Veil (59 page)

“Your … your first time? You’ve never—” he
stumbled over his words. “The Great Widow Tsay has never Veiled?”
That was almost too much for him to believe. Actually, it was too
much for him to believe, but he didn’t dare accuse her of
lying.

“Nope. Never. And I think this is a good one
to have as my first time.” She winked
.

“Wow.” Roy was stunned. His mouth hung
open.

“We’re ready.” Suren giggled at Ken. “At
least this time it will work,” she winked again and reached up to
touch the button, which would start the process.

As Suren went for the button, Ken shouted,
“Wait!” He lunged over and knocked the collar off of her.

Roy’s collar was tethered to Suren’s, so his
was yanked off as well.

“Ken!” she yelped and jumped from her seat.
She picked up Roy’s collar and handed it to him with an apology.
“I’m sorry about that.”

Ken knelt on the floor next to Suren’s
collar, picked it up
,
and shook it at
her.

“Jin’s … Jin’s memory…” He tried to catch his
breath. “It’s still in here. We forgot. We have to discharge it
first.”

Suren gasped and covered her mouth. They were
all silent. No one wanted to suggest what might’ve happened if Ken
hadn’t remembered.

Ken reach into his pocket and again pulled
out what looked to Roy like a keychain. He used it earlier to
re-enable Suren’s collar. Ken pressed a button and a key-like
device attached to a glowing blue cable popped out of it. Only four
of those things existed. Roy wanted to ask what it did but found
himself too shy to ask. After inserting the key into Suren’s
collar, Ken pushed a sequence of buttons on the small device, which
lit up with the same blue glow as the cable. The display on Suren’s
collar indicated the Witness it contained was discharged.

“Ok there ya go,” Ken handed it back to her.
“All safe now. ”

Suren tittered at how casual Ken sounded. She
grabbed her Veil from him and put it on.

“So…so,” Roy stuttered. “Suren’s Witness was
already inside there? From when she was at the memory store?”

“Yep,” Ken nodded.

“Then—then,” Roy struggled to ask, “how does
she have a Witness in her head now?”

“Oh,” Ken smiled. It was actually a pretty
good question. “Well, the Veil device provides someone with
artificial neuroelectricity that lasts until their Witness gets
returned to them. However, if their Witness isn’t returned, like
how Suren’s was kept stored in her vCollar, their brain generates
new neuroelectricity during that person’s next sleep cycle. So,
that Witness of Suren’s could’ve stayed inside her collar
forever—or until she was ready to upload it back onto herself. Make
sense?”

Roy pulled the corners of his mouth down and
nodded to indicate it made sense, although it didn’t really make a
lick of sense to him. Not one lick. Then again, nothing about Veil
made sense to him.

“So … ready?” Suren asked Roy.

“Ready ma’am,” he smiled.

Suren pushed the button on her collar and
began the process of uploading her Witness onto Roy, so she could
shadow him.

“You’re sure it’s set for realtime?” she
asked Ken not even an hour later.

“I’m sure. Surely sure.”

“Ok, here goes nothing.” Suren’s voice
slightly trembled as she reached up and pushed the button on her
Veil. When it beeped, she tensed and held her breath.

“Remember, don’t hold your breath,” Brock
reminded her.

She winked, nodded
,
and exhaled. She closed her eyes.

Waves of chills flowed through Suren’s body,
and she was instantly covered in goose bumps
.
The blackness of her closed eyes tunneled with
brilliant colors that slowly formed into focus. It wasn’t as clear
as her own vision, but it was dang close. Roy’s vision crystallized
in her mind, and suddenly she was looking at herself, through Roy’s
eyes, about forty minutes prior. It was like nothing she ever
experienced. It was nothing she could ever imagine or explain.

Seeing herself through Roy, she suddenly
understood. She understood the “Selfers”: the faction of Veilers
who became completely obsessed with seeing themselves through other
people’s eyes. She heard about them and about the lengths they
would go to in order to experience themselves through anyone and
everyone else. They went as far as arranging anonymous Veils with
groups of other Selfers, so they wouldn’t know exactly whose eyes
they’d see themselves through; they wouldn’t know who they were
shadowing, only that they were shadowing
someone
. By not
knowing who they were shadowing, the Selfer theory went, everyone
would act more naturally. Seeing herself sitting there, but through
Roy’s eyes … experiencing herself through the perception of Roy’s
mind, it was remarkable. She could certainly understand why the
Selfers would get so hooked.

Suren’s mind immediately went to Jin. What
did Jin see when he saw himself through her eyes that day? How did
he look to himself? If Jin lived—and had the New Veil World still
happened somehow—would they have been one of those couples she
heard about who Veiled with each other literally every day? Those
couples that became so entranced by how they saw each other,
completely blurring the line between where one began and where the
other ended.

Or, would they be one of those couples who
were eventually torn apart? Those couples who couldn’t bear to see
themselves through each other’s eyes; the ones who couldn’t stand
hearing what they really thought of each other. Definitely the
former, she knew. If Veil turned them into a Selfers couple, they
definitely would’ve been the former. She would have Veiled her Jin
every single day, and vice-versa. No doubt about it.

Suren pulled herself back; she forced herself
to stop thinking. Since that was her first time, they were prepared
with some tricks to get her used to how Veil worked. First, they
all sat quietly in the room, after her Witness was uploaded onto
Roy. They knew during Suren’s first few minutes inside the Veil
she’d be so distracted that her own mind would be racing, and she
wouldn’t immediately let herself be Roy. Years of practicing Veil
also taught people a very important tool: smell.

Veilers learned there was something about
smell. Something about it could help Veilers anchor into the Veil
experience rather than getting lost in their own thoughts, like how
Suren was lost in hers. Smell triggered something. It could bring
focus. So, right before Suren shadowed Roy, Ken lit some incense in
the office. Although the odor faded considerably from the room by
the time Suren’s Witness was uploaded back onto her, when she
reminded herself of it, she could suddenly smell it precisely as
Roy smelled it, those forty minutes ago.

She could smell it that strongly; she could
smell it through Roy, and the smell helped her sink into Roy and
anchor herself into Roy’s experience. It helped Suren become Roy,
by smelling what Roy smelled, so clearly and strongly. There was
another trick Veilers used in those situations: taste. Sometimes
the person being shadowed would suck on a mint or Red Hot.
Something for the Veiler to focus on later. In Suren’s case, the
smell of the incense worked wonders.

“Roy,” she heard herself tell him inside the
Veil, “close your eyes.”

She usually absolutely
,
positively hated the sound of her own voice but,
through Roy’s ears, she sounded beautiful. She sounded majestic. In
the room, as everyone watched, Suren gasped and covered her mouth
when she heard her voice through Roy. She sounded like royalty. The
feeling her voice gave Roy was not unlike the impression she got
whenever she heard someone with a British accent. It was
remarkable.

As Roy closed his eyes inside the Veil,
everything went dark.

“Ok Roy, good,” she continued earlier as she
read from a piece of paper that contained the questions and
instructions Ken prepared. “Now I want you to remember yourself
sitting at your security station at the hospital.”

Roy’s mind was filled with a hazy image of
what she immediately recognized as the hospital. It was quite
blurry and had she not known what the hospital looked like, she
wouldn’t have recognized what she was supposed to be seeing.

Suren heard herself continue. “Sitting in
front of you is a can of soda. Diet Pepsi, your favorite.” Giving
people something specific to focus on, especially when accessing a
general memory rather than a particular one, helped people’s brains
manifest a sharper image from their memory banks, Ken
explained.

Inside the Veil, Roy kept his eyes closed and
followed her instructions. Suren experienced as Roy’s mind very
clearly remembered sitting at his station in the hospital. She
could see his memory. Although a little hazier than the field of
vision she saw through Roy’s eyes when they were open, she could
still witness his memory rather clearly
.
Suren could see what Roy remembered and saw the image materialize
in his mind. She suddenly understood Vaulting; she could definitely
understand what Mariano, the memory storeowner, meant when he said
that only second-generation memories could be sold to someone.

If Roy’s memory were amplified through the
Vaulting process, Suren could see how she could serve as a Vault
for the memory and then pass it onto a customer if they shadowed
her. However, there was no way the customer could then turn around
and pass it on to yet another person. The memory was barely enough
for Suren to hold on to. Just enough, but barely.

She focused on the incense again and
instinctually took a deep breath through her nose. Although she
experienced the odor in Roy’s mind, it didn’t matter; she still
tried to breathe it in through her nose. Regardless, she smelled
the incense. She smelled it quite strongly.

“Now,” Roy heard her continue earlier, “I
want you to remember, from where you’re sitting at your station, a
time you saw Jin Tsay.”

The field of vision in Roy’s mind shifted to
the right, toward the hospital entrance, and Suren watched his
memory paint a scene in his mind. It was a generic scene, but
formed from the sum of all Roy’s memories. Hazy at first but
gradually focusing, she witnessed the hospital doors slide open. A
figure appeared. Suren knew immediately it was Jin, and not because
she expected it to be Jin but because she knew her Jin on sight.
She knew her Jin from miles away. Suren witnessed Jin walk through
the hospital door. Jin turned his head and looked directly at
Roy.

Suren’s eyes flew open and she gasped. Ken
anxiously waited for that moment. He knew it was going to be a
shock for her
,
but there was no way he
could prepare her for it. Although it was merely a memory of Jin,
it was someone else’s memory of him so, to Suren, it was going to
be new. Her mind was going to perceive it as a new experience. It
wasn’t going to feel like seeing Jin in a video; it was going to
feel like actually seeing Jin. Actually seeing him alive and well.
Experiencing him. Ken predicted it would initially shock and hurt
her.

Suren stood with such force it threw her
chair tumbling backwards. Her eyes were still open.

“Suren. Suren. Listen to my voice, Suren,”
Ken instructed.

She stood there, afraid to close her
eyes.

“Suren, if you don’t relax, you’re going to
miss him. Roy’s memory hasn’t stopped. It’s still being uploaded
onto you. If you don’t close your eyes and focus, you’re going to
miss Jin. Keep your eyes closed.”

She immediately shut her eyes and saw Ken was
right
.
Jin was already passing through the
corner of Roy’s field of vision in the memory, headed toward the
elevator as he did every morning.

“No!” Suren called out to Jin, although she
knew it was pointless. Despite what her brain knew, her thoughts
couldn’t override her instinct, and her instinct was to call out to
her Jin.

“Shhh,” Ken whispered as he bent down to pick
up the chair behind her. “Keep your eyes closed, Suren, it’s
important.” When the chair was back in position, he gently grabbed
her shoulders and pulled her backwards a little to help her sit,
while whispering again, “Keep your eyes closed.”

“Roy,” she heard herself address him forty
minutes prior, “I want you to recall another time you saw Jin.
Wearing something different this time. Another time you saw him
from your station.”

Ken expected Suren’s reaction to seeing Jin
inside the Veil for the first time, so he knew they would need to
give it a second go-round. He knew the first reaction would be of
shock. He predicted Suren’s brain would struggle to process the new
experience of her dead husband. Considering her brain also
experienced the emotional trauma of her husband’s death, he
realized her brain would hiccup at the impossibility of it. Ken
knew all that going into the Veil, so he predicted Suren would need
another chance at it. Unfortunately, he also predicted what the
next Jin sighting would likely do to her
.