«“I see where you’re going. You think we should leave the coma cases to die.”

“It’s not as if they’ll know what hit them.”

“All those citizens went into voluntary coma on the understanding that the PVS would be looking after them, and that Panoply would be standing by if the PVS failed in its care. That was a promise we made to those people.”

Clearmountain looked exasperated. “You’re worried about breaking a promise to a citizen with the brain functions of a cabbage?”

“I’m just wondering where this ends. So the coma cases are inconvenient to us. Fine, we lose them. Who’s next? Citizens who can’t move as fast as the rest? Citizens we just don’t like the look of? Citizens who maybe didn’t vote the right way the last time there was a poll on Panoply’s right to arms?”

“I think you’re being needlessly melodramatic,” Clearmountain said.»

This book was written in 2007. 2007