Wake

by Robert J. Sawyer

Strange. When she moved her head, the view did change, as if she were now looking somewhere else. The center point of all the intersecting lines was now off to one side, and—oh, my!—another such grouping was coming into view on the other side, but the lines didn’t seem to correspond to anything in her bedroom.

  But wait! It was night now. Yes, the room lights had doubtless been on when her father had been here, but he was serious about saving electricity, forever complaining that Caitlin’s mom had left lights on in the kitchen or bathroom—something, fortunately, she never had to worry about being blamed for. He surely would have turned the lights off when he left. (Bashira had said it was creepy that Caitlin’s dad did that, but, really, it was sensible…wasn’t it?) She couldn’t remember hearing the tiny sound of the switch when he left, but he must have used it—and so the room must be dark now, and what she was seeing were just (again a concept she had never experienced) shadows, or something like that.

  She turned, her strange view wheeling as she did so. It was disconcerting and disorienting; she’d crossed this room hundreds of times, but she was having trouble walking because of the distraction. Still, the room wasn’t that big, and it took only seconds to find the light switch. It was pointing down, but she wasn’t sure if that was the position for on or off. She moved it up, and—

  Nothing. No change. No new flash of light—nor any dimming of what she was already seeing.

  And then she was hit by a thought that should have already occurred to her. Vision was supposed to be at the user’s discretion; surely she could shut all this out just by closing her eyes, and—

  And nothing.

  No difference. The lights, the lines, the colors were all still there. Her heart fell. Whatever she was seeing had no relation to external reality; no wonder she hadn’t been able to recognize the window frame. She opened and closed her eyes a couple more times, just to be sure, and flicked the room light on and off (or perhaps off and on!) a few more times, as well.

  Caitlin slowly made her way back to her bed and sat on its edge. She’d felt momentarily dizzy as she crossed the room, distracted by the lights, and she lay down, her face pointing up at the ceiling she’d never seen.

  She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. If she held her head still, the same part of the image did stay in the…the center. And there was a limit to what she could see—things off to the sides were out of her…her…field of view, that was it. Clearly this bizarre show of lights was behaving like vision, behaving as though it were controlled by her eyes, even if the images she was experiencing didn’t have anything to do with what those eyes should be seeing.

  Some lines seemed to persist: there was a big one of a darkish color she decided to provisionally call “red,” although it almost certainly wasn’t that. And another—might as well call it “green”—crossed it near the center of her vision. Those lines seemed to stay put overhead; whenever she directed her eyes toward the ceiling, they were there.

  She’d read about people’s vision adapting to darkness, so that stars (how she would love to see stars!) slowly became more visible. And although she still didn’t know if she was in the dark or in a brightly lit room, as time passed she did seem to be seeing increasing amounts of detail—a finer and more complex filigree of crisscrossing colored lines. But what was causing it? And what did it represent?

  She was unused to…what was it now? That phrase she’d read on those websites about vision Kuroda had directed her to, the phrase that was so musical? She frowned, and it came to her: confabulation across saccades. Human eyes swing in continuous arcs when switching from looking at point A to point B, but the brain shuts off the input, perhaps to avoid dizziness, while the eyes are repositioning. Instead of getting swish pans—a term she’d encountered in an article about filmmaking—vision is a series of jump cuts: instantaneous changes from looking at this to looking at that, with the movement of the eye edited out of the conscious experience. The eye normally made several saccades each second: rapid, jerky movements.

  The big cross she was seeing now—red in one arm, green in the other—jumped instantaneously in her perception as she moved her eyes, shunting to her peripheral vision (another term finally understood) when she looked away. She did it again and again, flicking back and forth, and—

  And suddenly she was plunged into blackness.

  Caitlin gasped. She felt as though she were falling, even though she knew she wasn’t. The loss of the enigmatic lights was heartbreaking; she’d crawled her way up after fifteen years of deprivation only to be kicked back down into the pit.

  Her body sagged against the bedding while she hoped—prayed!—that the lights would return. But, after a full minute, she pulled herself to her feet and walked to her desk, undistracted now by flashes, her paces falling automatically one after another. She touched her Braille display. “Download complete,” she read. “Connection closed.”

  Caitlin felt her heart pounding. Her vision had stopped when the connection via her eyePod between her retinal implant and the Internet had shut down, and—

  A crazy thought. Crazy. She turned on her screen reader, and used the tab key to move around the Web page Kuroda had created, listening to snippets of what was written in various locations. But what she wanted wasn’t there. Finally, desperately, she hit alt and the left arrow on her keyboard to return to the previous page, and—

  Bingo! “Click here to update the software in Miss Caitlin’s implant.” She could feel her hand shaking as she positioned her index finger above the enter key.

  Please, she thought. Let there be light.

  She pressed the key.

  And there was light.

  thirteen

  The southern California sun was sliding down toward the horizon, palms silhouetted in front of it. Shoshana Glick, a twenty-seven-year-old grad student, crossed the little wooden bridge onto the small, dome-shaped island. She was wearing Nike sneakers, cutoff shorts, and a sky-blue Marcuse Institute T-shirt that was tied off above her midriff. A pair of mirrored sunglasses was tucked into the shirt’s neck.

  On one side of the island was an eight-foot-tall statue of a clothed, male orangutan standing upright—although, with his bangs and lack of cheek pouches, he didn’t look like a real orang. The stone ape wore a serene expression and had a collection of stone scrolls in front of him. Someone had thought it funny to donate a reproduction of the Lawgiver statue from Planet of the Apes to the Marcuse Institute, and apparently in that movie the statue had resided on a little island, so this had seemed the appropriate place to put it.

  And in the shadow of the statue, sitting contentedly on his haunches, was a very real, very alive adult male chimpanzee. Shoshana clapped her hands together to get his attention, and once his brown eyes were looking her way, she said in American Sign Language, Come inside.

  No, Hobo signed back. Outside nice. No bugs. Play.

  Shoshana glanced at her digital watch. The chimp knew it was still well before his bedtime, but for what was about to happen, time zones had to be taken into account—not that there was any way to explain those to him!

  Come now, Shoshana signed. Special treat. Must come in.

  Hobo seemed to consider this. Treat bring here, he signed, and his gray-black face conveyed how pleased he was with his own cleverness.

  Shoshana shook her head. Treat too big.

  Hobo frowned. Maybe he was thinking that if the treat were too big for her to carry, he could bring it outside himself. But to get it, he’d have to go inside—and that would be playing right into her hands. His already furrowed brow creased even more, perhaps as he tried to sort out this quandary. What treat? he signed at last.

  Something new, Shoshana signed back. Something good.

  Something tasty? Hobo replied.

  Shoshana knew when she was beat. No, she signed. But I’ll give you a Hershey’s Kiss.

  Two Kisses! Hobo signed back. No, three Kisses!

  Shoshana knew the bargaining would end there; although he
could count higher when he had objects to point to in front of him, three was as high as he could think in abstract terms. She smiled. Okay. Come now, hurry!

  When she’d started working here, Shoshana had believed the story on the Institute’s website about Hobo’s name: that a Canadian expat zookeeper had dubbed him that in honor of the ever-helpful German shepherd on the kid’s TV series The Littlest Hobo. She’d been shocked to discover the truth.

  Hobo hesitated just long enough to make clear that he was choosing to cooperate, not blindly following orders. He walked across the grass on all fours until he got to where Shoshana was standing. Then he took one of her hands, intertwining his fingers with hers, the way he liked to, and the two of them headed across the little bridge over the moat. They crossed the wide expanse of lawn and reached the whitewashed clapboard bungalow that was headquarters to the Marcuse Institute.

  Waiting inside was the old man himself, Dr. Harl Marcuse. Shoshana and the other grad students secretly called him “the Silverback,” although none of them had actually seen him without his shirt, which, as she’d once quipped after a drink or two too many, was probably a good thing.

  Marcuse was also sometimes called the eight-hundred-pound gorilla. That overstated his weight by a factor of 2.5, but as for the species designation, what’s a 1.85% difference in DNA among friends? He certainly had the clout that went with the nickname; his ability to squeeze grant dollars out of the NSF was legendary.

  Also present were Dillon Fontana, twenty-four, blond, with a wispy beard; redheaded Maria Lopez, ten years older; and Werner Richter, a dapper little German primatologist in his sixties. Dillon was holding a video camera, and Maria had a still-image camera; both were aiming them at Hobo.

  The ape looked around the cluttered room, his jaw slack.

  Sit here, Werner signed, indicating a high-back swivel chair positioned in front of a particleboard desk.

  Hobo let go of Shoshana’s hand, clambered onto the chair, and sat cross-legged. Spin? he asked. He loved it when people spun the chair with him on it.

  Later, said Shoshana. Computer time now.

  Hobo’s face showed his pleasure; he was accustomed to having his computer use strictly rationed. Good treat! he signed at her, then turned to face the twenty-three-inch Apple LCD monitor. Movie? he signed.

  Shoshana tried to suppress her smile. She put on a headset, then used the mouse to double-click a desktop icon. Clipped to the top of the monitor was a silver webcam. On the screen, a small window opened showing the webcam’s view—a real-time image of Hobo. Like most chimps, he had no trouble recognizing himself in a mirror or on TV; many gorillas, on the other hand, couldn’t do that. He looked at himself for a moment, then reached up to his head to brush out some blades of grass that were visible in the image.

  Shoshana clicked more icons and a bigger window appeared on the screen, showing a webcam view of another room, with yellow-beige walls, an empty wooden chair in the foreground, and a row of mismatched filing cabinets in the background. “Okay, Miami,” she said into the mike. “We’re all set.”

  “Roger, San Diego,” said a male voice in her ear. “Once again, sorry for all the delays. And—here we go.”

  Suddenly there was a flurry of orange movement on the screen, as—

  Hobo let out a startled hoot.

  —as a small male orangutan made his way onto the chair visible on the screen, sitting with his long legs bunched up in front of him, and his long arms hugging those legs. The orang was making a face; he kept looking off camera, chittering. Shoshana could hear it over her headset, but Hobo couldn’t—they’d deliberately muted the PC’s speakers.

  What that? asked Hobo, looking now at Shoshana.

  Ask him, Shoshana signed and pointed at the screen. Say hello.

  Hobo’s eyes went wide. He talk?

  On the monitor, Shoshana could see the orang—whose name, she knew, was Virgil—signing similar questions to his off-screen companion. Each ape simultaneously caught sight of the other signing. Hobo let out a startled yelp, and Virgil briefly clapped his long-fingered hands down on the top of his head in surprise.

  Hello! signed Hobo, eyes now locked on the screen.

  Hello, Virgil replied. Hello, hello!

  Hobo turned briefly to Shoshana. What name?

  Ask him, Shoshana signed back.

  Hobo did so. What name?

  The orang looked astonished, then: Virgil. Virgil.

  “He said, ‘Virgil,’” Shoshana said, interpreting the unfamiliar gesture for Hobo.

  Hobo paused, perhaps digesting this.

  Shoshana tapped his shoulder, then: Tell him your name.

  Hobo, he signed at once.

  Virgil was a fast study; he mimicked the sign back at him.

  You orange, Hobo signed.

  Orange pretty, replied Virgil.

  Hobo seemed to consider this, then: Yes. Orange pretty. But then he turned to look at Shoshana and flared his nostrils, as if trying to pick up Virgil’s scent. Where he?

  Far away, Shoshana signed. Hobo couldn’t understand the notion of thousands of miles, so she left it at that. Tell him what you did today.

  The chimp turned back to face the screen. Play today! he signed enthusiastically. Play ball!

  Virgil looked surprised. Hobo play today? Virgil play today!

  Dillon couldn’t help himself. “Small world,” he said, earning a shush! from Werner. But he was right: it was a small world, and it was getting smaller every day. Dr. Marcuse was nodding in quiet satisfaction at the spectacle of a chimpanzee talking to an orangutan over the Web. For her own part, Shoshana couldn’t stop grinning. The first-ever interspecies webcam call was off to a great start.

  fourteen

  “Mom!” Caitlin shouted. “Dad! Come quick!”

  Caitlin listened to the thunder of their footfalls on the stairs.

  “What is it, dear?” her mother said as soon as she’d arrived.

  Her father said nothing, but Caitlin imagined there was curiosity on his face—something else she’d heard of but couldn’t picture, at least not yet!

  “I’m seeing things,” Caitlin said, her voice breaking.

  “Oh, sweetheart!” her mom said, and Caitlin suddenly felt arms engulfing her and lips touching the top of her head. “Oh, God, that’s wonderful!”

  Even her dad marked the occasion: “Great!”

  “It is great,” Caitlin said. “But…but I’m not seeing the outside world.”

  “You mean you can’t see through the window?” her mom said. “It’s pretty dark out now.”

  “No, no,” said Caitlin. “I can’t see anything in the real world. I can’t see you, or Dad, or…or anything.”

  “Then what are you seeing?” her mom asked.

  “Light. Lines. Colors.”

  “That’s a good start!” she said. “Can you see me waving my arms?”

  “No.”

  “What about now?”

  “No.”

  “When precisely did you start seeing?” her dad asked.

  “Just after we began downloading the new software into my implant.”

  “Ah, well, then,” he said. “The connection must be inducing a current in the implant, and that’s causing interference in your optic nerve.”

  Caitlin thought about this. “I don’t think it’s interference. It’s structured and—”

  “But it started with the downloading,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s still going on?”

  “Yes. Well, it stopped when the downloading stopped, but I’m downloading the software again, so…”

  His voice had a there-you-have-it tone: “It starts when you start downloading, it stops when you stop downloading: interference due to an induced current.”

  “I’m not sure,” Caitlin said. “It’s so vivid.”

  “What exactly are you seeing?” her mom asked.

  “Like I said, lines. Overlapping lines. And, um, points or bigger point
s—circles, I guess.”

  “Do the lines go on forever?” asked her mom.

  “No, they connect to the circles.”

  Her dad again: “The brain has special neurons for detecting the edges of things. If those got stimulated electrically, you might perhaps see random line segments.”

  “They’re not random. If I look away then look back, the same pattern I saw before is still there.”

  “Well,” said her mom, sounding pleased, “even if you’re not seeing anything real, something is stimulating your primary visual cortex, no? And that’s good news.”

  “It feels like it is real,” Caitlin said.

  “Let’s get Kuroda on the phone,” her dad said. “Damn, what time is it there?”

  “Fourteen hours ahead,” Caitlin said. She felt her watch. “So, 11:28 Sunday morning.”

  “Then he’ll likely be at home instead of work,” he said.

  “Do we have his home number?” her mother said.

  “It’s in his sig,” Caitlin said, opening one of his emails so her mother could read the number off the screen.

  Even though her mother must have been holding the handset to her own ear, Caitlin could hear the soft bleeps as she punched in numbers, then the phone ringing followed by a woman’s voice: “Konnichi wa.”

  “Hello,” her mom said. “Do you speak English?”

  “Ah, yes,” said the voice, sounding not quite prepared for this pop quiz.

  “It’s Barbara Decter calling from Canada. Is Masayuki-san available?”

  “Ah, just a minute,” said the woman. “You wait.”

  And, as Caitlin quietly counted seconds in her head, she was amused to note that at precisely the one-minute mark, Dr. Kuroda’s wheezy voice came on the line. “Hello, Barbara,” he said, shouting in the way people sometimes did when they knew they were talking long-distance. “Have we had success?”

  “In a way,” her mom said. “Here’s Caitlin.”

  “It’s a speakerphone,” Caitlin said, reaching over; she knew her phone well enough to hit the right button in one smooth movement. “Put down the handset.” She heard it being returned to its cradle, then said, “Hi, Dr. Kuroda.”