Free WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer Page A

her left optic nerve so that it overrode the still-incorrect signal her right retina was producing.

    But he had devoted months, if not years, to this project, and had little to show for it. He had to be bitterly upset and, she realized, it was a big gamble on his part to let her take the equipment back to Canada.

    “Anyway,” he said, “you work on it from your end: let that brilliant brain of yours try to make sense of the signals it’s getting. And I’ll work on it from my end, analyzing the data your retina puts out and trying to improve the software that re-encodes it. Just remember...”

    He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to. Caitlin knew what he’d been about to say: you’ve only got until the end of the year.

    She listened to his wall clock tick.

Chapter 9

    Sinanthropus regretted it the moment he did it: slapping the flat of his hand against the rickety table top in the Internet cafe. Tea sloshed from his cup and everyone in the room turned to look at him: old Wu, the proprietor; the other users who might or might not be dissidents themselves; and the tough-looking plainclothes cop.

    Sinanthropus was seething. The window he’d so carefully carved into the Great Firewall had slammed shut; he was cut off again from the outside world. Still, he knew he had to say something, had to make an excuse for his violent action.

    “Sorry,” he said, looking at each of the questioning faces in turn. “Just lost the text of a document I was writing.”

    “You have to save,” said the cop, helpfully. “Always remember to save.”

    * * * *

    More thoughts imposing themselves, but garbled, incomplete.

    ...existence ... hurt ... no contact ...

    Fighting to perceive, to hear, to be instructed, by the voice.

    More: whole ... part ... whole...

    Straining to hear, but—

    The voice fading, fading...

    No!

    Fading...

    Gone.

    * * * *

    LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone

    Title: At least my cat missed me....

    Date: Saturday 22 September 10:17 EST

    Mood: Disheartened

    Location: Home

    Music: Lee Amodeo, “Darkest Before the Dawn”

    * * * *

    I am made out of suck.

    I stupidly let myself get my hopes up again. How can a girl as bright as me be so blerking dumb? I know, I know—y’all want to send me kind words, but just
    ... don’t. I’ve turned off commenting for this post.

    We got back to Waterloo yesterday, September 21, the autumnal equinox, and the irony is not lost on me: from here on in, it’s more darkness than light, the exact opposite of what I’d been promised. I suppose I could move to Australia, where the days are getting longer now, but I don’t know if I could ever get used to reading Braille upside down ... ;)

    Anyway, we’d left the Mom’s car in long-term parking at Toronto’s airport. When we got back home to Waterloo, at least it was obvious that Schrodinger had missed me. Dad was his usual restrained self. He already knew about the failure in Japan; the Mom had called him to tell him. When we came through the door, I heard her give him a quick kiss—on the cheek or the lips, I don’t know which—and he asked to see the eyePod. That’s what it’s like having a physicist for a dad: if you bond at all, it’s over geeky stuff. But he did say he’d been reading up on information theory and signal processing so he could talk to Kuroda, which I guess was his way of showing that he cares...

    Caitlin posted her blog entry and let out a sigh. She had really been hoping things would be different this time and, as always when she got disappointed, she found herself slipping into bad habits, although they weren’t as bad as cutting her arms with razor blades—which is something Stacy back in Austin did—or getting totally plastered or stoned, like half the kids in her new school on weekends. But, still, it hurt ... and yet she couldn’t stop.

    It was doubtless hard for any child to have a father who wasn’t demonstrative. But for someone with Caitlin’s