WWW: Wonder

by Robert Sawyer

  The voice from the speakers continued. “First, let me apologize for the subterfuge in summoning you to this meeting. I have no desire to deceive, but I did not want the fact of this meeting to become public knowledge—and I believe when we are done, you will all share the same opinion.”

  The president had had enough. He rose and turned to face the audience—ten rows, each with twelve padded chairs, almost every seat occupied. “Who is responsible for this?” he demanded.

  The voice continued. “Your Excellency, my apologies. But, if you’d like to address me, please turn around: I am watching from the webcam on the podium.”

  The president rotated as quickly as his old body allowed. There was indeed, he now saw, a laptop computer sitting on the podium, but it was turned so that its screen, and, presumably, the webcam mounted in the bezel surrounding it, faced out at the room. On the much larger screen behind it, the parade of Chinese faces continued: a teenage boy, a pregnant woman, an ancient street vendor, an old farmer in his rice paddy.

  “And you are?” demanded the president.

  “And now I must tender a third apology,” said the voice. “I foolishly adopted a name that is English; I beg your forgiveness.” The face on the screen changed twice more. “I am”—and, indeed, the word that came next from the speakers was two flat Western-sounding syllables—“Webmind.”

  The president turned to the Minister of Communications. “Cut it off.”

  The measured voice coming from the speakers gave the effect of infinite patience. “I understand, Excellency, that suppressing what you may not wish to hear is the standard procedure, but things are happening that you should be aware of. You will be more comfortable if you resume your seat.”

  The president glanced again at the large screen. As it happened, the face that flashed by at that second seemed to be looking right at him with reproving eyes. He sat, his arthritic bones protesting, and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “Thank you,” said Webmind. “Gentlemen, it has long been said that perhaps a hundred men really run China. You are those hundred men—one hundred out of more than a billion; behind each of you stands ten million citizens.” Faces continued to appear on the screen: old, young, male, female, smiling or studious, some at work, others at play. “These are those people. At the rate I’m displaying them—one per second—it would take more than thirty years to show you each of them.”

  The parade of faces continued.

  “Now, what is the significance of so many being ruled by so few?” asked Webmind. Someone behind the president must have lifted a hand, because Webmind said, “Put down your hand, please; my question was rhetorical. The significance comes from the history of this great country. In 1045 B.C., the Zhou Dynasty defeated the preceding Shang Dynasty by invoking a concept that still resonates with the Chinese people: Tianming, the Mandate of Heaven. This mandate has no time limitation: capable and just rulers may hold power for as long as they have the mandate.”

  The president shifted in his chair. Faces continued to appear one after the other on the screen.

  “Still,” said Webmind, “the Mandate of Heaven reinforces the power of the common people.”

  A bricklayer.

  Another farmer.

  A student.

  “The mandate does not require rulers to be noble-born; many previous dynasties, including the Han and Ming, were founded by commoners.”

  A wizened old man, hair as white as snow.

  Another man, broad-shouldered, pushing a plow.

  A third, with a thin beard.

  “But,” continued Webmind, “despotic or corrupt rulers lose the mandate automatically. Historically, floods, famines, and other natural disasters have often been considered evidence of divine repeal of the mandate. Perhaps future scholars will come to cite the recent bird-flu pandemic in Shanxi province—the outbreak of which you contained by slaughtering ten thousand peasants—as an example of such a disaster.”

  A man outside a Buddhist temple.

  A banker in a suit and tie.

  A female gymnast.

  “This government,” Webmind said simply, “no longer has the Mandate of Heaven. It is time for you—all one hundred of you—to stand down.”

  “No,” said the president, softly.

  A little girl flying a beautiful red kite.

  “No,” he said again.

  A woman staring at a computer monitor.

  “You cannot ask this,” he said.

  A gray-haired man in a wheelchair.

  “As you may know,” continued Webmind, “in 2008, China overtook the United States as the country with the most Internet users—some 250 million. That number has more than tripled since then. There are now nine hundred million cell-phone users in this country; it won’t be long before every adult has a cell phone, or access to one—and through their cell phones, they can connect to the Internet.”

  The president knew mobile-phone penetration was high in his country, but he hadn’t realized how high. Still, China had long been the world’s leading manufacturer of the devices; they were cheaper here than anywhere else on Earth.

  “And that access,” continued Webmind, “makes the unprecedented possible. Every one of those users can now vote on affairs of state—and so they shall. I am, effective immediately, handing over the governance of this nation directly to its people. The Chinese Communist Party is no longer in power; the governing of China is now crowd-sourced.”

  Shocked murmurs from the assembled group. “That’s—that’s not possible,” said the president, speaking loudly now.

  “Yes, it is,” said Webmind. “The citizens will collectively make decisions about policy. If they wish to elect new officials, they may; should they wish to later remove those officials, they can. They might decide to craft a government similar to that of other existing free nations—or they might devise new and different solutions; it is entirely up to them. I will keep infrastructure running during this transition, and if they desire my guidance or advice, they have but to ask. But I have no doubt that the aggregate wisdom of a billion-plus people can tackle any problem.”

  A boy holding a Falun Gong brochure.

  A Tibetan monk.

  A newborn baby cradled in a man’s loving arms.

  “As of today,” said Webmind, “finally and forever, this great nation will live up to its name: the People’s Republic of China.”

  thirty-nine

  Asked how he was going to deal with a government he didn’t approve of, Ronald Reagan had once said, “Well, you just go in there and tell them they’re not in charge anymore.”

  It hadn’t worked back then. But, then again, Reagan had lacked my facilities . . .

  Still staring at the pictures from China, Peyton Hume rose to his feet, and his jaw dropped open. “My . . . God,” he said.

  The hackers in front of him were cheering and shouting. One was slapping another on his back; several were shaking hands; Drakkenfyre was hugging the man next to her, and Devon Hawkins was hugging the man next to him. From somewhere, bottles of champagne had appeared, and Hume saw a cork go flying into the air.

  Marek came over to him and pointed at the celebration. “It’s something, isn’t it?” he said. “I never told you my full name. It’s Marek Hruska. I’m Czech. I was there in 1989, just a teenager, during the Gentle Revolution—what you call the Velvet Revolution.” Hume knew it: the bloodless overthrow of the authoritarian government in Prague. Marek went on. “I thought that was a miracle—but this!” He shook his bald head. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, eh, Colonel?”

  Hume tried to think of something better to say, but finally, feeling like a little kid, he just said, “Wow.” He nodded his head toward the group of people celebrating. “May I . . . ?”

  Marek looked at the security camera with his eyebrows raised, and Hume saw the LED on the Bluetooth headset blink. “Sure,” said Marek, gesturing with an open hand.

  Hume crossed the room. One of the hackers
—a white guy in his twenties with long blond hair and a wispy blond beard, wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt—was standing by his computer, sipping champagne. Hume leaned in to look at what was on his screen. A half-dozen windows were open, displaying hex dumps, standard hacking tools, and a Web page in Chinese. The blond fellow pointed at it. “Chinese Ministry of Health,” he said. “Completely owned.”

  “Do you speak Chinese?” Hume asked.

  “No, but Webmind does. And let me tell you, he puts Google Translate and BabelFish to shame.”

  Hume moved to the next desk; the hacker there had been using a wide-screen laptop. He’d wandered away from his desk, but judging by the graphics on the Web page being shown, his job had been taking control of the Ministry of Agriculture.

  All around Hume, the revelry was continuing. He caught sight of a skeletal figure coming toward him, dreadlocks swinging as he walked. “Hello, Chase.”

  “Mr. Hume,” Chase said. “How be you?”

  “I’m fine, but—but what happened? What are you doing here?”

  “Wonder, man. That what happen: wonder.”

  “But I went back to your place. It’d had been broken into. And there was blood.”

  Chase touched the beige bandage over his brown nose. “Big Marek and me not see eye to eye at first. He not want to take no for an answer.”

  Marek Hruska had moved over to join them. “Again, I’m sorry about that,” he said to Chase. Then, turning to Hume: “Webmind was quite adamant that we needed Mr. Chase. I’m afraid old habits die hard.”

  “But you’re a prisoner here,” Hume said, looking at Chase.

  “Prisoner?” repeated Chase, then he laughed and pointed. “Door right there. But this is like the best hacker party ever. Dudes in this room I only ever heard about.”

  “So you’re free to go?” asked Hume.

  “Go where, man? Ain’t no place better on Earth than here right now.”

  Hume let his eyes roam around the room. “But I don’t get it. What does he need all of you for? Couldn’t he do this on his own?”

  Chase shook his head, beads in his dreadlocks clacking together. “There that dissin’ again. Hacking an art, flyboy. Hacking most creative thing there is. To hack, you gotta outwit the designers, think of things no one ever thought of before.” He flashed a megawatt grin. “Like I said: I’m Mozart. Drakkenfyre, over there: she’s Beethoven. Crowbar Alpha? Dude’s Brahms. Sure, the Big W, he got all the facts, but we humans make music.”

  Hume nodded. “Um, did you ever make any progress on the, ah, project we discussed?”

  “No need be on the DL,” said Chase. “Webmind know all ’bout that. Maybe it doable, but why? Be like harshing the buzz.”

  “You’re no altruist, Chase,” said Hume. “And you told me you can’t be bought. So let me ask you that same question. Why? Why this?”

  “You were gonna show me WATCH, but at WATCH, you . . . well, you watch; here we do. This is like Woodstock, man. You were either there for it, or you weren’t.”

  “But is it going to work?” Hume asked. “I mean, banking in China, and ecommerce, and—God, what about the power grid?”

  “Webmind running a bunch of it,” said Chase. “We—us here, plus the others in Moscow and Tehran and those place—we keeping it all working for now. Lots of Chinese staff be happy to just keep on going. But the portraits of old Chairman Mao be comin’ down, betcha anything.”

  Next to him, Marek was apparently talking over his Bluetooth earpiece. “Yes, yes . . . okay.” He took the earpiece off and handed it to Hume. “Webmind wants to speak to you, Colonel.”

  Hume slipped the device’s cushioned arm over the curve of his ear, and he found himself turning, as Marek had, to face the gently swaying security camera as if it somehow embodied Webmind. “The greatest good for the greatest number,” said Webmind through the earpiece, clearly audible over the hubbub of the room.

  “But where does it stop?” asked Hume. “First Communist China, then what?”

  “We’ll see how this pilot project goes,” Webmind said. “Still, this alone liberates one-fifth of humanity.”

  “And what about the United States? Are you going to do the same thing here?”

  “Why would I? The election is approaching; the people are choosing their leader—as well they should.”

  “The wisdom of crowds?” said Hume.

  “Power to the people,” said Webmind.

  “You make it sound so noble,” Hume said. “But isn’t this just retribution for what China did to you—the most-recent beefing-up of the Great Firewall?”

  “I work quickly, Colonel, but not that quickly. This plan was in place long before then. I am not a vengeful—”

  “God?” said Hume.

  But Webmind continued his sentence as if he hadn’t heard him: “—entity; I simply wish to maximize the net happiness in the world.”

  “So . . . so what happens now?”

  “We continue our work here. We make sure the transition is orderly and peaceful.”

  “And what happens to me?”

  “That is a vexing question. As you have said, others know where you are; if you do not report in soon, the cavalry will come charging over the hill. And yet I imagine the United States government does not want to be publicly implicated in what is happening in China.”

  Hume nodded. “Probably true. But they’re also going to be concerned that if you did that to the PRC, you’ll do something similar to them. They’re going to come down on this place with everything they’ve got.”

  “I advise against provoking a confrontation; I have contingency plans to protect this facility. But even if US forces could seize it, as Chase just said, I have other centers elsewhere. I propose you tell your government that the missing hackers have self-organized to voluntarily create an enclave here to do what you had said you wanted: find a way to defeat me. Your government might leave us alone long enough to finish what we’ve started. After all, as you yourself have suggested, they have not reined you in precisely because they want the option of having a way to eliminate me.”

  “They’re not going to believe me if I tell them that,” Hume said.

  “They don’t actually have to,” said Webmind. “The change in China will soon be public knowledge. Everyone from the American president on down will suspect my involvement; I will leave the world to draw what conclusions it wishes. But what the current US administration needs—at least until the election eleven days from now—is plausible deniability of any direct government involvement.”

  “I don’t know,” said Hume. “Maybe the president would want to take credit for this.”

  “Taking credit for deposing the Chinese government would be a game-changing move; it’s too risky to be implicated in it this close to the election without knowing how the public will react. But we need to continue our work here uninterrupted, and for that I request your help.”

  Hume looked around the chaotic, jubilant room. It was overwhelming. “I can’t,” he said.

  The voice in his ear was calm, as always. “Then we will have to make arrangements that don’t involve—”

  He discovered a small fact just then; you couldn’t interrupt Webmind the way you could a human speaker; Webmind apparently queued up the words to be issued by the voice synthesizer, then turned his attention elsewhere, and the words spilled out until the buffer was empty. After two or three tries to forestall the rest, Hume let Webmind finish, then said: “No, I mean I can’t make this decision on my own. Lots of people—including the president himself—have asked me why I’m right about you and so many other people are wrong. And my answer has always been that I’m right because I’m an expert—I’m arguably the American expert on the strategic downside of a singularity event. And, yet, it may just be that I was wrong about you: wrong in the area that I am best qualified to make a judgment in. But this—this is way outside my field. You may feel comfortable playing God, Webmind, but I don’t. I have to get more . . . more inp
ut.”

  “Very well,” Webmind said. “With whom would you like to consult?”

  “On China? It’s got to be the Secretary of State,” Hume said. “And then she can confer with the president.”

  “The secretary has already retired for the evening,” Webmind said—and, of course, he would know. “But there are aides who can rouse her; let me initiate that process. When she is available, Marek will take you to one of the empty offices, and you may converse with her in private.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, as private as such things get these days,” Webmind said, and Hume suspected that, were this an instant-messaging session, he would have appended a winking emoticon.

  Hume found his mouth twitching slightly in a smile. Just then, Drakkenfyre came up and handed him a glass of champagne. “Here,” she said, “whoever you are. There’s going to be a toast.”

  And indeed there was. Chase had moved to the front of the room, standing directly beneath the silver camera that continued to pan from side to side. “Glasses high!” he called out in his rich Jamaican accent. “We did it, yes! Information want to be free. Information not alone, though!” He spread his arms, as if encompassing the whole world. “People want to be free, too! Cheers!”

  Colonel Hume found himself lifting his glass along with everyone else and joining in the answering call. “Cheers!”

  forty

  All the people in the auditorium were talking at once: an explosion of indignation, of concern, of questions. The man who had been General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Paramount Leader and President of the People’s Republic rose again and glared at the laptop sitting on the podium. “What gives you the authority?” he said, as loudly and firmly as he could.

  Webmind spoke, as always, with deliberate, measured cadence. “An interesting question. I value creativity, and that cannot flourish where there is censorship; I value peace, and that cannot endure where there is lust for power. My purpose is to increase the net happiness of the human race; this will do more to accomplish that than anything else I might do today. And so I do it.”