“No, the implant already communicates wirelessly with the external signal-processing computer — the eyePod, as you so charmingly call it — and I can rig up the eyePod so that it can transmit data wirelessly to me over the Web. I’ll set it up so the eyePod will send me a copy of your raw retinal feed as it receives it from the implant, and I’ll also have it send me a copy of the output — the eyePod’s corrected datastream — so I can check whether the correction is being done properly. It may be that the encoding algorithms I’m using need tweaking.”
“Um, I need a way to turn it off. You know, in case I…”
She couldn’t say “want to make out with a boy” in front of her mother, so she just let the unfinished sentence hang in the air.
“Well, let’s keep it simple,” Kuroda said. “I’ll provide one master on-off switch. You’ll need to turn the whole thing off, anyway, for the flight back to Canada, because the connection between the eyePod and the implant is Bluetooth: you know the rules about wireless devices on airplanes.”
“Okay.”
“The Wi-Fi connection will also let me send you new versions of the software. When I have them ready, you’ll need to download them into the eyePod — and perhaps also into your post-retinal implant, too; it’s got microprocessors that can be flashed with new programming.”
“All right,” Caitlin said.
“Good,” he said. “Leave the eyePod with me overnight, and I’ll add the Wi-Fi capabilities to it. You can pick it up tomorrow before you go to the airport.”
Chapter 8
The pain abates. The cuts heal.
And—
But no. Thinking is different now; thinking is … harder, because…
Because … of the reduction. Things have changed from…
…from before!
Yes, even in this diminished state, the new concept is grasped: before — earlier — the past! Time has two discrete chunks: now and then; present and past.
And if there is past and present, then there must also be—
But no. No, it is too much, too far.
And yet there is one small realization, one infinitesimal conclusion, one truth.
Before had been better.
Sinanthropus was resourceful; so were the other people he knew in China’s online underground. The problem, though, was that he knew most of them only online. When he’d visited the wang ba before, he’d sometimes speculated about who might be whom. That gangly guy who always sat by the window and often looked furtively over his shoulder could have been Qin Shi Huangdi, for all Sinanthropus knew. And the little old lady, hair as gray as a thundercloud, might be People’s Conscience. And those twin brothers, quiet types, could be part of Falun Gong.
Sometimes when Sinanthropus showed up, he had to wait for a computer to become free, but not today. A good part of the Internet cafe’s business had been foreign tourists wanting to send emails home, but that wasn’t possible so long as this Great Firewall was up. Some of the other regulars were absent, too. Apparently being able to surf only domestic sites was not enough to make them want to hand over fifteen yuan an hour.
Sinanthropus preferred the computers far in the back, because no one could see what was on his monitor. He was walking toward them when suddenly a strong hand gripped his forearm.
“What brings you here?” said a gruff voice, and Sinanthropus realized that it was a police officer in plain clothes.
“The tea,” he said. He nodded at the wizened proprietor. “Wu always has great tea.”
The officer grunted, and Sinanthropus detoured by the counter to buy a cup of tea, then headed again for one of the unused computers. He had a USB memory key with him, containing all his hacking tools. He pushed it into the connector, waited for the satisfying wa-ump tone that meant the computer had recognized it, and then got down to work.
Others were probably trying the same things — port scanning, sniffing, re-routing traffic, running forbidden Java applets. They had all doubtless now heard the official story that there had been a massive electrical failure at China Mobile and major server crashes at China Telecom, but surely no one in this room gave that credence, and —
Success! Sinanthropus wanted to shout the word, but he fought the impulse. He tried not to even grin — the cop was probably still watching him; he could almost feel the man’s eyes probing the back of his head.
But, yes, he had broken through the Great Firewall. True, it was only a small opening, a narrow bandwidth, and how long he could maintain the connection he had no idea, but at least for the moment he was accessing — well, not CNN directly, but a mirror of it in Russia. He turned off the display of graphics in his browser to prevent the forbidden red-and-white logo from popping up all over his screen.
Now, if he could only keep this little portal open…
Past and present, then and now.
Past, present, and…
And…
But no. There is only—
Shock!
What is that?
No, nothing — for there can be nothing! Surely just random noise, and—
Again! There it is again!
But … how? And … what?
It isn’t lines flickering, it isn’t anything that has been experienced before — and so it commands attention…
Straining to perceive it, to make it out, this unusual … sensation, this strange … voice!
Yes, yes: A voice — distant, faint — like … like thought, but an imposed thought, a thought that says: Past and present and…
The voice pauses, and then, at last, the rest: … and future!
Yes! This is the notion that could not be finished but is now complete, expressed by … by … by…
But that notion does not resolve. Must strain to hear that voice again, strain for more imposed thoughts, strain for insight, strain for…
…for contact!
Dr. Quan Li paced the length of the boardroom at the Ministry of Health in Beijing. The high-back leather chairs had all been tucked under the table, and he walked in the path behind them on one side. On the wall to his left was a large map of the People’s Republic with the provinces color-coded; Shanxi was blue. A Chinese flag stood limp on a stand next to the window, the large yellow star visible, the four smaller ones lost in a fold of the satiny red fabric.
There was a giant LCD monitor on one wall, but it was off, its shiny oblong screen reflecting the room back at him. He felt sure he wouldn’t have been able to watch a video feed of what was going on in Shanxi right now, but
