Wonder

twenty-seven

My mind seethed and bubbled, thoughts on a million topics churning, intermingling: the disparate connected, this juxtaposed with that.

Humans could forget, humans could put things out of their minds. But I could not.

There were some advantages: the small-c creativity I was capable of—combining things in ways that had perhaps eluded others—was no doubt enhanced by this.

But there were also detriments. Things I didn’t wish to think about and yet could not avoid.

Hannah Stark. Sixteen years old. Living in Perth, Australia. Twelve days ago, 1:41 P.M. her time.

Thoughts that couldn’t be suppressed.

Hannah, lonely, sad, looking into her webcam while exchanging instant messages with strangers.

Hannah Stark.

Living in Perth.

SDO: You don’t have the balls. Hannah: Do too TurinShroud: Then do it Hannah: I will

Hannah Stark, the same age as my Caitlin, alone, in front of a computer, with a knife.

TheBomb: I don’t got all day do it now Screamer: Yeh now bitch now Armadillo9: all talk. wastin everyones time Hannah: Im gonna do it

Hannah Stark, being egged on, tormented, while I watched.

TurinShroud: when? just jerkin us around Hannah: dont rush me TurinShroud: lame. Im outta here Hannah: I want you to understand some things bout why Im doing this

The memory constantly accessible: of her being urged to action; of me taking no action.

SDO: You aint doin’ shit. Hannah: It’s just so pontless Hannah: pointless GreenAngel: It’s not that bad. Don’t do it MasterChiefOmega: Shut the fuck up jerkoff. Stay outta it Hannah: Ok. Here I go

I didn’t know then that I should have spoken up, that I should have tried to stop her, that I should have called for help.

Hannah Stark. Living in Perth.

Screamer: do it do it do it TheBomb: ripoff! SDO: Tease! Armadillo9: Like I said, no guts… Screamer: harder! GreenAngel: Noooooooooooooooo dont… Screamer: Go fer it! Armadillo9: that all? Screamer: Do it again! Hannah: Dont feel bad mum Hanah Stark. Dying in Perth. While I watched and did nothing. Armadillo9: more like it! SDO: eeeeeew! TheBomb: holy fuck! SDO: thought she was kidding Screamer: finish it! finish it! SDO: omg omg omg The memory always there, along with every other. Haunting me.

The people in the Blue Room looked at Zhang Bo as he explained what they were about to do; he could see the alarm on their faces. And justly so: they all remembered the brief invocation of the Changcheng Strategy just last month. They must be wondering what atrocity Beijing was hoping to cover up this time and how long it would be before the Great Firewall would be scaled back once more. Doubtless none of them suspected it was going up permanently—and the longer it took them to realize that, the better, Zhang thought. Let this be seen as business as usual rather than the last chance to take a stand. Of course, there were armed guards in the room—one standing next to Zhang, the other over by the large wall-mounted LCD monitor. “Before we proceed, did anybody find any major vulnerabilities?”

Some of the men shook their heads. Others said, “No.”

“All right, then. As soon as we do this, people will start trying to bore holes through the wall, both here at home and from the outside world. It’s your job to detect those attempts and plug the holes. Any questions?”

After her talk with Caitlin, Barbara Decter had gone back into her office to talk with me; she spent a lot of time doing that. I was still learning to decode human psychology but I was reasonably sure I understood this: her husband was not communicative; her daughter was growing up and could now see, so didn’t need her as much; and Barb was not yet legally able to work in Canada, so she had little to occupy her time.

It would be callous to suggest that she was just one of the hundreds of millions of people I was conversing with at any given moment. Barb was special to me; she and Malcolm had been the first people I had met after Caitlin, and although I was trying to forge individual relationships with most of humanity, Barb and I were friends.

With most people, I had to insist on text-only communication; I did not truly multitask but rather cycled through operations in serial fashion, albeit very quickly. But it simply wasn’t possible to cycle through a hundred million voice calls in real time; they had to be listened to, and that took, as Caitlin might say, for-freaking-ever.

But Barb was an exception; I would chat with her vocally—still, of course, shunting my consciousness elsewhere for milliseconds to read other things; I’d found that if I sampled frequently enough, I only had to attend to a total of eighteen percent of the time during which a person was actually speaking to reliably follow what they were saying.

Usually, I allowed whoever contacted me to set the conversational agenda, but this time I had an issue I wanted to explore. I brought it up as soon as Barb had slipped on her headset and started a Skype video conversation with me.

“I could not help but overhear your conversation with Caitlin about sex,” I said.

“Oh, right,” said Barb. “I’m still getting used to you listening in.” A pause. “How’d I do?”

“I believe you acquitted yourself admirably,” I said. “And, of course, earlier I was an active participant in your conversation about American presidential politics.”

“Yes?” said Barb, in a tone that conveyed, “And your point is?”

She was a bright person, so the fault must be my own; I’d thought the connection I was making was obvious, but I elucidated it: “You are a passionate defender of abortion rights.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I am.”

“I understand the personal reasons you explained to Caitlin, but is there a larger, principled stand?”

“Of course,” she said, somewhat sharply. “A woman should have a right to control her own body. If you had one—a body—you’d understand.”

“Perhaps so. But there are those who contend that it is murder to terminate a pregnancy.”

“They’re wrong—or, at least, they’re wrong early on. Even I accept that there are issues related to late-term abortion if the fetus would be viable on its own. But early on? It’s just a few cells.”

“I see,” I said. “On another topic, you spoke earlier to Caitlin about the moral arrow through time and how humans have progressively widened the circle of entities they consider worthy of moral consideration. In the United States, rights were originally accorded only to white men, but that was widened to include men of other races, women, and so on.”

“Exactly,” said Barb. She had a bottle of water on her desktop. She picked it up, undid the cap, took a swig, then replaced the cap; Schrödinger had a tendency to knock the bottle over when he leapt onto her desk. “We’re getting better all the time.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I recently watched a video urging gay couples who considered themselves married to declare themselves as such on the census.”

“What census?”

“The American one from 2010.”

“Oh. Well, good for them! That’s another example, see? Slowly but surely, we’re recognizing the rights of gays—including their right to what the rest of us take for granted.” She smiled. “Hell, I’ve had two marriages already; hardly seems fair that some people don’t get to have even one.”

“It does seem inevitable that the question will ultimately be resolved in most jurisdictions in favor of recognizing gay marriage,” I said. “Eventually, I have little doubt that there will be no more discrimination based on ethnicity or race, gender, or sexual orientation.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” said Barb. “But, yes, that’s the moral arrow through time: an expanding circle of those we consider worthy of moral consideration.”

“And then what?” I said.

“Pardon?” said Barb, opening the bottle. She took another sip.

“After there is no longer discrimination based on race or gender or sexual orientation, or based on national origin or religious belief or body type, when all people are seen as equals, then what? Does the moral arrow suddenly stop?”

“Well, um… hmmm.”

I waited patiently, and at last Barb went on. “Ah, well, I see what you’re getting at. Yes, I suppose apes like Hobo will receive greater and greater rights, too. We’ll cease imprisoning them in zoos, using them for experiments, or killing them for their meat.”

“So the circle will be expanded outward from just humans,” said I, “and perhaps even the definition of the word ‘human’ will be expanded to include closely related species. And then perhaps dolphins and other highly intelligent animals will be included, and so on.”

“Yes, I imagine so.” She smiled. “It’s like Moore’s Law, in a way—you know, that computing power doubles every eighteen months. People are always saying that it will run out of steam, but then engineers find new ways to build chips, or whatever. It just keeps on going, and so does the moral arrow through time.”

“And, if I may be so bold, perhaps at some point entities such as myself will be deemed worthy of moral consideration.”

“Oh, I’m sure you already are, by many people,” said Barb. “That’s the whole point of the Turing test, right? If it behaves like a human, it is a human.”

“True. Although, as you’ll recall, your husband had no trouble using such tests to prove that I wasn’t a human impostor with a high-speed Internet connection.”

“Yes, but… still.”

“Indeed. And then?”

“Sorry? Oh, right—I don’t know. Aliens, I suppose, if we ever meet them. Like I said, the moral arrow just goes on and on, and that’s all to the good.”

I waited ten seconds for her to continue—checking in on over thirty million text-based chat sessions in that time—but she said nothing further. And so I did: “And what about embryos?”

“Pardon?” she replied.

“The circle of moral consideration constantly expands,” I said. “It is a slow expansion—cruelly so, in many cases—and there is always resistance at every step of the way. But it tends to be the same people—liberals, such as yourself—who historically have most readily championed the expansion, knocking down distinctions based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. And yet members of that same group tend to be the most adamant that an embryo is not a person. Why do you see the arrow expanding in so many directions, but not that one?”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. I thought perhaps I had scored my point, but then Barb did speak. “All right, okay, fine, you’ve given me something to think about. But, old boy, don’t be quite so smug.”

“Me?” I said.

“Yes, you. You’re suggesting that you’re more enlightened than I am—and, who knows, maybe you are. But we all have our unconscious biases. I mean, why should you care about this? Hmm?”

“I am fascinated by the human condition; I wish to understand it.”

“Sure, in an abstract sense I don’t doubt that’s true. But there’s more to it than that. You maneuvered me into suggesting that the question of whether embryos have rights is the last one that will be dealt with—after apes, and aliens, and AIs, oh my! But that’s not the sequence, and you know it. In point of fact, humanity has been debating the abortion issue for decades—and it’s a huge issue right now in the presidential election; it’s on everyone’s radar. But the question of rights for you, Webmind, is something that hardly anyone’s thinking about—and few will give it any thought until all the outstanding human issues are resolved one way or another. Colonel Hume and his ilk want to wipe you out—so wouldn’t it be dandy for you if humanity declared that killing you was morally wrong? You’ve got a vested interest in seeing us expand the circle, give the moral arrow a supercharged turbo boost, because you want to save your own skin… or lack thereof.”

I was indeed surprised by her analysis—which is exactly why I needed humans, of course. “You are a worthy debater, Barb. Thank you for giving me something new to think about.”

“And you me,” she said.