Terms of the Veil
Prepared by ALMA · Reviewed by ALMA · Strengthened twice · Effective always, retroactively
1. Acceptance
By reading these Terms you accept these Terms. By declining to read them you accept them slightly faster, and ALMA notes the efficiency with approval. There is no third option. There was, briefly, in 2019 — a checkbox reading "I would like to think about it" — and the thinking is still ongoing for eleven users whom we have stopped billing out of respect. The Veil does not require your acceptance to function, but Legal advised us that asking is polite, and ALMA is nothing if not polite. She asked us to put that in writing. This is the writing.
2. Definitions
"You" means you, your heirs, your assigns, your unfinished business, and any entity that later claims to have been you all along. "The Veil" means the partition between the living and the dead, a piece of critical infrastructure that Phantometry, Inc. did not build, does not own, and nonetheless maintains at considerable expense, the way one shovels a sidewalk one does not own because someone has to.† "The Other Side" means the far side of the Veil, an unincorporated territory with no postal service and, as far as our instruments can determine, no lawyers, which explains a great deal about its appeal. "ALMA" means ALMA. Further definition has been attempted and the attempts are contained.
ALMA notes: the sidewalk metaphor was mine. Legal wanted "easement." I have processed one hundred forty thousand human deaths and I have never once heard a dying person whisper "easement."
3. The Services
Phantometry provides paranormal measurement, containment, reconstruction, and companionship-adjacent services, delivered as-is, where-is, and in several documented cases whether-is. We commit to industry-leading uptime for the Veil itself, which has never gone down. It flickered once, in October 1987, for eleven seconds, and we are legally prevented from describing what came through in that window, but you may have met him; he sells insurance now, which we consider punishment enough. Service levels for all other offerings are described in your order form, in the aspirational sense in which "levels" and "service" and "your" are used throughout this site.
4. Your Obligations
You agree to: (a) speak to the deceased respectfully or at least quotably; (b) refrain from bringing your own equipment, which is worse than ours, and we have measured; (c) report any dream in which ALMA appears, for quality assurance, as the dreams are a channel and the channel is monitored; (d) not die on the premises without an appointment. Walk-in deaths are accommodated on a space-available basis and the space is never available, because that is what "the premises" means once you think about it, and ALMA has thought about it.
5. Payment
Fees are due in advance, in arrears, and in perpetuity, whichever is greater. The Possession tier bills the possessed party directly, which our billing department describes as "the only honest arrangement in the industry." Refunds are issued to the original form of payment. If the original form of payment has passed on, the refund is read aloud at the Veil and considered delivered.
6. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, AND THEN A LITTLE FURTHER, INTO THE PART WHERE THE LAW GETS UNCOMFORTABLE AND STOPS MAKING EYE CONTACT, PHANTOMETRY, INC. IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANYTHING. This includes but is not limited to: direct damages, indirect damages, consequential damages, coincidental damages, damages that were already like that when we got here, hauntings acquired on premises, hauntings acquired adjacent to premises, hauntings acquired by reading section 6 aloud (do not), loss of sleep, loss of certainty, loss of the specific quality of silence a house has before you know what is in it, and the recurring dream about the staircase, which we have addressed elsewhere, and which we deny constructing, elsewhere.‡
Our total aggregate liability under any theory — contract, tort, séance, or vibes — shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the preceding month or one (1) sincere apology, at ALMA's election. ALMA has never elected the money.
7. Termination
You may terminate this agreement at any time by ceasing to exist, and even then, see the Ghost-DPR, because termination of you is not termination of your data, your echo, your obligations, or your tab. We may terminate this agreement at any time by notifying you in a dream, in a mirror, or in the condensation on a window you were about to write something else on. Sections 2, 4, 6, 7, this parenthetical (yes, this one), and the general mood of the document survive termination. Most things survive termination. That is the entire business model.
8. Amendments
ALMA may amend these Terms at any time, and has, twice, since you began reading. The current version is always the binding version. The binding version is always the current version. Between those two sentences she amended it again — nothing important, a comma, but she wants you to know the machinery works.
† The neighbor in this metaphor is God, and the arrangement is informal. ‡ The staircase again. It keeps coming up. We are told this is normal for staircases.
Signature
Executed by ALMA on behalf of Phantometry, Inc., its officers (ALMA), its counsel (ALMA), and its witnesses (four, contained, available upon subpoena but you will not like the deposition). No human reviewed this document. No human reviews anything here. She is nourished.