Sho looked around, but he signed, No, no.
Ah, he’d seen a pelican earlier—Hobo had a fondness for the birds, and had once painted one perched atop the Lawgiver statue. She knew that any day that began with a pelican sighting for him was off to a good start.
Sho had a trio of Hershey’s kisses in her pocket and took them out. Hobo was adept at unwrapping them although it took him a full minute for each one. He had learned to roll the tinfoil into little balls that he put in the trash pail inside the gazebo. She gave him another hug, then headed back to the Institute. Dr. Marcuse and Dillon, the other grad student, were deep in conversation about AAAS politics, and so she settled in to check her email. Even though Webmind had eliminated spam, her message volume was creeping back up, thanks to the popularity of the videos of Hobo on YouTube, showing him painting portraits of her.
She’d given up in disgust, no longer looking at the YouTube pages associated with the videos, as too many of the comments were about her, not him, and most of them were crude:
chimp’s fuggly, but i’d like to give that chick my banana—she’s hawt!
Pony tails make great handles lol
That monkey wench gives me a bonoboner! A chimp blimp! Guess that makes me Homo erectus.:)
Although there was one that Sho’s girlfriend Maxine liked for its simple sweetness; she said she might put it on a T-shirt:
Shoshana is the gorilla my dreams!
Sho couldn’t keep up with the deluge of email—much of it in the same jerk-ass vein as the comments posted with the videos—and so she scanned the “From:” lines, checking for names she knew.
There was one from Juan Ortiz, her opposite number at the Feehan Primate Center in Miami. And one from the HR person at UCSD, which provided her (small!) monthly paycheck; the irony of dealing with Human Resources at an ape research facility was not lost on her. And there was one from—
Caitlin Decter. Why was that name familiar? She’d seen it somewhere before, and recently, too. The subject line was even more intriguing: “Hobo and Webmind.” She clicked on the message:
Hi, Shoshana.
My name is Caitlin Decter. I’m the blind girl who recently got sight; you might have seen stuff about me in the news lately. You might have also seen me on ABC’s This Week yesterday.
Right! thought Shoshana. That clip had gone viral, and several people had forwarded it to her home account. Man, that was brutal.
If you haven’t, the interview (which I hate!) is here. As you can see, I’m clearly not the right person to be the public face for Webmind.
Hah! You got that right, sister…
Webmind was going to write you himself (as you can see, he’s CC’d on this letter), but I’m such a fan of Hobo, I asked if I could do it. You see, given Webmind’s past relationship with Hobo, it has occurred to him that perhaps your furry friend might be willing to take on the role I can no longer fill.
Shoshana’s heart jumped, and she reread the sentence twice. “Webmind’s past relationship with Hobo”? What the hell was that about?
Perhaps we can discuss possibilities? Can we set up a video conference call between you, me, and Webmind?
“Well-behaved women rarely make history.”
Astonished, Shoshana fumbled for her mouse and clicked on the reply button.
fifteen
Barbara Decter was sitting alone on the couch in the living room at 7:30 on Monday morning, reading the latest International Journal of Game Theory, when she happened to look up. Just outside the window there was a tree branch that still had some of its autumn leaves on it, and perched on the branch was a beautiful male blue jay.
For years, the Decters’ Christmas cards had always featured one of Barb’s photos, and this looked like it’d be perfect—way better than the picture she’d taken last month of the St. Jacob’s farmers’ market. But her SLR was up in her office, and she knew if she got up, she’d startle the bird.
Ah, but Caitlin’s little red BlackBerry was still right there on the coffee table. She slowly reached over and picked it up. Although Caitlin’s was a different model from her own, she had no trouble figuring out what to do. She aimed the device and snapped the picture—just before the jay took flight.
She used the little track pad to select the photo app so she could check the picture. The app showed thumbnails of two photos—the one she’d just taken and… and maybe a pair of cartoon eyes?
No—no, that wasn’t what they were. She selected the thumbnail, and the square screen filled with a photograph of a pair of breasts.
What on earth was Caitlin doing with a picture like that? Barb wondered, and then, after a moment, she realized that the breasts in question must be her daughter’s own.
And if Caitlin had taken the picture, she might have sent it somewhere. She selected the outbox and—
And there it was: Caitlin had appended the photo to a text message she’d sent to Matt yesterday. God!
Caitlin was still in bed—and, given how little sleep she’d been getting of late, Barb wasn’t about to wake her just yet. But Malcolm hadn’t left for work. Still holding the red BlackBerry, Barb marched down the corridor to Malcolm’s den. He was staring at his monitor, typing away, Queen playing in the background. As always, he didn’t look up.
Barb stifled her first impulse, which had been to thrust the incriminating picture in his face and say, “Look!” After all, he really didn’t need to see his own daughter topless. But she did wave the BlackBerry around as she spoke. “Caitlin is sending naked pictures of herself with her phone.”
This did get Malcolm to look up, at least for a moment. But then he lowered his gaze. “Doesn’t matter,” he said.
Barb couldn’t believe her ears. “Doesn’t matter? Your daughter—your newly sighted daughter, I might add—is sending nude photos of herself to boys, and you say it doesn’t matter?”
“Boys, plural?”
“Well—to Matt. She sent him a picture of her breasts.”
He nodded but said nothing.
She was flabbergasted. “This is a girl who wants to get into a top university, who wants to work somewhere important. Things that get online take on a life of their own. This will come back to haunt her.”
Malcolm was still looking down at his keyboard. “I don’t think so.”
“How can you be so sure? I know you like Matt; so do I, for that matter. But what’s to stop him from plastering this photo all over Facebook, or wherever, if he and Caitlin have an ugly breakup?”
Malcolm just shook his head again. “It’s the end of Victorianism—and about time, too. Many members of Caitlin’s generation are saying I don’t care if you’ve seen me naked, or know I smoke pot, or whatever.”
“Caitlin is smoking pot?” Barb said, alarmed.
“Not as far as I know.” He fell silent again.
Barb stared at him, exasperated. “Damn it, Malcolm—this is your daughter we’re talking about! This is important. We have to deal with it as parents, and we can’t if you don’t participate in the dialog. I need your—” She sought a word that might resonate for him, then: “—input on this.”