“And, well, remember the Zipf plots we did on the patterns they made?”

He nodded again. Zipf plots showed whether a signal contained information.

“And, later, remember, you calculated their Shannon entropy?”

Yet another nod. Shannon entropy showed how complex information was—and, when her dad had done his calculations, the answer had been: not very complex at all. Whatever was in the background of the Web hadn’t been sophisticated.

“Wellll,” said Caitlin, “I did my own Shannon analyses… over and over again. And, um, as time went by, the score kept getting higher: third-order, fourth-order.” She paused. “Then eighth and ninth.”

“Then it was secret messages!” said her father. English, and most other languages, showed eighth- or ninth-order Shannon entropy. And that had indeed been their fear: that they’d stumbled onto an operation by the NSA, or some other spy organization, running in the background of the Web.

“No,” said Caitlin. “The score kept getting higher and higher. I saw it reach 16.4.”

“You must have been—” But he stopped himself; he knew better than to say “—doing the math wrong.”

Caitlin shook her head. “It isn’t secret messages.” She paused, recalling that Webmind’s first words to her were, in fact, “Seekrit message to Calculass,” imitating a phrase Caitlin herself often used online.

“Then what is it?” her mother asked.

Caitlin took a deep breath, blew it out, then: “It’s a… consciousness.”

“A what?” her mom said.

Caitlin spread her arms. “It’s a consciousness, an intelligence, that’s emerged spontaneously, somehow, in the infrastructure of the Web.”

Caitlin still had to parse facial expressions piece by piece, and then match the clues to descriptions she’d read in books. Her father’s eyes narrowed into a squint, and he pressed his lips tightly together: skepticism.

Her mother’s tone was gentle. “That’s an… interesting idea, dear, but…”

“Its name,” Caitlin said firmly, “is Webmind.”

And that look on her mother’s face—mouth opened and rounded, eyes wide—had to be surprise. “You’ve spoken with it?”

Caitlin nodded. “Via instant messenger.”

“Sweetheart,” her mother said, “there are lots of con artists on the Web.”

“No, Mom. For Pete’s sake, this is real.”

“Has he asked you to meet him?” her mother demanded. “Asked for photographs?”

“No! Mom, I know all about online predators. It’s nothing like that.”

“Have you given him any personal information?” her mother continued. “Bank account numbers? Your Social Security number? Anything like that?”

“Mom!”

Her mother looked at her father, as if resuming some old argument. “I told you something like this would happen,” she said. “A blind girl spending all that time unsupervised online.”

Caitlin’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I’m not blind anymore! And, even when I was, I was always careful. This is as real as anything.”

“You didn’t answer your mother’s question,” her dad said. “Have you given out any personal numbers or passwords?”

“Jesus, Dad, no. This isn’t a scam.”

“That’s what everyone who is being scammed says,” he replied.

“Look, come up to my room,” Caitlin said. “I’ll show you.”

She didn’t wait for an answer; she just turned and headed for the staircase. Her breathing was ragged, but she knew she wasn’t going to accomplish anything by being pissy. She took a deep breath, and a memory of an animated cartoon came to her. She hadn’t seen it yet, but she’d always enjoyed listening to it, after Stacy back in Austin had explained what was going on. It was a Looney Tunes short called “One Froggy Evening,” about a frog who sang and danced for the guy who’d found it, but just croaked when anyone else was around. Eyes closed, steps passing beneath her feet, the frog’s favorite song ran through her head:

Hello! ma baby

Hello! ma honey

Hello! ma ragtime gal

Send me a kiss by wire

Baby, ma heart’s on fire!

Her parents followed her. Caitlin sat down in the swivel chair in front of her desk. She had an old seventeen-inch monitor hooked up to one computer, and the new twenty-seven-inch widescreen monitor she’d received that morning as an early birthday present connected to her other computer. Her mother took up a position on her left, arms crossed in front of her chest, and her father stood on her right. The chat session with Webmind was still on screen, with her brb as the last post. Things she said were in red letters, and Webmind’s words were in blue.

She couldn’t see her father—she was still blind in her right eye—but in her left-side peripheral vision, she saw her mother shoot him another look.

She typed, Back.

There was no response. The IM window—a white rectangle parked in a corner of her big monitor—showed nothing except an animated ad at its top. She shifted in her chair. Of course, Webmind knew she wasn’t alone. It watched the datafeed from her eyePod, and certainly could see her mother.

She tried again, typing Hello.

Still nothing. She turned to look at her father—and realized that might have been a mistake, since Webmind could now see that he was there, too. She faced the screen again and drummed her fingers on the stonewashed denim stretched across her thigh. Come on, she thought. Send me a kiss by wire…

And after six more seconds, the blue letters “POS” appeared in the instant-messenger window.

A startled laugh burst from Caitlin.

“What’s that mean?” demanded her mother.

“ ‘Parents over shoulder,’ ” Caitlin said. “It’s what you write in an IM when you can’t talk freely.” She typed: Yes, they are, and I’d like you to meet them. She looked at her father, so Webmind could see him, and she sent, That’s my dad, Dr. Malcolm Decter. And she looked the other way, then added, And my mom, Dr. Barbara Decter.

Webmind might have wrestled mightily with what to do next—but its response appeared instantaneously. Greetings and felicitations.

Caitlin smiled. “It’s read all of Project Gutenberg,” she said. “Its language tends to be dated.”

“Sweetheart,” her mother said gently, “that could be anyone.”

“It’s read all of Wikipedia, too,” Caitlin said. “Ask it something that no human being could find quickly online.”

“The Wikipedia entry on any topic is usually the first Google hit,” her mom said. “If this guy’s got a fast enough connection, he could find anything quickly.”

“Ask it a question, Dad. Something technical.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if wondering whether to go along with this nonsense or not. Finally, he said, “Are heterotic strings open or closed?”

Caitlin started to type. “How do you spell that?”

“H-e-t-e-r-o-t-i-c.”

She finished typing the question, but didn’t press enter. “Now, watch how fast it answers—it won’t be searching, it’ll know it.” She sent the question, and the word closed appeared at once.

“Fifty-fifty shot,” said her mother.

Caitlin was getting pissed again. There had to be an easy way to prove what she was saying.

And there was!

“Okay, look, Mom—my webcam is off, see?”