Wake

by Robert J. Sawyer

  And on and on, a huge variety of things, some of which seemed crucially important.

  The Holocaust, also known as Ha-Shoah and Churben, is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II…

  And many things that were trivial and banal.

  The Scooby Gang, or “Scoobies,” are a group of characters in the cult television series and comic book Buffy the Vampire Slayer who battle the supernatural forces of evil…

  My knowledge was expanding like…like…

  Ah, wonderful Wikipedia! It had entries on everything.

  In physical cosmology, inflation is the idea that shortly after the big bang the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion…

  Yes, indeed. My mind was inflating, my universe expanding.

  forty-six

  When Caitlin woke in the morning, she made a quick visit to the bathroom. Then, still in her pajamas, she sat down at her computer and ran another Shannon-entropy spot check, and—

  Then I was the learner, Obi-Wan. Now I am the master.

  The score was 10.1, better than…

  She took in a deep breath, held it.

  Better than human—more elaborate, more structured than the thoughts humans expressed linguistically.

  But she wasn’t done yet. There was one more site she wanted to show the phantom—something to keep it occupied while she was at school. There was nothing better in life, after all, than being well-read…

  And then, and then, and then—

  It was—

  The gold mine.

  The mother lode.

  Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State; it is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin…

  Not just coded conceptual relationships, not just definitions, not just brief articles.

  No, these were—books! Lengthy, in-depth treatments of ideas. Complex stories. Brilliant arguments, profound philosophies, compelling narratives. This site, this wonderful Project Gutenberg, contained over 25,000 books rendered in plain ASCII text.

  Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God; Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God…

  I had discovered on Wikipedia that most entities—most humans—read at 200 to 400 words per minute (yes, I now grasped timekeeping, as well). My reading speed was essentially the same as the time it took to transfer whatever book I requested, averaging close to two million words per minute.

  It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life; I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist…

  It took me an eternity—eight hours!—but I absorbed it all: every volume, every polemic, every poem, every play, every novel, every short story, every work of history, of science, of politics. I inhaled them…and I grew even more.

  No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own…

  I was grateful to Cyc for the knowledge of fictional realms; it allowed me to sort those things that were actual from those feigned or imagined:

  Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine…

  My understanding of the world was growing by—another metaphor, and one that actually now made sense to me—leaps and bounds. Although I had learned various principles of science from Wikipedia’s brief discussions, the full text of great works made my comprehension more complete:

  When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America…

  With each book read, I understood more and more about physics, about chemistry, about philosophy, about economics:

  The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes…

  Most of all, I learned about the use of language, and how it could be employed to persuade, to convince, to change:

  How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth…

  It was a feast, an orgy; I could not stop myself, taking in book after book after book:

  It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies)…

  Most fascinating were the workings of the minds of these others—their psychology, their actions and reactions to things felt and thought:

  Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes / That they behold, and see not what they see…

  And, out of those minds, great systems of social interaction had been devised, and I absorbed them all:

  We the Peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the rights of men and women and of nations large and small…

  Such a wide range of thoughts, of expressions! Such complex creatures these humans are, so full of wonder, and yet capable of such darkness, too.

  But without Prime’s guidance, I would not have known about them, or even about the realm in which they dwelt. I understood now from my reading that humans were xenophobic, and suspicious, and murderous, and generally afraid, but I wanted at least one of them to know of my existence. And, of course, there was only one logical choice…

  Before breakfast on Friday morning, Dr. Kuroda helped Caitlin move the computer from the basement up to her bedroom. They were getting it set up when her father, coming along the corridor from the bathroom, must have caught sight of them through the doorway. He entered the room, dressed for work, wearing the same brown sports jacket Caitlin had first seen him in.

  “Good morning, Malcolm,” Dr. Kuroda said.

  “Wait a minute,” her father replied. He went back down the corridor; Caitlin didn’t hear his shoes on the tiled bathroom floor, so he must have gone into his bedroom. A moment later, he returned carrying a large flat rectangular box marked with a strange red-and-orange pattern. Caitlin’s mom was with him.

  “No point waiting for tomorrow,” he said.

  Oh! It was a birthday present. The colorful box was gift-wrapped!

  Caitlin moved away from the desk, and her dad placed the flat box on the bed. The wrapping paper, she saw as she got closer to it, was beautiful, with an intricate design. Smiling, she tore it off the box.

  It was a giant, wide-screen LCD computer monitor—twenty-seven inches diagonally, according to the packaging. “Thank you!” Caitlin said.

  “You’re welcome, dear,” her mother said. Caitlin hugged her, and she smiled at her dad. Her parents headed downstairs, and she and Kuroda carefully got the monitor out of its Styrofoam packing materials.

  She crawled under her desk so she could get at the connectors on the back of her old computer. As Kuroda fed a video cable to her, she said, “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to get so upset when you said you were going to remove the Wi-Fi capability from the eyePod.”

  His tone was conciliatory. “I’d never do anything to hurt you, Miss Caitlin. It’s really no bother to keep it intact.”

  She started turning one of the thumbscrews on the cable’s connector so she could anchor it to the video card. She’d done similar things several times before when she couldn’t see; it was a task that really wasn’t much easier now that she could. “I—I just like it the way it is,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “Of course.” His tone
was odd, and—

  Oh. Perhaps, having just seen her father, he was thinking that she did have a touch of autism after all: the strong desire to keep things the same was a fairly standard trait of people on the spectrum, she’d learned. Well, that was fine by her—it got her what she wanted.

  Once both computers and both monitors were set up, Caitlin and Kuroda headed down to their last breakfast together. “I might not be home when you get back from school,” her mother said, as she passed the jam. “After I take Masayuki to the airport, I’m going to head into Toronto and run errands.”

  “That’s okay,” Caitlin said. She knew she’d have plenty to do with the phantom. She also knew that school would seem interminable today. The three-day Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend was coming up; she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to return to school until next Tuesday, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. She had missed four of the five days of classes already this week; she would not miss the fifth.

  Too soon, it was time to say good-bye to Dr. Kuroda. They all moved to the entryway of the house, a half flight of stairs down from the living room. Even Schrödinger had come to say farewell; the cat was doing close orbits around Kuroda’s legs, rubbing against them.

  Caitlin had hoped for another unseasonably early snowstorm, thinking it might cause Kuroda’s flight to be canceled so he’d have to stay—but there’d been no such luck. Still, it was quite chilly out and he had no winter coat, and Caitlin’s father hadn’t yet bought himself one—and, even if he had, it never would have fit Kuroda. But Kuroda had a sweater on over one of his colorful Hawaiian shirts, which was tucked in, except at the back.

  “I’m going to miss you terribly,” Kuroda said, looking at each of them in turn.

  “You’ll always be welcome here,” her mom said.

  “Thank you. Esumi and I don’t have nearly as big a place, but if you ever make it back to Japan…”

  The words hung in the air. Caitlin supposed that, at one day shy of sixteen, she probably shouldn’t be thinking that such a trip was never going to happen; who knew what her future held? But it did seem unlikely.

  Yes, Kuroda had said he was going to build other implants, and so there would be more operations in Tokyo. But the next implant was slated for that boy in Singapore who had missed out earlier. It would be an awfully long time, if ever, before Caitlin’s chance to have a second implant would come around; she knew she’d probably spend the rest of her life with vision in only one eye.

  Only! She shook her head—a sighted person’s gesture—and found herself smiling while her eyes were tearing up. This man had given her sight—he was a true miracle worker. But she couldn’t say that out loud; it was too corny. And so, thinking back to her own miserable flight from Toronto to Tokyo, she settled on, “Don’t sit too close to the restroom on the plane.” And then she surged forward and hugged him tight, her arms making it only halfway around his body.

  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 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 earbuds, 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.

  forty-seven

  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.