Slowly, I allowed them to see me.
“Holy shit!” Streeter stepped back. “How’d you… when did you get here?”
“My meeting ended.” My voice was eerily quiet.
He came over, hand out, and slapped it into mine, clasping his other hand over it and shaking. I automatically felt a connection with him. He felt a tug in his belly. I let go of him before I started sipping on his essence, but not before he shook his head, a little dizzy, not sure what just happened.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“All you got to do is ask.” He stepped back, rubbing his stomach. “Give me a second, I’ll get the technician started on a setup.”
Buxbee’s assistant, Peter Hammel, had a college degree in networking and virtualmode world building. And Streeter was telling him what to do. Peter didn’t seem to mind. Janette was listening, making sure she understood what they were doing.
I wandered to the wall where a shelf displayed several awards. Five of them recognized the school’s exceptional development of virtualmode training and execution, which was primarily because of Buxbee, but two had Streeter’s name. The larger of the two awards was a three-dimensional prism. I took it down, the colors switching through the transparent surface. State Champion Codebreaker. Best high school codebreaker in South Carolina. Did he know his endless potential?
“He talks about you all the time.” Janette stared at the glittering trophy. “Socket this, Socket that. I wish he would talk about me the way he talks about you.”
I looked into the award like it contained the lifetime of memories with Streeter, each one more entertaining then the next. I wish I could put those memories inside her so that she could feel the same joy.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
I didn’t realize I was grinning, so I shared a memory with her. I told her when we were in kindergarten, we stayed the night at each other’s house so much that we each had our favorite cereal at each house. We’d be buried behind our box on each side of the table, slurping milk and reading the back of the box for the hundredth time. I was a Corn Pops kid. He was Fruity Pebbles.
“I’m glad you’re around to keep an eye on him,” I said.
“Why? Where are you going?”
I took a long breath. “I’m not sure.”
We stared at the awards for a while longer, then she tugged me away to the table and told me about their progress with the locator. It was on a little stand. Their appointment with NASA was only a week away and, aside from when it screwed up with me, it had been operating flawlessly. It could also mean a lot of money. She opened a holographic circuitry layout that stretched over the table.
“What’s up?” Streeter walked up.
“Just showing Socket the locator plans.”
“Socket could figure this stuff out in his head,” Streeter said. “You wouldn’t believe what he can do.”
Neither would you.
“So what’s the favor?” Streeter asked.
“I’m sorry, Janette, but can I speak to Streeter alone?”
“Yeah, oh, sure… I can, I’ll just be… I’ll go—”
“If you want to help Peter, I’m not sure he fully understands what I need him to do,” Streeter said. “We probably won’t be long.”
She said goodbye, grabbed her things and left. I paced around the table, thinking where to start. How to start.
“You all right?” Streeter asked.
“I would never ask you for this if it wasn’t important.”
“Well, what is it? You need money? Help codebreaking?”
“I just need to use the school’s virtualmode portal.”
“That’s it? That’s not a big favor.”
“I might snap some alarms.”
He cocked his head. “What kind of alarms?”
“I’m not sure, but it might get you in trouble.”
“I’m always up for trouble.” But he drummed his fingers on the table. “Is it that important?”
“I wouldn’t ask.”
He nodded. And drummed. Then pointed at one of the oversized chairs against the wall. “You can’t do anything I can’t handle. Have a seat.”
“I’ll stand.”
“All right.” He laughed, nervously, then said with a squeaky tone, “Should I be freaking out about now?”
Yes. “I’ll explain in a minute.”
“That’s not helping.”
“Sorry.”
He considered again. Anyone else in the world and he would’ve called security. Instead, he sat at the mainframe monitor. “I’ll get the transporters ready.”
“No need.”
He looked over his shoulder. “You still have the imbed transporter in your neck?”
“I’ll explain later. Promise.”
“Sure.” He spun on the seat and crossed his arms. “Then launch when you’re ready.”
I didn’t need the transporters or any sort of gear. In fact, I really didn’t need to ask Streeter to use the school’s virtualmode portal, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble without him knowing. I’d already penetrated the entire lab, followed the circuitry and routers down to the school’s portal that powered the virtualmode experience that communicated with millions of portals all over the world like a network of ethereal pipelines, where people existed in virtual reality.
I only needed the portal to access the Internet network so I could spread my influence worldwide, like pouring my consciousness into a system of veins. I wouldn’t be able to expand as far without it. I needed to feel everything, searching for the one person that could answer my questions. I moved my awareness through the portal and instantly stretched across the planet, knowing and feeling everything without leaving my body. I closed my eyes, whispering his name.
Pike.
His essence was as unique as his fingerprint. I could distinguish the difference between every person, every machine, everything that was operating on the worldwide virtualmode network. Suddenly, the school’s portal contracted.
“Artificial intelligence has breached virtualmode.”
I forced it to open back up, sniffing the mental realm like a bloodhound. I was around the world in a second, sensing a strong presence somewhere in a mountainous region. I focused my attention, brought Pike’s essence into view, honed in on his location. It was a dead end.
The Garrison.
No way he was in the Garrison. I was sensing the leftover memories of where he spent most of his life. There was little chance I would find him, even with the inexhaustible power I had. The Paladins would have him so secluded that no one could locate him.
I contracted back into my body. Lights were flashing everywhere, along with flickering sounds and high-pitched alarms. The lab door swooshed open and Buxbee and Peter came rushing inside. Streeter was already at the mainframe monitor, shouting that he had it under control. I willed the alarms to quiet and restored the original status of the security. Streeter explained the crossover error of the locator and apologized. He threw the locator in his pocket, promised to work on the coding outside the lab. Buxbee stared at him, then he and Peter turned back to the monitor to assure the integrity.
Streeter grabbed my arm and marched into the hallway. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
Located
I followed Streeter to the elevator, but not before a security guard named Jeff Baker stopped him. “You got a pass?” he asked.
Streeter flashed the badge strung around his neck. “Um, we’re going to the library.”
The security guard looked around. “Who’s we?”
Streeter shrugged.
“Better check in with Mr. Buxbee if you go anywhere else,” Jeff said.
We took the elevator up two flights to the top floor. Streeter’s leg shook while we waited. We stepped into the circular floor of the library situated on top of the school’s tower with windows in all directions. The librarians, still talking in hushed tones even though the floor was empty, looked at Street
er as we exited the elevator. Streeter held up his badge. They went back to talking.
We headed straight for a back room. The windows were wide and clear, overlooking a long wide field stretching out toward the Interstate. The football field was to the left and the tagghet stadium to the right, but between them was a view of the live oaks beyond.
He paced back and forth, muttering to himself while his fingers twittered at his side. It didn’t seem like a good idea to tell him the truth, but somehow I owed it to him. Someone should know. I just needed to get it out of me.
“I’ve known you forever,” I said. “You should know this.”
“Know what?”
“Have a seat.” I pointed at the cushioned chair positioned in front of the window.
“Why? What’re you going to do?”
“Just sit down, will you? You don’t want to be standing when I show you this.”
He sat down, slowly, not taking his eyes off me. “Show me what?”
“Relax, this isn’t going to hurt. But it might freak you out a bit.”
Tension gripped his body. His muscles were rigid, like I was going to pull a tooth. Lactic acid dumped into his muscles, his body quivered. I had been holding myself tightly wound up, avoided merging with the people around me, avoided siphoning their essence but now I released it, feeling the carpet below my feet, the furniture and dry paper in the books. My awareness exploded outside the window, all the way to the Interstate and the cars speeding toward Charleston.
But I focused on Streeter, his eyes wide open. I willed his body to relax, his mind to open and accept the coming vision. What he saw, what he felt, was the humming in my chest, the regeneration of my fingers and the revelation of my true nature. He saw Pivot tell me I was cloned from a human, that I was created to help him avenge Fetter.
I receded from his consciousness, forced myself to disconnect from the sweet taste of his essence that whirled in my belly. Forced myself not to take from him or anything else within my reach, even though it filled me and tingled inside.
His fingers did not nervously twitter. His leg didn’t bounce. Instead, he looked at me with a soft expression, then stood, slowly came over and took my hand. He turned it over, studied the back of the light-colored flesh and looked at the palm.
“Are you playing with me?” he asked.
“I wish I were.”
He went to the window and leaned his forehead against it. His breath was short. A lightness surged into his experience. His foot slipped off the windowsill and his head began to slide across the glass. I caught him before he fell. It was too much. I should’ve just told him, giving him a vision was too surreal. Even though he’d known me all his life, saw me when I first sliced time and read thoughts, when I became a Paladin and developed telekinesis, still he was having trouble assimilating this. Even after everything we’d been through, this was a lot.
I placed him in the chair and allowed myself to get inside his mind, again, this time blotting out some of the detail. I left a faint memory of my true nature: I am not human, I’m a product. Congratulations, your best friend is a duplicate!
He fidgeted after a few minutes. Snorted from a short nap and smacked his lips. I was gazing out the window when he opened his eyes. It took a bit for his awareness to catch up to the present moment and the truth of what he was looking at. He was watching me. He considered running. I couldn’t blame him. After all that time together, he didn’t owe me anything. Maybe he should run.
He leaned forward, then slowly stood, walked next to me. We watched the traffic in the distance, all driving somewhere so unimportant. He propped his leg onto the windowsill and pointed toward the football stadium, leaving a smudge on the glass.
“Remember our first day of school? Jared Miles shoved me down the steps during gym and you pummeled him right there in the bleachers, right in front of the coach and everybody. You remember that?”
“Got suspended three days.”
“And he never messed with me again.” His eyes darted around. Memories flipped through his mind. “You remember, over there? Remember when Alex Deeter dared me to moon the lacrosse team at practice? You remember that?”
“They came after you with sticks.”
“Yeah, and you stood up to all of them.”
“They would’ve beat me senseless if the coach didn’t stop them.”
“But you took the blame.”
“I have a higher pain tolerance.”
He tapped the window, punctuating a set of memories as if to validate this moment, to anchor his beliefs about who he was. Who I am. Then he stepped away, scratching his chin. I leaned back against the window, let my head bump against the glass.
Then he said, decisively, “I know who you are, goddamnit.”
“I showed you the truth.”
“That’s not what I mean. I don’t care what you are. I’ve known you all my life. You’re Socket.” He stopped pacing. “Socket Greeny.”
He resumed looking out the window. The moments stretched out, silently. The librarians were talking louder, now, mostly about Tommy Fletcher and how he needed to get counseling for his severe attention deficit disorder.
Streeter turned his head. “So what now?”
I shrugged.
“You going to the Garrison?”
“No, it’ll just be madness if I go back. I mean, if your alarm system recognized me, I’m not going to make it within a hundred yards before a dozen crawler guards gang-tackle me.”
“You can come to my house.”
“I… no. Not a good idea.”
“Why not? No one will know you’re there. Besides, you got to eat.”
No, I don’t. “It’s not that. I’m… evolving into something, I think. I don’t think it would be a good idea if you were around me until I figure it out.”
“What? You mean, you’re becoming one of them?” He meant duplicate. “You planning on taking over the human race?”
No, it was the temptation that bothered me. The taste of his essence lingered around me like an addiction. Like a shark smelling blood. I could resist, but for how long?
I faced him. “You feel that in your belly?”
He rubbed his stomach, sensed the fear of falling, the removal of his essence as I let myself for just a moment to reconnect with him, automatically absorbing his essence, leaving him with the twisted missing sensation of a void.
“I think I’m stealing from you,” I said. “Kind of like charging my battery with your… life.”
He tensed. “Dude, that’s cold.”
“Sorry.”
“Can you stop?”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know for how long. I just need to go somewhere with no one around, just for a while, anyway.”
The sun hung lower in the sky. Streeter didn’t run, but he didn’t take his hand away from his stomach, either. His mind was working. After a long minute, he said, “I know where you need to go.”
“The North Pole?”
“You need to find your clone.”
Now I laughed. Streeter was mentally tough; he assimilated more than I gave him credit for. “I have no idea where he’s at.”
“I know exactly where he’s at.” He pulled the locator from his pocket and, fearlessly, took both my hands and placed it in my palms. “Do it again, like you did at the tagghet ceremony. Locate yourself in time and space.”
I turned it over, saw my distorted reflection in the black convex surface. It invited me to connect with it, almost like it was thinking to me. Like we speak the same language.
“Go on.” Streeter nudged me. “Do it.”
He had rewritten the code; it was tighter and more efficient, merging with my consciousness as I opened to it. A holographic planet projected from the surface, rotating between us.
“He’s there.” He stuck his finger on the spot of light in the middle of Illinois. “When you used this at the ceremony, in front of all those people, it knew you were just a copy, it found the original.”
A copy. I cringed.
“It worked,” he said. “The whole time, it was working.”
My chest fluttered. He was right, the locator simply considered me a mirror projected from the original identity. Streeter had done it.
“You should go.”
I looked up. “Why?”
“Why? He’s you. You’re him. You’ve been separated from who you are all your life. You’ve got to go see if something will happen.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know! What else are you going to do, sit in the desert and meditate the rest of your life? Just go and find out.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel in control of anything. And that was my answer. I wasn’t in control; I was swept into the current of the unknown, flowing with the mystery of life. I handed the locator back to Streeter. “You’re right.”
“Hell yeah, I’m right. You can use my car, if you want. I’ll tell my gramma you needed it for a couple days. She won’t care.”
“I won’t need it.”
“Are you kidding me? Illinois is like 800 miles away unless you’ve got a ship or something out there in the trees.” He looked out the window. “Do you?”
I looked at him. He’d really like to know.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Or do you have some kind of teleportation thing.” His eyes were wide. “You’ve got teleportation?”
Maybe I shouldn’t do it, I didn’t want to overload him again. But he’d want to see it. I held up my hand and let it dissolve. My fingers were the first to fall away, dissolving into the air, followed by my hand, wrist and arm. I gathered the molecules at my waist and my arm reappeared.
“That is badass.” He stared at my arm, blinking heavily. The overload was dulling his consciousness again.
“I got to go, Streeter.” I washed the thoughts from his immediate awareness, let him keep the memory for later digestion.
“Am I going to see you again?”
“I don’t know.”
We shook hands, fingers up, then I jerked him close and we hugged, patting each other’s backs with the free hand. “You should probably get back to Janette.”
Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny Page 13
