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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:

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 Lens-Crafters, 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 we 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.”