THE VEIL

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They used to say a lot of things about space, but it’s not like anyone actually knew whether or not they were true. Down there, all we knew was dirt.

Like everything else, space was out of reach. Just an idea. Not something anyone actually thought they’d ever see. Me included. The funny part about that little saying, “nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space,” isn’t actually the farfetchedness of going to space to find out. Where I come from, the strangest part is the idea of hearing someone scream at all.

For any Org’s who might be out there reading this, allow me to give you some context. I was born and raised on the planet formally known as Gliese 667CC, or what the Vesps like to call “Umbi,” a word in their lexicon akin to “Foul.” You would think that this name would offend us considering our relationship with them, but it ended up sticking. You could call it a reclamation, but I’m not sure anything has ever really been “reclaimed” from the Vesps to be honest with you.

If you haven’t encountered a Vesp before, and you’re reading this, that means my log has miraculously found who it was intended for. You need to understand that this log is perhaps the single most important piece of data that has crossed the hands of an Org. And I mean any Org, anywhere, at any point in time or space. If you and your species are some of the lucky few who have thus far evaded the grasp of the Vesps, read my words carefully: They’re coming. As you read this, they’re getting closer. I’m going to recount my experience with the Vesps for your benefit. You need to read each portion carefully and learn what you can before they arrive.

The “Vesps,” a term we coined for the members of the Vespiary. They are not a species, not a type of Org, and unlike anything I would imagine you’ve seen before. They are all Orgs. They are anything they want to be, anything they can get their hands on. Before I was born, Orgs on Umbi (which, prior to the arrival of the Vesps, was commonly referred to as “Gliese Prime”) were using an archaic neural net system. Orgs in the Gliese system had been using the same neurotech for countless orbits, which is exactly the type of situation the Vesps are looking for.

The Vespiary is a form of swarm intelligence, an AI with viral characteristics in constant search of weak or susceptible neurotech users, which you can obviously imagine are in abundance throughout my cluster. Once they have any form of contact with an untouched neural net, their work is already done. Your entire civilization loses autonomy before they even have time to shed a tear.

The Vesps came to Umbi long before I was born. Once your civilization’s neural net is infected by a Vesp, you all become Vesps too, but that’s a bit of a misconception. See, not all Vesps are considered the same. There is a caste system. At the top, the Queens. Original members of the Vespiary. Nobody knows how many Queens there are, where they all are, or what their endgame is, other than to maximize growth. In the middle are the Drones. Not to be confused with vehicles that don’t need an operator, the Drones are mostly former Orgs. They serve as direct deputies to the Queens. Lieutenants, if you will.

The last caste was us, the Steriles. The Steriles have only one purpose: to work, and work we did. Anything using a neural net can be infected and become a Sterile. Orgs, droids, you name it. Umbi was a naturally habitable exoplanet, meaning it was extremely rich in various resources and didn’t require any terraforming for initial colonization. This, in combination with an outdated neural net system, was an absolute jackpot for the Vesps. New bodies, an abundance of resources, and more influence.

The first thing they took away was our sonic capabilities. All communication was conducted via our neural systems, thus more easily monitored by the Drones. That’s another thing I forgot to mention, once the Vespiary infects your civilization’s neural network, they control the entirety of the flow of information, and the information flows up but not down. Therefore, the Drones know our every thought, our every action, and our every emotion, but we don’t have access to theirs. Then of course, the same is true for them and the Queens.

Now you know why the idea of screaming in space didn’t even really resonate with an Umbian. Not only was space travel forbidden, or travel of any kind outside of your designated sector, but no native born Umbian had uttered an actual sound in thousands of orbits. The function was blocked completely by the Vespiary interface. In fact, most functions were blocked by their interface. We were enslaved. You had remarkably limited control outside of your work functions, and any thought you had that strayed from serving the Vespiary could be immediately identified. Even further, the Vespiary interface could determine just how likely you were to act on a rebellious or disobedient thought, and bodies that were identified as having a likelihood to do so were immediately disposed of.

We were powerless. It was impossible to resist the imposition of the Vesps because they already knew, that you knew, that they knew your every thought, and they knew, that you knew you were too scared to rise against them. At least, this is what I thought, until Luther roped me into this mess.

Luther was always a little strange, but I never really paid much attention to him. He was a harmless brand of strange, and in his defense, anyone who worked in the Torrefaction Plant went a little loony after a while. They say rubidium torrefaction creates a dust that causes cognitive decline. I thought that was why Luther almost never took his mask off, but I was wrong about that too. In any case, I hated going down there. Most of my work was surface work, and I only went down there every trimester or so to unload storage carts. Looking back, I couldn’t be happier that that was one of my duties.

It was almost a full orbit ago now. I walked down into the Torrefaction Plant and walked into Luther’s pod. He was alone, which was normal, grinding away at some massive raw block. I turned my back to him, and as I was going about unloading the storage carts, I felt a tingle originating from my neural node. The tingle turned into chills running down from my neural node across my back and eventually through my whole body, then the chills turned into an excruciating pain. My head snapped back, as if trying to flee from the pain coming from the very node that was lodged in the back of it. The pain was so fierce I fell to my knees, which is when I finally noticed Luther standing behind me. The pain continued to get worse, coursing through my body straight from the neural node to the tips of my fingers and toes.

The pain was so agonizing that finally….I screamed.

Or at least, I tried to, but Luther covered my mouth with his hand. He didn’t even bother to take off his disgusting work glove. He pulled me up close to him by my arm and whispered in my ear,

“I’ve just given you the greatest gift anyone could possibly receive.”

I kept screaming into his glove. The pain had yet to subside, but now the scream had new motivation. I was horrified. He whispered into my ear again,

“I don’t have much time to explain this to you, but I’ve given you something you probably didn’t even know existed. You’ve just been bestowed with the Veil. I’ve returned your autonomy to you. And since I’ve done you this favor, you now owe me a favor in return.”

He pressed his thumb into my neural node, instantly relieving me of the pain. I dropped back to my knees, exhausted, and still scared for my life. I was sure the room would be stormed any minute. See, the real genius of the Vespiary is the boundless function of the hivemind of each caste. Although the Drones were our superiors and monitored workflow, any behavior outside of the norm was self-policed. If you did something wrong, everyone in your proximity came for you. Even your friends, family and loved ones. It was in their best interest to do so, an infallible system of self-regulation.

Luther could see the look in my eyes. He could see that I thought I was going to die. That both of us were going to die. I stared at him for a while, nothing breaking our gaze, until finally he took off his mask. Underneath he still had his goggles on, but I could see the better part of his face, including a massive smile.

“What did you do to me?” I asked.

“I already told you,” he said. “You’re free.”

“Free from what?” I muttered.

“Everything,” he let out through his grin. “But now…you owe me.”

His grinder automatically lifted off the raw block, so he waltzed over to it and set it back down, masking our conversation with its noise once again.

“You need to understand something,” he said to me. “You’ve just involuntarily joined the most important movement in existence as far as either of us are concerned. You’ve been given the Veil, an antivirus I’ve installed in your neural node. You have complete autonomy, as if the Vespiary never existed. That upload process scanned your metadata patterns, and it’s sending them a mimicry of those exact patterns as we speak.”

He made his way across the room and stood directly over me.

“They have no idea this conversation is happening,” he said. “Which is why I need to make the most of it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Really, I still couldn’t believe I was hearing at all. This encounter was, as far as I know, the only spoken conversation that had occurred on our planet since the arrival of the Vesps.

“You’ve killed me,” I said to him. “You’ve killed us both. They’re going to find out about this.”

“Not if you do exactly as I say,” he responded, walking back over to the grinder to reset it again.

“Today is inspection day, which means that a Drone is coming all the way from outside of our cluster to ensure there aren’t any abnormalities in our work. Any moment now, he’ll come through my pod door and begin his inspection. Part of his inspection is a direct scan of my node, within which he’s sure to find an abnormality, of course.”

“Which means that–,” I started.

“Which means that I would be a dead man walking, yes, and you would be guilty of crimes against the Vespiary just for standing here with me.”

Luther let out a sinister chuckle at the thought.

“But that’s not what’s going to happen. Because I’m going to kill the Drone, and you’re going to help me. It is your only option. Any other course of action is certain death for the both of us.”

I went into a cold sweat. Killing a Drone? I wanted to kill Luther. But I couldn’t. He had all the power. Also, he was right. Who was I going to tell?

“They already know,” I told him. “How could they not already know?”

“Because they aren’t here, are they?” He remarked. “If they knew, we would already be dead. Didn’t you listen to what I told you? The Veil. Trust the Veil. It’s telling them what they need to hear. They think you are going about your storage cart emptying, or whatever it is you do.”

He walked up to me and put his face right to mine.

“Now listen to me carefully,” Luther whispered. “In a matter of seconds the Drone is going to walk into the pod. You have to remain composed. Pretend you are just going about your storage cart business. Remember, nobody knows you're off schedule. Not the Drone, not the other Steriles. The Veil is doing its job. When I see the opportunity, I’m going to do the same thing I did to you to the Drone. I’m going to install the Veil. None of the Vesps will know what’s happening to him. Like you, the Drone is probably going to undergo an excruciatingly painful process, though it’s different for everyone. I’m going to physically restrain it. Once the upload is complete, I need you to run over and remove the Drone’s neural node. I’ll cue you when that time comes. The Drone will drop dead, and we’ll have the first piece of our puzzle. That’s all there is to it.”

I stared back at Luther wide-eyed. My cold sweat turned into hot flashes. Was my life ruined? Was I going to die? Why did Luther choose me for this? How could I have possibly avoided this? I grew nauseous.

“What if I can’t do it?” I asked him.

Luther lifted up his goggles and looked me in the eyes for the first time.

“You must,” he said.

"But-," I started.

"Don't you understand what's at stake here? It's not just you and me we're doing this for. It's everyone you know and love! Everybody! Everything! You must compose yourself! We only have one chance. You must rise to the occasion, my child! You must..."

The grinder lifted off of the block. Luther put a finger over his lips, and motioned for me to return to emptying the cart.

He put his mask back on and went back to work. I walked slowly over to the cart and began emptying it again, but I could hardly move. So much had just happened.

I looked over at Luther who looked back at me through his mask. All he could offer was a simple nod, and then back down to his grinding. I was shaking, but I took one last deep breath and went back to emptying my cart.

Finally….

The pod door unlocked, depressurized, and slid open.