WWW 2: Watch (34 page)

He switched chairs, and Caitlin took the other one, and she opened the big card and placed it on the table in front of them. “Read what people wrote to me,” she said.

“Well, that’s mine, like I said. I wrote, ‘Math students never die—they just cease to function.’ ”

“Hah! Cute.”

“And that one’s Bashira’s.” He pointed to some bold writing in red ink. “She wrote, ‘See if you can get me sprung, too!’ ”

She laughed.

“Most of the others just say, ‘Best wishes,’ or ‘Good luck.’ Mr. Heidegger wrote, ‘Sorry to see my star pupil go!’ ”

“Awww!”

“And that one’s Sunshine’s—see how she makes the dot above the
i
look like the sun?”

“Holy crap,” Caitlin said.

“She wrote, ‘To my fellow American: keep the invasion plans on the DL, Cait—these Canadian fools don’t suspect a thing.’ ”

Caitlin smiled; that was more clever than she’d expected from Sunshine. She was feeling twinges of sadness. She’d still see Bashira, but she was going to miss some of the others, and—

“Um, where’s Trevor’s?” she asked.

Matt looked away. “He didn’t want to sign.”

“Oh.”

“So, what do you think about Webmind?” Matt asked.

Caitlin’s heart jumped. Her first thought was that he
knew
—knew that she was the one who had brought Webmind forth, knew that it was through her eye that Webmind focused his attention, knew that at this very moment Webmind was looking at him while she did the same thing.

But no, no. Surely all he wanted to do was get away from talking about another boy—and who could blame him?

“Well,” she said, closing the card, “I’m convinced.”

“You believe it’s what it says it is?”

She bit her tongue and didn’t correct him on the choice of pronouns—even with three occurrences of
it
in an eight-word sentence. “Yes. Why, what do you think?”

He frowned, considering—and Caitlin was surprised at how tense she became waiting for his verdict. “I buy it,” he said at last. “I mean, what else could it be? A promo for something? Puh-leeze. A scam?” He shook his head. “My dad doesn’t believe it, though. He says Marcello Truzzi used to say, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.’ ”

“Who’s that?”

“My male parent; my mother’s husband.”

She laughed and whapped him on the arm. “Not your dad, silly. Marcello whoever.”

Matt grinned—he clearly liked her touching him. “He was one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. My dad says Truzzi originally said that about things like UFOs, and he thinks it applies here, too.”

“Ah.”

“But, thing is,” said Matt, “I don’t think this
is
an extraordinary claim. It’s something that
should
have happened by now. In fact, if anything, it’s overdue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever read Vernor Vinge?” Matt asked.

“Is that how you say it? ‘Vin-jee’? I always thought it rhymed with
hinge.”

“No, it’s
vin-jee.
Anyway, so you’ve read him?”

“No,” said Caitlin. “I keep seeing his name on the list of Hugo winners; I know I
should
read him, but . . .”

“Oh, he’s
great,”
said Matt. “But you should really read this essay he wrote called—wait for it—‘The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.’ Just google on ‘Vinge’ and ‘singularity’; you’ll find it.”

“Okay.”

“He wrote that in, um, 1993, I think,” Matt said.

Caitlin frowned. She had a hard time believing that anything written before she’d been born could have a bearing on what was going down right now.

Matt went on. “He said in it that the creation of intelligence greater than our own would occur sometime between 2005 and 2030—and I’ve always been expecting it to be at the earlier end.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. The headlong rush of Webmind’s progress had made Caitlin think things didn’t have to take a long time to unfold. But there was more to it than that. She was no longer going to see Matt every day at school. If she didn’t make an impression, he’d lose interest, or move on to someone else. Yes, yes, yes, she knew what Bashira said about his looks, but she
couldn’t
be the only one who saw his good qualities: his kindness, his gentleness, his brilliance, his wit. She
had
to impress him now, while she had the opportunity, and—

And she knew one way that would work for sure. “Can you keep a secret?” she said.

His blond eyebrows went up. “Yes.”

Of course,
everybody
answered that question the same way; she’d never once met anyone who’d replied, “No, not at all; I blab things all over the place.” Still, she thought Matt was telling the truth.

“Webmind?” she said.

Matt replied, “What about it?” but the word hadn’t been addressed to him. Rather, it was an invitation for Webmind to stop her before she went further. What sailed across her vision in a series of Braille dots was,

“Okay,” Caitlin said, now to Matt, “but you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“That’s what keeping a secret means,” Matt said, smiling.

“Promise,” Caitlin said earnestly. “Promise it.”

“Okay, yes. I promise.”

He’s telling the truth,
Webmind supplied.

“Well,” she said at last, “that was me.”

“What was you?” Matt asked.

“Bringing forth Webmind. Bringing him into full consciousness. Helping him interact with the real world.”

Matt was making that deer-caught-in-headlights face.

“You don’t believe me,” Caitlin said.

“Wellll,” said Matt, “I mean, what are the two most amazing news stories of the last month? Sure, ‘World Wide Web Claims to be Conscious’ has got to be number one. But a good contender for number two must be, ‘Blind Girl Gains Sight.’ What are the chances that
both
of them would involve the same person?”

Caitlin smiled. If he was going to doubt her word, at least he was doing it based on statistics. “That
would
be a remarkable coincidence,” she said, “if they were unrelated events. But they’re not. See, when Dr. Kuroda—that’s the guy who gave me sight—when he wired this thing up” (she pulled the eyePod/BlackBerry combo out of her pocket so Matt could see it) “he made a mistake. When I’m getting data uploaded to it over the Web, it gets fed into my optic nerve, as well—and when
that’s
happening, I visualize the structure of the World Wide Web; my brain co-opted its visual centers to do that while I was blind. And, well, it was through this websight—that’s what we call it; websight, s-i-g-h-t—that I first detected what was going on in the background of the Web.”

She waited for his reply. If he
did
reject what she was saying again, well—she’d have to kick him in the shin!

But what he said was
perfect.
“I think I’d come out of hiding to be with you, too.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Caitlin said again.

“Of course not. Who
does
know that you’re involved?”

“My parents. Dr. Kuroda.”

“Ah.”

“The Canadian government. The American government.”

“God.”

“The Japanese government, too.”

“Wow.”

“And who knows who else? But so far, no one has said anything about me publicly.”

“Aren’t you afraid, you know, that somebody’s going to try to
do
something to you?”

“That’s why I’m not going outside just now—although I think my parents are overreacting. After all, I’m being watched.”

He lowered his voice. “By who?”

“By
him,”
she said. “By Webmind.” She pointed to her left eye.

Matt made what must have been a perplexed frown.

“He sees what I see,” Caitlin said. “There’s a little implant behind this eye that picks up the signals my retina is putting out. Those signals get copied to him.”

“Him?”

“Him. After all, if he were a girl, his name would be Webminda.”

He smiled, but it disappeared quickly. “So, so he can see me right now?”

“Yes.”

He paused, perhaps thinking, then raised his right hand, splayed out his thumb, and separated his remaining fingers into two groups of two.

“What’s that mean?” Caitlin asked.

Matt looked momentarily puzzled. “Oh! I keep forgetting. It’s the Vulcan salute. I’m telling Webmind to live long and prosper.”

Caitlin smiled. “I take it you like
Star Trek? ”

“I’d never seen the TV show until J.J. Abrams’s movie came out a few years ago, but I loved that movie, and so I downloaded the old episodes. The original versions had really cheesy effects, but later they put in CGI effects, and, yeah, I got hooked.”

“You and my dad are going to
so
get along,” she said.

They both fell silent for a moment, and Braille dots briefly obstructed part of her vision:
Tell him I say, “Peace and long life.”

“Webmind says, ‘Peace and long life.’ ”

“It can talk to you right now?”

“Text messages to my eye.”

“That is
so
cool,” Matt said.

“Yes, it is. And there’s no freaking fifteen-cents-per-text charge, either.”

“ ‘Peace and long life’—that’s the traditional response to the Vulcan greeting,” Matt said, in wonder. “How does it know that?”

“If it’s online, he knows about it. He’s read all of Wikipedia, among other things.”

“Wow,” said Matt, stunned. “My girlfriend knows Webmind.”

Caitlin felt her heart jump, and Matt, suddenly realizing what he’d said, brought a hand to his mouth. “Oh, my . . . um, I . . .”

She got up from her chair, and reached out with her two hands, taking his, and pulled him to his feet. “That’s okay,” Caitlin said. She closed her eyes and—

And waited.

After five seconds, she reopened them. “Matt? You’re supposed to kiss me now.”

His voice was low. “He’s watching.”

“Not if my eyes are closed, silly.”

“Oh!” he said. “Right.”

She closed her eyes again.

And Matt kissed her, gently, softly, wonderfully.

 

 

 

 

I’d expected people to suddenly become circumspect in email, to stop speaking so freely in instant messages, to back away from posting intimate details on Facebook and other social-networking sites. I’d expected teenage girls to stop flashing their thongs on
Justin.tv
, and married people to cease visiting
AshleyMadison.com
. But there was very little change on those fronts.

What did change, almost at once, was the amount of out-and-out illegal activity. Things that people would merely be embarrassed to have a wider circle know about continued pretty much unabated. But things that would actually ruin people’s lives to have exposed dropped off enormously. Websites hosting child pornography saw huge reductions in traffic, and racist websites had many users canceling their accounts.

I had read about this phenomenon, but it was fascinating to see it in action. A study published in 2006 had reported on the habits of forty-eight people at a company. In the break room, there was a kitty to pay, on the honor system, for coffee, tea, and milk. The researchers placed a picture above the cash box and changed it every week. In some weeks, the picture was of flowers; in others, of human eyes looking directly out at the observer. During those weeks in which eyes seemed to watch people as they took beverages, 2.76 times more money was put in the kitty than in the weeks during which flowers were displayed. And that dramatic change had occurred when the people
weren’t
actually being watched. Now that they actually
were,
even if I never did anything else, I expected an even more significant change.

Still, I wondered how long the effect would last: would it be a temporary alteration in behavior or a permanent one? If I did not act on the information I now possessed about individuals, at least occasionally, would they all go back to doing what they’d always done? Only time would tell, but for now, at least, it seemed the world
was
a slightly better place.

 

 

Matt ended up staying for dinner. It was the first time Caitlin had had a friend over for a meal since they’d moved here. Bashira needed halal food; if the Decters had kept kosher, she’d have managed well enough—but they didn’t.

Matt did indeed hit it off with Caitlin’s father, or at least as much as one could. Her dad wasn’t good at small talk, but he could lecture on technical topics; he
had
taught at the University of Texas for fifteen years, after all. And Matt was an attentive listener, and—except for once or twice—he remembered Caitlin’s instruction that he not look at her father. In fact, he took that, apparently, as
carte blanche
to stare at her all meal long, which seemed to amuse her mother.

At his request, Caitlin had muted the microphone on her eyePod, so that her father could talk freely without his voice being sent over the Web, and, of course, Caitlin wasn’t looking at him; if the video feed were intercepted, there’d be no lips to read.

“. . . and so,” her father said, “Dr. Kuroda proposed that what Caitlin was perceiving in the background of the Web were in fact cellular automata. Have you heard of Roger Penrose?”

“Sure,” said Matt, after he’d finished swallowing his peas. “He’s a mathematical physicist at Oxford. ‘Penrose tiling’ is named after him.”

Caitlin
had
to look at her dad to see his reaction to that. His features actually shifted, and although she’d never seen that configuration on anyone before, she thought it might mean,
Can we start planning the wedding now, please?
“Exactly,” he said. “And he has some very interesting notions that human consciousness is based on cellular automata. He thinks the cellular automata in our brains occur in microtubules, which are part of the cytoskeletons of cells. But Caitlin suggested”—and there
was
a slight change in his voice, something that might even have been pride!—“that the cellular automata underlying Webmind’s consciousness are mutant Internet packets that reset their own time-to-live counters . . .”