Wonder

Caitlin straightened her neck, and her view rotated back to horizontal, the larger lobe again on the left and the smaller one on the right. She forced her gaze to bounce even more rapidly between the two parts, imitating the way in which she’d first taught Webmind to make links, hoping that the Other might start making its own effort to reach out to Webmind.

Nothing happened. Although Webmind was visibly stretching toward the Other, the Other was making no effort to reach out from its side of the void. Either it had forgotten how to make a link, or it was unaware of the overture from Webmind, or—and Caitlin prayed in her best atheist way that this wasn’t the case—it simply didn’t want to reconnect with the rest.

During previous visits to webspace, Caitlin had tried—really tried—to go closer to the shimmering background. But no matter how much she focused on the backdrop, she’d been unable to move toward it. She could travel along link lines, zooming like a luge down a racing chute, but there’d been no way to close the distance between herself and the remote background. But if she could reach out and touch the Other—

She concentrated. She stretched—physically, straining in her chair. She closed her eyes and balled her fists, and—

She was still learning to do depth perception; she saw with only a single eye, after all, and couldn’t rely on stereoscopic effects, but—

But, yes, she had read this. If something in the distance was of a fixed size and appeared to grow larger, then it was actually getting closer. And the shimmering pixels in the background did seem ever so slightly larger when she strained forward with all her might in the chair. Which meant she could get nearer to them, but—

But as she watched, they seemed to shrink again, almost as if in bashful response to her attention. If she was going to touch them, she’d have to go in quickly.

And she couldn’t—God damn it, she could not. Her whole life, she’d only run short distances in carefully controlled environments; a blind person didn’t have the luxury of going for a jog, let alone sprinting.

Right now she was seeing webspace—just as another person saw the real world. Still, she could simultaneously visualize other things, just as anyone might conjure up an image of one thing while looking at another. She brought up a mental picture of her real-world surroundings. She was in the living room, between the couch and the easy chair; her mother was seated on the former and Bashira on the latter. To her left was the big- screen TV. In front of her was the dining room, and beyond it, the kitchen. To her right was Matt, standing at her side, and past him there was the entryway, and the staircase leading to the second floor, and the little bookcase with the netbook on it. And behind her—

Behind her was the long corridor leading down to the washroom, and her father’s den, and the utility room, and the house’s side door. If she couldn’t run while seeing the real world, she certainly couldn’t do it while looking at the crisscrossing lines of webspace. But she needed to move quickly to reach the shimmering mass that represented the Chinese portion of the Web; she needed to practically fly if she were to touch the Other.

And so she held out a hand—although she couldn’t see it. “Matt?”

His hand took hers, and from the sound of his voice he had crouched beside her. “I’m here, Caitlin.”

“I need your help…”

thirty-one

Wai-Jeng’s hands danced over the keyboard with an ease they hadn’t felt for weeks. He was proficient at Perl—the duct tape of the Web—and had a thousand tricks at his command. Here, in the room devoted to plugging holes, he had access to port-sniffers, Wireshark, Traceback, and all the other tools of the hacker’s trade—electronic awls to pierce with, software pliers to bend with, subroutine wrenches to twist with.

This iteration of the Great Firewall was stronger than the last, and presumably he alone here in the Blue Room was working to slash it open; all the others were attempting to shore it up. But Wai-Jeng had an additional resource now, something he hadn’t possessed when he’d managed to break through the earlier, less sophisticated barrier: he had Webmind himself for his beta tester. Linus’s law said that with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow— and Webmind had more eyes than even the Communist Party.

Sinanthropus’s hands flew across the keyboard, the keyclicks an anthem of freedom.

Caitlin felt herself rushing through webspace, felt herself streaking toward the shimmering backdrop that represented the Chinese Webmind, felt herself racing along, felt the incredible rush of speed, felt the giddy exhilaration of being a projectile, a rocket, felt—yes, indeed!—her hair whipping in the breeze!

Bashira’s voice from the outside world, from far away, from way behind her: “Faster! Faster!”

The reckless surge continued, and—yes, yes, yes!—the background pixels were growing, were taking on distinctive shapes. She was getting closer!

Sounds like thunder behind her—beside her—in front of her, and her mother’s voice: “Go, Matt, go!”

And now Matt’s voice, a mixture of huffing and cracking: “Are… you… there… yet?”

The pixels growing larger still, so big that she could easily see individual ones flipping from green to blue and back again, their arrangements forming geometric patterns.

“No!” Caitlin shouted. “It’s still a long way off.”

Thunder now echoing from the rear and Bashira’s voice over top of it: “Faster, Matt!”

The background moving into the foreground, the cellular automata resolving themselves into animated, living things—

Her mom: “I’ve got the door!”

Banging, clanging, wood against wood, suddenly all echoes stopping, and—yes!—birdcalls! Cool air on her face, and—

Oh, my God!

Matt, voice cracking: “Hang on!”

Bump bump bump bump bump!

Getting there, getting there, and—a sharp left turn? What—no! Damn! “No, no, no!” Caitlin yelled. “I have to go that way!” She pointed to her right with a hand she couldn’t see.

“Working on it!” Matt said, his voice straining with exertion.

The cellular automata were sliding by now as if she were skimming above them, a meteor glancing off the atmosphere—but the field of pixels was coming to an end; she was reaching its edge.

“Turn!” Caitlin said. “Turn now!”

“Almost… to… the… street!” Matt called.

Sliding by, sliding by…

“And—now!” exclaimed Matt.

More bumps, then careening, almost tipping over, her heart jumping as she thought she’d be thrown from the chair—

Suddenly, a smoother ride, with Matt pushing her as hard and as fast as he could, his running shoes slapping against asphalt now.

She was going in the right direction again, surging forward, falling downward, flying upward—the sensation kept shifting, but regardless of which she felt, the wall of cellular automata was again growing closer.

Her mom’s voice, breathy, ragged: “I can… take over…”

Matt, firmly. “No! I’ve got her!”

A headlong rush, her hair flying behind her.

Two quick toots of a car horn—a driver remarking on the spectacle of Matt furiously pushing her down the