"Oh," AnneMarie said. "And just how does this Contract work?"
Hoooooo-boy. "Nothing to it. You just order Prime Intellect to start ignoring you. We have a formal statement that covers all the bases. It's straightforward enough; just keeps you from running away in the middle of things."
"And what happens then?"
"Then your host kills you. Or, sometimes, lets you go. That happens sometimes in the Games category, where the winners can survive. But I go for the simple exhibitions.
"Do those hari-kari guys have Contracts?" There was a well-known group of Japanese Nationalists who had been killing themselves in the traditional Japanese manner each evening since the Change, in protest of the equalization of the races. Caroline had to admit those guys had class; even after all her Deaths, she doubted if she could disembowel herself in total silence.
"No, but it's not quite the 'beginner' level to stick a knife in yourself without chickening out. No offense."
"Oh, none taken," AnneMarie replied earnestly.
"I prefer to put up a fight. I think it's more Authentic," Caroline said, and she was able to sound very sincere about this since it happened to be the truth.
"Do you know someone who would be a good…uh…"
"The polite word is 'host, but I prefer 'killer. If you're that sensitive about words, you need to find a different hobby."
"A good host, then?" You just don't get it, do you?
Caroline looked down modestly. "I've been known to off a couple of friends in my time," she lied.
"Oh, really? Do you think you could…you know…?"
Caroline made a great, exaggerrated shrug. "It might be kind of interesting, considering our history and all."
"Oh, I'd be honored if you would!"
That's what you think. "Well, let's do it then."
"What do I have to do?"
"Well," Caroline said with great care, "just call Prime Intellect and repeat what I say…"
AnneMarie repeated the Contract word-for-word, and answered in the affirmative when Prime Intellect asked if she was sure.
"What happens now?"
"Whatever I want. Try to get Prime Intellect's attention."
AnneMarie called half-heartedly, and there was no response. "It's really not listening?"
"Watch." Caroline issued a silent command, and AnneMarie's furniture disappeared. As did her clothes. The two women were absolutely alone together in the white space — the empty white space — which Caroline called home.
AnneMarie moved to shield her crotch and her breasts with her hands. Caroline actually felt sorry for her for a brief moment, a feeling she crushed as soon as she was conscious of it. If the passing centuries had poorly prepared the bitch to be at another's mercy, then it would only make her vengeance sweeter.
"Got it yet?" she asked.
"You…so you're going to kill me now?"
"You seem nervous."
"It's a little startling, that's all." AnneMarie giggled slightly, as if that might drive the terror away. Of course, for Caroline and those who savored their Deaths, the terror was part of the attraction. Fear is real, and pain is real. But AnneMarie had asked for Death because it was the in, trendy thing to do, and she was not really prepared for it at all.
"Well, brace yourself… for… this!" Caroline swept her hand through the air, and came up with a hypodermic needle. AnneMarie, once a nurse by trade, fixed her eyes rigidly on this deceptively simple instrument. She had no way of knowing what the clear fluid was within it. But to her credit, she didn't back away when Caroline pressed it against her arm.
The sting startled her; it had been a very long time since AnneMarie had felt anything uncomfortable. But Caroline finished the injection, and as AnneMarie's eyes started to roll, she wished the hypo away. Its job was done.
"It…it…ohhhhhh," AnneMarie sighed, and she collapsed against Caroline, who supported her gently. It would take a few minutes for the effect she wanted to manifest itself.
Of course, Prime Intellect could have done what she wanted in an instant, but where was the fun in that?
"It's junk," AnneMarie whispered, and Caroline cradled her with deceptive gentleness.
"That's exactly what it is, girl," she replied.
Death Jockeys had devised a number of ingenious ways to restrain and torture themselves using Prime Intellect's advanced control over matter, but Caroline would have none of that. She had figured out what she wanted to do to AnneMarie within a few years after the Change, and none of it required Prime Intellect's help at all.
In the mid-1980's some home drug manufacturers had made a uniquely unpleasant discovery. If they were manufacturing MPPP, a powerful synthetic heroin substitue, and they cooled the preparation too rapidly at a critical step, a slightly different compound called MPTP was formed along with the dope. This compound delivered a horribly sinister side effect: It homed in on a particular group of cells, the unique brown neurons of the substantia nigra, and killed them. Nobody knew exactly how or why this happened in 1985, though Prime Intellect said it was because the drug was converted into an enzyme which triggered the cells to release too much dopamine at once, leaving them with an insufficient supply to power their unique metabolism. In any case the damage could not be repaired, although a useful treatment was discovered a few years before the Change.
When a decision is made by the neurons of the cerebral cortex to move a group of muscles, it is the substantia nigra which relays this command to more primitive parts of the brain. This is its only function. The result of destroying it was an instant and complete form of Parkinson's Disease, or Paralysis Agitans, a total and permanent paralysis of the voluntary muscles. Nothing else was affected; the victim could still see, hear, feel, understand. The body maintained itself. Breathing, heartbeat, digestion, and a thousand other important functions were unaffected. They just couldn't perform voluntary movements. They couldn't run, walk, sit up, smile, talk, or even blink, except as a reflex action.
At the time Caroline heard of it she had summoned glassware and created the drug by honest chemical synthesis. She had spent half the hypodermic on herself, and found the effect to be appropriately terrifying and complete. And after Prime Intellect had done its duty and restored her to health, she sent the other half of the hypo into storage to wait — for three hundred years as it turned out — until she was ready to use it.
Now the contents of that hypo were where they belonged, in AnneMarie's body, and as she held her nurse's naked body against her own and felt the AnneMarie's muscles slowly locking, she began to feel excited. Well, if Death could give her sexual feelings, why not vengeance? Fred would find it amusing. He would say Caroline was coming along nicely, in fact.
As AnneMarie's body froze, her eyes widened. Caroline could easily read the message those eyes desperately telegraphed — I can't move. Help me. Caroline patted AnneMarie's cheek and nodded. "That's right," she said, and smiled.
She spoke a word, and a squat cylinder popped into existence behind her. AnneMarie's eyes showed puzzlement, then horror as Caroline demonstrated the torch, which was Authentic down to the brand name emblazoned on its propane tank. Caroline lit it and adjusted it so that it made a bright blue flame which hissed evilly, then she aimed it ever so gently at AnneMarie's big toe.
For the only time in her long, long life, Caroline used Prime Intellect to tune in on another person's emotions. She felt the chemicals coursing in her bloodstream that were flowing in AnneMarie's; tasted her panic, shook with her terror, felt the faint echo of her agony. In fairness, Caroline made the sharing complete, so that AnneMarie could know of her satisfaction, her arousal, her delight.