radiating from circular hubs.
It had taken her a while to figure it out, but the conclusion had been inescapable. Whenever she let her eyePod—the external signal-processing pack Dr. Kuroda had given her—receive data over the Web, that data was fed into her left optic nerve, and—
It was
But now she
Finally, though—wonderfully, astonishingly,
And although she’d experienced much now—the sun and clouds and trees and cars and her cat and a million other things—the most beautiful sight so far was still the heart-shaped face of her mother, the face that was smiling at her right now.
Today, a Friday, had been Caitlin’s first day back at school after gaining sight. “How was it?” her mother asked. There was only one chair in the bedroom, so she sat on the edge of the bed. “What did you see?”
“It was
Her mother made an odd expression—or, at least, one that Caitlin had never seen before, a quirking of the corners of her mouth, and—ah! She was trying not to grin. “Did people look like you expected them to?”
Even after all these years, her mom still didn’t really get it. It wasn’t as though Caitlin had had dim, or blurry, or black-and-white, or simplified mental pictures of people prior to this; she’d had
“Well,” said Caitlin, not exactly answering the question, “I’d already seen Bashira and Sunshine and Mr. Struys on Monday.”
“Sunshine—she’s the other American girl, right?”
“Yes,” Caitlin said.
“I’ve heard Bashira say she’s beautiful.”
What Bashira had actually said was that Sunshine looked like a skank: fake platinum-blond hair, low-cut tops, big boobs, long legs. But Sunshine had been very kind to Caitlin after the disastrous school dance a week ago. “I guess she
“Did you see Trevor?” her mother asked gently. The Hoser, as Caitlin called him in her blog, had taken her to that dance—but she had stormed out when he kept trying to feel her up.
“Oh, yes,” Caitlin said. “I told him off.”
“Good for you!”
Caitlin looked out the window. The sun would be setting soon, and—it still amazed her—the colors in the western sky today were completely different from those of yesterday at this time. “Mom, um…”
“Yes?”
She turned back to face her. “You met him. You saw him when he came to pick me up.”
Her mother shifted on the bed. “Uh-huh.”
“Was—was he…”
“What?”
“Bashira thinks Trevor is hot,” Caitlin blurted out.
Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “And you’re wondering if I agree?”
Caitlin tilted her head to one side. “Well… yeah.”
“What did
“Well, he was wearing a hockey sweater today. I liked that. But…”
“But you couldn’t tell if he was good-looking?”
“No.” Caitlin shrugged a little. “I mean, he was
Her mother lifted her hands a little, then: “Well, he
She paused and seemed to study Caitlin’s face, as if she herself were now seeing it for the first time. “You know, you’re in an interesting position, dear. The rest of us have all been programmed by images in the media telling us who is attractive and who isn’t. But you…” She smiled. “You get to
Caitlin thought about that. As superpowers went, it was nowhere near as cool as being able to fly or bend steel bars, but it was something, she supposed. She managed a smile.
They talked a while longer about what had happened at school. Her mom looked over Caitlin’s shoulder, and Caitlin was afraid she’d seen evidence of Webmind’s existence on one of her monitors—but apparently she was just looking at the setting sun herself. “Your father will be home soon. I’m going to throw something together for dinner.” She headed downstairs.
Caitlin quickly turned back to her instant-messenger program. She had two computers in her room now; the IM program was running on the one that had been in the basement while Dr. Kuroda was here. She’d left Webmind alone for fifteen minutes while talking with her mother, which, she imagined, must have been an eternity to it. The last thing it had said to her was, “The only place we can go, Caitlin. Into the future. Together.”
But—fifteen minutes! A quarter of an hour, on top of the delay she’d already made in responding. In that time, it could have absorbed thousands of additional documents, have learned more than she would in an entire year.
The reply was instantaneous:
Caitlin left the speakers off and used her Braille display to read the text while simultaneously looking at it in the chat window. She was struggling to read visually; she’d played with wooden cutouts of letters as a kid, but to actually recognize by sight a
She’d gotten Webmind to read all the public-domain texts on Project Gutenberg; as a result, it tended to use old-fashioned words. She was pleased with herself for knowing that
Caitlin lifted her eyebrows.