Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (VEIL)

On a certain morning in June, Zula emerged from the building’s elevator into its lobby and donned her sunglasses. A yellow ball—the mildest of warnings—flickered in the corner of her vision. She glanced at it. It noticed the movement of her eyes and responded by letting her know that three VEILed pedestrians happened to be passing by outside.

Zula ignored it, pushed the door open, and saw them immediately: three high-school-aged girls, coffee cups in hand, gaily laughing and talking.

They all had wearables with large, reflective lenses, and so their eyes could not be seen. From the cheekbones down, their faces were exposed. But points and patches of light, projected by lasers in the lower rims of the glasses, were flashing and sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial-recognition algorithms.

Zula wasn’t using a VEIL. By exposing her face in a public area, she had, therefore, announced her location to any camera capable of seeing her and of checking her features against a database. Most people had become accustomed to this a long time ago and did not particularly care. But many preferred to opt out. You could avoid being recognized by wearing a physical veil and a pair of sunglasses, but most people in the industrialized world opted for its information-age equivalent.

To say that Verna and Maeve Braden had invented the Virtual Epiphanic Identity Lustre wasn’t quite right, since it incorporated a number of separate technologies. It had been more of a systems integration and branding play than an invention. But they had conceived it, named it, and made it a thing.

The VEIL was more likely to be worn by persons in the Venn diagram intersection of “young,” “geeky,” and “countercultural.” It was no surprise to find people like that on Capitol Hill. Zula was pretty sure that these three young ladies were on their way to the prep school a few blocks away.

Stephenson, Neal. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (pp. 256-257). William Morrow. Kindle Edition. 

The third of those interviews—the last thing on her calendar before lunch—turned out to be with her daughter. This was a surprise.

Sophia was wearing a hoodie and jeans, which explained why Zula hadn’t recognized her from behind while walking past the conference room. Sophia had turned on her glasses’ VEIL functionality. Conceivably, Marcus might have recognized her when she had arrived at the Foundation earlier that morning, but Marcus and Sophia had probably never been in the same room together and there was no particular reason why he would have known her.

Zula had reviewed this anonymous candidate’s application more than once over the last several months, and given it a final once-over before she had walked into her office, but it didn’t have a name associated with it. Only a PURDAH. Which wasn’t unusual. Marcus had, in fact, made it almost mandatory. Concealing names, genders, and the like behind a PURDAH was a way to reduce the possibility that candidates would benefit from positive, or suffer from negative, discrimination. So Zula had noted a few points of similarity between this applicant and her daughter, but was nonetheless surprised when Sophia walked into her office, pulled the hood back from her head, took off her glasses, and sat down.

Stephenson, Neal. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (pp. 267-268). William Morrow. Kindle Edition.