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* Chapter Five:
Caroline Approaches
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 She was enveloped by light, and she was the light. The light seemed to penetrate the very core of her being, burning her soul.
Then she
understood. She stepped forward, twice, and the light winked off,
leaving her temporarily blind. She was out of the circle. Her eyes
slowly adjusted and she turned around.
Caroline had
materialized in the center of a column of blinding radiance about three
meters in diameter and extending upward into the heavens. The ground
was hard and rocky, devoid of life. The column shed a bright glow over
the surroundings. A Stonehenge-like group of megaliths surrounded it at
a respectful distance. Beyond this was a barren landscape littered
with huge boulders. The horizon was low and sharp, rocky but not
mountainous. Caroline was reminded of the pictures sent back from Mars
by the original Viking landers.
It was night.
Instead of stars, the darkness was criscrossed by straight, sharp lines,
as if an incredibly busy constellation map had been filled out on the
night sky itself. Most of these were white, the same color as the
column of light, and in fact it seemed to ascend into the sky to become
one of them. A few were other colors, blue and red and turquoise. The
effect was quite beautiful and, to Caroline's knowledge, unique.
There were four copies of the stone tablet, so it was impossible to leave Stonehenge without seeing one. They all said:
YOU ARE NAKED AND ALONE BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO SEE ME,
AND I DON'T WANT TO BE SEEN. WELCOME TO MY WORLD.
YOU ARE AT THE SOUTH POLE. I AM AT THE NORTH. THE
REST OF THE JOURNEY IS YOUR PROBLEM. IT IS MY SINCERE
HOPE THAT YOU FAIL.
Caroline, who had
come to Lawrence's Task naked and alone anyway, had already missed the
first of his environment's supposedly disorienting influences. Now she
shook her head in disgust at the second. "Fuck you, Doctor L. I'm
calling this the north pole, and you're at the south."
No answer. She hadn't really expected any.
Outside of
Stonehenge, the landscape looked the same in every direction. Well,
Lawrence had given her valuable information; if they were at opposite
poles of a spherical planet, then it didn't matter which way she went.
She struck out at random and began to explore.
A couple of hours
later Caroline knew quite a bit more. She was on the top of a high
mesa, and she had found what seemed to be the only path down. She
regarded this with suspicion; she knew enough about the game-playing
mentality to know the most obvious solution often got you killed.
Beyond the mesa she could easily see she was on an island, an almost
circular island about twice as wide as the mesa. She paced off the
mesa's diameter, circling around Stonehenge, and decided it was about
two kilometers across. That made the island four kilometers across,
with the "beach" about one kilometer wide.
As far as she
could tell without descending, the landscape at the bottom was no
different from the landscape at the top. The only feature of interest
was some kind of structure which emerged from the water a kilometer or
so offshore.
She set about
carefully searching the top of the mesa, because she wasn't sure she
would be able to get back up once she was down, and there might be
something hidden up there she would later need.
She verified that
the vault of the sky was, indeed, rotating about the column of light.
It seemed as if the entire planet were spitted on it. She was not
expecting the sun or whatever passed for it here to rise, so she was
almost taken by surprise when, after several hours, one corner of the
sky began to glow. The sky-lines quickly faded out on that segment of
the horizon.
It got bright, and it got bright fast.
The air had been
chilly -- not uncomfortable, particularly to someone like Caroline who
was used to nudity -- but it warmed quickly. And still no sign of the
sun itself. Suddenly it peeked over the horizon, a thin sliver of
impossible white-hot brightness, and Caroline knew with certainty she
had made her first mistake.
Now to survive it.
She dove for the
nearest cover, one of the larger boulders, and crouched in its rapidly
shortening shadow. From the fuzziness of the shadow's edge she could
tell the sun was huge, ten or twenty times bigger than on Earth and
probably that much hotter. No wonder nothing grew here! She watched
the shadow retreat toward her and wondered what she would do when it
reached her. There was no longer any chill; the landscape around her
was being baked, and it was so hot she could barely breathe.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how she looked at it, the
shadow was moving fast. She wouldn't have to last long to survive the
"day." But "noon" was fast approaching, and with it her boulder's
protective shadow would be almost gone.
The boulder was
half-buried; it had nothing resembling an overhang. She was way too far
from Stonehenge. Not far away she could see through the shimmering
heat-haze another, slightly smaller boulder with a second rock propped
awkwardly beside it. This offered a slight overhang, but it was more
than thirty meters away. Caroline calculated her chances furiously,
estimating that she would be exposed for two or three minutes while the
sun was directly overhead, when there would be no shadow on either side
of her rock. She'd never survive that; the overhang was her only
chance. She'd have to risk a dash for it.
Caroline drew quick breaths of hot air, then sprinted.
Everything was
heat. Heat on her back, heat on her arms, the hot ground blistering the
soles of her feet. She thought only of her destination: Twenty
meters, fifteen, ten, five. She slammed into it without slowing, then
collapsed. Her hair, exposed so briefly, had become dry and stiff. She
knew with awful certaintly that it would have ignited if she had been
exposed much longer.
Fortunately,
mercifully, the sheltered area extended through the two rocks. She
wouldn't have to expose herself again to get to the other side.
In the unearthly
brightness she could see her skin reddening. Her face had been
protected by her hair, the front of her body by her crouching stance.
But her back and legs and arms all had varying degrees of sunburn. She
knew her back and legs and her right side would blister and peel, but
she wasn't sure about the other burns, or the soles of her feet.
The sun sailed
majestically over the horizon, setting as quickly as it had arrived. It
took long minutes for her vision to return; the subtle illumination of
the light-column could not compete with the terrible brightness of that
compressed day. Caroline noted the position of the star-lines, and
hoped that day and night were synchronized with the rotation of the
planet. But she couldn't take that for granted; the sun obviously moved
in its own orbit, and there was no reason for one period to have
anything at all to do with the other.
She limped back
toward Stonehenge and the light column, and noted the arrangement of
stones. Stonehenge would be safe, she finally decided. She planned to
stay there and recover from her burns until an old, familiar feeling
manifested itself, and she knew a brief moment of rage.
She was hungry.
Her body was not
being powered directly by Prime Intellect, as she and most citizens of
Cyberspace had come to take for granted. She would have to eat to stay
in the Challenge, if not "alive."
And there was nothing, nothing at all, to eat in this barren sun-blasted land. So how was she supposed to deal with this?
Shaking her head, she made for the pathway. She had found nothing on
the top of the mesa. Her options were few and bad; she could stay and
starve, or worse dehydrate, or go out and risk the sun again.
Near-certain endgame out there was better than certain endgame by
starvation.
There was nothing
obviously treacherous about the path down. It was wide and shallow, and
even with the blisters forming on her feet not a difficult downhill
walk.
The mesa was high,
though, several hundred meters high. The pathway spiralled gently
around the side. There was no shelter, and Caroline realized with a
shudder that she would have been fried if she had been caught on the
path at sunrise. Well, caution had served her well, if not well enough
to avoid a sunburn.
It was much darker
at the base of the mesa, and she lost track of the sky's position. She
knew it must have taken her most of a day to walk down, though, and
there was no telling from which direction the sun might reappear. Even
though the mesa itself was the most obvious source of shelter, Caroline
walked to the beach. She tasted the water, and to her immense relief
found it fresh instead of salty. Then she bathed, soothing the itch of
her burned skin a little. She wondered for a moment if there might be
life in the water, and then realized that the shallows at least were
probably sterile. From the sun.
She was dog-tired, but she couldn't rest yet. She had to find shelter.
Following the rocky beach, she began to circle the island.
About halfway
around, by her estimation, Caroline found herself facing the offshore
object she'd spotted from the top of the mesa. Now she could tell what
it was. It was some kind of spaceship. It was also huge.
From its obvious
tilt and its location out in the water, Caroline also suspected it had
not landed here easily. Of course, it probably hadn't landed here at
all; it had been designed here, part of the landscape of Lawrence's
Task. But the key to beating any game was to look at it both ways.
Considered from the outside, the spaceship was something symbolically
meaningful to Lawrence, or just something he thought was amusing. But
she wasn't outside this world, she was now part of it, and the burns she
had gotten from her brief exposure to the sun were quite real. Ergo,
she should act as if it were in fact a crashed spaceship, at least
provisionally.
She had seen
nothing which promised shelter, much less to eat. She could continue
around the island and hope, but if she did that and she didn't find
shelter, she might get caught in the sunrise. Probably would, in fact.
So she would try for the ship.
Just as there was
nothing to eat, there was nothing that would obviously float. The ship
was a good distance out. Could she swim a kilometer or more through
half-meter waves? It didn't seem she had much choice. Rather than
dither, she walked out into the surf and was hardly surprised when the
bottom dropped out from under her feet less than twenty meters out. She
was in good shape and had practiced swimming along with lots of other
useless skills. She began to swim with confident, powerful strokes,
holding her breath and letting the waves wash over her with their
predictable rhythm.
The sun caught her half-way out.
So absorbed was
Caroline in the rhythm of her swimming that she didn't even notice the
sun until it was high in the sky and almost too late. She sucked a huge
breath and dove under. Opening her eyes, she saw the water's surface
above her had become a huge vault of liquid light. It penetrated far
below her, to reflect off of the sea floor. The water was at least a
hundred meters deep, a fact which saved her life.
Caroline held her
breath until it seemed her lungs would burst, then reluctantly shot to
the surface to gulp more air. She stayed up for a few moments, then
dove again. Deep as the water was, it would not have time to heat up
during the short "day." Even a meter or two beneath the surface she was
protected. And when she surfaced to breathe, the air was bearable
because the water cooled it, too. And Caroline's wet hair could protect
her exposed head for a few moments.
Her eyelids could
not shut out the brightness. Neither could the meter or two of water
she dared put between herself and the sun. But she didn't cook, her
hair didn't flame, the air didn't sear her lungs going in. She would
survive.
Dive, surface,
dive, surface. Finally the light grew dim, then with extreme suddenness
went out entirely. Once again Caroline had been blinded. She relaxed
and adopted the "drown proof" floating posture. This was definitely a
good news/bad news sort of situation. She was alive, but this also
meant other things might live in the sea. On the other hand she hadn't
seen anything floating or swimming by when the sun was up, and she'd
been able to see damn near all the way to the bottom.
She felt itching,
and knew her sunburn was now much worse. Water is transparent to
ultraviolet light. Well, there was nothing she could do about it.
Finally her sight
returned enough for her to tell which direction to swim. She had
drifted slightly off-course during her desperate cycle of diving and
breathing. She corrected her course, and kept swimming.
The ship's metal
wall was smooth and featureless, and it slipped out of the water almost
vertically without obvious handholds or openings. Caroline swam around
it, looking for a way up.
The ship had
crashed hard, and its seamless hull was split in several places. The
sea had entered through these, filling the ship's lower section with
water. Caroline squeezed through one of these openings and found
herself enveloped in nearly perfect darkness. It was cave darkness, and
she knew her eyes would never adapt to it. Working entirely by feel
she found the edge of what had been a wall or bulkhead or floor before
it had been broken in the crash, and she hoisted herself out of the
water.
The gap where she
had entered was barely visible, a lesser darkness outlined by perfect
black. She heard the waves lapping at the walls around her. The floor,
if that's what it was, was tilted at a small angle, a few degrees at
most. From echoes Caroline estimated that she was in a smallish room,
less than three meters square for certain, but it was hard to tell
because of the break.
Exhausted, she finally let herself collapse for a few hours of fitful sleep. She had been awake for twenty-six straight hours.
Working entirely
by feel, she began to explore. An hour of careful work told her that
the ship was more or less upright, and she was at least standing on a
floor. She found the outline of a door, and mounting bolts where
furniture or equipment had once been fixed in place. She supposed that
the room's contents had all gone out the gap when the ship crashed.
The door wasn't latched, and she was able to slide it aside. The echoes told her this was a hallway.
Through her
useless skills, an ability to think like someone of Lawrence's age and
temperament, and not a little luck, Caroline had already passed tests
that would have eliminated most of the good citizens of Cyberspace. But
there were plenty of other surprises he might throw at her, depending
on just how seriously he wanted to be left alone and by whom. If his
intention was to limit his visitors to those who had been around before
the Change, there might not be any more difficulties. On the other
hand, if he wanted everyone to stay the hell away, her problems might
have only just begun.
In the dark ship
there would be lots of opportunities to kill her, Caroline knew. There
could be holes in floors, airless or poison-filled chambers, sharp edges
and dangerous objects galore. The ship could also be inhabited, though
she'd seen no evidence of life yet and didn't really expect that
particular challenge. Caroline thought about all of this as she edged
down the hall, carefully testing the floor and following the wall, until
she found another door.
It was locked.
Caroline found the
fifth door was different. She was able to force it open, and almost
stepped through when she realized it didn't have a floor. It was a
vertical shaft.
She felt around
the sides and almost fell through the door before she realized there was
a ladder within her reach. Instinct told her to go up, and she wasn't
eager to keep trying doors on the half-submerged level where she had
entered. Working very slowly, she moved herself onto the ladder. She
could hear the water lapping not far below her; it had filled the shaft
to the level of the sea outside.
Hooking an elbow
through one rung of the ladder, she hung on and clapped her hands
sharply. The sound echoed several times, and Caroline smiled in the
darkness as she worked out the period. There were three echoes in the
time it took her heart to beat once. That meant the echo time was about
a fifth of a second, which made the shaft (if Lawrence had not altered
the speed of sound for some reason) about seventy meters high. The
rungs were about a third of a meter apart, so she knew she should expect
to find the top of the shaft after counting a couple of hundred rungs.
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.
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