“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“Under the terms of the health care directive that your brother signed,” Stan said, “life support is now to be withdrawn without further delay.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?”