Chase was tall, black, and heroin-addict thin, with long dreadlocks. There was a gold ring through his right eyebrow and a series of silver loops going down the curve of his left ear.
“You ever kill anyone?” Chase asked. He had a Jamaican accent.
Hume raised his eyebrows. “Yes. In Iraq.”
“That’s a bad war, man.”
“I didn’t come here to discuss politics,” said Hume.
“Maybe Webmind stop all the wars,” said Chase.
“Maybe humanity should be able to determine its own destiny,” said Hume.
“And you don’t think we be able do that much longer, so?”
“Yes,” said Hume.
Chase nodded. “You right, maybe. Beer?”
“Thanks, no. I’ve got a long drive home.”
Hume knew that Chase was twenty-four. He’d come to the States three years ago—the required paperwork magically appearing; more proof that he was one of the best hackers in the business. In other circumstances, someone else might have gone off the reservation to hire a former black-ops sniper, but for this, a digital assassin was called for.
“So, what you want from me?” said Chase.
“Webmind must be stopped,” Hume said. “But the government is going to waste too much time deciding what to do, so it has to be done by guys like you.”
“There ain’t no guys like me, flyboy,” said Chase.
Hume frowned but said nothing.
“You don’t say to Einstein, ‘Guys like you.’ I’m Mozart; I’m Michael Jordan.”
“Which is why I came to you,” Hume said. “The public doesn’t know this, but Webmind is instantiated as cellular automata; each cell consists of a mutant packet with a TTL counter that never decrements to zero. What’s needed is a virus that can find and delete those packets. Write me that code.”
“Why I wanna do that, man?”
Hume knew the only answer that would matter. “For the cred.” Hacking into a bank was so last millennium. Compromising military systems had been done, quite literally, to death. But this! No one had ever taken out an AI before. To be the one who’d managed that would ensure immortality—a name, or at least a pseudonym, that would live forever.
“Need more,” said Chase.
Hume frowned. “Money? I don’t have—”
“Not money, man.” He waved at the row of monitors. “I need money, I take money.”
“What then?”
“Wanna see WATCH—see what you guys got.”
“I can’t possibly—”
“Too bad. Cuz you right: you need me.”
Hume thought for a moment, then: “Deal.”
Chase nodded. “Gimme seventy-two hours. Sky gonna fall on Webmind.”
nine
Even though it was a Saturday morning, Caitlin’s father had already left for the Perimeter Institute. Stephen Hawking was visiting; he did not adjust to different time zones easily and wasn’t one to take weekends off, so everyone who wanted to work with him had to get in early.
Caitlin and her mother were eating breakfast in the kitchen: Cheerios and orange juice for Caitlin; toast, marmalade, and coffee for her mom. The smell of coffee made Caitlin think of Matt, who seemed to be fueled by the stuff. And on that topic…
“I can’t spend the rest of my life a prisoner in this house, you know,” Caitlin said. She was learning the tricks of the sighted: she pretended to study the way her Cheerios floated on the sea of milk but was really watching her mother out of the corner of her eye, gauging her reaction.
“We have to be careful, dear. After what happened at school—”
“That was three days ago,” Caitlin said, in a tone that conveyed the time unit might as well have been years. “If those CSIS agents had wanted to come after me again, they would’ve already—they’d simply knock on our door.”
Caitlin used her spoon to submerge some Cheerios and watched as they bobbed back to the surface. Her mother was quiet for a time, perhaps considering. “Where do you want to go?”
“Just down to Timmy’s.” She felt all Canadian-like, calling the Tim Hortons donut chain by the nickname the locals used.
“No, no, you can’t go out alone.”
“I don’t mean by myself. I mean, you know, with, um, Matt.” Caitlin didn’t want to spell it out for her mom, but she could hardly have a relationship with him if they were confined to her house and always chaperoned.
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, baby,” her mom said.
Caitlin looked full on at her mother now. “For Pete’s sake, Mom, I’m in constant contact with Webmind; he can keep an eye on me. Or, um, my eye will let him keep up with me. Or whatever.”
“I don’t know…”
“It’s not far, and I’ll bring you some Timbits when I come back.” She smiled triumphantly. “It’s a win-win scenario.”
Her mother returned the smile. “All right, dear. But do be careful.”
_Webmind_ Question: where are the movies that portray artificial intelligence as beneficent, reliable, and kind?
Malcolm Decter sat listening to Stephen Hawking. It was amusing that Webmind had a more-human-sounding voice than the great physicist did. Hawking had long refused to upgrade his speech synthesizer; that voice was part of his identity, he said—although he did wish it had a British accent.
It was also intriguing watching Hawking give a lecture. He had to laboriously write his talk in advance, and then just sit motionless in his wheelchair while his computer played it back for his audience. Malcolm wasn’t much given to thinking about the mental states of neurotypicals, but, then again, Hawking surely wasn’t typical—and neither was Webmind. Malcolm rather suspected the great physicist was doing something similar to what Webmind did: letting his mind wander off to a million other places while he waited for people to digest what he was saying.
Behind Hawking, here in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, were three giant blackboards with equations related to loop quantum gravity scrawled on them by whoever had been in here last. Hawking was denied many things, not the least of which were the physicists’ primary tools of blackboards and napkin backs. He had almost no physical interaction with the world and had to conceptualize everything in his mind. Malcolm couldn’t relate—but he suspected Webmind could.
A break finally came in Hawking’s lecture, and the audience of physicists erupted into spirited conversation. “Yes, but what about spinfoam?” “That part about the Immirzi parameter was brilliant!” “Well, there goes my approach!”
Malcolm fished his BlackBerry out of his pocket and checked his email; he’d never been obsessive about that before, but he wanted to be sure that Barb and Caitlin were okay, and—
Ah, there was an answer from Hu Guan. He opened it.
Malcolm, so good to hear from you!
I do know the person about whom you ask. Sadly, he is no longer at liberty. It took me a while to locate him. I’d expected him to be in prison, but he’s actually hospitalized; the poor fellow’s back has been broken.
Since the authorities now have him, I suppose there’s no further danger to him in mentioning his real name. It is Wong Wai-Jeng, formerly in technical support at the paleontology museum here in Beijing. It will perhaps be a comfort to him to know that his brave efforts were noticed half a world away.
For a second, Malcolm thought about forwarding the message to Webmind, but there was no need for that. Webmind read his email—he read everybody’s email—and so he already knew what Zhang had said, and presumably whatever he wanted to do with this Sinanthropus fellow was under way.