He looked down at the desktop, with its perfectly neat stacks of paper, and the stapler precisely aligned with the edge of the desk. His shoulders rolled slightly; she’d seen this before—seen him gathering himself into professorial mode, the only mode in which he could speak at length. And then he looked up, and ever so briefly met her eyes, his own perhaps pleading for her to understand that the way he was didn’t mean he loved Caitlin any less than she did. And then he focused on a spot on the gray wall a little to Barb’s right, and he spoke in rapid-fire sentences, wanting to get it all out as quickly as possible. “The point is that all the things we used to let society hold over us—my God, he got drunk in public; good Lord, she actually has sex; wow, he’s experimented with drugs; gee whiz, sometimes she doesn’t look perfect; holy crap, he’s had a few minor runins with the law—none of that garbage matters, and Caitlin and most of her generation are saying so. They just don’t care about it; they don’t care about it now, and they won’t care about it when they’re the ones in power, either.”
Barb was astounded but knew better than to interrupt him; if she turned the water pump off, it wouldn’t run this freely again for days. And, she had to admit, what he was saying did make sense.
He went on. “What’s the biggest fear the world has right now? It’s whether we can survive the advent of Webmind—survive the coming of superintelligence, survive being dethroned from our lofty position as the smartest things on Earth—survive all that with our fundamental humanity intact. But the way our generation lived our lives—hiding who we really were, fretting over what the neighbors might know about us, letting peccadilloes embarrass us, living in fear of being shamed for nothing more than doing what almost everyone else was doing anyway—well, as Caitlin would say, that is so over.”
He seemed to have said his piece and was looking again at his desktop, and so Barb said, “But… but they could blackmail her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. The feds, maybe.”
“Well, first, Webmind said he’s made our BlackBerrys secure. And, second, I’d love to see that headline: ‘US government has naked picture of underage girl.’ If anything, Caitlin could blackmail them: ‘Federal agent tries to coerce sixteen-year-old with topless photo.’ Attempting to kill Webmind might not cost the Democrats the next election, but getting into the child-porn business certainly will.”
“Porn!” said Barbara.
“It either is or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then who gives a damn?”
Barb frowned, remembering back to when her marriage to Frank, her first husband, had been falling apart: she’d been mortified that people would find out about their difficulties, that strangers—or, even worse, friends!—might overhear them fighting. “Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly.
“I am right,” he replied, and again he focused on the wall next to her. “We’re trying to preserve humanity in this new era, and yet we’ve spent the last century or more pretending to be perfect little robots. Well, I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. Caitlin isn’t perfect. So what? You’re divorced, I’m autistic, she used to be blind—who gives a damn? If you’re a good person, hiding who you really are is just another way of saying that you’ve decided to let others establish your self-worth. Remember how pissed you were when you found out the university was paying you less than they were paying me simply because you were a woman? It’s only because we shared that information that you were able to lead the fight for pay equity at the campus. Keeping things private empowers others to take advantage of your ignorance, to hold things over your head.”
“I guess. But I feel I should do something.”
“You should indeed,” said Malcolm, and he was clearly done now, for he went back to typing on his keyboard. “Make sure she knows about safe sex.”
I was still working my way through the vast quantities of online video. Some of it had to be accessed in real time; indeed, some played out slower than real time, with frequent pauses for buffering. Looking at videos randomly did not seem efficient; huge numbers of them were pornography, many more were unremarkable home movies (and a goodly quantity were both). And so, instead, I was guided partially by the star-ratings system on YouTube and by textual reviews, and I also followed links posted by people who intrigued me.
For instance, Shoshana Glick, the student of primate communications who worked with my friend Hobo, did “vidding” as a hobby: remixing scenes from TV shows to fit the storylines of popular songs, usually of a sexually suggestive nature. The notion of mixing others’ creations to make your point appealed to me, and I admired Shoshana’s artistry (although, judging by the posted comments, I wasn’t alone in failing to see the sexual chemistry she asserted existed between the two male leads on Anaheim, a new NBC drama series).
When I’d finished watching her own videos, I turned to the list of other videos she recommended. Most were vids by her friends, but there was also a link to an older YouTube video she thought was important. Caitlin and her father had recently watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and this video featured one of the actors from there; I was pleased with myself for recognizing that it was the same man despite his being three decades older.
The video was simple: two men sitting side by side on a couch. But the one on the left was oddly attired; my first thought had been that he was wearing the dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—a red jacket with a wide black belt—but as soon as he started speaking, he put that notion to rest: “I’m George Takei,” he said, “and I’m still wearing my Starfleet uniform.”
The other man spoke next, pointing to a highly reflective conical cap he was wearing: “And I’m Brad Altman, and this is a foil cap on my head.”
I saw now, in fact, that the two men were holding hands. “And we’re married,” Takei said, and then he looked at the odd headgear Altman had on, and said, with a deep chuckle, “My husband can be so silly at times.”
Altman spoke again: “This is the first time in history the census is counting marriages like ours.”
And then Takei: “It doesn’t matter whether you have a legal marriage license or not; it only matters if you consider yourself married.”
“Let’s show America how many of us are joined in beautiful, loving marriages,” Altman said. And they went on to explain how to fill out the census form to indicate that.
When they were done, Altman said, “Now, you may ask, why am I wearing this hat?”
And Takei said, “Or why I’m still wearing this Starfleet uniform? It’s to get you to actually listen to this important message.”
I had watched that three days ago, but, like everything, it was always front and center in my mind. I suspected they were correct: if you did have something important to say to people, you should indeed say it in a visually memorable fashion.
Communications Minister Zhang Bo once again made the long march to the president’s desk. This time he had been summoned—and that, at least, meant no interminable wait in the outer office until His Excellency was ready to receive him.
“Webmind is a problem,” said the president, gesturing for Zhang to sit in the ornate chair that faced the cherrywood desk. “Even its name reeks of the West. And the things it says!” He gestured at the printout on his desktop. “It speaks of transparency, of openness, of international ties.” A shake of the head. “It is poisonous.”