The Sleeping Hand

Twenty years after her Alzheimer diagnosis, the person who had been the third-richest on Earth still ran her company with ever-sharper attention to detail, her focus on business absolute, her ruthlessness indistinguishable from her younger days.

Year after year activist investors in her company's board challenged her fitness to manage it. Year after year her cognitive test results moved further past the human limits, her rivals challenged the validity of the test, and the challenge was dismissed by a court. A billion dollars in political contributions had bought an airtight law and test case at the Supreme Court: her constantly improved software aids were an integral part of her self. She could not be tested without them any more than a driver's test would be valid without prescription glasses.

Ten years after she last remembered where she was or what she had set in motion, the richest person on Earth began a PR, academic, and political push to set up the legal basis for corpses being people, which turned out to be a cheaper purchase than the previous law.