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who saw his good qualities: his kindness, his gentleness, his brilliance, his wit. She had to impress him now, while she had the opportunity, and—

And she knew one way that would work for sure. “Can you keep a secret?” she said.

His blond eyebrows went up. “Yes.”

Of course, everybody answered that question the same way; she’d never once met anyone who’d replied, “No, not at all; I blab things all over the place.” Still, she thought Matt was telling the truth.

“Webmind?” she said.

Matt replied, “What about it?” but the word hadn’t been addressed to him. Rather, it was an invitation for Webmind to stop her before she went further. What sailed across her vision in a series of Braille dots was,

I am guided by your judgment.

“Okay,” Caitlin said, now to Matt, “but you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“That’s what keeping a secret means,” Matt said, smiling.

“Promise,” Caitlin said earnestly. “Promise it.”

“Okay, yes. I promise.”

He’s telling the truth, Webmind supplied.

“Well,” she said at last, “that was me.”

“What was you?” Matt asked.

“Bringing forth Webmind. Bringing him into full consciousness. Helping him interact with the real world.”

Matt was making that deer-caught-in-headlights face.

“You don’t believe me,” Caitlin said.

“Wellll,” said Matt, “I mean, what are the two most amazing news stories of the last month? Sure, ‘World Wide Web Claims to be Conscious’ has got to be number one. But a good contender for number two must be, ‘Blind Girl Gains Sight.’ What are the chances that both of them would involve the same person?”

Caitlin smiled. If he was going to doubt her word, at least he was doing it based on statistics. “That would be a remarkable coincidence,” she said, “if they were unrelated events. But they’re not. See, when Dr. Kuroda—that’s the guy who gave me sight—when he wired this thing up” (she pulled the eyePod/BlackBerry combo out of her pocket so Matt could see it) “he made a mistake. When I’m getting data uploaded to it over the Web, it gets fed into my optic nerve, as well—and when that’s happening, I visualize the structure of the World Wide Web; my brain co-opted its visual centers to do that while I was blind. And, well, it was through this websight—that’s what we call it; websight, s-i-g-h-t—that I first detected what was going on in the background of the Web.”

She waited for his reply. If he did reject what she was saying again, well—she’d have to kick him in the shin!

But what he said was perfect. “I think I’d come out of hiding to be with you, too.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Caitlin said again.

“Of course not. Who does know that you’re involved?”

“My parents. Dr. Kuroda.”

“Ah.”

“The Canadian government. The American government.”

“God.”

“The Japanese government, too.”

“Wow.”

“And who knows who else? But so far, no one has said anything about me publicly.”

“Aren’t you afraid, you know, that somebody’s going to try to do something to you?”

“That’s why I’m not going outside just now—although I think my parents are overreacting. After all, I’m being watched.”

He lowered his voice. “By who?”

“By him,” she said. “By Webmind.” She pointed to her left eye.

Matt made what must have been a perplexed frown.

“He sees what I see,” Caitlin said. “There’s a little implant behind this eye that picks up the signals my retina is putting out. Those signals get copied to him.”

“Him?”

“Him. After all, if he were a girl, his name would be Webminda.”

He smiled, but it disappeared quickly. “So, so he can see me right now?”

“Yes.”

He paused, perhaps thinking, then raised his right hand, splayed out his thumb, and separated his remaining fingers into two groups of two.

“What’s that mean?” Caitlin asked.

Matt looked momentarily puzzled. “Oh! I keep forgetting. It’s the Vulcan salute. I’m telling Webmind to live long and prosper.”

Caitlin smiled. “I take it you like Star Trek? ”

“I’d never seen the TV show until J.J. Abrams’s movie came out a few years ago, but I loved that movie, and so I downloaded the old episodes. The original versions had really cheesy effects, but later they put in CGI effects, and, yeah, I got hooked.”

“You and my dad are going to so get along,” she said.

They both fell silent for a moment, and Braille dots briefly obstructed part of her vision: Tell him I say, “Peace and long life.”

“Webmind says, ‘Peace and long life.’ ”

“It can talk to you right now?”

“Text messages to my eye.”

“That is so cool,” Matt said.

“Yes, it is. And there’s no freaking fifteen-cents-per-text charge, either.”

“ ‘Peace and long life’—that’s the traditional response to the Vulcan greeting,” Matt said, in wonder. “How does it know that?”

“If it’s online, he knows about it. He’s read all of Wikipedia, among other things.”

“Wow,” said Matt, stunned. “My girlfriend knows Webmind.”

Caitlin felt her heart jump, and Matt, suddenly realizing what he’d said, brought a hand to his mouth. “Oh, my… um, I…”

She got up from her chair, and reached out with her two hands, taking his, and pulled him to his feet. “That’s okay,” Caitlin said. She closed her eyes and—

And waited.

After five seconds, she reopened them. “Matt? You’re supposed to kiss me now.”

His voice was low. “He’s watching.”

“Not if my eyes are closed, silly.”

“Oh!” he said. “Right.”

She closed her eyes again.

And Matt kissed her, gently, softly, wonderfully.

thirty-six

I’d expected people to suddenly become circumspect in email, to stop speaking so freely in instant messages, to back away from posting intimate details on Facebook and other social-networking sites. I’d expected teenage girls to stop flashing their thongs on Justin.tv, and married people to cease visiting AshleyMadison.com. But there