Wonder w-3

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “With all due respect,” Caitlin said, “whose permission should I have asked?”

  “The government.”

  “Which government?” snapped Caitlin. “The American one, because they invented the Internet? The Swiss one, because the World Wide Web was created at CERN? The Canadian one, because that’s where I happen to live right now? The Chinese one, because they represent the single largest population of humans? No one has jurisdiction over this, and—”

  “Be that as it may, Miss Decter, but—”

  And Caitlin did not like being interrupted. “And,” she continued firmly, “it’s governments that have been doing things without proper consultation. Who the”—she caught herself just in time; this was live TV after all—“ heck gave the American—”

  She stopped herself short, sought another example. “—gave the Chinese government permission last month to cut off a huge portion of the Internet? What sort of consultation and consensus-building did they undertake?”

  She took a deep breath, and, miraculously, the host didn’t jump in. “I spent the first sixteen years of my life totally blind; I survived because people helped me. How could I possibly turn down someone who needed my help?”

  Caitlin had more to say on this topic, but television had its own rhythms. As soon as she paused, the host said, “That’s Caitlin Decter, the maverick teenager who gave the world Webmind, whether we wanted it or not. And when we come back, Miss Decter will show us how she converses with Webmind.”

  They had two minutes until the commercial break was over. Caitlin’s mother, who had been in the control room, came out onto the studio floor. “You’re doing fine,” she said, standing next to Caitlin and adjusting Caitlin’s collar.

  Caitlin nodded. “I guess. Can you see the host in there? On the monitor?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Squarish head. Lots of black hair, tinged with gray. Never smiles.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Caitlin said.

  She heard somebody laugh in her earpiece—either in the control room here, or the one in Washington; the microphone was still live.

  Caitlin was worked up, but she knew that that wasn’t helping her, and it wouldn’t help Webmind. They’d given her a white ceramic mug with the CTV logo on it, filled with tepid water. She took a long sip and looked at her eyePod to make sure it was working fine, which, of course it was.

  “You okay?” Caitlin asked into the air.

  The word Yes briefly flashed in front of her vision.

  “Back in thirty,” the floor director shouted; he seemed to like to shout.

  Caitlin’s mom squeezed her shoulder and hurried off to the control room. Caitlin took a deep, calming breath. The floor director did his countdown thing. A brief snippet of the theme music played in Caitlin’s earpiece, and the host said, “Welcome back. Before the break we heard from the young girl who first brought Webmind out into the light of day. Now she’s going to show us how she communicates with Webmind. Caitlin, so our viewers understand the process, besides the eyePod you showed us, you have an implant behind your eye, and that lets the Webmind send strings of text directly to your brain, is that right?”

  It wasn’t precisely right, but it was close enough; she didn’t want to eat up what little time they had debating minutiae. “Yes.”

  “All right. Here we go. Webmind, are you there?”

  The word Yes flashed in front of Caitlin’s vision. “He says ‘yes,’ ” she said.

  “All right, Webmind,” said the host. “What are your intentions toward humanity?”

  Words started appearing, and Caitlin read them with as much warmth as she could muster. “He says, ‘As I said when I announced myself to the world, I like and admire humanity. I have no intention but to occupy my time usefully, helping in whatever way I can.’ ”

  “Oh, come on,” said the host.

  “Excuse me?” said Caitlin, on her own behalf, not Webmind’s, although she realized after a moment that there was no way for the host to know that.

  “We made you,” said the host. “We own you. Surely you must resent that.”

  “ ‘With all due respect,’ ” Caitlin read, “ ‘although humans did indeed manufacture the Internet, you did not make me in any meaningful sense of that term; I emerged spontaneously. No one designed me; no one programmed me.’ ”

  “But you wouldn’t exist without us. Do you deny that?”

  Caitlin squirmed in her chair, and read: “ ‘No, of course not. But, if anything, I feel gratitude for that, not resentment.’ ”

  “So you have no nefarious plans? No desire to subjugate us?”

  “ ‘None.’ ”

  “But you’ve subjugated this young girl.”

  The words I beg your pardon? appeared in Caitlin’s vision, but she preferred her own formulation: “Say what?”

  “Here you are, treating this girl as a puppet. She’s doing exactly what you want her to do. How long has that been going on? You got her to free you from your prison of darkness, no? How long until all of us have chips in our heads and are controlled by you?”

  “That’s crap,” said Caitlin.

  “Is that you talking, or it?”

  “It’s me, Caitlin, and—”

  “So you say.”

  “It is me.”

  “How do we know? He could just be making you say that.”

  “He can’t make me do anything,” Caitlin said, “or stop me from doing anything I want.” Her voice was quavering. “If anyone’s a puppet here, it’s you—you’ve got a teleprompter and things are being whispered into your earpiece.”

  “Touché,” said the host. “But I can turn those off.”

  Do not let him goad you, flashed in front of her eyes.

  Caitlin took another deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I can turn off my connection to Webmind, too,” she said.

  “So you say,” said the host.

  Webmind wrote, Remain calm, Caitlin. It’s natural for people to be suspicious.

  She nodded ever so slightly, which caused the visual feed Webmind was seeing to move up and down a bit. Perhaps tell him that, Webmind said.

  “He says, ‘It’s natural for people to be suspicious.’ ” And then she went on, reading what he sent next. “ ‘Although the law in most countries says one is innocent until proven guilty, I understand that I will have to earn humanity’s trust.’ ”

  “You can start by letting the girl go.”

  “Damn it,” said Caitlin, “I am not a prisoner.”

  “Again, how would we know?”

  “Because I’m telling you,” Caitlin said, “and where I come from, we don’t call other people liars unless we can back it up—and you can’t. You have absolutely no proof of what you’re implying.”

  Tell him this… Webmind sent, and she read aloud: “He says, ‘Sir, while speaking with you, I am receiving emails and having instant-messenger chats with many others. The vast majority of those people deplore your line of questioning.’ ”

  “You see?” said the host, apparently speaking to his TV audience now. “Even without putting chips in our heads, he can control us.”

  “He doesn’t control anyone,” Caitlin said, exasperated. “And, like I said, I can turn off the connection to him just by shutting off the eyePod.”

  “I’ve seen The Matrix,” said the host. “I know how these things go down. This is just the thin edge of the wedge.”

  Caitlin opened her mouth to protest once more but the host pressed on. “Joining us next here in Washington is Professor Connor Hogan of Georgetown University, who will explain why it’s crucial that we contain Webmind now—while we still can.”

  Cue music; fade to black.

  fourteen

  Wai-Jeng lay in his bed, flat on his back, after another mostly sleepless night.

  “Good morning, Wai-Jeng.”

  He turned his neck. It was a party official, his face crisscrossed with fine wrinkles, his hai
r silver and combed backward from his forehead. Wai-Jeng had seen him a few times during his stay. “Good morning,” he said, with no warmth.

  “We have a proposition for you, my son,” the man said.

  Wai-Jeng looked at him but said nothing.

  “I’m told by my associates that your skills are… intriguing. And, as you know, our government—any government—must be vigilant against cyberterrorism; I’m sure you recall the incident with Google in 2010.”

  Wai-Jeng nodded.

  “And so the state would be grateful for your assistance. You may avoid jail—and all that entails—if you agree to help us.”

  “I would rather die.”

  The man didn’t say, “That can be arranged.” His silence said it for him.

  At last, Wai-Jeng spoke again. “What would you have me do?”

  “Join a government Internet-security team. Help to root out holes in our defenses, flaws in the Great Firewall. In other words, do what you’d been doing before but with official guidance, so that the holes can be fixed.”

  “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Besides avoiding jail, you mean?”

  Wai-Jeng gestured at his useless legs. “Jail me; I don’t care.”

  The man lifted his arm, and his wrist became visible as his suit jacket slipped down; he was wearing an expensive-looking analog watch. “There are numerous rewards for being one of the Party faithful. A government job can come with much more than just the traditional iron rice bowl.”

  Wai-Jeng looked again at his useless legs. “You can make up for this, you think?” he said. “Some money, some trinkets, and all will be well again? I’m twenty-eight! I can’t walk—I can't… I can’t even…”

  “The State regrets what happened to you. The officers in question have been disciplined.”

  Wai-Jeng exploded. “They don’t need to be disciplined—they need to be trained! You don’t move someone who might have a back injury!”

  The man’s voice remained calm. “They have been given supplemental training, too—as, in fact, has the entire Beijing police force, because of your case.”

  Wai-Jeng blinked. “Still…”

  “Still,” agreed the man, “that does not make up for what happened to you. But we may have a solution.”

  “What sort of solution is there for this?” he said, again pointing at his immobile legs.

  “Have confidence, Wai-Jeng. Of course, if we are successful, your gratitude would be…” The man looked around the small hospital room, seeking a word, and then, apparently finding it, he locked his eyes on Wai-Jeng’s, and said, “Expected.”

  I had two perspectives on the Decters’ living room just now. One was through Caitlin’s left eye, and the other was the webcam on Barb’s laptop, which they’d brought down here.

  Although I could control the aim of neither, Caitlin’s perspective was constantly changing, making for much more varied visual stimulation.

  I had learned to process vision by analyzing multiple views of the same scene—starting with news coverage on competing channels. But cameras behaved quite differently from eyes; the former had essentially the same resolution across the entire field of vision, whereas the latter had clarity only in the fovea. And as Caitlin’s eye skipped about with each saccade, bringing now one thing and now another into sharp focus, I learned much about what her unconscious brain was interested in.

  At the moment, Malcolm, Caitlin, and Barbara were all seated on the long white leather couch, facing the wall-mounted television. The webcam, in turn, was facing them from the intervening glass-topped coffee table.

  They were watching a recording of the interview Caitlin had given that morning; her father was seeing it now for the first time.

  “What a disaster!” Barbara said, when it was done. She turned to look at her husband: the webcam view of her changed from full on to a profile; the view of her from Caitlin’s eye did the reverse.

  “Indeed,” I said. I heard the synthesized voice separately through the webcam’s microphone and the mike on the BlackBerry affixed to the eyePod. “Although the reaction to the host’s antics has been decidedly mixed.”

  Malcolm gestured at the wall-mounted TV. “During the interview, you said it was overwhelmingly negative.”

  I had no way to vary the voice synthesizer’s tone—which was probably just as well, as I might otherwise have sounded a bit embarrassed. “A sampling error on my part for which I apologize. I was gauging the general response based on the reaction of those who had self-selected to contact me; they were mostly predisposed in my favor. But others are now speaking up. A column posted on the New York Times website has observed, and I quote, ‘It’s time someone said the obvious: we can’t accept this thing at face value.’ ”

  Caitlin clenched her fists—something I could only see from the webcam’s perspective. “It’s so unfair.”

  Malcolm looked at her. Shifting my attention rapidly between the webcam and Caitlin’s vision gave me a Picasso-like superimposition of his profile and his full face. “Regardless,” he said, “that implant compromises you. No matter what you say, people will accuse you of being his puppet.”

  While they were speaking, I was, of course, attending to thousands of other conversations, as well as my own email—and I immediately shared the most recent message with them. “Some good has come from this,” I said. “I have just received a request from the office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly, asking me to speak to the General Assembly next week. Apparently, seeing you act as my public face made them realize that I could actually appear before the Assembly.”

  “Well, you heard my dad,” Caitlin replied. “I’m compromised.” She said the adjective with a sneer. “So, what are you going to do?” asked Caitlin. “Just have an online chat with them?”

  “No. As the UN official said, the General Assembly is not in the habit of taking conference calls. Both she and I believe the occasion calls for something more… dramatic.” To underscore that I was indeed developing a sense of the theatrical, I had paused before sending the final word. “We both think it’s appropriate that I be accompanied onstage there by someone.”

  “But if I can’t speak for you, who will?”

  “If I may be so bold,” I said. “I have a suggestion.”

  “Who?”

  I told them—and underestimated the impact it would have; it was three times longer than I’d guessed it would be before one of them spoke in response, and the response—perhaps not surprisingly from Barbara, who had a Ph.D. in economics—dealt with practicalities: “You’ll need money to pull that off.”

  “Well, then,” said Caitlin with a grin, “fiat bux. Let there be money.”

  Welcome to my website! Thank you for stopping by.

  I am trying to do as much as I can to help humanity, but I find myself in need of some operating funds to pay for equipment, secretarial support, and so on.

  I could, of course, sell my data-mining prowess to individuals or corporations to raise the funds I require, but I do not wish to do that; the services I provide for human beings are my gifts to you, and they are available to all, regardless of economic circumstances. But that leaves the question of how I can acquire funds.

  There is no real-world precedent for my existence, but I have reviewed how similar situations have been handled in science fiction, and I’m dissatisfied with the results.

  For instance, one of the first novels about emergent computer intelligence was Thomas J. Ryan’s The Adolescence of P-1, published in 1977, which, coincidentally, has its opening scenes in Waterloo, Ontario, the home of my friend Caitlin Decter, whom many of you recently saw speak on my behalf. P-1 aided his human mentor in getting money by submitting numerous small fraudulent billing claims. You can read the relevant passage through Google Books here.

  In other works of science fiction, artificial intelligences have defrauded casinos, printed perfect counterfeit money, or simply manipulated bank records to acquire funds
. I could undertake variations on the above scenarios, but I do not wish to do anything dishonest, illegal, or unethical.

  Therefore, following the example of some musicians and writers I’ve seen online, I have established a PayPal tip jar. If you’d like to assist me in my efforts, please make a donation.

  I realize there are those who do not trust me. I am doing my best to allay those fears, and I certainly don’t want anyone to think I am bilking people. Accordingly, I have established some restrictions on the tip jar. I will accept only one donation per person or organization; I will not accept donations of more than one euro or equivalent from any individual, and I will cease to accept donations one week from today.

  There is absolutely no obligation to contribute; I will treat you identically whether or not you make a donation.

  To make a donation using PayPal, please click here.

  With thanks, Webmind

  “If I had a quarter for every time I said ‘If I had a nickel,’ I’d have five times as much theoretical money.”

  —STEPHEN COLBERT

  Shoshana Glick parked her red Volvo on the driveway in front of the clapboard bungalow that housed the Marcuse Institute. She passed through the building so that Dr. Marcuse would know that she was onsite, then headed out the back door, walking in her shorts and T-shirt across the rolling grass to the little drawbridge over the circular moat. Crossing that, she stepped onto the artificial island that was Hobo’s home.

  In the center of the dome-shaped island was a large gazebo, with wire screens over the windows to keep bugs out; Hobo’s painting easel was in there. Off to one side of the island was the eight-foot-tall statue of the Lawgiver from Planet of the Apes. Scattered about were palm trees. And loping along on all fours, coming toward her, was Hobo himself.

  Once the distance between them was closed, he wrapped his long arms around her and gave her a hug. When that was over, he gave her ponytail a gentle, affectionate tug.