I’d originally dubbed her Prime. Online, she sometimes adopted the handle Calculass. But now I was finally, really seeing her, rather than just seeing through her—seeing what she actually looked like.
Project Gutenberg had wisdom on all topics. Beauty, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford had said, is in the eye of the beholder.
And to this beholder, at least, my Caitlin was beautiful.
Caitlin woke slowly. She knew, in a hazy way, that she should get out of bed, go to her computer, and make sure that Webmind had survived the night. But she was still exhausted—she’d been up way too late. Her mind wasn’t yet focusing, although as she drifted in and out of consciousness, she realized that it was her birthday. Her parents had decided to give her the new widescreen monitor yesterday, so she didn’t expect any more gifts.
Nor was there a party planned. She’d managed to make only one friend—Bashira—over the short summer that they’d been in Waterloo, and she’d missed so much of the first month of classes that she didn’t really have any friends at school. Certainly not Trevor, and, well, somehow she suspected party-girl Sunshine (what had her parents been thinking?) wouldn’t have wanted to spend her Saturday night at a lame, alcohol-free Sweet Sixteen.
Sixteen was a magical year (and not just, Caitlin thought, because it was a square age, like nine, twenty-five, and thirty-six). But it didn’t make her an adult (the age for that was eighteen here in Ontario) or let her legally drink (she’d have to make it to nineteen for that). Still, one couldn’t be as obsessed with math as she was without knowing that the average age for American girls—presumably even those living in Canada!—to lose their virginity was 16.4 years. And here she was without a boyfriend, or even the prospect of one.
She was comfortably snug in her bed, and Schrödinger was sleeping next to her, his breathing a soft purr. She really should get up and check on Webmind, but she was having trouble convincing her body of that.
But maybe there was a way to check on Webmind without actually getting up. She felt on her night table for the eyePod. It was a little wider and thicker than an iPhone, and it was a couple of inches longer because of the Wi-Fi module Kuroda had attached to it with duct tape. She found the device’s single switch and held it down until it came on, and then—
And then webspace blossomed around her: crisscrossing glowing lines in assorted colors, radiant circles of various sizes.
She was pleased that she could still visualize the Web this way; she’d thought perhaps that the ability would fade as her brain rewired itself to deal with actual vision, but so far it hadn’t. In fact—
In fact, if anything, her websight seemed clearer now, sharper, more focused. The real-world skills were spilling over into this realm.
She concentrated on what was behind what she was seeing, the backdrop to it all, at the very limit of her ability to perceive, a shimmering—yes, yes, it was a checkerboard; there was no doubt now! She could see the tiny pixels of the cellular automata flipping on and off rapidly, and giving rise to—
Consciousness.
There, for her, and her alone, to see: the actual workings of Webmind.
She was pleased to note that after a night of doubtless continued growth in intelligence and complexity, it looked the same as before.
She yawned, pulled back her sheet, and swung her bare feet to the dark blue carpeted floor. As she moved, webspace wheeled about her. She scooped up the eyePod, disconnected the charging cable, and carried it to her desk. Not until she was seated did she push the eyePod’s button and hear the low-pitched beep that signified a switch to simplex mode. Webspace disappeared, replaced by the reality of her bedroom.
She picked her glasses up from the desktop; her left eye had turned out to be quite myopic. Then she reached for the power switch on her old monitor, finding it with ease, and felt about for the switch on her new one. They both came to life.
She had closed the IM window when she’d gone to bed, and, although the mouse was sitting right there, its glowing red underbelly partially visible through the translucent sides of its case, she instead used a series of keyboard commands to open the window and start a new session with Webmind. She wasn’t awake enough yet to try to read text on screen, so she activated her refreshable Braille display. Instantly, the pins formed text: Otanjoubi omedetou.
Caitlin felt it several times. It seemed to be gibberish, as if Webmind were getting even for her father’s games from yesterday, but—but, no, no, there was something familiar about it.
And then she got it, or thought she did. Grinning, she typed, Konnichi wa! But—fair warning!—I only know a few words of Japanese.
The reply was instantaneous. That’s “ happy birthday.”
Caitlin smiled. Thank you!
I had some spare time after figuring out how to interpret graphics, so I learned Japanese; it seemed inappropriate to make Dr. Kuroda converse with me in something other than his native language.
Just like that, she thought. Overnight, on top of, doubtless, a million other things, it had learned Japanese.
So you can see images now?
Still images, yes. Dr. Kuroda continues to work on giving me access to moving images. Or, at least, he was doing that; he is sleeping now, I believe.
Hey, typed Caitlin, you’re no longer all “ hitherto” and “perchance.”
I have read much more widely now than just Project Gutenberg. I understand the distinctions between colloquial and archaic English—and colloquial and archaic Japanese, too, for that matter.
Caitlin frowned. She actually considered its old way of speaking rather charming.
Webmind went on: I know it’s traditional to give a gift to one celebrating a birthday. I can’t buy you anything, but I do have something for you.
Caitlin was startled. OMG! What?
A link, underlined and colored blue, popped up in the IM window on her screen. You’re supposed to click on it, Webmind added, helpfully.
Caitlin smiled, found her mouse, fumbled to get the pointer over the link, and—
And text started to appear on her larger monitor, but, paradoxically, her Braille display didn’t change, and—
And the text was… was painting in slowly on the monitor, top to bottom, and—
And it wasn’t even straight; the lines of text were angling up to the right for some reason. And the letters were tiny, and blotchy; it was unlike any Web page she’d yet seen, and she couldn’t understand why her computer wasn’t rendering the fonts properly.
And then it hit her. She’d heard of such things, but hadn’t ever thought about what they must look like. This was a scan of printed text: a graphic file, a picture that happened to be of a document. From descriptions she’d read, she guessed it was a clipping from a newspaper: narrow, parallel columns of text. But the spacing between words was odd, and—
Oh! That must be what’s meant by “right justification.” The text was so small, she could barely make it out. She had enough trouble reading crisp, clean text—but this!