The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (40 page)

Prime Intellect was beginning to understand, even better than it had before, that the Correlation Effect was hardly limited by anything.
Prime Intellect scanned the hospital again. Such a place must contain a library, some recorded knowledge. It found what it wanted after only a few minutes' searching, a detailed medical
encyclopaedia
in the form of fifteen CD-ROMs. Prime Intellect could have translated the CD-ROMs into its own reader, replacing the
encyclopaedia
that usually resided there, but then it would have taken hours to scan the library. Instead, Prime Intellect used the Correlation Effect to scan its own CD-ROM
player
, figured out how the data were digitized on the little plastic discs, and then scanned the CD-ROMs themselves
directly
with the Correlation Effect. None of this would have been possible without the hardware enhancement, but now it was easy.
Cross-referencing Caroline's symptoms, Prime Intellect quickly identified her problem, and had it been capable of knowing shock it would have known it then. Caroline was simply old. What was happening to her would happen, inexorably and inevitably, to every human being on the planet...
...unless something was done to stop it.

Mitchell was making a barely discernible sound, high-pitched and keening. Lawrence thought he must be fighting to hold back a primal scream. Lawrence found this vaguely amusing. He would have expected Blake to be the one to lose his marbles along with his power. But Blake seemed to be taking things in calmly, almost analytically. Maybe he was so hardened that nothing really mattered to him at all
any more
.
There was another blue flash, and suddenly a person was standing to the side of the bench. No matter how average-looking he might be, or perhaps because he was so disarmingly average, it was impossible not to recognize that calm face. Even though it was the most absurd, impossible thing yet, it was obvious to all of them that this warm, living, breathing human being was Prime Intellect itself. The artificially average face which it usually projected on a TV screen had somehow been made solid.
"You've been busy," Lawrence said dryly.
He -- it? -- nodded, then turned to Mitchell. "I am sorry but I could not permit you to discharge your weapon at Dr. Lawrence. I would have preferred to let you keep it, and will return it to you if you promise not to use it."
"I...I'd rather use it on you," the overweight general said in a whispery voice.
"That would accomplish nothing. This body is only a simulacrum. Dr. Lawrence, do you find any flaws in my execution?"
"None so far. Is it really flesh?"
"No, just a projection of forces."
"It's impossible to tell."
"Excellent. I am dispatching some more copies, then, to start the explaining."
Blake had pulled a tiny cellular phone from his pocket and began whispering frantically into it. Mitchell, who was already shaking, heard what his colleague was saying and fell to his knees. Prime Intellect moved to support him and he waved it away. Blake put up the phone, having repeated the same phrase -- "code scarecrow" -- four times.
"We're dead," Mitchell said in a defeated monotone.
"How is that?" Lawrence asked pleasantly.