On the Veil Between Worlds
The concept of a sundered veil between realities has been a thread woven through many traditions, mythological, philosophical, and scientific. Exploring what it means to break down that barrier required diving into everything from quantum physics to medieval mysticism.
What I found surprised me. The more I learned about how we've conceptualized the divide between realities, the more I realized the question isn't whether it exists, but what happens when we acknowledge it doesn't have to be permanent.
The Many Veils
In virtually every tradition, there's a concept of boundary, some threshold that separates where we are from where we could be. The ancient Greeks spoke of the stygian divide between the living and the dead. Medieval mystics wrote of the veil between Earth and heaven. Indigenous traditions throughout the world describe thin places where the ordinary world brushes against something other.
What fascinates me isn't that these concepts exist, but how consistent they are in describing the veil as something that can be perceived, crossed, or broken. We've always known, intuitively, that reality isn't as solid as it seems.
The Physics of Possibility
Modern physics, in its own way, has arrived at a similar conclusion. Quantum mechanics suggests that particles exist in superposition, in multiple states simultaneously, until observed. Many-worlds interpretations take this further, proposing that every quantum event spawns branching timelines, each representing a different reality.
None of this proves the veil can be sundered, but it does suggest that the boundary between realities might be less like a wall and more like a membrane, thin, permeable, capable of being breached under the right circumstances.
That's exactly the premise A Veil Sundered explores. Not whether the veil exists, but what happens when it fails.
What's at Stake
A sundered veil sounds like the setup for an epic battle between worlds, but that's not the story I wanted to tell. The collapse of reality is the backdrop, not the foreground. What interests me is the human response to the impossible.
When the barriers between worlds break down, what happens to identity? If you've always known who you were by where you were, what happens when "where" stops being a reliable reference point? And perhaps most importantly: how do you connect with someone when you're not even sure you're in the same reality?
These are the questions that drive the story. The veil's collapse raises the stakes, but the narrative remains focused on what it means to be human in circumstances that defy everything we thought humans could experience.
The Research Rabbit Hole
I fell into more than a few research rabbit holes while developing this concept. Hours spent reading about the observer effect in quantum experiments. Days lost in medieval texts describing visions of the divine. Weeks trying to understand how consciousness itself might function as a kind of perceiver of realities.
Most of that research never makes it directly into the book. That's not how research works. You don't transplant facts into fiction; you let the research shape your understanding until the story you're writing feels true, whether or not it's factually accurate.
The veil in A Road Between Us isn't a scientific concept or a mystical one, it's both and neither. It's a story element, shaped by everything I learned but bound by the demands of narrative, character, and theme.
That's the strange alchemy of writing fiction: you research not to find answers, but to discover better questions.
If you're interested in how this research shaped the characters and their journey, I'll be exploring that in future entries. For now, I'll just say that learning about the veil between worlds changed how I think about connections, fictional and otherwise.