Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  The younger lawyer was named Marcus, he was from Shaker Heights, he had attended Penn, where he had majored in philosophy and lettered in rowing. After a stint working in a rural Mississippi town with Teach for America, he had gone on to Stanford Law School. He had a lovely wife of Korean ancestry and a six-month-old baby and was just days away from closing on a Tudor Revival three-bedroom in the Queen Anne neighborhood—a bit of a fixer-upper but with good bones, a great family dwelling once they pulled the asbestos-covered heating ducts out of the basement, a job on which they were taking bids now. Alice extracted all of this from him and then, almost as an afterthought, got him to admit that his specialty was structuring transactions in the tech industry and that he didn’t really know anything about family law and had never drawn up a will. Before Stan—who had spent most of the conversation checking his phone—was fully aware of the trap that his young associate had just stepped into, he made a similar confession. Now that it was too late, he assured Alice that Christopher Vail had been quite good at that kind of thing.

  Alice shook her head like a disappointed mom. On the flight from Omaha last night, she had blown fifteen bucks on wireless Internet service and apparently spent the whole three hours researching Chris Vail’s background and career and found no evidence at all that he knew anything about wills. “Yesterday I had Zula send a scanned copy of Richard’s will to our family lawyer back home,” she announced, “who may be a small-town lawyer but I can tell you that he has made out a lot of wills, as it is a major part of his practice, and he found three things wrong with it on the first page. Rookie mistakes, he called them.” She shook her head.

  Stan had put his phone away and was sitting there red faced. Marcus was agog.

  “Do you know what it looks like to me? It looks like this Chris Vail character got a call from Dodge that Dodge wanted a last will and testament drawn up, and he said to himself, ‘I don’t want to lose my billionaire, I do believe I’m just going to take care of it myself. How hard could it be to draw up a will?’ And he wrote the first and probably the last document of that type of his career, and I’m sure he was well-intentioned, but he botched it.”

  “Alice—” Stan began.

  “Malpractice, is what some would call it,” Alice said.

  This woman was a cobra. Corvallis made a note of it.

  Wishing he were elsewhere, he let his gaze stray to Zula, who was looking back at him deadpan. Welcome to the family, C-plus.

  “Well, it’s all water under the bridge,” Alice sighed. “The will is written the way it’s written and Dodge signed it because he was too busy to care and there is nothing we can do about it now. The man who did it has moved on to a different place and there is no sense in bedeviling him with recriminations and threats. But I am not Dodge. I am paying attention and I will hold Argenbright Vail to a higher standard as far as competence and billing are concerned.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stan said. But the moment was ruined by the ringing of a phone: Corvallis’s. Stan, perhaps feeling that he had just been saved by the bell, heaved a sigh and looked over at him.

  “Sorry,” Corvallis said, and lifted the phone from his shirt pocket. He did a double take at the name on the screen, then held it up so that the others could read it: El Shepherd.

  “I would recommend not taking that call just now,” Stan snapped. Then he looked to Alice, as if seeking her approval. She glanced away demurely, which seemed to settle Stan down. “Have you talked to Mr. Shepherd yet?” Stan asked.

  “No,” Corvallis said, “just some of his minions.”

  “What was the general tenor?”

  “Intense focus on the situation,” Corvallis said. “Not a whole lot of what you would call warmth. A sense of lawyers silently gesticulating.”

  “Well,” Stan said, “now that we have gotten to know each other a little bit, this gives a segue into the matter at hand. If I may.”

  “Please, be my guest,” said Alice.

  “Before I get into it, what do we hear from the doctors?”

  “No change,” Zula said. “We have to assume that he is brain-dead and not coming back.”

  As she spoke the last few words she glanced over at Jake, who noticed it, and raised his hand momentarily. “I’ve already communicated my views on this,” he said. “Only God can take a life. In Him all things are possible—including a full recovery for Dodge. As long as his soul remains united with his body, Richard is as alive as anyone at this table.”

  Stan allowed a few moments to pass in silence before nodding and saying, in his best lawyerly baritone, “Thank you, Jacob. Zula had mentioned to me that you might take that view of it. I want to proceed in a way that is respectful of your beliefs.”

  “I appreciate that, sir,” Jake said.

  “My job is the law,” Stan went on, “and as I’m sure Alice’s lawyer back in 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?”
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br />   “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 own freezer, is my point. I think the odds are that if you go and talk to Wabsy—”

  “Wabsy?”

  “WABSI, which, as Corvallis points out, is less than a mile away, you can work something out in which Richard’s brain is donated to science.”

  “But then they could do anything they like with it!”

  Marcus shook his head. “You can write up any contract you want. Be as specific as you like about what is to be done with it.”

  “Why would they sign such a contract?” Alice asked.

  “Because the Forthrast Family Foundation is going to give them a shit-ton of money,” Zula predicted, “and money talks.”

  “I’m just the lawyer here,” Stan said, “but I like this. We cannot make a reasonable argument that Ephrata Cryonics is insolvent, because it is being supported by El Shepherd out of his own seemingly bottomless funds. So. If the family’s preference is that Dodge’s brain not be prematurely subjected to the same destructive scanning process that ELSH is pushing, then, according to the terms of the health care directive, we simply need to make an argument that there is some better process available. And if there’s anything to what Corvallis is saying, that’s going to be easy.”

  “Easy enough to satisfy Elmo Shepherd?”

  “We don’t have to satisfy him,” Stan said. “We just have to be able to look him in the eye when we’re telling him to fuck off.”

  5

  Corvallis felt his phone buzzing in his shirt pocket and peeked at the screen. It was a local number that he did not recognize. It ended in two zeroes, suggesting the call was originating from a main switchboard. He excused himself, arose from the table, and walked into the foyer of the suite before answering it.

  A minute later he was back in the dining room. In his absence, chairs had been pushed back, dishes collected, laptops slipped back into bags. Zula caught his eye. “El Shepherd still hassling you?”

  “It was the place,” Corvallis said. Fully aware of how inarticulate he was being, he blinked, shook his head, and circled around for another try. “The medical office where Dodge was yesterday. Where he was, uh, ‘stricken’ I guess is the word.”

  “The people who killed him?” Alice asked. “What did they want?”

  “I’m on record as his emergency contact—I was there when it happened,” Corvallis said. “They were just calling to let me know that they have his bag. With his stuff. And his clothes and his wallet and so on. All of that was left behind when the firemen came and grabbed him. So, I guess I’ll walk over there and pick all of that stuff up.” The Forthrasts were all just staring at him. “If, you know, that makes things easier.”

  “Please,” Alice said.

  “I’ll walk you down,” Stan announced, placing a companionable hand on Corvallis’s shoulder.

  In the elevator, Corvallis asked him, “Did I miss anything?”

  “Zula is going to talk to a couple of vent farms,” Stan said.

  “What’s a vent farm?”

  “Horrible term. When you have a patient like Richard, who is fundamentally stable but who can’t be taken off the ventilator, there’s no need to keep him in the ICU. It is overkill. It’s expensive and it takes up bed space that the hospital could use for people who really need intensive care. There are businesses that exist to serve this market. Think of it like a nursing home, except all of the people who live there are . . .”

  “Are like Richard?”

  “Yeah. There’s a politically correct term for it, but doctors call it a vent farm.”

  “So we’re thinking of moving Dodge to a vent farm?”

  “Alice is vehemently opposed,” Marcus said. He managed to say it in a manner that, while utterly deadpan, still conveyed some sense of the vi
vid impressions he had taken in, during the conversation just concluded, of Alice Forthrast.

  “She wants him to stay in the ICU?”

  “The alternative would be to move him back to his apartment and put him back in his real bed,” Stan said. “The ventilator would have to go with him, of course. Round-the-clock nursing care, the whole bit.”

  “Esme Hurlbut is pushing for it hard,” Marcus added.

  “She wants him off the property,” Stan said.

  The elevator doors opened and they walked out into the hotel lobby. “She’s a lawyer,” Corvallis pointed out.

  “She can see where it’s going—the protocol. The ice bath, the freezing of the remains. No way does she want that happening on hospital property.”

  “I see.”

  They stepped out into the hotel’s front drive and paused under the awning, which was giving off faint white noise as small drops of rain filtered down onto it from the silver sky. “You’re going to get Dodge’s effects now?”

  “Effects? Yeah.” Corvallis wondered at what point the clothes, wallet, and so forth became effects.

  “I would be shocked if they tried to pull a fast one,” Stan said, “but say nothing, okay? Other than hello and goodbye.”

  “A fast one?”

  “They are going to be worried about a malpractice suit. If they start pumping you for information—anything other than just handing over the bag—just walk away. Then call me.”

  Corvallis shook hands with Stan and Marcus and then stepped out into the rain and began navigating the streets of First Hill on foot, headed for the medical practice where Dodge had been stricken. It was a short walk but a much-needed head clearer.

  Or at least it was until his phone rang again. He was just outside the building, looking down a street lined with spectacular red maple trees. The very spot where Dodge had yesterday been buttonholed by the young fan with the broken arm, and unwittingly filmed his last video.