Veil (69 page)

In a little over three months, Suren
intrusively and inconspicuously Veiled eighty-six people. Some of
whom she Veiled multiple times. She found herself exploring parts
of the New Veil World she only heard about and some of which she
never heard. After all those years, Veil was still permeating
aspects of life and people were constantly coming up with new ways
to apply the technology.

By the end of those three months, Suren
couldn’t stop. She was no longer using her vKey as a means to hunt
down leads on the identity of Jin’s murderer. She all but gave up
hope on that—she simply couldn’t stop Veiling.

There were some activities she preferred to
avoid during Veil, but she could never know ahead of time what
activities the subject would be participating in, or what kind of
person they were. Still, anytime she got her Witness back and it
turned out to be someone engaging in vPorn or vSports—two things
she detested—she would immediately remove her device and discharge
the neuroelectricity. On the other hand, she found Veil
Entertainment to be surprisingly addicting.

She caught herself Veiling a few
Velebrities
,
so she could take part in one
of those Veillusions she heard about. To her amazement, acting was
no longer seen as one’s ability to portray a certain character, but
rather the ability to convince oneself they
were
a
character. Velebrities would take months to memorize a script and
learn their character. They would then act out that script, like a
play, while being Veiled, sometimes by millions of people.

The most renowned Velebrities of the
Veillusionism Industry were those who could convince themselves
almost entirely that they were a specific character
,
so that afterwards Veilers could upload back onto
themselves in realtime and experience the Veillusion precisely as
that character in the story. The best Velebrities were considered
to be the most convinced ones and therefore the ones with the most
shadowers as the story was acted out and unfolded. It seemed
through Veil, Broadway reclaimed its appeal and won out over
Hollywood.

However, Suren refused to Veil with those
Reality Velebrities. She didn’t enjoy
those people
. Those
individuals whom so many people Veiled just to get a chance to be
them
. Simply to get a chance to see what it was like to live
such a fabulous, wonderful, amazing life … or sometimes such a
tragic, scandalous, or pitiful life. To Suren, Reality Veiling was
the grossest form of Veil she could imagine. Perhaps it was because
she found all the Reality Velebrities to be so reprehensible and
vapid.

It was when attempting to hack in and
experience the latest installment of her favorite Soap Veillusion
that Suren discovered someone tampered with the functionality of
her vKey. That didn’t necessarily have to stop her, though. She
didn’t have to hack into a Velebrity to participate in a
Veillusion. She only needed to use her VSN and purchase a ticket,
like everyone else. Still, she’d be damned if she let Ken interfere
with her. With
her
!

“I know it was wrong. I know. And I can
explain,” she heard herself say, although it was a show, and she
knew it.

“I’m sure you can explain, Suren, and I don’t
really give a shit. It was wrong—it is wrong—and you of all people.
Jesus, Suren.
You
of all people.”

All she cared about was the fact that Ken had
the gall to shut her out of something … anything having to do with
Veil. Having to do with Veil!? Who did he think he was? Jin was her
husband. Veil was rightfully hers. She was the Gr—

Ken interrupted her internal tirade. “And
what’s more disgusting about all this is now I can’t take any
pleasure in telling you that I figured out a way, with the method
we used to create the memory of Jin, to track down Jin’s killer.
Using the memory I’m Vaulting, the memory of Jin we created from
Roy, and the Veil Network … I have a foolproof method to weed out
Jin’s killer. We can finally expose the man who killed Jin. We have
the key to weed him out, Suren. We can weed him out.”

S
uren found herself
instantly humbled
.
“You … you can find
him?”

“Yes,” Ken snapped. He was supposed to enjoy
the conversation a great deal more
,
and he
felt Suren robbed him of that.

“You’re sure? You can find him?”

“You know better than I do nothing is
certain. But I’ve come up with a way where we could expose him, and
it would work better than anything else we could’ve ever come up
with. If this doesn’t work, I can’t imagine what would.”

“How long would it take?”

“One day.”

Ken was damn proud of what he dreamed up, and
not merely the trap to catch Jin’s murderer. Sure he was proud of
that, but the trap was a byproduct of what made him so very proud
in the first place. It never dawned on him before, but he had such
a small role in the actual development of Veil that it wasn’t a
significant source of accomplishment or pride. However, Ken found
himself proud of his new accomplishment. That was completely
different. That was his baby.

Once he and Hunter perfected the methodology
for isolating and extracting Roy’s memories of Jin, the process was
quite simple and went by rather quickly. In no time, they digitally
mapped out a chronological montage of Roy’s memories of Jin. They
were able to merge, crop, and align them until it was exactly what
Ken set out to accomplish. They had yet to develop a way to test it
out and make it Veilable, but based on the neuroelectrical pattern
they pieced together from Roy’s brain, they constructed a
three-minute memory loop of Jin.

It was five years worth of memories of Jin,
from Roy’s perspective while seated at his security station at the
hospital. It was Jin, walking through the front door and over to
the elevators. Five years worth of memories of Jin chopped up and
condensed down into less than three minutes, looped infinitely. The
only thing left to do was create a technology capable of
transferring the memory to The Witness. They had to produce a
technology capable of stimulating The Witness in the same manner as
a brain. A technology that could deliver the memory to the
people.

Hunter told Ken the solution was so obvious
that they should have thought of it before they even figured out
how to record and reproduce the memory. All they had to do, Hunter
said, was create an artificial brain.

“Yeah, because that’s so easy. We’ll simply
get to creating a fake brain,” Ken whined.

“We don’t have to make an actual artificial,
fake brain, asshole,” Hunter argued. “The information is already
digital, the memory is already digitized.”

“So…” Ken thought out loud, “we only need to
create a digital brain. We could scan and image Roy’s brain to
create a digital, virtual version of it.”

“Yes sir,” Hunter acknowledged, “and it can
mimic precisely the way Roy’s brain stimulates his Witness in order
to produce the same effect.”

“An artificial memory in an artificial brain
providing a real experience to a real brain,” Ken grinned.

“Yes sir,” Hunter grinned back. “And because
we’re using the topography of a real brain as our template, the
Veil process should work seamlessly. We won’t have to tweak
anything. Any Witness will fit perfectly over the digital brain
and, provided it’s encased in something that can conduct
electricity, it will act completely naturally.”

“Our fake brain will play The Witness like a
piano.”

“And then The Witness will go back home and
play the real brain like a piano.”

“Holy shit,” Ken gawked.

“Right,” Hunter smiled. Now who was the dumb
man in the room?

They wanted to have the complete package
before they approached Congress. Soon, a complete package was
exactly what they had. They constructed a digital brain that was
hosted inside a silicone and copper brain replica, which was
enclosed in a glass shell. For aesthetic purposes, they added a
little blue light show right underneath the glass to represent
neuroelectricity. That, of course, was Ken’s idea. It was also
Ken’s idea to house the artificial brain in the bust of Jin that
was already on a pedestal inside the Tsay Temple.

With the artist’s permission, they could cut
open the bust, place the brain inside, piece it back together and
remove a portion from the back of Jin’s skull, so the brain inside
could be seen by visitors. All they had to do then was plug the
brain into the Veil Network, provide it with a VSN, which would
also act as its vNet Protocol address, and then people could
immediately begin to Veil it. It would be transmitting live 24/7
and could be Veiled at any time, for free. It would be configured
to accept all incoming connections. It really was as simple as
that, Ken told the other Tsay Trustees.