The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Sunny, Summer, 1991

Another thing that worked in Jordan's favour was, even though Tej sat right across from him and was drawing the eyes of many men and women in the room, he only had eyes for Bishan.

"So, Jordan," Sunny said, "you're also at UBC?"

Jordan nodded. "I'm in computer science," he said.

"Oh, yeah. That's a good program to be in. Computers are becoming necessary for everything."

Jordan leaned in excitedly and said, "You don't know the half of it. Have you heard of the Internet?"

"The what?" Tej asked.

"It's all the world's computers connected into one network, so that you can communicate with any of them from the one you're sitting at. I'm learning the coding language for the interfaces by which that can happen."

"Holy shit," Sunny breathed. "Is it like how the libraries can communicate with each other to facilitate interlibrary loans?" He'd used that service many times doing research for his papers.

Jordan smiled, a little too condescendingly for Sunny's taste, and said, "That's true, but on a much larger scale, and when the World Wide Web is really going, libraries won't be necessary anymore, because all the world's knowledge will be on it."

Sunny almost reared back in his chair, unable to believe what Jordan was saying. He spent a majority of his day sitting in a library, reading reference books and doing research. He couldn't ever foresee not being in one, nor not using its invaluable resources. "That can't be right," he said. "Libraries are so much more than information. Don't you remember going to Storytime at your public library? That feeling of being together with kids you don't know, listening along with them to the cadence of the librarian, getting inspired by reading? That's something a computer just can't replace."

Jordan shrugged, looking unconvinced. Of course a computer scientist was going to proclaim the supremacy of computers. If all one had was a hammer, everything looked like a nail. One thing Sunny had learned while learning the law was how there were at least two sides to every issue. For example, if all knowledge was going to be accessible to all people all the time, how could anyone judge the accuracy of that knowledge? What was to stop people from spreading damaging misinformation that could lead to tragic consequences? Legislation was created in the past to exclude people with skin like his on the basis of such misinformation, but that at least had the limitation of being passed along on hard copy paper or by word of mouth. If such were to be viewed on a computer screen, copied endlessly and available to anyone, how much worse would the calamity that followed be?

"So, you two met at karate class, then?" Tej asked. "You're not taking computer science, are you, Bishan?"

"Are you kidding?" Bishan said. "Jordan showed me a section of code he wrote once, and it looked like poetry written by a maniac. I do want to take some Microsoft Word and Excel courses, though; those will be valuable for when I go out in the work world."

"What do you plan to do for a living?" Tej asked. "I don't think you ever said."

Bishan shrugged. "I still have time to decide."

"Don't you have to declare a major soon?" Sunny asked.

"Once I'm back in the Fall I should have it figured out. I'm trying to decide between Economics or Political Science."

"Politics, huh?" Tej said. "Maybe you'll become Prime Minister one day."

Bishan blew a raspberry at her. Sunny enjoyed their sisterly banter.

"What's so wrong with that?" Jordan asked her. "You can be the first woman Prime Minister." A few years later he would have had to qualify that description; Kim Campbell would briefly hold the title after Brian Mulroney stepped down, but would lose in the next general election. As of today, a woman of colour has never held the title.