Veil (26 page)

“None of this has gone as planned. Not since
you arrived. You shouldn’t even be here anymore. You should have
been off this project weeks ago,” Schaffer snapped. He didn’t
bother to look up from the papers that Hunter knew he was only
pretending to read.

Hunter nearly laughed out loud as he thought,
Maybe starting with the one I slept with and never called again
was a bad idea after all.

“Look Carl,” he began, “you know I never
wanted any of this. I was ready to leave that day when I thought I
designed what you guys asked of me,” he lied. “So, it’s not like I
was coming in here trying to steal Veil from you. Hell, I didn’t
know what the fuck Veil was. I still don’t completely. I’ve never
done it. I don’t have the insight you and Pollock have.”

After the last part, Schaffer rolled his eyes
and looked up at Hunter without raising his head. Hunter knew right
then he shouldn’t have mentioned Pollock’s name, so he backtracked.
“Ok, the insight you have. Pollock has the insight of a frat
boy.”

Schaffer got up and walked around his desk
while he produced an exaggerated groan. He leaned on the edge of
his desk and folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t look at
Hunter until he positioned himself precisely where and how he
wanted. Hunter couldn’t tell if Schaffer fell for the hot air he
tried to blow up his ass.

Finally, Schaffer said, “All that’s important
to me is Veil. I don’t give a fuck about you, Hunter, and I
definitely don’t give a fuck about Luke. If Coffman is so hell-bent
on you being his butt-boy, then so be it. We both know how he’d
feel if he knew you got his men drunk so you could take advantage
of them and trick them into sucking your dick.”

It sounded like Schaffer was actually hurt by
Hunter’s treatment of their encounter as a one-night-stand.

What a fag
, Hunter thought when he
realized Schaffer had been hurt. The thought was followed quickly
by,
God, there is really something wrong with me
.

Hunter refocused, feigned offense, and
started to argue. “If you think for a minute that—”

Schaffer put his hand up and continued. “It
doesn’t even matter. I’m sure Pollock is next on your list.”

At least he’s got a decent body
,
Hunter wanted to shoot back but instead practiced untypical
restraint. Given the situation, he felt he had no choice but to
refrain.

Schaffer kept talking. “So—what Hunter? What
do you want?”

“What do you mean what do I want?”

“Exactly what I said. What do you want? Why
did you come in here?”

That provided Hunter the opportunity to
manipulate the two men, which was the goal that led him to
Schaffer’s office in the first place. Door opened, walked
through.

“Dude, I’ve done everything I can now. I
don’t know what to do next. If that in there just now was the
General’s way of putting me in command or something, then all I can
say is … well, I’m ordering you to help me. Just because I know how
Veil works doesn’t mean I have any idea what I’m doing. I have no
idea what the fuck to do next.”

Schaffer looked dumbfounded. He stared at
Hunter for a moment and then looked down at his feet, which he
fumbled with. He obviously didn’t expect that and instead was
mentally prepared for some kind of battle of the wits. After he
gathered himself, Schaffer looked up at Hunter.

“Then I guess I need to start coming up with
something. I mean, I guess we need to start. And I suppose we can’t
leave Pollock out.”

Score!
Hunter laughed to himself and
thought,
What a faggot
. That was swiftly followed-up with
the very distinct thought,
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong
with me
?

With Schaffer and Pollock unwittingly at work
for Hunter, the design materialized rather quickly. Hunter already
knew one of the primary functions Tsay’s mainframe performed was
mapping out the neuroelectrical pattern of The Witness
,
so it could be uploaded and downloaded but still
retain the same pattern in the end. Hunter knew they couldn’t
simply take an electrical pattern and force it through a bunch of
wires and expect it to come out the other end in the same
pattern.

The pattern of The Witness, created by the
neuroelectrical currents and their vibrations, was crucial to Veil
and was what Hunter’s initial design failed to capture. So, Hunter
already knew the end design was going to have to be something that
covered a person’s entire head; Veil was going to have to be
something that could take a snapshot of the neuroelectrical pattern
right before it was transferred so it could be rearranged in the
exact same way after being transferred.

Pollock required further explanation.

Of course he does
, Schaffer rolled his
eyes.

Hunter explained, “You can’t take the hairnet
off someone, wad it up, push it through a tube and then take that
wadded-up, balled-up hairnet and set it on top of someone else’s
head on the other end. You have to unwad the hairnet and it has to
be unwadded precisely in the same exact shape.”

“Unwad and unwadded aren’t words,” Schaffer
growled.

“Shut—up—Scha—ffer,” Hunter growled back
before he continued. “So we need a device that covers a subject’s
entire head
,
so it can instantly map out
the pattern of The Witness and then download it. Then it has to be
able to transfer The Witness over to the target’s Veil. The
target’s Veil will receive the subject’s Witness and then upload
that Witness onto the target’s brain in the same exact mapped-out
pattern. Understand now?”

“I think so. So there will be two Veils and a
wire will connect them, kind of like the one we used in the old
lab? The ones that were hooked up to the computers?”

“Well, there doesn’t have to be two. One Veil
could store everything. But, yes, essentially you’re right, and all
the functions those huge computers processed will get processed in
the Veil device itself, on the fly. It will contain a processor
inside and be programmed the same way as those mainframes. And, I
think it’s important not to limit ourselves. I think instead of
only talking about connecting two Veils we need to be thinking
about it in terms of a network. Like, a host.”

“A host?”

“Yeah. We need to go at this with foresight,
guys. What if there’s a situation where more than one person needs
to be able to Veil someone? What if there needs to be multiple
Witnesses uploaded onto a single person at one time? What if it
needs to happen over a great distance?”

“Why would they ever need to do that?”

“Hell if I know. Look at how current
technology is organized
,
though. Things
are networked through hosts. We rarely connect two devices
together; we use hubs. Things are networked internally and
externally. I think it’s an important trend to take into
consideration and it doesn’t overcomplicate things. If we’re going
to design this
,
we might as well design it
right and according to how other technologies are designed and
trending.”

Hunter knew that might be pushing
it
,
but he imagined the inclusion of
networking capabilities could be crucial for Veil when it was
implemented in the real world. One thing he’d been honest about was
his desire to design Veil to be as advanced as possible
,
by utilizing all the current technological trends
and developments. Not only did he want to produce a product that
would be market-ready
,
he also wanted to
leave that lab with as close to a finished product as possible.
Hunter didn’t want to waste any time in Ken’s lab once he made his
move. The timing was critical. Again with the dramatics, he knew it
could mean life or death.

“And that won’t cause any problems?” Schaffer
asked. “More than one Witness in a person at a time? Like it won’t
short circuit them or something?”

“No,” Hunter explained and tried to appear as
patient and understanding as possible. “Because the
neuroelectricity of The Witness is self-insulated. It only receives
signals from the brain, not from another Witness, plus the
different electrical currents don’t, for whatever reason, interfere
with each other. You could literally upload a million Witnesses in
someone and still be fine.”

“It wouldn’t overload their brain or
something?” Pollock wondered.

“No, the neuroelectrical charge of The
Witness is minuscule. And because each Witness has its own
signature, if you will, its own unique frequency, which is how a
brain can know to only accept information from a Witness it
produced, each Veil will be able to recognize The Witness it
mapped. So it will be able to single it out from all the rest.”

“How do you know all of this?” Pollock
groaned rhetorically. He pushed himself away from the table, threw
his pen down
,
and leaned back in his
chair.

“Did you guys read the research. Like, at
all?” Hunter teased
.

Ultimately, it was Pollock’s brilliant idea.
The fact that it came from Pollock didn’t anger the other two or
cause them to feel inferior in any way. Without acknowledging it,
they were relieved Pollock could contribute somehow … some way …
and garner a modicum of pride in thinking he actually came up with
something; Pollock could think he actually came up with an idea.
Which he did, in a sense, he just happened to present it in the
usual, asinine Pollock way.

“The blind dude, from Star Wars, except
backwards,” he blurted.

Schaffer looked at Hunter as if to say,
Please, let me
.

He looked at Pollock and asked, “What the
fuck are you talking about, Luke?”

“You know, the black blind dude from Star
Wars, who wore that gold band thingy to see.”

That time it was Hunter’s turn.

“First of all, it was Star Trek, not Star
Wars, and second of all, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Hunter and Schaffer laughed.

Unfazed, Pollock stood, walked to the
whiteboard
,
and started to
draw
.

“Star Trek, whatever. Anyway, it can be
shaped like that, except go around the back of the neck. Like
eyeglasses that hook over the ears, except they fall down and rest
on the nape of the neck. Backwards glasses but shaped like that
visor thing the blind dude wears. And,” he rambled on as he added
dotted lines that ascended from the visor-shaped device, “the thing
that maps out the neuroelectricity can be collapsible; it can
expand and contract in and out of the base automatically when the
uploads and downloads take place. That way, the person doesn’t
gotta have this stupid thing covering their head the whole time if
they wanna leave the Veil thing on.”

When Pollock stopped talking and stepped away
from the whiteboard, Hunter knew he was looking at the very first
Veil prototype. It was actually quite brilliant; it could be sleek
and unobtrusive. It looked kind of futuristic but not in a cheesy
way like those personal mobile fan collars, for which he was pretty
sure Sharper Image was to blame. The base could provide ample room
for all the components that would be necessary to download,
upload
,
and transfer
neuroelectricity
,
during which time it
could also map it out, manipulate it
,
and
process it.

The concept could incorporate a direct
connection port and a network connection port to play hub to a host
in order to transfer multiple Witnesses. It could even connect to
an entire Veil internet to transfer a Witness over great distances.
And, best of all, the components responsible for the mapping,
downloading
,
and uploading of the Witness
could be folded up and tucked neatly inside the base when it wasn’t
in use, like the roof of a convertible car. No ridiculous helmet
thing that no one would want to be caught dead wearing in
public.