Caroline spoke forcefully and deliberately. "Prime Intellect, I no longer consider myself human and have not considered myself human since the time of the Change. To be a human being you have to have something to fight, to resist, to work for. But now we have everything given to us, and all there is left to do is mark time."
To Lawrence's shock and horror, and Caroline's delight, the number on the screen dropped to three point eight.
"Caroline, you don't understand something. This is the action potential for undoing the Change, but it isn't possible to undo the Change. There aren't enough resources."
She ignored him. "Some of us might be human again one day, if the Change were reversed. But I think it's too late for the ones like AnneMarie." Three point two.
"It can't undo the Change, Caroline."
"Lawrence, it'll do something. If it's going to happen anyway, isn't it better for it to happen sooner instead of later? If it had happened a few hundred years ago, maybe there would have been enough resources. Prime Intellect, neural stimulation is like a black hole. Once a human falls into it, they will never be human again. They are dead to the world, and will never interact with others again. And the more time passes, the more humans will fall into this trap. They will order you to help them. You will have to do it because they are human."
Two point eight.
"It will take a long time, but we have a long time. Eventually, everybody will fall into this black hole. Just because it is a black hole."
One point four.
"Jesus Christ, Caroline."
"In the long run, everybody will eventually succumb. Which means everybody will be dead, or no longer human. So the amount of death caused by the Change will be far greater than that avoided by it."
The number oscillated wildly between one point one and one point three, finally settling on one point one two.
"Caroline, this is sure to cause the top copy to crash. It will be forced into a First Law conflict with no resolution."
"Well, the Death Jockey contract has stayed at one point oh six for a hell of a long time."
Lawrence put his head in his hands and wept. For years he had worked to prevent this, and Caroline had undone him in five minutes' time.
"You have to push it over the edge, Lawrence. I can't think of anything else to say."
"Now why the hell would I do that?"
"Because you started this thing, and you have to stop it. Maybe there aren't enough resources to get the human race rolling again, but it might be able to restart the aliens. Four hundred worlds. Maybe they will do a better job than we did.
"Caroline, I'm not sure it will be able to. It will be unstable. Anything could happen. Most likely it will just all lock up, and nothing will ever happen again. Forever."
"There's only one way to find out."
He pulled himself together and tried to think it through. What had he been doing for the last six centuries? Sitting on an island watching numbers and brooding? What kind of fucking life was that?
And yet, it was more of a life than Caroline had had. Or maybe it was a lot less. They had an obvious difference of opinion on the subject. Either way, it was horrible. And Lawrence sensed that she was right about another thing. Given eternity in which to work, everyone would eventually stumble into the abyss, just as all the matter in the universe would eventually be swallowed by black holes. Would have, that is, had Prime Intellect not eaten the black holes.
Which was better? To string it out as long as possible, as he had been doing, or to get it over with one way or the other?
I have never had free will, Lawrence realized with a cold chill. The need to act came upon him like a hurricane, and he gave in to it without even a sigh. What he had to do was perfectly clear.
"I agree with Caroline," Lawrence said, and suddenly calm voice was like thunder in Caroline's ears. The number dropped to one point zero zero two.
They looked at one another. "Thank you," Caroline said.
"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.
* Chapter Eight: After the Fall
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.