Veil

by Aaron Overfield

“And?” Suren wasn’t going to give up until Peyton gave it up.

  “And that’s why I’m showing you and not Hunter. No one talks about what happened. It’s the one secret all of you still have. I can understand why. After seeing you and Hunter together, I know something happened between the two of you. Something big and horrible. I started thinking it’s probably the same big thing that happened to Ken. So, I thought I would show this to you first.”

  Suren mulled more. She couldn’t make it about her. That was the problem before: they all knew Lundy would be dead soon enough but Suren made it about her. She made it all about her bloodlust. Lundy already had ninety-nine convictions, which meant ninety-nine daily Veil Atonements. Each vAtonement would take about three minutes. That was nearly five hours a day. Five hours of Veil Atonements every day. If Lundy didn’t kill himself within a month, he’d be driven completely crazy and his body probably would’ve shut down from the stress.

  They all knew Lundy was going to die. She knew it, but she didn’t care. She was more interested in watching Lundy die than she was in making sure Ken stayed alive. All she had to do was say “no.” Just like Hunter did. All she had to do was be concerned for Ken, just like Hunter had been. Regardless of his inability to communicate effectively or appropriately, Hunter’s outbursts and objections were simply care and concern. All Suren had to do that day was tell Ken she didn’t want him to act as Atoner and tell him she wouldn’t let him do it. All she had to do was stop and consider Hunter’s point. Had she not made that moment about her and her need for revenge, maybe Ken would still be alive. Alive to that day. So, no … she couldn’t make it about her again.

  “It’s up to Hunter,” Suren exhaled her words heavily, and they sounded as though she held her breath the entire time she mulled them over.

  “Are … are you sure?” Peyton asked.

  “I’m sure. It’s up to him. It’s his Ken. He can decide.”

  “So—so, it’s true? Dr. Wise executed Lundy using Jin’s memory? And that’s what killed Dr. Wise?”

  “Peyton … ask Hunter.”

  When Peyton got to Hunter’s, he was streaming her Veillusion again. She wondered if that was all the man did. What was even more odd to her was how he always Veiled the story from his own perspective. She assumed if he were going to obsess over the Veillusion because of Ken, he would Veil it from Ken’s perspective. But, Hunter always took on his own role. It was odd to her: always choosing to be himself in the story of his own life.

  “Here,” she said and handed him one of those little shiny black boxes. He hadn’t seen that one before. It wasn’t marked.

  “What is it?”

  “Just Veil it. Then call me.”

  “Look, little girl—” he started to say.

  “Hunter,” she put her hand up, “I’m not Suren. I don’t take that shit. Not from some bitter old queen who hates the world and doesn’t leave his house. Shut the hell up and Veil it. When you’re sober and your sad gay eyes dry up, feel free call me.”

  Hunter smiled. Ken would’ve liked her so much. Brock would’ve loved her.

  “Has Suren seen this?” Hunter happily and maliciously shit-stirred through the phone.

  “Yes, she has.”

  “Oh…” he groaned.

  He had to pause. He was expecting Peyton to say ‘no.’ He was hoping she would say ‘no.’

  “Well, what did she say when she saw it?” He hoped Suren died when she saw it. Although, he definitely would’ve heard about it if she died. Nope, Suren was still alive. Bummer.

  “She said it was up to you.”

  “Up to me?”

  “Yes, she said it was up to you. She said you got to decide, and that he was—that he is—your Ken. So, she said it’s not up to her or about her. Something like that.”

  “I see,” he replied in an effort to buy some time.

  He really didn’t know what to say, which was something he wasn’t used to. He was usually able to make up some offensive drivel while plotting what to say next. He was thwarted, though. He planned on calling up Peyton and telling her to go ahead and inform Suren about the new and improved Veillusion he watched. However, Peyton sucked the wind out of those sails. He imagined Peyton’s vagina was one huge, big, giant vacuum, and he pictured her—

  “So what would you like me to do?” Peyton interrupted Hunter’s thoughts, as if she could tell from the other end of the phone that Hunter was perverting her in his mind.

  “Fuck it, come over tomorrow. We can polish this new version up. There are some things you got wrong and some things you left out.”

  When they hung up, Hunter took a large sip from his drink and set the glass down. It made a loud, sharp clink. The noise distracted him and he was bombarded by the thoughts he actively repressed. They were thoughts about what Suren’s gesture meant. Make no mistake about it … that was what the old bitch did by leaving the decision up to him: she made a grand, apologetic gesture.

  “Ah, damnit,” he growled to himself.

  After another drink, he called Roy and told him to come over the following day. Roy was perplexed and nervous, but he agreed.

  “He—he wants me to go over there tomorrow.” Oh my God, please help me.

  “I see.” He will most likely do physical or emotional harm to Roy. Perhaps both.

  “Do—do you think he’s going to kill me or something? He’s never told me to come over before.” He’s going to kill me.

  “He won’t kill you, Roy.” I could see him killing someone.

  “I hope not.” I can’t believe Ken and Brock left me here alone with the two of you.

  “Anyway, I’m pretty sure I know why he wants you there.” It’s because he’s evil and out to destroy me.

  “You do?” Is it cause I’m stuck in the middle of two crazy people?

  “Yes. And it’s fine. Whatever he asks of you, do it. Don’t worry about me. Just do it.” Poor Roy. Poor, poor sweet Roy.

  “Ummm … ok. But … what—” he started to ask but gave up. “Never mind. Goodnight, Suren.” Right, because I’m going to be worried about you while he’s trying to kill me. Right.

  “Goodnight, Roy.” Poor Roy.

  He started the long walk to his wing of the mammoth house. Whatever Suren was alluding to shouldn’t matter to him. If Roy let it matter, he’d worry about it all night and wouldn’t be able to sleep. He’d find out soon enough why Hunter summoned him. Besides, Roy learned long ago that when it came to matters having to do with Suren and Hunter, it was best to go in blind.

  It was like when he used to go see a movie, although he never saw its preview. That way, he couldn’t kick himself afterwards; he couldn’t blame himself. He had no idea what was coming the following day, which was usually best when dealing with those two.

  Blindly was the only way to deal with the likes of Suren and Hunter. If someone knew what was coming and they still went into the situation willingly, that meant they were as crazy as Suren and Hunter. Roy knew he might be slightly off, but he wasn’t Suren-and-Hunter-crazy.

  “Hell no I ain’t,” he said out loud and changed directions. He headed for the kitchen.

  “And that’s what happened the first night Ms. Suren showed up at my house. After … after she got the memory. After she got my message.”

  Slack-jawed, Peyton gawked at Roy. She couldn’t believe what she heard. For Almighty Jin’s sake, she simply couldn’t picture the woman her mother and grandmother idolized—the same small, frail old woman she met—doing what Roy described. Not the Great Widow Tsay.

  “Sh—she’s ok with us putting all that in the Veillusion?” Peyton asked Hunter.

  “Yes.” Hunter’s tongue swirled his words out vindictively. “She said it’s up to me. Since you figured out how Ken ended up being the Vault for the memory, you might as well have the whole torrid backstory. I think maybe people will start to understand the Tsay Legacy a little clearer now that you have the real version of how and why Ken died, and the story of how crazy s
he was—I mean how crazy she is.”

  “I don’t think ‘clearer’ is the right word, Dr. Kennerly. Like, this will change the history of Veil or something. I don’t know. But, that’s like … pretty major.”

  “Honey, she said it’s all up to me, and if we’re going to put out the truth—then fuck it. Let’s see if they can really handle the truth.”

  Roy laughed at that line, and Hunter laughed in return. The reference was lost on Peyton, but it didn’t matter; her mind was struggling to process the new information, so she was still in shock.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “So now you and I write in the missing parts, fix some details you messed up, and then we’re done. I’ll send notice to Suren and tell her to get the testimony to Congress ready. Recording and storing real neuroelectrical patterns will still be forbidden, as will streaming anything over the vNet. Other than that, it looks like the Veillusion Industry is about to get a big boost.”

  “It looks like it,” Peyton grinned. She was proud of herself and of what they produced.

  “Once it’s ready, we can load it up in the Temple, and it can go live. The release of the Veillusion will coincide with our announcement that The Jin Experience bill has been rewritten.”

  “That’s so amazing. You really have no idea, Dr. Kennerly. It’s going to change so much.”

  “I’m guessing it will. All we need to do is name your Veillusion, I guess.”

  “Actually, to be honest, I was considering calling the damn thing ‘Veil.’ If … if that’s ok with you, of course. With all of you.”

  Hunter laughed, “I was going to suggest naming it ‘Suren Dies at the End,’ but perhaps yours is more suitable. I’m sure none of us have a problem with that. However, feel free to go with my suggestion if you like.”

  Peyton placed a small, shiny black box onto the table in front of Suren. The box was inscribed with the shimmering gold letters to which Suren had grown accustomed.

  The box read: “VEIL.”

  “That’s it,” Peyton smiled.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes ma’am. That’s it. That right there is the complete Veillusion of Veil. From the very beginning with you, Jin, and Ken in college to the very end of Lundy’s trial and everything we could possibly include in-between.”

  “How long is it?”

  “Total, it’s nine hours and forty-five minutes in realtime and about thirty-five minutes in Veiltime. Although, almost no one will use Veiltime, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But it’s ready. It has the Hunter and Roy seals of approval, and it’s only awaiting yours. Unfortunately, now that we’re done working on it, Hunter made me remove all the traces of the streaming technology I had, so you’re going to have to shadow it in realtime. But, like … you could shadow it overnight, and then it would be ready in the morning. Use the touchscreen on the collar to choose which Trustee’s perspective you want, and it will do the rest.”

  “Ok, well thank you Peyton. I will be in touch tomorrow. I’ve already informed my contact in Congress about the plan, and I’ll be able to appear before them soon to recommend the change. My recommendation will go through, and we’ll likely set the announcement for Jin Tsay Day, like we did for The Jin Experience.”

  “But … but—” Peyton quickly did the math and protested, “That’s over five months away. Jin Tsay Day isn’t for five months.”

  “Which gives you a head start, young lady. Only the announcement will be on Jin Tsay Day. The amendment to the bill will be effective immediately. You can start programming your little Veillusions right away. Before any of your peers know what’s coming.”

  Peyton beamed as that sunk in.

  “I’ll contact you tomorrow,” Suren smiled in return.

  It was late and she was getting tired. Because she knew she wouldn’t be able to Veil the final version that evening, there was no sense in staying up much longer. She set her collar to shadow the artificial brain overnight so the Veil would be waiting for her in the morning. She rolled herself to her bedroom.

  Suren tried to do things on her own as much as possible. She could get in and out of bed easily enough, although she lacked the strength to walk unassisted. Trying to use a cane or walker caused too much pain, so she didn’t bother with one. Besides, she felt a wheelchair was more elegant than a cane or walker. She didn’t like the image of herself all hunched over and hobbling; Suren preferred to sit upright and glide gracefully.

  Her doctor told her she lacked energy because of her lungs. She didn’t get enough oxygen in her lungs, so her blood couldn’t deliver the load her muscles needed. Suren knew there were things she could do to improve her health, strengthen her lungs, increase the blood flow. She simply didn’t care. She didn’t want to die, and she had reason enough to live; she was just apathetic. Apathy maybe mixed with a twinge of good, old fashioned lazy. Suren was tired, and she wanted whatever was going to happen to her to simply happen already.

  The morning after Peyton left her with the Veillusion, Suren pulled herself out of bed and popped into her wheelchair. It wasn’t noon yet, which meant it was too early for Roy to be up, so she didn’t even bother flattening down her hair with her hands. She rolled herself down the long hallway. As always, she marveled at the burgundy and gold plush carpet, with its honeycombed, Victorian pattern. The design reminded her of the Metro tunnels. Jin always loved those tunnels. They might’ve been one of his favorite things about the District. Suren smiled; that carpet was such a good choice.

  She rolled herself through the swinging mahogany French doors and into the garden room. She pushed the doors open with her wheelchair footrests, which had marked the doors on both sides—approximately four inches from the ground. Each time Suren rolled through, she thought to herself that they should prop the doors open and leave them that way. Each time the doors swung closed behind her, she remembered that the garden room needed to stay closed off to contain the right atmosphere for all the plants.

  She rolled to the glass table in the middle of the room and positioned herself so the edge of the table was gently digging into her left side. Suren lifted the vCollar from the table and placed it on herself. The collar sat atop her hair and rested on her nape. She pressed the button to begin the transfer of her Witness from the artificial brain back over to her collar. The silicone sheet expanded from the base and snaked up along the contour of her head. When the collar beeped again, Suren let her head fall back against the headrest of her high-back wheelchair, and she closed her eyes.

  Within seconds, she was back in college. She was watching Jin and Ken as they argued over some formula she didn’t care about. She didn’t care about it back then, and she still didn’t care about it. She sat and watched the two of them and reveled in their presence and the sounds of their voices. It was like watching her memories come to life and made her actual memories feel like dreams, like shadows of their former selves. She thought perhaps her brain was loosening its grip on those memories. Maybe her brain no longer had a reason to hold onto them so tightly. Now that she had the Veillusion, she didn’t have to remember—she could relive.

  Revealing that Ken was the Vault for Jin’s memory opened up a lot more of the story, and added the storyline of how Roy became one of the legendary Tsay Trustees. During her initial version of the Veillusion, Peyton speculated that Roy was brought into the Tsay Legacy fold solely due to his memories of Jin, which were used to create The Jin Experience.

  With that Roy storyline opened up, Suren immediately knew why Hunter summoned Roy to his house. She knew Hunter wanted Roy to give Peyton his account of that first night when Suren went to Roy’s house. That first night when she went over there with a gun.

  Suren knew there was no way Hunter would let them leave out that part of the story. She figured it would be one of the first tasty little morsels Hunter would use to spruce up the Veillusion. She knew Hunter wouldn’t be able to resist exposing what he saw as Suren’s character flaw
s and instabilities. He’d gather them up and add them to the Veillusion like spices, until he achieved precisely the flavors he sought: humiliation, retribution, defeat. Right on cue, Suren found herself staring at Roy’s front door. She was holding a gun.

  Early on, Suren asked Peyton what would happen when the Trustee whose perspective the Veiler chose wasn’t in a particular scene, as in the one where it was only she and Roy. What happened in that part of the story, Suren asked her, from the perspective of the other characters in the Veillusion? Like if someone chose to experience the Veillusion as Ken or Hunter. Peyton responded that it was simple: the Veiler was temporarily given the perspective of the main character of that scene.

  Peyton told her that she wrote the main characters to be Suren, Ken and Hunter—in that order. Since at least one of those perspectives was in every scene in the Veillusion, no part of the story would be lost to any Veiler, regardless of which character they chose. Suren experienced that herself in some of the scenes of Hunter and Brock or when Hunter was in the military lab. Until she arrived at the scene of herself standing at Roy’s door, she hadn’t given the issue much thought.

  Suren realized that no matter which perspective—which character—a Veiler chose, they would always experience that particular scene through Suren or Roy’s perspective. She presumed Hunter included it on purpose. She knew it was his way to show the world a side of the Great Widow Tsay they’d never seen and could never imagine. She couldn’t blame him for it.

  Like Roy told her, Hunter felt as if she were his Lundy. If she were Hunter’s Lundy, then of course he wanted the world to see her as the monster he came to know. When sending Peyton to Hunter, Suren had to accept what would inevitably be revealed. The world would see that scene of Suren and Roy. She could only hope the world would understand.