The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (35 page)

Prime Intellect had found a number of "signatures" it could use to quickly locate the human beings in its scans, including things like our characteristic body temperature and certain electrical fields. Using these "signatures" it easily saw that there was a huge commotion on the first floor of the building, converging on a particular room, the one
labelled
108 by its engraved plaque.
It took Prime Intellect several moments, though, to identify the forty kilogram object on the bed as a human being. Nearly all of the "signatures" were off. But it was clearly the object of their attentions.
Prime Intellect did a discreet high-resolution scan of the body on the bed, and was rewarded with a bewildering confusion of data. It really had no idea how the human body worked. It thought of scanning Lawrence for comparison, but he wasn't in the control room and besides, Prime Intellect quickly figured out the patient was female.
So it scanned one of the nurses. There were only two women involved in the commotion; one was an older woman with several medical problems of her own, the slightly heavy-set matron who had administered the overdose. The other was
AnneMarie
.
It was only with great difficulty that Prime Intellect could even match the structures it found organ-for-organ, and associate them with the names it encountered in its library. "Lungs" were obvious enough, as was the "heart," but which of the jumbled masses in the abdomen was a liver? Where was the spleen, and what exactly was a spleen for? Why were the patient's electrical patterns so different from the control's? Why wasn't her blood circulating?
Belatedly, Prime Intellect began to listen in.
"...start her heart soon..."
"... CARDIAC ALERT ... CARDIAC ALERT ... CARDIAC ALERT ..."
"...we're losing her..."
One of the doctors was pounding on her chest. A group of people were wheeling a machine toward Room 108 with reckless speed. Heart? Prime Intellect realized they were trying to
start her heart
.
That was simple enough, Prime Intellect thought.
Prime Intellect
analysed
the motions being made by
AnneMarie
Davis's heart, applied careful forces to Caroline's, and began squeezing rhythmically.
The machine made it to the room and an orderly plugged two huge electrodes into it. "Stand back!" he ordered.