Wonder

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 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 cliché 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.

It’s me again, appeared in the window. Xiaomi. Come to me. I miss you so much.

Feng felt his head swimming. He tried to ground himself by looking about his office: Bones, books, journals, diplomas, and photos of him with Party officials and the worldwide greats of paleontology who had visited over the decades. When he looked down at the screen, the words I am waiting had been added to what was there before, and, while he watched, the word please popped in as well.

He got to his feet, slowly, pain stabbing through his right hip as he put weight upon it as if his body were urging him to accede to his wife’s request; no part of him was happy.

He left the office and shuffled toward the metal staircase, heading down the three floors to the second-story gallery, a vast square of displays with a huge opening in its middle through which the dinosaur skeletons on the first floor were visible. At this end, the tapering neck of the sauropod Mamenchisaurus snaked up from below; at the other, the hadrosaur Tsintaosaurus, standing—quite incorrectly, they knew now—on his hind legs, reared up through the opening. The gallery lights were dim—only a few lamps were left on at night—and the skeletons appeared black and ominous.

The opening was surrounded by white metal railings. Feng had been standing right here when Wong Wai-Jeng had climbed them and leapt to the floor below; he had done it in a desperate bid to escape capture by the police. This would be an escape of a different kind: an escape from loneliness, an escape from pain. And if Xiaomi really was waiting for him…

He was still clad in his dragon robe, and he realized he wanted to undo the sash, so that when he fell, the silk garment would billow up about him like wings. It wouldn’t break his fall, of course, not in the slightest—but it pleased him to think, as he fell to the floor below, with its displays of feathered dinosaurs from Liaoning province, that for one brief moment, a dragon would actually fly.

Down below, the allosaur was facing off against the stegosaur, the latter’s tail with its quartet of spikes curved around to try to disembowel the marauding carnivore.

When Wai-Jeng had climbed the barrier around the opening, which was made of metal tubular segments, he’d used the successively higher segments like the rungs of a ladder. He’d clambered up and over in a desperate rush that Feng could never copy. But Feng did manage to climb up slowly, each awkward bending of his limbs sending pain coursing through him. And he painfully swung himself around, and perched on the top of the barrier, his thin legs dangling over the precipice, his gnarled hands gripping the topmost of the white tubes.

I miss you so much, Xiaomi had said.

I’m waiting for you, she had said.

Come to me, she’d said.

Webmind was doubtless right: a fall of ten meters would easily finish him off; his bones were as brittle as were fossils before being treated with resin.

He took a deep breath, then pushed off, spreading his arms, closing his eyes, falling—and flying—into the embrace of his loving wife.