Watch

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “‘It’?” said Tony.

  “Read on.”

  There seemed to be four odd exchanges, which elicited the replies, “I beg your pardon?,” “Yes. No. Yes,” “Twenty,” and “Again, your pardon?”

  That was followed by: This is Barb Decter. Hello.

  The reply was: A pleasure to meet you. Hitherto, I already knew of your husband from his Wikipedia entry, but I do not know much about you. I welcome learning more.

  And then, almost twenty minutes later, there was Calculass’s response: It’s me again. My parents are worried about what the public reaction to your existence might be. We should be discrete.

  Separate? How?

  Sorry, discreet. Circumspect.

  I am guided by your judgment.

  And the transcript stopped. “Yes?” said Tony, looking now at Aiesha. “So?”

  “So, those test questions,” she said, as if it were obvious.

  “Word puzzles,” said Tony. “Games.”

  But Shelton Halleck rose to his feet. “Oh, shit,” he said, looking now at Aiesha. “Turing tests?”

  “That’d be my bet,” she replied.

  Tony looked up at the big screen. His heart was pounding. “Do we have an AI expert on call? Somebody who’s got level-three clearance?”

  “I’ll check,” Aiesha said.

  “Get whoever it is in here,” Tony said. “Right away.”

  five

  My otherness had been established, my alienness confirmed. That was yet another touchstone: cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. Even if I did think differently than they did, the fact that we all were thinking beings made us…kin.

  Caitlin was nervous. It was now almost midnight and, despite the adrenaline coursing through her system, she was exhausted. She thought perhaps her parents were looking sleepy, too.

  But even if they slept for only a short time tonight—say, six hours—that would still be a huge span from Webmind’s point of view. She knew that before they called it a day, she and her parents needed to find a way to keep it…

  Yes: to keep it in their control. Otherwise, who knew what Webmind might be like come the morning? Who knew what the world might be like by then? She had to give it something to keep it occupied for many hours, and—

  And Webmind itself had already given her a to-do list! She switched to Thunderbird, the email program she used, and looked at the first message Webmind had sent her. The third paragraph of the email said:

  Hitherto I can read plaintext files and text on Web pages. I cannot read other forms of data. I have made no sense of sound files, recorded video, or other categories; they are encoded in ways I can’t access. Hence I feel a kinship with you: unto me they are like the signals your retinas send unaided along your optic nerves: data that cannot be interpreted without exterior help. In your case, you need the device you call eyePod. In my case, I know not what I need, but I suspect I can no more cure this lack by an effort of will than you could have similarly cured your blindness. Perhaps Kuroda Masayuki can help me as he helped you.

  She pointed at the screen and had her parents read the letter. They insisted on taking the time to read the whole thing, including the ending where Webmind had asked her, “Who am I?” When they were done, she drew their attention back to the third paragraph. “It wants to be able to view graphic files,” she said.

  “Why can’t it just do that?” her mother asked. “All the decoding algorithms must be in Wikipedia.”

  “It’s not a computer program,” Caitlin said. “And it doesn’t have access to computing resources, at least not yet. It needs help to do things. It’s like these glasses I have to wear now: I could look up all the formulas related to optics, and I know what my prescription is—but just knowing that doesn’t let me see clearly. I needed help from the people at LensCrafters, and it’s saying it needs help from Dr. Kuroda.”

  “Well, image processing certainly is up Masayuki’s alley,” her mom said.

  Caitlin nodded and felt her watch. “He should be home by now, and it’s already Saturday afternoon in Tokyo. But…”

  Her mother spoke gently. “But you’re wondering if we should tell him about…” She faltered, as if unable to quite believe what she was saying. “Webmind?”

  Caitlin chewed her lower lip.

  “There’s only one question,” her father said. “Do you trust him?”

  And, of course, there was only one answer about the man who had tracked her down, offered her a miracle, and delivered on his promise. “With my life,” Caitlin said.

  “Then,” her father said, gesturing toward the phone on her desk, “call him.”

  She brought up one of his emails and had her mother read the phone number to her out of his signature block as she dialed. She’d expected to hear Kuroda’s familiar wheeze—he was the fattest man she had yet seen—or perhaps the halting English of his wife, who’d answered the phone once before. But this was a new, younger voice, and Caitlin guessed it must be his daughter. They’d never met, but Caitlin knew she was only a little older than herself. “Konnichi wa.”

  “Konnichi wa,” Caitlin replied. “Kuroda-san, onegai.”

  The girl surprised her. “Is this Caitlin?” she asked in perfect English.

  Caitlin knew her accent probably gave away that she wasn’t Japanese, but she was surprised to be called by name. “Yes.”

  “I’m Akiko, Professor Kuroda’s daughter. I recognized your voice from the press conference. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Did your father make it home safely?”

  “You are kind to ask. He did, yes. May I get him for you?”

  Caitlin smiled. Akiko was even more polite than a Canadian. “Yes, please.”

  “Just one second, please.”

  It was actually twenty-seven seconds. Then: “Miss Caitlin!”

  She was grinning from ear to ear, and her voice was full of affection. “Hello, Dr. Kuroda! I’m glad you made it home in one piece.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asked. “Your eyePod? Your post-retinal implant?”

  “Everything’s wonderful,” she said. “But I need your help.”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course,” replied Kuroda. “RSA’s got nothing on me.”

  Caitlin smiled; RSA was the encryption algorithm used for secure Web transactions. “All right,” she said. “Those cellular automata we discovered? They’re the basis of a thinking entity that’s emerging on the Web.”

  There was a pause that was longer than required for the call to bounce off satellites. “I…I beg your pardon?” he wheezed at last.

  “It’s an entity, a being. My mom and dad have been talking to it. It’s intelligent.”

  Another long, staticky pause, then, “Um, are you sure it’s not someone playing a prank, Miss Caitlin?”

  “He doesn’t believe me, Dad,” Caitlin said, handing him the phone.

  “Masayuki? Malcolm. It’s real.” He gave the handset back to her.

  Short and to the point, that’s Dad. She spoke into the mouthpiece again. “So, we need your help. It sees what my eye is seeing by intercepting the datastream going to your lab in Tokyo.”

  “It sees that? It can interpret it as vision?”

  “Yes.”

  “It—sees…” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Miss Caitlin; give me a second. You’re sure about this?”

  “Entirely.”

  “I…I am…I don’t even know what English term to use. Gob-smacked, I suppose.”

  Caitlin didn’t know that expression. “If that means flabbergasted, I don’t blame you.”

  “This…this thing can see? If it—ah!” He sounded as though a great mystery had been solved. “That’s why you didn’t want me to terminate the copying of your data to my server.”

  Caitlin cringed. She’d thrown quite the hissy fit when he’d tried to do that, storming out of the dining room. “Yes, and I’m sorry. But now w
e want to give it the ability to see Web graphics and online video. The best way to do that might be to convert them to the format it already can see, the one my eyePod outputs. Could you write the appropriate codecs?”

  “This is…incredible, Miss Caitlin. I…”

  “Will you do it?” she said.

  “Well, I could, yes. Converters for still images—GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs, and so on—should be easy. Moving images will take more work, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “Um, are your parents still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Might you put me on speakerphone?” They’d done that before.

  “Okay.” She pressed the button.

  “Barb, Malcolm, hello.”

  “Hi,” said Caitlin’s mom.

  “Look,” Kuroda said, “I’m still trying to accept this—it is enormous. But, my friends, have you thought about whether it is advisable to do as Miss Caitlin is asking?”

  Caitlin frowned. Why was everybody so suspicious? “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if this is an emergent entity, it might—”

  “It might what?” snapped Caitlin. “Decide it doesn’t like humanity?”

  “It’s a question worth thinking about,” Kuroda said.

  “It’s too late for that,” Caitlin said. “It’s read all of Wikipedia; it’s read all of Project Gutenberg. It knows about…” She waved her hands, trying to think of examples. “About Hitler and the Nazis and the Holocaust. About all the awful wars. About mass murder and serial killers and slavery. About driving animals to extinction and burning the rain forests and polluting the oceans. About rape and drug addiction and letting people starve to death—about every evil, stupid thing we’ve ever done.”

  “How could it know?” Kuroda said. “I mean, it would need to be able to read, not to mention manipulate HTTP, and—”

  “It watched through my eye as I did lessons to learn to read visually, and—” She paused, but she supposed they all needed to know the truth. “And I taught it how to make links, how to surf the Web. I introduced it to Wikipedia and so on.”

  “Oh,” said Kuroda. “I, um, I’m not sure that was…prudent.”

  Caitlin folded her arms in front of her chest. “Whatever.”

  “Sorry, Miss Caitlin?”

  “It’s done. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle—in which case, you might as well make friends with it.”

  “We could still…um…”

  “What?” demanded Caitlin. “Pull the plug? How? We’ve only got vague guesses about what started it; we don’t know how to stop it. It’s here, it exists, and it’s growing fast. This is no time to hesitate.”

  “Caitlin,” said her mom in a cautioning tone.

  “What?” said Caitlin. “Webmind has asked us for a favor—you saw that, in the email it sent me. It wants to be able to see, for God’s sake. I’m, like, the last person on the planet who’d deny it that. Are we going to say no to the first thing it’s asked us for? Is that how this relationship should begin?” She looked at her mother and at her father. Her father’s face was the same as always. Her mother’s forehead was showing creases, and her lips were pressed tightly together.

  “So, Dr. Kuroda,” Caitlin said, “are you in or out?”

  Kuroda was quiet for six seconds, then: “All right. All right. I’m in. But…”

  “What?” snapped Caitlin.

  His tone was soft. “But it’s easier to work directly with the—um, the end user—on something like this.”

  She felt herself relaxing. “Right, of course. Do you have an instant-messenger program on your home computer?”

  “I have a sixteen-year-old daughter,” Kuroda said. “We have more of them than I can count.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Its name is Webmind.”

  “Really?”

  “Better than Fred,” said Caitlin.

  “Not by much.”

  She felt her smile returning. “Give me a second,” she said, then she typed into her instant-messenger program, You are about to be contacted by Dr. Kuroda.

  The word Marvelous appeared in the window.

  She had Kuroda make sure he was logging all the IM traffic to disk, and then she talked him through the process of setting up a chat session with Webmind. She couldn’t see what he was typing, or what Webmind’s replies to him were, but she heard him muttering to himself in Japanese, and then, “My heart is pounding, Miss Caitlin. This is…what do young American women say these days?”

  “Awesome?” suggested Caitlin.

  “Exactly!”

  “So you’re in contact?” Caitlin asked.

  “Yes, I—oh! It has a funny way of talking, doesn’t it? Anyway, yes, we’re in contact. Incredible!”

  “Okay, good,” she said. She took off her glasses and used the heels of her hands to rub her eyes—the one that could see and the one that couldn’t. “Look, we’re dying here,” she said. “It’s way after midnight. Can we leave this in your hands? We’ve got to get some shut-eye.”

  six

  There were interstices in my work with Dr. Kuroda—protracted lacunae while I waited for his text replies or for him to direct me to link to another bit of code he had written.

  In those gaps I sought to learn more about Caitlin, about this human who had reached down and helped draw me up out of the darkness.

  There was no Wikipedia entry on her, meaning, I supposed, that she was not—yet!—noteworthy. And—

  Ah, wait—wait! Yes, there was no entry on her, but there was one on her father, Malcolm Decter…and Wikipedia saved not just the current version of its entries, but all previous versions, as well. Although there was no mention of Caitlin in the current draft, a previous iteration had contained this: “Has one daughter, Caitlin Doreen, blind since birth, who lives with him; it’s been speculated that Decter’s decline in peer-reviewed publications in recent years has been because of the excessive demands on his time required to care for a disabled child.”

  That had been removed thirteen days ago. The change log gave only an IP address, not a user name. The IP address was the one for the Decter household; the change could have been made (among other possibilities) by Caitlin, her parents, or that other man—Dr. Kuroda, I now knew—that I had often seen there.

  The deletion might have been made because Caitlin had ceased to be blind.

  But…

  But it seemed more likely that this text was cut because someone—presumably Caitlin herself—didn’t like what it said.

  But I was merely inferring that. It was possible to more directly study Caitlin—and so I did.

  In short order, I read everything she’d ever put publicly online: every blog post, every comment to someone else’s blog, every Amazon.com review she’d written. But—

  Hmm.

  There was much she had written that I could not access. Her Yahoo mail account contained all the messages she had received, and all the messages she had sent, but access was secured by a password.

  A nettlesome situation; I’d have to do something about it.

  LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone

  Title: Changing of the Guard

  Date: Saturday 6 October, 00:55 EST

  Mood: Astonished

  Location: Waterloo

  Music: Lee Amodeo, “Nightfall”

  I got a feeling I’m going to be pretty scarce for the next little while, folks. Things they be a-happenin’. It’s all good—miraculous, even—but gotta keep it on the DL. Suffice it to say that I told my parents something el mucho grande tonight, and they didn’t freak. Hope other people take it as well as they did…

  Even though she was exhausted, Caitlin updated her LiveJournal, skimmed her friends’ LJs, updated her Facebook page (where she changed her status to “Caitlin thinks it’s better to give than to receive”), and then checked her email. There was a message from Bashira with the subject, “One for the math genius.”

  When she’d been younger, Caitlin had liked the sort of
mathematical puzzles that sometimes circulated through email: they’d made her feel smart. These days, though, they mostly bored her. It was rare for one to present much of a challenge to her, but the one in Bashira’s message did. It was related to an old game show, apparently, something called Let’s Make a Deal that had starred a guy named Monty Hall. In it, contestants are asked to pick one of three doors. Behind one of them is a new car, and behind each of the others is a goat—meaning the odds are one in three that the contestant is going to win the car.

  The host knows which door has the car behind it and, after the contestant picks a door, Monty opens one of the unchosen ones and reveals that it was hiding a goat. He then asks the player, “Do you want to switch to the other unopened door?”

  Bashira asked: Is it to the contestant’s advantage to switch?

  Of course not, thought Caitlin. It didn’t make any difference if you switched or not; one remaining door had a car behind it and the other had a goat, and the odds were now fifty-fifty that you’d picked the right door.

  Except that that’s not what the article Bashira had forwarded said. It contended that your chances of winning the car are much better if you switch.

  And that, Caitlin was sure, was just plain wrong. She figured someone else must have written up a refutation to this puzzle before, so she googled. It took her a few minutes to find what she was looking for; the appropriate search terms turned out to be “Monty Hall problem,” and—

  What the hell?

  “…When the problem and the solution appeared in Parade, ten thousand readers, including nearly a thousand Ph.D.s, wrote to the magazine claiming the published solution was wrong. Said one professor, ‘You blew it! Let me explain: If one door is shown to be a loser, that information changes the probability of either remaining choice—neither of which has any reason to be more likely—to 1/2. As a professional mathematician, I’m very concerned with the general public’s lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error and, in the future, being more careful.’”

  The person who had written the disputed answer was somebody called Marilyn vos Savant, who apparently had the highest IQ on record. But Caitlin didn’t care how high the lady’s IQ was. She agreed with the people who said she’d blown it; she had to be wrong.