*) Are those the eyes of a huge animal from hell, or merely the brake lights of a car stopping outside?
Humanplayers' natural condition spiritual and not physical. After endlife they were only what they were before startlife. Preposterous to demand that species of existence which had beginning should not have end. Whatever they were after endlifes, even though it was nothing, just as natural and suitable to them as their own individual organic existence was now. Most they had to fear was moment of transition from one state to another, from life to endlife. From rational point of view, hard to see why they were so troubled by idea of endlife and of time when they no longer were; they seemed so little troubled by idea of beforelife. And since humanplayer existence essentially personal, the ending of a personality could hardly be regarded as loss.
*) Quick wits and good technique are essential to stay alive. Do not be overly aggressive at first. Victory requires practice. Create dissension among opposition by manoeuvring them into a crossfire. Humanplayer Aidan Kenny's life could be regarded as dream and his endlife as awakening. His endlife could hardly be regarded as transition to state completely new and foreign to him, but rather to one originally own, from which life had only been but brief absence. Easier to understand a brief history of humanplayer Aidan Kenny in earth time, mathematically:
1. Beforelife humanplayer Aidan Kenny- 4.5x109 years
2. Physical humanplayer Aidan Kenny —41 years 1955-1997
3. Endlife humanplayer Aidan Kenny — [?] years*
* being quantity of years having value greater than any assignable value
Coagulated blood from open wound on humanplayer Aidan Kenny's head resulting from when he had launched himself at door, had attracted number of flies. Hard to say from where these had come since door to computer room remained hermetically sealed against any possible incursion by those humanplayer lives still inhabiting twenty-first level boardroom. But possibly high temperature — almost 100deg Fahrenheit in rest of building — had encouraged their impressive multiplication and a few had found their way into HVAC system and computer room. Might be interesting to see humanplayer body disassembled by another species, as GABRIEL had attempted and failed to disassemble own systems for purposes of inducing total hard error. Both of humanplayer endlife bodies were out of reach of those who remained alive. But no reason to withhold three endlifes in elevator and one good reason to release them. Question of morale. Humanplayer ingenuity and resilience were impressive enough but want to see which was stronger: their emotions or their powers of reason and logic. Reason had already told them that humanplayers in elevator were endlifes. But seeing endlifes might still affect them.
*) Man's oldest sanctuaries were trees. But in your haste to escape you have run headfirst into the outstretched arm of this king of the forest.
Send relevant car up to twenty-first level, announce arrival with bell as usual, and then deal with three humanplayers climbing on tree in atrium.
Helen Hussey walked towards the office that, since the events in the men's washroom, had been designated as the women's latrine. Aware of the fact that Jenny Bao was having some breakfast at the boardroom table she did not knock on the door but went straight in, trying to ignore the unpleasant smell that greeted her nostrils.
Crossing, to an unused corner near the window, she drew up her skirt, slipped off her panties and then squatted down on her haunches like some Third World peasant.
Like a bashful astronaut, Helen had been putting this off for a while. She had hoped that they would be rescued before she would have to do such a thing. But you could stall Nature for only so long.
Inhibition made her reluctant to release her bladder and bowels. It was not easy. So she tried to think of something that would help. Some kind of mental diuretic. After several unsuccessful moments she remembered a trip to France and visiting some great chateau or palace where she had been shocked to learn that when the place was built the people who owned it had urinated in the corners of some of those great rooms and halls. Not just any people, but the aristocracy; and they didn't just urinate either.
A little comforted by the thought that she was doing only what the kings and queens of France had once done, Helen relaxed enough to relieve herself. However unpleasant it was, she reflected, it was better than risking a horrible death in the washroom.
She wiped herself carefully with a paper napkin, thought better of stepping back into her increasingly malodorous panties, and sprayed some eau de cologne up her skirt. She took out her powder compact, but when she saw herself she decided against bothering to apply any makeup: her freckled face was as red as a slice of watermelon and beaded with sweat. She had never been good in the heat. She made do with combing her fine red hair.
Helen picked the blouse off her breasts, pumped some air against her chest and then, noticing that the silk was badly stained under her arms and deciding that she would probably be cooler without it, she took it off all together and stuffed it into her handbag. If the men stared she would just put up with it. Anything was better than being so hot and humid. She closed the door firmly behind her. She was about to return to the kitchen to wash her hands when she heard the bell of the elevator. Her heart leaped in her chest. For a moment she thought they had all been rescued, and that any second now she would see a couple of firemen and some uniformed cops striding down the corridor. She almost skipped to greet them.
'Thank goodness,' she cried, but even as she spoke she realized that she was going to be disappointed. Nobody had come out of the car. She slowed to a walk again as a sound, like some enormous egg breaking, crackled down the corridor and clouds of cold air began to escape from between the slowly opening doors. Nobody would ever come out of this car. Nobody alive, anyway.
Helen stopped, her heart thumping in her chest. It would, she knew, be better not to look, only she wanted to make quite sure before she told the others. She faced the open car, her breath clouding in front of her face like someone entering a cold-storage room. But the chill she felt was more than just her fear and the extreme cold. It was as if she felt death reach out and touch her.
She did not scream. She was not the type. It had always irritated her how women in movies screamed when they found a dead body. Of course the point of the scream was to scare the hell out of the audience — she knew that, but still it annoyed her. By rights she ought to have screamed three times, since there were three bodies in the car, or maybe three times as loud as normal. Instead Helen swallowed back her horror, gathered her breath and went to tell Curtis.
Since his electrocution, Willis Ellery was confused and a little deaf in one ear. Worse, his left arm did not seem to work properly. He felt like someone who had suffered a stroke.
'That's probably the anoxia,' explained Curtis, helping the injured man to drink some water. 'It might take you a while to get back to normal. Believe me, Willis, you're damned lucky to be alive. You must have a heart like a fuckin' hippopotamus.'
Curtis inspected the wrench-shaped burns on the palms of Ellery's hands and the charred cutis and raised white blistering on his thumb from where the electricity had exploded out of his body. Jenny Bao had wrapped his hands in clingfilm to try and prevent infection, and had given him a couple of painkillers: Beech had found a small bottle of Ibuprofen in his hunter's vest pocket.
'Looks like she's done a pretty good job on you here,' said Curtis. 'Take it easy, huh? We'll get you to a hospital as soon as we can.'