Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,32

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