Veil (10 page)

The research was microscopically detailed and
thorough, which was typical of Jin
.
In no
more than eight hours
,
Ken fully grasped
the principles and potential of Veil. He understood how Jin went
from the knowledge that The Witness retained information, to the
discovery of how The Witness could be transferred—it could be
downloaded and uploaded—between brains, to the epiphany that one
brain’s Witness could shadow another brain and store all the
signals it obtained.

Jin’s ultimate discovery was that a brain
could replicate the experience of another brain by shadowing it
using The Witness.
That
was the absolute game changer.
That
was the epiphany of Veil: the shadowing. It didn’t take
long for Ken to predict how the ability for one person to shadow
another person could change everything. Since he and Suren
conspired to give Veil to the world, Ken quickly realized it
would
change everything.

Ken also recognized what the wolves wanted
with Veil. It wasn’t hard to see at all. He could only imagine the
state secrets one could easily uncover if Veil was used against
someone without their knowledge. Or if it was used during
interrogation. Forget about a truth serum or waterboarding, there
was no need. With Veil, what the wolves had instead was full mind
access: backstage VIP passes to a person's thoughts, feelings, and
memories—all of it.

However, in terms of memories, they only had
access if the subject recalled those specific memories while they
were being shadowed, which was one of the several principles
outlined by Jin. Some principles were based in practice, but most
were purely speculative at that stage, albeit completely logical
speculation
.
It was Jin after all. But,
because Jin was only able to conduct one test run of Veil before he
was killed, most of his principles remained speculation. Still,
Jin’s principle that the person doing the shadowing would only have
access to memories the subject actively recalled
during
the
Veil process made perfect sense to Ken.

The person doing the shadowing would have no
physical control over the subject; they would merely act as a
witness to the experiences of the subject. To the shadower, it
would be like watching a movie, except it would be a full-body,
full-person experience. Still, the experience would be limited to
events that occurred only during the Veil, during the shadowing.
There would be no access by The Witness to anything the subject
experienced at any other time; access was limited to experiences
that occurred during the time in which The Witness was shadowing
the subject.

That access included memories.

Although a mind can re-experience an event
through recollection, otherwise known as a “memory,” Jin figured
the only way The Witness would have access to a memory would be if
someone or something brought it up during the Veil. Like a
flashback or a flash-forward in a movie. The Witness only had
access to the immediate thoughts, feelings, emotions,
sensations
,
and perceptions that took
place during the Veil—which included memories.

Ken realized The Witness couldn't control the
person, nor could it actively scan the subject's brain for every
single bit of information it contained, as if the brain were a
computer hard drive. That wasn't how The Witness or how Veil
worked. Heck, that wasn't even how the brain worked. Ken tried to
scan his own brain for every bit of information and all the
memories he possessed. After about five seconds, he laughed at
himself.

There were some rules as well, most of which
Jin hypothesized but didn’t have the chance to test. There was one
about languages. Jin believed if someone shadowed a subject who
spoke a language the shadower couldn't understand, a language
foreign to the shadower, then the overall Veil experience would be
limited. Upon uploading The Witness back onto its owner’s brain,
the mind of the shadower wouldn't be able to absorb and process any
of the subject's thoughts, as they would be in a completely
incomprehensible language
.

They didn’t live inside Star Trek, Ken joked
with Suren, and so the brain didn’t contain some built-in universal
translator. Jin hypothesized that
,
in a
Veil involving a foreign language, the shadower would be limited to
only experiencing what the subject sensed and felt, without
understanding what the subject was thinking. Unlike a movie, Veil
couldn’t be dubbed or include subtitles. Suren didn’t get the Star
Trek reference and gave Ken that blank Jin-esque stare, which
pretty much creeped Ken the heck out when she gave it to him,
because it was so much like Jin’s. However, she did get the
“subtitle” reference and nodded.

The files contained dozens of rules that Jin
speculated. Ken could picture Jin's excitement in mapping out each
one and developing the ways in which he would come to test
them
,
until each was proven or refuted. If
one were proven, Ken knew Jin would be sure to explain it in full
detail; that was simply how Jin worked. Heck, even if Jin disproved
a theory, he would still take the time to explain his process in
full detail.

Ken couldn’t imagine Jin wasting precious lab
time postulating all those rules and principles, especially because
Jin was constricted by the military’s purposes for Veil. Instead,
he pictured Jin, in his spare time at home or while at the grocery
store or while riding the Metro, pondering those things and then
furiously scribbling them down as soon as he completely fleshed out
a rule. Jin always carried a small notebook with him for such
epiphanies; he always had a place to write down his random thoughts
and ideas. Ken would’ve loved to get his hands on some of those and
made a mental note to ask Suren if she knew where Jin kept
them.

In addition to the rules Jin proposed were
some guiding principles. Many of them answered the questions
already starting to form in Ken as his mind began to accept the
nature and implications of Veil. One of the first principles
addressed the main question that palpably hung in the air up until
the day Ken left the project:
How can one access and extract the
information and experience that’s produced when the
neuroelectricity of The Witness stimulates the brain?

Jin eventually deduced that only a human
brain could use the vibrations of The Witness to access, extract
and, most importantly, transform the information into experience.
According to Jin, only a brain could understand and mirror another
brain. Ken was inclined to agree
.
The
complicated structure of the human brain, and the specific form of
consciousness it produced, was unlike any structure imaginable. So,
it made sense to Ken that only a brain could access a brain.

There was a caveat from Jin that stated
enormous technological advances over time may one day allow
artificial access to the information, but he suggested current
technological trends wouldn’t lead to it any time soon. Jin also
suggested the technology in question would have to be more advanced
than the human brain
,
as it would be
obligated to access, extract, interpret, and communicate data in a
way the human brain itself could not. In that sense, so-called
artificial intelligence would actually have to be more
intelligent—more conscious, more aware—than humans themselves. At
least, in order to accomplish what was possible through Veil.

Jin's principles elaborated on how the
information produced by The Witness was too complex and reliant on
simultaneous, interconnected functions of the brain for it to be
interpreted by anything but another brain. One couldn’t simply
single out an aspect of the human experience, like a solitary
thought or feeling, and expect to locate and extract it from the
brain; it took every other part and function of the brain working
together through The Witness to form awareness and experience in
the first place. The brain proved to be an all-or-nothing
organ.

As he read through the notes, Ken only had to
stop a few times in order to process Jin’s ideas. That was one of
those times: a time when hard and soft sciences had to respect each
other and work together in Ken’s mind. Immediately before Ken left
the project, he and Jin made the discovery of how The Witness
retained its information-producing electrical vibrations for a
period of time, like ripples in water. Once the discovery was made,
Jin petitioned the government for funding. So, unlike Jin, Ken
didn’t have the time or leisure to comprehend what all of it meant.
Ken was playing catch-up to Jin’s years of work. Sadly, absorbing
his dead friend’s research made Ken feel closer to Jin than he had
in years.

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.”