Veil (79 page)

Look at her
…

She was all laid up in bed, lifeless and
pathetic and forgotten and unwanted. There was an oxygen tank next
to her and some tubes coming out of her. He wondered if there was a
tube going up into her hoo-ha, so she could just laze around and
pee.

Ewww, she nasty.

In addition to the smell—which was bad
enough—her hair was all grey and dull. It reminded him of ashes
from the bottom of some annoyingly happy family’s barbecue grill.
Suren was once so famous for her hair. Its impossibly deep
blackness made its ability to shine seem paradoxically unnatural.
It resembled the smooth, hard, black acrylic from which the
original vCollars were made. Women often publicly envied how, from
underneath the large hats that guarded her, Suren’s hair would
drape her shoulders with cascades of unattainable elegance. Hunter
sneered and shook his head. Now look at the lady those women all
desperately tried to emulate. Pitiful.

Her skin was pale—even for her—and all
wrinkled. Hunter always thought Asian folks were like black folks
when it came to their skin. How their skin stayed soft and smooth
beyond their years, but once the wrinkles
did
hit … boy did
they hit hard. His mother was that way, and she prided herself on
her smooth, juicy skin. She claimed she looked half her age
compared to them white ladies. Them old white ladies did tend to
look dry, wrinkled, haggard, leathery. Their skin didn’t have the
right type of oil, or their pores didn’t produce enough of it. Them
poor white ladies.

However, as they did to every woman, the
wrinkles eventually caught up to his mother. Once that happened,
she decided she was going to will herself to death. She would just
sit in a chair in the middle of the kitchen, and she would will
herself to death. When that didn’t work, she became obsessed with
that Flori Roberts beauty shit.

“You need Febreze up in here. And Avon. Or
whatever you Asian bitches use. Pearl Cream.”

“Hello, Hunter.”

“
Suren
,” he hissed.

“How are you?”

“I’m old.” He paused and then added, “And
doing much better than you. I see you must’ve met my good friend,
Karma.”

“Yes, apparently so.”

He folded his arms and glared at her from the
foot of her bed. He made sure he appeared sufficiently disgusted
with her.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I did it for Ken. He’s the only reason I’m
here. I did it for him.”

“I figured if you did come, he would be
why.”

“Well obviously you’re too damn weak to have
it out, so why did you summon me? What do you want?”

“Please, sit down.” She patted the edge of
her bed.

“Bitch, I ain’t sitting on that urine soaked
petri dish. You’ve been fermenting on that for god knows how long,”
he crowed while he scanned the room for a chair. He spotted one in
the far corner of the room and pushed a pile of folded clothes off
the seat. As he walked back toward her and positioned it next to
her bed, Suren flashed to the times she arranged Jin’s clothes on
that same chair each night, so they’d be waiting for him in the
morning.

She closed her eyes and walked herself
through the evening ritual.

First were his slacks, which she folded along
the crease in front and draped over the seat. Atop his slacks, she
piled his boxers and undershirt, both neatly folded—she made sure
his undershirt always covered his boxers, since the sight of his
own underwear embarrassed Jin. She then draped his suit jacket over
the entire pile, long ways and folded down the center, so the
lapels touched.

On top of all that, she splayed out his
starched dress shirt and tightly tucked its edges underneath the
entire pile to encase it. Suren topped off the bundle with Jin’s
tie and placed his shoes and socks underneath the chair. By the
time Suren was finished, Jin’s pile of clothes was a compressed
origami of meticulously stacked and utterly unwrinkled business
attire. She started that routine well before they married, and she
performed it every evening.

No one—not even Ken—knew how Suren continued
that routine every night following Jin’s death, until she moved out
of the Old Tsay House. Each evening, she set out his clothes, only
to put them away the following morning. When she moved out of the
house and into the mansion, she brought a single arrangement of
Jin’s clothes with her and put the rest in storage. She left the
clothes piled on that same exact chair, which had been placed in
the corner of her new bedroom.

It was the pile Hunter thoughtlessly threw to
the ground.

“So … what?” he barked after he plopped down.
Her eyes were closed, and he wasn’t sure if she bit it right there
in front of him. He wondered if that was her plan all along: get
him at her side and—poof—up and die. Maybe so her soul would escape
and soak into him through all his pores or some shit. That way, she
could live underneath his skin like a creepy ass Suren ghost
suit.

Ohhh, I just know that bitch is going to
haunt me
.

No sooner than he wondered if perhaps he
should hold his breath, so he didn’t inhale her spirit into his
lungs, Suren opened her eyes.
Thankfully
. Hunter
exhaled.

“I’m sure Roy told you, I’m not long for this
world,” Suren sighed.

“Spare me the theatrics, Margaret Cho. You
and I both know that I don’t care how long you have. Not in this
world or in any other. Why did you want me here?”

“Hunter, what I mostly want to get off my
chest—”

“No! You know me well enough to know this
isn’t some fucking
Oprah
moment filled with unicorns and
cupcakes. Where we bare our souls and make amends.” He paused to
catch his breath. Then, to cover his paranoid ass, he added, “And
to be clear, this ain’t no
Touched By An Angel
shit, either.
You’re not haunting me until I admit I was wrong to hate you, so
your soul will get set free. I hope I was wrong about religion, so
there really is a hell—and you go there and burn.”

“I know.”

Hunter leaned in and lowered his voice. “You
know I hate you, crazy old woman.”

“I know. I know,” she shook her head and
almost produced a laugh, but the tightness in her chest and throat
stifled it. Despite the little death show she attempted to put on
for Hunter, Suren had been feeling rather weak and ill. Her doctor
put her on bed rest and fluids. That was what the stupid drip next
to the bed was for: to rehydrate her or something. Although, now
she didn’t mind it so much. It helped her put on her little show
for Hunter.

“Then what? For the last time, why did you
call me here?”

“Because Hunter, they’re coming for Veil. The
wolves are coming back for Veil,” she frowned and pointed over his
shoulder with a wrinkled, bony finger.

Hunter rolled his eyes and swung his head
around. He really didn’t care what the Crypt Keeper was pointing
at, but finding out meant he thankfully didn’t have to look at her
old, raggedy bones for a minute.

On a shelf next to the bedroom door was a
glass skull that contained an artificial brain. Next to the skull
sat a small, shiny, black box, inscribed with large gold
letters.

The box read “KEN.”

Peyton Waymon knew all she had to do was
wait. Problem was, she didn’t want to wait, and she didn’t think
she should be forced to wait. She didn’t want to wait for the
antiquated icons and pioneers of the New Veil World to dry up and
wither away. She also didn’t want wait for more and more old people
to die off, until anyone and everyone who cared about the stupid
Tsay Legacy was dead and gone.

People her age didn’t care about the damn
Legacy; it was something they had to Veil about in social studies
and history classes. Learning about the damn Tsay Legacy was a
field trip during Veilementary school; it was required Veiling at
the vAcademy. Other than that, the Legacy didn’t really mean
anything to her or anyone she knew, so why should the Tsay Legacy
suffocate
her
art? Why should
her
genius be held
hostage by the grip of the irrelevant Tsay Trustees?

As far as Peyton was concerned, it was all
Ken Wise’s fault. It was all his doomsaying and predictions about
the so-called Veil Apocalypse. It was his stubborn, archaic vision
of some future world that may or may not happen if people were
allowed to store and stream neuroelectrical patterns.

Without the ability to store neuroelectrical
patterns, as an artist, she was limited. Limited to the point of
being smothered. Smothered by the paranoia of a dead Tsay Trustee.
With The Jin Experience bill looming over her head, the Veillusions
that Peyton Waymon dreamed of making—Veillusions she knew she was
capable of producing—would never be possible, and the New Veil
World would never know what it was missing out on.

The Old Time Veillusions she heard older
people rave about sounded so pathetic. In the early Veil Years,
people would Veil with actors to shadow them as they performed
roles from a script. For Old Time Veillusions to work, everyone
involved had to block out reality sufficiently enough to convince
themselves that what was happening in the story was real. Not only
the audience but the actors themselves as well.

The better a Veilactor could lie to
themselves and fully believe they were their character, the more
convincing their performance would be—and the better their chances
of becoming some famous Velebrity. That always seemed to be the
goal: to become a Velebrity. Then, maybe move on to becoming a
Reality Velebrity. That was the ultimate measure of
‘success
.
’ Countless people would Veil you
because of who you were, just so they could
be you
. Damn,
the whole thing sounded so pathetic.

To Peyton, the entire setup smelled of
boredom in the form of unrealistic, bad writing and laughable,
ridiculous performances. Old Time Veillusions sounded no better
than those “movies” and “plays” and “television shows” people used
to watch. The only difference was Old Time Veillusions played out
in the mind through Veil. To Peyton Waymon, the idea of having to
sit through an Old Time Veillusion sounded about as fun as staring
at a “movie” screen and watching a story with your own eyes and
listening to it with your own ears. Besides, if someone had to
convince themselves a story was true simply to enjoy it, what was
the damn point?

At least the Tsay Legacy provided them with
the future. Well … besides providing them with Veil itself. Still,
without trying, the Legacy handed them the future of Veillusion in
the form of
The Jin Experience
. Without
The Jin
Experience
, her vAcademy Veillusionism professor explained, the
technology that transformed Old Time Veillusions into the
Veillusions of the day might have never happened. If by chance it
did happen, it might not have happened for decades—possibly
centuries. Although The Jin Experience bill imposed pretty
significant and devastating limitations onto their craft, the
technology that accompanied it changed the whole field of
Veillusionism.

He—if it was a he—was only ever identified as
Yoko. If anyone knew his or her real or full name, it was lost
somewhere in the shuffle. Yoko realized that the technology used to
create
The Jin Experience
demonstrated how a brain could be
artificially stimulated by neuroelectrical patterns—patterns that
could be artificially designed and produced. Yoko figured, in order
to learn how to speak the brain’s language and therefore, how to
manufacture experience itself, perhaps all someone had to do was
decode those patterns. Yoko discovered it was possible to author
experience itself and deliver it to someone else through an
artificial brain, exactly like how someone could write music and
use an instrument to deliver it to ears—exactly like how Ken Wise
and Hunter Kennerly authored and delivered
The Jin
Experience
.