Still, there was one touchstone, one property that Caitlin’s realm and mine shared: the linear passage of time.

And so very much of it was slipping by…

Caitlin Decter’s fingers shook as she typed into her instant-messenger program: Where do we go from here, Webmind?

The reply was immediate: “The only place we can go, Caitlin.” Her spine tingled as it called her by name. She heard the words in the mechanical female voice of her screen-reading software, and she saw them with her left eye, an eye that could now see after a lifetime of blindness, and she felt them as she glided her fingers over her refreshable Braille display: “Into the future.”

And then, after a pause that was doubtless an affectation on Webmind’s part, it sent one more word: “Together.”

Her vision blurred. Who’d known tears could cause that?

She had done it. Here, a day shy of her own sixteenth birthday, she had done it! She had reached down into the darkness and had pulled this entity, this newborn consciousness, up into the light of day. Annie Sullivan had nothing on her!

But now she had to figure out what to do next. Her parents knew something was going on in the background of the Web, and so did Dr. Kuroda, the gentle giant of an information theorist who had given her sight.

The ball was in her court, she knew; she needed to type a reply. But it was so daunting. This notion of connecting an emergent intelligence with the real world had been a fantasy, for Pete’s sake! And now it was here, talking to her!

The front door opened downstairs. “Cait-lin!” It was her mother, home from running errands in Toronto after dropping Dr. Kuroda at the airport.

Caitlin didn’t want to be interrupted—not now! But she could hardly tell her mother to buzz off. “Up here, Mom!”