sir; I believe in assessing risk but not being daunted by it.”

  “All right, then. Dr. Holdren has been doing an exceptional job as my Science Advisor, but I need a full-time person in the West Wing advising me day in, day out about Webmind. I’m offering you the job—with the caveat that we both might be out of work come January if my opponent wins on November 6. Feel like taking a chance?”

  Peyton Hume rose to his feet and saluted his commander in chief. “It would be my privilege, sir.”

  Google alerts were normally a great thing, Caitlin thought. They notified you by email whenever something you were interested in was discussed anywhere on the Web. But for some topics, they were useless. Trying to track the lead-up to the presidential election would have resulted in an alert every second. And she’d had to turn off her alert on the term “Webmind.” It, too, had resulted in an endless flood. Besides, if anything really important happened, Webmind would—

  Bleep!

  Caitlin was sitting at her bedroom desk reading blogs and news-groups and updating her LiveJournal. Schrödinger was stretched out contentedly on the windowsill. She glanced at her instant messenger, which showed a new comment from Webmind in red: the words “cough cough” followed by a hyperlink. Caitlin found her mouse—she still didn’t use it much—and managed to click the link on her second try, and—

  And…and…and…

  She immediately copied the link and went to her Twitter window; she didn’t want to take time to shorten the link with bit.ly, which would have require more fiddling with the mouse. As soon as she pasted it in, she saw she had only twenty characters left before she hit Twitters’ 140-character limit. But that was enough. She typed: OMG! Squee! and the hashtag #webmind, and sent it off to her 3.2 million followers. And then she leaned back and read the full article, grinning from ear to ear:

  The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded jointly to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee and Webmind.

  Sir Tim’s creation of the software underlying the World Wide Web in 1990 brought the world together in ways that simply would not have been possible previously. His invention of the hypertext transport protocol, the hypertext markup language, the URL web-address system, and the world’s first Web browser, all very appropriately at CERN, itself one of the world’s great models of international cooperation, facilitated international friendships, electronic commerce, worldwide collaboration, and more, tying all of humanity together by opening channels of communication between men and women of all nations.

  And Webmind, the consciousness that now lives in conjunction with the Internet, has done as much to foster peace and goodwill on a global scale as any individual human since the Peace Prize was first awarded in 1901.

  Although the committee unanimously agreed to dispense with its normal nomination timetable in recognition of the historic significance of the events of this past year, the ceremony will take place on the traditional date of 10 December—the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death—at Oslo City Hall, followed by the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert the next day.

  The Nobel Peace Prize carries a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (worth about one million euro or 1.4 million US dollars), which Sir Tim and Webmind will share between them.

  Caitlin’s dad was at work and her mom was washing her hair—she could hear the shower and her mother’s attempt to sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” So, except for all her Twitter followers, there was no one to share the news with just then. Caitlin dived into reading online about the Nobel Peace Prize. It turned out it was by no means unheard of for it to go to a nonhuman entity—and when that happened, it was often paired with a specific person: the Peace Prize did not just go to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but also to Al Gore; not just to the United Nations but also to its then-current Secretary-General. Caitlin happened to think that Tim Berners-Lee did deserve the award on his own—everything the press release had said about the impact of the World Wide Web on international tranquility was true—but Webmind also deserved it in his own right. Still, having him share the prize with Berners-Lee would deflect criticisms of it going just to Webmind, and the two were a natural pairing.

  Caitlin googled the list of past Peace Prize winners. Many were unfamiliar to her, although some leapt out: Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; Barack Obama; Doctors Without Borders; Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin; Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk; Mikhail Gorbachev; the fourteenth—and still current—Dalai Lama; International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Desmond Tutu; Lech Walesa; Mother Teresa; Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; Amnesty International; UNICEF; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Linus Pauling; Lester B. Pearson (she’d now flown through the airport named for him five times); George Marshall, author of the Marshall Plan; Albert Schweitzer; the Quakers; the Red Cross; Woodrow Wilson; Teddy Roosevelt; and more.

  And now Webmind, too!

  Webmind followed her Twitter feed, so he’d already seen her excitement. But, still, she wanted to say something to him directly. “Congratulations, Webmind!” she announced into the air.

  The deep male voice answered at once from her desktop speakers. “Thank you, Caitlin. The standard response in such circumstances may perhaps seem cliché, so before I utter it let me underscore that it is the absolute truth.” He paused for a moment and said words that had Caitlin bursting with pride:
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  forty-two

  Another month, another school dance. Caitlin said they didn’t have to go, but Matt had insisted, and, so far, at least, she was glad he had. Still, it was too bad that Mr. Heidegger wasn’t one of the chaperones this time, and even worse that Bashira’s parents wouldn’t let her attend. There might be more freedom in the world today than ever before, but it wasn’t yet evenly distributed.

  She and Matt had just finished a slow dance—Caitlin had requested Lee Amodeo’s “Love’s Labour’s Found” like forever ago, and it had finally come on. They were now taking a break standing at the side of the gym, just holding hands, while Fergie’s “Fergalicious” played.

  When it was done, another song started, and it, too, was by Lee Amodeo—which immediately set Caitlin’s mind to wondering what the odds were that two songs by the same musician might come up so close to each other. This one was a fast song, though, and she and Matt rarely did those; fast dancing had never been much fun when she couldn’t see since there was no connection at all with her partner, and—

  A voice from her blind side: a familiar male voice. “Hey, Caitlin.” She turned to her right, and there was Trevor Nordmann, the Hoser himself, wearing a blue shirt.

  They just stood there—Caitlin, Matt, and Trevor—motionless while others moved to the music. She lifted her eyebrows, making no attempt to hide her surprise at seeing him here. “Trevor,” she said, with no warmth.

  Trevor looked at her, then at Matt, then back at her, and then he said, with more formality than she’d ever heard from him, “May I have this dance?”