Veil (49 page)

“I can’t right now, please, not after what
I—”

“Don’t you dare fucking say after what you
had to go through! Don’t you dare fucking say that to me, you son
of a bitch.” She picked up the crystal glass and threw it at the
wall but missed. It shattered one of the tall windows instead.

Suren regained her composure, and started
back in on him with a disturbingly cynical tone, “So then…”

Ken’s head snapped up. He knew what she was
about to try. He looked directly at her and protested, “No,
Suren!”

“Yes. You don’t get to decide, Mr. ‘I’m Never
Going To Use Veil
.
’ So then … tell me,
Ken.”

“No! Suren, no.”

“What happened? What did you see?”

“Stop … stop.”

“Did you see everything? Did you see the
bullet tear through Jin’s forehead?”

“Suren, don’t do this, please!” he begged and
pulled at clumps of his hair again.

“Did you watch through the murderer as the
life died out of Jin’s eyes? Did you see what he did with Jin’s
body?”

“Hunter!!!” Ken screamed.

“Did you, Ken? Did you see everything? Tell
me what you saw, Ken.”

“Hunter!!! Hunter!!! Hunterrrrrrrrrr!!!” he
kept screaming.

“Did you see what he did with my Jin’s body?”
she screamed as Hunter threw open the doors and ran inside the
office. “Tell me!”

Ken kept shrieking and pulling his hair.
Hunter rushed over and threw his arms around him.

Suren was relentless. “His body! Tell me,
Ken! Tell me what you saw!” she continued to scream over Ken’s
shrieks and howls
.

“Stop! Now!” Hunter yelled and put his hand
up at Suren. “STOP!”

“NO! He has to tell me! I have the right!
Fuck you both, I have the right,” she screeched, nearly foaming at
the mouth.

“Fine! You crazy bitch!” Hunter screamed
back. “You want to know?”

Ken grabbed Hunter by the arm and tried to
stop him.

“Yes,” she lowered from a screech to yell.
“That’s all I want. I have the right to know. What happened? What
did he see? What did he do with my Jin’s body? Fucking tell
me!”

Above Ken’s pleas of, “No, please don’t,
Hunter no, no…” Hunter let go of Ken and slammed his fists on the
desk, rattling almost everything on it. He locked eyes with Suren
and let it go; Hunter finally let six years go.

“He didn’t do anything with Jin’s body
because Jin didn’t die! He didn’t fucking die!”

Suren fell back into the chair
.
She heard the words still coming from Hunter, but
she wasn’t fully listening to them and had to slowly piece them
together.

“Ken won’t even tell me what the memory is …
all he says … over and over and over again, every time this happens
is that Jin didn’t die. He didn’t die! That’s what’s in the memory,
Suren. Jin didn’t fucking die, ok? Your husband didn’t die.”

“No, no, no!” she roared. She rose up from
the chair with enough force to send it flying back. It hit the
bookcase behind her and tipped over. “How does he know? Jesus
fucking Christ, how does he know?!”

From Ken came the deepest, most pain-filled
howl either of them could imagine coming out of someone, so
hauntingly loud that it shut them both up. It was a single,
piercing squall that should have ripped his vocal cords open until
they spewed forth vomitus blood. They looked at him, absolutely
terrified and speechless.

Still on his knees in front of the desk, Ken
once again reached up and clenched large clumps of his own hair; he
pulled as hard as he could, until blood seeped from thousands of
follicles. He leaned backwards completely, until his back and
shoulders touched the ground.

Once he assumed that position, Ken released a
six-year-old demon, before falling unconscious.

“It isn’t his killer’s memory!” he screamed.
“It belongs to Jin! It’s Jin’s … getting shot … it came from Jin!
Jin’s memory. I can still feel the bullet. I can feel it.”

As he slipped out of consciousness, Ken
repeated over and over, “I can feel it, I can feel it, I can feel
it…” until his voice faded out.

S
ince he was
portless, most people assumed he was a “Veilgrant”: one of those
few remaining anti-Veil zealots who rejected the very existence of
Veil. Thanks to the discrimination he experienced due to that
assumption, he ended up learning a lot more about the different
Veil factions than he probably would’ve ever cared to. If he were
able to Veil, he likely would’ve been a normal, everyday Veiler.
Instead, and out of circumstance, he got lumped with
them
.

Consensus was that Veilgrants opposed the
truths of Veil out of fear and cowardice. They were willing to
become vagrants due to fear alone. Fear of change; fear of
technology; fear of what they’d find inside others; or the most
common presumption, fear of what others would find inside them.
Fear of …
Veil
.

To the majority of the world, Veilgrants
practiced and preached the ultimate treason against the
ever-burgeoning New Veil World. They were the world’s last
remaining second-class citizens and, according to consensus, only
as a result of their own backwards stubbornness. The minute they
embraced Veil was the minute they would be enthusiastically
embraced by the rest of society. Until then, they were the new
trash; until then, they remained the new vagrancy.

He learned Veilgrants were a short step down
from “Veilists”: the faction who declared themselves the utmost
Veil purists. As the boundaries and battle-lines between nations
and religions began to dissolve in accordance with what the masses
praised as the unifying and equalizing power of Veil, came the
backlash against what Veilists claimed was a correlating moral
erosion. Although Veilists recognized that Veil fostered a total
spiritual integration of world religions, they were not prepared to
forego the moral compasses once provided by their respective
religions. The remaining religious fundamentalist sects banded
together and sought to establish a main sect: a World Veligion. One
whose purpose would be to govern morality through enacting ethical,
sectarian Veilistic Law.

According to Veilists, men should not Veil
with women and vice-versa. Veil should not be used against
someone’s will. Veil should absolutely never be used during any
sexual acts, even masturbation, and protocols should be in place to
block the shadower from experiencing any of the subject’s sexual
thoughts and feelings during the Veil process. Veil should not be
used interracially. Heterosexuals should only Veil with other
heterosexuals; homosexuals only with other homosexuals. If any
cross-sexuality Veiling were to take place, it should be done
solely for the purpose of reparative therapy; such Veils should
only take place in the form of a homosexual shadowing a
heterosexual
,
so the homosexual could be
exposed to the normalcy of heterosexuality.

Veil should not be used by pregnant women.
Veil should not be used on children or by children. Veil should not
be used on the dying, especially those very near death. Veil should
only be used for spiritual purposes and, as much as possible,
Veilists should only Veil with other Veilists (preferably only with
those who shared their fundamental religion). The mentally ill and
those with addictions should not be allowed to Veil, whereby they
could spread their disease. Finally, to avoid spiritual
contamination, a Veilist should never Veil with a nonbeliever.

Veilistic Law, recognized and followed only
by Veilists, evolved over a short time in response to the rising
New Veil World, and eventually each religion developed its own
Veil-based text. The theological portions of each religion’s Veil
text were remarkably similar, if not completely identical. It was
due mostly to what was dubbed the “Spiritual Veilightenment,” which
occurred as a result of the spiritual integration of the world
religions. The only notable differences between the religious texts
came in the form of the varying moral codes and guidelines—and even
those differences were slight. One could pick up a Veil Bible, a
Veil Torah or a Veil Qur’an and find they all reflected and
complemented each other to near perfection.

With the signing of the Right To Veil bill,
which the Great Widow Tsay herself helped pen and fought to ratify,
came the first step toward what so many were hoping was on the
horizon: a completely secular Veil-based governance—a total World
Veilocracy. In the Right To Veil bill, no concessions were made to
the Veilgrant or Veilist factions; there were no negotiations or
discussions with either group. The bill ensured free and universal
access to Veil for anyone over the age of eighteen. The only
condition to the free, universal access was that no one could be a
total exhibitionist or voyeur; one couldn’t shadow only or be
shadowed only. To be a Veiler meant you had to be fully Inveiled;
it had to be a two-way street.

The bill banned Veiling of death and of those
near death
,
and only because, during a
near-death experience, Veilers were found to suffer traumatic and
permanent psychological and physiological damage. The so-called
vFlatline experiences were the only ones to make it onto the
illegal list. At least, other than nonconsensual ones.

It became illegal, through Suren’s Law, to
Veil someone against his or her will or without their knowledge.
That was, except through the reformed, rigorous
,
and transparent Department of Surveil. Generally
referred to as simply Surveil, the department promised to “Protect
and Surveil,” through Surveil Enforcement and also strove to obtain
“Justice Through Veil,” through the Surveil Judiciary. After the
signing of the bill, there were to be no more police, only
Surveillors and no more lawyers, only judges and juries.

The bill also legitimized the privatization
of the Veil Industry and established the first phase of sweeping
industry regulations. Finally, it banned any entity, government or
otherwise, from intercepting or storing information that traversed
the Veil Network except for one single and rare purpose: for
Surveil Enforcement to track, by VSN, when a wanted criminal cabled
into the vNet
,
and only then in order to
assist with their apprehension.

It was the very last bit of the bill that was
the kicker for him. It was the deal breaker. He owned an original
vCollar back in the day. Hell, he probably still had it around
somewhere. Because he owned one, he was even assigned his VSN.
However, once he saw the direction things were headed, well before
the Right To Veil bill crossed anyone’s lips, he knew exactly what
was coming, and he could have no part in it. To do so—to Veil—would
mean the end of his freedom and likely, once Surveil got hold of
him, the permanent end of his sanity.

The risks he predicted were twofold.

The first risk was, at some point, he knew
Surveil Enforcement would track and locate people by their VSN
using the Veil Network. That was a pretty obvious given. You
couldn’t access the vNet without a VSN and the VSN was foolproof;
essentially, it was the fingerprint of the brain. It couldn’t be
faked, spoofed
,
or circumvented. At all.
Widow Tsay herself offered, and was still offering, a cash reward
to the sole hacker who could bypass the Veil security protocols one
time.
Just once
.

The reward started out at a million dollars
with another million tacked on each year the system wasn’t
compromised. Since it had yet to be hacked and as the vNet just
entered its tenth year, the reward stood at ten million dollars.
That was a pretty good indicator to him Veil was likely never going
to be hacked and there was simply no way around the security of the
VSN. There was no way for one to keep from being tracked and
eventually located the very instant they plugged into the vNet.

As if that weren’t risk enough, there was
still risk number two. If risk number one weren’t enough for him to
banish himself willingly into the shadows, risk number two was
almost enough to keep him from ever uttering the word Veil itself.
He knew he couldn’t be the only one with the problem, but perhaps
he was the only one with enough foresight to see what was coming.
To see what was in store not only for him but likely for
everyone.

Sure, the language of the Right To Veil bill
was quite specific in forbidding the interception or storage of any
information that passed through the network, but there were no
guarantees that would always be the case. There was no guarantee
that the law would never allow storage of experiences and memories
that traveled through the vNet. The statute was not some kind of
moral absolute; it wasn’t some law delivered unto them directly
from the mouths of the gods. Society was forever evolving, as were
the constitutions and laws on which all nations were built. Veil
itself was proof to him of that fact.