Wonder

thirty-eight

I understood the significance of what had just happened, of course. And I was pleased with my restraint. When Caitlin had first pulled Matt to her, I’d thought about flashing into her vision the words, “Get a room!”—although maybe coming from me “Get a Roomba!” would have been more appropriate.

But I knew it would be best if I said nothing at all. I had no body, and so the joys Caitlin and Matt had just experienced would forever be foreign to me; the closest I got to embodiment was the feeling I had when one part of me suppressed the action another part proposed. It wasn’t literally holding my tongue, but it felt somehow akin to that.

Twenty-two minutes later, Caitlin turned her eyePod back on. They were still in the math classroom, but Matt was fully dressed again, including wearing his coat, and I assumed Caitlin was dressed, as well. He looked quite happy, I must say.

Matt gingerly opened the classroom door and stuck his head into the hallway. Apparently the coast was clear because he motioned for Caitlin to follow. They quickly made their way down the corridor, then descended to the first floor.

Just as they were about to exit the building, Matt excused himself to go into the boys’ restroom. As soon as Caitlin was alone, she said, “Sorry, Webmind.”

No need to apologize, I sent to her eye. It is your right to turn off the eyePod whenever you wish.

Caitlin shook her head; I could tell by the way the images moved. What? I asked.

“And they call you Big Brother. Jerks.”

Indeed… my little sister.

“Not so little anymore,” she said softly.

That was true.

Caitlin was growing up.

I was growing up.

And just maybe the rest of the planet was, too.

Burly bald-headed Marek led Peyton Hume down the pea green corridor and into the room he’d seen when he’d been eavesdropping. It was larger than Hume had thought, and the walls were yellow, not the beige they’d seemed on his monitor. There were windows along one side, which also hadn’t been visible in the view he’d had before, but they looked out over nothing more interesting than the adjacent parking lot, an industrial Dumpster, and the featureless black nighttime sky.

Hume immediately spotted the security camera he’d tapped into earlier: a silver box on a rotating turret hanging from the ceiling near the front of the room. He could see several other webcams scattered about—some shaped like golf balls, others like short cylinders—and there were probably more that he wasn’t seeing.

At the front of the room were two mismatched sixty-inch LCD monitors and a third monitor that looked to be perhaps fifty inches. One of the bigger ones was sitting on a desk; the other big one was atop a small cube-shaped refrigerator; and the fifty-incher was perched somewhat precariously on a half-height filing cabinet. The whole room had the look of a nerve center that had been thrown together in a hurry; Webmind clearly hadn’t been willing to wait for installers from Geek Squad to wall-mount the monitors.

The monitor on the left showed what looked like an organization chart, with a single box at the top, and successively more boxes at each level down, but Hume couldn’t make out the labels from this far back. The boxes were mostly colored green, but a few were amber and four were red—no, no, make that three were red. One turned green while he watched. An African-American man called out as that happened, “Got it!”

The monitor in the middle showed a view that kept cycling through what Hume soon realized must be the other control centers Webmind had referred to: each contained people in a variety of styles of dress intently working on various computers. One of the rooms seemed to be a gymnasium, with an indoor rock-climbing wall. Another might have been a factory floor. A third had large windows through which Hume could see a daytime cityscape although he didn’t recognize the city; all the people in that room were Asian.

The smaller monitor on the right showed data displays and hex dumps, plus a large digital clock counting down second by second. As Hume watched, it went from a minute and zero seconds to fifty-nine seconds, then fifty-eight. He glanced at his own digital watch, which he fastidiously kept properly set; it appeared the countdown was to 11:00 P.M. Eastern time.

He looked around the room, searching for any way he could stop what was about to happen—but there were clearly people involved all over the planet. Even if he could grab Marek’s gun—and there was no reason to think he’d be able to—what could he do? Shoot out the camera that was panning back and forth? That was pointless; it wouldn’t slow down Webmind. Or should he—desperate times required desperate actions—start popping off the hackers, putting bullets in the backs of their heads? But surely he couldn’t get more than four or five, tops, before someone blew him away.

There was indeed nothing to do but watch.

The digital timer continued to decrement. Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine.

He looked again at the organizational chart; while his attention had been elsewhere, all but one of the squares had turned green.

Webmind’s voice emanated from a speaker. “Mr. Hawkins—time is running out.”

Devon Hawkins—Crowbar Alpha—was madly scooting a mouse along his desktop. “Sorry!” he shouted. “Damn system keeps reconfiguring itself. It’ll just—there!”

Hume looked back at the board; every box was now emerald. He snapped his eyes to the timer: Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen.

He half expected the roomful of hackers to start chanting the countdown out loud, just as he’d seen crowds do at the Cape before a shuttle launch, but they were all intent on their computers. With ten seconds left, Webmind himself started a spoken countdown: “Ten. Nine. Eight.”

“All ports open!” shouted Chase.

“Seven. Six. Five.”

Hume could hear his own heartbeat, and he felt sweat beading on his forehead.

“All set!” shouted another man.

“Four. Three. Two.”

“Interlocks in place!” shouted Drakkenfyre.

Webmind’s tone didn’t change at all as he reached the end of the countdown; he simply finished it off with perfect mechanical precision. “One. Zero.”

Hume half expected the lights to dim—after all, he was in Washington, D.C., which had to be ground zero of any attempt to take over America’s computing infrastructure. But nothing happened in the room or, as far as he could tell, outside the window.

But, still, Webmind’s next word took his breath away. “Success.”

The president never arrived at meetings early; it would not do for him to be seen waiting on his underlings. At precisely 11:00 A.M., he nodded to one of the two uniformed guards, each brandishing a machine gun, who stood on either side of the auditorium’s heavy wooden door. The guard saluted and opened the door.

The president was surprised to see so many senior Party members here. Indeed, it seemed the Minister of Communications had exceeded his authority summoning such a large group. He looked up at the podium, expecting perhaps to see Zhang Bo there, but—

Ah, there he was, sitting in the front row. The president made his way down. His reserved seat was the central one in the first row, but he had to pass by the minister to get to it, and, as he did so, he said, “I trust your explanation will be satisfactory.”

Zhang gave him an odd look, and the president took his seat. The moment he did so, a male voice emanated from the wall-mounted speakers, saying, in crisp Mandarin, “Thank you all for coming.”

There was no one at the podium, which was positioned at stage left. But there was a giant LCD monitor mounted on the back wall, flanked on either side by a large Chinese flag hanging from the ceiling. The monitor lit up, showing the face of an old, wise-looking Chinese man. A second later, it changed to that of a smiling Chinese girl. Another second, and a middle-aged Zhuang woman appeared. A second more, and she was replaced by a kindly-looking male Han.

The president shot a glance at the communications minister. He would have thought that everyone on his staff understood his dislike of PowerPoint by now.

The voice from the speakers continued. “First, let me apologize for the subterfuge in summoning you to this meeting. I have no desire to deceive, but I did not want the fact of this meeting to become public knowledge—and I believe when we are done, you will all share the same opinion.”

The president had had enough. He rose and turned to face the audience—ten rows, each with twelve padded chairs, almost every seat occupied. “Who is responsible for this?” he demanded.

The voice continued. “Your Excellency, my apologies. But, if you’d like to address me, please turn around: I am watching from the webcam on the podium.”

The president rotated as quickly as his old body allowed. There was indeed, he now saw, a laptop computer sitting on the podium, but it was turned so that its screen, and, presumably, the webcam mounted in the bezel surrounding it, faced out at the room. On the much larger screen behind it, the parade of Chinese faces continued: a teenage boy, a pregnant woman, an ancient street vendor, an old farmer in his rice paddy.

“And you are?” demanded the president.

“And now I must tender a third apology,” said the voice. “I foolishly adopted a name that is English; I beg your forgiveness.” The face on the screen changed twice more. “I am”—and, indeed, the word that came next from the speakers was two flat Western-sounding syllables—“Webmind.”

The president turned to the Minister of Communications. “Cut it off.”

The measured voice coming from the speakers gave the effect of infinite patience. “I understand, Excellency, that suppressing what you may not wish to hear is the standard procedure, but things are happening that you should be aware of. You will be more comfortable if you resume your seat.”

The president glanced again at the large screen. As it happened, the face that flashed by at that second seemed to be looking right at him with reproving eyes. He sat, his arthritic bones protesting, and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Thank you,” said Webmind. “Gentlemen, it has long been said that perhaps a hundred men really run China. You are those hundred men—one hundred out of more than a billion; behind each of you stands ten million citizens.” Faces continued to appear on the screen: old, young, male, female, smiling or studious, some at work, others at play. “These are those people. At the rate I’m displaying them—one per second—it would take more than thirty years to show you each of them.”

The parade of faces continued.

“Now, what is the significance of so many being ruled by so few?” asked Webmind. Someone behind the president must have lifted a hand, because Webmind said, “Put down your hand, please; my question was rhetorical. The significance comes from the history of this great country. In 1045 B.C., the Zhou Dynasty defeated the preceding Shang Dynasty by invoking a concept that still resonates with the Chinese people: Tianming, the Mandate of Heaven. This mandate has no time limitation: capable and just rulers may hold power for as long as they have the mandate.”

The president shifted in his chair. Faces continued to appear one after the other on the screen.

“Still,” said Webmind, “the Mandate of Heaven reinforces the power of the common people.”

A bricklayer.

Another farmer.

A student.

“The mandate does not require rulers to be noble-born; many previous dynasties, including the Han and Ming, were founded by commoners.”

A wizened old man, hair as white as snow.

Another man, broad-shouldered, pushing a plow.

A third, with a thin beard.

“But,” continued Webmind, “despotic or corrupt rulers lose the mandate automatically. Historically, floods, famines, and other natural disasters have often been considered evidence of divine repeal of the mandate. Perhaps future scholars will come to cite the recent bird-flu pandemic in Shanxi province—the outbreak of which you contained by slaughtering ten thousand peasants—as an example of such a disaster.”

A man outside a Buddhist temple.

A banker in a suit and tie.

A female gymnast.

“This government,” Webmind said simply, “no longer has the Mandate of Heaven. It is time for you—all one hundred of you—to stand down.”

“No,” said the president, softly.

A little girl flying a beautiful red kite.

“No,” he said again.

A woman staring at a computer monitor.

“You cannot ask this,” he said.

A gray-haired man in a wheelchair.

“As you may know,” continued Webmind, “in 2008, China overtook the United States as the country with the most Internet users—some 250 million. That number has more than tripled since then. There are now nine hundred million cell-phone users in this country; it won’t be long before every adult has a cell phone, or access to one—and through their cell phones, they can connect to the Internet.”

The president knew mobile-phone penetration was high in his country, but he hadn’t realized how high. Still, China had long been the world’s leading manufacturer of the devices; they were cheaper here than anywhere else on Earth.

“And that access,” continued Webmind, “makes the unprecedented possible. Every one of those users can now vote on affairs of state—and so they shall. I am, effective immediately, handing over the governance of this nation directly to its people. The Chinese Communist Party is no longer in power; the governing of China is now crowd-sourced.”

Shocked murmurs from the assembled group. “That’s—that’s not possible,” said the president, speaking loudly now.

“Yes, it is,” said Webmind. “The citizens will collectively make decisions about policy. If they wish to elect new officials, they may; should they wish to later remove those officials, they can. They might decide to craft a government similar to that of other existing free nations—or they might devise new and different solutions; it is entirely up to them. I will keep infrastructure running during this transition, and if they desire my guidance or advice, they have but to ask. But I have no doubt that the aggregate wisdom of a billion-plus people can tackle any problem.”

A boy holding a Falun Gong brochure.

A Tibetan monk.

A newborn baby cradled in a man’s loving arms.

“As of today,” said Webmind, “finally and forever, this great nation will live up to its name: the People’s Republic of China.”