Neal Stephenson - Fall or, Dodge in Hell

“It did a lot of his work for him,” Corvallis said, nodding. “Made the same point.”

“Inasmuch as ENSU succeeded, it made Moab seem unnecessary. Cack-handed. Inasmuch as ENSU failed, it made him wonder whether there was any real future in his own visions for a secure Internet.”

“When you say ENSU failed, you’re referring to the fact that—”

“That billions of people went on believing everything they saw on the Internet in spite of it.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Corvallis said.

“Then you must feel a little of what Elmo Shepherd felt,” Sinjin said.

“Why fight it?”

Sinjin nodded. “What’s the point? The mass of people are so stupid, so gullible, because they want to be misled. There’s no way to make them not want it. You have to work with the human race as it exists, with all of its flaws. Getting them to see reason is a fool’s errand.”

“Seems kind of bleak. There are things you could do in the way of education—”

“Not if your primary focus is on preparing for the next world.”

“You mean, what happens after death.”

Sinjin nodded.

“I’ve seen El on social media, suggesting that Moab actually was nuked. Like, openly pandering to the people who still believe that,” Corvallis said. “I don’t see how that helps. That’s crazy. ”

“Exactly!” Sinjin said, brightening. “This brings us back to the main thread of this conversation.”

“Which is?” Corvallis asked, throwing up his hands in bewilderment.

“El’s going crazy.”

Corvallis turned to look Sinjin in the eye. Sinjin wasn’t joking.

“Elmo Shepherd suffers—has always suffered—from an incurable genetic disorder. I’ll tell you the medical name later and you can Google it if you want to know the gory details. It runs in his family. He’s been aware of it since he was in college. One of its inevitable results is a degeneration of the brain that typically begins when the sufferer is in his forties or fifties. Mr. Shepherd is fifty-two.”

“Okay,” Corvallis said, after a pause to consider this news. “I see what you mean about the main line of the conversation. Everything he’s done with Ephrata Life Sciences, the preservation and scanning of brains—it all relates to this.”

“We are all mortal,” Sinjin said grandly, “and we differ only in the extent to which we ignore that fact. Mr. Shepherd was never granted the luxury of being able to ignore it and so he has prepared for it with greater forethought than most.”

“How does Moab fit in?”

“I wish I knew,” Sinjin sighed. “In addition to the things you and I talk about—the brain stuff—there is a vast scope of other activity. He compartmentalizes well, so I don’t always know of these projects until he chooses to make me aware of them. But in the last year or so I have become conscious of an acceleration.”

“You mean, he’s getting sick faster, or kicking these projects up into high gear?”

“Both. And since ‘getting sick’ here is a euphemism for going crazy, well, you can probably see that I have a quite interesting job. When one of his fascinating projects comes to light, as it does from time to time, I honestly can’t say whether Mr. Shepherd is pursuing some profound strategy or succumbing to his disease.” Sinjin paused for a few moments—a rare occasion in which it seemed he was groping for words. “You should understand that El thinks highly of you and of Zula Forthrast. In my judgment, he would not knowingly take actions that were in any way injurious to either of you.”

“‘Knowingly’ being the key word in that sentence,” Corvallis said.

“Indeed, Corvallis, just as the existence of your beautiful young family is an unpredictable side effect of one of my client’s more imaginative projects, there’s no telling what the future may hold as Mr. Shepherd’s disease progresses toward its inevitable conclusion and his affairs pass into the management not just of me, but of others he has decided to entrust with this or that task. Until he changes his mind, however, I’m your man when it comes to all things brain related.”

“When does he want to do it?” Corvallis asked.

Sinjin said nothing for a while. He pretended to pay attention to some important nearby boat traffic.

“That’s his dilemma, isn’t it?” Corvallis went on. “On the one hand, he should wait until the technology is better proven. On the other, his brain is degenerating, and he knows it. What’s the point in perfectly preserving a brain that has gone to pieces?”

“It’s a question we could all ask ourselves,” Sinjin said. “He just has to ask it every minute of every day.”

Seventeen years after Richard Forthrast’s death

The ancestral home of the Forthrasts was situated in the northwestern quadrant of Iowa: a two-hundred-mile-wide quadrangle defined by Interstates 80 and 90 to the south and north, and 29 and 35 to the west and east. It was now being displayed in miniature, superimposed on a coffee table in an eating club at Princeton University, visible only to Sophia and to the friends she had shared it with: Phil, Julian, and Anne-Solenne. They could see it as long as they were wearing their glasses.

They were planning a summer road trip. They had worked it out as far as Des Moines by following interstate highways. Now Sophia was proposing a diagonal transit to Sioux City on two-lane roads. The very idea of it had led first to blank stares, then to head scratching, and finally to outright concern among Sophia’s traveling companions. The conversation had stalled entirely, and the plan for their summer adventure had been at risk of collapse, until a solution had taken shape in the agile brain, and sprung from the perfectly sculpted lips, of Sophia’s boyfriend Phil: “Look. I’m just not going to tell my parents—or anyone —that we are temporarily going off grid.”

This had led to a pause as they admired the audacity of it. Sophia decided on the spot not to dump Phil for at least another few weeks. Julian and Anne-Solenne, who had been draped over each other on a couch opposite, disentangled and put their brains in gear. “Well,” said Anne-Solenne, probing the idea for weaknesses, “you’d pretty much have to tell your editor—unless you’re truly shutting everything off. Going actually dark.”

“Sure!” Phil agreed. “You know what I mean.”

“We would all have to align, as far as that goes,” Julian pointed out, “since everyone is going to know we are traveling as a group. I think that my editor would be willing to tell a little white lie for—how long?”

Sophia shrugged. “The roads are decent by the standards of Ameristan. Farmers need roads to move stuff around, so they don’t see them as a government plot—they don’t tear them up on principle, they don’t ANFO the bridges. There are not a lot of roadblocks. So, call it two days, with one night at the farmhouse—which is in a little pocket of blue.” She leaned forward so that she could reach the coffee table to which she’d anchored the virtual map. The four interstates aligned roughly with the table’s edges. To her and Phil, Des Moines was in the near right corner and Sioux City in the far left, next to Anne-Solenne’s knee. “We are crossing diagonally,” she said. “We say goodbye to Phil’s car in Des Moines—”

Phil had pushed his glasses up on his forehead. So he could no longer see the map. He wasn’t paying attention to Sophia. He had got stuck on what Julian had last said. “That’s your editor’s job, ” he pointed out. He spread the fingers of his left hand in just the faintest hint of a dismissive gesture, putting Sophia on hold.