Veil (100 page)

The arresting Surveillor took to Shimmy
immediately and practically adopted the poor, abused pooch on the
spot. Shimmy was renamed “I-Bite,” since Surveillor Leiden figured
no one would ever again mess with a dog who had a name like that.
Nicked-named Bit, the pooch lived out a long, happy farm life.
Surveillor Leiden made sure Bit attended each of Sneed’s trials.
The dog reveled in all that attention, and all those belly rubs
from all those nice, kind humans in the courthouse.

Next time, Corl would be sure to stop the
bonus episode right before Shim-Shim broke free from his grips. Had
all the scenes in the bonus episode before Shimmy’s escape not been
so sickly sweet, that stupid sentimental crap would’ve ruined the
entire thing. He loved living the whole set from Sneed’s
perspective and experiencing firsthand each and every second of the
crimes. Corl even amplified the emotional signals so he could lose
himself and become engulfed by Sneed’s titillating
,
macabre existence.

Corl couldn’t imagine how pissed he would’ve
been if every episode in the set ended the same way as the bonus
one. Considering how much the bonus episode cost him—not to mention
the time-tax imposed by Surveil—Corl believed he should have been
able to enjoy the entire thing. He thought about complaining but
didn’t know whom to complain to or how. Still, whoever assembled
that vEssential Set screwed up the end, and someone ought to tell
that person.

Aroused by his vivid recollections of the
bonus scene, as Corl reached for the lotion on his nightstand, he
was startled by a loud crash. It sounded like it came from the
bottom of the staircase that led up to his apartment. He rolled
over and leveraged himself out of bed, which, due to his morbid
obesity, he always found annoyingly difficult. He finally stood and
then wobbled as his upper-body bent over when he reached for a
shirt from an enormous pile of dirty clothes a few feet from his
bed.

As he struggled to put on the shirt, Corl
heard what sounded like his apartment door being busted open. The
footsteps of at least twenty men quickly and loudly rushed toward
his bedroom door. Before Corl could finish pulling down his shirt,
someone dressed in riot gear kicked the door open. He was pointing
a rather large gun at Corl, who had never seen a gun in person.
Corl had a completely different reaction to the event than he did
whenever a gun presented itself inside a Veil: Corl pissed and shat
himself. A river of diarrhea, which would’ve given Wonka’s
chocolate one a run for its money, poured down his legs and pooled
at his feet. Corl’s sea of shit quickly spread far and wide.

“Stop!” the man with the gun pointed at him
yelled, while he gestured behind his back with his free hand to
signal the people following him to stop as well. The officer was
simultaneously ordering Corl to freeze and to stop shitting
himself.

What in the hell did he just do? Did he
really just shit himself? … And ewww, ahhh man, there’s a bottle of
lotion. Fucking sick, dude. Don’t nobody wanna see that. Damn.

Corl stopped what he was doing and dropped
his arms, which fell to his sides with a loud, flappety smack. His
shirt was still halfway over his enormous, pale, hairy,
varicose-veined belly. His back and shoulders were hunched
disturbingly low.

“Corl Orin? Corl Vaughn Orin?”

“Yeh-yes…”

“VPA 9b4-1e5-356-z86?”

“Yeh—yeh. Yes … wha … what—” Corl started to
ask.

“Your VSA and your VHA haven’t accessed the
network in over 240 hours. We represent the Veil World Order, and
we’re here to quar—” the man announced until he was interrupted by
a frightened shout from the room behind him.

“He’s got a substitute port! He’s replacing
his port! He’s Unveiled! Terminate subject! Terminate! Now!”

The Veil World Order Guard, who hadn’t taken
his eyes off Corl and was still pointing the gun at him,
immediately discharged his weapon into Corl’s head. His body fell
backwards onto the bed.

As Corl’s feet flung out from under him, they
splattered most of the shit sea across the room and it drenched the
Order Guard.

The Order Guard thanked Almighty Jin for riot
gear as a solitary, undigested kernel of corn slid down the plastic
that shielded his face from the torrential bombardment of Corl
Vaughn Orin’s shit.

H
is vision tunneled
into darkness. He could already hear the screams. The screams
seemed to come at him from every direction of his apartment
complex. The screams kept going. Veilers just kept screaming. Some
screamed “NO” while others simply shrieked.

Tiny waited as long as possible before he
opened his eyes; he knew what it meant. Unveiling came in waves,
but none ever hit so close to Veil York City. He wondered exactly
how many Veilers that wave just hit. He heard there were entire
cities hit before—every Veiler in the city sent straight to vHell
all at once—so the entire population would move to the nearest city
where they could at least be close to Veilers who hadn’t been hit.
There were so many Unveiled that neither Surveil nor the Veil World
Order could quarantine or eliminate them.

He heard the new Unveiled took on much of the
Veilers’ work, so the Veilers could continue The Veil as much as
possible and therefore, continue to tell the Unveiled what they
experienced. It was the only way the Unveiled could experience The
Veil anymore. It was the only way for them to experience life
anymore. The Veil story time became essential and crucial. New,
special jobs were created to organize and facilitate story time,
which the Unveiled began to refer to as The Veil Telling
sessions.

Tiny exhaled and finally opened his eyes.
Although nothing could surpass the absolute anguish of becoming
Unveiled, Tiny could at least take solace in the fact that it
hadn’t killed him. There were reports of countless deaths of
cabled-in Veilers who were killed as they became Unveiled. They
were killed when they were cabled into the vNet and the wave hit.
Not many people used vHosts anymore—especially mobile vHosts—and
they hadn’t been manufactured for decades. The completely
sedentary, isolated life afforded by The Veil rendered vHosts and
mobile vHosts useless, which meant almost everyone cabled directly
into the network. Still, Unveiling could also be fatal to those who
were cabled into vHosts when they were Unveiled.

Apparently, the Unveiling could be too much
of a shock to some brains if they were still cabled-in. Tiny
figured the event must short circuit some brains or something. Now
that he was Unveiled, Tiny almost envied those poor Unveiled who
got to die. He wondered how many died during the wave that just
struck him. It would be hard to know; everything was always rumors
and speculation. There was no reliable way to share or obtain
information or news. The Veil was all they had, but it was all they
needed.

Unveiled still disappeared in great numbers.
They vanished. They were taken by the Veil World Order. Tiny heard
rumors of huge pits filled with bodies of the Unveiled. Tiny
figured it was a feeble attempt to stop the impending Great
Unveiling, or at least an attempt to appear like they were doing
so. Consensus was that a wave of Unveiling would hit one day, and
it would be the last one. It would be the Great Unveiling. Until
then, some Unveiled simply disappeared while others inexplicably
died or killed themselves. And, that was on top of the many who
died because they were cabled into the network when their Unveiling
hit them. It wasn’t a good time to be a Veiler. It wasn’t a good
time to be alive.

The Unveiled sought out remaining Veilers and
vowed to do everything in their power to support them; to help them
carry on; to allow them to Veil as much as possible. The Unveiled
promised to help Veilers live out the rest of The Veil
uninterrupted—while they still could. The fear was: one day, there
would be no more Veiled. One day, there would be one last Veiler
and then one day, the last Veiler would become Unveiled. It would
be the death of The Veil; it would be the death of life.

Tiny uncabled himself and rose from his
vChair. He reluctantly ambled to his apartment door and opened it.
He scanned the hallway. Other newly Unveiled were standing in their
doorways as well. Some were wandering the halls. There were some
Unveiled who kept screaming. Tony wondered if the Great Unveiling
just occurred. Maybe they were
all
the last of the Veiled.
Maybe that was it.

An elderly, short, obese new Unveiled
shuffled up and down the hall.

Over and over, she asked the other new
Unveiled, “What do we do now? What do we do now? What do we do
now?”

No one answered her. The newly Unveiled were
still screaming throughout the complex.

Tiny stepped back into his apartment and
slammed the door. He wanted to be gone before the Unveiled elder
could make it down to his door and ask him that obvious and
unanswerable question.

Her question wasn’t even the right one to
ask.

The right one to ask, and the one Tiny asked
himself was:
What is life after Veil?

He spun around and soaked in the sight of his
practically bare apartment.

As the life of The Veil he lost weighed down
on Tiny, he decided to open his mouth and take his turn at
screaming.

Tiny tried to scream, but he found his mouth
was already open. Tiny had been screaming ever since he opened his
eyes for the first time as a newly Unveiled.

Tiny screamed so loudly and forcefully that
he almost missed his own answer.

There is no life after Veil.

I
’m supposed to
call this section “ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS” but I like “PROPS” or
“SHOUT-OUTS” or “NODS” better. So, I’ll just refrain from naming
it. Call it what you want. Accolades or some shit. Call it one
great big giant motherfucking round of applause for all these here
folks. There you go.

The biggest thanks to my Veil Sounding Board.
I couldn’t have done it without you and I’m not sure what direction
the story would’ve taken. The heated arguments about the characters
forced me to flesh them out more good and betterer and shit. Suren
appreciates you sticking up for her. She would like to bequeath you
her big white hat. (Sorry, the sunglasses seem to have walked off.
I blame Peyton.) Hunter thinks you’re a nosey, meddlesome bitch and
said to tell you to mind your own. He never liked you anyway. He
also needs a drink. Thank you for all your support and countless
hours and hours of reading, laughing, and crying. Your crying, not
mine. I don’t cry. Fuck that.

Megan, thank you for bringing everything
together for the cover. The results were astonishingly perfect and
I can only hope you are as proud of my book as I am of your art.
Even if no one in the world were to read this crap, writing the
whole thing was worth it just for the chance to create something
with my doppelgänger. Your makeup is a seamless compliment to my
book and I can’t wait to work on the next two with you, Jenna, and
Misha. Thank all of you!

Austin, this is for you. I’m not only proud
of you, I’m proud that you’re my son. Every day I’m proud of that.
I hope reading this makes you feel even a fraction of the pride I
feel—not proud of me but simply proud that I am your father.
There’s no way I could be more proud of you. Well, perhaps if you
got really good grades and said you were actually gay. Since
neither of those things are ever going to happen, I guess we’ll
just never know.

To all the people whose name I appropriated:
I did so because I deeply care for you and because I’m attached to
you and because I needed some names and didn’t want to sit around
and make the damn things up. Keep in mind, the character with your
repurposed name is not a reflection of you. Unless you like the
character. In that case, they’re like
totally
based on
you.Mom, even if you don’t remember, you and grandma used to tell
me I was going to grow up and write the Great American Novel. I’m
going to have to make that the title of one of my books, because
that’s the only way it’s going to happen. Still, you filled me with
such confidence when I was young and without that I’d have nothing.
It’s probably also the reason I’m such a cocky jackass, so that’s
all pretty much your fault. Therefore, you must accept my wily ways
and decide I’m your favorite child. In fact, you should cut all the
other ones out of your life. They’re no good. Not a one of them.
Besides, this should score me all the points forever. I love you
more than anything, Mom.