Veil (5 page)

“The Witness is how all the different parts
within the brain communicate and interact with each other to form
one single person. Dr. Tsay discovered this neuroelectrical network
retains the … ummm … information it receives and transmits. The
information is retained for one entire timespan between
sleep-cycles. You see, during a sleep-cycle, the brainwaves
decelerate into delta waves, the slowest waves, so The Witness
fades away, and the brain kind of resets and prepares for another
cycle to begin when the person wakes—”

The General put his hand up and interrupted
the annoying whitecoat. “Are you arriving at a point? I might as
well read the damn book.”

“Yes—yes. Sorry, sir. Sorry. But yes, ok.
What Dr. Tsay learned, and it’s the crux of all this, the beauty of
it,” he continued and leaned in. He raised his hand and pressed his
index finger and thumb together
,
as if to
emphasize his point. “That neuroelectrical network, that electric
veil, can be extracted—it can be downloaded—from one subject’s
brain and implanted—or uploaded—onto another subject’s brain. Like
putting a veil over a veil. When this happens, when their Witness
is uploaded onto someone else, their Witness experiences all the
same things the subject does. They essentially are that person. All
the information is retained in that neuroelectricity. It’s stored,
by the person’s neuroelectrical network, by their Witness, so when
that neuroelectricity is returned to their brain, they remember
everything—”

The General put his hand up again.

“Get—to—the—fucking—point,” he snarled.

“Ok … ok … right, sir. So, as I was saying,
when they’re uploaded back onto themselves, they remember
everything
about being that other person. You see, their
brain is subjected to all the neuroelectricity retained in their
Witness. In essence, when it’s uploaded back onto them, their
Witness plays their brain kind of like a piano. It strikes all the
synaptic notes it stored up when it was inside the other person,
and it strikes them in exactly the same way as the other person’s
synapses were struck. You see, their brain gets stimulated the same
way the other person’s brain was stimulated and—”

The General slammed a fist onto the desk.
Both scientists inhaled, and their blood pressure rose. The General
leaned forward and pointed at the other whitecoat, who remained
mostly silent up to that point, although by no choice of his own.
However, now that it was his turn to talk, he no longer wanted to
take it.

“I suggest you do a much better, much quicker
job of answering my question than your little asshole friend here.
All he’s done is use a bunch of pansy-ass words to tell me what I
said in the very beginning. Can you answer my question?”

“Yes sir, I’ll try, sir. Ummm … so what
Schaffer was saying—what he was trying to say—after the Veil gets
done, that person totally remembers what it was like to be the
other person. They remember that person’s thoughts and stuff. Their
thoughts and memories and stuff. Like, I mean, even what they saw,
smelled, tasted. Everything. It gives a dude the power to literally
be another dude and then remember what it was like to be that other
dude, sir. Like you said before. We could like spy on the enemy,
you know? Cause we could Veil the enemy and be the enemy, to get
all the enemy’s thoughts and stuff, sir. We can—”

Schaffer couldn’t help himself. He had to
interrupt. He couldn’t stand anything about Pollock, and having to
listen to how Pollock talked drove Schaffer
absolutely friggen
insane
. Schaffer thought Pollock sounded like George Bush. The
Dubya
one. He couldn’t believe he and Pollock had the same
job, and that they were considered equals
.

So, Schaffer simply couldn’t help himself. He
interrupted.

“Right! Right! See, as I was saying earlier,
using Veil, my neuroelectrical network can be temporarily removed
from me, placed over your brain like a veil for an entire day and
then when that network was returned to me, I would remember exactly
what it was like to be
you
. My neuroelectricity, my Witness,
will play my brain like a piano, using all of your experiences as
its sheet music.”

Schaffer stopped.

He planned to continue—there was so much he
wanted to explain, and he really liked the piano analogy; he made
that up on the spot—but he noticed the General wasn’t looking at
him. The General didn’t look at him during any of what he said, and
he was still looking at Pollock. Pollock wasn’t looking at him
either; he was looking at the General.

So, Schaffer stopped.

The General completely ignored Schaffer and
his outburst. He directed his next question to Pollock. He also
considered Schaffer lucky that he was ignoring his outburst. Quite
lucky.

“So, if I had an alive Saddam
straight-to-hell Hussein sitting right here next to you, I could
use Tsay’s machine and take your mind, put it on top of Hussein’s
mind, and you’d know what it was like to be him? You’d have access
to every
damn
thing Hussein knows and when we put your mind
back inside you, you could tell us everything we wanted to know
about him?”

Pollock nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, yeah, sir. That’s pretty much it. In a
manner of speaking, yeah. Totally. There are like these limitations
and rules and stuff, but you get the overall idea, sir. You’re
good. You’re good. Tsay invented this technology that literally—and
I mean
literally
, man—allows one person to experience what
it’s like to be someone else and then remember it. All of it. With
Tsay’s technology, we totally have the ability to be someone else
for a day. Trust me, sir, I tried it. It’s some badass shit.”

“Ok, so why not just go inside and take out
one thought or one memory? Why can’t we just extract only the crap
we need?” the General asked. “Why make all this so complicated with
two brains and electronic veils and fucking nonsense stupid-ass
goddamn … bullshit … …
motherfuck
!”

Neither of the scientists knew if what the
General said ended with an actual question, or if it was a
frustrated series of random cuss words that indicated some kind of
seizure or something occurred.

“Well?!” the General barked.

Right, it was a question. Whew.

“Ok, so get this. What Tsay said—” Pollock
stopped himself.

I said, ‘Tsay said
.
’ Heh.

Pollock chuckled. “Tsay said. That’s pretty
funny.”

“Jesus, Pollock. Really?” Schaffer grunted
and shook his head.

I could not possibly hate you more, you
frakking imbecile.

Pollock chuckled again and then
continued.

He ignored Schaffer the same way the General
did earlier, without so much as glancing over at him or
acknowledging his existence.

“Anyway, so Tsay
said
we can’t
separate one function of the brain from another. Even if we wanna,
we can’t just go in and pick and choose what we want, because it’s
all tied together. We gotta use the entire brain. And, according to
him, because it’s so complicated up in there and all intertwined,
you know, the only way we can access and interpret what’s in one
dude’s brain is by using another dude’s brain. Or, a chick’s brain.
We could even do a chick—Veil a chick, I mean. We could even Veil a
chick.”

Schaffer thought he’d give it one more try.
At least he wouldn’t have to listen to Pollock talk for a minute.
He’d rather hear the General shout than hear Pollock friggen
whisper.

“And that is Dr. Tsay’s theory of Veil,” the
mostly silent and increasingly annoyed Schaffer interjected. “The
neuroelectrical network that
I
explained is The Witness. The
Witness is but one part of Veil. While it is the most crucial part,
Dr. Tsay spent years researching the process and developing Veil as
a whole. The entire theory, its application, all its rules, and the
implications of what this all could mean—that is Veil. It is
remarkable, General.”

General Coffman had enough. All he asked for
was an explanation of the intel they could expect to obtain through
Veil. He also wanted to know if the two buffoons sitting in front
of him could build it, and if they could build it quickly.
Apparently, those two questions were too hard for the two
assholes-for-mouths to answer.

“Son,” the General leaned forward and lowered
his voice, which made the two whitecoats as nervous as when he
yelled invectives at them, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.
Witness, Veil, or fucking iBrain. All I care about is if it works,
and if we can use it.”

“It works.”

“You can use it.”

“Then get the hell out of my office and make
it happen. Build the thing like you were supposed to do in the
first damn place. As of
today
, you’ve had exactly three
months to bring me something. That book doesn’t count. Now, get
your asses out of my sight,” the General commanded.

The two men quickly exited the General’s
office but left the book behind.

Both glanced at it as they moved past, but
both avoided it.

They had their own copies; they didn’t need
that one.

Three months to the day since Suren’s husband
left for work and never returned, she stared at the computer screen
in their home office. It was the same day two whitecoats met with
their commanding General in order to discuss her husband’s
technology. Technology the military acquired by ordering his
murder, although he developed it for them.
For them.

None of it made any sense to her. None of it
made any sense the day Jin didn’t return after work, and it didn’t
make any sense three months later. The only explanation of what
happened to Jin was on their computer, and it wasn’t much of an
explanation at all.

The monitor displayed the computer’s desktop,
which contained two folders she positioned in the middle of the
screen. One folder was titled “VEIL” and the other,
“FEED
.
” As she did every day since Jin’s
disappearance—which became a reality Suren was forced to
investigate herself—she opened the folder titled “FEED” and
double-clicked the recording she cropped and saved as
“11-21
.
”

The video opened and Suren watched a man step
inside the elevator. He was tall, muscular, and white. He had
short, dark hair and was dressed in jeans, black tennis shoes, and
a black coat. She watched him press the button for the
14
^th
floor, insert a key into the panel, and enter the
numbers 0-9-0-3-1-2-0-4—a combination of her and Jin’s birthdays.
He then exited when he reached his destination, which appeared to
be the 13
^th
floor. Suren observed every frame and soaked
in every pixelated detail until the man exited the elevator and the
doors closed behind him.

Only once had she played the second
recording, which she saved as “JIN
.
” In
it, she saw Jin approach and enter the same elevator, perform the
same strange procedure, and exit on what also seemed to be the
13
^th
floor. She checked with the hospital and city
records; both indicated there was no 13
^th
floor in that
building. She tried to show the recordings to anyone who would look
at them, in order to prove not only the existence of the
13
^th
floor but also the apparent murder of her husband.
No one cared enough to listen. Besides, she must be crazy to
believe in some top-secret floor in a widely regarded hospital.

She moved the mouse from the first recording
to the third, which she saved as “MURDERER
.
” The cursor momentarily hovered over the second
recording. The images of what was contained in the second video,
what she witnessed happen to her Jin, flashed in her memory each
time she moved the cursor from the first to the third recording.
Each time, the images were as disturbingly clear as the day she
first saw them. She didn’t need to see it again. She couldn’t see
it again. Her only job was to keep the evidence safe.

She moved the cursor the rest of the way over
and double-clicked on the third video. In that recording, she
witnessed the white male enter the other elevator from the
13
^th
floor, approximately three hours after Jin was
murdered. The initial elevator was shut down while the hospital and
police investigated and cleaned up the remains of her husband,
which splattered inside when he was shot.

Suren watched the man ride the elevator to
the lobby. The bastard who shot her husband rocked back and forth
on his feet and appeared careless and unbothered. She watched the
doors open at the lobby and saw him walk out of the elevator. Suren
watched until she couldn’t see one more pixel of him in the frame.
She restarted the recording and watched him enter the elevator
again and again and again. She studied his face with the same
burning intensity as she did the day before and the day before that
and the day before that.