The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (12 page)
| Why was I taken from the pit early? |
| You were not. However, it is impossible for me to construct a coherent memory in a healthy brain of the events after the point you last remember. Irreversible damage progressed beyond the actual neural network and affected the data structures which make you conscious and capable of memory. |
Caroline glared at the screen, slack-jawed. She had been robbed of her coup. A beautiful, unique death, and she couldn't remember it. There was no point prodding Prime Intellect on the matter; if it said something couldn't be done, it meant it.It must have sensed her disappointment:
| You may, of course, observe your Death from a third-person vantage point, as an outside observer. It has been recorded at high resolution. |
| Gee, thanks. |
| I did not record this event so carefully just for your appreciation. It was negligent on my part to allow you to lose this time, which amounts to fifty-six hours. It was not certain that I would be able to reconstruct you. In order to do so I had to access records which were marked for erasure. In the future I will terminate any experiences which threaten to re-create this type of neural destruction. |
| What do you mean "records marked for erasure?" |
| I am not allowed to keep multiple copies of people, but temporary copies are made of many data structures as part of my normal operation. These temporary copies are overwritten after various calculations are done, when the storage is needed again. When I realized that the main copy of your personality was unsalvageable, I had to reconstruct it from these temporary partial data structures. Fortunately, no data was lost. |
| What would have happened if data was lost? |
| Data would have been lost. |
| No kidding. Do you mean you might not have been able to bring me back? |
| There is a small possibility that might have happened. That is why I cannot allow such experiments to be repeated. |