Caitlin frowned again. If game theory was all about people being selfish, it wasn’t going to help her accomplish what she wished with Webmind; she needed a way to make it want to act altruistically.
“Now,” her mom went on, “that’s a simple game: each player only got to make one move. But most games involve a series of turns. Consider a dollar bill—”
“We’re in Canada now, Mom,” Caitlin said, teasing. “They don’t have dollar bills.” She knew the Canadian one-dollar coin was called a loonie, because it had a picture of a loon—a kind of waterfowl—on the tails side. She also knew that the two-dollar coin was called a toonie. She thought a much more clever name would have been “doubloon,” but nobody had asked her.
“Fine,” her mother said, smiling. “Consider a dollar coin, then—and consider a bunch of people at a party. Now, I’ve actually tried this myself, and it really works. Announce to the group at the party that you’re going to auction off the dollar—highest bidder gets to keep it. But, unlike normal auctions, there’s one special condition: the second-highest bidder also has to pay up whatever his or her highest bid was—but gets nothing for it. Got that?”
Caitlin nodded.
“How much, on average, do you think the dollar sells for?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Fifty cents?”
“Nope. The average is $3.40.”
“That’s crazy!” said Caitlin.
“Loony, even,” her mother replied. “But it’s true.”
“Why do people bid so high?”
“Well, remember, the second-highest bidder has to pay the auctioneer, too, so…” She trailed off, clearly wanting Caitlin to figure it out for herself.
She tried to do so. The first bidder presumably bid a penny to start—which would net him a ninety-nine-cent profit. But then as soon as a second bidder offered two cents, the first bidder probably figured that offering three cents was still a good deal: he’d net ninety-seven cents in profit.
And so it would continue, until—
Ah!
Until one bidder bid ninety-nine cents—which would still give him a one-cent profit. But the previous bidder, whose bid might have been, say, ninety-eight cents, was now looking at losing that much and getting nothing in return. And so he would bid a dollar—thereby breaking even, at least. But then the guy who had bid ninety-nine cents faced a dilemma: he either walked away and lost ninety-nine cents, or he bid, say, $1.01—which would cut his losses to just a penny.
And so, indeed, it would escalate, with bids going higher and higher, until the utter ridiculousness of the situation finally caused all but one of the bidders to drop out.
Caitlin said as much to her mom, who smiled encouragingly. “That’s right, dear. Now, can you think of what the optimal strategy would be—and no cheating by having Webmind tell you.”
Caitlin considered for a second then: “Make an opening bid of ninety-nine cents. No one else would have any motive to bid against you, because the best they could do, if they outbid you by one cent, is break even, and if they bid more, they’d lose money. You’d end up being the only bidder, and you’d still make a profit, even if it’s only a penny.”
“That’s right,” her mother said again, “assuming all the potential bidders were rational and that their only motive was profit. But here’s where simple math fails to account for reality—there’s a psychological element that Webmind will need to understand.”
“Yes?”
“Suppose it was your worst enemy who had just bid ninety-nine cents. You might bid, say, $1.98, just so he’d be out almost a buck—and you’d still be out less than he was.”
“Wow,” Caitlin said. “That’s nasty.”
“I’ve seen this game get very ugly at parties,” her mom said. “I’ve seen couples who arrived together leave separately after playing it.”
“Ah, okay, then I’ve got a question for you, Mom. What would you wish for if you knew that your worst enemy would get double what you got?”
“Hmmm. A million—no. Um, I don’t know.”
“To be blind in one eye,” Caitlin replied.
“God!” said her mother. “But, um, yes, that’s an example of what I’m trying to get at: it’s possible for people to value outcomes differently. Do you remember when your father taught you how to play chess?”
They had a special chessboard with Braille characters on the heads of each piece. “Sure.”
“And remember how he used to let you win?”
Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “Say what?”
“Um, dear, he—”
“I’m just kidding, Mom.”
She smiled. “Well, why did he let you win?”
“I dunno. I guess, ’cause if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to play anymore. I wouldn’t have come back for another game.”
“That’s right. What he valued most was not him winning, but rather you winning. In other words, you both wanted the same thing, and even though it cost him—in the sense of losing the game—to let you win, he was happy when you did.”
“I get it,” Caitlin said. “But, in the dollar auction, people don’t want to play anymore after a certain point, too, right? And I bet it’s not just that it’s ridiculous that causes them to finally stop bidding. It’s also boredom: I mean, even if you were bidding in ten-cent increments, instead of penny increments, it would still take thirty-four bids to get the $3.40 you mentioned. But if I was writing a pair of computer programs to play that game, they’d keep playing forever—because the only way you lose money is if you stop bidding.”
She paused, and then a big smile came to her face. “Or, to put it in terms like in that movie Dad and I watched, the only losing move is not to go on playing.”
“Good point,” her mom said. “Now, can you think of any real-life examples of things like the dollar game?”
Caitlin was trying to do just that when Schrödinger crossed her field of view, moving absolutely silently. “Evolution,” she said.
“Yes, exactly!” said her mom. “But why?”
“Evolution is an arms race, right?” said Caitlin. They’d talked about this in biology class. “Predators keep getting faster and stronger, so prey keeps getting faster and better able to defend itself. Gazelles evolved the ability to run fast in response to lions doing the same thing. The game goes on and on forever—because whoever stops upping the ante dies. Again, the only losing move in evolution is not to play.”
“Bingo,” said her mom.
Caitlin nodded. “Mr. Lockery—my biology teacher—says if dinosaurs were magically brought forward in time today, we’d have nothing to worry about. Dogs, wolves, and bears would make short work of tyrannosaurs.” She nodded at Schrödinger, who was now padding across the floor in the opposite direction. “Big cats, too. They’re faster, tougher, and brighter than anything that existed seventy million years ago. Everything is always ramping up, always escalating.”
“Exactly,” said her mom. Caitlin saw her glance out toward the living room, at—ah, she was looking at the staircase, the one that led up to the bedrooms, up to where Caitlin’s computer was, up to where they’d been talking to Webmind. His powers were growing, too, and not just generation by generation, as in biological evolution, but moment by moment. Caitlin turned back to her mom and saw something else for the first time: she saw a person shudder.
When Harl Marcuse had found the property that now housed his institute, it had seemed like an ideal location: twenty-five acres of rolling grassland, with a dome-shaped man-made island in the middle of a pond. But that had been based on the assumption that Hobo was going to be a cooperative ape. Hobo’s island wasn’t large, but he could easily keep his distance from anyone who set foot upon it. Of course, if two people went onto the island, one could go left and the other right, but a cornered, angry ape was not a pretty sight.
Shoshana, Dillon, and Dr. Marcuse were discussing the problem in the main room of the bungalow. Dillon was leaning against the wall, Sho was se
ated in front of a computer, and Marcuse was in the easy chair.
An idea suddenly occurred to her. “If he won’t talk to us,” she said, “maybe he’ll talk to another ape.”
Marcuse’s shaggy eyebrows went up. “Virgil, you mean?”
Virgil was an orangutan; Hobo and Virgil had made history the previous month with the first interspecies webcam call.
“He might indeed speak to Virgil,” Dillon said. “But do we dare risk bringing Hobo into the house now?” He spread his arms, indicating all the breakables.
“Good point,” Marcuse said. “Plus, I doubt he’d come willingly, and I don’t want to drug him. Let’s set up a webcam chat system for him out in the gazebo.” He turned to Shoshana. “I’m still not talking to that shithead at the Feehan. You work out the details.” And the Silverback headed out of the room.
Shoshana exchanged a look with Dillon, then picked up the phone and dialed the number in Miami.
“Feehan Primate Center,” said a male voice with a slight Hispanic accent.
“Hi, Juan. It’s Shoshana Glick, at the Marcuse.”
“Shoshana! Is the old man still pissed at me?” Juan had leaked word of the initial webcam call between Hobo and Virgil to a stringer for New Scientist, and that had triggered the chain of events that had led to the Georgia Zoo filing its custody lawsuit.
She swiveled her chair and looked out the window. “Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re two thousand miles away.”
“I’m so sorry,” Juan said.
It had been a year or so since she’d last seen Juan in the flesh. He was about thirty, had a thin face, high cheekbones, and lustrous long black hair that Sho envied. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not mad at you—and I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Yes?”
“We’re having lots of trouble with Hobo. He’s become violent and antisocial.”
“Chimps,” said Juan in a “Whatcha gonna do?” tone of voice.
“If it’s just that he’s reaching maturity, there may be nothing that we can do—but he is young for that, and, of course, he is a very special ape, and, well, maybe it’s foolish, but we’re hoping we can get him to cooperate again, at least for a bit. We need him to stand up for himself if we’re going to keep him from…well, you know.”
“Georgia wants to castrate him, right?” said Juan.
“Yes. Barbarians.”
“Well, if they did, Hobo might become a lot more docile.”
“We don’t want him docile, for God’s sake.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Don’t.”
“Sorry,” Juan said. “Um, what can we do for you?”
“We thought if we could get Hobo talking again to someone, we might be able to get him back to talking to us.”
“His old pal Virgil?”
“Exactly. We can’t even get Hobo to come when we call to him anymore, but we thought if we established an open, ongoing webcam link between his hut here and Virgil’s room, maybe they’d start chatting again.”
“Virgil would love that. He was asking about Hobo just today. ‘Where that banana ape?’ he said. ‘Where that talking ape?’”
“Good, good,” said Shoshana. “So, can we get this set up?”
“Sure, no problem,” said Juan. “Just tell the old man I helped, okay?”
twenty-six
After dinner, Caitlin headed up to her room. She put on a Bluetooth headset and made some adjustments on her computer. Then: “For now, instead of sending text to my eyePod directly, IM me on my desktop.”
“As you wish,” announced JAWS.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“I am learning much,” Webmind replied. “I believe I perhaps have an inkling of what your own experiences of late have been like; being able to access online video has given me a significantly wider understanding of your world.”
Caitlin smiled. “I’m sure.”
“But there is so much of it, and the quantity is ever growing. Thirteen hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It is easy for me, or my subcomponents, to scan text for keywords; it is much harder to quickly assess the value of a video.”
“You’re telling me,” said Caitlin. “For YouTube, people often send each other links to clips they like. I couldn’t watch them, but sometimes I listened to the soundtracks. That’s how I discovered Lee Amodeo, as a matter of fact.” She thought for a second, then realized that she actually did have a favorite YouTube video now—and one she’d actually seen. She’d tried to show it to Dr. Kuroda when he’d been here, but he had brushed her off with a “maybe later.”
But perhaps Webmind would enjoy it. She had it bookmarked in Firefox, so she cut-and-pasted the URL into the instant-messenger window and wrote, Have a look at this.
“Okay.”
She started the clip playing for herself, too. There was no particular reason, she knew, that this sight should be more astonishing to her than any other—but it was. The video was narrated by a man with a deep, booming voice that reminded her of James Earl Jones. And when he appeared briefly on screen, he was as big as she’d heard Jones was, although this guy was white.
But it wasn’t the man who was fascinating—oh, no, no. Rather, it was the other two…beings in the video.
One was a chimpanzee, with black hair, a black face—really black, not the brown she’d discovered so-called black human skin actually was. And the other was an orangutan, with orange hair, slightly lighter skin, and alert, brown eyes. The chimp, according to the narrator, was named Hobo, and the orangutan was called Virgil.
The video was remarkable because in it, Hobo, who lived in San Diego, and Virgil, whose home was in Miami, were talking to each other in sign language. It was, apparently, the first-ever interspecies webcam call—and it was even more remarkable because neither of the species involved was Homo sapiens.
Play today, the chimp signed—or, at least that’s what the gestures meant, according to the subtitles, which appeared in a bigger, bolder font than the ones she’d seen when she’d watched movies with her dad. Play ball!
Caitlin still had a hard time interpreting human expressions; she had no idea at all what the change in the orangutan’s face was conveying. But what he signed back was, Hobo play today? Virgil play today!
Not a bad life, thought Caitlin. She supposed she should be a little jealous. The first interspecies webcam call had been made on September 22, according to the narration. Her own first conversation with Webmind had occurred on October 5, just thirteen days later. She’d missed out on making the history books by being part of the first online communication between different kinds of intelligence by less than two weeks.
But then again, she probably would make the history books, anyway, and not just because of her interaction with Webmind, if that ever became public. Rather, Dr. Kuroda’s success in giving her sight had already been well noted, and—
And she found herself opening another browser tab and checking, and, lo and behold, there it was: a Wikipedia entry on her, complete with a picture from the press conference; according to the history tab, it had gone online that very day. It wasn’t long—just a few sentences—but it was astonishing to her that it existed at all. She corrected one small error—she’d been born in Houston, not Austin—and then went back to watching Hobo and Virgil talk.
It was endlessly fascinating. She’d always said she’d been grateful to be blind rather than deaf, because blind people could easily be involved in conversations at parties, go to lectures, listen to music and TV, and so on. But to be deaf—to be shut out of all that—would have been more, Caitlin had thought, than she could have borne. And to be both blind and deaf, as Helen Keller had been, well—it boggled the mind to contemplate that.
But here were Hobo and Virgil communicating animatedly, with signs designed for the deaf. The movements were beautiful, lyrical, like birds in flight. The paranoid part of Caitlin wondered if any of her teachers back at the Texas
School for the Blind had spoken American Sign Language. It would have been a great way for them to talk without most of the students even knowing they were doing so—almost like telepathy, sharing thoughts without saying a word.
The two apes were exchanging views about various fruits. Banana! signed Hobo. Love banana!
And for once Virgil made a face Caitlin could decipher: he looked disgusted. Banana no, banana no, he replied. Peach!
Caitlin had seen a banana—the word had come up in her online reading lessons, along with a picture. But although she knew what a peach felt and tasted like, she had no idea what one looked like. And “peach” was also the name of a color, but she hadn’t a clue what sort of color it was. It was humbling to think that these apes knew the world better than she herself did.
“Cool, huh?” said Caitlin, when the video was over.
“Indeed,” replied Webmind.
“Anyway, what else have you been up to? Anything exciting?”
“I have successfully cracked the passwords for forty-two percent of the email accounts I have attempted to access.”
“What?” said Caitlin. She was glad she was already sitting down.
Webmind repeated what he’d just said.
“Let me get this straight. You’re reading people’s email?”
“In hopes of learning how to make them happier, yes.”
“Have—have you read my email?”
“Yes. Inboxes and outboxes.”
Caitlin didn’t know what to say—and so, for most of a minute, she said nothing.
“Caitlin?” Webmind finally prodded.
She opened her mouth, and—
And she was about to tell Webmind that it shouldn’t be doing what it was doing, but—
But what came out was, “Well, then, um, I’d like to know what Matt really thinks of me.” She let the thought sort of hang in the air, waiting to see if Webmind would pick up on it.
But there was no point in waiting for a response from Webmind; he didn’t need time to think—at least not time that Caitlin could measure. And so, when he didn’t immediately reply, she went on.