Fall or, Dodge in Hell. Neal Stephenson
Iowa would be the first to tell you, the health care directive—what some people refer to as the living will—doesn’t necessarily take the beliefs and opinions of family members into account.”
“I am aware of it,” Jake said. “I know I’m in the minority here anyway.” He looked across the table at Alice and Zula, who looked right back at him.
“Under the terms of the health care directive that your brother signed,” Stan said, “life support is now to be withdrawn without further delay. But this is to be done according to a specific technical protocol whose purpose is to preserve the brain. And because of the additional provisions that Chris Vail very carefully worked into the document”—and here he favored Alice with a significant look, which she disdained to notice—“if Ephrata Cryonics is insolvent, or if some better technology has come along in the meantime, there is an out.”
Alice nodded. “And according to my lawyer, one of the problems with this document is that it doesn’t actually specify the nature of the out. It’s open-ended.”
“It is difficult,” Stan said delicately, “to specify the exact nature of an alternative brain preservation technique that hasn’t yet been invented, or even conceived of. The only way to write such a directive is to make the signer’s—Richard’s—intent primary. And his intent, apparently, was to make sure that if there existed, at the time of his death, some plausible technology that might later bring him back to life, then that technology should be invoked. And if more than one such technology existed, he quite reasonably wanted the best—not just whatever Ephrata Cryonics happened to be peddling on that particular day.”
“But who decides that?” Zula asked.
“Ultimately, you—the next of kin—make that decision. No one can gainsay it. There’s no penalty for getting it wrong.”
Jake sat forward. “But you just finished saying a minute ago that the living will doesn’t take the beliefs of family members into account.”
“You can’t just countermand the will,” Stan said, “but as long as you are making an effort in good faith to carry out Richard’s underlying intent, you are allowed some discretion.”
“I guess my point is that we are not experts on neuroscience,” Zula said.
“Then you can go find someone who is,” Stan said. “Seattle is full of high-powered—”
Corvallis interrupted him. “Done.”
Everyone looked at him.
“I mean, it’s still in progress,” Corvallis explained. “But some of the really high-level coders from Corporation 9592 ended up getting hired away, a couple of years ago, by the Waterhouse Brain Sciences Institute. I took the liberty of getting in touch with one of them, Ben Compton, whom I have stayed friends with.”
“Is this the Waterhouse from the weird cyber bank?” Alice asked. “That Waterhouse?” She was referring to one of the local tech philanthropists, an entrepreneur who had been involved in an early cryptocurrency venture that had somehow managed to grow into a serious financial institution.
“The same.”
“Forgive me for asking a dumb question, but why would a brain institute hire video game programmers?”
“Gamification,” Zula said.
“Yes,” Corvallis said, “it’s kind of a long story and I would be happy to fill you in. But the bottom line is that scientists have identified certain problems that are very difficult for computers to solve but easy for humans. If you can turn those problems into a fun game, then you can get lots of people on the Internet solving them for free. The Waterhouse Brain Sciences people stumbled on one of those problems and decided to gamify it—then they came after our best game programmers.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Anyway. You have friends who work at this high-powered brain institute. Here in town, I assume.”
Corvallis nodded. “Less than a mile from here. So I reached out to them and broke the news about Richard, whom they love, by the way. And I asked if they knew anything on this topic. I told them about the process that ELSH used several years ago to scan those eleven brains that they had frozen. And they—the Waterhouse people—said it is definitely not the state-of-the-art in that field. Much more sophisticated techniques have been developed. Night and day.”
“Then why isn’t ELSH using them?” Alice asked.
“Well, it looks like I could just hit redial on my phone and ask El Shepherd,” Corvallis said, “but the answer is probably that they have never been used on human brains before. Only mice.”
“Only mice,” Alice repeated.
The Forthrasts’ reactions were varied. Alice was incredulous, perhaps wondering why Corvallis had bothered mentioning it if that was the case. Jake shook his head in utter disdain at the foolishness of these rodent-brain-scanning humanists. But Zula got it.
“How many years?” Zula asked.
“What?” Alice asked.
“How many years out? Before they can make one big enough to do a human?”
“That,” Corvallis said, “is what I am trying to find out. I have a call in to—”
“Years? What good does that do us?” Alice demanded. “We have to make a decision now. Richard’s lying in a bed across the street on a ventilator.”
“We could freeze him now,” Corvallis said.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Jake demanded.
“Sorry,” Corvallis said. “Point taken. You, the family, could freeze him now.”
“I’ll have no part of it,” Jake reminded him.
“Jake, stop interrupting,” Alice said. “Go on, please, C-plus.”
“If he were frozen now, using the latest version of the Eutropian protocol—which supposedly preserves the connectome, the pattern of connections among the neurons—and if he were kept frozen for a few years, then, when this new scanning technology did become available, his brain could be scanned that way.”
“But I was told that the company that freezes people was out of business,” Alice said.
“Richard’s net worth is something like three billion dollars,” Corvallis pointed out.
“Enough to buy a freezer, you’re saying.”
“I’m saying it’s an option.”
“Then do we hire someone to stand by the freezer for a few years and make sure it keeps running?” Jake demanded.
“I don’t know,” Corvallis said, “I haven’t thought it through yet.”
Marcus, the junior lawyer, had been silent ever since blundering into Alice’s trap. He spoke up now. “Our law firm has done some work for the Waterhouse-Shaftoe Family Foundation—the primary funder of WABSI, the Waterhouse Brain Sciences Institute,” he announced.
“Of course it has,” Alice said. “Argenbright Vail works for everyone.”
Marcus held up a hand to stay her. “It’s a big firm,” he said, “and we are very careful to avoid conflicts of interest. We have to be. All I’m saying is that, around here, such foundations are pretty common. A lot of people have made a lot of money in tech. When they reach a certain point in their lives, they start giving it away, and that’s how these foundations get established. They interlock”—he laced his fingers together—“in complicated ways. Now, as soon as a death certificate is issued for Richard Forthrast, according to his last will and testament, a new one of those is going to be brought into existence.”
“The Forthrast Family Foundation,” Alice said, “inevitably.”
“You don’t have to buy your