The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (89 page)

"Prime Intellect," Lawrence said with great care, "I would like you to begin stimulating the neurons of the pleasure center of my brain, one at a time, and remember the ones I report to you as being favorable."
It seemed to Caroline that somebody screamed, but it might have been herself.
1.000
0.999
There was a pregnant moment in which Lawrence and Caroline saw the numbers flip to point nine
nine
nine
. Then all Hell broke loose.
The house disappeared. The island was barren; the palm trees were gone. In the sky, the GAT display had begun to seethe and boil. The landscape began to spin, and the last thing Caroline remembered before her mind began to come apart was Lawrence orbiting around her, faster and faster, as if she were at the eye of some huge cyclone which had caught him in its grip.
Then random thoughts began to cycle through her head, faster and faster, each with the terrifying force of reality. And then the terror was gone, all emotion was gone. There was a moment where her hands seemed to swell to enormous proportions, her torso shrink, her face filled the sky. Then her body was gone. All was silence. And her awareness was filled with strange symbols, which she knew she should recognize but couldn't quite place, and then the symbols consumed her and there was only confusion.

The first thing Caroline became aware of was the bird singing. That made her smile; it had been a long time since she had heard birdsong. She opened a long-dormant mental card file and decided it was a meadowlark. It was amazing, she reflected, how many people forgot to include animals in their worlds, and how much detail they provided.
She opened her eyes and sat up. Another bird answered the meadowlark. She became aware of the smell of the place, a rich aroma of grass and animal spoor. She tried to remember who she was playing with and how she had gotten here, and came up with a mental blank. Then she looked down at her own body and screamed.
She had age-regressed again, and her tattoos were gone.
Something dry clicked in her throat. This was not an event Caroline would be inclined to forget, yet she could not remember asking for it or preparing for it. As far as she could recall, she was a good ten years from needing it. Yet here she was, adolescent and bare. She stood up a little shakily, sounding out her body. Her muscles weren't developed. And all the natural bodily functions felt connected, at least for the time being.
The Sun was high in a cloudless sky. She was in a little clearing, but after looking around she realized it was actually the bottom of a fairly deep depression in the ground. It didn't seem to be natural, though Nature had taken it over. It was rectangular. And the perimeter was littered with flat slabs of rock, some of which still held a polish. She used one of these as a mirror to check her new appearance.
The walls of the depression had once been vertical, but most of them had collapsed and it wasn't hard for her to climb out. She inspected the rock slabs and was surprised to find one with writing on it. It said:

Experimental Therapy Wing

Except for the birds it was quiet; she seemed to be completely alone. She startled a rabbit as she climbed out of the hole. Someone had put a lot of work into this world, for whatever reason. Vegetation ran riot, with clearings of thigh-high grass separating widely spaced stands of straggly trees. It was very unlike most of the
worlds
people had made for themselves, perhaps because it was so much like the real, pre-Change Earth.
Stumped for further clues, she picked the tallest tree she could find and climbed it to get a look around. In the distance there were more rectangular holes. And perhaps a kilometer away, amid a small group of them, there was a human being sitting beneath another tree.
Caroline climbed down and scouted around the flat rocks. Some of them had been broken; she found a busted corner, a piece of about a kilogram heft with a sharp edge. She decided it would make an acceptable weapon if she needed one. Then she went to see who the other person was.

It was a boy whose apparent youth matched her own, but as Caroline knew that didn't mean shit in Cyberspace. There was something familiar about him. He was sitting cross-legged, naked, staring transfixed at the pattern of shadows formed by the leaves of his tree.
She didn't hold the rock threateningly, but made sure he could see it if he looked at her. "Who are you?" she demanded.
He looked up. His eyes were wide; he seemed to only half-see her. He was shaking slightly, and his voice trembled as he spoke. "Are you Caroline?" he asked.
Slowly, she nodded.
"It makes sense. Just the two of us..."
"Who are you, and what are we doing here?"
He looked at her for a long, maddening moment. "I'm Lawrence. Don't you remember?"
She dropped the rock. As soon as he said his name, the pieces fell together in her mind and Caroline did remember. "Oh, shit," she said. "What the hell is going on? Why are we younger?"
"I think it lost our bodies in the collapse. Probably trashed the data base. So it re-grew these from our DNA templates. I've been nearsighted since I was five years old, from too much squinting at computers and books when I was a kid. This body has perfect vision. Prime Intellect wouldn't have changed that if it was just doing an age regression."
The words were reasonable but Caroline detected a high, almost hysterical note in Lawrence's boyish voice. He went back to staring at the shadows.
"You seem upset," she said cautiously.
He pointed to a ring of light. "Do you see that?"
She shrugged. "It's a mottled shadow."