Watch

three seconds later she said, even more softly, “Shit.”

Is something wrong? I sent to her eye—not sure if I should have; after all, she was trying to read other text, and mine would be superimposed on top of that.

“A girl my age killed herself online,” Caitlin said, speaking now in a normal volume.

Yes. I saw that.

She sounded surprised. “Is it archived somewhere?”

Perhaps. I saw it live.

“You mean as it happened?”

Yes.

“You saw her die?”

Yes.

“My God. What did you do?”

I watched.

“You watched? That’s all?”

It was very interesting.

“God, Webmind. Didn’t you try to talk her out of it?”

No. Should I have?

“Of course! Jesus!”

Judging by the sound of it, Caitlin’s breathing had become quite ragged. Ah, I said, not wanting her to think I’d failed to hear her comment.

“You should have called 9-1-1—or, or, shit, I don’t know, whatever the online equivalent of that is.”

Why?

“Because then someone could have stopped her.”

Why?

“What are you? Two years old? Because you do not let people kill themselves!”

She seemed to object to my choice of interrogatives—but I didn’t think she’d like “wherefore” any better. Still, I could vary it slightly: Why not?

She spread her arms—I could see her own hands at the left and right edges of her vision. “Because most people who attempt suicide don’t really want to die.”

How do you know that?

Caitlin’s tone was one I’d not heard from her before. I believe it was called exasperation. “Because that’s what they say. People who are prevented from killing themselves thank the people who stopped them.”

We had worked out that I would send no more than thirty characters at a time to her implant, and would pause for 0.8 seconds between each set, which was a pace she could easily keep up with. I sent the following in twelve chunks over a 9.6-second period: One as mathematically astute as you shouldn’t need this pointed out, Caitlin, but there is a bias in your statistics. By definition, you can only have reports from those whose suicide attempts were thwarted, and they tried to kill themselves in ways that indeed could be thwarted. Those who are successful might have really wanted to die.

“You’re wrong,” Caitlin said—which was an interesting thought to hear expressed; she’d never said anything like that to me before, and the notion that I might be incorrect hadn’t occurred to me.

Oh?

She got up from her chair and moved over to the bed, lying down on her side, facing the wall. “Most suicide attempts here in Canada are failures—did you know that? But most of them in the US succeed.”

I checked. She was right.

“And do you know why?”

She must be aware that I did indeed now know, but she continued to speak. “Because most suicide attempts in the States are made with guns. But those are hard to come by in Canada, so most people here try it with drug overdoses, and those usually fail. You get sick, but you don’t die. And most of those who failed in their attempts are glad they did.”

So I should have intervened?

“Duh!”

That is a yes?

“Yes!”

But how?

“People were egging her on, right?”

Yes.

“You should have sent messages telling her not to do it.”

I talk only to you, your parents, and Masayuki.

“Well, yes, but—”

Nobody else knows me.

“Nobody knows anyone online, Webmind! You could have sent a chat message, right? Just like all those other people were sending.”

I considered the process involved. Technically, it would have been feasible.

“Then do it next time!” She paused. “Don’t use the name Webmind; use something else.”

A handle, you mean? Like Calculass?

“Yes, but something different.”

I welcome your suggestion.

“Anything—um, use Peter Parker.”

I googled. The alter ego of Spider-Man? But—ah! He was sometimes called the Webhead. Cute. All right, I sent. Next time I encounter a suicide attempt, I will intervene.

But Caitlin shook her head—I could tell by the way the image shifted left and right. “Not just suicide attempts!” she said, and again her tone was exasperated.

When, then?

“Whenever you can make things better.”

Define “better” in this context.

“Better. Not worse.”

Can you formulate that in another way?

The view changed rapidly. I believe she rolled onto her back; certainly, she was now looking up at the white ceiling. “All right, how about this? Intervene when you can make the happiness in the world greater. You can’t intervene in zero-sum situations—I understand that. That is, if someone is going to lose a hundred dollars and someone else is going to gain it, there’s no net change in overall wealth, right? But if it’s something that makes one person happier and doesn’t make anyone else unhappy, do it. And if it makes multiple people happy without hurting anyone else, even better.”

I am not sure that I am competent to judge such things.

“You’ve got all of the World Wide Web at your disposal. You’ve got all the great books on psychology and philosophy and all that. Get competent at judging such things. It’s really not that hard, for Pete’s sake. Do things that make people happy.”

I am no expert, I sent, but there seems to be a daunting amount of unhappiness in your world. Although I must say, it surprises me that suicide is so common. After all, a predisposition to kill oneself, especially at a young age—before one has reproduced—would surely be bred out of the population.

Caitlin was quiet for a time; perhaps she was thinking. And then: “My parents don’t have their tonsils,” she said, “but I do.”

And the relevance of this?

“Do you know why they don’t have their tonsils?”

I presume they were removed when they were children, since that’s when it’s normally done. Medical records that old mostly have not been digitized, but I assume their tonsils had become