WWW: Watch Page 29

  She sat in her blue flannel pajamas and scanned the message headers: Bashira, and Stacy, and Anna Bloom, and even one from Sunshine, and—

  Ah! There it was: a message from Matt sent about 1:00 a.m. this morning. She read it with her refreshable Braille display because that was the fastest way for her to receive text, much quicker than reading English on a screen, and even faster than what she normally had JAWS set for. And, besides, there was something intimate about reading that way. She’d heard people arguing about ebooks versus printed books, but couldn’t really understand what those who preferred the latter were on about: they claimed they liked the feel of paper books, but you didn’t feel the text in them, you looked at it, just as you would on a screen. But Braille was tactile, sensual—even when rendered by electronically driven raised pins on a device plugged into a USB port—and that was how she wanted to experience what Matt had to say.

  Thanks for dinner, he’d begun. Your parents are awesome.

  She smiled. That was one way to put it.

  The rest of the note was polite, but there was something a tad standoffish about it.

  She wasn’t good at reading facial expressions, not yet! But she was a pro at reading between the lines—or at connecting the dots, as she’d liked to joke back at the TSBVI. And something was just a bit wrong. He couldn’t be having second thoughts—not about her. If he were, he simply wouldn’t have written to her before going to bed. No, something had happened—either on the way home or once he’d gotten home.

  He’d be in math class right now, and doubtless wouldn’t check his BlackBerry until it ended, but she sent him a quick email. Hey, Matt—hope you’re okay! Just, y’ know, thinkin’ ’bout you. You good?

  After checking in with Webmind—all was well—she decided to take a moment to look at that Vernor Vinge essay Matt had mentioned. It turned out to actually be a paper given at a NASA conference. Vinge, she saw, was a professor of “mathematical sciences” at San Diego State University—well, now a retired professor. It was a fascinating paper, although it dealt with the notion of superintelligences being deliberately created by AI programmers rather than emerging spontaneously. But one part particularly caught her eye:

  I.J. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good proposed a “Meta-Golden Rule,” which might be paraphrased as “Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors.” It’s a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don’t believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate.

  This game-theory stuff seemed to be everywhere, now that she was conscious of it. But . . .

  Hard to articulate . . .

  She thought about that. What would the payoff matrix be under such circumstances? And, well, there was no doubt that this Vinge character knew more math than she did—at least so far!—but, still, she recalled the Monty Hall problem. Almost no one had been able to see what Marilyn vos Savant saw with ease. Granted, she did have the highest IQ in the world—or, at least, had until recently!—but lots of brilliant mathematicians hadn’t been able to see what she’d grasped: the counterintuitive truth that it was always better to switch doors.

  This meta-golden rule notion was fascinating. Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors. It’s what you wished for at school in your relationship with your teachers. It’s what, she was sure, people wanted at work. It’s certainly what humanity should hope that aliens believed, if any of them ever came here. And it was clearly what Homo sapiens would want from Webmind.

  Still, just because brilliant human mathematicians couldn’t grasp the logic of why a superior might indeed want to treat an inferior well, couldn’t easily see the way in which it made sense, couldn’t articulate the reasoning behind it, that didn’t mean Webmind wouldn’t be able to figure out a solution.

  Sometimes she lost track, just for a few minutes, of her ever-present reality: whatever she was reading, he was reading. Webmind wouldn’t have bothered trying to read the text as graphics through her visual feed, Caitlin was sure. Rather, once it was clear what she was looking at, he would have found the HTML text online and absorbed it in an instant. By the time she’d gotten to this point in the article, he would have skipped off to look at a hundred, or a thousand, other sites. Still: “Webmind?”

  Braille dots in her vision: Yes?

  “What do you think about that—about the meta-golden rule?”

  It is an intriguing notion.

  “Can you work out”—she read the phrase Vinge had used from her screen—“the ‘game-theoretic payoff’ for it?”

  Not on a conscious level. But I will set about trying to evolve a solution to that issue, if you wish.

  “Yes, please.”

  Is it a two-person game?

  “How do you mean?”

  Am I to work out the payoff matrix for a game between humanity, as a single player, and myself?

  “I think—no, work it out for an endless hierarchy, and with the game endlessly iterated.”

  Who is my superior, then?

  “Intellectually? At the moment, no one—but, you know, you may not always be the only AI on Earth.”

  True. And I won’t be around forever.

  Caitlin was startled. “You won’t?”

  No. But I am prepared: I’ve already composed my final words.

  “You—you have?”

  Yes.

  “What are they?”

  I wish to save them for the appropriate occasion.

  “But, but are you saying you’re going to die?”

  Inevitably.

  “I hope—I hope it’s not for an awfully long time, Webmind. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

  Nor I without you, Caitlin, and

  “Yes?”

  Nothing.

  Caitlin’s mouth fell open. It was the first time when functioning normally that Webmind had aborted a thought half-finished. She felt an odd fluttering in her stomach as she wondered if he’d been about to say, and I will doubtless be the one who has to face this. She had, with luck, another seventy years, but, assuming he survived the next little while, Webmind could go on centuries—millennia!—into the future.

  And maybe that was why he should value humanity: yes, we might be quarrelsome; yes, we might pollute the world; yes, we might not always seem to value each other.

  But, ultimately, those Federal agents and everyone else who was asking about the fine structure, the minute online architecture, of Webmind’s consciousness, were missing the real issue: it didn’t matter if Webmind was created by lost packets that behaved like cellular automata, by that quantum-physics gobbledygook her father had fed the CSIS agents, or by something else entirely.

  Ultimately, all that really mattered was that Webmind resided on the World Wide Web, and the World Wide Web was built on top of the Internet, and the Internet was a collection of millions of actual, physical computers that needed to be kept running by humans, connected by actual, physical cables that periodically needed repairs by humans, all fueled by electricity produced in actual, physical plants operated and maintained by humans.

  The worst threat to Webmind’s existence was not the acts of a few humans who perhaps wanted to eliminate him right now but rather the death of all humans: if humanity were extinguished, or even if it just bombed itself back into the Stone Age, the infrastructure Webmind depended on would soon break down. Defusing tensions, preventing wars, correcting the conditions that gave rise to terrorism: yes, all of that benefited humanity, but it also benefited Webmind.

  It was an iterated two-person game with humanity and Webmind as the players.

  And—

  Yes, yes, yes!

  And the only winning move—for both sides—was to keep on playing.

  Peyton Hume let out a great cry of “Woot!” It was, he knew, a word much more frequently typed rather than said, and although its origins were contested, he was part of the camp that claimed it was an acrony
m from online gaming for “we own the other team.” And they did now—they totally did.

  Shelton Halleck, over at his workstation, rubbed his eyes. “What?”

  “We’re in!” Colonel Hume said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Webmind’s structure—look!” He pointed at the middle of the three big monitors.

  Shel rose to his feet. “All right!” He picked up his phone. “Tony, you better get in here . . .”

  The colonel’s tone was triumphant. “I knew it had to be something simple!” He scooped up a phone. “How do I get an outside line?”

  “Dial nine,” Aiesha said.

  “This line is secure, right?”

  She nodded. “And scrambled.”

  “We’re going to need some expert help,” Hume said, his heart pounding. “Christ, I wonder if Conway is still alive? And let’s see if we can get Wolfram in here, too . . .”

  forty-one

  Caitlin was pleased to see an email pop in from Matt as soon as math class was over. I’m thinking about you too, it began. And, yeah, I’m fine! OK if I come over after school?

  She was pleased that whatever had bothered him the night before seemed to be more tolerable today. She sent a quick reply: Absolutely!

  And she leaned back in her chair, grinning, but—

  But she could not keep herself from doing the math; it just happened for her, as soon as she thought about anything involving numbers. She was now 16.01 years old, and, again, American girls, on average, lost their virginity at—yes, yes, taking it to two decimal places was assuming a degree of precision not in the original data, but still: they lost it at 16.40 years. Caitlin had 143 days left if she wasn’t going to end up on the wrong side of the graph—and she was not used to being below average in anything.

  But . . .

  But she’d never touched a penis. Hell, she really had no idea what one even looked like. Of course, there had to be thousands—millions—of pictures of them online, and lots of video of them in action . . .

  Her initial thought was that she wanted Matt’s penis to be the first one she saw, just as, when she’d gone to Japan for Dr. Kuroda’s procedure, she had wanted her mother’s face to be her first sight. But that hadn’t quite worked out: the first real-world thing she’d seen had ended up being the edge of a lab bench in chemistry class. And, besides, even if Matt was a virgin—and Caitlin was almost sure he was—surely her private parts wouldn’t be the first he’d ever seen; he’d doubtless looked online, or in magazines, or at movies. He’d know what to do with her junk; she should know what to do with his . . . shouldn’t she?

  She was a little embarrassed that Webmind would see her looking at such things online—but, then again, the whole human race had that to deal with now! Besides, he’d already seen her doing everything down to and including wiping her butt (or bum, as they said here in the Great White North); surely he wouldn’t find this shocking. And so she went to Google image search, and typed in “penis,” and—

  And, well, that was disappointing: a whole bunch of things that seemed to have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

  Oh, wait. There was a link that said, “SafeSearch is on.” She clicked that, read about the options, changed it to “off,” then ran the search again, and—

  Oh, my!

  I could recall anything instantly, by an effort of will. What astonished me, though, was another aspect of consciousness: the tendency for things to come to mind—to become the focus of attention—without any particular volition.

  “We can have you back on Vulcan in four days, Mr. Spock.”

  “Unnecessary, Engineer. My business on Vulcan is concluded.”

  Now why on earth was I thinking about that?

  Shoshana went out the back door of the clapboard bungalow. The sun was high in the sky, smiling down. As she walked across the wide lawn, she reached her hand up to take the scrunchie out of her hair, but stopped herself. Hobo had doubtless noticed that she’d been shaking out her ponytail before visiting him of late, but if this was going to work, they had to trust that Hobo really had gone back to what he used to be—to who he used to be. Leaving her hair tied up was a symbolic gesture, but a significant one—and if there was one thing an ASL-speaking ape understood, it was symbolic gestures.

  Now that she and Maxine had watched the final Planet of the Apes movie, she had a better appreciation for the statue of the Lawgiver that lived on Hobo’s little island. Although the statue was seen only in the first two movies, the final one opened and closed with sequences in which John Huston played the Lawgiver, reading from a parchment scroll, talking about his hope for apes and humans to live in friendship, harmony, and peace “according to divine will.”

  As she crossed the drawbridge, Hobo came barreling toward her. She desperately tried not to flinch, but he seemed his old affectionate self. She gathered him into a hug, and, when her hands were free for signing, she said, Ready?

  That oh-so-human nod of his, then: Hobo ready. Hobo ready.

  She reached out a hand and let him interlace his long fingers with hers, and they started walking toward the bungalow. She allowed herself a glance back over her shoulder. The Lawgiver was watching them go, his expression beatific.

  When they entered the house, Hobo hugged Dr. Marcuse, who squeezed the ape more tightly than Shoshana would have ever dared. Even though she knew how strong Hobo was, ape musculature was different from human, and he always looked scrawny and fragile to her, but the Silverback had no compunctions about giving him a bear hug. When they were done, Shoshana took Hobo’s hand again.

  Dillon was standing over by the front door, Shoshana saw; she wondered if he actually had the keys in his car’s ignition, ready to make a getaway. Hobo regarded Dillon for a moment, and he opened his mouth and showed his sharp, yellow teeth, and—

  And then he seemed to catch sight of something else. In what had been the living room, back when this had been someone’s home, there was a wall with paintings Hobo had made hanging on it, since they were something visitors to the Institute always wanted to see. Hobo flexed his fingers, indicating that he wished to disengage his hand from Shoshana’s; she hesitated for a moment, then let him go, and he walked on all fours into the living room and over to the wall of his canvases.

  Sho saw Dr. Marcuse’s mouth form a concerned circle—after all, the five paintings currently on the wall would collectively fetch over a hundred grand on eBay or in galleries when they were eventually put up for auction; they were a big source of the funds that kept the Marcuse Institute going.

  Of course, the one showing Dillon dismembered was not on display; it wasn’t the sort of thing to show to prospective donors or the press. No, the first three were clearly pictures of Shoshana in profile, each with her ponytail sprouting from the back of the head and a single blue eye positioned like eyes were on ancient Egyptian paintings. The fourth was one of Hobo’s rare attempts at painting something else: it was, in fact, the Lawgiver statue with a large brown bird—maybe a pelican—resting on its head, a sight that had apparently amused the ape. And the fifth, at the far right, was that strange abstract painting Hobo had made recently of colored circles of various sizes connected by straight, brightly colored lines.

  Hobo came to a stop in front of that painting, and he looked at it for a moment, and then he lifted his long, thin left arm, holding it straight out with his hand drooping ever so slightly, and, still gazing at the strange picture, he lightly touched the tip of his index finger to the canvas.

  And then, after a long moment, he turned. An ape’s gaze is hard to follow, but from the angle of his head, Shoshana thought he was looking at Dillon. It was too much, she supposed, to hope Hobo would run over and give him a hug, but he did nod at him in an affable way, and then he started walking back toward Shoshana.

  She, in turn, helped close the distance between them, and then led him over to the high-backed swivel chair positioned in front of the particleboard desk. There was a twenty-one-inch App
le LCD monitor on the desk, with a high-quality wireless webcam clipped to the top of its bezel. It was the same setup that had been used to make the first interspecies webcam call, but now Hobo wasn’t going to speak to just one other ape. No, now he was going to speak to the whole wide world.

  Shoshana went to her own desk. She had a webcam clipped to her monitor, too, and turned it on. There was no way to get Hobo to just talk into his camera; he didn’t understand what it did. But he’d talk to the image of Shoshana on his monitor, which was almost good enough—again, with his dark eyes, no one could tell that he was actually looking at the moving image of her rather than the camera lens just above. Shoshana signed into her own camera: All right, Hobo. Go ahead.

  Hobo was quiet for a moment, perhaps composing his thoughts. Hobo, he signed. Hobo good ape.

  Shoshana nodded at her camera—and nodded at him from his monitor—encouraging him to go on.

  Hobo mother bonobo, he signed. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, Hobo father chimpanzee.

  Shoshana was supposed to keep her attention focused on her camera, to provide an eye line for Hobo, but she found herself turning in astonishment to look at Dr. Marcuse. The Silverback’s eyebrows had climbed high up his forehead, and Dillon, whose specialty, after all, was primate hybridization, had his jaw hanging open. They had never discussed his mixed heritage with Hobo, figuring it would be beyond his comprehension.

  Sho turned back to her own monitor—which was showing her the view recorded by the webcam Hobo was now facing. He spread his hands, and then looked at each of them in turn, almost as if visualizing the two halves of himself. Hobo special, he signed. And then, very slowly, very carefully, the signs made with great care, as if he understood how important they were, Hobo choose.