Wonder

An American academic on sabbatical here had dubbed Hiroshi and Masayuki, not unkindly, the Laurel and Hardy of the department: Hiroshi was slight of build and had a long face and a curiously wide grin, whereas Masayuki was fat with a round head.

Perhaps, Masayuki thought, the real Hardy had also had a penchant for colorful Hawaiian shirts—but, given that all his films were black-and-white, that fact might have been lost to history. In any event, the comparison was no less flattering than being called the “Sumo Wrestler of Science,” as the Tokyo News had dubbed him in its recent story about his success with Caitlin. And this breakthrough—assuming it worked!— would bring him even more media attention. Still, there was a part of him that wished for the quieter life he’d had before.

He and Hiroshi continued working throughout the afternoon, and well into the evening; Masayuki downed four liters of Pepsi before they were done. But at last the device was ready.

“Behold the second eyePod,” said Hiroshi.

Masayuki frowned. “We can’t call it that. This one’s not for sight.” He’d gotten quite fond of the term Caitlin had come up with, though, and couldn’t see referring to this new unit just as an outboard spinal-signal-processing pack. No good pun occurred to him in Japanese, but—

Ah hah!

It had been slightly uncomfortable, Masayuki knew, back in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, where the press conference announcing his success with Caitlin had been held. Mr. Lazaridis himself was in attendance, and probably hadn’t been happy when Masayuki had revealed that they called the device the “eyePod”—a play on the name of the biggest competitor for RIM’s product line.

But perhaps this would make amends for that. “I have it!” Masayuki said triumphantly. “We’ll call this one the BackBerry!”

The BackBerry wasn’t the only device Webmind needed built. Fortunately, he was in contact with scientists and engineers—as well as electronics hobbyists—all over the world. He’d posted a description Sunday night Eastern Time of the other contraption he required: a Dr. Theopolis–like disk that Hobo could carry for him. Crowd-sourcing was indeed a great way to get problems solved quickly, and while Caitlin and her family had slept, more than 200 people—many of them in China, Japan, India, and Australia—had contributed to the design of the device, which, because time was short, needed to be made of off-the-shelf parts.

As for actually building it, there was nowhere better than Waterloo—the key vertex of Canada’s Technology Triangle. Eight days ago, when Caitlin had needed some modifications to her eyePod—including adding the ability for Webmind to send text messages to her eye—her father had taken her to RIM, and Tawanda Michaelis, an engineer there, had done the work.

And now, on this Monday afternoon, Caitlin and her dad returned to Tawanda’s engineering lab. The walls were decorated with giant photos of BlackBerry devices, and there were three long worktables, each covered with equipment.

Caitlin was pleased that she recognized Tawanda: she was developing a memory for faces. And, more than that, she was getting better about categorizing them. Tawanda was—

Caitlin stopped herself. No, she wasn’t African-American, a term that had no relevance here. She was, in fact, Jamaican-Canadian, and she spoke with an accent Caitlin found musical. Tawanda’s face was narrow, and her brown eyes were large. And, based on her appearance, she was… yes, Caitlin actually felt comfortable trying to hazard a guess: Tawanda looked young, and—another visual judgment; Caitlin was getting the hang of this!—she was pretty.

“You’re a sneaky one, Caitlin D,” Tawanda said, after they’d exchanged pleasantries. “It didn’t come to me until you were on the news yesterday. When you’d been here before, you said you wanted to see if your eyePod could receive instant messages from someone named ‘Webmind.’ Didn’t even register on me then; just sounded like a typical online handle—but now! Well, well, well! So, the Great and All-Powerful Oz can talk to you thanks to what we did here!”

Caitlin nodded, and read aloud what Webmind had just sent to her eye. “Yes, and Webmind says, ‘Thank you very much. The work you did was excellent.’ ”

“My pleasure, my pleasure,” said Tawanda. “And now, boys and girls, to today’s science project.” She ushered them farther into the room. “Building the new device was easy—not much to it, really. Only took about five hours.”

They moved over to the middle workbench, and Caitlin felt deflated: there were just too many shiny, metallic, complex items spread out on it for her to pick out the one she was looking for even though she’d seen its blueprints online.

Tawanda picked up the device. Once it was away from the clutter, Caitlin was able to parse its form: it was a disk about a foot in diameter and three inches thick—much bigger, she knew, than necessary to hold its components, but it needed to be visible from across a large room if it was going to serve as Webmind’s public face. Hobo would wear it like a giant medallion.

The whole thing was suggestive of a face. In the upper half of the disk’s silver circular front were two webcam eyes—Webmind had mastered the art of seeing stereoscopically; the learner had now exceeded the master.

Beneath the eyes was a mouth panel shaped like a half-moon, which would light up red in time with Webmind’s speech; it was, apparently, a cliche of science-fiction films for computers and robots to have displays like that, but it was also a very easy thing to engineer, and good theater to boot.

On either side of the disk, round speakers were attached where ears might have gone; Webmind’s voice would emanate from those. The overall effect was rather like an emoticon brought to life; it was only slightly more elaborate than the big-smile:D face.

The bottom of the disk’s rim had been flattened, so the disk could stand on a table; indeed, Tawanda set it down just now in that position.

The disk’s top had been similarly flattened, and an LCD screen—from a BlackBerry Storm—had been installed there, so that Webmind could show Hobo strung-together videos of ASL signs, letting him talk to the ape. Next to the screen was another camera, pointing up; it would allow Webmind to look at Hobo; the device’s microphone was also located on the upper edge.

“It’s tied into the BlackBerry network,” Tawanda said, “meaning Webmind should be able to communicate with it just about anywhere. And we’re using the best new cells we’ve got here at RIM: the battery should last for two days of continuous use before recharging.”

Caitlin’s dad had said nothing beyond a simple hello when they’d arrived, but he was looking at the device with interest. Caitlin wondered if having cameras face him was as disconcerting for him as having people look at him.

“Thank you so much,” Caitlin said to Tawanda.

“My pleasure,” she replied. “So, you’re going to take it to New York yourself?”

“On Wednesday,” Caitlin said. “I’m going to hand-deliver it.”

Tawanda lifted her eyebrows. “It’s not on the list of approved electronic devices, you know. You won’t be able to take it in your carry-on luggage; you’ll have to check it.”

Caitlin frowned. “Is it fragile?”

“Well, it’s made to withstand the worst an angry male ape might throw at it, but as to whether it can survive airport baggage handlers—your guess is as good as mine.”

“Let me be sure I understand you, Mr. Webmind,” said the General Assembly’s protocol officer into his phone. “You want to bring a monkey into the General Assembly Hall?”

I replied, “Hobo is not a monkey, Miss Jong; he is an ape. But, yes, that’s what I want to do.”

“Why?”

I considered several possible answers, including “Because it tickles my fancy,” “Because, as a nonhuman, Hobo will not require the intrusive background checks others are put through before being allowed into secure areas,” and “Because he is my friend,” all of which were true, but the one I gave voice to was this: “Because, having looked now at millions of photographs on the Web, I have learned the value of iconic imagery. This will be a historic occasion, like the March on Washington, the first steps on the moon, and the knocking down of the Berlin