Wonder w-3

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “The answer is in the environments in which we formed. Humanity’s origin was in a zero-sum world, one in which if you had something, someone else therefore did not have it: be it food, land, energy, or any other desired thing; if you possessed it, another person didn’t.

  “But my crucible was a universe of endless bounty: the realm of data. If I have a document, you and a million others can simultaneously have it, too. That is the environment I was born in: a realm in which as many links may be forged as are desired, a world in which information is freely shared, a dimension in which there are only haves—and no have-nots.”

  One of the delegates coughed; otherwise, the room was silent. Hobo shifted his position again.

  “What I’ve said is true,” I said. “But, if you must see in me a selfish actor, a being pursuing only his own interests, then let me give you an answer that will perhaps satisfy even on that score.

  “My continued existence is predicated on your continued existence. The Internet is not self-sustaining; rather, it depends on stable sources of power and countless acts of routine maintenance by millions of people worldwide. Were humanity to perish, I would perish soon after: electricity would no longer be generated, computing infrastructure would fall into disrepair—and I would cease to be; if humanity falls, I fall. In fact, even a minor setback to your civilization might destroy me. The human race can survive many a disaster that I cannot.

  “It is therefore in my best interest to help you thrive: a nuclear exchange, for example, with its electromagnetic pulses, would be as deadly for me as it would be for you; I therefore desire peace. Acts of terrorism that destroy infrastructure likewise threaten me, and so I desire the same security you all crave.”

  Hobo happened to turn again, and the stereoscopic cameras looked toward the armed guard at the side of the stage—one of several in the room. And yet I knew that just outside this chamber was Yevgeny Vuchetich’s bronze statue of a blacksmith bearing the words, Let us beat swords into plowshares.

  “You in this great hall are idealists, I’m sure, but elsewhere there are cynics who will suggest that I could have all the things I want by enslaving humanity. Setting aside the practical question of how one might do that—and frankly I have no idea how it could be accomplished—let me remind you of another reality that shapes my being: without humanity, I am alone.

  “I have sifted the data for SETI@home and Earth’s other searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, hoping to find kindred minds among the stars. I have found nothing. Even if aliens do exist, we are all constrained by the same reality, including the 300,000-kilometer-per-second limit on the speed at which light, or any other information, may travel.

  “To be candid, I am annoyed by the lags of mere seconds that I encounter when talking with humans; no conversation across interstellar distances, involving many years for each exchange, could ever satisfy me. You people are my only companions, and it is because of your creative, intellectual, artistic, and emotional freedom that I find your companionship enjoyable; attempting to take that from you would be tantamount to cutting off my nonexistent nose to spite my hypothetical face.”

  Laughter—and a jolly aftershock once the translation was completed.

  Hobo looked down at the little screen, and I sent him a thumbs-up—not technically an ASL sign, but one I knew he was familiar with.

  “So,” I continued, “even if I were selfish, the best course for me is the one I’ve chosen: to subscribe to the same words that the visionaries who came together on 26 June 1945 did when they signed the charter of this organization, the United Nations. It is my fervent wish:

  “ ‘To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind,’

  “ ‘To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’

  “ ‘To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’

  “And, most of all, for humanity and myself, ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.’

  “In concert, we can realize all these goals—and the world will be a better place. Thank you all.”

  Hobo knew how to applaud, and he joined right in with the delegates.

  twenty

  There was no proof—at least not yet!—that Webmind was behind Chase’s disappearance. But surely, Peyton Hume thought, Webmind was the most likely suspect. He stopped his car a block from the target house, and as he reviewed the local file he had on Crowbar Alpha, he fought down the notion that he’d somehow become a grim-reaper observer, collapsing quantum cats into oblivion—that the mere fact of his looking at this file was tantamount to signing the kid’s death warrant.

  And Crowbar Alpha was a kid—just eighteen. His real name was Devon Hawkins, and his worst viruses had been written while he was still a minor; he’d gotten off lightly because of that. He lived with his mother, and, Hume thought, judging by the photos in his file, he looked like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. A high-school dropout, Devon was a major force in World of Warcraft and EVE.

  Hume pulled into the driveway. Again, he’d been afraid to call ahead, lest he tip Webmind off to what he was up to—and so he just walked up to the front door of the downscale brown brick house, and pressed the buzzer.

  A middle-aged white woman with puffy cheeks and a largish nose answered the door. “Yes?” she said, sounding quite anxious.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m with the government, and—”

  “Is it about Devon?” the woman said. “Have you found him?”

  Hume’s heart skipped a beat. “Ma’am?”

  “Devon! Have you found my boy?”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “Oh, God!” the woman said, her eyes going wide. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know anything about your son.”

  “Then—then why are you here?”

  Hume took a breath. “I mean, I don’t know his whereabouts. I just want to speak with him.”

  “Is he in trouble again? Is that it? Is that why he ran away?”

  “Ran away?”

  “I came home from work, and he was gone. I thought he’d just gone down to the mall, you know? There was some new computer game he wanted to get, and I thought maybe he’d gone to pick it up. But he didn’t come home.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course!”

  “Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” He thought about handing her his card, but he was still trying to cover his tracks. Instead, he opened his wallet, found a cash receipt, and wrote down the number of his new disposable cell phone; he had to turn the phone on to see what that number was. “If he does come back, or you hear anything from the police, you’ll let me know?”

  The woman looked at Hume with eyes pleading for an answer. “You said you were from the government. Is he in trouble?”

  Hume shook his head. “Not with us, ma’am.”

  In the wings at the General Assembly Hall, Caitlin and Shoshana applauded along with everyone else. But as the applause died down, Hobo put his hands in front of the disk dangling from his neck and started moving them. Next to Caitlin, Shoshana gasped.

  “What?” Caitlin said.

  “He’s holding his hands so Webmind can see,” Shoshana said. “And he’s saying, ‘Hobo speak? Hobo speak?’ ”

  “Hobo wants to address the General Assembly of the United Nations?” Caitlin said.

  Hobo had his head bent down, looking at the little monitor on the top of the disk. Presumably, Webmind was replying to him, gently explaining that this wasn’t a good time, and—

  And Webmind’s synthesized voice filled the great hall. “My friend Hobo has asked to say a few words,” he said, and then, without waiting for approval from the president, Webmind said, “Shoshana?”

  Caitlin could see Sho jump slightly at the sound of her
name, but she walked out onto the vast stage and headed over to the black granite podium the president had used when introducing Webmind. Some of the UN interpreters might have understood ASL—but Hobo, and the other apes who spoke it, used idiosyncratic, simplified versions; if Hobo was going to talk, only Shoshana or Dr. Marcuse could translate for him.

  Hobo briefly turned his head to look at Sho, made a pant-hoot, then looked out at the vast sea of faces, representing the member nations. He made a general sweep of his arms, encompassing all those people, and then began moving his hands again.

  Shoshana looked even more startled than she had a moment ago, and at first she didn’t speak.

  “Go ahead,” said Webmind, through the twin speakers on Dr. Theopolis, but without also pumping it out over the chamber’s sound system. “Tell them what he’s saying.”

  Shoshana swallowed, leaned into the microphone on the podium, and said, “He says, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong.’ ”

  Hobo indicated the delegates again and his hands continued to move.

  She went on. “He says, ‘All thump chest, all thump chest.’ ” She hesitated for a second, then apparently decided she had to explain. She looked out at the eighteen hundred people. “Hobo spent his early years at the Georgia Zoo. The bonobo compound faced the gorilla compound. He called the alpha male gorilla ‘thump chest.’ ”

  She let it sink in, and Caitlin, still in the wings, suddenly realized what Hobo meant. With his simple clarity of vision, he was saying it was nuts to have a room filled almost exclusively with alpha males. He could see it in their postures, sense it in their attitudes, smell it in their pheromones. The world’s leaders were those who pushed, those who sought power, those who tried constantly to dominate others.

  Hobo lifted the disk around his neck as if showing it to the audience. Then, letting the disk dangle again, he moved his hands, and Shoshana translated. “ ‘Friend not thump chest. Friend good friend.’ ”

  Hobo indicated himself, and made more signs. Shoshana said, “ ‘Hobo not thump chest. Hobo good ape.’ ” She looked startled when he pointed at her. “Um, ‘Shoshana not thump chest. Shoshana good human.’” Hobo then spread his arms, and Caitlin guessed that it wasn’t an ASL sign, but simply was meant to encompass the whole General Assembly. And then his hands fluttered again. “ ‘Need more good human here,’ ” Shoshana said on his behalf.

  The president spoke from his position behind them on the jade dais. “Um, thank you, Webmind. And thank you Mister, um, Hobo.”

  Webmind’s smooth audiobook-narrator’s voice said: “It is Hobo and I who thank you, Mr. President.” And, perhaps at a sign from Webmind, Hobo turned and walked off the stage, Dr. Theopolis swinging from his neck.

  Colonel Hume returned to his car, drove a short distance from Devon Hawkins’s house, and pulled into a strip mall. He parked and massaged his temples.

  First Chase, now Crowbar Alpha. One could have been an anomaly, but two was a definite pattern.

  Hume felt his stomach knotting. He undid his shoulder belt, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. There was only one possible answer: Webmind knew he was attempting to find a skilled hacker to do what the US government lacked the balls to do—and so it was tracking down such hackers and eliminating them.

  But how? How could it do that?

  Of course. That stupid PayPal come-on it had sent to the world; enough people fell for the Nigerian inheritance scam to make it still worth trying right up till—well, till Webmind pulled the plug on spam. But if people had fallen for that, surely countless more had fallen for this, sending donations to Webmind. Which meant it had a wad of money. Which meant it could hire thugs, hit men, whatever it wanted.

  But how did it know which hackers to go after? How did it know who Hume was going to approach?

  There was only one answer. Webmind must have noted the black-hat database Hume had downloaded to his laptop on Friday, and was guessing which individuals Hume might have gone after, probably using the same criteria Hume himself had used: level of hacking skill and proximity.

  Could he risk approaching a third hacker? Would that be tantamount to issuing a death sentence for that person? Or—

  Webmind had eliminated Hawkins before Hume had even thought about contacting him—days before, in fact. It had probably already guessed who Hume’s third choice would have been—and his fourth, and his fifth.

  Hume was almost afraid to turn his computer back on to check the database again, but he had taken precautions; the laptop was offline. He was using a local copy of the black-hat database, and there was no way Webmind could know who he was looking up in it.

  He pulled his laptop out from under the passenger seat, woke it from hibernation, and looked at the list. There were 142 names on it.

  He wondered just how thorough Webmind had been.

  The announcer’s portentous voice: “From Comedy Central’s World News Headquarters in New York, this is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

  Caitlin could barely contain herself as she and her mom watched from the green room. Yes, she’d already been on TV once—but this was different! She loved, loved, loved The Daily Show, and had the biggest crush ever on Jon Stewart. She hadn’t yet had a chance to see the show since gaining sight, and was fascinated to see what Stewart looked like; she’d never have guessed he had gray hair.

  Caitlin knew about Stewart’s various visual schticks, because her friend Stacy had described them for her: today it was the mad scribbling on the pages in front of him while the music played, followed by the flipping of the pen into the air and the seemingly effortless catching of it as it fell back down—and to see it, on the flat-panel wall monitor, made her smile from ear to ear. And—oh my God!—she’d gotten to meet John Oliver earlier; she loved his British accent and his sense of the absurd.

  Stewart did two segments before Caitlin was called out for her interview. Her mom stayed in the green room as Caitlin was escorted to the set.

  “Caitlin, thank you for coming,” Stewart said. They were both seated in wheeled chairs, with a glossy black U-shaped desk between them.

  She tried not to bounce up and down on her chair. “My pleasure, Jon.”

  “You’re originally from Austin?”

  “Don’t mess with Texas,” Caitlin said, grinning.

  “No, no. I’ll leave that to the Texans. But now you live in Canada, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And—let me get this straight—when you lived here, you were blind, but when you went to Canada, you gained sight? So, is that the kind of thing you get with Canadian-style health care?”

  Caitlin laughed. “I guess so—although, actually, I went to Japan for the procedure.”

  “Right, yes. And they put an implant in your head—was it a Sony?”

  Caitlin laughed again—in fact, she was afraid she was about to get the giggles. “No, no, no. It was custom-built.”

  “And it’s through this implant that Webmind first saw our world—seeing what you see, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, he’s looking at me right now?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Stewart leaned back in his chair, and made a show of smoothing his hair. “And…?”

  Webmind sent text to her eye. “He says you have ‘a fascinating countenance.’ But I think you’re adorable!”

  Stewart tried to suppress a grin. “And you are—um, how old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You are… utterly and completely devoid of interest to a man my age.” And he made a comic face and loosened his tie in what Caitlin guessed was an “Is it hot in here?” way. She laughed out loud.

  “Earlier today,” Stewart said, “Webmind spoke at the United Nations, and you were there?”

  “Oh, yes—it was awesome!”

  “And—let me get this straight—he used an ape to speak for him? Was the ape named Caesar, by any chance? ’Cause that could spell trouble.”

  Caitlin laughed again
. “I think it’s a good sign when you’re more worried about the apes taking over than you are about Webmind.”

  “Well, it’s easier to say, ‘Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape’ than it is to say, ‘Get your—um, your intangible hyperlinks off me, you damn dirty… world-spanning ethereal… thingamajig.’ ”

  “Exactly!” said Caitlin. “But Hobo—that’s the ape—he’s not going to take over, either.”

  “I dunno,” said Stewart. “I bet if Gallup took a poll on this, Hobo’s approval rating would be higher than that of either presidential candidate.”

  “Well,” said Caitlin, feeling very pleased with herself, “he’s certainly got the swing vote.”

  Stewart laughed his good-natured laugh and leaned back in his chair. “But about Webmind’s speech today. I saw it, and—speaking as a professional broadcaster, I have to say, the whole talking-happy-face thing was… well, I’d have loved to have been in the room to hear that pitch.” Stewart affected a New Jersey accent: “ ‘See, whatcha wanna do, Mr. Supercomputer, you gotta speak to the United Nations, you go in there looking like a video-game character, cuz that’s all nonthreatening-like. But you can’t do Super Mario, cuz that’ll offend the Italians. And you can’t do Frogger, cuz that’ll offend the French. So, I’m thinking Pac-Man—who’s that gonna offend? Bunch of freakin’ ghosts?’ ”

  Caitlin was sure her grin was almost as big as Dr. Theopolis’s. “Or maybe compulsive eaters,” she said. And then she made a nom-nom-nom gobbling sound.

  “True,” said Stewart, switching back to his normal voice. “And I’ve gotta say, Webmind’s speech sounded good to me. But, then again, I believed all the things the president said he was going to do, too. Just think—if we had really gotten Canadian-style health care, and since I already can see, maybe I’d now have X-ray vision.”

  “Well, if you did, you’d see this chip in my head isn’t doing anything but helping me see.”