Fall or, Dodge in Hell. Neal Stephenson

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СКАЧАТЬ that work out for them?” Zula asked, deadpan.

      “These guys were smart,” Corvallis said. “Not flakes. There was nothing they didn’t know, or couldn’t learn, about the science. They knew perfectly well that it was going to be a long time—decades at least—before practical life-extension technology became available. They knew that in the meantime they could die at any point in a car accident or whatever. So, they instituted a stopgap. Based on the best science at the time, they designed a protocol for preserving human remains and keeping them on ice indefinitely.”

      “So that, down the road—” Zula began.

      “Down the road,” Corvallis said, “when it did become technologically possible, they could be brought back to life.”

      “Like Walt Disney,” said Dr. Trinh.

      “Apparently that’s an urban myth,” Corvallis said, “but yeah, it’s the same idea. Cryonics. It’s a big long hairy story. The idea has been around since the 1960s and it’s come and gone in waves. Well, what you both need to know is that Richard got caught up in one of those waves for a little while.”

      “It doesn’t seem like him,” Zula said.

      “Yes and no. Sure, he is—was—skeptical. A fatalist. But he was also open-minded. Willing to take calculated risks.”

      “I’ll give you that.”

      “Around the time that his company became a big deal, he was making a lot of contacts in the tech world, going to conferences, hanging out with VCs. One of the VCs who had backed Corporation 9592 also had some money in a startup that had been founded by an offshoot of the Eutropians. To make a long story short, it was a cryonics company. They constructed a facility in eastern Washington State. Electrical power is cheap there because of the Grand Coulee Dam.”

      “And that was their biggest expense,” Dr. Trinh surmised. “Power to keep the freezers running.”

      “Exactly. They approached a lot of people who had new tech money and offered them a Pascal’s Wager kind of deal.”

      “Pascal’s Wager?” asked Dr. Trinh.

      “Pascal once said that you should believe in God because, if you turned out to be wrong, you weren’t losing anything, and if you turned out to be right, the reward was infinite,” Corvallis said.

      Zula nodded. “It was the same exact deal here.”

      “Exactly,” Corvallis said. “If cryonics turned out to be worthless, and it was impossible to save your frozen body, who cares? You’re dead anyway. But if it actually did work, you might be able to live forever.”

      “I can totally see Richard going for that,” Zula said, nodding. “After a few drinks.”

      “He did go for it, and he followed all of their recommended procedures,” Corvallis said. “For a little while, he wore a special medical bracelet giving instructions on how to freeze his body.” He spun his laptop around and let them see the photograph. “Around the same time, he updated his will. And most of it, I’m guessing, is just an ordinary will.” Corvallis rested his hand on the thickest of the three documents. “But the health care directive and the disposition of remains consist mostly of boilerplate instructions that had been developed by the Eutropians. And basically what it says is that after his body has been chilled down, it’s supposed to be shipped to this facility out in eastern Washington, where a team of medical technicians will take over and prepare him for the full cryonic-preservation thing.”

      “I’ve never seen that bracelet on him,” Zula remarked.

      “Because he stopped wearing it before you came out to Seattle,” Corvallis said. “He told me this story once, a long time ago. About the Eutropians and the VC and all the rest. I had kind of forgotten it. Dodge had a lot of stories and this wasn’t the most interesting of them.”

      “No, it wasn’t,” Zula confirmed, with a slow shake of the head.

      “It was pretty clear from the way he told the story that he had decided the whole thing was ridiculous. Like when he went out and bought that Escalade and then wrecked it.”

      “One of those silly things that boys do when they suddenly get a lot of money,” Zula said.

      “Exactly. It’s long forgotten. But”—and Corvallis now rested his hand on the health care directive—“he never updated his will.”

      “That is still legally binding?” Zula asked sharply, nodding at the documents.

      “I’m not a lawyer,” Corvallis said.

      They both looked at Dr. Trinh, who held his hands up as if under arrest and shook his head.

      Stan Peterson—who was, in fact, a lawyer—was there half an hour later. He had canceled all of his appointments, he wanted it known. He did not announce this in a self-congratulatory manner. He just wanted Zula to understand that the full resources of Argenbright Vail, up to and including drone strikes and private rocket ships, were at her and the family’s disposal.

      “Alice is on a plane,” Zula told him. “She’ll be here late tonight.”

      Stan looked a little nonplussed.

      “Richard’s sister-in-law,” Zula explained.

      “She’ll be the executor?”

      Zula shook her head no and glanced at the will. “She’s just the most senior next of kin, I guess you would say. I don’t know how it works. If we’re going to do something—to pull the plug or whatever—she would want to be in on it.” Her face screwed up and she went into a little cry.

      “I’m sorry,” Stan said. In addition to nonplussed, he seemed a bit of a mess emotionally. It was evident that he too had cried, and done it recently enough that he had a lingering case of the sniffles. He had probably looked at Richard on his way in. “Who is named as the executor?”

      Zula looked up, sniffled, controlled it. Then her eyes turned to Corvallis.

      “Sorry, I haven’t read the will,” Corvallis began.

      Zula interrupted him. “I have. You’re the executor, C-plus.”

      “Oh.” Corvallis said. “Holy shit.”

      “You and I have a lot to talk about then,” Stan said.

      “But he’s not technically dead yet, right?” Corvallis said. “So, the will doesn’t kick in. Not until—”

      “Not until there is a death certificate,” Stan said with a nod. His eyes strayed toward the health care directive. He sniffled once more and nodded at it. “That was drawn up personally by Christopher Vail Jr.,” he said. Seeing that this meant nothing to the others, he elaborated: “The cofounder of our firm. He took early retirement about five years ago. Early-onset Alzheimer’s. He’s in a special hospice now. He’s feeling no pain. But he won’t be able to help us with these documents.”

      “Have you read them?” Corvallis asked.

      “In the Uber, on the way here.” Stan raised СКАЧАТЬ