“You are crazy, and you are a bitch, and I fucking despise you. But Ken loved you—so, whatever.”
Hunter made sure not to look in her direction while he made his exit. He turned away from her and shuffled to the hallway. When Hunter made it to Suren’s bedroom door, she called out to him.
Hunter rolled his eyes when he barely heard Suren croak, “Send in Roy, please.”
As he exited through the door at sloth-like speed, he lifted a hand over his shoulder.
With his back still to the old bitch, Hunter gave Suren the finger.
25
BATHOS
Roy scurried back toward her bedroom. While he scuttled, he clutched onto what Suren sent him to fetch from the foyer: a large, ornate, gold-veined mirror encrusted chest. For as long as he could remember, the box remained totally undisturbed and untouched. It sat on a mirrored side-table that appeared to have been designed as a stand for the box, although Roy wasn’t sure if that was the case. The chest was positioned beneath a massive painting of Suren and Jin, which hung on the wall amidst the dual staircase in the entryway of the huge mansion. Roy would be lying if he said he never wondered what the hell was in that enormous, exorbitant box. He never asked and assumed the chest was locked, so he never attempted to investigate it.
He scampered over to her with the chest cradled in his arms. It was too large and heavy for her to hold, so he plopped down into the chair next to her bed and held the chest in his lap.
“The key is in there,” Suren rasped and shifted her eyes to her nightstand. Roy opened the drawer, lifted some papers, and dug around until he found a brass, Victorian era barrel stem key. He held it up, and Suren nodded. He handed the key to her. She took it from him, and he propped up the chest, so she could slide it in the keyhole. She tried to insert the key a few times but was unsuccessful, and she groaned.
Roy took the key back from her and turned the chest around, so he could try for himself. He tilted it and attempted to slide in the key, but it wouldn’t budge. He peered inside the keyhole and noticed that someone must’ve tampered with it. Out of curiosity, Roy lifted the lid. Already unlocked, the chest opened. Suren groaned again.
After her shift at the power plant, Cheyenne Modesto boarded the decrepit train that ran to the outskirts of town, traveling in the opposite direction of her house. As she did every day, Cheyenne took the train to its very last stop and as always, she was the last passenger aboard during its final four stops. She detrained and walked down a set of crumbling stairs, which led from the platform and out of the station. As Cheyenne’s feet met the sidewalk, her shins parted knee-high weeds. She trudged through the overgrowth and tried her best to remain on the concrete as she followed the path.
Cheyenne walked until she came to a large plot. Old people claimed it once served as some big, flat parking station for personal automobiles. In the ancient days, people supposedly used those automobiles to travel from their homes to the train station. Apparently, they would leave the machines at the parking station and then take the train to their destination, which didn’t make much sense to Cheyenne. Why not simply take the train everywhere and then walk to where ever you were headed?
When she arrived at the lot, she crossed to the far corner, where she kept a substantial patch cleared for her daily visits. Cheyenne sat down on the black asphalt near one edge of the patch. She was seated on a very faded yellow line that had been painted on the asphalt for some unknown reason. She took off her shoes and socks, adjusted the cloth bandages around her toes, and pulled a pair of fresh socks out of her bag.
After she put on the fresh socks, Cheyenne removed her mobile vHost from her bag and set the bag aside. She strapped the mobile vHost onto her wrist and spooled out its internal vCable, which she pulled around behind her head, so she could cable herself into the unit. After the cable snapped into place in her vPort, she powered up the vHost and chose to resume streaming her current Veil. She also selected the option to unmute her body’s physical responses from the Veil. Cheyenne took her position in the middle of the cleared patch and pushed the button on her vHost to resume streaming the Veil stored in the unit. She closed her eyes.
Cheyenne Modesto was Dominika Alexandrovna. She walked out onto the stage, took her bow, and immediately rose up onto one toe. Her muscles moved as Dominika’s muscles moved, her body danced as Dominika danced. Every fiber of Cheyenne’s being turned into the perfection of Dominika’s performance. The more Cheyenne let go of herself, the more she was Dominika. Cheyenne slipped away completely and became Dominika. In that moment, the perfection of Dominika’s dance was matched only by the degree in which Cheyenne could let go of herself in order to become Dominika Alexandrovna.
Cheyenne could smell the theater and feel the cold, hard, wooden stage beneath her feet. At the end of each rotation in Dominika’s fouetté en tournant, when she faced front and her foot flattened on the stage, in the instant before she rose onto her toe again to make another turn, she could see the audience staring at her with wonder. She could feel as Dominika’s only emotion was the dance. She could hear as Dominika’s only thought was of perfected movement. She could feel her heart racing, her blood flowing, and her lungs filling. She could feel herself flying through the air for the final pirouette.
She was Dominika Alexandrovna.
She didn’t feel the asphalt under her feet or the aching of her out-of-shape, untrained, disproportionate body.
When the dance ended, she took her bow and received her standing ovation. She swelled with the perfect mixture of pride, humility, and appreciation. She soaked in the applause and cries of the crowd and stood before them, their perfect Black Swan. The world’s most perfect Black Swan ever. She took another bow and headed off stage. She waited precisely the appropriate amount of time before returning to the stage to take her perfect final bow.
As Dominika left the stage for the second time, Cheyenne reached down to her wrist and pushed the button on the side of her vHost.
Cheyenne looked down at her feet, which hurt and were raw and bleeding. She limped over to the yellow line and toward her bag. She sat, took off her socks, and readjusted her bloody bandages. She pulled another fresh pair of socks out of her bag. She put the new socks on and put the bloodied ones inside her bag. She adjusted her vHost to resume muting her body’s physical responses that her brain received from the Veil.
She pressed the button to resume her life as Dominika Alexandrovna. She followed the path back to the train station by instinctually navigating the line between being Cheyenne Modesto and Dominika Alexandrovna. She climbed the stairs and proceeded to the closest bench. Cheyenne sat on the bench with her eyes closed and lived as Dominika until she could hear the train approaching. Even then, she only kept her eyes open long enough to board the train. Cheyenne’s eyes remained closed as much as possible, so she wouldn’t miss anything that Dominika’s eyes had seen.
She greeted her adoring fans with an exemplary mixture of gratitude and confidence. She gave them the perfect smile and in return was given the most perfect, beautiful roses. She excused herself only at the most appropriate time and returned backstage where she placed the flowers in a pristine crystal vase. She bent over to smell the flowers with genuine love, and they smelled more succulent than any roses could ever hope to smell; there were no roses of comparable quality left in the world. She returned to the studio in the back of the theater and sat down to put on a fresh pair of slippers, so she could resume her ideally rigid schedule of practicing and perfecting her dance. Cheyenne quickly pressed a button on her vHost to stop the stream again. She would save that practice until the following day, when she could return to her private patch after work.
Cheyenne was alone on the train. She sat lifelessly quiet and motionless until the train arrived at her destination. She detrained and began her walk home. The street was empty and she walked in the middle of it, along a path that had been worn through the weeds. She arrived at her house, and as she fought her way through the thi
ck weeds that blocked the path to her front door, her vHost vibrated. She took her phone out of her bag and opened her email. The Department of Surveil approved her official name selection. Her employer would be informed that in two weeks, on her eighteenth birthday, her name selection of Dominika Alexandrovna would be effective. Surveil thanked her. Cheyenne dropped her phone in her bag and walked up the stairs to her front door, as void of expression and as lifeless as she’d been on the train.
“I thought this was broken?” Roy teased as he lifted Suren’s original platinum vCollar from the vandalized chest. The collar with the encrusted diamond initials. The one she used in order to Veil him that fateful night. The one she ripped off her head when she witnessed herself inside the Veil actually speak to him.
“I lied,” she whispered and took the collar from Roy.
The moment she had it in her hand, Suren noticed every diamond from the letter “J” had been removed. Someone pried out each diamond. Someone crudely carved into the metal where the diamonds originally were. Someone carved the initial, “H.” Suren groaned again—much louder that time—and showed Roy the defacement.
“Oh no. Oh God. What a bastard,” Roy gasped. He is such a bastard.
Suren nodded her head in agreement and prepared to cry. Oh my God, Roy. What did that bastard do?
Suren spun her vCollar around so she could view its touchscreen. She powered it up and used the controls to mute the signals responsible for the other person’s thoughts and emotions. She selected the portion of the stored neuroelectricity that represented the part of the Veil she wanted to experience. She tried to put on the collar but was too weak to lift it high enough while also pulling her head off the bed, so Roy helped.
Suren didn’t have to tell Roy what was in the Veil; he already knew. He distinctly remembered what point the two of them reached inside the Veil when Suren abruptly stopped its upload, so he knew what all remained of that Veil. Roy would be astonished if after all those years—over a quarter of a century—Suren’s collar still worked and the neuroelectricity inside remained intact.
Suren pushed the button on the side, and the collar beeped. Suren smiled at Roy as the silicone snaked the contour of her skull. She closed her eyes and rested on her pillow. Roy took one of Suren’s cold, dry hands and held it with both of his warm, loyal, pudgy paws.
He had such an advantage: most of his work could be done from home, and he was smarter than most people. So many people wasted their time because they were stupid; most people were going to miss out on so much. He developed as many automated systems as he could to ensure his job in the Basic Needs Division barely took up a third of the daily time that Surveil projected his position to require.
He still had a few years before his seniority advanced him to a position with a shorter daily time projection, so was forced had to make do with what he had. You could never have enough time; every Veil second mattered. More time meant more Veil: time was Veil.
His vChair was fully loaded and then some. Sure, he had the vitals. Who didn’t? Every vChair base model had those: heating and cooling, massage capabilities, food and beverage delivery systems, and basic lavatory components. Of course, he also had the more elite upgrades like custom leather, decked out handles and swivels, selectable firmness, and sexual stimulators. He didn’t stop there, though. He modded his vChair to go above and beyond. Time was Veil.
He attached three additional monitors to his chair. Each of them was for work, so he could occasionally survey the progress of his automated systems. That was strictly forbidden for Surveil employees—utilizing a vChair during the course of performing job functions—but it wasn’t as if anyone would come check up on him. Besides, he programmed a different vibration in his chair for every alert created by his automated systems, so he could stay apprised of the more crucial progress indicators. For times when he was really deep in a Veil. That way, he sounded up-to-speed should his supervisor ever buzz him. Not that his supervisor ever had a reason to buzz him, but he needed to be prepared.
Getting caught Veiling on the job was an automatic demotion to a position with a daily time projection five levels longer than your current position. Getting caught utilizing a vChair meant permanent demotion to the lowest position. If that happened to someone, they were stuck—for the rest of their lives—at the level with the absolutely longest daily time projection: four hours of work per day. He swore to Jin, there was no way in vHell he’d spend the rest of his life in the Basic Needs Division doing four hours of work every day.
He stocked up on chips, sodas, lotion, tissue, and cans of cream corn. He loved downing cream corn straight from the can while he Veiled. Juxtaposed with the sensations being simultaneously delivered through Veil, the metallic tang from the canned corn as it hit his tongue made his head tingle all over and sent shivers through his spine. He started his vChair, switched on all the monitors attached to it, and booted up his vHost. His Veil Queue was already loaded, and the next five vEssential Experience Sets scrolled up onto one of the monitors. The screen displayed a list of all the experience episodes contained in each of the five sets up next in his queue.
The Peyton Principle was continually scanning the network and vServers to detect any new, incoming experiences whose power and intensity outranked any of the vEssential Experiences. However, there were no ‘New vEssential Recommendations’ listed alongside his queue. He couldn’t remember the last time someone’s Veil Barometer caused them to outrank a vEssential Experience.
It had to have been ten years; it was probably more than that. The last one occurred totally by chance when that one girl whose name he didn’t remember just so happened to witness the explosion at that power plant, which killed over seven hundred people. Her vBarometer went off the charts and from what he could recall she outranked like the bottom five or six vEssential Experience Sets. The VeilTrackers went crazy. There hadn’t been an outranking that powerful for over fifty years. That was one lucky chick, he figured. Hell, that was only one experience; it wasn’t even a full set.
He scrolled down to the bottom of his vQueue to check the kind of progress he was making. The total number of vEssential Sets he queued would take him fifty-six years to Veil through. Considering the current life expectancy rates, he was in no hurry to keep adding more spaces in his queue. He set up his vQueue to add the next vEssential Set automatically—based on his personal filter preferences—every time he completed a set. Veilers could filter and sort sets in any way they wanted, and the top vEssential Sets inevitably fell under four or five different Veil Categories. That’s how they got to be the top ones. The more categories the experiences fell into, the more likely the experience episodes or experiences sets would outrank others.
In order, his category filtering preference was: Sex, Violence, Death, and Justice. He could sub-filter with genres like Orgy, Gore, Murder, and Execution but from his main filters alone, each of his top five queued vEssential Experience Sets contained all four of his filters. According to the synopsis, his next queued set was from the life of the infamous Alabaster Sneed, who was considered the last century’s most perfectly heinous serial killer.
The set consisted of fifty-five main vEssential Experience episodes. The main episodes contained firsthand experiences of Sneed’s rape, torture, and slaughter of: twenty-six women, five men, eighteen boys, and six girls. Those fifty-five incidents were interspersed with additional experience episodes of the Surveillors who eventually proved Sneed’s guilt. The final three episodes were of Sneed’s trial, his Veil Atonements, and then his execution. There was also an optional—and rather expensive—bonus experience episode whose synopsis sounded downright twisted and enticing enough to him.
The entire vEssential Experience Set would take him five days to complete. He thought that was going to be a damn good set. Corl Orin couldn’t wait. His supervisor better not choose to interrupt that one. Corl really couldn’t wait to get to the bonus episode. That episode sounded so sick and totally worth the time and cost
.
Within seconds, Jin’s hospital room crystallized in Suren’s mind. She was immediately struck by her vision inside the Veil. It was momentarily blinding. The eyesight was clearer and more detailed than her actual, aged eyes could manage. That made the Veil so much more powerful. She wasn’t prepared for the contrast, and she shuddered. Her age sank into her, and it was tough—but not impossible—to accept.
When her vision fully materialized into focus, she realized she was looking down at a pair of hands. Except, they weren’t the hands she was expecting: they weren’t Roy’s hands; they were her own hands. From their appearance and the wedding ring, Suren could instantly tell that those hands belonged to her. They were her hands. Inside the Veil, Suren was herself. She was Suren again.
She gasped and opened her eyes. Roy was intently staring at her face and gently squeezed her hand. Suren quickly shut her eyes again. When she did, she found she was still looking down upon her hands. Her eyes slowly made their way up and looked across Jin’s bed toward a figure seated on the opposite side. It was Ken. Ken!
Ken was there with them. He was looking down at Jin and crying. He held one of Jin’s hands, lifted it, and kissed it before he lowered it and let it go. Ken told Jin he loved him and then looked up and locked eyes with Suren. He didn’t say anything to her, but Ken held Suren’s gaze, nodded, and stood up. Suren’s heart raced, inside and outside of the Veil. It was Ken. He was there with her and her Jin.
Veil Page 61