Now she began to climb, one rung at a time, feeling at each step for the next rung, for another door, for hazards. She found the next door after counting twelve rungs. She couldn't force it open, but it didn't matter; she wanted to go higher anyway.
The third door came open for her, revealing only more blackness. As did the sixth and seventh, and the tenth. The fifteenth door came open for her too. She had only counted a hundred and eighty-six rungs, but something outside that broken door caught her eye and she carefully eased herself out of the shaft.
There was a light.
It wasn't much of a light, and she still had to approach it cautiously. True to her suspicions there was a nasty gap in the floor where the ship had split on impact. There was some debris around this opening, and Caroline dropped a piece of metal into the abyss; it bounced several times before splashing into the water far below. Had Caroline gone bounding down the corridor, she'd have ended up in a nasty way.
By tossing debris across it she determined that the gap was a couple of meters wide. There was no obvious way across it. Except one. Although Caroline was in excellent shape, it would be very risky in the pitch blackness. But it was this or back to the elevator shaft, and the light was too tempting. She backed off, pacing carefully, then broke into a run toward the gap. Twenty paces, ten, five… NOW! She jumped, and braced herself.
To her great surprise, she made the jump successfully and didn't even trip when she landed. She felt behind her and found that she had made it with only a few centimeters to spare. The protruding edge of the deck was rough and jagged; if she had fallen short, she would have been badly cut even if she had managed to haul herself up.
Working carefully, testing the floor for more gaps, she approached the light.
It was a sign, written in alien, unreadable script. But from the shape of the box it was decorating, Caroline guessed that it said «emergency» or something similar. Caroline found the handle that she imagined must open the box, held her breath, and pulled it.
The box didn't open. In fact, something much more dramatic happened.
The lights came on.
Caroline's exploration was much easier with the emergency system on; not only was there light, but doors and elevators worked. She was still careful, but her progress was much more rapid.
The inhabitable part of the ship was a cylinder, wrapped around some kind of central core. With the power on she was able to find stores of food, bland stuff in hard-to-open plastic pouches. She tested one, didn't get sick, then ate four. Her appetite seemed to be operating normally, and she hadn't eaten in almost two days. Other pouches proved to contain vaguely sweet liquid.
She didn't trust the elevators, but she had to use them; she tested them by sending them off unoccupied, then if they came back she assumed they were safe. In this way she gradually ascended, level by level. She found tools, and took something that was probably a flashlight and certainly worked well enough to be used as one. She didn't wonder how the batteries came to still be good; she knew it was all there for her benefit. None of it had really happened by accident.
Eleven levels higher she found herself on an empty, circular platform. Now she could look down into the center of the ship. She expected to find propulsion devices, or perhaps a nuclear reactor. But when she pointed her flashlight down into the darkened core, it revealed banks and banks of circuit cards. The entire ship was wrapped around a huge computer.
Many cards had been knocked out of their sockets by the crash-landing; some hung loosely out of their card cages, and other slots were empty. The cylinder extended most of the length of the ship; it was half-full of water. Beneath the water, the floor of the cylinder was littered with loose cards.
A couple of card cages extended high enough for her to reach them; she climbed over the railing, hung on, and pulled one of the loose cards free. It was a very unusual design, Caroline realized. She knew something about electronics, and she knew no real computer had ever been this simple. The card contained banks of identical, three-legged components that looked for all the world like big transistors. But there was no intricacy to their connection pattern; the components were all simply wired in parallel. Instead of a card-edge connector, the card mated to its cage through a three-prong plug.
Shaking her head, Caroline put the card aside and called the elevator for the next level.
Above the circular gallery the ship began to taper rapidly, until she reached the highest level, which consisted of a single circular room. It was the bridge. There were no obvious controls, only some dark screens and a few chairs. Caroline sat in the captain's seat, which swiveled around to face all the screens, the other chairs, or the elevator door. She thought out her options.
In real life she'd never dream of trying to fly the ship out, but in the game universe of Lawrence's world it might be possible. There was no obvious propulsion system; the computer in the middle of the ship must therefore have something to do with moving the ship around, just as Prime Intellect…
Caroline blinked. Of course!
It had been six hundred years, and Caroline hadn't been lucid enough at the time to be aware of Prime Intellect's awakening, or its unique hardware. But she had heard the tale once or twice in passing. The original hardware hadn't been very important any more by the time Caroline was healthy enough to appreciate it, and things had been happening fast. But somehow she did know that Prime Intellect had originally been built with these deceptively simple circuit boards.
She had found plenty of tools, and the ship had power. It wasn't out of the question for her to replace all the cards, at least above the water line, and try to power it up. For that matter it might be possible to pump the water out faster than it could re-enter the chamber, so she could replace all the cards.
She swiveled in the chair, and frowned. She wasn't going to do it that way. Forget it. Even if it was what Lawrence intended, it would seem like a tacit approval of Prime Intellect and its way of doing things to awaken this copy.
She was going to make it to Lawrence the right way. She was going to build a boat.
* Chapter Six: After the Change
After the Night of Miracles, Caroline had stayed in the hospital for about a week. It wasn't that she needed their care. She didn't mind letting the doctors satisfy their curiosity about her condition, and she really didn't have anywhere else to go.
She had asked Prime Intellect for nothing in that time, but her body had kept changing for almost four days. The doctors took pictures as she aged in reverse, documenting her progress. It was only toward the end of that time that she really began to resemble a teenager, because different parts of her body healed at different rates. Her skin had returned to baby-softness almost instantly, but it took long days for her bone structure to return to its youthful configuration. She continued to use a cane to walk for two days, then threw it away.
Finally it was obvious that there would be no more changes. The doctors pronounced her condition stable and healthy. Her thin hair had been brittle and nearly snow-white, but it was now growing thick and black. She let one of the nurses give her a crew-cut so that it would all be the same color. It didn't matter to her. The nurse had a nose ring, a detail Caroline noticed but which also didn't matter to her.
Nothing much seemed to matter. All the things which had once seemed so important were now trivial. She ate, had bowel movements, moved without pain or weakness, and had in the bargain become a beautiful young girl. She had, perhaps, the chance to live another hundred years. But to what purpose?
AnneMarie had run away. She had at least wanted to thank AnneMarie for taking care of her for so many years, and it was this desire which caused her at last to ask for Prime Intellect's attention. It shook its head as she stated her request — its mannerisms had now become indistinguishable from those of a real person — and told Caroline that AnneMarie was hiding from her. Prime Intellect then told her why.