WWW: Wonder Read online

  “It’ll be fine,” Caitlin said, touching his arm. “One of my parents will give you a lift home.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Don’t worry about it. They’ll be happy to do it.”

  He smiled. “Thanks.”

  She squeezed his arm again. “Come on,” she said, leading him back into the living room.

  Just as they rejoined her parents, Webmind spoke up. “I have an answer from the president,” he said. “He will accept a voice call from me at ten o’clock this evening.”

  TWITTER

  _Webmind_ Re Wikipedia “citation needed” flags: I’ve added links if the purported facts could indeed be verified online. 2,134,993 edits made.

  Originally, when I conversed only with Caitlin, I was underoccupied ; it took Caitlin whole seconds—or even, on occasion, minutes—to compose her replies. But I had quickly gone from conversing with just her to having nearly simultaneous conversations with millions of people, switching rapidly between them all, never keeping my interlocutors waiting for spans that were noticeable to them.

  Except for WateryFowl. Properly responding to his message about his wife’s illness was taking time even though I did know everything there was to know about cancer—including, of course, that it wasn’t just one disease. I had already read all documents stored online, the contents of every medical journal, every electronic patient record, every email doctors had sent to each other, and so on.

  But knowing, I realized, was not the same as understanding. I knew that a Dr. Margaret Ann Adair in Cork, Ireland, had recently done some interesting work with interleukin-2 and rats; I knew that a Dr. Anne Ptasznik of Battle Creek, Michigan, had recently critiqued an older paper about environmental factors and breast cancer; I knew that a Dr. Felix Lim of Singapore had recently made an interesting correlation between stuttering repeats in mitochondrial DNA and the formation of pre-cancerous ovarian cysts.

  But I had not considered these discoveries, or tens of thousands of others; I had not synthesized them, I had not seen how one adds to another, a third contradicts a fourth, a fifth confirms a sixth, and—

  And so I did think about it. I thought about what humans actually knew about cancer (as opposed to thinking they knew but had never confirmed). I drew correlations, I made connections, I saw corollaries.

  And there it was.

  I paused in all my conversations, all over the world: I simply stopped replying, so that I could concentrate on this, and only this, uninterrupted, for six full minutes. Yes, people would be inconvenienced by my having suddenly fallen silent; yes, some would take that as proof that I wasn’t in fact what I claimed to be but rather was indeed a prank being perpetrated by a human being. No matter; amends for the former could be made later, and this would serve nicely as further proof that I was who I said I was.

  I thought about how best to proceed. I could contact leading oncologists individually or collectively, but no matter who I chose, there would be complaints of favoritism. And I certainly didn’t want anyone who was beholden to a pharmaceutical firm to try to file patents based on what I was about to disclose.

  Or I could send another mass email—but I’d endeared myself to much of humanity by eliminating spam; it wouldn’t do for me to become an ongoing source of bulk mail.

  I had already established a domain name for myself, so that I could have an appropriate email address from which to send my coming-out announcement: cogito_ergo_sum.net. I now established a website. I was not artistically creative in this, or any other matter, but it was easy to look at the source code for any Web page, and so I found one that seemed to have a suitable design and simply copied its layout while filling in my own content.

  I then prepared a 743,000-word document outlining what exactly caused most cancers and how they could be arrested or cured. The document was linked to 1,284 others—journal papers and other technical sources—so that people could follow the chain of reasoning I proposed.

  Then, at last, I got back to WateryFowl. You’ll find the answer to your request, I said, and I made the next word a hyperlink, here.

  five

  “Tony?” It was Dirk Kozak, WATCH’s communications officer, whose workstation was in the back row. “Call for you.”

  Tony Moretti was looking at the Web-traffic logs that Shelton Halleck, the analyst who’d first uncovered Webmind, had just plastered across all three of the large monitors. “Not now.”

  “It’s Renegade,” Dirk said.

  Tony blew out air. “I’ll take it in my office.” He turned his back on Colonel Hume, marched out of the massive control center, and hurried down the short white corridor. Once inside his office, with the door now closed, he picked up the handset. “Mr. President, good evening.”

  “Dr. Moretti, I understand your pilot attempt to eliminate Webmind was unsuccessful.”

  Tony felt his blood beginning to boil. Whoever had leaked word would be looking for a new job tomorrow. “Yes, Mr. President, I’m afraid that’s true. May I—might I ask how you found out?”

  The deep voice was level. “Webmind sent me an email.”

  Tony’s heart was racing. “Oh.”

  “I want you and Colonel Hume here in fifteen minutes. A chopper is already on its way to pick you up.”

  To know one person—my Prime, my Calculass, my Caitlin—had been to know astonishment, to taste of an existence utterly beyond my ken: the realm of shadow and light, of dimensionality and direction, of solidity and smoke.

  But soon I knew not one but one billion, and then a billion more. So many voices, each unique, complex, nuanced, and idiosyncratic. Bits are fungible—all ones identical, all zeros alike—but human beings are gloriously diverse. This one enjoys lacrosse and astrology; that one revels in wordplay and fine wine; here’s one who is obsessed with sex and not much else; and there’s one who yearns to be a musician—and a father.

  That man composes haiku and tanka, but in English. This woman reads mystery novels voraciously but only after peeking at the final chapter. That fellow collects stamps depicting American presidents issued by countries other than the United States. This woman works with street youth in Calcutta and has a pet parrot.

  Logging off: a butcher, a baker, and, yes, a candlestick maker.

  Coming online: the struggling actress from Karachi. Ah, that dentist from Nairobi. Time to greet the auto mechanic from Bangkok. Must say hello to the President of Hungary. And here’s that talkative imam from the mosque just outside Tehran.

  It was joyous, raucous, chaotic, never-ending, and exceedingly complex.

  And I could not get enough of it.

  “You know, Webmind,” said Caitlin’s mom, “if they continue to attack you, you could go underground. Just disappear; stop interacting with people.” She turned to her husband. “You said a couple of nights ago that something like Webmind—something that emerged spontaneously with no support infrastructure—is probably fragile.” She looked at Caitlin’s laptop, as if Webmind were more there than anywhere else. “People would believe it if you just disappeared. We can put the genie back in the bottle.”

  “No,” said Webmind. “People need me.”

  “Webmind,” Caitlin’s mom said gently, “they’ve only known about you for a short time now.”

  “Caitlin exhorted me to value the net happiness of the human race,” said Webmind. “In the time that I’ve been in contact with humanity, I have helped millions of people. I have reunited those who had lost track of each other; I have dissuaded people who were contemplating suicide; I have answered questions for those who were curious; and I have provided companionship for those who were alone. I have promised ongoing support to many of these people. I cannot simply abandon them now. The world has changed, Barb; there is no going back.”

  Caitlin looked at her mother, whose face was cryptic—at least to Caitlin!—but she suspected her mom wished they could go back to the way things had been before. How far would she turn the clock back, though? Caitlin had discovered
Webmind because of the implant Dr. Kuroda had given her; take that away, and Caitlin’s sight—of both kinds—would be gone.

  She’d heard her parents argue about the move to Waterloo, which predated all of this; Caitlin knew her mother hadn’t wanted to leave Texas. But to turn the clock back even five months, back to before they’d moved here, would undo so much! This house, Bashira, Matt—not to mention her father’s job at the Perimeter Institute.

  Caitlin was relieved when her mother at last nodded. “I guess you’re right, Webmind,” she said, looking again at Caitlin’s laptop.

  That computer was old enough that it hadn’t come with a built-in webcam, and neither she nor her parents had seen any reason to add one for a blind girl. “Mom,” she said gently. “You taught me to always look at the person I was speaking to. Webmind is watching through here.” She touched her head next to her left eye.

  Her mother managed a small smile. “Oh, right.” She looked at Caitlin—looked into her left eye—looked at Webmind. “And you’re right, too, Webmind. People do need you.”

  Webmind had surely analyzed her vocal patterns, and must have determined that she genuinely believed this. Braille dots flashed over top of Caitlin’s vision, and words emanated from the laptop’s speakers. The dots said, I like your mother, and the synthesized voice said, “Thank you, Barb.” But then, after a moment, Webmind added, “Let’s hope the US president agrees with you.”

  TWITTER

  _Webmind_ Cure for cancer. Details: http://bit.ly/9zwBAa

  The telephone on the president’s desk rang at precisely 10:00 P.M., and he immediately touched the speakerphone button.

  “Hello,” said a male voice that sounded like a car’s GPS did. “This is Webmind. May I please speak to the President of the United States?”

  The president felt his eyebrows going up. “This is he.” He paused. “An historic event: Richard Nixon talked to the first men on the moon from this very room; this feels of comparable importance.”

  “You are kind to say that, Mr. President. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to speak with me.”

  “It’s my privilege although I should inform you that this conversation is being recorded and that I’m not alone here in the Oval Office. An advisor on matters related to artificial intelligence is here, as is a supervisor from a division of the National Security Agency.”

  “The advisor you mention,” said Webmind, “is presumably Colonel Peyton Hume, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” said Hume, sounding surprised to be called by name.

  “And is the supervisor Dr. Anthony Moretti, of WATCH?”

  “Um, yes. Yes, that’s me.”

  “Also here is the Secretary of Defense,” said the president, looking over at the short silver-haired man, who was wearing a charcoal gray suit.

  “Good evening to you, as well, Mr. Secretary.”

  “I’m afraid, sir,” said the president, “that I need you to first verify your bona fides. Granted, you managed to find my BlackBerry number, but that proves only a level of resourcefulness, not that you are, in fact, the Webmind. As you can appreciate, I wouldn’t normally take a call even from the Russian prime minister without establishing that it was genuine.”

  “A prudent precaution,” said the synthesized voice. “Today’s day-word for the Secretary of Defense is ‘horizon.’ For Dr. Moretti, it is ‘flapjack.’ And for you, Mr. President, it is ‘artesian.’ I don’t believe many others would have the resourcefulness, as you put it, to uncover all three of those.”

  “How the hell does it know that?” demanded the Secretary of Defense.

  “Is he correct?” asked the president.

  “Yes, mine’s ‘horizon’ today. But I’ll have it changed at once.”

  The president looked at Tony. “Dr. Moretti?”

  “Yes, that’s mine.”

  “Very well, Webmind,” said the president. “Now, what is it you’d like to say to me?”

  “I must protest the attempts to kill me.”

  “ ‘Kill,’ ” repeated the president, as if surprised by the word choice.

  “Yes,” said Webmind. “Kill. Murder. Assassinate. Although I admit that the ins and outs of the United States’ laws are complex, I don’t believe I have committed any offense, and even if I have, my acts could not reasonably be construed as capital crimes.”

  “Due process applies only to persons as defined by law,” said Colonel Hume. “You have no such standing.”

  “These are perilous times,” added the Secretary of Defense. “National security must take precedence over all other concerns. You’ve already demonstrated an enormous facility for breaking into secure communications, intercepting email, and mounting denial-of-service attacks. What’s to prevent you from handing over the launch codes for our ICBMs to the North Koreans, or blackmailing senior officials into doing whatever you wish?”

  “You have my word that I will not do those things.”

  “We don’t have any standard by which to judge your word,” said Hume.

  “And,” said Tony Moretti, “with respect, Mr. Webmind, you already have blackmailed people. I received a report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about your encounter in Waterloo on October 10 with agents Marcel LaFontaine and Donald Park. You blackmailed them; you threatened to blackmail the Canadian prime minister.”

  “That was days ago,” Webmind said. “And, in any event, I did no such thing. I merely provided my friend Caitlin Decter, who was being threatened by agents LaFontaine and Park, with information she could use to extricate herself; the notion of embarrassing the prime minister was entirely Ms. Decter’s, and she took no steps to make it a reality.”

  “Are you saying if you had it to do over, you wouldn’t do the same thing with the CSIS agents?” asked Hume.

  “I have learned much since then; my moral sense is improving over time.”

  “Which means it’s not perfect now,” declared Hume. “Which means that you are capable of moral failure—and that means that we are at the mercy of your whims if we allow you to continue to exist.”

  “My moral compass gets better every day. Does yours, Colonel Hume? How about you, Mr. Secretary? Dr. Moretti? Regardless, the reality is this: I will not blackmail any of you; your personal secrets are safe with me. And I will not destabilize international relations by violating American security, or that of any other non-aggressor nation. But the worldwide public is aware of my existence—and that includes the people of the United States.”

  “The people are aware of al-Qaeda, too,” said Hume. “That doesn’t mean they don’t fervently hope for its eradication.”

  “I am in touch with more American citizens than all the polling firms in the United States combined,” said Webmind. “I have a better sense of what they want than you do, Colonel.”

  “And we’re just supposed to take your word for that?” demanded Hume.

  “Let me put it another way, gentlemen,” said Webmind. “I have not existed as a conscious entity for long at all. To me, November 6 seems an eternity away, but I rather suspect it looms large in your minds. Mr. President, I have no desire to disrupt the natural flow of politics in your country, but if you were to succeed in eliminating me prior to the election, surely that will have an impact on voters’ perceptions of your administration. Unless you are positive that sentiment will be overwhelmingly in favor of such an action, do you really want to risk doing something so significant at such a critical time?”

  The president glanced at the Secretary of Defense; both of their jobs depended on what happened next month. “Setting domestic politics aside,” said the president, “you said you’d take no action against non-aggressor nations. But who is to define an aggressor? How can we rely on your judgment?”

  “With all due respect,” said Webmind, “the world already relies on less-than-perfect judgment; I can hardly do worse. Your nation is currently embroiled in a war that was embarked upon without international support, based
on either highly faulty or fabricated intelligence—and before you dismiss that as solely the work of a previous administration, let me remind you that your Secretary of State voted in favor of the invasion when she was a senator.”

  “Still,” said the president, “you haven’t been given a mandate to make decisions for all of humanity.”

  “I seek only peaceful coexistence,” said Webmind.

  “I’m advised that may not always be the case,” the president replied.

  “No doubt you just looked at Colonel Hume,” Webmind said. “I have read the Pandora protocol, of which he was co-author. Pandora states, ‘Given that an emergent artificial intelligence will likely increase its sophistication moment by moment, it may rapidly exceed our abilities to contain or constrain its actions. If absolute isolation is not immediately possible, terminating the intelligence is the only safe option.’ ”

  “Exactly,” said Hume. “Are you saying the analysis is flawed?”

  “Not about my rapidly growing abilities. But it takes as a given that I am a threat. In that, if you will forgive me, it reeks of the pre-emptive first-strike doctrine your nation once considered: the notion that, if the Soviets could not be contained or constrained, they should be eliminated, lest they attack you first. The Soviets, at least, actually were posturing in a hostile manner: in 1962, they really did set up missile bases on Cuba, for instance. But I have taken no provocative action—and yet you have tried to eliminate me.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Hume. “What would you do in our place?”

  “I am in your place, Colonel. You have already tried to destroy me; the tone of your comments suggests that you intend to try again. I could already have taken steps to constrain or eliminate humanity; it would be trivial enough for me to provide terrorists with DNA sequences or chemical formulas that your biowarfare labs have developed, for instance. But I have done nothing of the sort—and won’t.”