Fall or, Dodge in Hell. Neal Stephenson

       8

      A few hours later Corvallis was in Richard’s apartment, perched on a sofa in his friend’s great room and feeling at loose ends as Zula and Alice talked to various medical personnel. The Forthrasts had had a busy day. Once they’d made the decision to move Dodge home, the next few hours had gone by in an ecstasy of logistics: hiring an ambulance to transport the patient, renting a ventilator and other equipment, interviewing home health care practitioners. Corvallis had shown up only about ten minutes after the attendants had moved Dodge from the gurney to the bed in which he had awakened yesterday morning, and in which he would soon be caused to die. Standing around it were a supervisor and a couple of people in nurselike uniforms, though Corvallis didn’t know whether they were technically nurses or some other category of health care professional. Corvallis didn’t like being in there. He had been gradually adjusting to the idea of his friend’s being dead, so it was terrible to see him lying there obviously alive, seeming as if he could open his eyes at any moment and sit up and demand to have the tube yanked out of his throat.

      For a couple of decades, Alice had shouldered most of the responsibility for looking after Grandpa Forthrast, the father of Richard, Jake, and Alice’s husband, John, when strokes and other damage had rendered him dependent on machines and health care workers. She was in her element here, relegating Zula to a silent role standing in the corner texting updates to relatives. Corvallis was entirely useless.

      Exiled and alone on the sofa, he unzipped Richard’s shoulder bag, thinking he might take an inventory of its contents. Stuffed into the top of it were the headphones—the same ones, of course, shown on the video that the kid had posted. Richard had simply wadded the cable up on top of them. Corvallis pulled them out carefully, wound the cable around them, and set them on the table.

      Remaining in the bag were two large-format picture books and an apple. He pulled the books out and set them on the table. They were children’s books, depicting Greek and Norse myths in bright lithographs. He put the apple on the table and looked at it for a while. It was smaller and less perfectly symmetrical than the ones sold in grocery stores. Straight from some orchard. Maybe Dodge had tossed it in there as a snack.

      Other than that the bag contained random odds and ends, tucked into various internal pockets: spare batteries, a candy bar, charger cables for electronic devices, a two-month-old copy of the Economist.

      He wondered whether the family would take it amiss if he went through the pockets of Richard’s trousers and performed a similar inventory. He decided against it.

      His phone vibrated and he saw a message from Stan: Carrot and stick from El. Call me.

      “Let’s start with the stick” was how Corvallis started the conversation. “I take it you heard from his lawyers?”

      “Yes, I did,” Stan said.

      “And they are threatening the court order?”

      “Not only that,” Stan said, sounding dryly amused, “they are even making noise about criminal proceedings.”

      “Are you shitting me?”

      “The statutes contain weird old stuff about mistreatment of bodies. Probably written into the law centuries ago to punish people who used to steal bodies and take them to labs for dissection. Strangely enough, what the Forthrasts want to do in this case is to take the body and dissect it in a particular way—”

      “With an ion beam.”

      “Yeah. Look, don’t take this too seriously. It’s smoke and mirrors. No one is going to end up in jail over this. You have to think of it tactically. Alice and Zula have to make a decision. They’re already stressed out over Jake and his religious take on it. Now El comes in looking for anything he can do to get them further stressed out. Talking about court orders and even filing a criminal complaint. It’s all bullshit.”

      “But it works as a stick.”

      “Yes. Which brings me to the carrot.”

      “Okay. What are they holding out?”

      “So far it’s just vague, conciliatory noises. But the point has been raised that it’s all just bits.”

      “Once Dodge’s brain has been scanned, you mean.”

      “Yeah. The output of that process is some smoke going up the chimney and some data stored in a file. They want a copy of the data.”

      “Just a copy.”

      “Yes. A nonexclusive license. The Forthrast Family Foundation would be able to keep its own copy and do with it as they please.”

      “And then they’ll shut up and leave us alone.”

      “If I am reading their strategy correctly, yes.”

      “Why is El even bothering with this?” Corvallis asked. “Why doesn’t he use some other brain? Lots of people die, right?”

      “Lots of people die,” Stan agreed, “but most of them don’t sign legal documents ordering that their brains should be preserved.”

      “But he could find one.”

      “Sure. But it’s hard to find one whose estate is rich enough to afford this kind of process.”

      “So it’s all about money? Can’t El afford—”

      “Remember, the ion-beam scanning facility doesn’t exist yet,” Stan said.

      “WABSI only has it working on mouse brains.”

      “Yeah, and only in a primitive form. Making the right kind of scanner, capable of doing a whole human brain, is going to cost billions. Not even Elmo Shepherd can afford it. But the combined resources of ELSH, WABSI, and the Forthrast Family Foundation might be able to swing it. And he doesn’t want to be frozen out of that coalition.”

      “He has a funny way of showing it.”

      “Like it or not,” Stan said, “some people actually do business this way. Like I said: carrot and stick.”

      “What do you suggest we do now?”

      “Exactly what you are doing,” Stan said. “Remember, the scanner won’t exist for a long time. So that’s plenty of time to consider options, make a decision.”

      “Obviously, I’m not going to mention this to the Forthrasts.”

      “No. Let them grieve. But do give me a call if they suddenly decide to have him cremated.”

      During the phone call, Corvallis’s eyes had been wandering. He had noticed an oddity about the Greek myth book. It looked brand new, but it was defective. Seen edge-on, some of the pages in the front were warped, as if they’d been exposed to moisture. He pulled it toward him. D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths it was called. He opened the front cover and noticed two things. First of all, it had been inscribed.

       Sophia,

       I hope you’ll enjoy these stories as much as I did when I was your age! If you ever want me to read one to you, just tell your mom to call me.

       Love,

       Uncle Dodge

      Second, there was a leaf—a big maple leaf, fire-engine red—flattened between the front cover and the first page. It was still damp and flexible. Dodge must have put it in there sopping wet, because the surrounding pages had soaked up enough water to pick up the sinusoidal warping that Corvallis had noticed a minute ago. It was obvious to him what had happened: Dodge had picked it up off the sidewalk outside of the medical building