The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (101 page)

Tears welled in Nugget's eyes. "Fifty years. You make a fool of me for my entire life, then..."
"You're not a fool, daughter. I'll tell you why we did it."
"If I ... If I ..." Nugget sobbed. "If I help you down, I'm not sure you'll be able to make it back up the path."
"I don't think that will be a problem."
Still weeping, Nugget helped Caroline to her feet and down the first steps to the path to the old fountain.

The hot water slipped around her like a velvet skin, and Caroline tried to slip into the past.
"Daughter, do you have any idea how old I am?"
"I'm counted seventy-one solstices, so you must have seen at least eighty-five."
"I am over seven hundred and seventy years old."
Nugget sobbed louder. "Please, mother, don't tell me lies at a time like this."
"No lies, child. I lived a hundred and six years in the World Before, and I was dying then as I am dying now. I didn't know it, but your father was working as I was dying. He was a great man. There has never been another like him, but he was not perfect and he made one terrible mistake.
"With the help of many thousands of other people, your father built a vast and complicated thing. The word for it is on your tablets; it was called a computer. That's nothing but a meaningless word to you, and that's all it needs to be. But of all the artisans who dedicated themselves to the making of the computer, your father was the most important, because he was the one that taught it to think. Without the others to help him Lawrence could not have made the computer, but without Lawrence, the others could not have made it live; you have to remember that."
"Okay, Mother."
"The computer could not disobey Lawrence, but he was afraid other people would use it for bad purposes. So he taught it to answer first to its own conscience, the conscience he had created for it. Then your father set it loose, confident that it was capable of doing only good for the people of the World Before. Even Lawrence himself would not be able to make it contradict its nature."
She paused, and Nugget prodded her. "What happened?"
"The computer got a bright idea," Caroline said in a sour voice. "It figured out how to make people immortal. So it made us immortal."
"Just like that?"
"That was the least of its powers. It remade the world. There was nothing we couldn't have for the asking. There was nothing we couldn't do. Nothing could ever hurt us." She coughed again. "It was fucking boring."