Veil (99 page)

As a last resort, after going back down to
the minimum three and a half hours a day at work, Cheyenne started
wasting time by reading the synopses provided for all the various
lives stored on the vServers. There were over twenty-five thousand
lives available to stream to someone’s vHost—or their vPort if they
cabled directly into the network, which was rare. Since every vLife
was accompanied by an outline of the original owner’s history from
beginning to end, it at least provided Cheyenne with something to
do. She started with categories she closely identified with and
went outward from there. She even ended up reading about some of
the lives she heard her coworkers describe as they lived them out.
Cheyenne found it unsettling to know what her coworkers would be
experiencing in the future, so when she realized she was reading a
coworker’s life, she would immediately stop.

Cheyenne knew exactly what it meant when the
call came and her doctor stated at the outset that she didn’t need
to bother coming into his office. Her attention to Dr. Webster’s
words waned as she started mourning the life of Dominika, which was
lost to her forever. She barely heard him say words like
“unexplainable” and “permanent” and “phenomenon” and “incurable.”
However, her attention immediately snapped back as her ears
detected the words “virus” and “plague.”

“Huh?” she mumbled. “What did you just
say?”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Webster repeated. “They said
there is a concern that this could be a virus. There have been
reports of a few cases from around the New Veil World, and they’ve
decided they must intervene in order to avoid any kind of plague.
They must quarantine the phenomenon in case it is contagious. They
informed your employer, and you are not to return to work. Surveil
will ensure your basic needs are met. They said you are to remain
at home, and representatives from Surveil will be arriving there as
soon as possible in order to deal with this situation. If you ask
me, they are ill equipped to handle this sort of thing, so it will
take some time, but they assured me you would be properly handled
and taken care of. They said you would receive the best care at a
very remote location. They also told me to inform you that, despite
the current state of affairs, you should be happy. Surveil decided
to push your name choice through. Immediately.”

A little over three weeks later, four
representatives from Surveil trampled tall weeds, which grew over
the sidewalk that led up to a one Dominika Alexandrovna’s front
door. When they arrived at the bottom of the stairs to her front
door, they stopped and tossed a large plastic bag onto the porch.
It landed right in front of Dominika’s door. Using a bullhorn, a
Surveil representative announced that Dominika Alexandrovna was to
step outside, open the plastic bag, and put on the hazmat suit it
contained. Upon doing that, the representative announced, she would
be provided further instruction.

Five minutes later, Dominika hadn’t presented
herself to Surveil as instructed. Taking a more stern and
commanding tone, another representative used the bullhorn to repeat
their orders. Five minutes after that, the bullhorn was used to
inform Dominika Alexandrovna that because she had not come out of
the house, Surveil was going to be entering by force, and she was
to keep a distance of ten feet from them.

Once inside Dominika’s home, Surveil finally
made contact with the infected. She was wearing what appeared to be
a pinkish ballerina’s tutu, fashioned from scraps of plastic trash
bags and paper. On top, she wore a pink fitted shirt that appeared
to be sized for a young girl, as it was much too tight for her. On
her feet, she wore a fresh pair of white socks that she tried to
dye pink, or at least it seemed she attempted to do so. She also
attached tiny ribbons to those pitiful excuses for ballerina
slippers. She managed to install a swivel bolt into the rafters in
the ceiling in her living room. Tied to that bolt was a short rope
that Dominika used to hang herself.

Dominika Alexandrovna hung from the ceiling
by her neck, as Surveil representatives wearing riot gear stood in
the doorway and stared at her corpse.

Had they arrived sixteen hours earlier, her
lifeless body would have still been spinning—in mock pirouette.

H
e wouldn’t allow
himself to believe it at first. To believe it would be to admit way
too much. He knew what happened to the Unveiled, or at least he
heard rumors of what happened to them. Actually, he didn’t hear
what happened to them, he only heard they disappeared. They simply
vanished. Whatever happened to them, and however long they remained
alive, the Unveiled lived in vHell: life without Veil. There was no
way he was going to believe he was one of
them
. One of the
supposed 2%. (A number he knew was way exaggerated.) But anyway, he
sure as shit wasn’t one of those unlucky losers.

If there was one thing Corl Vaughn Orin knew,
it was systems. Not only computer systems but systems in general.
Due to the increasing and persistent rumors of the Unveiled and how
they mysteriously disappeared, a very small but rapidly growing
number of people suddenly became reluctant to see a doctor for any
reason, even basic vHost problems. Although vPort malfunctions were
rare, vHost issues were much more common.

Fear alone of being diagnosed as Unveiled
kept more and more folks from going to the doctor, and it fostered
an underground market of vParts so people could attempt to diagnose
and fix problems themselves. That way if, Jin forbid, they did end
up being one of the Unveiled, their doctor wouldn’t discover it and
therefore, wouldn’t be forced to report them to Surveil. No doctor
would be willing to risk his or her own Right To Veil in order to
protect an Unveiled. Heck no.

Corl tracked down a used, black market vPort
and a vHost. While there was no way anyone could completely replace
a port on their own, Corl figured he could at least start with his
host and troubleshoot his way from there. Without giving a reason,
Surveil reinstated the Veil security protocols so every vHost was
given a Veil Host Address; each had to be registered and linked to
a specific vPort and VSN. That would be tricky to work around, but
not impossible.

Despite Surveil’s reticence, everyone knew
the protocols were reinstated due to Unveiling. However, no one
knew exactly how the security protocols were being used. Corl
suspected they were tracking VHA and VSN numbers to detect if
someone stopped using them, which implied they either died or were
Unveiled. If that were the case, he would have to hack into the
replacement vHost and apply his VHA number to it as soon as
possible. Because hosts weren’t known to be as permanent and
enduring as their port counterparts, they were somewhat easier to
hack into, given the right knowledge. Corl figured he possessed the
right knowledge.

Unveiling was seen as a fate worse than
death. Unveiling was a loss of one’s life without actually dying.
To be Unveiled was to be left but a shadow of a person: an empty
shell without any connection to real life or the real world.
Without Veil, one was reduced to going through the motions of
living without any of the actual life experiences Veil provided. In
short, Corl figured, they were merely
there
; they were
simply
basic
needs
. Without Veil, the Unveiled
floundered away in vHell.

No one could explain Unveiling, and that was
precisely the problem. Although Surveil wouldn’t admit Unveiling
existed, the rumors spread and consensus was Surveil believed
Unveiling was due to some contagion. Unveiling, the rumor went, was
a product of some inexplicable virus in the brain. The process of
being Unveiled resulted from infected structures in the brain
somehow being altered. They weren’t quite sure how it started or
how it spread. They had no idea how to stop it, and since they
weren’t sure if it was contagious or genetic, they had no choice
but to quarantine any Unveiled and their family. What happened to
those quarantined Unveiled remained a mystery. They simply
vanished. Corl was not going to vanish. vHell no. Fuck a bunch of
that.

People doubted Surveil would soon—if
ever—find a cure for the Unveiled or to prevent Unveiling.
Progression of science and technology had all but ground to a halt
well over a century prior. It left scientists and doctors barely
able to make use of the developments that had already taken place
up until then. Anything not required to meet the basic needs of the
people or help sustain Veil and all its components was lost so many
years ago that those things ceased to matter.

When Unveiling reared its ugly head, there
became quite the scramble to figure out how to address the problem.
Actually, the scramble had more to do with determining who should
be tasked with the undertaking. After all, working on a cure for
Unveiling would cut into someone’s Veil time. It would cut their
life short. Those possibly intelligent enough to cure Unveiling
were also those intelligent enough to avoid being tasked with it.
Corl figured a cure would only truly be sought when Unveiling began
to infect and affect those in Surveil and/or those who had the
skills or knowledge to research it.

The replacement vHost wasn’t Corl’s cure. He
hadn’t been holding his breath, because he knew he wasn’t that
lucky. He knew if anything, it was going to be his vPort. He just
knew it. Luckily, Corl figured, he also knew where to go to address
such a problem. He knew where the ultra-paranoid went when the
ultra-paranoid experienced a Veil malfunction.

A trip to a small colony outside of the
Ancient District would severely cut into his Veil time, but he
supposed it didn’t matter much since he couldn’t Veil anyway. He
figured lost Veil time was better than no Veil time at all.
Although trains still ran and provided intercity travel, such
travel was practically unheard of and was unnecessary. There was
simply no reason for people to travel; it was an outdated artifact
of PreVeil life. Corl wondered how much life PreVeil people wasted
just by traveling. Then again, he figured, what kind of life could
they have had anyway if they were PreVeil? He supposed time hadn’t
mattered much to them. Corl couldn’t imagine time not mattering to
someone.

Getting from a city to an outskirt colony
proved to be much more challenging than intercity travel, not to
mention riskier when one considered the wildlife threat. He would
take the train to the Ancient District, which would take about a
day. He’d walk to the colony, which would take about two days.
Along with his basic needs and his replacement vPort, Corl packed
what he hoped would be twice enough provisions for the trip. He
paused for a moment as he packed the port and hoped the problem
wasn’t with his silicone membrane. He shuddered at the thought of
having the silicone replaced by some backwoods hack from the colony
on the outskirts of the Ancient District. Having his scalp peeled
back and then reattached by some Unveiled vagrant—who he pictured
as skinny and living in vHell with clean hair and nice teeth and
plenty of time on their hands—was not how Corl hoped his trip would
end.

He planned to leave in the morning. He could
possibly return in six or seven days and was pretty sure he could
make up that Veil time. That was, if he hadn’t already compensated
for it through the automated systems he built for work. He had to
sit down and do the math on that one. He was too nervous to do it
yet. He’d wait until he got back from the trip and could resume
life.

As he lay in bed, Corl stared up at the
ceiling and hoped he’d fall asleep out of sheer boredom. His mind
wandered back to that last vEssential Experience Set he finished.
It was the one about sick ol’ Alabaster Sneed. Corl lived the set
all the way through to the bonus episode, which he also luckily
finished living through. It was by far his favorite, although when
he lived through it again, he’d probably skip the stupid, sappy,
happy ending.

The bonus episode consisted of incidents when
Sneed repeatedly violated a stray mutt he called Shim-Shim, which
he dressed up like a human. During his trial, Alabaster claimed he
dressed Shimmy up in that manner because he felt too guilty raping
a dog. And because Shimmy seemed really nice. Coincidentally,
Shim-Shim was Sneed’s downfall.

During one of the traumatic sessions, having
escaped Sneed’s lecherous clutches, Shimmy made a break for it. He
bolted through a screen in the backdoor of Sneed’s house and ran
down the street. Without considering his current state, Sneed
chased after damn disobedient Shim-Shim. Shocked and confused by
the sight of a naked man chasing a clothed dog, a patrolling
Surveillor intervened. It didn’t take long for the patrolman to
detect something was not quite right about the man, and that was
the end of Alabaster Sneed’s sick spree.