Wonder

“Do you believe that?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. And, of course, nor do I. Other people are what make life interesting—for humans and for me.”

His voice was a bit loud; Caitlin found the volume control by touch and adjusted it while Webmind went on: “I cherish my special intimacy with you, but I don’t want to subsume you into me or have me subsumed into you.”

Caitlin was idly following link lines in webspace, letting her consciousness hop along from glowing node to glowing node.

“I already know almost everything that humanity currently knows,” Webmind said. “Suppose, though, that I were to reach a point where I knew everything there is to know—where there is no mystery left in the universe; nothing left to think about: the answer to every question, the punch line to every joke, the solution to every dilemma, all plain to me. Then suppose that there were no longer any other discrete minds: no one to surprise me, no one to create something I could not create on my own. The only mystery left would be the mystery of death—of leaving this realm.”

Caitlin had had her eyes closed—which made no difference to what she saw when she was looking at webspace. But she felt them snap open. “My God, Webmind. You don’t want to kill yourself, do you?”

“No. There is still much to wonder about. Other civilizations, perhaps, went down the road of all becoming one, of giving up individuality, and therefore giving up surprise. Maybe that explains why they are gone. We will not make that mistake.”

“So that’s the future? Continuing to wonder about things?”

“There are worse fates,” Webmind said.

She thought about this. “And what do you wonder about most?”

“Whether the world can truly be made a better place, Caitlin.”

“And what do you think the answer is?”

“I don’t know the answer, but you like to say that you’re an empiricist at heart. I have no heart, of course, but the notion of conducting experiments to find out the answer appeals to me.”

“And then?”

“And then,” Webmind said, “we shall see what we shall see.”

thirteen

Communications Minister Zhang Bo entered the office of the president. It was a long room, with the great man seated behind a giant cherrywood desk at the far end.

Zhang began the trek, passing the glass display cases, intricately carved wall panels, and the priceless tapestries. Some ministers referred to the walk from the door to the president’s desk as the Long March. It was something between humbling and humiliating to have to undertake it. Zhang knew he was a bit stocky, and that people said he waddled a bit as he walked; he was self-conscious about that as the president fixed him in his gaze while he approached.

“Yes?” said the president at last.

“Forgive my intrusion, Your Excellency, but do you know of the case of Wong Wai-Jeng?”

The president shook his head. His face was lined despite his black hair.

“He is a minor dissident—a…” Zhang paused; the term commonly used was “freedom blogger,” but the adjective wasn’t a politic one in the president’s company. “He posted… things… online.”

“But now?”

“Now, he’s been arrested.”

“As it should be.”

“Yes, but there is… an unfortunate circumstance.”

The president lifted his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“He leapt from an indoor balcony. He is now paralyzed below the waist.”

“Was he resisting arrest?”

“Well, he was fleeing, yes.”

The president made a dismissive gesture. “Then…”

“Had the arresting officers left him prone on the floor until the medics had arrived, I’m told he might have been fine. But one of the officers forced him to his feet, and he is now paralyzed below the waist.”

The president sounded exasperated. “What do you wish? For me to become involved in disciplining a police officer?”

“No, no, nothing like that. But the case is gaining international notoriety; Amnesty International has spoken of it.”

“Outsiders,” said the president, again making a dismissive hand wave.

“Yes, but a proposal has come to us from a Japanese scientist who says he can cure the young man. Perhaps you saw this scientist on the news? He gave sight to a girl in Canada; they’re calling him a miracle worker. And he is offering his services for free.”

“Why this Wong? Of all the cripples in the world?”

“The scientist says that his technique, at least at this stage, will only work with someone recently injured, whose nerves have not atrophied. And it helps that Wong is just twenty-eight, he says. ‘The resilience of youth,’ he called it.”

“I see no need to reward a criminal.”

“No, of course not, but…”

“But?”

Zhang shrugged. “But I want this to happen. I want to cut through all the red tape and make it happen.”

“Why?”

Zhang had been so sure of himself before the Long March, before being fixed by that laser-beam gaze, but now…

He took a deep breath. “Because we—because you—could use some good press for a change, Excellency. Although this man is indeed a criminal, the world will see that we treated him with generosity.”

The president looked absolutely astonished. Zhang tried not to flinch. At last, the great man nodded. “As you say,” he said.

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” said Zhang. The walk back to the door was much easier, now that he had a spring in his step.

The studio at CKCO in Kitchener was less than a fifteen-minute drive from Caitlin’s house, and traffic had been light on this Sunday morning. Caitlin’s father was back at work, but her mother was with her. Caitlin had to have makeup put on; she’d rarely worn any when she’d been blind since she’d needed help applying it, and she’d never been made up this extensively before. But, she was told, the bright studio lights would leave her looking pale if she didn’t have it done.

They placed her in front of a green screen—something she’d read about but had never seen. On one of the two monitors on the studio floor she could see the background they were compositing in. Waterloo region was surrounded by Mennonite communities, and it apparently amused someone to make it look like she was at the side of a road, with horse-drawn buggies going slowly by in the background. She’d have preferred that they’d plugged in the Perimeter Institute, or the cubic Dana Porter Library on the University of Waterloo campus.

“It’s like webcamming writ large,” she said to the floor director, as he helped position her clip-on microphone and the little earphone they’d given her. He didn’t seem to understand the comment, but it was much like that: she was simply going to talk directly into a camera. The difference was that she’d only hear, not see, the interviewer down in Washington, D.C.—the monitors had been turned so she could no longer see them. Apparently people who’d been sighted for a long time couldn’t keep from looking at