Watch

He laughed again. “We make it work somehow. I mean, it’s a small thing for English Canada, and it makes French Canada happy, so why the heck not? Yeah, the cloning of Tim Horton is kinda crazy, I’ll give you that. But all the maple leaves are cool.”

They went into the Hortons, and Matt read the menu to her, explaining what kinds of sandwiches they offered—she could have read it herself, given time, but there were people in line behind them. She ordered chicken salad on a whole-wheat bun, a chocolate glazed donut, and a Coke. He ordered sliced turkey on a regular bun and a small coffee.

Caitlin opened her wallet—and found herself pausing to stare. She still had her bills folded in distinctive ways so that she could tell a five from a ten from a twenty by touch. But now she could read the large, clear numerals on the Canadian bills—not to mention see that the five was blue, the ten purple, and the twenty green. Would wonders never cease?

Realizing she was holding up the line, Caitlin handed over a ten, took her change, and then followed Matt to a table in a corner—one of those modular ones with chairs attached to it. “So,” she said, after some chitchat that she had to admit was pretty lame, “do you—um, do you have a girlfriend?” She was amazed at how dry her mouth had suddenly become.

She was surprised to see him appear—hurt, perhaps? Like maybe he thought she was teasing him. But at last he said simply, “No.”

She looked away, in case she was making him uncomfortable, and pleased herself by the figurative and—at that precise moment, literal—truth of her reply: “I’m not seeing anyone, either.”

He took a bite of his sandwich, and she took a bite of hers. She was afraid to say anything else, but—

But she was Barbara Decter’s daughter, for Pete’s sake! And her mother had told her, years ago, when Caitlin had asked about her parents’ relationship, that she had asked her father out the first time, and, eighteen months later, that it had been her, not him, who had popped the big question.

So, hell, she wouldn’t even be here if her mother had been too shy to make the first move—and the second, and the third, and…

“Um,” she said, and “ah,” and then, disappointing herself with the quality of her rhetoric, she let loose with another “um.” Online she was fearless—she was Calculass! But here, in the real world, she was just Caitlin, and sometimes, especially when having to deal with people stuff, she felt more like her father’s daughter than her mother’s. She took a deep breath and tried to summon the strength of her alter ego. Then she looked down at her sandwich, and, when she forced the words out they came in a rush, without any pauses: “So would you like to go out sometime?”

Caitlin, of course, counted the seconds.

One. Two. Three.

She resisted the urge to look up him, afraid of the expression she might see.

Four. Five. Six.

“You want to go out with me?” he said, at last, sounding stunned.

She did lift her gaze. “Yes, silly.”

“I, uh, I thought you were going with Trevor. I, um, I mean, didn’t he take you to the dance?”

“Were you there?”

“Me?” He seemed astounded at the suggestion. “No.”

“Trevor’s a jerk,” she said. “And, no, I’m not going out with him. So, how ’bout it? Wanna go out sometime?”

“Well,” he said, and “um,” and, at last, “yes.”

“Great,” said Caitlin. She paused, waiting for him to make a suggestion, but when he didn’t she said, “There’s an awesome series of free public lectures at the Perimeter Institute. Have you ever been to any of those?”

“No. I’ve tried. The tickets are impossible to get. They go like that.” He snapped his fingers as he spoke the final word.

“I’ve got an in. My dad is on the lecture committee there.”

“Your dad works at PI?”

“Uh-huh. He studies quantum gravity.”

“Cool!”

Caitlin smiled. Who’d have thought her dad would turn out to be cool?

Suddenly, Braille dots flowed in front of her eyes. If I may be so bold, Caitlin, you should inquire about what he hopes to do after high school.

Caitlin wanted to ask what the hell Webmind was doing, but there was no way to do so with Matt right there. Still, it did seem like a good way to keep the conversation going, so she posed the suggested question.

“I’m going to do computer science.”

Ask him where.

“Where?”

“Here,” he said. “There’s nowhere better than the University of Waterloo.”

“Really? I’ve always had my heart set on MIT.”

“Well,” said Matt, “you should check out what’s here, too.”

Ask him what his favorite color is.

Caitlin couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are you doing?” she said into the air.

I read all of Project Gutenberg, Webmind replied at once, including the play Cyrano de Bergerac. I thought I’d lend a hand.

“Sorry,” said Matt. “I, um, I always eat my sandwich that way.”

Caitlin had too little experience with watching people eat to be able to identify whatever Matt had done that was unusual. “Ah,” she said, and smiled at him. “That’s okay. It’s cute.”

twenty-five

Caitlin had heard her mom use the phrase “nonzero-sum” from time to time. She knew it was a term from her mother’s field of expertise, game theory. Webmind had already read everything on Wikipedia about game theory, but that didn’t mean he actually understood what “nonzero-sum” meant. Nor, if she was really honest with herself, did Caitlin, and yet this notion of nonzero-sum games was stuck in her mind: win-win situations in which everything could be made better.

Her mother had been having her own conversations with Webmind all day long while Caitlin was at school. Once Caitlin got home and had checked her email and so forth, she went across the hall to her mother’s office and told her about that poor Australian girl who had committed suicide, and about how she’d told Webmind that he should intervene in nonzero-sum situations.

Her mom looked horrified. “It just… just watched her kill herself? It didn’t try to stop her?”

“He, Mom. He didn’t know what to do, what to think. We need him to understand what to do the next time, and not just with teen suicides, but in any nonzero-sum situations. Can you help us?”

Her mother’s face moved through several expressions but then settled on one that Caitlin had seen before: the take-charge, supermotherscan-do-everything face. “Yes, I’ll help it—help him—learn to help the rest of us. That’s something I definitely want in on.”

“Thanks,” replied Caitlin. “But, I mean, I know—we know—what nonzero-sum is; we get that. But there must be a lot more to game theory than just that.”

“Oh… a bit,” said her mother. Caitlin realized she was still coming to grips with the magnitude—the importance—of what she was about to do.

“So, could you explain it to us? I remember hearing you say once that game theory really isn’t just about mathematics, but about human psychology.”

“That’s right,” her mother said. “In fact, the hottest branch of game theory right now is called ‘behavioral