The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (81 page)

The situation was simply amazing. Caroline had come to dress Lawrence down for creating this thing, thinking he was exercising some godlike control over its direction, and instead she found out that he barely understood the situation himself. And that it was totally out of his hands.
He knew he had fucked up. He was sorry. He had spent his life trying to mend things. Suddenly he seemed tragic and noble, all the more so because he had readily admitted his mistake. And Caroline didn't want to feel that way at all. She hadn't come all this way to feel sorry for him.
"You can stay as long as you like," Lawrence was saying. "You can't communicate with Prime Intellect while you're here, but I won't kick you out or hurt you. After making you travel all that way I feel I have a responsibility to give you your money's worth."
"I'd like you to show me how Prime Intellect works."
Lawrence was stunned. "That...that's a tall order, Caroline. I don't understand all of it myself."
"Just as much as you understand."
"I don't want to. I think it could be dangerous."
Caroline looked at him as if to say:
C'est
pas
vrai
!
"You have been at the center of several terrible Second Law paradoxes. Prime Intellect pays an awful lot of attention to you. It considers you a kind of bellwether."
"My money's worth?"
"Let me think about it."

She could stay as long as she wanted, though, and she was very patient when necessary. In the end it was inevitable that he would teach her.

In the sky, the pole star represented the First Law of Robotics. The southern pole star was the Second Law. And all the other stars were other concepts. The sky represented only a small fraction of Prime Intellect's mind; Lawrence could change the emphasis to focus on different things.
"Display Caroline Frances Hubert," Lawrence said, and a whole network of bright lines lit up. Her star was blinking, and the lines radiating from it were all different colors.
Lawrence explained the color code in some detail. "As you can see, there is a whole body of tightly related concepts connecting you to the First and Second Laws. That constellation over there represents the negotiating process you used to develop the Death Jockey contract." Lawrence pointed out the different stars, and had Prime Intellect report the concepts they represented.
"What's that group over there?"
Lawrence knew, but he didn't want to tell her. "That...um. Well, it's
AnneMarie
Davis."
Caroline's jaw fell. "The gang's all here. There's a lot of static around that. Is that because I drove her crazy?"
"Basically, yes."
Caroline could see that it bothered Lawrence a lot. She wanted to press him on the subject, but prudently let it drop. She'd get another chance later.