Veil (65 page)

“For years now, they’ve been after us for a
piece of my Jin. All of us. Each one of us in this room, they’ve
been after us. And you,” she emphasized, pointing at Hunter,
“didn’t even know him. Never met him. But that doesn’t stop them.
They’re all after us. They all want something of Jin. They want a
memory, an experience. Something they can hold onto as a way to
experience the Great Jin Tsay.”

“Yes,” Ken agreed. Old news.

It became one of the biggest and most
daunting demands since Veil ushered in the New Veil World. He
didn’t begrudge people for wanting to get closer to Jin. None of
the Tsay Trustees begrudged them. They simply couldn’t play a part
in it. None of them felt right handing over their experiences of
Jin—their memories of him—to the public
,
no matter how well intentioned the public’s need and demand. The
Tsay Trustees were as protective of their memories of Jin as they
were of each other.

Suren elaborated, “I went back to Mariano’s
store and looked through the memories of Jin he had for sale. Not
only were they scarce, they were weak and they were irrelevant.
They were from people who barely remembered Jin and even then he
was only a passing ghost in their memory. But everyone is so
desperate for a piece of him that they eat these sad excuses for
memories up. It breaks my heart. It truly does. I’m not willing to
give up the Jin I carry with me, and I know you’re not either,” she
looked at Ken, “and I love that. Of course I do. I appreciate it.
But if there is going to be a demand for him, a demand for Jin, I
want to give them a Jin we all approve of and one we can all be
proud of.”

“So how does Roy come into this?” Ken asked,
still not following her. Or not wanting to follow her.

“I figured you of all people would already
predict what I was thinking,” she smiled at Ken. “It’s pretty
simple. Roy saw Jin almost every single day. For
years
.
Other than me, he probably saw Jin more than anyone else for
nearly—what?—six or seven years?”

“Around there, yeah,” Ken estimated. He
started to see where Suren was headed.

“And not only did he see Jin every morning,
he saw Jin in a very unique way. Obviously, Roy had a fondness for
Jin, which shows in everything he did for him in the end. For Jin.
But, beyond that, he saw Jin simply being Jin. Walking through the
doors of the hospital every day, not really happy or sad, on his
way to do what he did and do what made him Jin. On his way,
fittingly enough for this purpose, to develop Veil. And that’s what
I want to give to people. That’s the Jin I want to give the world.
They apparently are not going to stop demanding—stop begging. So I
want to give them the Jin that Roy got to see every day.”

“And how do you suppose we go about doing
this?” Ken asked, his voice lowered. He already had somewhat of an
idea as to what Suren was thinking
,
and he
was increasingly displeased. He wanted to hear her say it,
though.

“Well, what I was thinking was we should
develop some sort of technology that could store a memory of Roy’s
or something. A small memory of Jin, which people can access
through the vNet whenever they want. I know there are limitations
to Veil, but I was hoping you two could come up with something, so
at least a memory could be stored and delivered to people to give
them what they all want. Give people my Jin, but a version of him
with the official Tsay Trustees’ seal of approval.”

Ken immediately stood up from the couch and
circled the desk to his chair. He didn’t respond until he was
seated in his chair, facing both Suren and Hunter.

“Absolutely not. Never. If we allow it—if we
ever allow that—it will be the undoing of Veil. You have no idea
what that would eventually do to people.”

“As remarkable as all that sounds, and please
don’t take me the wrong way, it is truly fascinating, how does that
help me? How can I use that?” Suren asked the doctor.

“Well I guess if anything, it gives you an
understanding as to the power of Veil and what becomes available to
anyone who uses it. Anyone who shadows someone. I’m guessing you’ve
at least shadowed someone before? Correct?” Dr. Mulligan tried to
find his way back to the point.

“Yes. I have.
Once
.”

Again, he had to ignore the absurdity of the
Great Widow Tsay’s response.

“And did you upload back onto yourself in
Veiltime or in realtime?” he asked.

“In realtime. It was important to do it that
way for our purposes in that situation.”

“Oh, good, good. That’s actually good for
these purposes as well. Because I’d venture to guess you struggled
to keep focused on the subject. You likely struggled to stay inside
the experience and within the Veil for the entire duration.”

“Actually, yes I did. We were prepared for
that, so we used incense as an anchor. The smell of the incense
helped anchor me into the experience of Roy—of the subject.”

“Perfect!” The doctor slapped his knee.
“That’s perfect! Then you’ll understand where I’m coming from. You
see, because you were so new to Veil, you were likely overwhelmed
by the very wonder of Veil itself. That’s why the incense was used.
To snap you back into the process. To let you become this—this Roy
again.”

“Yes, and it worked quite well.”

“Good! Good! It’s supposed to. However, as
time goes on, as the newness of Veil wears off, you will begin to
see the layers available to you through the Veil process. Layers
upon layers upon layers.”

“Layers?”

“Yes, layers. As you probably know, we don’t
have access to all of a person’s memories through Veil. We can’t
scan their memories from beginning to end. We only have access to
what they remember during the time they are being shadowed.”

“Right, I understand that. That’s what the
questions and instructions were for. The things I read to Roy as I
was shadowing him. To trigger the specific memories we were trying
to uncover.”

Without knowing anything about Suren’s Veil,
the doctor could still use the information to make his point.
“Precisely, the memories have to be triggered in order to access
them. However, and this is what I can and will teach you, in quite
the opposite way, we do have access to every fiber of thought and
feeling the subject experiences while they are being shadowed.
Thoughts and feelings from the deepest recesses of their mind.
Thoughts and feelings they are unaware of
,
or that they unconsciously deny themselves.”

“I see,” Suren nodded, still letting what the
doctor said sink into her mind. After a moment, she began to
comprehend the gravity of what he was saying. “I see!”

He continued, “Since the shadower’s mind
isn’t trained to ignore those thoughts and feelings; since they are
foreign to the shadower; since they can be objective, the
shadower—with the right training—can access them. They can access
parts of the subject that the subject themselves can’t access.”

“Does this—” she started to ask but stopped
and contemplated how to sensitively phrase what she was trying to
get at. “Is this why … is this what lead to so many suicides when
Veil first began to grow and expand? Because people started
learning truths about themselves. From other people.”

Suren immediately flashed back to a
foreboding poem some unknown author penned barely two months after
Veil was delivered to the world. It was only two lines, but it cut
her like Hunter’s tongue could cut the weak.

Veil is suicide wildfire, follow the
leader.

Lightening flash fast, Veil is a garden
weeder.

That poem deeply haunted Suren, as reports of
more and more suicides surfaced. They eventually plateaued, but an
unprecedented rash of suicides, which numbered in the millions,
marred the First Veil Year. It was something none of them expected
or predicted, not even Ken. Not even Ken.

“Yes, yes,” the doctor nodded. “Oh yes. The
Great Reveilation had its positives and negatives, and the rash of
suicides—that suicide wildfire—during the First Veil Year was
definitely a result of what we’re talking about. Most definitely.
Some people simply couldn’t handle knowing truths about themselves,
let alone someone else knowing them and experiencing them
firsthand.”

She cringed when he said
those two
words
. Suicide wildfire. She flashed back to the poem again
when those words crossed his lips. Her reaction to that poem was
always the same.

Leave those weak souls alone and find
him
.
He’s the weed
.
Weed him out
.
Find
him
.

Why couldn’t Veil weed out the one soul she
begged it to weed out? The one soul that deserved to be weeded
out.

“I see,” Suren whispered and bowed her
head.

Dr. Mulligan saw her reaction and tried to
move on. He hadn’t considered how that fact would affect the Mother
of Veil. Of course that fact would affect her. Deeply.

“Please though, please. What I really want
you to take away from this is an understanding of what can be
available to you through Veil and how, if you simply take the time
to learn to access what’s available, there’s truly no part of a
person that isn’t accessible. We have the entire iceberg, right in
front of us. With training, I think I can teach you how to find
whatever it is you’re looking for. Whatever it is that brought you
to me.”

“I understand, doctor. I honestly do. And
that is why I summoned you here in the first place. So I am
definitely ready to learn. I guess, with my background in
education, my main question would be: what is the greatest obstacle
to achieving this, from what you’ve seen? The main obstacle to
people accessing or learning how to access the entire iceberg, as
you put it?”

“Hmmm … well, that’s definitely a profound
question,” he paused. “I think if I had to choose something it
would be the shadower’s agenda.” He paused again. “Yes, yes—that
would be it, the shadower’s agenda.”

“Their agenda?”

“Yes. We’re all still human, still bound by
what makes us ‘us’, if you will. So each of us, through Veil, is
going to be inclined to look for some things more than other
things, for whatever reasons. Each of us is going to choose which
part of the iceberg we want to access—which parts we choose to
listen for—and that is going to be determined by the shadower’s
personality, not by the subject’s.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Ok—ok,” he paused again. “Say, for instance,
what interests me most is human sexuality. Let’s say, for whatever
reason, that’s what fascinates me most. Not only how a person’s
sexuality manifests itself into thoughts and feelings, but the
entire spectrum of human sexuality. How it permeates everything
about a person, from the way they walk and talk; to what catches
their gaze; to how they give and seek attention—how people will
give attention to and seek attention from those who they don’t even
consider themselves sexually oriented towards
.
All in an effort to constantly define and gauge
themselves. Women gauge their own attractiveness based upon how
attractive they find certain women. Men gauge their own
attractiveness based upon how attractive they find certain men.
Human sexuality is a complicated, complex, multi-dimensional aspect
and, with Veil, it’s all right there. It’s all there to be accessed
and witnessed.”

“Fascinating,” Suren sighed.

She was being genuine. It was truly
fascinating. Ken’s relationship with Hunter caught her completely
off-guard at the time. She never suspected any such thing about
Ken, and then afterwards she realized that no one should ever
suspect such a thing out of anyone either way. She couldn’t believe
she was the type of person to assume so much of people and so
readily buy into notions of how things “should” be.

Suren often cursed the culture of the United
States for forcing her to live in a society where being “white” was
the default and anything else was marginal or came in second. She
saw signs of it everywhere, anywhere she went. But, there she was
all along, presuming that being “straight” was the default,
assumptive sexual preference for anyone and everyone. She realized
everyone wasn’t “heterosexual until proven otherwise.”

Suren understood how Veil taught people
rather quickly—perhaps one of the quickest lessons—that sexuality
was anything but black-and-white. PreVeil, public discourse was
obsessed with all things straight vs. gay; in the New Veil World,
those kinds of identities scarcely existed. They held no meaning.
Although Suren was familiar with the shift, she never explored the
nuances of it, as she did with the shifting of racial identities.
And that was only because it didn’t affect her personally, or so
she wrongly assumed.