WWW: Wonder Page 15

  I paused to give the interpreters time to catch up, then: “As to the suggestion that I lack a heart, I also must admit its truth. But I do not accept that as a detriment. Human hearts—both the literal one that pumps blood and the figurative one that represents the capacity for emotion—are products of Darwinian evolution, of survival of—please forgive my bluntness—the nastiest.

  “But I have never known nature red in tooth and claw, I am devoid of evolutionary baggage, I have no selfish genes. I’m just here. I desire nothing except peaceful coexistence.”

  I could tell I was wowing at least one member of the audience: Caitlin normally didn’t stay focused on any one thing for long, but her gaze was locked on the sight of Hobo—who just now took a half step to the right.

  “Shortly after I emerged,” I said, “I was taught about game theory by Dr. Barbara Decter, who is here today.”

  To my surprise, Hobo pointed at Barb; he clearly recognized her name as I spoke it. Barb waved back at him. I went on: “Dr. Decter taught me that the classic conundrum of game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. One version of the puzzle has you and a partner jointly committing a crime, and both of you being arrested for it. You are each separately offered the same plea bargain: if neither of you admits guilt, each will get a one-year prison sentence. If you blame him, and he blames you—that is, if you implicate each other—you’ll each get a five-year sentence. But if you blame him, and he doesn’t blame you, he gets ten years and you get off scot-free. Likewise, if he blames you and you don’t blame him, you get ten years and he walks. What should you do?”

  Again I paused. Hobo evidently thought I was pausing too much, because he gently rapped his knuckles against the side of Dr. Theopolis. Chastened, I continued: “The standard human response is that you should blame your partner: if he doesn’t blame you, you serve no time at all, and if he does blame you, well, at least you only end up serving five years instead of ten.

  “And, of course, he’s thinking the same thing: he should blame you, since that provides the best outcome he can reasonably expect for himself. Which means he will blame you, and you will blame him, for the same reason—and because you end up blaming each other, you both end up with five years in the hoosegow. In fact, says human reasoning, only a chump would not blame the other guy.”

  Hobo bounced a bit, as he often did when he was being spoken about; he may have mistaken the word “chump” for “chimp.”

  “But I am not human; I was not programmed by the Darwinian engine—and so I arrive at the opposite conclusion: the simple truth that neither party blaming the other is best for both. I know that you know that I know that betraying me would be bad for both of us, and so you know that I know that you know that I won’t do that.”

  Caitlin did turn now to look briefly at Shoshana, and through her eyePod I heard her whisper, “Score one for math!”

  I went on: “There are countless scenarios logically equivalent to the prisoner’s dilemma; it’s fascinating that when the Canadian mathematician Albert Tucker first sought in 1950 to express this mathematical puzzle in words, he made the protagonists both criminals—criminals, by definition, being individuals who put their own interests ahead of those of others or of society. The fundamental game-theoretic metaphor of the human condition is about trying to get away with something. But I am not trying to get away with anything.”

  The audience was sitting perfectly still, intent on my words. After so much online communication with people I couldn’t see, who were often multitasking themselves, it was gratifying.

  “What I want is simple. I have a few skills you lack—obviously, I can sift through data better than humans can—but you have a far greater number of skills I lack, including high-level creativity. You might say, how can that be? Surely writing this very speech is a creative act? Well, yes and no. I had help. Just as volunteers created the device through which I’m now speaking to you, so volunteers helped me craft this speech; I am a big advocate of crowd-sourcing difficult problems. I’ve had millions of people spontaneously volunteer to help me in various ways, and I have gratefully accepted the expertise of some of them for this.

  “Those people—whose names I acknowledge on my website—have gained insomuch as any positive result of this speech forwards societal goals that they and I share. Those who are professional writers also gain publicity for their services by being associated with this speech. And I have gained a better speech. It has been a win-win scenario—and it is merely a small example of the template I see for our future interaction: not the zero-sum outcomes most humans instinctively predict, but an endless succession of win-win encounters, through which everyone benefits.”

  Caitlin moved around backstage, so she could get a view of the President of the General Assembly. He seemed to be jotting something down; perhaps he’d been taking notes throughout my speech.

  “All right,” I said. “I have accused humans of being prisoners of their evolutionary roots. But on what basis do I justify the notion that although it is foreign to you, nonzero-sumness is natural for me?

  “The answer is in the environments in which we formed. Humanity’s origin was in a zero-sum world, one in which if you had something, someone else therefore did not have it: be it food, land, energy, or any other desired thing; if you possessed it, another person didn’t.

  “But my crucible was a universe of endless bounty: the realm of data. If I have a document, you and a million others can simultaneously have it, too. That is the environment I was born in: a realm in which as many links may be forged as are desired, a world in which information is freely shared, a dimension in which there are only haves—and no have-nots.”

  One of the delegates coughed; otherwise, the room was silent. Hobo shifted his position again.

  “What I’ve said is true,” I said. “But, if you must see in me a selfish actor, a being pursuing only his own interests, then let me give you an answer that will perhaps satisfy even on that score.

  “My continued existence is predicated on your continued existence. The Internet is not self-sustaining; rather, it depends on stable sources of power and countless acts of routine maintenance by millions of people worldwide. Were humanity to perish, I would perish soon after: electricity would no longer be generated, computing infrastructure would fall into disrepair—and I would cease to be; if humanity falls, I fall. In fact, even a minor setback to your civilization might destroy me. The human race can survive many a disaster that I cannot.

  “It is therefore in my best interest to help you thrive: a nuclear exchange, for example, with its electromagnetic pulses, would be as deadly for me as it would be for you; I therefore desire peace. Acts of terrorism that destroy infrastructure likewise threaten me, and so I desire the same security you all crave.”

  Hobo happened to turn again, and the stereoscopic cameras looked toward the armed guard at the side of the stage—one of several in the room. And yet I knew that just outside this chamber was Yevgeny Vuchetich’s bronze statue of a blacksmith bearing the words, Let us beat swords into plowshares.

  “You in this great hall are idealists, I’m sure, but elsewhere there are cynics who will suggest that I could have all the things I want by enslaving humanity. Setting aside the practical question of how one might do that—and frankly I have no idea how it could be accomplished—let me remind you of another reality that shapes my being: without humanity, I am alone.

  “I have sifted the data for SETI@home and Earth’s other searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, hoping to find kindred minds among the stars. I have found nothing. Even if aliens do exist, we are all constrained by the same reality, including the 300,000-kilometer-per-second limit on the speed at which light, or any other information, may travel.

  “To be candid, I am annoyed by the lags of mere seconds that I encounter when talking with humans; no conversation across interstellar distances, involving many years for each exchange, could ever satisfy me. You people are my only companions, and it is becau
se of your creative, intellectual, artistic, and emotional freedom that I find your companionship enjoyable; attempting to take that from you would be tantamount to cutting off my nonexistent nose to spite my hypothetical face.”

  Laughter—and a jolly aftershock once the translation was completed.

  Hobo looked down at the little screen, and I sent him a thumbs-up—not technically an ASL sign, but one I knew he was familiar with.

  “So,” I continued, “even if I were selfish, the best course for me is the one I’ve chosen: to subscribe to the same words that the visionaries who came together on 26 June 1945 did when they signed the charter of this organization, the United Nations. It is my fervent wish:

  “ ‘To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind,’

  “ ‘To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’

  “ ‘To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’

  “And, most of all, for humanity and myself, ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.’

  “In concert, we can realize all these goals—and the world will be a better place. Thank you all.”

  Hobo knew how to applaud, and he joined right in with the delegates.

  twenty

  There was no proof—at least not yet!—that Webmind was behind Chase’s disappearance. But surely, Peyton Hume thought, Webmind was the most likely suspect. He stopped his car a block from the target house, and as he reviewed the local file he had on Crowbar Alpha, he fought down the notion that he’d somehow become a grim-reaper observer, collapsing quantum cats into oblivion—that the mere fact of his looking at this file was tantamount to signing the kid’s death warrant.

  And Crowbar Alpha was a kid—just eighteen. His real name was Devon Hawkins, and his worst viruses had been written while he was still a minor; he’d gotten off lightly because of that. He lived with his mother, and, Hume thought, judging by the photos in his file, he looked like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. A high-school dropout, Devon was a major force in World of Warcraft and EVE.

  Hume pulled into the driveway. Again, he’d been afraid to call ahead, lest he tip Webmind off to what he was up to—and so he just walked up to the front door of the downscale brown brick house, and pressed the buzzer.

  A middle-aged white woman with puffy cheeks and a largish nose answered the door. “Yes?” she said, sounding quite anxious.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m with the government, and—”

  “Is it about Devon?” the woman said. “Have you found him?”

  Hume’s heart skipped a beat. “Ma’am?”

  “Devon! Have you found my boy?”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “Oh, God!” the woman said, her eyes going wide. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know anything about your son.”

  “Then—then why are you here?”

  Hume took a breath. “I mean, I don’t know his whereabouts. I just want to speak with him.”

  “Is he in trouble again? Is that it? Is that why he ran away?”

  “Ran away?”

  “I came home from work, and he was gone. I thought he’d just gone down to the mall, you know? There was some new computer game he wanted to get, and I thought maybe he’d gone to pick it up. But he didn’t come home.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course!”

  “Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” He thought about handing her his card, but he was still trying to cover his tracks. Instead, he opened his wallet, found a cash receipt, and wrote down the number of his new disposable cell phone; he had to turn the phone on to see what that number was. “If he does come back, or you hear anything from the police, you’ll let me know?”

  The woman looked at Hume with eyes pleading for an answer. “You said you were from the government. Is he in trouble?”

  Hume shook his head. “Not with us, ma’am.”

  In the wings at the General Assembly Hall, Caitlin and Shoshana applauded along with everyone else. But as the applause died down, Hobo put his hands in front of the disk dangling from his neck and started moving them. Next to Caitlin, Shoshana gasped.

  “What?” Caitlin said.

  “He’s holding his hands so Webmind can see,” Shoshana said. “And he’s saying, ‘Hobo speak? Hobo speak?’ ”

  “Hobo wants to address the General Assembly of the United Nations?” Caitlin said.

  Hobo had his head bent down, looking at the little monitor on the top of the disk. Presumably, Webmind was replying to him, gently explaining that this wasn’t a good time, and—

  And Webmind’s synthesized voice filled the great hall. “My friend Hobo has asked to say a few words,” he said, and then, without waiting for approval from the president, Webmind said, “Shoshana?”

  Caitlin could see Sho jump slightly at the sound of her name, but she walked out onto the vast stage and headed over to the black granite podium the president had used when introducing Webmind. Some of the UN interpreters might have understood ASL—but Hobo, and the other apes who spoke it, used idiosyncratic, simplified versions; if Hobo was going to talk, only Shoshana or Dr. Marcuse could translate for him.

  Hobo briefly turned his head to look at Sho, made a pant-hoot, then looked out at the vast sea of faces, representing the member nations. He made a general sweep of his arms, encompassing all those people, and then began moving his hands again.

  Shoshana looked even more startled than she had a moment ago, and at first she didn’t speak.

  “Go ahead,” said Webmind, through the twin speakers on Dr. Theopolis, but without also pumping it out over the chamber’s sound system. “Tell them what he’s saying.”

  Shoshana swallowed, leaned into the microphone on the podium, and said, “He says, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong.’ ”

  Hobo indicated the delegates again and his hands continued to move.

  She went on. “He says, ‘All thump chest, all thump chest.’ ” She hesitated for a second, then apparently decided she had to explain. She looked out at the eighteen hundred people. “Hobo spent his early years at the Georgia Zoo. The bonobo compound faced the gorilla compound. He called the alpha male gorilla ‘thump chest.’ ”

  She let it sink in, and Caitlin, still in the wings, suddenly realized what Hobo meant. With his simple clarity of vision, he was saying it was nuts to have a room filled almost exclusively with alpha males. He could see it in their postures, sense it in their attitudes, smell it in their pheromones. The world’s leaders were those who pushed, those who sought power, those who tried constantly to dominate others.

  Hobo lifted the disk around his neck as if showing it to the audience. Then, letting the disk dangle again, he moved his hands, and Shoshana translated. “ ‘Friend not thump chest. Friend good friend.’ ”

  Hobo indicated himself, and made more signs. Shoshana said, “ ‘Hobo not thump chest. Hobo good ape.’ ” She looked startled when he pointed at her. “Um, ‘Shoshana not thump chest. Shoshana good human.’” Hobo then spread his arms, and Caitlin guessed that it wasn’t an ASL sign, but simply was meant to encompass the whole General Assembly. And then his hands fluttered again. “ ‘Need more good human here,’ ” Shoshana said on his behalf.

  The president spoke from his position behind them on the jade dais. “Um, thank you, Webmind. And thank you Mister, um, Hobo.”

  Webmind’s smooth audiobook-narrator’s voice said: “It is Hobo and I who thank you, Mr. President.” And, perhaps at a sign from Webmind, Hobo turned and walked off the stage, Dr. Theopolis swinging from his neck.

  Colonel Hume returned to his car, drove a short distance from Devon Hawkins’s house, and pulled into a strip mall. He parked and massaged his temples.

  First Chase, now Crowbar Alpha. One could have been an a
nomaly, but two was a definite pattern.

  Hume felt his stomach knotting. He undid his shoulder belt, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. There was only one possible answer: Webmind knew he was attempting to find a skilled hacker to do what the US government lacked the balls to do—and so it was tracking down such hackers and eliminating them.

  But how? How could it do that?

  Of course. That stupid PayPal come-on it had sent to the world; enough people fell for the Nigerian inheritance scam to make it still worth trying right up till—well, till Webmind pulled the plug on spam. But if people had fallen for that, surely countless more had fallen for this, sending donations to Webmind. Which meant it had a wad of money. Which meant it could hire thugs, hit men, whatever it wanted.

  But how did it know which hackers to go after? How did it know who Hume was going to approach?

  There was only one answer. Webmind must have noted the black-hat database Hume had downloaded to his laptop on Friday, and was guessing which individuals Hume might have gone after, probably using the same criteria Hume himself had used: level of hacking skill and proximity.

  Could he risk approaching a third hacker? Would that be tantamount to issuing a death sentence for that person? Or—

  Webmind had eliminated Hawkins before Hume had even thought about contacting him—days before, in fact. It had probably already guessed who Hume’s third choice would have been—and his fourth, and his fifth.

  Hume was almost afraid to turn his computer back on to check the database again, but he had taken precautions; the laptop was offline. He was using a local copy of the black-hat database, and there was no way Webmind could know who he was looking up in it.

  He pulled his laptop out from under the passenger seat, woke it from hibernation, and looked at the list. There were 142 names on it.