As she hurried along, the orange link line grew wider and wider, like a road or a sluice, and the mass, the torrent, the deluge surged toward her, running down its length. She sped up—she might not be able to run well in the real world, but in webspace she was a gazelle!

“What’s happening?” her mother’s voice called from the other realm, but Caitlin didn’t dare break her concentration to answer.

Webmind, though, could better subdivide his attention, and she heard him say, “We’re giving them more than they bargained for.”

“Traffic at the switching station is increasing,” said Aiesha, looking up from her console.

Tony looked at the right-hand monitor, beneath the WATCH eye logo. It was now showing a graph of web-traffic levels at the Alexandria AT T switching center. It had just shot way, way up, the curve looking an awful lot like the leading edge of a tsunami. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Everywhere!” shouted Shel. “Anywhere—still can’t trace the damn source.”

“God,” said Colonel Hume. “It’s a fucking flood.”

Tony looked at Hume, then back at Shelton Halleck. “A denial-of-service attack?”

“Maybe,” said Shel. “There are so many packets now. The ones we were looking for were initially a tiny fraction of the traffic flow, but now they’re not even one in a billion.”

“What is it?” demanded Tony. “What the hell is it?”

“Analyzing now,” said Shel. “Gotta string the packets back together—give me a sec…”

And then the center screen filled with a hex dump, including 6F 75 72 20 74 69 6E.

“Well?” snapped Tony. “What is it? Viruses? Program code? Encrypted data?”

“Oh, crap,” said Shel. “No, it’s not encrypted. It’s goddamn plaintext. It’s fuckin’ ASCII, for crying out loud.” He hit a key, and the hexadecimal bytes were converted to their English equivalents on the screen: Are you sad about your tiny penis? If so, we can help! Just respond with your credit-card number, and—

“Jesus!” said Tony.

“It’s still pouring in,” said Aiesha. “It must be everything since Webmind started intercepting it! Something like 300 billion messages—and it’s bouncing it all back at our node at once.”

“AT T is reporting critical overload conditions,” said Dirk Kozak, the communications officer, holding a telephone handset to his chest. “They say if we don’t do something, that node will lock up totally.”

“It’s not going to give up without a fight, is it?” Tony said to Hume, who slammed his freckled right fist into his left palm. Tony turned and looked out at the vast room. “All right,” he shouted. “Abort! Abort! Abort!”

Caitlin, her mother, her father, and Matt were all in the Decter living room. Schrödinger prowled. The big rectangle of the wall-mounted TV was off.

Caitlin’s dad was intimidating at all times, but particularly so when he was standing, looming over everyone else. “Who did you tell?” he demanded.

“Nobody,” said Matt.

Only anger, Caitlin knew, could make her father speak so much. “Come on, Matt! You’re the only person outside of this family, Masayuki, and Dr. Bloom in Israel who knows about the cellular automata. And none of us said a word.”

“I—um, I didn’t…”

“Who’ d you tell?”

“Nobody. Nobody. I promised Caitlin, and I keep my promises.”

The words He’s telling the truth flashed across Caitlin’s vision.

“He isn’t lying,” Caitlin said. “Webmind says so.”

“Then how’d the government find out?” her father replied sharply.

“I didn’t say a word,” Matt said. “Honest. But…”

“Yes?” snapped her father.

Matt lifted his shoulders. “I was curious. I wanted to know more.” His voice was cracking on every syllable. “And, well, I—”

“Oh, shit,” said Caitlin’s mom, getting it. “You googled it.”

Matt nodded.

“What search terms did you use?” demanded her father.

Matt’s voice was small. “It spiraled outward. I started with ‘cellular automata,’ and then ‘Conway’s Game of Life,’ and ‘Stephen Wolfram.’”

“Did you include the term ‘Webmind’ in any of your searches?” her dad asked.

“No! I’m not that stupid.” He took a breath. “But…”

A single word like a bullet: “Yes?”

“Well, you mentioned Roger Penrose, and so I did search on”—and his voice cracked again as he said it—“ ‘cellular automata consciousness.’ ”

“God,” said her father. “Anything else?”

Matt nodded meekly. “I also looked up ‘packets’ and ‘time to live’ and ‘hop counters.’ ”

“You might as well have shouted it to the world! Don’t you get it? We’re being watched—and not just by Webmind.”

“I thought Google would be secure.”

“Google might very well be secure,” her father said, “but your ISP isn’t. Anyone can watch the keywords you’re sending to Google.”

“I’m sorry, Caitlin. So, so sorry.” He looked into her eye. “Webmind, I’m so sorry.”

“Matt,” said Caitlin’s mom sternly, “if you’re going to be part of this, you have got to be more circumspect. You’ve got questions, you come to me or Caitlin’s dad, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me ma’am. ‘Dr. Decter’ will do.”

“Yes, Dr. Decter.”

Matt looked again at Caitlin—and at Webmind. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

Caitlin held him in her gaze for ten seconds, then let a smile cross her face. “How can I be mad at anyone for being curious about cool math stuff?”

Matt looked relieved, and, for the first time in front of her parents, Caitlin reached out and took his hand.

“Today was only the beginning,” Caitlin’s mom said. “They’re going to try again.”

“What right have they got to do that?” Caitlin said. “It’s murder, for God’s sake!”

“Sweetheart…” her mom said.

“Isn’t it?” Caitlin demanded. She let go of Matt’s hand and paced in front of the coffee table. “Webmind is intelligent and alive. They have no right to decide on everyone’s behalf. They’re wielding control just because they think they’re entitled to, because they think they can get away with it. They’re behaving like… like…”

“Like Orwell’s Big Brother,” offered Matt.

Caitlin nodded emphatically. “Exactly!” She paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. After a moment, she said, “Well, then, I guess our work’s cut out for us. We’ll have to show them.”

“Show them what?” her mom asked.

She spread her arms as if it were obvious. “Why, that my Big Brother can take their Big Brother, of course.”

“The Georgia Zoo has dropped its lawsuit,” Dr. Marcuse announced excitedly, after reading the email that had just arrived.

“Really?” said Shoshana. “Yay!”

“Go us!” said Dillon.

“Yes,” said the Silverback. “They’ve dropped their custody claim. A full day of people boycotting the zoo was enough for them, it seems. Not to mention thousands of emails complaining about what they were planning to do. We were copied on 2,642 of them, and only God—or Webmind!—knows how many were sent that we weren’t copied on.”