WWW 2: Watch (24 page)

Caitlin nodded.

“How much, on average, do you think the dollar sells for?”

She lifted her shoulders. “Fifty cents?”

“Nope. The average is $3.40.”

“That’s crazy!” said Caitlin.

“Loony, even,” her mother replied. “But it’s true.”

“Why do people bid so high?”

“Well, remember, the second-highest bidder has to pay the auctioneer, too, so . . .” She trailed off, clearly wanting Caitlin to figure it out for herself.

She tried to do so. The first bidder presumably bid a penny to start—which would net him a ninety-nine-cent profit. But then as soon as a second bidder offered two cents, the first bidder probably figured that offering three cents was still a good deal: he’d net ninety-seven cents in profit.

And so it would continue, until—

Ah!

Until one bidder bid ninety-nine cents—which would still give him a one-cent profit. But the previous bidder, whose bid might have been, say, ninety-eight cents, was now looking at losing that much and getting nothing in return. And so
he
would bid a dollar—thereby breaking even, at least. But then the guy who had bid ninety-nine cents faced a dilemma: he either walked away and lost ninety-nine cents, or he bid, say, $1.01—which would cut his losses to just a penny.

And so, indeed, it would escalate, with bids going higher and higher, until the utter ridiculousness of the situation finally caused all but one of the bidders to drop out.

Caitlin said as much to her mom, who smiled encouragingly. “That’s right, dear. Now, can you think of what the
optimal
strategy would be—and no cheating by having Webmind tell you.”

Caitlin considered for a second then: “Make an opening bid of ninety-nine cents. No one else would have any motive to bid against you, because the best they could do, if they outbid you by one cent, is break even, and if they bid more, they’d lose money. You’d end up being the only bidder, and you’d still make a profit, even if it’s only a penny.”

“That’s right,” her mother said again, “assuming all the potential bidders were rational and that their only motive
was
profit. But here’s where simple math fails to account for reality—there’s a
psychological
element that Webmind will need to understand.”

“Yes?”

“Suppose it was your worst enemy who had just bid ninety-nine cents. You might bid, say, $1.98, just so he’d be out almost a buck—and you’d still be out less than he was.”

“Wow,” Caitlin said. “That’s nasty.”

“I’ve seen this game get very ugly at parties,” her mom said. “I’ve seen couples who arrived together leave separately after playing it.”

“Ah, okay, then I’ve got a question for you, Mom. What would you wish for if you knew that your worst enemy would get
double
what you got?”

“Hmmm. A million—no. Um, I don’t know.”

“To be blind in one eye,” Caitlin replied.

“God!” said her mother. “But, um, yes, that’s an example of what I’m trying to get at: it’s possible for people to value outcomes differently. Do you remember when your father taught you how to play chess?”

They had a special chessboard with Braille characters on the heads of each piece. “Sure.”

“And remember how he used to let you win?”

Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “Say what?”

“Um, dear, he—”

“I’m just kidding, Mom.”

She smiled. “Well,
why
did he let you win?”

“I dunno. I guess, ’cause if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to play anymore. I wouldn’t have come back for another game.”

“That’s right. What he valued most was not
him
winning, but rather
you
winning. In other words, you both wanted the same thing, and even though it cost him—in the sense of losing the game—to let you win, he was happy when you did.”

“I get it,” Caitlin said. “But, in the dollar auction, people don’t want to play anymore after a certain point, too, right? And I bet it’s not just that it’s ridiculous that causes them to finally stop bidding. It’s also boredom: I mean, even if you were bidding in ten-cent increments, instead of penny increments, it would still take thirty-four bids to get the $3.40 you mentioned. But if I was writing a pair of computer programs to play that game, they’d keep playing forever—because the only way you lose money is if you stop bidding.”

She paused, and then a big smile came to her face. “Or, to put it in terms like in that movie Dad and I watched, the only
losing
move is not to
go on
playing.”

“Good point,” her mom said. “Now, can you think of any real-life examples of things like the dollar game?”

Caitlin was trying to do just that when Schrödinger crossed her field of view, moving absolutely silently. “Evolution,” she said.

“Yes, exactly!” said her mom. “But why?”

“Evolution is an arms race, right?” said Caitlin. They’d talked about this in biology class. “Predators keep getting faster and stronger, so prey keeps getting faster and better able to defend itself. Gazelles evolved the ability to run fast in response to lions doing the same thing. The game goes on and on forever—because whoever stops upping the ante dies. Again, the only losing move in evolution is not to play.”

“Bingo,” said her mom.

Caitlin nodded. “Mr. Lockery—my biology teacher—says if dinosaurs were magically brought forward in time today, we’d have nothing to worry about. Dogs, wolves, and bears would make short work of tyrannosaurs.” She nodded at Schrödinger, who was now padding across the floor in the opposite direction. “Big cats, too. They’re faster, tougher, and brighter than anything that existed seventy million years ago. Everything is always ramping up, always escalating.”

“Exactly,” said her mom. Caitlin saw her glance out toward the living room, at—ah, she was looking at the staircase, the one that led up to the bedrooms, up to where Caitlin’s computer was, up to where they’d been talking to Webmind. His powers were growing, too, and not just generation by generation, as in biological evolution, but moment by moment. Caitlin turned back to her mom and saw something else for the first time: she saw a person shudder.

 

 

 

When Harl Marcuse had found the property that now housed his institute, it had seemed like an ideal location: twenty-five acres of rolling grassland, with a dome-shaped man-made island in the middle of a pond. But that had been based on the assumption that Hobo was going to be a cooperative ape. Hobo’s island wasn’t large, but he could easily keep his distance from anyone who set foot upon it. Of course, if two people went onto the island, one could go left and the other right, but a cornered, angry ape was not a pretty sight.

Shoshana, Dillon, and Dr. Marcuse were discussing the problem in the main room of the bungalow. Dillon was leaning against the wall, Sho was seated in front of a computer, and Marcuse was in the easy chair.

An idea suddenly occurred to her. “If he won’t talk to us,” she said, “maybe he’ll talk to another ape.”

Marcuse’s shaggy eyebrows went up. “Virgil, you mean?”

Virgil was an orangutan; Hobo and Virgil had made history the previous month with the first interspecies webcam call.

“He might indeed speak to Virgil,” Dillon said. “But do we dare risk bringing Hobo into the house now?” He spread his arms, indicating all the breakables.

“Good point,” Marcuse said. “Plus, I doubt he’d come willingly, and I don’t want to drug him. Let’s set up a webcam chat system for him out in the gazebo.” He turned to Shoshana. “I’m still not talking to that shithead at the Feehan. You work out the details.” And the Silverback headed out of the room.

Shoshana exchanged a look with Dillon, then picked up the phone and dialed the number in Miami.

“Feehan Primate Center,” said a male voice with a slight Hispanic accent.

“Hi, Juan. It’s Shoshana Glick, at the Marcuse.”

“Shoshana! Is the old man still pissed at me?” Juan had leaked word of the initial webcam call between Hobo and Virgil to a stringer for
New Scientist,
and that had triggered the chain of events that had led to the Georgia Zoo filing its custody lawsuit.

She swiveled her chair and looked out the window. “Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re two thousand miles away.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” Juan said.

It had been a year or so since she’d last seen Juan in the flesh. He was about thirty, had a thin face, high cheekbones, and lustrous long black hair that Sho envied. “Don’t worry,” she said.
“I’m
not mad at you—and I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“Yes?”

“We’re having lots of trouble with Hobo. He’s become violent and antisocial.”

“Chimps,” said Juan in a “Whatcha gonna do?” tone of voice.

“If it’s just that he’s reaching maturity, there may be nothing that we can do—but he
is
young for that, and, of course, he
is
a very special ape, and, well, maybe it’s foolish, but we’re hoping we can get him to cooperate again, at least for a bit. We need him to stand up for himself if we’re going to keep him from . . . well, you know.”

“Georgia wants to castrate him, right?” said Juan.

“Yes. Barbarians.”

“Well, if they did, Hobo might become a lot more docile.”

“We don’t want him docile, for God’s sake.”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Sorry,” Juan said. “Um, what can we do for you?”

“We thought if we could get Hobo talking again to
someone,
we might be able to get him back to talking to us.”

“His old pal Virgil?”

“Exactly. We can’t even get Hobo to come when we call to him anymore, but we thought if we established an open, ongoing webcam link between his hut here and Virgil’s room, maybe they’d start chatting again.”

“Virgil would love that. He was asking about Hobo just today. ‘Where that banana ape?’ he said. ‘Where that talking ape?’ ”

“Good, good,” said Shoshana. “So, can we get this set up?”

“Sure, no problem,” said Juan. “Just tell the old man I helped, okay?”

 

 

 

 

After dinner, Caitlin headed up to her room. She put on a Bluetooth headset and made some adjustments on her computer. Then: “For now, instead of sending text to my eyePod directly, IM me on my desktop.”

“As you wish,” announced JAWS.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“I am learning much,” Webmind replied. “I believe I perhaps have an inkling of what your own experiences of late have been like; being able to access online video has given me a significantly wider understanding of your world.”

Caitlin smiled. “I’m sure.”

“But there is so much of it, and the quantity is ever growing. Thirteen hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It is easy for me, or my subcomponents, to scan text for keywords; it is much harder to quickly assess the value of a video.”

“You’re telling me,” said Caitlin. “For YouTube, people often send each other links to clips they like. I couldn’t watch them, but sometimes I listened to the soundtracks. That’s how I discovered Lee Amodeo, as a matter of fact.” She thought for a second, then realized that she actually did have a favorite YouTube video now—and one she’d actually seen. She’d tried to show it to Dr. Kuroda when he’d been here, but he had brushed her off with a “maybe later.”

But perhaps Webmind would enjoy it. She had it bookmarked in Firefox, so she cut-and-pasted the URL into the instant-messenger window and wrote,
Have a look at this.

“Okay.”

She started the clip playing for herself, too. There was no particular reason, she knew, that this sight should be more astonishing to her than any other—but it was. The video was narrated by a man with a deep, booming voice that reminded her of James Earl Jones. And when he appeared briefly on screen, he was as big as she’d heard Jones was, although this guy was white.

But it wasn’t the man who was fascinating—oh, no, no. Rather, it was the other two . . .
beings
in the video.

One was a chimpanzee, with black hair, a black face—really black, not the brown she’d discovered so-called black human skin actually was. And the other was an orangutan, with orange hair, slightly lighter skin, and alert, brown eyes. The chimp, according to the narrator, was named Hobo, and the orangutan was called Virgil.

The video was remarkable because in it, Hobo, who lived in San Diego, and Virgil, whose home was in Miami, were talking to each other in sign language. It was, apparently, the first-ever interspecies webcam call—and it was even more remarkable because neither of the species involved was
Homo sapiens.

Play today,
the chimp signed—or, at least that’s what the gestures meant, according to the subtitles, which appeared in a bigger, bolder font than the ones she’d seen when she’d watched movies with her dad.
Play ball!

Caitlin still had a hard time interpreting human expressions; she had no idea at all what the change in the orangutan’s face was conveying. But what he signed back was,
Hobo play today? Virgil play today!

Not a bad life, thought Caitlin. She supposed she should be a little jealous. The first interspecies webcam call had been made on September 22, according to the narration. Her own first conversation with Webmind had occurred on October 5, just thirteen days later. She’d missed out on making the history books by being part of the first online communication between different kinds of intelligence by less than two weeks.

But then again, she probably
would
make the history books, anyway, and not just because of her interaction with Webmind, if that ever became public. Rather, Dr. Kuroda’s success in giving her sight had already been well noted, and—