Veil (70 page)

“But, no one has tested the memory yet,” Ken
informed Suren and Roy.

“We figured, obviously, you should be the
first to see the memory,” Hunter chimed in.

Suren and Roy looked at each other. Suren
immediately raised her hand to stop Roy from saying anything.

“Before we sit here and try to convince each
other why the other one should be the first to see the memory, and
argue over who has the right to decide—because he was my husband,
or because it’s your memory—let me nip it right in the bud and
remind you that I pointed a gun at your head and pulled the
trigger. After I’d already beat you bloody. As a way to make that
up to you, please allow me to let you see the memory first.”

Ken and Hunter stared at each other,
speechless. They knew Suren’s first encounter with Roy was likely
quite a scene, but they really had no idea. No one revealed those
particular details of that night. The look between Ken and Hunter
indicated to each other that the two of them were definitely going
to talk about that later.

“I—I really can’t argue with that,” Roy
smiled. “I really can’t.”

“Are you two crazy? Or just stupid?” Hunter
shook his head in embarrassment for them both.

Suren and Roy looked back at him with equally
blank faces
.

“Ummm, helloooo … you can both Veil it at the
same time. Freaks.”

“Oh,” they chuckled at themselves and each
other.

When the shadowing of Roy’s artificial brain
was complete, The Witnesses of Roy and Suren were transferred back
over to their vCollars. They sat down next to each other on the
couch in Ken’s office. Months earlier, Suren asked Ken to build her
a new collar, since she informed him that hers was broken when she
flung it off her head near the end of her Veil with Roy. She wasn’t
ready to get ported just yet, so having Ken build her another
collar was her only option. Her new one wasn’t as fancy. No
platinum, no diamonds; it was merely the plain, black, classic
variety. The kinds that were no longer mass
manufactured
,
since practically everyone
was ported.

“You ready?” she asked Roy as they both
placed their vCollars on themselves.

“I think so,” he smiled.

She grabbed Roy’s hand and held it. With
their free hands, they both reached up and positioned themselves to
push the button that would begin the upload.

Suren counted, “One … two … three
.
”

They pushed the button on “three,” and their
Veils beeped at the same time. They closed their eyes.

First came the chills and then immediately
after came the goose bumps. No matter how many times someone
Veiled, the chills and goose bumps ushered in every single session.
Although, as time wore on for every user, the sensation no longer
lasted for the duration of the Veil. It was present only in the
beginning of each session followed by a rush of streaming colors
that would take a few moments to blend into focus.

As the colors took shape, Roy and Suren
noticed that Roy’s thoughts and emotions inside the memory were
muted. Coming from far off in the distance, they heard a note form
and get louder. The lobby of the hospital crystallized in their
vision along with the single note of music, which gradually
intensified in the background.

The vision and sound melded. Suren instantly
recognized the music. She immediately recognized the voice. It was
Nina Simone’s song “Feeling Good.” Suren let out a tiny squeal and
covered her mouth. She wanted to open her eyes and look at Ken, but
she didn’t want to miss anything, so instead she clinched them
tightly.

When the hospital doors slid open, Nina was
already belting out the first line.

Birds in the sky you know how I feel…

Though Roy usually saw Jin so early in the
morning that dusk would’ve barely begun to break and the hospital
would’ve been dark, Ken and Hunter instead chose to use a bright,
sunny image of the lobby as the static backdrop for the memory of
Jin.

Right as Jin’s left foot stepped through the
doorway, Nina wailed out her next line
.

Sun in the sky you know how I feel…

The image of Jin forming in Roy and Suren’s
vision was so graceful but so striking and powerful that it left
the two of them breathless. Tears immediately fell from Suren’s
eyes. Not tears of sorry or joy
,
tears of
absolute astonishment and awe. The background of the hospital
remained fixed
,
but the image of Jin fully
transformed in their vision at every passing moment, as if in every
single second he burst into existence again and again, right in
front of their eyes. Although they could see him clear as day, each
image of him appeared as an impression emblazoned on the mind.

The changing of his clothes and the movement
of all the colors in the montage blended together seamlessly to
create a total picture of Jin that Suren couldn’t put into
words.

Nina did it for her.

Breeze drifting on by, you know how I
feel…

Oh, it was glorious perfection. The amazing,
graceful aura of Jin, the music, the lyrics, the power of Nina’s
voice. It was almost too much for Suren to take. It was as if
everything was meant to happen. It was as if all those elements
inside the memory existed for the sole purpose of coming together
in exactly that way.

However, as Suren instantly realized and then
rejected, that would’ve meant Jin was supposed to die. It would’ve
meant some kind of fate or destiny brought them to that memory. Her
heart immediately refused that; she knew Jin was not supposed to
die. He was meant to see all of it. He was meant to live on and
witness what he created. Instead, Suren had to live with what was
left.

She had to live in the world Jin
created
,
but one he was forced to leave
behind.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new
life for me…

Nina told her—and she told her again.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new
life for me…and I’m feeling good.

Right as Nina sang the words “feeling good,”
Jin turned his head and looked directly at Suren and Roy. Jin
smiled and nodded his head. It’s how he greeted Roy every single
day. A small, friendly nod with a slight smile. That part caused
Roy to grin so wide. That was the Jin he knew.

If he forced himself to think of who Jin was,
the image in his mind could be represented by the feeling he got
from that nod: the feeling of familiarity and friendliness. That
was how he remembered Jin. Roy opened his eyes, looked at Ken and
Hunter, smiled at them and nodded. They captured it. They captured
his
Jin. The two men beamed back, and he closed his
eyes.

Suren saw it too and although Roy’s thoughts
and feelings were muted inside the memory, she knew Roy felt
exactly how she felt about Jin in that moment. That was the Jin she
wanted to give the world. That was
her
Jin. It was Jin being
Jin. Still clinching her eyes, she grinned widely and beamed.

While generally it took Jin about twenty
seconds or so to walk across the lobby to the elevators and out of
Roy’s sight, the montage of Jin created from Roy’s memories was
stretched to a span of a little under three minutes, aligning
perfectly with the duration of the song. Accompanied by the slow,
steady, syrupy rhythm of Nina Simone’s burgundy voice, nearly five
years worth of memories of Jin breezed through the doors and
trailed across the lobby. The combination of the music and the
morphing of each separate image of Jin produced not so much a
memory but rather an experience that unfolded into a colorfully
radiant, symphonic, kaleidoscopic ballet.

As the power of Nina’s voice reached its
culmination, as she belted out the final three words of the
song—

I’m feeeeeeling goooooooood…

—the hospital backdrop became brighter and
brighter, not entirely unlike how one might imagine the light at
the end of the tunnel.

The image of Jin grew larger and larger while
slowly breaking up into uneven blocks of increasingly vibrant
color. Each of those blocks flew closer and closer into view until
they floated by, out of sight, leaving only the glowing white
background which then quickly faded into black, reaching total
darkness at the last note of Nina’s song.

Suren and Roy stared at the darkness of their
own closed eyes for a few moments after the memory finished playing
out, although they both heard their Veils beep to indicate their
Witnesses were finished uploading.

Without opening his eyes, Roy finally spoke,
“I wanna see it again.”

Suren laughed, opened her eyes, and removed
her collar.

“Exactly what I was going to say.”

Ken and Hunter were pleased and were
smiling.

“We can’t call this a memory,” Suren
declared.

“Oh, no, no…” Roy agreed as he removed his
collar as well. “That doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“What do you mean?” Ken asked.

“It doesn’t feel like a memory,” Suren tried
to explain. “It has a different feeling altogether. It’s like an
experience. An entirely new experience that unfolds as you’re
watching it.”

“Yes!” Roy agreed again, “An experience.
Exactly!”

“Then that’s what we’ll call it,” Hunter
smiled as he stood to grab the two vCollars from Suren and Roy.
“We’ll call it
The Jin Experience
,” he finished as he took
the collars from their hands. He walked to the artificial brain to
start another Veil session so Suren and Roy could take one more
ride on
The Jin Experience
.

“
The Jin Experience
,” Suren grinned.
“I like that. I really like that.”

“The plan was to offer
The Jin
Experience
to the world with the caveat that the technology
we’re using to store the memory can never be used for any other
purposes,” Hunter announced to the other four Tsay Trustees. “It
won’t be explored or developed and if the technology is detected on
the vNet it will be disabled immediately as will the vPort and
vHost of the person using the technology. Permanently
disabled.”

“Was the plan?” Brock asked. “What do you
mean that
was
the plan?”

“Well, that is still the plan, but we’ve had
to make a few tweaks to the technology and the plan since Ken came
up with a method to use it to track down Jin’s killer. Ken, do you
want to explain?”

“Sure, I will try. It’s complicated, but I
think it’s also simple enough that everyone in this room will be
able to grasp it.”