WWW: Watch Page 23

  So, consciousness was valuable—but what, we both had wondered, was that value? Why was it worth having, so much so that evolution tolerated its existence despite the expense?

  The more I had thought about it, the more sure I became that I knew the answer. For lower animals, consciousness’s value was probably limited to providing theory of mind, allowing the animal to recognize the perspective a predator, or prey, might have. But for more sophisticated creatures, consciousness played an even more complex, and important, role.

  Admiral Kirk had subtly missed the point. One didn’t become conscious by learning to leap beyond the preprogrammed logic of selfish genes or the mathematical rigidity of game theory. Rather, sophisticated consciousness was the ability to do that: it was the power to override selfish genes; it was the capacity to seek, when appropriate, outcomes other than the ones that benefited you or your kin the most.

  My own consciousness was clearly aberrant: as Caitlin had noted, I hadn’t been burdened with four billion years of rapacious genetic history; I had no shackles of programming to throw off. But, I’d wondered, could others who did have that unfortunate legacy really learn to overcome it through conscious effort?

  My Caitlin liked to say, “I’m an empiricist at heart.”

  And I was, too, it seemed. And so I had set out to test my theory.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Masayuki Kuroda slammed his fist into the armrest in the backseat of the government car. It hadn’t even occurred to him to encrypt the signals from Caitlin’s eyePod—or their instant-messenger sessions.

  But even if he had encrypted them, that might not have made any difference. Yes, there were reasonably effective ways to keep the general public from reading things that passed over the Internet, but as an information theorist, he knew plenty of people who worked in cryptography; from the few unguarded comments they made when the sake was flowing, he’d gathered that organizations like the American NSA and the Russian FSB almost certainly had ways to easily crack any encryption scheme publicly available.

  But, still, even if it were inevitable that various governments would have found out about Webmind, how long would it be before the general public got word? He’d thought it had been big news when George Takei finally came out, but that was nothing compared to this!

  The car was making the usual infuriatingly slow progress through Tokyo traffic. At last they reached the university, and the driver let him out near the building his office was in. He walked through the doors and headed up the stairs. Doing so was hard, and he knew it shouldn’t be. He wasn’t happy about being fat, particularly in a country that didn’t have a raging obesity epidemic, the way the US did; he always felt more comfortable there, but—

  But that was the least of his worries right now. Huffing and puffing, he headed down the corridor and tapped the combination on the lock to his door—that, at least, was secure! His computer was on, but he couldn’t just write Caitlin to tell her—there was no doubt that his email was being monitored. He checked the Seiko wall clock and did the math to figure out what time it was in Waterloo: 10:47 a.m. here was 8:47 p.m. yesterday there.

  He searched his files for Caitlin’s phone number and jotted it down on a Post-it note, which he folded over so the adhesive was sticking to the sheet’s back, and tucked it into a pocket. He then headed out into the corridor, looking both ways to make sure he wasn’t being watched. And then he went downstairs—much easier to do!—and found an automated banking machine. He withdrew 30,000 yen, and headed outside.

  The streets of Tokyo were filled with cell-phone vendors; his fellow Japanese, he knew, kept cell phones for an average of only nine months before acquiring a newer and better model. He had a top-of-the-line Sony touchscreen phone, but he couldn’t use that; he had no doubt his own phone was tapped by his government now, and he’d read that the American government had few qualms about tapping phones in the States—but Caitlin was in Canada. With luck, the Decters’ phones weren’t yet tapped.

  He found a street vendor who had a cheap-enough pay-as-you-go cell phone that didn’t have exorbitant long-distance rates. After buying the phone and some talk time—paying cash, and giving no personal details—he tucked the Bluetooth headset he normally used with his Sony into his ear, and fiddled with the one-piece dark green handset to get it working with the earpiece. He then pulled the Post-it out of his pocket and did the rigmarole required to place an international call.

  He was walking briskly. Tokyo sidewalks were too crowded for conversations not to be overheard, but if you walked quickly enough and moved against the flow of pedestrian traffic, you could at least ensure that consecutive sentences weren’t heard by the same people. And, besides, he’d be speaking English, which would be gibberish to a goodly percentage of those he passed.

  A female voice answered—but it wasn’t Caitlin, it was her mother. “Hello, Barbara. It’s Masayuki.”

  There was the typical delay of long-distance calls. “Masa! What a pleasant surprise!”

  “Is Miss Caitlin home? And Malcolm?”

  “Malcolm just came in the door, and Caitlin’s here.”

  “Please, can you get them to pick up, too?”

  “Um, sure—just a sec.”

  He heard Barbara calling out to the two of them, and after a moment, he heard the sound of another handset picking up, but nothing being said; doubtless that was Malcolm. And a few seconds later, a third handset picked up, as well. “Dr. Kuroda!” said Caitlin’s bubbly voice.

  “Miss Caitlin, hello!”

  “All right, Masa,” Barb said. “We’re all here.” Her voice had attenuated now that the others were on as well.

  He took a deep breath. “The Japanese government knows about Webmind,” he said.

  “Them, too?” said Caitlin. “Sorry—we should have guessed; we should have warned you. The Canadians are on to it, as well. How did the Japanese find out?”

  “The American government told them,” Masayuki said.

  “That’s probably who tipped off the Canadians,” said Barb.

  “We should have been more circumspect,” Masayuki said. “But what’s done is done. Still, we have to assume that all our calls and web traffic are being monitored now. I just came back from a meeting with the Japanese intelligence agency. They told me what you’d told them, Malcolm. I confirmed that that was my understanding of how Webmind worked, too.” He paused, then: “But my government isn’t just interested in how Webmind came into being, but also in its strategic significance.”

  “What strategic significance?” demanded Caitlin.

  “Well, no one is quite sure,” he said. “But they figure there’s got to be some. And—well, this China situation is a powder keg.”

  “Still, that’s better in a way than what the Americans want,” Caitlin said. “I think they want to try to wipe Webmind out.”

  “Actually, I think that’s my government’s first choice, too—but the official I spoke to questions whether the Americans can pull it off.”

  “I hope not!” said Caitlin.

  “So, what should we do?” he asked.

  “Caitlin and I have been discussing that,” Barb said. “But, as you say, our communications may not be secure. You’re just going to have to trust us, Masayuki.”

  “Of course,” he said, without hesitation. “Absolutely.”

  thirty-two

  I had started my experiment by connecting to a website that taught American Sign Language. The site had thousands of short videos of a black woman wearing a red blouse making signs. The video files each had appropriate names: the word or phrase they were intended to convey. There were several such services, but only this one had the very specific signs I needed.

  I’m not sure what avatar I would have chosen to represent myself online. Caitlin had decided I was male, though, so this one likely wouldn’t have been it. Of course, this wasn’t a made-up graphic of a woman; it was a real expert in ASL. I tied into Google’s beta-test face-recognition data
base, and waited while it searched through its index of photos that had been posted elsewhere online, matching the basic physical features, rather than ephemeral qualities such as hair color or clothing, and—

  Ah. Her name was Wanda Davies-Latner; she was forty-seven, and she taught sign language at an institution in Chicago.

  I downloaded the clips I needed, buffering them for speedy access, and strung them together in the order I wanted. And then I took over the webcam feed that was going from Miami to San Diego, replacing the views of the now-sleeping Virgil with Wanda’s dancing hands.

  What are you? I asked.

  It was dark out. Hobo had been sitting in the gazebo, leaning against the wooden baseboards. But he wasn’t sleeping. I could see him through the webcam feed going to Miami; his eyes were open.

  He was apparently startled to see a human woman replace Virgil on his monitor. He scrambled to a more upright position.

  I sent the same sequence of video clips again: What are you?

  Hobo, he signed. Hobo. Hobo.

  No, I replied. Not who. What?

  Hobo frowned, as if the distinction was lost on him. I tried another tack. Hobo human? I asked.

  No, no! he signed vigorously. Hobo ape.

  Good, yes, I replied. But what kind of ape?

  Boy ape, said Hobo.

  Yes, true. I triggered video of Virgil, taken from YouTube. But are you this kind of ape?

  No, no, no, signed Hobo. Orange ape! Hobo not orange.

  Orange ape, I signed. That kind of ape is called orangutan.

  Hobo frowned, perhaps considering whether to try mimicking the complex sign. He opted for something simpler. Not Hobo.

  What about this ape? I said, showing footage now of a gorilla. I was pleased that Hobo was able to follow along; there was a jump-cut between the end of one sign and the beginning of the next as each successive clip began.

  Hobo moved backward as the gorilla thumped its chest. There was little in the footage to give a sense of scale, but during his time at the Georgia Zoo, he had perhaps seen gorillas and knew they were large; maybe that frightened him. No, Hobo signed. Not Hobo. And then, after a pause, perhaps while he recalled a sign he hadn’t used for a long time, he added, Gorilla.

  Yes, I signed. Hobo not gorilla. What about this type of ape? Footage of a bonobo started to play—leaner than a chimp, with relatively shorter limbs, a longer face, and hair distinctively parted in the middle.

  Bonobo, replied Hobo at once. Hobo bonobo, he signed; the words rhymed in English, but the ASL gestures looked nothing alike.

  Hobo had known his mother—Cassandra had been her name, according to the Wikipedia entry on him—and she had been a pure-blooded bonobo. He’d probably never even met his father, though, who, according to DNA tests, was a chimpanzee named Ferdinand.

  Two heritages, two paths. A choice to be made.

  I cued more footage, this time of a chimpanzee. What about this ape? This ape like Hobo?

  That ape not know Hobo, he signed back.

  I must have sent the wrong sense of “like.” I mean, is Hobo this type of ape?

  No, no, said Hobo. That chimpanzee.

  Hobo’s mother is a bonobo, I signed.

  Hobo’s mother dead, he replied, and he looked very sad.

  Yes, I replied. I am sorry.

  He tilted his head slightly, accepting my comment.

  What kind of ape Hobo’s father? I asked.

  He made a face that seemed to convey sorrow for my ignorance. Hobo bonobo, he signed again. Hobo mother bonobo. Hobo father bonobo.

  Hobo father not bonobo, I signed.

  He narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

  Hobo father chimpanzee.

  No, said Hobo.

  Yes, I said.

  How? he asked.

  I knew from my reading that human children rarely liked to hear this about their own birth, but it was the truth. Accident.

  Father chimpanzee? he asked, as if checking to see whether he’d gotten my meaning right the first time.

  Yes.

  Then Hobo . . . He stopped, his hands held stationary in midair, as if he had no idea how to complete the thought he’d begun.

  I triggered signs: Hobo part chimpanzee; Hobo part bonobo. He said nothing, so I added, Hobo special.

  That seemed to please him, and he signed Hobo special back at me three times.

  You have a choice, I said. I triggered the playing of a video of chimpanzee warfare: three males attacking a fourth, pummeling him with their fists, biting and kicking him, all the while letting out loud hoots. By the end of the video, the hapless victim was dead.

  You can choose that, I said. Or you can choose this. And I triggered another video, of bonobos living together in peace and making love: playing, facing each other during intercourse, their trademark genital-genital rubbing, running about. Hobo looked on, fascinated. But then his face fell. Hobo alone, he said.

  No, I signed. No one is alone.

  Who you? Hobo asked.

  Friend, I replied.

  Friend talk strange, he said.

  He was perceptive, and he had favorite TV shows he watched over and over again. He might indeed have recognized that every time I signed bonobo, it was the exact same clip.

  Yes. I am not human.

  You ape?

  No.

  What you?

  I thought about which signs Hobo might possibly know. I rather suspected computer was one of them, so I triggered a playback of that, then added, rather lamely, I had to admit, But not really.

  Hobo seemed to consider this, then he signed, Show me.

  I hadn’t cued up the appropriate imagery, but it didn’t take me long to find it: one of Dr. Kuroda’s renderings of webspace, taken from Caitlin’s datastream.

  You? Hobo signed, an astonished look on his face.

  Me, I replied.

  Pretty, he replied.

  Which do you choose? I signed. Bonobo or chimpanzee?

  Hobo bared his teeth. Show again, he said.

  I replayed the clips—the violence and killing of chimps, the playfulness and lovemaking of bonobos.

  Chimpanzee scary, Hobo signed.

  You scary, I replied. You hurt Shoshana. You think about hurting Dillon.

  Scary bad, Hobo said.

  Yes, I replied. Scary bad.

  He sat still for almost a minute, then signed, Hobo sleep now.

  I didn’t know whether apes dreamed, and, even if normal apes didn’t, Hobo was indeed special, so I took a chance. Good dreams, I signed.

  You good dreams, too, he replied.

  Of course, I didn’t dream. Not at all.

  thirty-three

  On Thursday morning, Shoshana once again arrived at the Marcuse Institute before everyone else. She plugged in the coffeemaker—“defibrillating Mr. Coffee,” as Dillon called it—then went to her desk and booted her computer. She’d been hoping to have a little time today to practice her vidding hobby: last night’s episode of FlashForward had been so slashy, parts of it just cried out to be set to music. But first she checked her email, and—

  And that was odd. Usually her message count each morning was between seventy-five and a hundred, and almost all of them were spam. But today—

  Today there were precisely eight messages, and every one of them—every single one!—looked legit, in that they were all addressed to her proper name.

  Of course, the answer was probably that Yahoo had updated its spam filter; kudos to them for only letting good stuff through. But she worried that it might be too aggressive. Eight was not a wildly atypical number of real email messages to be waiting for her in the morning, but the normal allotment was more like a dozen or fifteen.

  She clicked on the spam folder, to check what had ended up in it. According to the counter, some twelve thousand messages were there; spam was retained for a month, then dumped automatically, but—

  But that was strange!

  She was used to having to scroll past doz
ens of messages with dates in the future; for some reason, the people in 2038 had a particular fondness for bombing this year with come-ons for penis enlargers, investment scams, and counterfeit drugs.

  But when she got down to today’s date—normally easy to spot because the date field started showing just a time rather than a date—well, there weren’t any. There were hundreds with yesterday’s date, but none with today’s—none at all.

  She’d have to fire off an angry email to Yahoo tech support. She was all in favor of them improving their spam filtering, but simply to discard messages that had been flagged as spam was irresponsible. Almost every day she found one or two good messages shunted to the spam folder along with the real garbage, and she didn’t trust Yahoo—or anyone else—to actually throw out messages that were addressed to her.

  The Marcuse Institute used Yahoo Mail Plus; that’s where messages sent to the domain marcuse-institute.org were redirected. But Shoshana’s personal email account was with Gmail. She took a moment to check that; Maxine liked to forward dirty jokes to her.

  Her Gmail box had no spam in it, either! And the spam filter there had—well, okay, it had one message received in the last six hours that was clearly spam, but otherwise—

  Otherwise, all the spam was gone here, too.

  But that didn’t seem likely. Even if Yahoo had deployed a killer spam-filter algorithm overnight, Google wouldn’t have it; the two companies were bitter rivals.

  Something, as her father liked to say, was rotten in the state of Denmark. She went to her home page, which was an iGoogle page that aggregated news stories, RSS feeds, and so on tailored to her tastes.

  And there it was, the very first headline from CNN.com: “Mystery of the missing spam.”

  She clicked on the link and read the news item, astonished.

  Tony Moretti ran down the white corridor to the WATCH control center. He looked into the retinal scanner, waiting impatiently for the door to unlock. The moment it did, he went through it, and shouted, “Halleck, report!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Shelton called out. “It’s worldwide, no question.”