If it’s a bug it isn’t a very recent one. At least 5Z71 behaves the same way, i.e. the decide phrase is not called or considered (or whatever it’s called in Inform) at all. Perhaps it doesn’t know to treat “Jake” as a constant rather than a literal?
In 5Z71 you could write:
To decide which room is the destination of (character - Jake):
if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
decide on the Sickbay.
And that would work as expected.
But I think there’s non-fixed bug in later builds that prevents it (see the thread about Sanddancer failing to compile: [url]https://intfiction.org/t/sand-dancer-failing-to-compile-with-6f95/1458/1]).
So perhaps you have to resort to something like this
To decide which room is the destination of (character - person):
if the character is Jake:
if Connor is conscious, decide on the Cockpit;
decide on the Sickbay.