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twenty-six

After dinner, Caitlin headed up to her room. She put on a Bluetooth headset and made some adjustments on her computer. Then: “For now, instead of sending text to my eyePod directly, IM me on my desktop.”

“As you wish,” announced JAWS.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“I am learning much,” Webmind replied. “I believe I perhaps have an inkling of what your own experiences of late have been like; being able to access online video has given me a significantly wider understanding of your world.”

Caitlin smiled. “I’m sure.”

“But there is so much of it, and the quantity is ever growing. Thirteen hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It is easy for me, or my subcomponents, to scan text for keywords; it is much harder to quickly assess the value of a video.”

“You’re telling me,” said Caitlin. “For YouTube, people often send each other links to clips they like. I couldn’t watch them, but sometimes I listened to the soundtracks. That’s how I discovered Lee Amodeo, as a matter of fact.” She thought for a second, then realized that she actually did have a favorite YouTube video now—and one she’d actually seen. She’d tried to show it to Dr. Kuroda when he’d been here, but he had brushed her off with a “maybe later.”

But perhaps Webmind would enjoy it. She had it bookmarked in Firefox, so she cut-and-pasted the URL into the instant-messenger window and wrote, Have a look at this.

“Okay.”

She started the clip playing for herself, too. There was no particular reason, she knew, that this sight should be more astonishing to her than any other—but it was. The video was narrated by a man with a deep, booming voice that reminded her of James Earl Jones. And when he appeared briefly on screen, he was as big as she’d heard Jones was, although this guy was white.

But it wasn’t the man who was fascinating—oh, no, no. Rather, it was the other two… beings in the video.

One was a chimpanzee, with black hair, a black face—really black, not the brown she’d discovered so-called black human skin actually was. And the other was an orangutan, with orange hair, slightly lighter skin, and alert, brown eyes. The chimp, according to the narrator, was named Hobo, and the orangutan was called Virgil.

The video was remarkable because in it, Hobo, who lived in San Diego, and Virgil, whose home was in Miami, were talking to each other in sign language. It was, apparently, the first-ever interspecies webcam call—and it was even more remarkable because neither of the species involved was Homo sapiens.

Play today, the chimp signed—or, at least that’s what the gestures meant, according to the subtitles, which appeared in a bigger, bolder font than the ones she’d seen when she’d watched movies with her dad. Play ball!

Caitlin still had a hard time interpreting human expressions; she had no idea at all what the change in the orangutan’s face was conveying. But what he signed back was, Hobo play today? Virgil play today!

Not a bad life, thought Caitlin. She supposed she should be a little jealous. The first interspecies webcam call had been made on September 22, according to the narration. Her own first conversation with Webmind had occurred on October 5, just thirteen days later. She’d missed out on making the history books by being part of the first online communication between different kinds of intelligence by less than two weeks.

But then again, she probably would make the history books, anyway, and not just because of her interaction with Webmind, if that ever became public. Rather, Dr. Kuroda’s success in giving her sight had already been well noted, and—

And she found herself opening another browser tab and checking, and, lo and behold, there it was: a Wikipedia entry on her, complete with a picture from the press conference; according to the history tab, it had gone online that very day. It wasn’t long—just a few sentences—but it was astonishing to her that it existed at all. She corrected one small error—she’d been born in Houston, not Austin—and then went back to watching Hobo and Virgil talk.

It was endlessly fascinating. She’d always said she’d been grateful to be blind rather than deaf, because blind people could easily be involved in conversations at parties, go to lectures, listen to music and TV, and so on. But to be deaf—to be shut out of all that—would have been more, Caitlin had thought, than she could have borne. And to be both blind and deaf, as Helen Keller had been, well—it boggled the mind to contemplate that.

But here were Hobo and Virgil communicating animatedly, with signs designed for the deaf. The movements were beautiful, lyrical, like birds in flight. The paranoid part of Caitlin wondered if any of her teachers back at the Texas School for the Blind had spoken American Sign Language. It would have been a great way for them to talk without most of the students even knowing they were doing so—almost like telepathy, sharing thoughts without saying a word.

The two apes were exchanging views about various fruits. Banana! signed Hobo. Love banana!

And for once Virgil made a face Caitlin could decipher: he looked disgusted. Banana no, banana no, he replied. Peach!

Caitlin had seen a banana—the word had come up in her online reading lessons, along with a picture. But although she knew what a peach felt and tasted like, she had no idea what one looked like. And “peach” was also the name of a color, but she hadn’t a clue what sort of color it was. It was humbling to think that these apes knew the world better than she herself did.

“Cool, huh?” said Caitlin, when the video was over.

“Indeed,” replied Webmind.

“Anyway, what else have you been up to? Anything exciting?”

“I have successfully cracked the passwords for forty-two percent of the email accounts I have attempted to access.”

“What?” said Caitlin. She was glad she was already sitting down.

Webmind repeated what he’d just said.

“Let me get this straight. You’re reading people’s email?”

“In hopes of learning how to make them happier, yes.”

“Have—have you read my email?”

“Yes. Inboxes and outboxes.”

Caitlin didn’t know what to say—and so, for most of a minute, she said nothing.

“Caitlin?” Webmind finally prodded.

She opened her mouth, and—

And she was about to tell Webmind that it shouldn’t be doing what it was doing, but—

But what came out was, “Well, then, um, I’d like to know what Matt really thinks of me.” She let the thought sort of hang in the air, waiting to see if Webmind would pick up on it.

But there was no point in waiting for a response from Webmind; he didn’t need time to think—at least not time that Caitlin could measure. And so, when he didn’t immediately reply, she went on.

“I mean, you know, he seems like a nice guy, but…”

“But,” said Webmind, “a girl has to be careful.”

She wondered if he was just quoting something he’d read from Project Gutenberg, or if he really understood what he was saying. “Exactly,” she replied.

“Matt is the boy you helped in math class?”

“Yes.”

“His last name is Reese?”

“Yes.”

“A moment. Matthew Peter Reese, Waterloo—I have his Facebook page… and his log-in there. And his email account at Hotmail. And his instant-messaging traffic. He makes no mention of you.”

Caitlin was saddened, but… “No, wait. He probably didn’t call me by name.”