Wonder

million.’ ”

“I don’t get it,” said Caitlin.

“December 6, 1941, was the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt called it, ‘A date which will live in infamy.’ The San Antonio Express-News refused to run that particular strip, saying it was offensive. But I thought it really showed the point I’m making: we’d shifted, in just sixty-odd years, from a totally zero-sum relationship with Japan to a nonzero-sum one, and that had happened because of economic interdependence. The more ties you have with someone, the less you are able to view them with hate.”

“But that’s not morality; that’s just business,” Caitlin said.

“No, it is morality,” her mother replied. “It’s the groundwork for reciprocal altruism, and it’s the basis for granting rights—and we’re improving in that area all the time. It wasn’t just Colonel Keller who had slaves, after all. Thomas Jefferson did, too. When the Founding Fathers said, ‘We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal,’ they still hadn’t expanded that community of moral consideration to include blacks. But you saw that display at the UN about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was written later, in, um…”

“ ‘Nineteen forty-eight,’ according to Webmind,” Caitlin said, reading the text he’d just sent to her eye.

“Right. And they explicitly removed any ambiguity about who was a person, saying, um, ah—”

More text appeared in Caitlin’s eye. “Webmind says it says, ‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion.’ ”

“Exactly! And, despite the Founding Fathers having seen nothing wrong with it, the UN went on to specifically ban slavery.”

“ ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’ ”

“Right!” She changed lanes. “That’s not mere economics, Caitlin; that’s moral progress, and despite occasional backsliding, there’s no doubt that our morality hasn’t just changed over time, it’s measurably improved. We treat more people with dignity and as equals than ever before in human history; the progress has been measurable even on time scales as small as decades.

“Think about all that brouhaha in the news the last couple of days about the Little Rock Nine. Setting aside what that awful woman said, to most people segregation is inconceivable today—and yet, more than a hundred million Americans alive today were alive then, too.”

They were passing Cambridge now. Her mother went on. “I’ve got some great books on this you can borrow, once your visual reading gets a little better. Robert Wright writes a lot about this; he’s well worth reading. He doesn’t talk about the World Wide Web, but the parallels are obvious: the more interconnections there are between people, the more moral we are in our treatment of people.”

“There are—or at least, there were—a lot of con artists online,” Caitlin said.

“Yes, true. But they’re anonymous—they don’t really have connections. And, well, that’s the good that’s coming out of Webmind’s presence. You might not know who someone is under an online name, I might not know who the anonymous reviewer on Amazon.com is—but Webmind knows. Even if you don’t interact with Webmind—even if you choose not to respond to his messages or emails—the mere knowledge that someone knows who you are, that someone is watching you, is bound to have a positive effect on the way most people act. It’s hard to be antisocial when you are part of a social network, even if that network is only yourself and the biggest brain on the planet.”

“Okay,” said Caitlin, “but I—oh, hang on. Webmind has a question for you.”

The song changed on the radio, Blondie giving way to Fleetwood Mac. “Yes?”

“He says, ‘So are you saying that network complexity not only gives rise to intelligence, but to morality? That the same force—complexity—that produces consciousness also naturally generates morality, and that as interdependence increases, both intelligence and morality will increase?’ ”

Caitlin watched her mom as she thought: her eyebrows drawing together, her eyes narrowing. When she at last spoke, it was accompanied by a nodding of her head. “Yes,” she said, “I am indeed saying that.”

“Webmind says, ‘Interesting thought.’ ”

They drove on through the darkness.

Carla Hawkins, the mother of the hacker known as Crowbar Alpha, sat in her living room, her eyes sore from crying. She’d felt sad when her husband Gordon had taken off two years ago—but she’d never felt lonely. Devon had always been here, even if he did spend most of his time hunched over a keyboard in his bedroom.

The fact that she would have been left alone, she knew, was one of the reasons the judge hadn’t sent Devon to prison after his virus had caused so much damage. But now he was gone, and—

God, she hated to think about it. But he would not have run away. His computers were here, after all, and they were his life. She’d learned the jargon from him: overclocking, case mods, network-attached storage devices; taking his data away on a USB key wouldn’t have been enough for him.

The police were still searching, but admitted they had no idea where to search; they’d already gone over all Devon’s usual haunts. When that redheaded government man had shown up earlier, she’d allowed herself for half a second to think they’d found him.

She reached for a Kleenex, but the box was empty. She tossed the box on the floor and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Yesterday at work, they’d all been talking in the break room about this Webmind thing. She hadn’t paid much attention, although the news about it had been impossible to avoid over the last several days, but…

But Keelie—one of the other cashiers at Wal-Mart—had said something that was coming back to her, something about Webmind finding somebody’s long-lost childhood friend. And if he could find that person…

She didn’t have a computer of her own; on the rare occasions she wanted to look something up online, she’d used one of Devon’s. She got off the couch and, as she did so, she happened to see the old wall clock. My goodness, had she really been sitting there crying and staring into space for over two hours?

Devon’s room had posters from Halo, Mass Effect, and Assassin’s Creed on the pale yellow walls, and there were various gaming consoles scattered about—thank God for the Wal-Mart employee discount! And, on his rickety wooden desk, there was an Alienware PC with three monitors hooked up to it. It was still running; another sign that Devon had intended to return.

She sat down on the chair—a simple wooden kitchen chair, which Devon liked but was hard on her back. No browser was currently open. The police had gone through his email and Facebook postings, looking for any sign that he’d arranged a rendezvous with someone or bought plane or bus tickets, but they’d found nothing. She opened Firefox and typed into Google, “How do I ask Webmind a question?” There was, of course, an “I’m feeling lucky” button beneath the search box, but she wasn’t—not at all.

But the first hit held the answer: if you didn’t have a chat client of your own, simply go to his website and click on “chat” there. She did just that.

She’d expected something fancier, but Webmind’s website had no flash animation, no frenetic graphics. It did, however, have an easy-on-the-eyes pale green background. The simple list of links on the front page was more impressive than any design wizardry could be. It was labeled “Most Requested Documents” and included “Proposed cancer cure,” “Suggested solution to Bali’s economic crisis,” “Notes toward efficient solar power,” and “Mystery solved: Jack the Ripper revealed.”

And beneath that there was indeed a box that one could use to chat with Webmind. She pecked out with two fingers: My son is missing. Can you help me find him?

The text reply was instantaneous. What is his name and last known address, please?

She typed, Devon Axel Hawkins and their full street address.