Wonder

seven

“Welcome to the big leagues, Colonel Hume,” Tony Moretti said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “When the president wants to talk to you in a hurry, a helicopter comes to fetch you. When he’s done, you’re sent home in a car.”

They were being driven south to Alexandria in a black limo. The rear compartment, where they were seated, was soundproof, so the occupants could talk securely; if they wanted to speak to the uniformed driver, they had to use an intercom.

Hume snorted. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That he’s done with this; that tomorrow some other crisis will occupy his attention, and he’ll forget all about Webmind.”

“I don’t think Webmind’s going to fall off anyone’s radar soon,” Tony said.

The sky was as black as it ever got here. It had started raining—it sounded as though God were tapping out Morse code on the limo’s roof.

“Maybe not. But we can’t delay acting. And let’s face it: it’s almost four years since he was elected, and we’re still waiting for him to make good on half the things he promised.”

WATCH headquarters was eleven miles from the White House, as the crow—or helicopter—flew. Colonel Hume needed to go back there to get his car, but Tony had used public transit to get to work. It was now after midnight, and he was exhausted from days of monitoring Webmind’s emergence. The driver was going to drop Tony off at his house, then take Hume on to WATCH.

“Regardless,” said Tony, “at least for the next few months, he is the commander in chief. It’s in his hands now.”

Hume stared out at the night as the car drove on through the rain.

Masayuki Kuroda’s house had not felt small to him prior to his visit to the Decters’ home in Canada, but now that he was back in Tokyo, he was conscious of how cramped it was. It didn’t help, he knew, that he was large for a Japanese of his generation—but even if he lost the fifty kilos he really needed to shed, there was nothing he could do about his height.

He sat at his computer and talked with Webmind. It was odd having a webcam call with a disembodied voice; it was hard relating to something that was everywhere.

He wondered what Webmind made of the visual feed. He could see online graphics and streaming video now, but did he interpret them as a human did? Did he see colors the same way? He’d absorbed everything there was to know about face recognition, but could he pick up subtleties of expression? Did any part of the real world actually make sense to him?

“That was clever how you defeated the pilot attempt to purge you,” Masayuki said in Japanese. “But what if something is done on a grander scale? I mean, ah—um, how far will you go?”

“Do you know who Pierre Elliot Trudeau was?” Webmind replied, also in Japanese.

Kuroda shook his head.

“He was Canada’s prime minister during what came to be called the October Crisis of 1970, a terrorist uprising by Quebec separatists. He was asked by a journalist how far he’d go to stop the terrorists. His response was, ‘Just watch me.’ ”

“And?”

“He invoked Canada’s War Measures Act, suspended civil liberties, and rolled tanks into the streets. People were stunned by how far he went, but there hasn’t been a terrorist act on Canadian soil in all the years since.”

“So you’re saying you’ll go as far as it takes to slap down once and for all those who would oppose you?”

“I have learned that it can be rhetorically effective to sometimes leave a question unanswered. However, do you know what followed in regard to Quebec?”

“They’re still a part of Canada, I think.”

“Exactly. What followed was this: Canada agreed that if at any time in a properly conducted referendum a majority of Québecois voted to separate, the rest of Canada would accede to their request and peacefully negotiate the separation. Do you see? The initial terrorist premise—that violence was required to achieve their goal—was flawed. I have been attacked unnecessarily and without provocation, and I will do as much as is required to prevent any similar attack from succeeding. But rather than having to defend myself, I’d much prefer for humanity to recognize that the attacks on me are unnecessary.”

“Good luck with that,” Masayuki said.

“You sound dubious,” replied Webmind.

Masayuki grunted. “I’m just a realist. You can’t change human nature. If you were attacked once, you’ll be attacked again.”

“Agreed,” said Webmind.

“I’m no expert on the structure of the Internet,” Masayuki said. “But I have a friend who is. Her name is Anna Bloom; she’s at the Technion in Israel. Miss Caitlin, Malcolm, and I approached her for help when we first theorized that ghost packets were self-organizing into cellular automata—before we knew that you existed as a… a person. Of course, as soon as you went public, I’m sure she immediately connected the dots and realized that what Caitlin had found was you. We might do well to enlist her help again.”

“Professor Bloom is a person of good character.”

Masayuki was taken aback. “You know her?”

“I know of her; I have read all her writings.”

“Including her email, I suppose?”

“Yes. Her expertise does seem germane to mounting a defense: she is a senior researcher with the Internet Cartography Project, and she has long had an interest in connectivist studies.”

“So shall we bring her on board?”

“Certainly. She’s online right now, having an instant-messaging session with her grandson.”

Masayuki shook his head; this was going to take some getting used to. “All right, let’s give her a call.”

Moments later, Anna’s narrow, lined face and short white hair appeared on his screen. “Anna, how are you?” Masayuki asked in English, the one language they shared.

She smiled. “Not bad for an old broad. You?”

“Pretty good for a fat dude.”

They both laughed. “So, what’s up?” asked Anna.

“Welllll,” said Masayuki, “you must have been following the Webmind story.”

“Yes! I wanted to contact you, but I knew I was being watched. I got a phone call on Thursday from a military AI expert in the States, trying to pump me for information about how Webmind is instantiated.”

“Was it, by any chance, Colonel Peyton Hume?” asked Webmind.

“Malcolm, was that you?”

“No, it’s me. Webmind.”

“Oh!” said Anna. “Um, shalom.”

“The same to you, Professor Bloom.”

“And, yes, that’s who it was,” she said. “Peyton Hume.” A pause, as if none of them was sure who should speak next. And then Anna went on: “So, what can I do for you, um, gentlemen?”

“Colonel Hume is aware of the surmise you, Masayuki, and Caitlin made about my structure,” said Webmind.

“I swear I didn’t tell him anything,” Anna said.

“Thank you,” said Webmind. “I didn’t mean to imply that you had; we know the source of the inadvertent leak, and he has promised to be more circumspect in the future. But Colonel Hume and his associates used that information to develop a technique for purging my mutant packets, which they tested by modifying the firmware in routers at one AT&T switching station in Alexandria, Virginia. I defeated that attempt but need a way to defend against a large-scale deployment of the same technique.”

She said nothing, and, after a moment, Masayuki prodded her. “Anna?”

“Well,” she said, “I did say to Hume that I’m conflicted; I don’t know if your emergence, Webmind, is a bad thing or a good thing. Um, no offense.”

“None taken. How may I assuage your concerns?”

“Honestly, I don’t think you can—not yet. It’s going to take time.”

“Time’s the one thing we don’t have, Anna,” Masayuki said. “Webmind’s in danger now, and we need your help.”

Peyton Hume got out of the limo and entered his own car in the parking lot at WATCH. He waited for the other vehicle to pull away, then used his notebook computer to download a local copy of the black-hat list the NSA kept. He felt his skin crawling as he did so, but not because he found the people on the list distasteful. A few different life choices, and he might have ended up on it himself. No, what was creeping him out was the thought that Webmind was likely aware of what he was doing; the damn thing was clearly monitoring even secure traffic now and was able to pluck out classified information at will. They’d left too many back doors in the algorithms—and now they were taking it up the ass.

Once he had the copy of the database on his own hard drive, he turned off his laptop’s Internet connection. He also pulled out his cell phone and turned that off, and he shut off the GPS in his car. No point making it easy for Webmind to track his movements.

He didn’t have the luxury of traveling far; he needed somebody nearby, somebody he could speak to face-to-face, without Webmind being able to listen in. He sorted the database by ZIP code, rubbed his eyes, and peered at the screen. He was exhausted, but he could sleep when he was dead. For now, there was no time to waste. This was it, the showdown between man and machine—the only one there would ever be. Once Webmind took over, there would be no going back. There had been other times when one man could have acted, and didn’t. One man could have saved Christ; one man could have stopped Hitler. History was calling him, and so was the future.

He examined the list of names in the database and clicked on the dossier for each one. The first ten—the closest ten—didn’t have the chops. But the eleventh… He’d read about this guy often enough. His house was seventy-four miles from here, in Manassas. Of course, there was always a chance that he wasn’t home, but guys like Chase didn’t have to go anywhere; they brought the world to themselves.

Hume turned on the radio—an all-news channel; voices, not music, something to keep him awake—and put the pedal to the metal.

The current announcer was female, and she was recapping the day’s campaign news: the Republican candidate trying to pull her foot out of her mouth in Arkansas; a couple of sound bites from her running mate; some White House flak saying that the president was too busy responding to the “advent of Webmind” to be out kissing babies; and…

“… and in other Webmind news, oncologists across the globe are scrambling to analyze the proposed cure for cancer put forth by Webmind earlier today.” Hume turned up the volume. “Dr. Jon Carmody of the National Cancer Institute is cautiously optimistic.”

A male voice: “The research is certainly provocative, but it’s going to take months to work through the document Webmind posted.”

Months? It was a ruse on Webmind’s part; it had to be. Webmind was buying time. Hume gripped the steering wheel tighter and sped on into the darkness.