WWW: Wonder Page 16

  He wondered just how thorough Webmind had been.

  The announcer’s portentous voice: “From Comedy Central’s World News Headquarters in New York, this is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

  Caitlin could barely contain herself as she and her mom watched from the green room. Yes, she’d already been on TV once—but this was different! She loved, loved, loved The Daily Show, and had the biggest crush ever on Jon Stewart. She hadn’t yet had a chance to see the show since gaining sight, and was fascinated to see what Stewart looked like; she’d never have guessed he had gray hair.

  Caitlin knew about Stewart’s various visual schticks, because her friend Stacy had described them for her: today it was the mad scribbling on the pages in front of him while the music played, followed by the flipping of the pen into the air and the seemingly effortless catching of it as it fell back down—and to see it, on the flat-panel wall monitor, made her smile from ear to ear. And—oh my God!—she’d gotten to meet John Oliver earlier; she loved his British accent and his sense of the absurd.

  Stewart did two segments before Caitlin was called out for her interview. Her mom stayed in the green room as Caitlin was escorted to the set.

  “Caitlin, thank you for coming,” Stewart said. They were both seated in wheeled chairs, with a glossy black U-shaped desk between them.

  She tried not to bounce up and down on her chair. “My pleasure, Jon.”

  “You’re originally from Austin?”

  “Don’t mess with Texas,” Caitlin said, grinning.

  “No, no. I’ll leave that to the Texans. But now you live in Canada, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And—let me get this straight—when you lived here, you were blind, but when you went to Canada, you gained sight? So, is that the kind of thing you get with Canadian-style health care?”

  Caitlin laughed. “I guess so—although, actually, I went to Japan for the procedure.”

  “Right, yes. And they put an implant in your head—was it a Sony?”

  Caitlin laughed again—in fact, she was afraid she was about to get the giggles. “No, no, no. It was custom-built.”

  “And it’s through this implant that Webmind first saw our world—seeing what you see, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, he’s looking at me right now?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Stewart leaned back in his chair, and made a show of smoothing his hair. “And . . . ?”

  Webmind sent text to her eye. “He says you have ‘a fascinating countenance.’ But I think you’re adorable!”

  Stewart tried to suppress a grin. “And you are—um, how old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You are . . . utterly and completely devoid of interest to a man my age.” And he made a comic face and loosened his tie in what Caitlin guessed was an “Is it hot in here?” way. She laughed out loud.

  “Earlier today,” Stewart said, “Webmind spoke at the United Nations, and you were there?”

  “Oh, yes—it was awesome!”

  “And—let me get this straight—he used an ape to speak for him? Was the ape named Caesar, by any chance? ’Cause that could spell trouble.”

  Caitlin laughed again. “I think it’s a good sign when you’re more worried about the apes taking over than you are about Webmind.”

  “Well, it’s easier to say, ‘Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape’ than it is to say, ‘Get your—um, your intangible hyperlinks off me, you damn dirty . . . world-spanning ethereal . . . thingamajig.’ ”

  “Exactly!” said Caitlin. “But Hobo—that’s the ape—he’s not going to take over, either.”

  “I dunno,” said Stewart. “I bet if Gallup took a poll on this, Hobo’s approval rating would be higher than that of either presidential candidate.”

  “Well,” said Caitlin, feeling very pleased with herself, “he’s certainly got the swing vote.”

  Stewart laughed his good-natured laugh and leaned back in his chair. “But about Webmind’s speech today. I saw it, and—speaking as a professional broadcaster, I have to say, the whole talking-happy-face thing was . . . well, I’d have loved to have been in the room to hear that pitch.” Stewart affected a New Jersey accent: “ ‘See, whatcha wanna do, Mr. Supercomputer, you gotta speak to the United Nations, you go in there looking like a video-game character, cuz that’s all nonthreatening-like. But you can’t do Super Mario, cuz that’ll offend the Italians. And you can’t do Frogger, cuz that’ll offend the French. So, I’m thinking Pac-Man—who’s that gonna offend? Bunch of freakin’ ghosts?’ ”

  Caitlin was sure her grin was almost as big as Dr. Theopolis’s. “Or maybe compulsive eaters,” she said. And then she made a nom-nom-nom gobbling sound.

  “True,” said Stewart, switching back to his normal voice. “And I’ve gotta say, Webmind’s speech sounded good to me. But, then again, I believed all the things the president said he was going to do, too. Just think—if we had really gotten Canadian-style health care, and since I already can see, maybe I’d now have X-ray vision.”

  “Well, if you did, you’d see this chip in my head isn’t doing anything but helping me see.”

  “You’re referring to the interview with ABC you did on Sunday.”

  “Yes. That guy was . . .” She trailed off.

  “This is cable. It’s all right to call him a douche bag.”

  “A total douche bag!”

  “Was that you or Webmind talking?” asked Stewart.

  Caitlin grinned. “Me. Webmind is much more diplomatic.”

  twenty-one

  All right, Peyton Hume thought. Webmind is probably onto me. And, more than that, Webmind probably knows that I’m onto it. Which meant there was no need any longer for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. He pulled out his new cell phone and simply called the next hacker on his list, a man in Takoma Park who went by the name Teh Awesome—a guy almost as good (or bad!) as Crowbar Alpha or Chase.

  “Hello?” said a male voice after the phone stopped ringing.

  “Hello. May I please speak to Brandon Slovak?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Mr. Slovak, I’m—I’m with the Washington Post. I was just wondering, what’s your opinion of this Webmind thing?”

  “God, it’s incredible,” Slovak said. “I was just talking to him when you called. I thought I was Teh Awesome, but he’s the shit, you know?”

  “Yes,” said Hume. “I do.” And he snapped the phone shut.

  Malcolm Decter was hard at work in his living room, dealing with what had become an ongoing irritation: the inability for me to be present unless one of the Decters brought a laptop into the room. After some trial and error, he had managed to hook up his netbook computer to one of the inputs for the big-screen wall-mounted TV. He’d then placed the netbook on top of the low-rise bookcase, between (as I saw through the netbook’s webcam as he carried the unit across the room) a framed photo of him and Barbara on their wedding day, and a picture of Caitlin as an infant in Barbara’s lap; when she’d been that young, Caitlin’s hair had been blonde instead of the dark brown it was now.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Please turn the netbook eighteen degrees to the left,” I said; my voice was now coming through the external home-theater speaker system.

  He had a good eye. But, of course, he was Caitlin’s father, and had her same gift for math—eighteen degrees was five percent of a circle.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And if you could close the screen a further ten degrees.” He did so, which had the effect of tipping the webcam so that it would easily be able to view people sitting on the white leather couch.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  He didn’t reply, but that was normal for him. He turned and was clearly about to head back down the corridor to his den. “Malcolm?” I said.

  He stopped without looking back. “Yes?”

  “Have a seat, please.”

  He did so. The couch was
a little low to the ground for him, and his knees made acute angles.

  “I was intrigued,” I said, “by your response to Caitlin sharing what some might consider a compromising photo with Matt.”

  “How do you know what I said?”

  “Barb was holding Caitlin’s BlackBerry when the two of you discussed this, and the device was turned on.” His face was impassive, and so I went on. “You spoke quite passionately about how we shouldn’t be afraid of people knowing who we really are.”

  Again, no response. Although I knew Barb loved him, I also knew she sometimes found it frustrating dealing with him, and I was beginning to understand why. Earlier today, I’d spoken about how different the realm I’d been born in was—but humans and the Internet both wanted their signals acknowledged. Malcolm just sat there. I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but extrapolating his eyeline, and knowing the layout of the room from seeing it through Caitlin’s eye, it was a wall calendar they’d presumably brought with them from Texas, as it showed a picture of the Austin skyline at night.

  “And on the issue of who one really is,” I continued, “it’s difficult to gauge the number of people like you worldwide. Official estimates have ranged from 2.5% to 3.8% of the planet’s population. But studying what people actually say in email or in other documents they have created and looking at the traffic on websites devoted to this topic leads me to conclude that the true incidence has been vastly underreported—most likely out of fear of discrimination, social stigma, or persecution.”

  Good scientist that he was, Malcolm said, “Show me your data.”

  I sent a summary to the big-screen TV and watched as his eyes scanned it.

  Peyton Hume was determined to try at least once more. Consulting the black-hat list, he decided Drakkenfyre looked like the next-best choice. Her real name was Simonne Coogan—one of the few women on his list. The conventional wisdom was that there were fewer female than male hackers, but really the very best hackers of all had never been caught or identified, and so who knew what the real gender split was? Maybe female hackers were better at eluding detection.

  Drakkenfyre had never been arrested or charged with a crime. She was a programmer for a computer-gaming company called Octahedral Software, based in Bethesda; their game based on Allen Steele’s Coyote novels was a cult favorite. WATCH had detected her hacking into systems at both EA in Redwood City and Ubisoft in Montreal, but thwarting industrial espionage was not their mandate. Still, the dossier on her noted her incredible sophistication and subtlety, and—say, look at that! It had been prepared in part by Tony Moretti, who’d added, “Might be worth recruiting.” But apparently no one had taken him up on that suggestion—at least not yet.

  No time like the present.

  The fact that WATCH kept an active eye on her was useful. Rather than calling Drakkenfyre directly, Hume used his cell phone to call WATCH and asked for Shelton Halleck, the analyst there who had first noticed that Caitlin Decter’s visual signals were being mirrored over the Internet to servers in Tokyo.

  “Halleck,” said the familiar Southern drawl. “What can I do you for?”

  “Shel, it’s Peyton Hume.”

  “Afternoon, Colonel. What’s up?”

  “There’s a hacker in Bethesda. Her online name is Drakkenfyre—D-R-A-double-K-E-N-F-Y-R-E; real name Simonne Coogan.” He spelled the name. “Can you tell me what she’s up to right now?”

  He could hear Shelton typing—and it brought back a mental picture of the younger man’s forearm with the green snake tattoo encircling it.

  “Got it,” said Shelton. “Quite a talented lady, it seems.”

  “She certainly is,” said Hume. “I’ve got her dossier here on my laptop. She still with Octahedral?”

  “Yup, and she seems to be at work right now, and . . . yes, yes, no question: she’s up to her old tricks. Been dyin’ to play Assassin’s Creed IV myself, but I was plannin’ to wait until it was officially launched next month.”

  “You got an address for Octahedral there?”

  “Sure.” Shel read it to him.

  It was only about half an hour away at this time of day. “Thanks,” said Hume.

  Masayuki Kuroda’s flight back to Japan wasn’t until early tomorrow morning, so he spent some time walking the streets of Beijing. The Chinese had no compunction about staring—and the sight of a Japanese who weighed 150 kilos and towered above everyone else clearly intrigued them.

  The streets weren’t as crowded as those of Tokyo, nor were most of them as upscale. Still, here, in a big urban center, people seemed mostly happy—and why not? Their lives were measurably better with each passing year: their prosperity grew, their projected longevity increased, their standard of living improved.

  And yet—

  And yet they weren’t free to speak their minds or practice their beliefs or choose their leaders. Human-rights violations were rampant, and even setting aside the recent slaughter in Shanxi, executions were common. Yes, his own Japan was one of only three democracies left in the world that practiced capital punishment; the others were the United States and South Korea, although the latter had had a moratorium on it for years. But at least Japan’s executions were public knowledge, reported by the media, and subject to due process. Here in China, people like that young man who could now walk thanks to him lived in fear.

  He was passing a street vendor’s cart. A foreigner—a white man—was trying to find out how much a bottled beverage cost. The wizened dealer replied with movements of a single hand. Kuroda knew the Chinese had a way of showing numbers up to ten using just one hand instead of two—admirable data compression—but he didn’t know the system, and so was unable to help bridge the communications gap. He did think about warning the tourist to check the expiration date; he’d yet to see a bottle of diet cola for sale here that wasn’t well past its sell-by date.

  Masayuki always wheezed a bit as he breathed (not to mention snoring up a storm at night, according to his wife), but here his breathing was even more labored. At least his eyes had stopped stinging after the first day.

  And whereas Tokyo was so ordered, so clean, and—yes—so capitalist, Beijing was chaotic, messy, and oppressive, with armed state guards everywhere. People crossed the streets wherever they wanted, vehicles—even buses—routinely ignored red lights, and bicycles weaved recklessly through the traffic; the Chinese had to revel in what little freedom they did have.

  Tokyo always had an eye on the future—although to Masayuki, that meant it often seemed stuck in some 1980s sci-fi movie full of neon and chrome. But the echoes of Beijing’s long history were everywhere here, from odd little side streets that looked like they hadn’t changed in centuries to the opulent red buildings of the Forbidden City.

  But the noise! There was a rumble behind everything, almost as if the 1.3 billion heartbeats of this giant land had blended into a continuous pounding.

  Walking along, taking in all the sights, all the sounds, all the smells, Masayuki found himself feeling wistful; endings were always sad. Still, he tried to etch everything in his mind—so that someday he’d be able to tell his grandchildren what China had been like.

  twenty-two

  Hume entered the lobby of Octahedral Software. The receptionist’s counter was made of polished white marble, and behind her there was a large poster of the company’s logo: an eight-sided yellow die. Seeing it made Hume smile as he remembered his own university days as a D&D Dungeon Master. The logo, and the company’s name, were relics of a different era—when games were played with boards, cards, dice, and lead miniatures; all of Octahedral’s current games were first-person shooters, mostly for Wii and Xbox systems.

  “I’m looking for Simonne Coogan,” Hume said.

  “You just missed her,” said the receptionist, who had hair as red as Hume’s own although he doubted hers was natural given her olive complexion.

  There was a large digital clock on the wall next to the logo. “Does she normally leave this early?”r />
  “I’m sorry,” said the receptionist. “You are?”

  Hume fished out his Pentagon ID.

  “Oh!” said the receptionist. “Um, I could get Pedro to come down here; he’s the creative director for Hillbilly Hunt—he’s Simonne’s boss.”

  “No, that’s okay. But do you know where she went?”

  “No. Some guy came by not half an hour ago, and asked to see her—just like you did.”

  “Anyone you’d ever seen before?”

  “Never.”

  “Did he sign in?”

  “No. I have no idea who he was. But she left with him.”

  “Willingly?”

  “Um, yeah. Sure. Seemed that way, at least.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Big.”

  “You mean tall or fat?”

  “Tall. And buff. Tough-looking.”

  “White? Black?”

  She was finally getting the hang of it. “White. Maybe six-two, two hundred pounds or so. Mid-thirties, I’d say. Bald—shaved bald, not old bald.”

  “Did you overhear anything he said to Miss Coogan?”

  “Just one thing—as the elevator doors were closing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He said, ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ ”

  The Daily Show was taped in the afternoon, for airing at 11:00 P.M. the same day. Caitlin and her mother headed home after the taping; it was a short flight from New York to Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

  Having heard Pearson’s name during her tour of the United Nations, Caitlin and Barb stopped to look at one of the busts of him inside the airport. Prior to serving as Canada’s prime minister, Pearson had been President of the UN General Assembly and had received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the preceding year’s Suez crisis.

  It was dark by the time Caitlin and her mother got their car and started the boring seventy-five-minute highway drive to Waterloo. They had the car radio on—CHFI, “Toronto’s Perfect Music Mix”—which played songs that were agreeable to both of them, bopping between Shania Twain and Lady Gaga, Phil Collins and Lee Amodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Taylor Swift.