She wondered if he was aiming them, or if the fall was random. It didn't really matter; the idea wasn't to survive, after all.
She reached the end of the tunnel, and found herself in a small chamber. Another tunnel veered off to the right at a sharp angle. How imaginative. A glowing ball hung by a thread from the ceiling. She raised her hand toward the light and watched in astonishment as her fingers sheared off in a perfect line.
"Whafuck?" she said aloud. She moved her hand again, and sliced off more flesh. An invisible cutting surface was stretched across the room. The pain was beginning to get interesting, but not interesting enough to counteract her growing sense of boredom. Blood was jetting from the stumps of her fingers. Summoning her strength, she aimed carefully and sat up, deliberately decapitating herself.
She was conscious of her own head falling, striking the floor as her body twitched above, and then Prime Intellect intervened.
"Why the hell did you do that?" Timothy demanded from across the entry pit. She had snapped back whole, as if she had never jumped. She could still feel a little pain where her leg had broken, just a fading echo. Fading fast.
"If you had designed it right, I wouldn't have been able to do that. What the hell was that cutter supposed to be, anyway?"
"That was diamond monofilament. Part of the booby trap you were supposed to get past, minus a few more dents. If you…"
"You call that Authentic?"
"It's physically possible…"
"No it's not. This is science-fiction shit. What were those stalactites made of? I can tell you it wasn't calcium carbonate. Look, you want to compete in Pain, or Adventure, or Imagination, go right ahead. But Authentic is for things that could really have happened in the pre-Change world."
"I don't think you understand…"
"I don't think you understand, sonny. Did you bother to ask Prime Intellect about me?"
"You're pre-Change and you're the best. That's what counts."
"Not just pre-Change. I was a hundred and six years old. Before the Change. I was in a nursing home with bedsores the size of baseballs and six different kinds of cancer eating me away. And my nurse was stealing my pain medication to trade for cocaine, so I got to experience every delightful moment in full three-D. This went on for years. And I didn't know Prime Intellect was gonna pop me back into this nice healthy body when it was all over. It was just the inky unknown and the pain. That's what death is. That's what counts."
"I was just trying to reach an artistic balance," he pouted. "I didn't realize you'd be so picky about the technical details."
"Artistic? What fucking bullshit! You think I've never been chopped into little bitty bits before? You just don't have time to appreciate art in a situation like that. Not if you have any human feelings at all."
"Why not? It's just a game."
"That is exactly the problem." She signalled Prime Intellect, and the meadow disappeared.
"You really put him in his place."
The words came from a shambling monster, a skeleton with loose folds of rotting flesh draped across its bones. Although its muscles couldn't possibly work, it moved, pointing a bony finger at her. The jaw moved as it talked, and sound came out even though the larynx and lungs had long rotted away. Its voice was strong and powerful. Surprisingly bright and alert eyes bobbed in the eye sockets.
"You're starting to stink, Fred."
"I know. I think it adds an extra dimension to the experience. You wouldn't believe how many types of bacteria are involved in the decay process."
Fred was on his seventh body as a zombie; when all the scraps of flesh rotted away and he was reduced to a living skeleton, he'd have it fleshed out again and start the process over. He had directed Prime Intellect to change the rules slightly in his personal space; death was still impossible, but healing occurred only in the authentic circumstances at the authentic rate. When healing was impossible, as it was after each time Fred cut his wrists to extinguish the life of his new body, consciousness and feeling would go on. Even for a rotting corpse.
It had started out as nothing more than a little joke on Caroline's periodic un-aging ritual, but Fred had found that it was fun to be a zombie.
His personal home was decorated in a matching Halloween motif; he had a huge haunted house with rotting floorboards and real ghosts. Large spiders spun intricate webs in the corners. Monsters prowled outside in the graveyard.
"That punk needed his bubble popped. He should spend some time as a zombie. Might teach him something."
"He never will. Too vain."
"Never is a long time," he reminded her.
There was a dramatic ding, followed several seconds later by a long, sonorous dong. A kid's voice: "Trick or treat!"
"Care to get the door, darling?" Fred asked graciously.
Caroline laughed and got up. Fred faded away. She knew the «kid» would be nearly as old as herself. Prime Intellect would never allow a real child anywhere near Fred. But Caroline wasn't the only one to appreciate his twisted and darkly humorous fantasies.
She opened the door and juvenile eyes opened wide in startled amazement. "Lady, you're naked!" the brat said. He looked about twelve, and was a surprisingly good actor. It was easy to believe his dumbfounded gape was the reaction of a pubescent boy who had never seen a naked woman before.
"No I'm not," Caroline said sweetly. I have my beautiful tattoos."
"I…I…"
"You want a treat?" Caroline asked teasingly, cupping her breasts and offering them to him. Her left nipple was already being tasted by a tattooed snake, whose body was coiled around her right breast, framing it invitingly.
"My…my mama said…"
"Or you want the trick?" Fred floated down from the roof and wrapped one rotting hand around the kid's head, forcing him forward, mashing his face against her bosom. "Take a close look," he said. "Take your last look."
The kid began screeching quite realistically, then Fred dragged him inside and started taking him apart. He should have gone into shock after Fred ripped off his right arm, but that little physiological mechanism also didn't work in Fred's home. Fred took a couple of experimental bites, then tossed the arm aside.
"Stringy," Fred said. "Let's try a drumstick."
The screams reached ear-piercing levels as Fred ripped off the left leg. There was blood everywhere, but Fred was working fast and the kid wouldn't have time to bleed to death.
"Want a bite?" he asked Caroline.
"Thanks, I already ate," Caroline said politely.
Fred the Zombie ripped the boy's belly open and rooted in his intestines, then gutted him. Finally he administered what should have been the coup de grace by ripping the kid's head off.
Fred held it up by the hair and pressed the face against Caroline's breasts. "One last kiss," he directed. The eyes were still tracking, and the mouth trying to scream. Then it kissed her left nipple, touching its blue tongue to the forked tongue of the tattoo-snake as Fred had directed it to.
"Bye now," he said to the head, and he dropped it and smashed it underfoot.
"Do these guys really get off on this?" Caroline asked.
"This question coming from a woman who infected herself with rabies, no less." The body, including the spreading stain of blood and gore, disappeared. "Nearly all of them are pre-Change. You saw an example of a modern sex pervert just before your arrival here."
"Ugh. Give me Charlie Manson. Someone with class."