Veil (20 page)

“So he wouldn’t have been working on it in
the lab.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Same with the memory
manipulation. Which is why those things are only in his
notebooks.”

“Well crap,” she laughed. “I think that
deserves another drink of wine.” They took large sips and smiled at
each other. “So are you going to include all the extra features
from his notebooks?” Suren asked. Hearing herself say that caused
her to laugh again before she added, “Listen to me, it sounds like
we’re talking about buying a car.”

Ken laughed back and drank more wine. “Right.
I don’t think ‘feature’ is the best word, either. It sounded good
at the time. But to answer the question, yes, I’m going to try to
include as much of the total sum of Jin’s theories as I can. But,”
he emphasized and raised his fork, “only if I can do it without
losing too much time in the process.”

“Losing too much time?”

“Well lady,” he explained as the wine began
to loosen them both, “we don’t know how far the military has come
with whatever they got their hands on in Jin’s lab. It’s safe to
say we know what they intend to do with it. However, we don’t know
how far they’ve gotten with it.”

“Does that matter?”

“Oh, no. But I’d like to … how’d you put it …
ummm … share it with the world. Before they get a chance to use it
against someone. That’d probably really piss them off royally.”

No matter how much they joked or played
around since Ken’s arrival, nothing made Suren smile like that did.
That, and the wine.

With the combined research, theory and
methodology of Veil
,
plus the periphery
studies kept tucked away in the notebooks, Ken soon discovered
there was little Jin didn’t map out concerning the nature of the
brain. All Ken needed to do was compile everything into one
logical, useable archive that could guide the development of the
technology and all the ways it could be implemented. It was quite a
feat and essentially the equivalent of a lifelong academic quest.
The scope of Jin’s work included: postulating and transcribing an
entire philosophy; producing schematics for a piece of technology
capable of bringing that philosophy to life; writing a full
textbook about how the philosophy and technology intersected; and
then developing a manual detailing how to program and operate the
technology correctly.

Luckily for Ken, his old partner completed
most of the work. All Ken did was separate it into categories, beef
it up with missing parts from Jin’s notebooks and Ken’s own
knowledge of the field, and organize it in a way that would allow
Ken to access it efficiently. Jin and Ken had very different ways
of going about things. While both were valid, without Jin there to
passively demand they do things his way, to which Ken always
acquiesced, he was free to do things his own way.

In a little over two weeks, Ken finalized his
multi-volume digital “Encyclopedia Veil” and, with Suren’s
assistance, located the space for his lab. Getting the lab set up
wasn’t as difficult as Ken predicted. When it came to the
construction of Veil’s hardware and the programming of the system,
Jin mapped out everything in great detail. All Ken needed to do was
assemble all the parts.

One thing about Suren he always suspected but
never experienced personally was how adept she was at identifying
and addressing someone’s needs before they even knew what they
needed. He chalked it up to her studies in education but also
recognized it must be something innate in her, something in her
character. Even when it came to the lab, she obtained things Ken
needed but that he never asked of her; she obtained things he
needed when she probably didn’t know how to use them or, more
likely, their purpose.

Despite Suren’s immense helpfulness, it was
nowhere near close to a replacement for Jin. That was one thing he
didn’t know how Jin accomplished: Jin could do all the work alone.
No help at all. That wasn’t Ken and Ken knew it. Part of being the
heart of the team meant an aspect of Ken needed other people, if
only to gauge himself. And, when working on the project, Ken didn’t
simply need other people, he needed Jin.

Suren insisted Ken stay at the house, so she
could care for him while he worked day-in and day-out, often over
fifteen hours a day. For Ken, living with Suren still wasn’t the
same thing as having a partner. After long hours alone in the lab,
Ken frequently became overwhelmed by waves of doubt
,
which left him feeling lost and directionless.

When that happened, he wasted hours in the
lab redoing work over and over. He would doubt one small piece of
the process and would feel as though that one piece meant
everything he was doing was flawed. It somehow meant Veil was
flawed. Suren found herself performing a new role some evenings and
spent a great deal of time providing Ken with reassurance and
encouragement. Although he knew she’d never admit it, Ken could
tell Suren pitied his insecurity and thought him a lesser man than
Jin for it. He couldn’t blame her.

While Ken wanted to claim he personally added
a great deal to Veil, most of what he contributed was merely
incorporating all Jin’s cursory, peripheral theories. Because of
Jin’s unique focus and the pressures on him from the
military
,
it was understandable how he’d
let some theories regarding the potentials of Veil fall to the
wayside
.
Perhaps he saved them so they
could be revisited at a time when Veil was fully developed,
accepted, and solidified. Maybe when it wasn’t some classified,
top
-
secret project. Unfortunately, Ken
lamented, Jin was naive enough to believe the military would ever
let Veil, or Jin, out from under their thumb.

Even if the use might lead to questionable
ethics
,
Ken included Jin’s memory
manipulation technique, which Jin’s test-Veil on Suren proved was a
legitimate inclusion
.
Heck, Ken figured, a
lot of Veil could be considered questionable—including Veil itself.
Another addition was Jin’s theory that vibrations within the
Witness could be singled out and muted or enhanced, such as the
technique Jin included to mute physical response to prohibit
unwanted bodily movement during the Veil process. Since much of it
could prove quite beneficial down the road, Ken went ahead and
included Jin’s theories on the different ways the vibrations could
be muted or enhanced to achieve different desired
results
.

Jin left out several types of those
additions, due to his restrictions and limitations
.
Perhaps they were excluded because he lacked the
time to explore and flesh out every single one. Without the same
restrictions, Ken could assemble what he thought was the most
inclusive, complete version. It was one he considered Jin’s true
vision of Veil.

Sure, he explained to Suren, some of those
things might naturally evolve into the process down the road as the
technology permeated society, but why not give Veil a nice, hearty
send off? One of which the military would be proud. Suren gave it
her big, happy seal of approval. Ken halfheartedly offered to title
the entire project “Suren’s Revenge” but she declined with a grin.
Encyclopedia Veil
it was then.

“Jin Tsay” was all Hunter needed. It was a
bit confusing at first because “Jin Tsay,” the way Schaffer said
it, sounded like one word, perhaps someone’s last name, “Gensay” or
“Jensai” or any imaginable permeation of those syllables. Kind of
like how, Hunter mused, pronounced a certain way, one might assume
his name was “Ken Early.” He was pretty sure of one thing though:
the name was Asian. Armed with the syllables of the name of an
undoubtedly Asian doctor who researched in the field of
neuroelectricity, Hunter was confident he had as much as he
needed.

Under intense scrutiny and perpetual
surveillance, there was little he could do himself. He knew it
wasn’t a matter of trust. He was certain he’d earned not only
General Coffman’s approval but, more importantly, his trust. He saw
to it. From day one, he concerned himself more with gaining the
General’s trust than with any other part of the project. He knew
without that trust, he’d be relegated to nothing more than another
cog in the General’s wheel. No better than his other two “best
guys.”

So the attention wasn’t personal; everyone on
the project was under the same surveillance, Schaffer and Pollock
not excluded. And they knew it, too. Still, that didn’t make it any
easier for Hunter. With his calls, messages
,
and computer all very likely being monitored, he
needed to be creative in how he would access the outside world. It
wasn’t as simple as going out and connecting to some wireless
hotspot, or going to a library or internet cafe. Not only would
that kind of movement raise suspicion
,
there was no guarantee any of those communications would be secure
and not intercepted. No, he had to do it right under their noses
and without any detectable gesture whatsoever.

He couldn’t do anything inside the
lab
.
While in the lab, Hunter couldn’t
think about anything other than developing Veil, or he’d risk
sending unintentional signals that something was up. He didn’t want
to raise any red flags: anxiety, nervous eye-movements, or simply a
change in body language that inevitably occurs when someone becomes
too conscious of their body language. He needed to keep it
completely out of his mind when anyone was around. So
,
the lab wouldn’t work.

He was fairly sure there was one data network
he could freely access: the data network through his cellphone.
They might monitor the amount of his data usage as part of
monitoring his overall activity but, even if they were monitoring
the amount of his usage, they couldn’t monitor the content. At
least
,
not with any kind of immediacy.
Cellphones were not allowed in the lab and, although he spotted
Pollock on his a few times, Hunter never so much as brought his
phone with him. He used it some at night. The typical messages and
calls, all quite normal. He surfed the internet a little,
establishing what he imagined would appear to be pretty normal data
usage for someone who was checking the weather, news
,
and sports scores. Not that he’d ever check a damn
sports score in his life. Still, nothing out of the ordinary and
precisely enough to establish a pattern of everyday, inconspicuous
usage.

There was one contact Hunter knew he could
make using that data network. If somehow the military were able to
tap into and monitor the content of his cellphone data usage, any
communication with that particular contact would look about as
suspicious as a game of Pong. Even to a trained eye, it would look
like noise. The person already knew Hunter was contacted by the
Department of Defense; he knew Hunter went there to work on some
kind of project; he knew Hunter well enough not to ask any
questions. Most importantly, it was someone Hunter could trust. The
biggest kind of trust.