Veil (51 page)

It took him a while to realize and accept the
fact that he actually was a Veilgrant. He always felt different
from them, removed somehow. He pictured them as some crazy, lunatic
fringe. As though they were against Veil because they were an odd
mixture of stupid and arrogant. Not unlike how, back in the PreVeil
days, there used to be nutbag separatists and cults.
Those
kinds of people. He never identified with them and, the more
ostracized he was, the more he despised them.

He eventually despised Veilgrants more than
the rest of society despised them. He even shopped around to get a
cosmetic port installed, but no one would do it. A normal doctor
wouldn’t do it because they detested Veilgrancy, so why help
someone hide being a Veilgrant? If he were able to find one, a
Veilgrant doctor wouldn’t have done it because they were proud of
being a Veilgrant and detested Veilers, so why help someone pose as
one?

He wasn’t sure why or how but one day it
dawned on him: he was a Veilgrant. It didn’t matter why he refused
to port. It made no difference why he refused to use Veil and
network-in like everybody else
.
What
mattered was that he
did
refuse. So what if he had an excuse
for refusing? So did every other Veilgrant out there. That was the
whole point. Besides, one of the main presumptions about Veilgrants
was that they didn’t port because they were afraid of what others
would find inside them.

Fact was, that was precisely the thing that
kept him from porting. They were right. No matter what his reason
or what he’d done, he didn’t want to port because he didn’t want
people to find out. He didn’t want people to find out who he was
and what he’d done.

In that way, Veil changed everything. There
was no hiding anymore. There was no getting away with anything.
There was no lying about who you were or what you’d done, even if
you were lying to yourself. As important as it was, before Veil, to
be able to live with who you were and what you’d done, it became
just as important, after Veil, that everyone else was able to live
with who you were and what you’d done. He’d done a lot of things in
his life, most of which he could possibly, eventually be forgiven.
But, not that one thing. Never would he be forgiven for that
one
thing.

He had to face it: he was a
Veilgrant
,
and he was always going to be
one.

He already dreaded the stench.

In the hopes that it would at least make his
job a tad bit more bearable, he waited two days, which was
approximately how long it would take for rigor mortis to finish
dissipating. Dealing with the stench was one thing; dealing with
the stench while trying to dismember a body in rigor mortis was
something entirely different. So he waited. Considering he left the
target lying there with a pole sticking out of his head, he was
positive the target didn’t last an hour. All he needed to do was
get up there, get the job done and get out.

He was all smiles as he pushed the cart over
to the security desk. “Hey! What’s up boss?”

“You know, you know.”

“Yeah. Hey, I’ve got twelve larges for ummm,”
he pretended to check his clipboard, “the conference room on the
15
^th
floor, looks like room 1523?” He knew it was room
1523 because he reserved the room for a “conference” for the next
three days. In case he needed more time. And that way, when
security checked, as security was doing just then, there were no
worries.

“Looks like it,” the guard behind the desk
replied. He was too rotund and lazy to get up out of his chair, so
he pointed over his shoulder with his right thumb, “Over there and
straight ahead to the elevators.”

“Thanks boss, thanks,” he continued to
smile
.
He pretended to glance over his
shoulder before looking back at the guard. “And here man,” he
whispered as he reached under the thermal padding that covered the
entire cart
.
He pulled out the only pizza
down there
.
“Take this one, I’ll tell ‘em
they only sent eleven,” he winked.

The guard perked right up when the pizza was
placed on the counter in front of him.

“Damn bro, I appreciate that. Ah, man that I
do. Hungry as hell.”

“No problem boss,” he smiled. “I know how it
is.” He pretended to glance around again. “Just don’t get caught
with it, ya know?” He laughed, backed away with his
cart
,
and turned toward the elevators.

“Thanks man for real,” the guard shouted
after him.

He headed for the elevator and could see from
the corner of his eye that the guard was leaving his station. Dude
was probably going to the employee lounge
,
so he could hide and eat the pizza. He shook his head with pity for
the security guard. It was identical to the pity he felt three
mornings prior, after he distracted the same guard by tossing a
damn rock at one of the windows.

He knew the guard would either forget all
about the pizza dude or assume the pizza dude left when he was back
in the lounge stuffing his fat fucking face. By the time he
finished up on the 13
^th
floor, the guards would’ve
probably changed shifts, so he could traipse right out of the
building while he pushed the cart filled with dead, dismembered
doctor parts. If he couldn’t get all the doctor parts to fit inside
the cart on the first try, he could come back the next day and do
it all again
.
The fat ass guard would
simply be happy to get another free pizza.

An additional advantage of the cart was that
it took up so much room it ensured he got the elevator to himself.
He turned the cart around and pulled it into the elevator. After
the doors closed, he shimmied his way around the cart and began the
process to access the 13
^th
floor. He whistled to himself
and tapped his foot. The elevator stopped; the doors opened and he
started to push the cart out of the elevator. Then he stopped.

He stood inside the elevator. The cart’s
handle was even with the elevator doors. He was faced by a soldier,
who was dressed in all black and holding an M16 across his chest.
The soldier was positioned directly in front of the lab door.

“Stop,” the soldier directed him.

“I’m already stopped.”

“Well … don’t come any further.”

“I need to get in there.”

“No one is allowed inside. Those are the
orders.” The soldier then looked straight ahead.

“From Coffman?”

The General’s name broke the soldier’s
demeanor for a brief moment and his eyes went from fixed straight
ahead, to eye-contact and then back to fixed straight ahead. He
didn’t respond.

“Look, I need to get in there.”

“I’m afraid that can’t happen.”

“Then contact General Coffman, but I’m
telling you, one way or the other, I’m getting in there. I have
work to finish.”

No response.

He moved to reach into his pocket and get the
lab keys
,
but the solider detected his
movement and immediately pointed the M16 at him. He stopped and
raised his other hand, palm facing the soldier.

“Easy there big fella, I’m only getting the
keys. Just getting the keys.” He took the keys out of his pocket
and said, “Here
.
”—he tossed them at the
solider
,
who caught them by reflex—“Now, I
want you to open that door and look inside. When you do, if you
look to the left, you’re going to see a body on the ground all the
way by the far wall. I’m here to remove that body, which I was
unable to do the other day. That man … that body in there is why
General Coffman sent me here. It’s why he sent you here. And I need
to get it taken care of now. If you would like to deal with the
body yourself, by all means, please do. Otherwise let me through
and let me do my job. Radio Coffman if you need to. Let him yell at
you. Let him also wonder if he needs to have me eliminate you like
I did the guy in there … simply because you saw all this.”

The soldier seemed to contemplate for a
moment while still pointing the M16 at the man behind the
cart
.
He eventually twisted the upper half
of his body toward the door
.
He inserted
the two keys and pushed the door open. In the distance, on the
left-hand side, he could see a body on the ground, hooked up to
machines.

“See?”

The soldier faced forward and reported, “That
man is still alive.”

“What do you mean he’s still alive?”

The soldier peered over his shoulder and
observed the scene again. Even from that distance
,
he could see the bag on the ventilator rising up and
down. More importantly however, although he couldn’t hear the beeps
of the machine, he could see the movement on the heart monitor
positioned next to the ventilator.

The soldier looked back and repeated himself,
“The man is alive.”

He supposed he could live comfortably off the
money he made, that wasn’t a problem. The problem was, PostVeil,
living comfortably to most people suddenly meant something entirely
different. Sure, money was still a necessity. People still had
basic needs; there was never a way around that. The market would
never disappear. If he could’ve enjoyed the money PreVeil, life
would’ve been completely different. Comfort was something
completely different back then. PostVeil, money was nothing more
than a way to meet your needs and once your needs were met, your
main priority was Veil.

Wealth became the fuel of Veil and the
lifeblood of its expansion. People inevitably pumped more wealth
into it so they could experience more. Experience more people,
experience different people, experience different experiences.
However, once wealth entered the realm of Veil, everyone got to
benefit from it equally. Everyone was contributing to the system
simply by participating in it. Although money enhanced and expanded
the technology, consumers of Veil were all equals. If you weren’t a
part of Veil, if you weren’t a Veiler, you didn’t matter. You
weren’t contributing anything to the system. You were
invisible.

PostVeil, he could live
“comfortably
,
” but that no longer meant
anything because it meant he was isolated and alone. His form of
wealth was meaningless to anyone other than Veilgrants and he
despised Veilgrants. He remained alone even after he accepted that
he was one of them. In a way, accepting it made him despise them
even more, if that were possible.

It made him despise them more because they
chose to be that way. He felt they had a choice: they could decide
any day to stop being a Veilgrant. If he could change positions
with them, he wouldn’t think twice. He’d port himself so fast and
then wouldn’t give his vPort a chance to heal before he cabled
himself into the network.

He could’ve burned all the money for what it
was worth; he didn’t care about it. The irony was not lost on him.
What he did, which earned him his wealth, left him unwilling to use
Veil and without Veil, his wealth turned out to have no value. He
couldn’t take any of it back, though. He could never take it back.
The only thing that made life worth living anymore was being able
to witness, although as an outsider, what was happening to the
world. What was happening to people. It was worth staying alive
simply to witness the ushering in of the New Veil World era.

Maybe one day he’d decide life wasn’t worth
living anymore. Perhaps then he would go ahead and Veil for as long
as he could get away with it. He would just Veil for as long as
possible
,
until eventually he got found
out. He would Veil until someone dug into his mind and discovered
what he did. However, he knew no degree of enjoyment he got from
being a part of society again, being a part of Veil, would outweigh
his paranoia or the crippling fear of his fate once the world found
out what he did to the Great Jin Tsay. Once they knew that, they’d
never be able to live with him. Once they knew that, he’d suffer a
fate far worse than being a Veilgrant.