Veil

by Aaron Overfield

  There were a few things Ken simply instinctually understood. The way he looked at it, the brain would accept the signals from another brain like the heart would pump blood from another person after a transfusion. It really wasn’t that hard for him to grasp; Ken simply understood things better using analogies and metaphors, so he generally took his logic in that direction. The way Ken saw it, Veil was like surfing.

  The functions of the brain occurred so quickly and constantly that it looked to an observer like a perpetual, static buzzing of electricity and chemicals. However, there was a rhythm in the brain: The Witness pulsated with a pattern, a beat. The brain worked through brainwaves and Jin Hosato Tsay, once Ken’s closest colleague and friend, not only figured out how to surf those waves but, astonishingly, also how to allow one person to surf another person’s waves.

  That was it; Ken got it.

  That was pretty much all there was to get.

  Now all Ken had to do was explain it to Suren, organize all the data, and build Veil. Ken figured that should only take him about six years, tops. Maybe eight. Perhaps with the help of a team of chimpanzees.

  Oh, and maaaaaaybe there’s-even-a-dead-puppy-involved.

  Suren was by no means a dumb woman. Quite the opposite. She and Jin met in grad school where she was working on a Masters in Education. One of the reasons Jin was attracted to Suren was her level of intuition. Jin was a man of little patience. Not because he was intolerant, but because his overworked mind simply couldn’t afford him patience. Suren accepted that and was never insulted by how his abilities played out in relationships.

  While most people would have taken him as insensitive or selfish, Suren never lost sight of what she saw as Jin’s immense genius. Her female peers often confronted her and suggested she was being a “good, subordinate Asian woman,” a role they believed her too sophisticated to play.

  Suren understood. She truly, truly did. She fully understood how their relationship must have looked from the outside. However, they were wrong. She dated men of lesser genius and those men expected her to tolerate more than Jin ever did. When she refused, those relationships unraveled.

  In Jin, Suren found a genius she could admire and love. An absolute genius. She lived to make him happy. Not because as a woman that was her job, but because she knew in her heart Jin lived to make her as happy as she lived to make him. In love, they were equaled. She didn’t care how the structure of their relationship or their lives looked from the outside; Jin was as much her Jin as she was his Suren.

  She didn’t care how it sounded; she belonged to Jin and Jin belonged to her. People could’ve taken as much issue with that as they wanted. She didn’t care. If a woman ever attempted to seduce Jin—not that Jin would ever respond or notice—Suren wouldn’t have thought twice about hitting the woman in the back of her throat with a cast iron skillet.

  No, she didn’t own Jin, but Jin was hers.

  Considering Suren was by no means a dumb woman, Ken tried not to get frustrated with the situation. However, Suren being such a smart woman was exactly what frustrated Ken about the situation. After two hours, he started to border on condescension.

  For the life of him, Ken could not explain Veil to Suren. She understood what Veil did, but he couldn’t get her to understand how Veil did what it did. It worried him. If he couldn’t explain Veil to someone as intelligent as Suren, the very wife of the man who created Veil, how was he going to be able to explain it to anyone?

  Suren sensed his frustration and tried not to laugh. Exhausted, she finally stopped him.

  “Why does it matter, Ken? Why does it matter if I know how it does what it does, as long as I understand its purpose? I understand the purpose of a computer, and how to operate it, but I couldn’t begin to tell you how it does what it does. I have no idea how a microchip works. It’s like magic to me. Seriously. Harry Potter books type stuff.”

  Ken pushed his chair away from the table and stretched his back, which was the victim of all his tension for at least the last hour. He laughed and shook his head.

  “I’ve been acting like you’re Jin. Trying to get you on my level. He could do all this stuff alone. Obviously. I guess I needed a partner. I’m not good at doing things alone.”

  “You have a partner mister,” she said with all seriousness and then joked, “but I don’t give a crap about all this,” she puffed and waved her hand at the papers spread out in front of them.

  Already headed to the kitchen, Suren asked Ken what he’d like to eat. He noticed she didn’t ask if he wanted to eat but rather what he wanted. Little things like that made him realize how Jin and Suren’s relationship worked. That made him miss Jin. That made him miss Jin for Suren.

  “I don’t know what my options are, lady,” he quipped.

  “Touché. How about I just make something? Kinda like how you’re supposed to be making something,” she one-upped him and again gestured at the endless swarm of papers.

  They both laughed. It was a good laugh. Their first real laughs since they reunited. It was how they always related to each other, and it was a relief for both that they hadn’t lost that. At least they didn’t lose that.

  Ken got up from his chair and walked to the kitchen. He leaned on the counter with an elbow and faced Suren. Her back was to him. She was rummaging through a cabinet next to the refrigerator.

  “Seriously though, Suren. I want to do Veil. I want to do it for Jin, for you. I want to do it for all of us. I want to do Veil because—now that I’ve seen it—it’s the most incredible piece of technology I could ever dream up.”

  “God it’s something isn’t it? Like it really is something.” She sighed. By saying those words and acknowledging that truth, she felt connected to Jin’s genius again.

  “It really is. I can’t believe what Jin accomplished.” His eyes watered, and his words trembled. When she detected the pain in his voice, Suren turned around. She saw Ken’s expression, walked to him, and put her hand on top of his while he continued. “It never was a regret before, I’ll be honest, it never was, but now my biggest regret is not being a part of this. Not sticking with Jin and seeing this through. Not being there to bask in this greatness. His greatness. Abandoning him.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, so he closed his eyes and shook his head. Damnit, that wasn’t what he set out to say. And now he was blubbering.

  Damnit.

  “No … no, Ken,” Suren cooed. “You were right. You were right back then, and you were right for both of you. Jin never blamed you. I don’t blame you. I wish Jin listened to you. In a lot of ways you were his heart, his guide. I always saw that. And Jin knew it.”

  Hearing that turned Ken’s tears into an outright bawl. It sank in: the grief, the loss of his friend. For more than half their lives, his best friend. And although the two did not remain as close, there was absolutely no animosity, and they didn’t completely grow apart. Ken loved his friend, and he missed him. The deeper he got into Veil, the more a certain feeling started to grow in him. The more Ken immersed himself in Jin’s work, the greater his determination to get Jin’s revenge, Suren’s revenge, and his own revenge as well. When Ken chose to join Suren, he decided they’d get their fucking revenge together.

  “We both now know where you’d be if you stuck by his side against your better judgment. You and I know where both of you would be right now. I’d have no one. And they would have Veil.” She put her hand under his chin and lifted his head. To force him look at her. To look in her eyes. “They would have Veil, Ken.”

  Suren always knew what to say. She knew what to do to get focus back where it needed to be. Ken remembered what he set out to say before he was so overcome.

  “And that’s just it,” he assured her as he wiped his eyes. “I want to do Veil. With everything in me, I want to do this. But, we’re right back where Jin and I were after grad school. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. Heck, look at the lab Jin needed to make Veil possible and make it happen. I know money isn’t everything, but in
this case, it’s pretty much the only thing.”

  Suren let out the loudest, strangest squeal he ever heard anyone produce; it was the sound of amusement tinged with something more sinister. Hearing it was about as scary as hearing Suren use the “F-word.”

  “Trust me, neither of us have to worry about that,” she cackled.

  “Uhhh…” he groaned.

  “Two things,” she explained and crinkled her nose as she finished the sentence, “and you’re gonna love both.” She paused to catch her breath some and let the anticipation build. “First, the contract Jin signed was for two people. Although you never signed it, for some reason they never changed the contract or its terms. Meaning, they still paid out on it as if it were for the both of you. We kept your half, but never dared to spend it. Who knew, maybe one day they’d realize what happened and ask for it all back? And you know how Jin was. Nervous about everything. More conscientious than anyone. Still, we kept it and earned interest on it. Even if they asked for the money back, since it was their mistake, they wouldn’t think of charging us interest. So let them ask for it back, we figured. But now…” Suren raised her eyebrows.

  Ken smirked, “Yeah, right, they’ll never ask for anything back now.”

  “Exactly. Which leads us to number two. And this is my favorite. They couldn’t just up and end Jin’s contract and stop paying on it without tipping their hand, not without admitting too many things they have no interest in admitting. After he disappeared, I went to see the General who was supposed to be overseeing Jin’s contract. When I walked into his office, it was as if he’d seen a ghost. Literally. It didn’t really dawn on me then because I was so out of my mind, but as time went on and I started piecing all these things together, I decided it would be in my best interest to have at least one more contact with the General. I called him and quite innocently suggested they should probably keep Jin’s contract intact until he could be found all safe and sound. After all, I told him, we couldn’t be sure what happened to him, so it was probably smartest to leave everything exactly how it was.”

  “Oh, fucking brilliant. Really … brilliant. What’d he say?”

  “He said ‘yes ma’am’ and hung up.” She grinned, self-pleased as anyone could be.

  “You might be my favorite person ever,” Ken beamed.

  “I figured I might be.”

  With a huge weight off him, and while Suren cooked dinner, Ken went back to his computer and dug around in files, which he already went over at least fifty times. Later, they ate, drank some wine, talked about school, the old times, Jin. It was good. They both needed it. It was solemn, but it was serene.

  The conversations that weren’t about Jin still seemed to conjure him up. He was their connection. Sure, they had their own way of relating to each other, and they liked each other well enough, but he was the center to their relationship. Jin was their anchor. No point in denying that.

  After dinner, while Suren cleaned up, Ken toyed around on his laptop some more; he scanned through folders and soaked in as much as he could. He memorized a lot of it, and some was … well, irrelevant. Like all the archived video feed recordings from the elevators at the hospital. It was a curious thing for Jin to have set up for himself, but in the end did prove invaluable, so Ken couldn’t really knock him for it. Just seemed like one huge waste of hard drive.

  Ken stopped and let out an audible, “Uhhh.”

  Suren quit wiping down the counter and looked at him.

  “Suren?” he called out, without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Yeah?” she replied, suddenly a bit more curious.

  His eyes were still glued to the screen. “So you never knew about Veil, or the 13th floor in the hospital, or anything like that?”

  Now she was really curious, so as she replied she was already moving to position herself behind Ken to peer over his shoulder. To see what caught his attention.

  “No, why? What’s—”

  She stopped.

  Ken’s laptop displayed a recording from the elevator.

  In it, she saw Jin and herself, clear as day, riding up and exiting at the 13th floor.

  Suren sat down in the chair next to Ken’s.

  “Play that again.”

  4

  WOLF

  General Coffman stood up slowly and with purpose. So much of his behavior was conditioned to instill certain feelings and elicit specific responses from people that it became second nature. The whitecoat actually caught him completely off-guard when he barged in and asked about Tsay, but he’d be damned if he let the little twerp see that.

  The General learned long ago having power meant he could speak as softly and slowly as he wanted. It was ideal to do one, or both, of those things in certain situations. Doing both while he snarled at Schaffer gave the General time to think about what the hell he was going to say. It also intimidated the hell out of the little fucking twerp. Two birds.

  The Tsay fiasco was a particularly sore spot. If the stupid ass hire did his job and did it to completion, the Tsay problem wouldn’t be a problem. The General assembled the dossier himself, so he knew the hire had all the required information at his disposal. He couldn’t fathom how Tsay’s wife was still alive or how, as she claimed when she visited him, she possessed video footage of the inside of the elevators, which led up to Tsay’s lab. He simply couldn’t understand how both those loose ends were left untied, because specific information about Tsay’s wife and Tsay’s home were included in the goddamn dossier.

  It took everything in him not to agonize over what other loose ends were left hanging out there since the hire did not complete what the hire was supposed to complete. His contact person for the hire went dark after Tsay was eliminated—and presumably so did the hire—which tended to happen after jobs. With his contact having gone dark, it wasn’t as if the General could pick up the phone and call to inquire about the hire’s stupidity and ineptitude.

  That was why the General longed for the day when he could use his own men in situations like with Tsay. At least then he’d know it would get done right; if it wasn’t done right someone would be immediately answerable to him. Some pansy asses saw using his own men as too much of a liability. Not to mention how it required the signatures of people going too high up and who were too concerned with their own butts than with the national security to which they paid so much lip service.

  It was too late anyway. Nothing could be done yet about Tsay’s wife, not without risking unacceptable attention. When she called the General to saccharinely demand she continue to receive Tsay’s pay, she was indicating she knew the General’s predicament and was willing to take advantage of it. In return, he was willing to play along for the time being. It kept her within reach.

  The General wanted to be very careful with his response to Schaffer. The last thing he needed or wanted was more of a Tsay headache than he already had. He also wanted to put Schaffer in his place. Barging into his fucking office unannounced? Who the fuck did Schaffer think he was?

  “Not that I can see how it’s any of your concern, boy, nor do I answer to you, but suffice it to say Jin Tsay is no longer part of this project and is permanently unavailable.” He ambled to the front of his desk while Schaffer attempted to explain himself.

  “Oh … oh, sir, I … I…” Schaffer stammered. “I understand that, sir. What I meant was—what I should have asked was, considering what happened to Dr. Tsay, since the Veil project is such a big asset that will obviously be protected no matter what, and I can see why, I can really see why … uhhh … that being the case I was wondering, with what happened to Dr. Tsay, what options do I have available to me in order to move forward on this project, sir? In terms of bringing someone else on board with the project, sir.”

  “Bringing someone on board? Explain.”

  “Someone with the right expertise, sir,” Schaffer tried to clarify.

  “So, you’re implying you don’t know what you’re doing,” the General asserted and leaned ba
ck on his desk. His butt came to rest on the edge and he folded his arms and stared directly at Schaffer.

  “No sir. I mean, some aspects. I … what I mean to say is that Dr. Tsay’s work touches on so many different areas. Different systems and technologies. It’s hard for one person to know enough about each in order to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish. Making Veil into something you can use, that is.”

  “Tsay knew enough about each. He worked alone,” the General snapped.

  “True—true. Yes.” Schaffer tried to think quickly and save face. “But, I’m not sure Tsay could’ve designed the device you’re wanting all on his own either, sir.”

  General Coffman wanted to get to the point and get to it quickly. The little shit was lucky he could use Tsay’s untimely departure to his advantage.

  “So what are you really asking me for, Doctor?”

  A bit taken aback by being referred to by his title but also filled with a bit more confidence, Schaffer spoke clearly.

  “What I’m asking you is if I can bring a civilian onboard for their particular expertise in how the brain’s electricity works? And how it works in conjunction with technology. The only information they would be given is information they needed to help design a device capable of manipulating and transferring the brain’s electricity in the way Veil requires—that is, without having to use a machine the size of a large room and without needing physical access to the subject.”