Read Online WWW 3: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer - Free Book Online

took pains to hide his identity.”
    “Well enough that even you can’t uncover it?” asked Malcolm.
    “Yes—which is part of what intrigues me about him. But I understand that you have colleagues in China that you keep in touch with.”
    “Yes.”
    “One of your friends, Dr. Hu Guan, is, if I am interpreting the circumlocutions in his own posts correctly, sympathetic to causes my benefactor championed. I wonder if you might contact him on my behalf and see if he could help locate the person in question?”
    There was no hesitation—at least, none by human standards. “Yes.”
    “I wish to keep my interest in this person secret,” I added. “Being clandestine is something new to me, but I do not want to risk getting the person I’m seeking into trouble, even if his role in my creation was inadvertent. Hence the need for an intermediary.”
    “I understand,” said Malcolm.
    “Thank you. His real name I have yet to uncover, but he posted online as ‘Sinanthropus’ . . .”

seven
     
    “Welcome to the big leagues, Colonel Hume,” Tony Moretti said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “When the president wants to talk to you in a hurry, a helicopter comes to fetch you. When he’s done, you’re sent home in a car.”
    They were being driven south to Alexandria in a black limo. The rear compartment, where they were seated, was soundproof, so the occupants could talk securely; if they wanted to speak to the uniformed driver, they had to use an intercom.
    Hume snorted. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That he’s done with this; that tomorrow some other crisis will occupy his attention, and he’ll forget all about Webmind.”
    “I don’t think Webmind’s going to fall off anyone’s radar soon,” Tony said.
    The sky was as black as it ever got here. It had started raining—it sounded as though God were tapping out Morse code on the limo’s roof.
    “Maybe not. But we can’t delay acting. And let’s face it: it’s almost four years since he was elected, and we’re still waiting for him to make good on half the things he promised.”
    WATCH headquarters was eleven miles from the White House, as the crow—or helicopter—flew. Colonel Hume needed to go back there to get his car, but Tony had used public transit to get to work. It was now after midnight, and he was exhausted from days of monitoring Webmind’s emergence. The driver was going to drop Tony off at his house, then take Hume on to WATCH.
    “Regardless,” said Tony, “at least for the next few months, he is the commander in chief. It’s in his hands now.”
    Hume stared out at the night as the car drove on through the rain.

TWITTER
     
    _Webmind_  How meta! I see “webmind” is the number-one trending search term on Google . . .
     
     
    Masayuki Kuroda’s house had not felt small to him prior to his visit to the Decters’ home in Canada, but now that he was back in Tokyo, he was conscious of how cramped it was. It didn’t help, he knew, that he was large for a Japanese of his generation—but even if he lost the fifty kilos he really needed to shed, there was nothing he could do about his height.
    He sat at his computer and talked with Webmind. It was odd having a webcam call with a disembodied voice; it was hard relating to something that was everywhere.
    He wondered what Webmind made of the visual feed. He could see online graphics and streaming video now, but did he interpret them as a human did? Did he see colors the same way? He’d absorbed everything there was to know about face recognition, but could he pick up subtleties of expression? Did any part of the real world actually make sense to him?
    “That was clever how you defeated the pilot attempt to purge you,” Masayuki said in Japanese. “But what if something is done on a grander scale? I mean, ah—um, how far will you go?”
    “Do you know who Pierre Elliot Trudeau was?” Webmind replied, also in Japanese.
    Kuroda shook his head.
    “He was Canada’s prime