WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

actions of Abraham, who’d been willing to sacrifice his own son without a second thought because God, apparently, had told him to do so. Jaynes contrasted these with the later stories, including Ecclesiastes, which dealt with, as Mrs. Zed kept saying all good literature should, the human heart in conflict with itself: the inner struggle of fully self-aware people to do the right thing.

    The Wikipedia entry was essentially correct, as far as Caitlin could tell from the portion of the book she’d read so far, but she did reword a couple of the sentences to make them clearer.

    Her computer started bleeping, an alarm she’d set earlier going off quite loudly through the earphones.

    Excitedly, she took off her headset, rotated her chair to face the window, and looked as hard as she could...

Chapter 10

    Straining to perceive. But the voice is still absent. Contemplating: the voice must have a source. It must have ... an origin.

    Waiting for its return. Yearning.

    Mysteries swirl. Ideas fight to coalesce.

    * * * *

    “Sweetheart!” Her mother, shocked, concerned. “My God, what are you doing?”

    Caitlin turned her head to face her. It was something her parents had taught her to do—turning toward the source of a voice was a sign of politeness. “It’s 6:20,” she said, as if that explained everything.

    She heard her mom’s footfalls on the carpet and suddenly felt hands on her shoulders, swinging her around in the chair.

    “I’ve always wanted to see a sunset,” Caitlin said. I—I figured if I looked at something I really wanted to see, maybe—”

    “You’ll damage your eyes if you stare at the sun,” her mom said. “And if you do that, none of Dr. Kuroda’s magic will make any difference.”

    “It doesn’t make any difference now,” Caitlin said, hating herself for the whine in her voice.

    Her mother’s tone grew soft. “I know, darling. I’m sorry.” She glided her hands down Caitlin’s arms, and took Caitlin’s hands in her own, then shook them gently, as if she could transfer strength or maybe wisdom to her daughter that way. “Why don’t you get some homework done before dinner? Your dad called to say he’ll be a bit late.”

    Caitlin looked toward the window again, but there was nothing—not even blackness. She’d tried to explain this to Bashira recently. They’d learned in biology class that some birds have a magnetic sense that helps them navigate. What, Caitlin had asked, did Bashira perceive when she contemplated magnetic fields? And what was her lack of that sense like? Did it feel like darkness, or silence, or something else she was familiar with? Bashira’s answer was no, it was like nothing at all. Well, Caitlin had said, that’s what vision was like to her: nothing at all.

    “All right,” Caitlin replied glumly. Her mom let go of her hands.

    “Good. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

    She left, and Caitlin swung her chair back to face her computer. Her homework was writing an essay about the civil-rights struggle in the US in the 1960s. When her family had moved from Texas to Waterloo, she’d been afraid she’d have to study Canadian history, which she’d heard was boring: no struggle for independence, no civil wars. Fortunately, there’d been an American-history course offered and she was taking that instead; Bashira, the big sweetie, had agreed to take it, too.

    Before Caitlin had tried to look at the sunset, she’d been Web surfing, searching for things about her father. And before that, she’d been updating her LiveJournal. But before that, she had indeed been working on her school project.

    As always, she had a clear map in her mind of where she’d been online. She didn’t use the mouse—she couldn’t see the on-screen pointer—but she quickly backtracked to where she’d been by repeatedly hitting the alt and left-arrow keys, passing back over other pages so fast that JAWS didn’t have time to even start announcing their names. She