Neal Stephenson - Fall or, Dodge in Hell

“Cut their operating expenses to the bone!” Stan proclaimed approvingly. Momentarily losing track, perhaps, of whose side he was on.

“What does this mean for us today?” Zula asked.

Stan pulled the health care directive over to himself and began scanning it. He seemed to be focusing on the part of it that had been contributed by his former colleague Christopher Vail. As he did so, he spoke in a somewhat distracted manner: “I think that is going to depend, Zula, on the questions we talked about a minute ago … whether the company is solvent … what the current state of the technology is …”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘solvent,’” Corvallis said. “According to the Internet—”

“Which as we know is never wrong,” Esme put in.

“Yeah. According to the Internet, the decapitation gambit only bought them three more years. Then they reached a point—”

“Oh, my god, I remember this now. It was a news story, briefly,” Esme said. “The power company was threatening to shut them off for nonpayment. The company insisted that letting the brains thaw out would be tantamount to murder. It was a standoff.”

Stan literally slapped his forehead. “Jesus. I can’t believe Dodge got into business with these people.” Which merely drew quizzical looks from both Zula and Corvallis, wordlessly asking, Do you have the first idea of the kinds of people he did get into business with? Oblivious, Stan shook his head. “But at least we’ve answered the question of whether they are solvent.”

“Depends on what you mean,” Corvallis said. His Googling was still keeping pace with the conversation. “A deal was worked out. One of the original Eutropians swooped in. Elmo Shepherd.”

“One of those pissed-off Eutropians who had sued them earlier?” Zula asked.

“You got it. Shepherd was the main instigator of that lawsuit. He claimed that Ephrata Cryonics had laid claim to some IP—some intellectual property—that ought to have been in the public domain—the open-source work of the original Eutropians.”

“Hang on, I know who El Shepherd is. Hell, I’ve met him,” Stan said. “I think he’s one of our clients in the Silicon Valley office.”

“He made some money on an IPO and became a venture capitalist,” Corvallis said. “Mostly conventional tech VC stuff, it looks like—but he has maintained a side interest in life extension.”

“So, what happened when he ‘swooped in’?” Esme asked.

“He formed a new company called Ephrata Life Sciences and Health,” Corvallis said. He had ceased to be an autonomous participant in the conversation and become a conduit for whatever was on the Miasma. “He funded it with his own money. And he worked out a deal—he acquired Ephrata Cryonics lock, stock, and barrel. Ephrata Cryonics is now a wholly owned subsidiary of ELSH, which is based out of the Presidio, San Francisco, California.”

“So technically it is solvent?” Zula asked. She had been juggling text messages and ignoring phone calls for several minutes and was losing the battle against electronic distractions.

“As long as El Shepherd is pouring money into it, it’s difficult to claim otherwise,” Stan said. “But listen, that’s not the only out in this document. Assuming you’re looking for an out. There’s also the question of whether the technology that ELSH is now using is really the best.”

“In the sole judgment of ELSH?” Esme asked.

Stan permitted himself a look of mild satisfaction. “Nope. In the boilerplate contract that was signed by the Ephrata Eleven—the people whose heads ended up in the freezer—the word ‘sole’ is used, but Chris Vail, bless his heart, struck that word out in the one that was signed by Dodge.”

“So we get some say over it,” Zula said.

Esme looked like she wanted to say something, but thought better of it and crossed her arms.

“You get lots of say over it,” Stan said, “and I’ll bet we can make an argument that cutting Dodge’s head off and throwing it in a freezer is no longer the best technology—if it ever was in the first place.”

Zula nodded at this and Corvallis had to swallow a mild feeling of discomfort. Later, he would sit down with Zula and Alice Forthrast and remind them that Argenbright Vail stood to make a lot of money if that case went to court and they had to argue it against El Shepherd’s lawyers. Anyway, his Googling had uncovered more facts that might make it irrelevant. “Turns out,” he announced, “that it’s no longer heads in a freezer. ELSH has moved on.”

“I’m ready,” Stan said. Again, Corvallis found his tone to be a little off. What really mattered was whether Zula was ready. But he could see where this was going. Stan was gradually asserting control over the situation. By the time Alice got off the plane, he’d be fully in command, ready to introduce himself as the Forthrast family lawyer.

Zula exchanged an unreadable look with Esme. A women-insolidarity kind of thing, he guessed.

Corvallis waited until he had caught Zula’s eye and she had given him the nod. “Now that we have cloud computing,” he said, “storing bits is way cheaper than storing body parts in a freezer. A few years ago, ELSH, in its sole judgment, decided that the only thing that really mattered was the connectome—the pattern of connections among the neurons in the brain. They took each of those eleven brains and scanned them. Reduced them to data structures. Stored the data in the cloud.”

“And where are those brains now?” Esme asked. Because that shoe was going to drop eventually.

“The scanning,” Corvallis said, “is a destructive process.” He was reading about it as he spoke. “Destructive” was putting it mildly but he saw no need to be heavy-handed. “By the time it is finished, there is nothing left that could be considered a brain. What is left is, they claim, disposed of in a respectful manner. Cremated. Ashes returned to the next of kin.”

“And since ELSH went over to this process,” Stan asked, “have there been any more?”

“Any more what?” Corvallis asked.

“Any more like Richard,” Zula said.

Stan nodded. “People who had signed a contract with Ephrata Cryonics and then died after the company got into difficulty.”

“If so,” Corvallis said, “no one is talking about it on the Internet.” He scrolled back. “One of these articles does say that ELSH refunded money to some clients, at their request, and canceled the contracts.”

“But not Richard,” Zula said.

“I would have no way of knowing,” said Corvallis.

Zula was staring at him. “C-plus. Come on. This is Richard. Do you really think he would have bothered?”

“No,” Corvallis said. “Dodge wouldn’t have bothered. If he even remembered signing the contract.”

“So, I have some action items,” Stan announced. “If it’s okay with the family, I can reach out to ELSH and find out whether that contract is still in force. Then it’ll be up to you all to decide how you would like to proceed. My recommendation is that we do a little background research on this—what do you call it? The connection thing?”

“Connect—connectomics,” Corvallis said, stumbling over the word in a way that drew puzzled looks from the others. Because some part of his brain had put up an oh shit flag while he was saying it.

“Everything okay, C-plus?” Zula asked. Giving him a mild feeling of shame that she, of all people, was concerned for his state of mind at such a moment.

“Umm, sorry. There’s a weird connection. Pardon the pun.”

“Connection to what?” Esme asked. Her primary reason for remaining in the room had long since become sheer intellectual curiosity.