WWW 3: Wonder (41 page)

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Authors: Robert J Sawyer

BOOK: WWW 3: Wonder
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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.”
thirty-nine
 
Asked how he was going to deal with a government he didn’t approve of, Ronald Reagan had once said, “Well, you just go in there and tell them they’re not in charge anymore.”
It hadn’t worked back then. But, then again, Reagan had lacked my facilities . . .
 
 
Still staring at the pictures from China, Peyton Hume rose to his feet, and his jaw dropped open. “My . . . God,” he said.
The hackers in front of him were cheering and shouting. One was slapping another on his back; several were shaking hands; Drakkenfyre was hugging the man next to her, and Devon Hawkins was hugging the man next to him. From somewhere, bottles of champagne had appeared, and Hume saw a cork go flying into the air.
Marek came over to him and pointed at the celebration. “It’s something, isn’t it?” he said. “I never told you my full name. It’s Marek Hruska. I’m Czech. I was there in 1989, just a teenager, during the Gentle Revolution—what you call the Velvet Revolution.” Hume knew it: the bloodless overthrow of the authoritarian government in Prague. Marek went on. “I thought
that
was a miracle—but
this!”
He shook his bald head. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, eh, Colonel?”
Hume tried to think of something better to say, but finally, feeling like a little kid, he just said, “Wow.” He nodded his head toward the group of people celebrating. “May I . . . ?”
Marek looked at the security camera with his eyebrows raised, and Hume saw the LED on the Bluetooth headset blink. “Sure,” said Marek, gesturing with an open hand.
Hume crossed the room. One of the hackers—a white guy in his twenties with long blond hair and a wispy blond beard, wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt—was standing by his computer, sipping champagne. Hume leaned in to look at what was on his screen. A half-dozen windows were open, displaying hex dumps, standard hacking tools, and a Web page in Chinese. The blond fellow pointed at it. “Chinese Ministry of Health,” he said. “Completely owned.”
“Do you speak Chinese?” Hume asked.
“No, but Webmind does. And let me tell you, he puts Google Translate and BabelFish to shame.”
Hume moved to the next desk; the hacker there had been using a wide-screen laptop. He’d wandered away from his desk, but judging by the graphics on the Web page being shown, his job had been taking control of the Ministry of Agriculture.
All around Hume, the revelry was continuing. He caught sight of a skeletal figure coming toward him, dreadlocks swinging as he walked. “Hello, Chase.”
“Mr. Hume,” Chase said. “How be you?”
“I’m fine, but—but what happened? What are you doing here?”
“Wonder, man. That what happen:
wonder.”
“But I went back to your place. It’d had been broken into. And there was blood.”
Chase touched the beige bandage over his brown nose. “Big Marek and me not see eye to eye at first. He not want to take no for an answer.”
Marek Hruska had moved over to join them. “Again, I’m sorry about that,” he said to Chase. Then, turning to Hume: “Webmind was quite adamant that we needed Mr. Chase. I’m afraid old habits die hard.”

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