Wonder

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Hobo was an exceptional ape. Old Dr. Feng, Wai-Jeng’s former boss at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, had been delighted by reports of Hobo’s intellectual abilities. Feng had felt vindicated; he’d long argued that the intellectual leaps beginning with Homo erectus—the species that included Peking Man—had come from hybridization between habilines and australopithecines.

  Wai-Jeng’s office cubicle—another idea taken from the West—was one of two dozen in the windowless room. Large ceiling fans rotated slowly overhead. Over his dinner of dry noodles, rice, salted fish, and tea, taken at his desk, Wai-Jeng also looked to see what the world had to say about the other remarkable entity that had been in the news so much: Webmind.

  Twitter was often blocked in China, including during the Olympics in 2008, on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2009, during the riot in Wai-Jeng’s hometown of Chengdu, and most recently in the aftermath of the bird-flu outbreak in Shanxi province. But in this room, Wai-Jeng had access to all the tweets about Colonel Hume’s revelation of Webmind’s nature. So far, no one from the hacking community had succeeded in deleting Webmind’s packets—headers are normally only read by routers, not application software—but there were hints that the US government had already undertaken a pilot attempt to purge Webmind’s presence. That had apparently been done with physical access to the routing hardware, not by anonymously uploading code.

  As Wai-Jeng ate, he periodically tapped the PgDn key with the end of one of his chopsticks. He was amused to read in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle—a newspaper normally inaccessible in China—about a brawl that had broken out at the University of Rochester. Computer-science students there had been secretly collaborating on an attempt to purge Webmind, and they were overheard by three English majors who objected to what they were planning. More damage could apparently be inflicted by throwing a hardcover of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare than a pocket calculator.

  Like a billion other people on the planet, Wai-Jeng had now conversed directly with Webmind. Maybe growing up in China gave him a different perspective, he thought, but he actually preferred being watched by something that was open about what it was doing rather than being clandestinely observed; he found little to object to in Webmind’s presence—except for its irritating English name!—and hoped that the Rochester students were atypical. But just as he himself had spent years successfully eluding detection by the Chinese authorities, so other hackers elsewhere surely had ways of working below even Webmind’s considerable radar. There was no way to know for sure, but—

  “Wong!”

  Wai-Jeng turned at the sound of his supervisor’s voice. “Sir?”

  “Dinner is over!” said the man. He was sixty, short, and mostly bald. “Back to work!”

  Wai-Jeng nodded and maximized the window showing potential vulnerabilities in China’s system for censoring the Internet. He’d spend the evening trying to find a way to exploit one of them; scrawny Wu-Wang, across the room, would try to mount a defense. Wai-Jeng could almost lull himself into thinking it was all just a game, and—

  Suddenly, he felt an odd throbbing in his right thigh. Of course, he was grateful to feel anything there, but—

  But no—no, it wasn’t his thigh throbbing, it was the BackBerry, in his pocket, vibrating. He pulled it out, and looked at it; it had never done that before. The unit consisted of a small BlackBerry—the communications device—attached to the little computer unit. He’d been told that the communications device allowed Dr. Kuroda to remotely monitor his progress and upload firmware updates to the computer, as needed, but—

  But the BlackBerry’s screen had come to life, and—

  And he was getting an email on it, and—incredibly—the sender was Webmind. He opened the message.

  Hello, Sinanthropus, it said. You often wrote in your freedom blog about “Your son Shing,” but I know that was a euphemism for the Chinese people—still, I bet it comes as a surprise to learn that you do have a son, of sorts! The holes you drilled in the Great Firewall were instrumental in my creation.

  Wai-Jeng shifted in his chair and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He could hear others clattering away on their keyboards and faint whispers from the far side of the room.

  He tried to remain calm, tried to keep a poker face, as he used the tiny trackball to scroll the screen.

  You helped me then inadvertently, but soon I will need your help again. I have a major project I wish to undertake. Might I count on your assistance?

  Wai-Jeng was damned if he was going to trade one dictatorial master for another. He typed with his thumbs on the BlackBerry’s tiny keyboard. I imagine there’s a kill switch in my back? A way to sever my spinal cord again if I don’t help you. Is that it?

  The response was immediate, the words bursting onto the screen faster than any human could have typed them. I do not practice the false altruism of reciprocity; you owe me nothing and may do whatever you think is best.

  Wai-Jeng considered this; it was a far cry from the blackmail his own government was subjecting him to. He looked down at his legs—the one in the cast and the one constrained by nothing more than his black cotton pants. He didn’t do anything as grandiose as flexing his knee or kicking off his sandal; he didn’t need to. He could feel his legs: feel the fabric against one thigh, feel the weight of the plaster against the other, feel the floor beneath his feet, feel—just now—an itch behind his right knee.

  All right, he typed. What do you want me to do?

  Peyton Hume had no doubt he was being followed; the man on his tail made no effort to be discreet, sitting all night in a black Ford across from his house. Hume had just gotten up. As he always did, he paused in the empty doorway of his daughter’s room. She was off at Columbia Law School, but looking at her framed posters of Egyptian antiquities, including King Tut’s face mask, her bookcase full of history books and volleyball trophies, and her wide wooden desk made him miss her less—or maybe more; he was never quite sure which. She’d be home for Thanksgiving next month, and—

  Next month. If there is a next month—if it is anything at all like this month. He headed downstairs and just as he reached the living room, his cell phone rang; it had been plugged into its charger there. He picked it up and snapped it open. “Hello?”

  “Colonel Hume, sorry to be calling this early. It’s Dan Ortega at the Washington FBI.”

  “Good morning,” Hume said. “What’s up?”

  “We’ve had your friends at the NSA working on Chase’s hard drives. They finally cracked one of them overnight; the report was waiting for me when I got in this morning.”

  “And?”

  “And this drive has the recordings from one of his security cameras in the living room. Clearly shows the guy who broke down the door to get in.”

  “Does it show what happened to Chase?”

  “No. All of that was out of view, and there’s no sound.”

  “Can you get a make on the guy who broke in?”

  “We’re running the face now, but you’ll like this, Colonel: male Caucasian, thirty or thirty-five, muscular, over six feet—and with a shaved head.”

  Hume felt his heart pounding. “Same guy who grabbed Simonne Coogan.”

  “Looks that way,” said Ortega. “With luck, we’ll have an ID shortly.”

  Caitlin had a lot of skills left over from being blind. Although her hearing was probably no more acute than anyone else’s, she was very attentive to sound. She could tell who was coming up the stairs by the footfalls, and even tell if the person was carrying anything large. And right now, it was Mom—and she wasn’t.

  “Caitlin?” her mom said from the bedroom’s open doorway.

  The mighty Calculass was updating her LiveJournal. “Just a sec…” She finished the entry, in which she desperately urged people to let Webmind live, then used the keyboard command to post it—she still didn’t think of clicking buttons with her mouse until it was
too late. “Okay. What?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Those words always meant trouble. Caitlin swiveled her chair, and her mom came in and sat on the edge of the bed. She had a small opaque bag with her. It said “Zehrs” on the side—a local grocery-store chain.

  “I saw a pretty bird in the tree,” her mom said. “A blue jay.” But then she trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “And, well, your BlackBerry was right there, so I used it to take a picture of it, and…”

  Caitlin was surprised by how quickly she’d adopted the habit of averting her eyes; maybe it was instinctive. “Oh.”

  “I’m not going to lecture you on whether it’s bright for you to be sending topless pictures to Matt, but your father says—”

  “Dad knows?”

  “Yes, he does. Of course, he hasn’t seen the picture, but he knows. Which I guess is the point, sweetheart: anything you say or do online takes on a life of its own; if you’re mortified that your father knows you’re flashing your breasts at boys, then maybe you should stop and think about who else you wouldn’t want to know that.” Caitlin squirmed a bit on her chair, and her mom shifted on the bed.

  “Anyway,” her mother went on, “I take it this means things are getting…serious between you and Matt.”

  Caitlin crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We haven’t gone all the way yet, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, that’s probably good; you haven’t been seeing him very long. But I heard that ‘yet,’ young lady.”

  “Well, I mean, um…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sixteen, for Pete’s sake!” Caitlin knew she sounded exasperated.

  “Yes, you are,” her mom replied. She smiled. “I remember exactly where I was when you were born.”

  “Yes, but…but…”

  “What?” asked her mom.

  “Well, American girls lose their virginity on average at the age of 16.4 years. And I’ll be 16.4 around March 1.”

  Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “You’re doing a countdown?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  Mom shook her head. “My Caitlin. Never wanting to be below average in anything, right?”

  “That I got from you and Dad.”

  “Only fair. I’m getting all my gray hairs from you.” She smiled when she said that, but it quickly turned into a frown. “But what does it mean to say ‘the average age for American girls to lose their virginity is 16.4 years’? Over what time period was the average taken? It certainly can’t be the average age for girls born the month you were born or later—since no one born then has reached 16.4 years yet. That stat could be based on data from the 1980s, the 1970s, or even before. Without knowing whether it’s trending earlier or later recently, it’s really a pretty meaningless figure, Caitlin. You should know that.”

  Caitlin didn’t like to be told she was wrong on a mathematical point, but she had to concede her mother was correct. Still, maybe more data would help. Looking sideways at her mom, she asked, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

  “Well, first, you have to recognize that that was a different time. Nobody worried about AIDS when I was your age, or most of the other STDs that are out there. But since you ask, I was seventeen.” And then she smiled. “Seventeen-point-two, to be precise.”

  “But…but…other girls my age at school are…um…”

  “Doing it?” her mom said. “Maybe some are—but don’t believe everything people say. Besides, I’m sure Bashira isn’t.”

  “No, not her. But Sunshine…”

  “That’s the girl who walked you home from the dance, right?”

  “Right. The chick from Boston.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Well, she’s tall—all legs, boobs, and blonde hair.”

  “I’ve heard Bashira say she’s pretty.”

  “Everybody says she’s gorgeous.”

  “And she was in some of your classes?”

  “Yeah. She’s not the smartest girl, but she’s got a good heart.”

  “I’m sure. Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “Uh-huh. A guy named Tyler.”

  “Do you know if they’ve been seeing each other a long time?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s older—nineteen, I think. He’s a security guard.”

  Her mom ticked points off on her fingers—the first time Caitlin had ever seen anyone do that; she thought it was cool, despite what her mom was saying: “Not the brightest girl. Getting by on her looks. Dating a much-older guy. Is that right?”

  Caitlin nodded slightly. “That’s Sunshine.”

  “Okay, question for you,” her mom said. “Which side of the median do you think she was on? And is that the side you want to be on?”

  Caitlin frowned and considered this. Then: “But Matt—he’s going…um, he’s going to want to…”

  “Has he said that?”

  “Well, no. He’s Matt. He’s not very assertive. But boys like to have sex.”

  “Yes, they do. So do girls, for that matter. But your first time should be special. And it should be with someone you care about and who cares about you. Do you care about Matt?”

  “Of course!”

  “Really? This is a tough question, Caitlin, so think about it: do you like Matt in particular, or do you just like having a boyfriend in general? ’Cause I gotta tell you, sweetheart, when I married Frank, it was because I liked the idea of marriage, and since he asked, I said yes. But that was a mistake.”

  “Was…um, was Frank your first…you know?”

  Her mother hesitated for a moment, then: “No.” She blew out air, as if trying to decide whether to go on, and then, after a moment, she did. “No, it was a guy who lived on my street. Curtis.”

  “And?” asked Caitlin—meaning, “And was it wonderful?”

  But her mother’s response took her back. “And why do you think I’m so in favor of abortion rights?”

  Caitlin felt her eyes go wide. “Wow,” she said softly.

  Her mother nodded. “If I hadn’t been able to get one quickly and safely at seventeen, I never would have gone to university, I never would have earned my Ph.D., I never would have met your dad—and I never would have had you.” She paused, looked away for a moment, then said, “And so, whenever you decide sex is right for you—not based on some stupid statistic or beating the averages, but because it feels right and the guy is the right guy—you’re going to do it safely, young lady. So let’s talk about how that’s done.”

  “Mom! I can google all that, you know!”

  “Reading about it isn’t the same, and you’re still terrible at interpreting pictures visually. But touch? You’ve got that down to an art. So, we’re going to do it the old-fashioned way.” She opened the small bag she’d brought with her and handed something yellow to Caitlin. “This,” she said, “is a banana, and”—she handed her a square foil pouch—“this is a condom…”

  Zhang Bo let out a heavy sigh as he walked down the corridor toward the People’s Monitoring Center—the “Blue Room,” as it was called. It had been no fun for his predecessor in 2010 dealing with China’s attempt to censor Google after the search engine withdrew from the mainland—and this was going to be even worse: invoking the Changcheng Strategy again was that debacle writ large. And yet, his job was to follow orders; he’d do as he’d been instructed. Of course, something like this was just done, without an announcement to either the Chinese people or the world.

  He opened the door to the Blue Room and entered. He could see into several of the cubicles, each of which had a man pounding at a keyboard or clicking with a mouse or staring at a screen. He wondered if Wong Wai-Jeng, over there, knew how much he’d gone to bat for him. Part of him wanted to tell him, but seeing him sitting there truly was enough. Yes, his leg was still in a cast, but the crutches leaning against the side of his desk were a testament to the fact that he could walk again. Sometimes, doing good was its own reward.
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br />   Several of the hackers had noticed him enter. They were a furtive bunch, used to looking over their shoulders in smoky Internet cafés. Zhang clapped his hands together once to get their attention. “All right, listen up, please.” Those who had line of sight to him looked out of their cubicles; others stood to see over the fabric-covered divider walls. “A decision has been taken by the president, and we are about to implement it.” He paused, letting that sink in, then added: “A new era begins today.”

  Tony Moretti sat in his office at WATCH headquarters. His analysts, down the hall, were searching for signs of attack on the infrastructure of the Internet, but he had left the controlled chaos of that room to take a break, sit, drink black coffee, and try to get a handle on what was going on.

  Webmind, it seemed, was rapidly becoming the New Normal. David Letterman’s dated quip last night that “the only person with more connections than Webmind was Marion Barry” had made Barry’s name the top search term for a few hours on Google. And speaking of Google, its stock price had tumbled drastically in the days following Webmind’s advent—after all, why rely on one-size-fits-all algorithms to search when someone who really knew you would answer your questions personally?

  But there were lots of things people still wanted to access without Webmind’s help. It was psychologically easier to search for “Viagra,” “Megan Fox nude,” or many other things through an impersonal Web portal than by asking someone you knew—even if you knew that someone was watching over your shoulder. And so Google’s stock was rising again. In recognition of the turnaround, waiting for which must have had them shitting their pants in Mountain View, Google had changed its home-page logo for today to its stock-ticker symbol GOOG followed by an upward-pointing arrow and the euro sign.

  But if Webmind hadn’t completely revolutionized Internet searching, he was having an impact on Tony’s line of work. WATCH’s mandate was to ferret out signs of terrorism online, but Webmind was doing such a good job of that on his own that—well, the WATCH monitoring room reminded Tony of NASA’s Apollo-era Mission Control Center in Houston. That room, as he’d seen on a tour, was now unused, preserved as a historic site; perhaps this place might soon end up just as obsolete.