Free Veil by Aaron Overfield

tell Jin
stumbled onto greatness.
    No, stumbled wasn't the right word. It
implied luck, chance, or accident. Jin took their work and created
something so beyond the theoretical confines of their partnership
that it caused Ken to wonder if Jin would’ve made the same progress
had he stuck around.
    The research was microscopically detailed and
thorough, which was typical of Jin . In no
more than eight hours , Ken fully grasped
the principles and potential of Veil. He understood how Jin went
from the knowledge that The Witness retained information, to the
discovery of how The Witness could be transferred—it could be
downloaded and uploaded—between brains, to the epiphany that one
brain’s Witness could shadow another brain and store all the
signals it obtained.
    Jin’s ultimate discovery was that a brain
could replicate the experience of another brain by shadowing it
using The Witness. That was the absolute game changer. That was the epiphany of Veil: the shadowing. It didn’t take
long for Ken to predict how the ability for one person to shadow
another person could change everything. Since he and Suren
conspired to give Veil to the world, Ken quickly realized it would change everything.
    Ken also recognized what the wolves wanted
with Veil. It wasn’t hard to see at all. He could only imagine the
state secrets one could easily uncover if Veil was used against
someone without their knowledge. Or if it was used during
interrogation. Forget about a truth serum or waterboarding, there
was no need. With Veil, what the wolves had instead was full mind
access: backstage VIP passes to a person's thoughts, feelings, and
memories—all of it.
     
    However, in terms of memories, they only had
access if the subject recalled those specific memories while they
were being shadowed, which was one of the several principles
outlined by Jin. Some principles were based in practice, but most
were purely speculative at that stage, albeit completely logical
speculation . It was Jin after all. But,
because Jin was only able to conduct one test run of Veil before he
was killed, most of his principles remained speculation. Still,
Jin’s principle that the person doing the shadowing would only have
access to memories the subject actively recalled during the
Veil process made perfect sense to Ken.
    The person doing the shadowing would have no
physical control over the subject; they would merely act as a
witness to the experiences of the subject. To the shadower, it
would be like watching a movie, except it would be a full-body,
full-person experience. Still, the experience would be limited to
events that occurred only during the Veil, during the shadowing.
There would be no access by The Witness to anything the subject
experienced at any other time; access was limited to experiences
that occurred during the time in which The Witness was shadowing
the subject.
    That access included memories.
    Although a mind can re-experience an event
through recollection, otherwise known as a “memory,” Jin figured
the only way The Witness would have access to a memory would be if
someone or something brought it up during the Veil. Like a
flashback or a flash-forward in a movie. The Witness only had
access to the immediate thoughts, feelings, emotions,
sensations , and perceptions that took
place during the Veil—which included memories.
    Ken realized The Witness couldn't control the
person, nor could it actively scan the subject's brain for every
single bit of information it contained, as if the brain were a
computer hard drive. That wasn't how The Witness or how Veil
worked. Heck, that wasn't even how the brain worked. Ken tried to
scan his own brain for every bit of information and all the
memories he possessed. After about five seconds, he laughed at
himself.
     
    There were some rules as well, most of which
Jin hypothesized but didn’t have the chance to test. There was one
about languages. Jin believed if someone shadowed a subject who
spoke a language