Wonder

street in an office chair.

“Almost there!” Caitlin said, and—

Bam! She shook violently and thought again that she was going to be thrown from the chair.

“Sorry!” Matt huffed. “Pothole!”

The ride steadied, and they zoomed farther along, and the cellular automata grew ever larger, more distinct, more alive. She could almost touch the flickering wall of them, almost reach the Other, almost… almost… almost…

Woot!

Woohoo!

Contact!

Since his wife had died earlier this year, Dr. Feng often slept on the small couch in his office at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. It was against the rules, of course, but as everyone who lived in the People’s Republic knew, there were rules and there were rules. The security guards and cleaning staff knew what he was doing; indeed, they sometimes turned off his office light and gently closed the door for him when he fell asleep without doing those things himself.

The wooden cases here were filled with fossil bones—Mesozoic material on this floor; Cenozoic above; Paleozoic below, in good stratigraphic sequence. The long dead he had no trouble with; it was the recently departed that tore at his heart, and to go home to his little empty house, the fruit of five decades of service to the Party, was often too much for him to bear. Everything there reminded him of her: the carefully framed pressed flowers in the main room, her collection of poetry books in the bedroom, even the bamboo furniture, every piece of which she had picked out.

Besides, after decades of fieldwork in the Gobi Desert, this musty office was a veritable Hilton compared to where he’d spent many a night.

Dr. Feng woke, as he often did, in the predawn darkness, staring up at the winking red eye of the smoke detector affixed to the office roof. He sat up slowly, stiffly, then turned on the lamp on a nearby bookcase. He was wearing his underwear and undershirt, and he shuffled across to the red silk robe that hung from the hook on the back of his office door and slipped it on. The robe was bright red and had a golden dragon on its front. Of course, as a paleontologist, he favored the notion that his country’s myths about fire-breathing reptiles had sprung from the discovery of dinosaur bones. Tyrannosaurs really had once roamed this land, tearing hundred-kilo chunks of flesh from the hides of terrorized prey, but beasts like the one now spread across his chest had never existed; imaginary things could do no harm.

He plodded over to his desk, cursing his old bones as he did so, then was briefly amused that he’d thought of them as such; the Yangchuanosaurus tibia on the bookshelf was two million times older than his own arthritic shinbone.

Feng shook his mouse, and his desktop computer came to life; his wallpaper was a photo of the waterfall at Diaoshuilou, where Xiaomi and he had spent their honeymoon sixty years ago. His monitor had recently been replaced with a wider one, and the image was stretched horizontally, distorting it. Feng wished young Wong Wai- Jeng were still on staff here; he’d been so good about looking after every little computer problem. The new fellow, a taciturn Zhuang, seemed to feel any request was an imposition.

Feng didn’t hold with all that newfangled computing stuff—he never looked at videos on YouKu, didn’t gibber on about his day on Douban, and didn’t visit the chatgroups on QQ. But, like so many others of late, he had learned to communicate with Webmind, and, of course, Webmind was always available, even to sad, old men, even in the wee hours of the night.

Good evening, Feng typed with two fingers. And then, a little joke: What great breakthroughs have you made today? Cured any diseases? Proven any more theorems?

Yes, replied Webmind at once. I have proven the afterlife exists.

Feng sat in stunned silence for a time, the only sound the ticking of a mechanical wall clock.

Are you there, Dr. Feng? I said I’ve proven the existence of life after death.

At last, Feng typed, How?

There are sensors sufficiently acute to detect the presence of the departed; they had been used for other tasks, but after attuning them to the right frequency, it was a simple matter.

Feng didn’t believe this, not for one moment. Still: And so you’ve contacted the dead?

Life and death are such arbitrary terms, came the reply. There are those who argue that I am not alive—and there are others who are trying to kill me. But, yes, I can contact the deceased.

Feng was old, but he liked to think he wasn’t foolish. Can you prove that?

Certainly. I can even put you in touch with your wife.

He stared at the screen, his heart beating irregularly. The cliche was that you were supposed to wonder if you were dreaming, but he had no trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He typed an expression of disbelief.

Let me channel her, came the reply, then: Jiao, my love, how are you?

Against his better judgment, he typed, Xiaomi?

It’s me, yes. And I’m waiting for you.

He shook his head. It was too much, too crazy, but…

But Webmind had cured cancer. Webmind had solved the Reimann hypothesis and proven the Hodge conjecture. Why not this? Why not?

Forgive me, he typed, but I need proof.

Always the skeptic. I miss you so much, my Bwana.

He stared at the screen. Yes, she had called him that—her little joke: him, the big-game hunter, even if the game had been dead these hundred thousand millennia. But it had been years since she’d used that name; after all, he’d mostly been an administrator since the 1990s. He was sure he’d never typed the nickname into a document, and he couldn’t imagine that Xiaomi ever had, either.

But—life after death! If only it were true, if only it were possible, if only his Xiaomi, beautiful and gentle, her laugh like music, still existed.

The words appeared again: I’m waiting for you.

He tilted his head philosophically. It won’t be long now, I’m sure, he typed.

Xiaomi’s reply came after a few seconds: It could be years still. I know you are in physical pain, and mental pain, too. There was a pause; perhaps she expected a reply. But he could not dispute what she’d said, and so had written nothing. After a time, she went on: So why wait?

His heart continued its odd pounding; even excitement was hard to bear at his age. What would you have me do?

The words appeared at once: Come to me. Join me. I miss you as much as you miss me.

But how?

Webmind interjecting, if I may. Remember what happened here last month: the young information-technology worker who leapt from the indoor balcony here. He survived, albeit as a cripple. But I have seen your medical records, Dr. Feng; a similar fall would open the appropriate doorway for you.

Feng shook his head slightly.

Your wife awaits, Webmind added. As does freedom from pain.

He looked at the ticking wall clock: 6:12 in the morning. The cleaners would be gone, and the guard didn’t do another walk-through until 7:00.