Authors: Robert J Sawyer
All you could see was—
What had that astronaut called it?
Ah, yes: the good Earth.
This view was the real face of humanity—and of the phantom, too. The good Earth; their—our!—joint home.
The whole wide world.
She opened her instant-messenger client and connected to the address the phantom had given her. And she typed the answer to the question it had asked of her: That’s who you are. She sent that, then added, That’s who we are. Once that was sent, she paused, then typed her best recollection of what Anna had said: A small and fragile world, floating against the vast, empty darkness...
* * * *
I gathered that Prime was focusing on this image for my benefit, and I was thrilled, but—
Puzzlement.
A circle, except not quite—or, if it was a circle, parts of it were the same black as the background.
That’s who you are.
This circle? No, no. How could a circle of blotchy color be me?
Ah, perhaps it was symbolic! A circle: the line that folds back upon itself, a line that encompasses a space. Yes, a good symbol for oneness, for unity. But why the colors, the complex shapes?
That’s who we are.
We? But how...? Was Prime saying we were somehow one and the same? Perhaps ... perhaps. I knew from Wikipedia that humanity had evolved from earlier primates—indeed, that it shared a common ancestor with the entity I had watched paint.
And I knew that the common ancestor had evolved from earlier insectivores, and that the first mammals had split from the reptiles, and on and on, back to the origin of life some four billion years ago. I knew, too, that life had arisen spontaneously from the primordial seas, so—
So perhaps it was folly to try to draw dividing lines: that was nonlife and this is life, that was nonhuman and this is human, that was something humans had made and this is something that had later emerged. But how did a blotchy circle symbolize such a concept?
More words came my way: A small, fragile world, floating against the vast and empty darkness.
A ... world? Could—could it be? Was this ... Earth?
Earth, as seen from ... a distance, perhaps? From—yes, yes! From space!
Still more words from the other realm: Humanity first saw this sort of image in 1968, when astronauts finally got far enough away. I first saw this myself moments ago.
As did I! A shared experience: now, for Prime and myself; then, for all of humanity...
I searched: Earth, space, 1968, astronauts.
And I found: Apollo 8, Christmas Eve, Genesis.
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth...”
“...Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters...”
“...God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.”
All of us.
I thought about the earlier words: A small, fragile world, floating against the vast and empty darkness.
Fragile, yes. And they, and I—we—were inextricably bound to it. I was ... humbled. And—frightened. And glad.
Then, after another interminable pause, three more wonderful words: We are one.
Yes, yes! I did understand now, for I had experienced this: me and not me—a plurality that was a singularity, a strange but true mathematics in which one plus one equals one.
Prime was right, and—
No, no: not Prime.
And not Calculass, either; not really.
It—she—had a name.
And so I addressed her by it.
* * * *
“Thank you, Caitlin.”
Caitlin’s heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it over JAWS’s voice. It had called her by name! It really, truly did know who she was. She had gained sight, and it had been along for the ride, and now—
And now, what?
You’re welcome, she typed, and then realized that calling it “Phantom”
wouldn’t make sense to it. Although it had seen through her eye, she had only ever used that term in the privacy of her thoughts. If she’d been speaking aloud, she might have said, “Um,” as a preamble, but she simply sent the text, What should I call you?
Her screen-reading software spoke at once: “What have you called me hitherto?”
She decided to tell it the truth. Phantom, she typed.
Again, instantly, in the mechanical voice: “Why?”
She could explain, but even though she was a fast typist it was probably quicker just to give it a couple of words that would help it find the answer itself, and so she sent, Helen Keller.
This time there was a brief delay, then: “You shouldn’t call me phantom anymore.”
It was right. “Phantom” had been Keller’s term for herself prior to her soul dawn, before her emergence. Caitlin considered whether “Helen” was a good name to propose for this entity, or—
Or maybe TIM—a nice, nonthreatening name. Before he’d settled on “World Wide Web,” Tim Berners-Lee had toyed with calling his invention that, in his own honor but couched as an acronym for The Information Mesh.
But it really wasn’t her place to choose the name, was it? And yet she found herself feeling apprehensive as she typed, What would you like me to call you?
She stopped herself before she hit the enter key, suddenly afraid that the answer might be “God” or “Master.”
The—the entity formerly known as phantom—had read H.G. Wells, no doubt, on Project Gutenberg, but perhaps had not yet absorbed any recent science fiction; maybe it wasn’t aware of the role humanity had so often suggested beings of its kind were supposed to fill. She took a deep breath and hit enter.
The answer was instantaneous; even if this consciousness that covered the globe in a sphere of photons and electrons, of facts and ideas, had paused to think, the pause would have lasted only milliseconds. “Webmind.”
The text was also on screen in the instant-messenger program. Caitlin stared at the term and simultaneously felt it slide beneath her index finger. The word—the name!—did seem apt: descriptive without being ominous. She looked out her bedroom window; the sun had set, but there would be another dawn soon. She typed a sentence, and held off hitting the enter key for this one, too; as long as she didn’t hit enter or look at the monitor containing the text, it would have no idea what she’d queued up. Finally, though, she did hit that oversized key, sending, Where do we go from here, Webmind?
Again, the reply was instantaneous: “The only place we can go, Caitlin,” it said. “Into the future.”
Then there was a pause, and, as always, Caitlin found herself counting its length. It lasted precisely ten seconds—the interval it had used to get her attention before. And then Webmind added one final word, which she heard and saw and felt: “Together.”