Veil (19 page)

“Ok,” Hunter replied. He hoped it really was
Schaffer’s last goddamn question, and not the beginning of an
endless string. He spent entire days in the lab answering questions
from Schaffer and Pollock.

“Why don’t the electrical currents mix? Like,
why don’t they combine or join or whatever? I would think
electricity would stream together if the currents got close to each
other.”

“Well, we’re talking about a neural network
here; we’re not talking about Proton Packs whose streams can’t
cross each other or something like that. The Witness is a closed
network. The Witness is self-insulated, that’s really the only way
I know how to put it. I can barely explain it to myself,” Hunter
finished in an attempt to indicate he was running out of
answers.

“Frak, this shit is complicated. It makes
sense after I think about it but, damn, it’s complicated as hell.
It makes me feel friggen stupid. Fucking stupid, I mean.”

“I know right. He must’ve been fucking
brilliant,” Hunter fished.

“Who?”

“The guy who created it, ummm … I can’t
remember his name.” And then to throw him off, since he already
knew Schaffer never worked with the guy, “It must’ve been crazy to
work with him. Jesus.”

“Oh, Dr. Jin Tsay, yeah. I mean, no, we never
worked with him, they just handed us the project. The General made
us scrub the guy’s name from the whole thing. But yeah, we were
definitely lucky. Veil is literally all I can think about since
that day.”

“Gensay … that’s right.”

Having finally received the final bit of
information he set out to get, Hunter jumped off the bed, turned
toward Schaffer and asked, “So, you hungry or you wanna get off
again real quick?

T
hey didn’t speak
about it all day, which seemed odd. He figured neither of them
wanted to be the first to bring it up. That made sense. It couldn’t
have been comfortable. However, there was no reason for anyone to
be embarrassed. Or feel uneasy. Not if they were going to have to
work together so closely. Still, he didn’t want to bring it up.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to.

“I want to thank you.”

“Thank me? What do you mean?” he asked and
looked up from a set of papers. The same set of papers he
repeatedly reviewed for at least an hour. Maybe longer. Maybe he
did it to avoid interaction. To avoid talking.

“Thank you for what you did. How you
explained the Veil. What you showed me.”

“Oh,” he started. He suddenly realized what
they were talking about. Almost an entire day passed, without any
mention of it, so he wasn’t sure if it was too touchy, too soon.
Too awkward. “Of course. Of course. I’m still trying to understand
it all myself, to be honest. I mean, I have everything I need. But,
I can’t wrap my head around it all.”

“Me either,” she sighed and placed a cup of
tea in front of him. She was careful not to place it on the papers.
She sat down in a chair next to him and talked while she gazed out
a window across the table. “Now that I think about it, a few weeks
before he—before Jin disappeared, I did notice he was acting
differently. He seemed more loving. You know, he was paying more
attention to me, being more affectionate. At first, I was worried.
The stupid kind of worry a wife gets when her husband’s behavior
changes,” she paused and took a sip of tea. “But I knew Jin, so I
figured he felt guilty. He worried about me. Too much time with him
away at the lab, not enough attention for me. An empty house with
only me in it.” She paused again, not to take a drink but not on
the verge of tears, either. “He wanted me to be happy. He worried
about how happy I was. So, I figured that’s all it had been. I
should have paid more attention. I had him right there. All that
love, right there. And what did I do?” she stopped. She didn’t
continue. Her question was rhetorical; he knew she already answered
it to herself. That was probably all she did that day, over and
over.

“You did what everyone does. You were just
going on with your day-to-day life. You didn’t know what happened.
You didn’t know what he experienced and how deeply it must’ve
affected him. Changed him. How could you have known? You didn’t do
anything wrong. You did what everyone does.”

“Yeah…” she sighed, uncertain
.

“And besides, Suren,” he said her name so
she’d look at him, “you’d already given him something. He was
acting like that toward you precisely because of what you gave him.
What he experienced through you. So don’t sit there and tell me
that you didn’t give him enough. You gave him life. First when he
met you, then when you married him and then once again, on the day
he Veiled you. That’s when he knew what your love for him meant to
you. You gave him more than any wife has ever been able to give her
husband.”

A single tear streamed down her cheek, and
she stared out the window again.

It wasn’t Ken’s goal to make her relive all
that
,
so he changed it up and went for the
extreme. “Fuck stupid ass children, I’d take what you gave him over
having kids any day. Jin died a happy man. A happy man in love who
felt loved in return. Who needs kids when you’ve got that?”

Suren cackled. Her expression lightened and
she took another drink of tea. A little more that time
,
since it cooled some.

“I never noticed but my memory from around
that time is so hazy. I don’t understand. Not simply that day, but
around that whole time.”

“That’s one thing that was bugging me.” Ken
perked up and moved some papers around. He dug one of Jin’s
notebooks from underneath the stack and continued. “Because there
was nothing about memory alteration within the official Veil
documents, so I read through a bunch of his notebooks and there was
a lot of ideas in them that weren’t in any of the Veil files.”

“Jin was always writing in those things,”
Suren chuckled. “It used to drive me crazy. He’d pull one out no
matter where we were.”

“Trust me, I know. Before he met you, he’d
pull them out at a bar, when I was trying to get us laid.”

“Oh, Ken!” Suren laughed and slapped at his
arm.

“Oh come on, can you see Jin leaving a bar
with a woman? Sleeping with her? A woman he just met? You know it
never happened. Not once.”

“Not for lack of you trying to get him to
though, I’m sure.” She put her hand on his shoulder and used it as
support to stand up. She headed for the kitchen. “And I’m sure you
left plenty of bars with plenty of girls back then. And a few boys,
no doubt.”

“Hey now!” He darted his head around to see
if she was joking, but her back was to him.

“I’ve heard stories, too. Kinky Ken they
called you.” She kept at him. “Kinky Ken getting kinky with men,”
she taunted.

“Now wait a minute, what does that mean?” He
rose and turned toward the kitchen. He became sincerely riled
rather quickly. “I never once in my life. With a man?
Really—never!”

In the kitchen, Suren set down the cup of tea
and buckled over. She covered her mouth, put her other hand on her
stomach
,
and fought back a laugh.

“Oh that’s not funny!” he barked.

By the time Suren turned around she was in
full laughter.

“Trying to get Jin laid, I should poke you in
the eye,” she pointed at him, then grabbed a rag and snapped it at
him playfully. He snatched the rag, used it to pull her to him, and
they hugged innocently.

“You were his best friend, Ken.”

He kissed the top of her head, held her by
her cheeks and looked her in the eyes.

“You were the only woman Jin ever loved.”

She hugged him again. She turned her head to
the side and rested it on his chest. She didn’t know how her heart
would ever stop bleeding over the loss of her Jin.

After a few moments, Ken grabbed Suren by the
shoulders, pushed her back gently, looked in her eyes and asked,
“Seriously though, did they really call me Kinky Ken?”

Suren escaped his grasp and danced around the
kitchen. She laughed to the point of tears, while she sang over and
over, “Kinky Ken, Kinky Ken, Kinky Ken…”

She eventually kicked him out of the kitchen
so she could prepare dinner. He went back to the table and sorted
through more of Jin’s notebooks and papers. When Suren brought out
plates of food, Ken pushed aside the documents to make room for
their dinner that, to a bachelor like him, smelled richer and more
savory than any food any restaurant ever served. He knew Jin
realized what a lucky man he was but times like that made Ken
wonder if Jin ever truly realized precisely
how
lucky he
was. Ken got up and went to the kitchen to grab utensils.

“So what I was saying,” he started up again,
“before I was so rudely interrupted by your sick humor, was that
there’s a lot of information in Jin’s notebooks. A lot. I’ve been
going through as much of it as I can, trying to incorporate what
all is there into the Veil files where it fits. He had a lot of
ideas and theories he wasn’t able to test out, some of it that I
think could prove useful. But anyway,” he went on as he carried the
utensils to the table, “some of the stuff was about memory. How to
use the Veil process itself to create markers in a subject’s brain
and then later target all the memories between those markers with
an amnesia-inducing chemical. All you’d have to do is give someone
a shot or a pill and they’d forget whatever occurred between those
two markers. It wasn’t included in the Veil stuff because it wasn’t
relevant to the military. It was pretty clear that’s what he used
to … well, you know.”

“Veil me.”

“Yes,” Ken tried to respond sensitively.
“What he used to Veil you without putting you in harm’s way.”

“Well that’s one way to put it,” she
quipped.

“Hey, I’m trying here.”

“I know, I know. So what’s it mean?”

“Honestly I don’t know right now, but I’m
still going through a lot of it. I hope to get everything compiled
into something I can use myself within a few days. The next step
would be to find a lab where I can get started on the real work. I
can’t use Jin’s old lab, obviously.”

“Obviously,” she agreed and took a bite of
food
.

“There were other notes, too, and one
development Jin seems to have intentionally left out of the
official Veil files. But, I could be reading into it, you
know?”

Suren nodded while she finished chewing and
then answered him after she swallowed and took a sip of water.

“Jin wasn’t an exceptionally cunning man. He
didn’t think like that,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, true. Secretive, sure. But, no
manipulative forethought,” he agreed.

“Then again, I never thought he would’ve … to
me,” she backtracked and looked at her plate while she toyed with
her food.

“Totally different. Totally.”

Suren shrugged, got up from the table and
went to the kitchen.

“Anyway, what was it?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, well, it was how he could
accomplish your Veil without any outside assistance. Because, you
know, he’d need to be on life-support at that point. Once his
neuroelectricity was removed and transferred to you.”

Suren stopped. She didn’t turn her body but
twisted her head and looked back at Ken.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah—I didn’t think of that,” she
frowned. She thought about it for a moment and then resumed what
she was doing.

“Yup, it was gnawing at me. And in Jin’s
notebooks he describes a method that seamlessly and artificially
replaces all the neuroelectricity in the person doing the
shadowing. It allows them to function while their Witness is
performing a Veil. Not merely enough to keep them alive, you know?
Enough for them to operate, like nothing had changed. When their
Witness gets uploaded back onto their brain the artificial
neuroelectricity is discharged as the original neuroelectricity
gets restored.”

“So Jin was awake when I left the lab?” she
asked and returned with two wine glasses and a bottle of red
wine.

“Yup, and he was awake when you came back,”
Ken answered. He stood and took the wine bottle and corkscrew out
of Suren’s hand. She sat down, put the wine glasses on the
table
,
and watched him uncork the bottle
and pour them both a glass. She remembered how Jin was always the
one who poured the wine, too. She wondered if pouring wine was
something men assumed they were supposed to do, because they were
men
.
Like carving the turkey.

“Why would he leave that out? That seems like
a good thing,” she wondered.

“Can’t figure it out for the life of me,” Ken
replied and sat down. He raised his glass and tilted it toward
Suren in mock-cheers. She returned the gesture and they took a
drink before Ken continued. “All I can figure is for the military,
for spying, there was no reason they would need that ummm … feature
in Veil.”