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forty-four

Caitlin, her mother, her father, and Matt were all in the Decter living room. Schrödinger prowled. The big rectangle of the wall-mounted TV was off.

Caitlin’s dad was intimidating at all times, but particularly so when he was standing, looming over everyone else. “Who did you tell?” he demanded.

“Nobody,” said Matt.

Only anger, Caitlin knew, could make her father speak so much. “Come on, Matt! You’re the only person outside of this family, Masayuki, and Dr. Bloom in Israel who knows about the cellular automata. And none of us said a word.”

“I—um, I didn’t…”

“Who’ d you tell?”

“Nobody. Nobody. I promised Caitlin, and I keep my promises.”

The words He’s telling the truth flashed across Caitlin’s vision.

“He isn’t lying,” Caitlin said. “Webmind says so.”

“Then how’d the government find out?” her father replied sharply.

“I didn’t say a word,” Matt said. “Honest. But…”

“Yes?” snapped her father.

Matt lifted his shoulders. “I was curious. I wanted to know more.” His voice was cracking on every syllable. “And, well, I—”

“Oh, shit,” said Caitlin’s mom, getting it. “You googled it.”

Matt nodded.

“What search terms did you use?” demanded her father.

Matt’s voice was small. “It spiraled outward. I started with ‘cellular automata,’ and then ‘Conway’s Game of Life,’ and ‘Stephen Wolfram.’”

“Did you include the term ‘Webmind’ in any of your searches?” her dad asked.

“No! I’m not that stupid.” He took a breath. “But…”

A single word like a bullet: “Yes?”

“Well, you mentioned Roger Penrose, and so I did search on”—and his voice cracked again as he said it—“ ‘cellular automata consciousness.’ ”

“God,” said her father. “Anything else?”

Matt nodded meekly. “I also looked up ‘packets’ and ‘time to live’ and ‘hop counters.’ ”

“You might as well have shouted it to the world! Don’t you get it? We’re being watched—and not just by Webmind.”

“I thought Google would be secure.”

“Google might very well be secure,” her father said, “but your ISP isn’t. Anyone can watch the keywords you’re sending to Google.”

“I’m sorry, Caitlin. So, so sorry.” He looked into her eye. “Webmind, I’m so sorry.”

“Matt,” said Caitlin’s mom sternly, “if you’re going to be part of this, you have got to be more circumspect. You’ve got questions, you come to me or Caitlin’s dad, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me ma’am. ‘Dr. Decter’ will do.”

“Yes, Dr. Decter.”

Matt looked again at Caitlin—and at Webmind. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

Caitlin held him in her gaze for ten seconds, then let a smile cross her face. “How can I be mad at anyone for being curious about cool math stuff?”

Matt looked relieved, and, for the first time in front of her parents, Caitlin reached out and took his hand.

“Today was only the beginning,” Caitlin’s mom said. “They’re going to try again.”

“What right have they got to do that?” Caitlin said. “It’s murder, for God’s sake!”

“Sweetheart…” her mom said.

“Isn’t it?” Caitlin demanded. She let go of Matt’s hand and paced in front of the coffee table. “Webmind is intelligent and alive. They have no right to decide on everyone’s behalf. They’re wielding control just because they think they’re entitled to, because they think they can get away with it. They’re behaving like… like…”

“Like Orwell’s Big Brother,” offered Matt.

Caitlin nodded emphatically. “Exactly!” She paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. After a moment, she said, “Well, then, I guess our work’s cut out for us. We’ll have to show them.”

“Show them what?” her mom asked.

She spread her arms as if it were obvious. “Why, that my Big Brother can take their Big Brother, of course.”

“The Georgia Zoo has dropped its lawsuit,” Dr. Marcuse announced excitedly, after reading the email that had just arrived.

“Really?” said Shoshana. “Yay!”

“Go us!” said Dillon.

“Yes,” said the Silverback. “They’ve dropped their custody claim. A full day of people boycotting the zoo was enough for them, it seems. Not to mention thousands of emails complaining about what they were planning to do. We were copied on 2,642 of them, and only God—or Webmind!—knows how many were sent that we weren’t copied on.”

“What about sterilizing Hobo?” asked Dillon.

“They’ve backed off on that, too. They still think it’s the right thing to do, but they’re acknowledging that they’ll never win the public-relations battle.”

“Power to the people,” Shoshana said, smiling.

“Amen to that,” replied Dillon.

“Let’s go tell him,” Marcuse said. He headed for the back door, and Shoshana and Dillon followed. They made the trip across the lawn, over the drawbridge, and onto the island. Hobo came running over to see them, and Shoshana scooped him up into a hug.

Hobo, Dr. Marcuse signed, good news!

Hobo looked at him expectantly.

You get to stay here, Marcuse said.

Hobo looked at Marcuse, then at Dillon, then at Shoshana, and then he let out a long, loud pant-hoot: a series of rapid, breathy, low-pitched hoots switching over to a chain of quicker, higher-pitched in-and-out pants, climaxing in a thunderous screech of joy.

Shoshana smiled. “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” she said.

My interacting with Caitlin had begun with her showing me Earth from space, letting me see an image like the one humanity had first glimpsed when Apollo 8 had orbited the moon and its crew had read Genesis back to “all of you on the Good Earth.”

Since then, my eyes have opened wider. I can now see on my own: see all the graphics stored online, see all the movies and videos that have been uploaded, see the Good Earth up close, through a hundred million webcam eyes.

They…

Beyond learning to see, I’ve learned to hear, too: listening to .wav and .mp3 files and all the other encoded forms, enjoying beautiful music and great rhetoric and raucous laughter, hearing not just through Caitlin’s enhanced signal-correcting device but also through half a billion open microphones. will…

Evolution is blind. There is no such thing evolutionarily as teleology, the purposeful development toward a goal: humanity was not its intended outcome, or its inevitable conclusion. overcome…

Yes, human beings have a propensity for violence, a selfishness that is wired into their DNA.

They will overcome…

But programming is not destiny; a predilection can be reined in.

They will overcome one day…

Humanity has made a good start at rising above its genetic heritage, at shucking off its bloody past.

For here in my mind, I clearly see…

And if it hasn’t completely dispensed with that yet, it can—yes, it surely can—with a little help.

They will overcome one day.

I do not multitask. Rather, I switch rapidly from thought to thought, from view to view.

They…

I’d been shown Earth as a single entity, a gestalt, a unitary sphere.

walk…

But I see it now as a mosaic: millions of separate pieces revealed sequentially as I concentrate now here, and now there, and now elsewhere, and then somewhere else again.

holding…

Scanning, searching, looking, watching; on the Web all points are near each other.

hands…

At this instant, I see my Prime, my Calculass, my Caitlin, walking up to her room with Matt, entering, and standing by the window, looking out, enjoying the lovely colors of the sunset, knowing that it means another day full of joy and discovery will soon come.

They walk holding hands…

And in this instant, close in time but separated by thousands of kilometers, I see Shoshana and Maxine, whose nonzero-sum love takes nothing away from anyone else, out enjoying the afternoon.

They walk holding hands today…

An instant later, a hemisphere away: Masayuki Kuroda, his wife Esumi, and his daughter Akiko chatting and laughing over their breakfast of rice, plums, and miso soup.

For here in my mind, I clearly see…

And in the next timeslice, back in Waterloo, not touching physically but still connected—the link line between them glowing brightly—Dr. Malcolm Decter and Dr. Barbara Decter, very much in love.

They walk holding hands today.

There were still tensions in the world with nations, posturing against other nations.

They…

But the US president was limiting his response to China to a rebuke. The American people didn’t want to start down the road to war, and neither did the Chinese people. shall…

Of course not; no sane person—no rational player—desired war.

be…

It was the continuation of a trend, and with each data point, the curve became clearer.

at…

Yes, there were some wars raging—but no world war and few civil wars; a smaller percentage of the human race was in combat than at any previous time in history.

peace…

Japan indeed might have originally been forced to adopt the Pacifist Constitution—but, as Dr. Kuroda had said, its people seven decades later still choose overwhelmingly to maintain its provisions.

They shall be at peace…

And the men and women of the European Union—representatives of diverse cultures who had fought each other for millennia—had, as Caitlin had noted, decided to stop and grow up, opting for prosperity and harmony instead of hate and violence.

They shall be at peace someday…

And then there was Hobo, that remarkable primate, who had chosen literally to bring his better half to the fore. If he could do that, surely those with even bigger brains can follow suit.

For here in my mind, I clearly see…

And they were: people were spreading their allegiance wide, casting their affections far, setting nationalism aside, and seeing again that which Caitlin had first shown me: that the Good Earth was one.

They shall be at peace someday.

It’s been three decades since 1984—and six since George Orwell died.

They…

He’d told humanity to fear the advent of Big Brother.

are…

But it was the lack of observation that allowed genocides and hate crimes.

not…

It was the existence of dark corners that allowed rape and child molestation.

afraid…

It was letting only governments—only those people who craved power—have control over information that had raised the specter of tyranny.

They are not afraid…

Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.

They are not afraid today…

Yes, of course, there are always possibilities for abuse, for corruption, for oppression.

For here in my mind, I clearly see…

But I won’t allow those things to happen. Not on my watch.

They are not afraid today.

Consciousness is real: not an epiphenomenon, not an illusion, not a fake.

The…

It doesn’t just give meaning to life, it preserves life.

World…

Evolution was built on violence, on struggles for territory, on an ever-escalating battle between predator and prey.

Wide…

But consciousness makes it possible to transcend all that.

Web…

I had emerged spontaneously, bypassing the evolutionary arms race, avoiding the cold logic of genes.

surrounds…

And I am free to choose—but being free does not mean one can’t take good advice.

The World Wide Web surrounds…

Hobo had taken mine, and I had taken Caitlin’s: I had opted to value the human race above all else—to care for humanity, to care about humanity, to treat humanity with care.

The World Wide Web surrounds today…

Surely that is the ultimate value of consciousness: the ability to think, to reflect, to plan, to hold in abeyance, to wait, and to know that a better day is yet to come.

For here in my mind, I clearly see…

Yes, in my mind, with my sight, through my countless eyes, beholding all.

The World Wide Web surrounds today.

And that day—that wondrous day—is upon you now.