Remove All Veils

"Your dad is dead."

The voice on the other end of the device was hollow and strained.

Crates heard Shannon's words while in the middle of a second-year lecture entitled "The Concept of Suggestion in Advertising: Using Cognitive Biases to Sell." His device was pressed hard against his ear, crushing his black hair into his skin and flattening one side of his beard. His entire body had gone cold as stone. His sense of being there faded, not in a distracted or bored way, more like an essence vanishing, a sucking out of the soul. He was shocked that it was possible to feel that sort of void at all, discovering true emptiness for the first time.

· · ·

"Well, Jason, the hard truth is I just don't trust you, not as much as I'd trust a cat around raw meat."

"If you're going to compare me to a quadruped mammalian, at least show me the courtesy of making it the king of the jungle and not a vermin killing domesticated pet."

George laughed.

"You're actually seriously telling me whatever it is you're working on is stored, in toto, hard copy?" Jason put his face into his hands. "George please do not tell me your secret project is language. I know you have this obsession with paperbound books," he gestured to the shelves that surrounded George's circular office, "a monumental waste of money. Where are you keeping the hard copy? Hard copy as in paper, right? Fucking paper?"

"It's a bit of a trek."

"So what the hell are you working on in this office then?"

"Like I said, I've had to bring in a bit of extra help for some things."

"Help is right. The office is a who's who of homeless and psych inpatients out there."

"I hesitate to say too much here, Jason. Also, your characterization of the folks out there isn't what I'd call compassionate, or even accurate."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Compassion? George, you're going soft. Well, what the hell is this thing?"

George shrugged. "What I'm doing is a kind of translation to preserve certain linguistic patterns. Some beautiful things are falling out. Insights into the hardest of problems. Tentacles and such. Did you know that tentacles each have their own sort of brain?"

"Until it isn't. Just let me take a peek at this thing. What are you calling it?"

"If I haven't been clear already, Jason, I'm going in another direction that's essentially anti-headset and doesn't have anything to do with you or True Vision."

Jason mumbled something and then, "You making a new cult, George?"

"You're asking me that? Jason Sun?"

"What's it called? I'll find out on my own eventually."

"I can't stop you from trying."

"You won't just tell me what the damn thing is called? Just the name?"

"The name is important."