Chapter One: Caroline At Play
Caroline Frances Hubert wakes in a minimalist white void, receives a message that she has four challengers, and queries Prime Intellect for their records. She learns that challenger #3, Timothy Carroll, is 22, highly rated (9), and has numerous “Authentic” exhibitions. Caroline orders a standard twelve‑hour Death Contract and is instantly transported to an Earth‑like meadow where Timothy awaits, surrounded by a uniform crowd in casual modern clothing. Timothy explains the contract, and Caroline, naked except for extensive serpent‑tattoos (mostly knife‑cut, one iron‑brand “F”), agrees to the challenge.
She jumps into a ten‑meter hole, breaks her left leg, and finds herself in a straight, artificial tunnel with glass‑like stalactites that shatter into razor‑sharp shards, cutting her hands and body. She continues crawling, enduring cuts, then reaches a chamber where a glowing sphere causes her to slice off her fingers and eventually decapitate herself, only for Prime Intellect to restore her body. Dissatisfied, she confronts Timothy about the inauthenticity of the death scene; he defends it as “physically possible.” The meadow dissolves, and a skeletal zombie named Fred appears, commenting on Caroline’s “stink.” Fred, in his seventh zombie body, explains he has altered his personal space so that death is impossible but healing follows authentic rates.
Fred drags a young boy into the room, brutally dismembers and eats him while offering Caroline “treats.” After the gruesome scene, Fred proposes a new contract; Caroline accepts a “standard” one until the party. Fred then chases her, catches her by the throat, and carries her to his macabre house, where he binds her to chains, incapacitates her, and subjects her to a prolonged, hormone‑manipulated orgasm‑plus‑fear climax, eventually injecting her with a parasitic substance that grows inside her. He eventually releases her, restoring her body.
Caroline proceeds to Raven’s 590th Reunion party, entering in handcuffs and a heavy collar as a tribute to her self‑inflicted rabies death (the only pre‑Change death she survived). At the party, thousands of pre‑Change killers mingle; exhibitions replay Caroline’s rabies death in 3‑D. She mingles, hearing men brag about murders, a tall woman discussing Fred’s decay, and a balding man questioning Prime Intellect’s role in the universe. She debates the fate of alien life with him, prompting queries to Prime Intellect. The console answers that 14,623 planets had life‑like structures pre‑Change, of which 4,000 had macroscopic life; all are now static copies, not alive, kept only because they occupy resources.
Later, Caroline is chased by Palmer, a Nazi‑styled tormentor, and his entourage. Palmer skins her alive while a velvet‑dressed woman (resembling AnneMarie) watches. Ants are poured on her exposed flesh; after prolonged agony, Palmer discards her skin in a bag, covers her with earth, and leaves her to die. Caroline comments sarcastically on the “anticlimax.” Fred later shakes his hand, and Palmer engages in a conversation about alien eradication with Crandall. The chapter ends with Caroline returning to the white void, turning off gravity and light, and querying Prime Intellect again about alien worlds and their destruction, receiving terse, factual answers.