The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect Read Online Free Page A

in limitless quantity in the privacy of their own personal space.
Raven held her first party only a few months after the Change, and had been holding it annually since. Not a few people marked the passage of years by the banner above Raven's door; this time it would say 590th REUNION . Contrary to usual practice, there was no dress or body code. But there was one simple admission requirement: You had to have killed someone before the Change. In other words, permanently.
Raven was one of only a few hundred people worldwide who had been sentenced to death, but not yet executed, at the time of the Change. Her crime had been the murder of her own children in their Chicago slum walk-up. She told the court it was because she couldn't bear to hear them crying from hunger, but the neighbors all said their hunger was due to her well-documented drug habit.
Fred was another. In fact, had the Night of Miracles occurred only a few weeks later, there was a good chance that Fred would have missed it; he had one appeal left and at that point fully expected to keep his date with the electric chair. He had killed two kids, a brother and sister, ages nine and twelve. He hadn't been particularly bright back then, and he had kept a little journal to help his memory. They said he had gotten the death penalty because of the one entry: "Killed the girl today. It was fine and hot." When that was read in court, Fred's attorney put his face in his hands and shook his head.
But the Change had given Fred all the time in the world to educate himself. His first lesson had been the value of a secret well hidden, and he no longer kept a diary.
There were about seven hundred thousand who were formally invited, who were known to have killed when it mattered. But the serial killers and mass murderers were the stars. People who killed for a cause were not welcome, nor those who had killed because they had to, in self-defense or as part of their normal duties in war or police work. Raven meant her reunion to be a gathering for those who had tasted the nectar of human blood and found the taste addictive.
Technically, Caroline didn't qualify for admission. Killing had been the furthest thing from her mind back then; had she not been so ill at the time, she might easily have added her own voice to those calling for Fred's head on a pike. Even her bizarre post-Change friendship with Fred couldn't get her in. But Raven did make a very few exceptions for those who she felt were worthy.
Caroline's friendship with Fred hadn't made her worthy, but rabies had.
     
    Caroline hadn't become a Death Jockey overnight. After she had learned to die, she had to learn to die gracefully. Finally she had learned to die imaginatively. Fred had been a great instructor in that regard.
At first Death had been little more than a parlor trick, or a private ritual to be experienced alone. But within months of the Change there were impromptu competitions to stage the most savage, outre ', and unique demonstration. Ironically it was Caroline, who hated everything formal and social about Cyberspace, who formalized the Death contract and helped to organize the social structure of the Death Jockey "circuit." Fred noticed this lack of consistency but never mentioned it to her; having drowned her emptiness in a sea of rage, even Fred could see she needed an outlet for the rage. And one thing she quickly found out once she started Dying regularly was that pleasure and pain were still real.
Especially pain. Sometimes the pleasure didn't come, but the pain always did. And that was enough for her.
After a busy round of hangings, stabbings, shootings, electrocutions, falling from tall objects, and drownings , Caroline had decided to check out diseases. In the medical library, she homed in on one of the most horrible deaths known to man, rabies infection. She noted that many rabies victims had killed themselves rather than continue their suffering, so she had taken steps to prevent herself from making