Veil (94 page)

“Let me preface this by saying that these are
my own personal beliefs, I’m not speaking for the Tsay Trustees or
representing all of us. What I have to say about this is exactly
what I’ve said since the beginning. I think Veil is wrong and
that’s why I don’t use it.”

“Wait … wait a minute. Are you saying Dr. Ken
Wise, one of the creators of Veil, is a Veilgrant? You think Veil
is wrong?”

“I wouldn’t align myself with Veilgrants, but
yes, I do think Veil is wrong, and I’ve never hidden that fact.
I’ve said it to Suren herself. I’ll admit I’ve witnessed what it
can do, and it can be a powerful, beautiful thing, but I also know
what the future can and likely will hold if certain developments
take place. If certain developments in Veil technology take
place.”

“What would those developments be, and what
are you predicting they would mean for the future of Veil?”

“Not simply for the future of Veil but for
the future of humanity. Those apocalyptic developments would be if
the storage and streaming of a human’s neuroelectrical patterns
were ever integrated into Veil and the Veil Network…”

“In the beginning, when it was only you and
Ken, he told you he thought Veil was wrong. When you asked him to
create
The Jin Experienc
e, he told you why he thought it was
wrong and made a prediction. He predicted, essentially, the Veil
Apocalypse.”

Suren nodded in acknowledgement. She was too
tired and weak to talk. She didn’t want to waste the energy.

“Well, despite what he initially claimed, he
also knew that storing and streaming neuroelectrical patterns
wasn’t enough. Those things, in and of themselves, weren’t enough
to bring about the dark side of Veil. That would be the beginning,
and it would only be how the apocalypse was
delivered
. He
told me the about-face of Veil could come years or decades after
the implementation of storage and streaming. He said there was one
thing that would indicate Veil had become or was about to become
the decay of humanity. It would signify the nail had been hammered
into the Veil coffin.”

Suren was raptly staring at Hunter and lifted
her eyebrows in impatience when he paused. Not only did she wait
over twenty years to hear about some kind of plan to avoid the Veil
Apocalypse, she was also hearing about the evolution of Ken’s
prediction for the first time. Ken’s logic never failed them, and
she found herself equally fascinated and tortured by
anticipation.

“Ken said it would be the removal of Veil
security protocols. To Ken, those protocols symbolized choice,
options, individuality, free will. He was adamant that if the
security measures of Veil and the vNet were removed, it would
clearly indicate Veil reached the tipping point. He said the need
for the VSN was to instill personal safety and later became a way
to track access for reasons of commerce. The VSN protected people
and sustained the Veil Industry.

“He predicted if storage and streaming were
implemented but people no longer needed protection, if they no
longer needed their VSN, it meant Veil was no longer being used
between individuals, but rather to access centralized
neuroelectrical patterns that were being stored and streamed to
everyone. To Ken that would mean reality itself would’ve stopped
being about individual experience and would’ve been replaced by an
increasingly small handful of experiences. That handful of
experiences would gradually be whittled down into one singular
experience. The way he described it was an Orwellian society, with
Veil acting as benevolent dictator. He said the apocalypse itself
would be if all individuality and personal security were
Veilinquished. Like he predicted early on, reality would be reduced
to that solitary set of coalesced lifetime experiences, organized,
amplified, and delivered in a way in which they unfolded perfectly.
It would be the life everyone spends their entire lifetime
Veiling.”

Suren coughed and started to speak.

“So the trigger is—” she tried to
clarify.

Hunter didn’t want Suren to have to waste the
energy, so he finished for her.

“—if the security is removed from the
network; if storage and streaming are implemented and the VSN is no
longer used. If both storage and streaming are incorporated into
the vNet, once a single Veil occurs across the network without an
exchange of Veil Security Numbers, the servers will detect it and
Ken’s Clause will be enacted. Like I said, it’s stored in
The
Jin Experience
brain at the Temple. Nobody else knows it, but
Ken restructured the network to where the brain can’t be removed or
the network will shut down completely.”

Suren smiled and looked up at the
ceiling.

“Like I said before, I don’t know how long
the spread of Ken’s Clause will take to complete, and I don’t know
how long it will take before it begins to work once it’s triggered.
He slowed down Jin’s process. It occurred instantly in your brain,
but he wanted it to have time to spread to nearly the entire
population before it started working. That way, it would be too
late to stop it or prevent it. He was pretty confident by then
society would’ve taken a huge technological leap backwards and
there wouldn’t be many, if any, scientists around to stop it from
happening anyway.”

“Things…” Suren started but had to clear her
throat again, “will really get that bad?”

“According to Ken, yes. People will perform
the basic functions to keep society afloat, but other than that
their lives will literally be spent Veiling—in realtime—that one
set of centralized, streaming experiences. He said by that time
those experiences will be so amazing and so beyond any of their own
abilities that they won’t be able to stop themselves. It would feel
to them like touching some kind of god. Stopping Veil itself from
working inside the brain will be the only way to stop it—to cure
it.”

“What happens if the brain malfunctions? …
What if something accidentally thwarts Ken’s Clause? … Is there a
backup plan?”

Each of Suren’s questions was accentuated by
deep gasps that saddened Hunter. That was really it; Suren truly
was reaching her last moments. He almost regretted giving her what
she wanted, which surprised himself. What surprised him was why he
regretted it. He didn’t regret it because he wanted her to die
never having known what she so desperately wanted to
know
.
He regretted it because he wondered
if Suren would’ve kept holding onto life as long as Hunter kept
holding off the answer. Could he have kept her around longer if he
didn’t give her what she wanted?

But, just so the bitch won’t haunt me.

“No. There isn’t another plan. That was a
point of contention between us. I brought it up all the time. All
Ken would say is that he hoped that didn’t happen, and he hoped
that if it did, then by that time they wouldn’t be advanced enough
to get the vNet running again. He claimed the worst-case scenario
would be that they will have Veil but wouldn’t be able to utilize
the network, and that would lessen the damage. I wasn’t satisfied
with that compromise but … well, you know Ken.

Suren nodded at Hunter. Yes, she knew Ken.
Her, Ken, and Hunter: each different, but she knew each were all
the same in so many ways. Stubbornness was high on that list.
Hunter didn’t have to say any more, although she found it
refreshing to hear that Hunter fought against the Veil Apocalypse
like that. Without meaning to, he tipped his hand a bit. She almost
mentioned it but refrained. The Old Widow Tsay might’ve called him
on it—but not Suren. That wasn’t
Suren
.

She tilted her head and gestured at the
papers that were still in Hunter’s hand. Hunter frowned. He kept
his gaze locked into Suren’s for a considerably long time. It was a
surprisingly long amount of time if one considered it was Suren and
Hunter. When he did break their gaze, still frowning, Hunter took a
pen from the nightstand, placed the document on Suren’s stomach,
and laid the pen on top.

“…and I predict the presence of that storage
and streaming would usher in a gradual reduction of individualism
in society. The reduction would be based on human ability and would
continue until we were left with a handful of centralized
experiences. They would be a set of experiences that everyone
spends their entire lives Veiling. It would mean Veil itself—a
single Veil streamed to everyone through the vNet—would become our
shared reality.”

“Ok, that went over my head, so I’m going to
assume it went over the heads of a lot of our viewers and Veilers
out there. I’m going to have to ask you to explain what you mean,
Ken.”

“I’ll try. Going back to what I said about
abilities, and how I see that as the greatest lesson Veil has
taught us: everyone has a particular ability. Well, the human
psyche inevitably works categorically and hierarchically. That is,
we separate and define everything, and then we rate it all in terms
of what is the best and what is the worst, what is preferred and
what is not. We can’t help it. It’s in our nature. It’s reflected
in everything in society. Humans operate through hierarchies.
They’re inescapable, unavoidable. To argue against hierarchies is
to contradictorily employ a hierarchy
.
That is somebody suggesting that a reality without hierarchy is
better than or preferable to a reality with hierarchy. I will be
very clear: humans cannot help but to categorize reality and
situate its elements hierarchically. That being said, we will
eventually start focusing on those human abilities and, once all
the various human abilities present themselves and the dust
settles, those who master each ability will begin to rise to the
top. We already see it happening in the form of Velebrities.”

“And I think we’re all familiar with
Velebrities. I think we can all relate to that. Interesting you
bring it up, because it seems so naturally pervasive that I doubt
most people question it.”

“Well, like I said, it’s human nature. It’s
not unlike PreVeil when we had celebrities of movies, music,
sports, politics and good old journalism. There has always been and
will always be a set of people who become known, famous, valued
more, what have you, for something in particular. PreVeil, it might
not have been because of a person’s ability or aptitude. There was
simply something about some celebrities that gripped people.
PostVeil, people have become filtered by ability and those who are
seen as better at something are shadowed by more people and
shadowed more often. That trend will only continue as the pool of
Velebrities shrinks. Take the current trend, throw in storage and
streaming of neuroelectrical patterns, and you have certain people
and experiences—entire lives—that become Veiled repeatedly and in
perpetuity. Over time, and we’re talking decades or possibly a
century here, these Velebrities will shrink down until there are
only a few. By that time, people will have grown up with Veil, and
their sense of reality will have been defined by the experiences
they receive from Velebrities. I hope I’m making sense,
Christiane.”

“For the most part, you are making sense to
me. It reminds me of something I recently read about VeilTracker
trends. There was an entry on a cloudsite the other day, Ken. You
brought up music earlier on in our interview, and I mentioned I
recently read about the trend you mentioned. You suggested someone
might actually hear music better than someone else. I came across a
young lady who commented on how she didn’t only Veil her favorite
musician, but she also Veiled a young gentleman who she felt heard
her favorite musician’s music better than she did. She actually
liked experiencing her favorite music through someone, through
someone else’s ears and mind. She chose this particular young man
because she thought the music sounded better through him. She felt
he was somehow able to experience it better than her. That’s
exactly how she described it. Apparently, he’s known for that and
many people Veil him because of it. I must admit Ken, I was
stunned. However, I’ve been noticing a string of comments and
statements similar to that young girl’s.”