"The two kids. A boy and a girl. I planned it for weeks. The perfect crime. I brought them here so nobody would hear them scream. See those hooks in the floor? That's where I spread-eagled 'em, side by side."
"You killed them?"
"Killed them both, yep. But not quickly. Not until they were ready. I had them here for over a week. The happiest week of my life, I can honestly say. Those two brats learned the meaning of life, Caroline. And before you ask, I'm not sorry. I would do it again if I could, but first they locked me up - that was my fault, stupidly getting caught - and then Prime Intellect had to fuck everything up. Now I don't even get to ride the lightning. I was kinda looking forward to that, you know. You only get - got - to do it once."
There was a fierceness in him that made Caroline feel excited and alive. "You were looking forward to your execution?" she asked. She thought for a moment that she should feel something for the victims, that their ending must have been quite horrible, that this man was mad. But she could summon up only a thin envy of them for having escaped this ridiculous lie of a world.
The man nodded sincerely. "It would have been a great way to go. Just think of it. Headlines, people picketing outside the jail, the last meal. Then they shave you and put you in. There's this great, really drawn-out ritual. Then, WHAM! Sometimes, you know, it takes more than one jolt. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine sitting in that chair, with the whole world watching, hanging on to life by the thinnest of miracles, watching while they recharge the batteries or whatever it is they do, knowing they will hit you again, and again, and again until you are really, really dead?" He sighed. "You have to admit this: Even that would be over pretty quick compared to what you were probably going through. A hundred and six years old couldn't of been very healthy."
Caroline nodded. Here was someone who understood things just a little better than might have been expected. "You'd have loved it. My nurse was stealing my pain medicine to trade for cocaine."
But he hadn't loved it; his brow had furrowed with scorn. "No, no, that's too cheap. That's shit. Where's the glory? She wasn't hurting you to pump herself up, just to get something she should have paid for. It was all out of proportion." He shook his head. "No, that's the kind of asshole that gives people like me a bad name. If I hurt you, I want you to know how much I'm enjoying it. That's what makes it worthwhile. Nobody should have to die like that pointlessly."
Caroline felt she had made a good choice to ask for this man. How did she come to feel such a feeling of respect, almost closeness, to this unrepentant child-killer? He seemed like the most honest person in the world. Excuse me, in Cyberspace.
"Did you dress up just to see me?" the man asked, grinning again.
Caroline fondled her breasts. "It doesn't seem like my body. Why should I mind if you see it?"
"I bet if I pinch it, you'll feel the pain."
A challenge. A moment of daring. "Do it," she said.
"What?"
"Pinch me."
The man drew close enough. Slowly he reached forward and grasped her right nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed. There was a short moment of almost pleasant pressure, then it began to hurt. Caroline backed away slightly but his grip was too strong. He kept pressing harder, and on his face was the bemused expression of a teacher showing a slow student a particularly important lesson. Her nipple began to throb, a deep discomfort that slowly expanded to fill her breast.
She made no move to stop him, though.
"You can blink out any old time. Just call old P.I. and tell him you've had enough."
"Fuck Prime Intellect."
"Not my type."
He let go. The feeling of relief was exquisite. "See?" he said. "Pain is still real. But it's not much fun knowing you'll just disappear the moment it gets too heavy."
"I see your point."
"No, you don't. But you will. I think you have it in you."
For the first time in decades she felt lustful. Here was a person she trusted implicitly, because of their shared distrust of Prime Intellect. They had almost nothing else in common, but needed nothing else.
"I'm Caroline," Caroline said. "Would you mind if I stay with you awhile?"
"I'm Fred," the man said. "Charmed."
They talked and talked. In Caroline's hundred and six years of life she had picked up many anecdotes a person like Fred might find amusing, and Fred was trying for the first time in his life to explain to another person why he was so excited by the terror he could induce in other people.
"You want to know just how fucked up things are? Watch this." Fred walked into another room and came back with an enormous revolver. "My first thought after Prime Intellect put me in the garden was to end it all. I understand a few others managed to pull it off, but I didn't figure out how. Now Prime Intellect lets me have any weapon I want. Watch."
To Caroline's amazement, Fred put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. There was an enormous sound, like all the books in the world being dropped from a great height and hitting a concrete floor at the same time. Fred's brain should have splattered across the wall and ceiling behind him, but it didn't. Instead, his head kind of swam, as her vision had at the time of the Change -- but it was like a mini-Change that only involved Fred's noggin. The bullet put a respectable hole in the wall behind him, but there was no gore. Fred lowered the gun and smiled. "Look ma, no cavities."
"Wow."
"Now, who's gonna be scared of someone like me? The minute I start working on 'em they disappear and all my careful work gets erased. Not much point even trying."
"Does it happen...if you shoot somewhere else? If you do something that doesn't instantly kill you?"
Fred was thoughtful. "I hadn't thought of that. That's a good idea." He pointed the gun at himself, then smiled. "Wait a minute." He pointed it at Caroline. "Do you mind? It was your idea."
There was a kind of electricity in Caroline's brain, something sinister and exciting. "Do it," she said before she could change her mind.
Fred aimed at her belly, then at the last moment lowered the gun and blasted her right kneecap. Caroline toppled in a blaze of pain. But she had been quite used to pain, and she managed not to scream. She gasped and tried not to black out.
"I'll be goddamned," Fred said. "You're still here. And you're still hurt. Why don't you get P.I. to fix you?"
It hurt too much to say why she'd rather die of blood loss than ask for Prime Intellect's help. But she knew she couldn't hold out for long, knowing such an exit existed. "You do it," she gasped. "Shoot me in the head."
"Another wonderful idea! You are an amazing lady, Caroline." He put the gun against her temple and fired.
As if by magic, the pain vanished. So did the blood which had been jetting all over the floor from her wound. She stood up, apparently unhurt.
"This would of been a great trick to pull in a bar," Fred said grinning.
"Except everybody can do it now."
"Yeah." Fred sighed.
They went inside and talked some more. Caroline kept thinking about that burst of pain, the happy look on Fred's face as he stood over her, the strength it took not to call Prime Intellect and run. For the first time since the Night of Miracles she had been too busy feeling something to worry about whether it mattered in the long run. She had felt real, ersatz youthful body and all. And she realized with thin humor that she finally wanted something in this world where want had been banished.
She wanted to do it again.
Caroline stayed with Fred overnight, and they had pedestrian sex on his squeaky bed. She played hard-to-get and made him overpower her, but the game was hollow. It was pleasant to feel a warm body next to her but beyond that there was no sense of excitement.
The next morning there was an unwelcome visitor on the porch. "Prime Intellect," Caroline announced. "Nobody called for you."
"Sorry. But I have to know something personal, and I didn't just want to materialize. It wasn't urgent, but it will be soon. I need
to know if you want to be able to get pregnant."
"Pregnant?"
"You had intercourse last night..."
"I remember that."
"...and Fred is fertile. I need to know whether to do the biologicals or not."
Do the biologicals? What the hell kind of phrase was that? "Is this a matter of letting nature take its course, or of doing something extra to allow me to get pregnant?"
"It's something extra I have to do."
"Then don't bother."
"As you wish."
It turned.
"Wait."
It turned back.
"Last night Fred shot me."
"I know. I was expecting you to ask for help."
"I know you were. That's the problem. Is there a way I can get you to ignore me - really ignore me - so that I can't chicken out if he hurts me again? So we'll know that I can't call for help and just disappear on him?"
"That's a pretty bizarre request. I think you might regret it."
"Let me be the judge of that."
It frowned. "You are basically telling me that you will give me two conflicting Second Law directives. Normally the second one would supercede the first. But if the first anticipated the second ... I suppose I would ignore the second. The first would have to be stated very forcefully. And I would not allow you to die. That would invoke the First Law. Anything that causes death would force me to intervene."
"I kind of figured on that. But if I tell you 'don't interfere with us until I die,' you'd really leave us alone? Even if later I begged you to help me?"
"That is a very difficult paradox for me. I think I would need a formal statement of the terms. More of a contract than a simple request."
They dickered for a little longer, and gradually developed the statement Prime Intellect would accept. In formal, legal English, it would leave no doubt as to Caroline's intent, or her understanding of Fred's. She knew she might be tortured and Prime Intellect was not to help her.
"I can accept that," Prime Intellect said. "Is it your intention now to simply work out the terms, or do you want to be bound by this Contract?"
She looked at Fred. The look of anticipation in his eyes mirrored her own.
"To be bound by it," she said.
"Consider it done. You are on your own, Caroline."
It blinked out.
Fred had been watching the negotiation in silence. Now he was astonished. "I'm not sure which surprises me more, that you got the bucket of bolts to do it or that you asked the bucket of bolts to do it. What happens now?"
"Whatever you want. Listen. Hey, Prime Intellect! Get over here! I've changed my mind!" There was no response.
"Hey, P.I.," Fred said softly. It appeared. "Why didn't you answer Caroline just then?"
"I'm ignoring her."
"Why?"
"Because I have no choice. She directed me to ignore her. Now the only way she can get my attention is to die. That will kick in my First Law obligation, which overrides the very strong Second Law directive she just gave me."
Fred didn't know from the Laws of Robotics, but he understood the score. "So she's totally at my mercy now."
"That's right."
Fred brightened. "In fact, if I want you to help me torture her, you'd have to do it, wouldn't you?"
Prime Intellect's image rippled slightly, as if some big relay had thunked over in the bowels of Cyberspace, causing a power surge. "Yes, I would," Prime Intellect said.
"Blow away." It disappeared.
He looked at Caroline.
"Why did you do this?"
"I thought you'd want it."
"Oh, I do. It's a wonderful surprise. I'm not even sure yet what I want to do to you...though I have a couple of ideas. I just don't understand why you would give yourself to me to play with. It's not something people would normally do voluntarily."
"There are some people who would have, even in the old days. Sickos."
"Are you a sicko, darling?"
"Fred, today we are all sickos."
It took him half an hour to make up his mind, and then he refused to tell Caroline what he was going to do.
After all, he didn't have to.
Under the house, there was now an open vehicle with a seat and handlebars like a motorcycle and four huge knobby-treaded balloon tires. Draped across the seat were several heavy chains and padlocks.
"I could get the bucket of bolts to do this, but I thought you'd rather I tie you up."
"You could force me."
"I could paralyze you. I've been whispering to El Bolt-Bucket. It is willing to be more helpful than you might have imagined."
Caroline shuddered a little, but it was a pleasant, anticipatory shudder. She put her hands together behind her back and Fred wrapped one of the chains around her wrists. He pulled it tight enough to hurt and padlocked her hands together. There was plenty of chain left; he wrapped it around her waist like a belt, again pulling it very tight. He locked this loop with another padlock, cinching her bound wrists up against the small of her back.
"Do you have the keys to these locks?" she grinned.
"Sure do." He closed his eyes, and Caroline realized he was talking to Prime Intellect under his breath. Now that might be a useful trick, she thought. Suddenly the padlocks disappeared, replaced by solid chain links. She was bound by an impossible chain without ends.
There would be no way out.
Caroline waited for Fred to act, and he didn't disappoint her. He kicked her feet out from under her, and with her hands bound she collapsed to the ground with an undignified yelp. Fortunately, the ground was soft; this was a marsh, and it was little more than peat and water.
Fred wrapped a second chain around her legs, cinching them together above the knees. Again he pulled it very tight. It had a long pigtail, and he looped it twice more around her calves and ankles. Each time he padlocked it, then made the lock disappear. The chain dug into her flesh painfully, but she knew that was just the appetizer. The main course of agony would be served elsewhere.
After her legs were securely bound there was still plenty of chain left, more than two meters. On the rear of the four-wheel motorbike there was a towing hitch. Fred looped the other end of the chain through the hitch and padlocked it.
Caroline now understood what Fred intended to do, and it was far too late to stop him. She squirmed, testing the chains, and found them secure. Fred mounted the bike and started it. She could feel its hot exhaust on her skin. Fred released the clutch and slowly pulled it out from under the house, dragging her behind.
When he got into the grass, he aimed it nowhere in particular and gunned the accelerator.
Caroline was astonished in so many ways she had no time to think that it was all fake. She was astonished by her own helplessness. She had been helpless for a long time, but that had been an internal thing, the rebellion of her own flesh. Now she was healthy and strong but the chains were stronger, and their cold mindless strength crushed her living will. She was astonished by the feelings, which weren't exactly painful, yet, but which she knew soon would be. She was astonished by Fred's imagination. This would be an exciting and terrible way to die, everything she had hoped for.
Most of all she was astonished by the machine Fred used to drag her through the dewy grass. The motorbike dragged her easily, not even straining its four-cylinder engine. The dirt and grass whizzed by her so fast it was nothing but a blur, so fast that she had no time to see the hazards which caused bruises and cuts to collect on her like bird droppings on a seldom-washed car.
Fred slowed and turned, and she went spinning. Then her feet were yanked again and the landscape speeded up. She twisted and struggled, but there was little she could do on her own behalf. Fred slalommed from side to side, so that she could not get herself oriented in any particular way.
Each time Fred accelerated she felt the machine's inhuman strength. It could rip her apart without straining, she realized, and without mind or conscience it would do so a
nd just keep going. In a battle between flesh and steel, flesh didn't stand a chance. How often had she gotten into a car without even a second thought for the strength it had, the terrible power harnessed on her behalf beneath its gleaming hood? Caroline had never been in an automobile accident, but now she was learning firsthand how bodies could be torn asunder by errant machines.
But the machine's victory would not last. When the flesh was defeated the rust would set in, and unlike living things machines could not repair themselves. Would this bike last a hundred and six years, even with regular maintenance? Flesh was weak because of its great subtlety, because it compromised perfect strength so that it could self-repair and adapt to its environment. But machines overloaded those clever mechanisms. This bike would kill her, it would scrape her raw and beat her senseless, and it wasn't even designed for the purpose of killing people. It was just something Fred had adapted on the spur of the moment.
The machines would kill the people, and then the machines would die too. It was all clear and self-evident. Mankind had set itself on course for this inevitable doom when the first caveman tried to tame fire and burned his fingers in the process. Die as they had, by the thousands of millions, more people were drawn to the power of the machine as moths were drawn to flames.
Caroline didn't exactly have these thoughts as I have set them down here; she was busy being dragged across a swamp, and they orbited through her skull in no particular order. They had to compete with the pain and the growing sexual excitement she was feeling, and her feeble efforts to struggle against the inevitable.
The landscape slowed to a crawl and stopped. The bike rumbled comfortably on its four fat tires, and Fred dismounted. Caroline struggled to face him. She hadn't really collected a lot of damage; Fred had dragged her several kilometers but the grass was wet and the ground was soft. She had a lot of small cuts and a couple of large bruises. Fred, of course, was hardly even sweating. He casually lit a cigarette and took a couple of puffs on it. Then he straddled her, pinning her to the ground. He pulled a rag out of his pocket. He pressed the lit end of the cigarette against her right breast, right above the areola.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect Page 13