Free WWW 2: Watch by Robert J. Sawyer

different breeds of dogs, different kinds of minerals.
    Dr. Kuroda had sent me occasional IMs as he wrote code. Half the work had already been done, he said, back when he’d worked out a way to make still images of Caitlin’s views of webspace, rendering what she saw in a standard computer-graphic format; what he was doing now for me was more or less just reversing the process.
    The results were overwhelming. And enlightening. And amazing.
    Granted, Caitlin’s universe contained three dimensions, and what I was now seeing were only two-dimensional representations. But Dr. Kuroda helped me there, too, directing me to sites with CT scans. Such scans, Wikipedia said, generated a three-dimensional image of an object from a large series of two-dimensional X-rays; seeing how those slices were combined to make 3-D renderings was useful.
    After that, Kuroda showed me multiple images of the same thing from different perspectives, starting with a series of photos of the current American president, all of which were taken at the same time but from slightly different angles. I saw how three-dimensional reality was constructed. And then—
    I’d seen her in a mirror; I’d seen her recently reflected—and distorted—in pieces of silverware. But those images were jittery and always from the point of view of her own left eye, and—yes, I was developing a sense of such things—had not been flattering. But Dr. Kuroda was now showing me pictures from the press conference at the Perimeter Institute announcing his success, well-lit pictures taken by professional photographers, pictures of Caitlin smiling and laughing, of her beaming.
    I’d originally dubbed her Prime. Online, she sometimes adopted the handle Calculass. But now I was finally, really seeing her, rather than just seeing through her—seeing what she actually looked like.
    Project Gutenberg had wisdom on all topics. Beauty, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford had said, is in the eye of the beholder.
    And to this beholder, at least, my Caitlin was beautiful.
     
     
     
    Caitlin woke slowly. She knew, in a hazy way, that she should get out of bed, go to her computer, and make sure that Webmind had survived the night. But she was still exhausted—she’d been up way too late. Her mind wasn’t yet focusing, although as she drifted in and out of consciousness, she realized that it was her birthday. Her parents had decided to give her the new widescreen monitor yesterday, so she didn’t expect any more gifts.
    Nor was there a party planned. She’d managed to make only one friend—Bashira—over the short summer that they’d been in Waterloo, and she’d missed so much of the first month of classes that she didn’t really have any friends at school. Certainly not Trevor, and, well, somehow she suspected party-girl Sunshine (what had her parents been thinking?) wouldn’t have wanted to spend her Saturday night at a lame, alcohol-free Sweet Sixteen.
    Sixteen was a magical year (and not just, Caitlin thought, because it was a square age, like nine, twenty-five, and thirty-six). But it didn’t make her an adult (the age for that was eighteen here in Ontario) or let her legally drink (she’d have to make it to nineteen for that). Still, one couldn’t be as obsessed with math as she was without knowing that the average age for American girls—presumably even those living in Canada!—to lose their virginity was 16.4 years. And here she was without a boyfriend, or even the prospect of one.
    She was comfortably snug in her bed, and Schrödinger was sleeping next to her, his breathing a soft purr. She really should get up and check on Webmind, but she was having trouble convincing her body of that.
    But maybe there was a way to check on Webmind without actually getting up. She felt on her night table for the eyePod. It was a little wider and thicker than an iPhone, and it was a couple of inches longer because of the Wi-Fi module Kuroda had attached to it with duct tape. She found the