Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny

by Tony Bertauski

  Fetter was inside me as I walked through the desert, pulling on essence against my will. Fetter was the reason I was absorbing from those around me, from Streeter and the people in Tannerville. I couldn’t stop her. I was becoming Fetter.

  Until I met Scott.

  “Although,” she said, “Manumit was quite effective. Genius, really. A human-based mech. He was able to merge your mind with the soul of your original being.” She looked at me, studying. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that when we were back home. It’s almost as if you became human, after all.”

  Chute’s hand squeezed tighter. Her mind struggled to comprehend everything that was happening, there was little chance she would understand my true being. Not now. But it hurt that she knew something about me wasn’t real. It hurt that she didn’t know. There just wasn’t time to explain. All I could do was squeeze back and protect her from the angelic predator sitting on the rock, wringing her hands.

  “Come, come, now. Let’s go home.” Fetter held out her hand for help. “This is foolishness, all this waiting. Give me the girl and we can go home. Your love for her is admirable, but misplaced. You can have her and your young love will flourish once we’re back.”

  “You mean you’ll manufacture her.”

  “It will feel as real as it feels right now.”

  Her perfect fingernails clawed at the boulder she was sitting on. The funnel had not grown and the wormhole was still small. She needed me to get it fully open. She was stuck until she got stronger. Until I gave up. She needed Chute. There was no more essence to draw from, not in the immediate area. She would have to journey to get it. Deep wrinkles cut into her stiff lips.

  “If you think you can resist me, boy,” she said, “you are mistaken.”

  She stood. The funnel began to shrink, pulling away from the wormhole, releasing the leaves caught in its current. But the grimmets circled around the black hole in the sky, the edges swirling as if they were holding it open. The psychic pressure intensified. She was drawing on her reserves.

  “I thought, perhaps, you would understand your fate,” she said. “You belong to me, darling. Your father has forsaken you, left you as a gift. You are strong, but you are no match for me, not even at my weakest.”

  Fetter’s mind clamped around us like jaws. And began to squeeze.

  Chute moaned. Her knees weakened and her pulse slammed in her veins. Fear oozed from her in a pungent wave. The warmth of her flesh, the beating of her heart, spread through me. I reasserted my mind, tightened it like an impenetrable wall, pushing back the psychic pressure. Chute felt the relief.

  “You are quite a source of power there.” Her nostrils flared, smelling us. “Do you think it’s enough?”

  I looked up to the grimmets, searching for Rudder, calling out. I needed their help. How long could I hold out? And if anyone ventured out to assist us, they would only feed Fetter until she eventually crushed me. But if I had to hold the ground forever, then so be it. I would hold it forever.

  But Chute won’t survive forever.

  The funnel suddenly vanished and showered us with sand and grit, bits of leaves fluttering around. Fetter threw the full weight of her power around me. My mind began to crack as the vise tightened. Chute was nearly limp, leaning against my back. She threw her arm over my shoulder.

  “Come now.” Fetter stepped closer. There was nothing I could do to stop her from stroking my cheek this time, her thin skin soft and innocent but scentless. “There’s no need to struggle.”

  “Get away from him.” Chute slapped her hand.

  Fetter stepped back, smiling. “You can’t hide forever.”

  Chute tried to go after Fetter again and I stopped her. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You matter more to the world than me! Let go of me and then crush her.”

  “Don’t say that!” I shouted.

  “I’m just a girl, but you… the whole world depends on you.”

  She didn’t know exactly what was going on, she didn’t know what Fetter wanted from her, she only knew I was protecting her. She believed the world needed me more than her, the world would be better off with me protecting them. Maybe she drew courage from me, the same way I was drawing strength from her. I could take her essence, absorb her before Fetter could, grow stronger and close the wormhole. I would have the strength to reduce Fetter to a single byte of data again and lock her away. But Chute would be the price for that.

  The pressure of Fetter’s attack increased. My mind was breaking. Chute could feel it falter. She was still looking at me. They were both looking at me. What now, Socket? We’re waiting. The whole world is waiting.

  Chute took a step toward Fetter, to throw herself on the sacrificial throne, give herself to the world. To let me live. She wanted me to absorb her before Fetter did. She was forcing me to do it. Take me, now, or I’ll jump.

  Fetter closed her eyes and nodded.

  The wormhole was bigger and blacker, deeper and stronger. The grimmets circling faster.

  Chute’s hand slid down my arm. Our fingers hooked one last time. The air thickened as Fetter’s mind clashed with mine, the jaws of a timeless eating machine clamped down on me. There was no way for me to win. It was checkmate. We all lose.

  The serpents have the king cornered.

  And as I let go of Chute’s finger, let it fall from my grip, all my strength went with it.

  Down my arm.

  And into Chute.

  Whatever strength, whatever essence, being or presence, whatever I was made of, everything that I called me, I gave to her. It surrounded her like an impenetrable shield that even the likes of Fetter could not defile. Nothing would harm her.

  I was completely vulnerable. Fetter smiled. The leaves whipped around her feet and a cold wind bit into my skin. The psychic fangs sunk deep.

  Fetter took my hand. “Come now, darling.”

  Chute felt the warmth around her. Confusion struck. “No!” She tried to smack my hand away from Fetter’s, but her hand passed through me like I was a shadow. Fetter had already begun to absorb my body, pulling me through her hand.

  The funnel began to grow, again.

  “No, no, NO!” Chute grasped my face. “Don’t you do this, Socket Greeny! Don’t you—” Her chest heaved and trembled. “You can’t leave me… you can’t do this. You mean too much. You said… you… YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE!”

  Did I matter, really? Any more than her? Any more than that rock or stump? What was I but just an imitation of Scott Teck. I was a duplication fooled to think I was human; I thought I was something real. Would the world miss that?

  Chute took my free hand, still warm and solid, and clasped it between both of hers, held it tight, as if that could stop me. But Fetter’s influence spread across my chest. My shoulders became numb and the loosening of my body spread across my back and down my legs, the solidity flowing towards Fetter’s gravitational pull, feeding her.

  The funnel reached the burgeoning wormhole.

  Chute held my hand to her wet cheek and the last thing I could feel was its warmth. The beating of her heart, it began to fade. And then her hands collapsed. My hand sifted through her fingers like dust, until she pressed only her own hands against her face. Only a faint image of my body remained, standing before her like an apparition. I reached out…

  “It’s time to go home,” Fetter said.

  And then, like a gust of wind, I was blown from the physical world.

  Merging with Fetter.

  Darkness fell.

  I could hear Chute sobbing. It sounded so distant, but her sorrow so tangible. If only I could soothe her pain, but I left that world. Now I was in another plane of existence. But still, her heartache poured over me. It seeped into the darkness and filled me. It seemed endless. As if the tears would flow forever. In fact, I felt denser because of her. I experienced some sort of outward growth, like I turned into filaments of a fungus, feeding on Chute’s love and penetrating into Fetter’s body. We hadn’t rocketed thr
ough the wormhole; we were still in the Preserve.

  Fetter hadn’t moved.

  WHUMP!

  The darkness quaked. There was a shift, something missing. A hole.

  Images began to form, faint spirits and colors. My vision was returning. I was soaring high above the Preserve, looking at the barren trees that were once lush, green and full of life. Directly below, in the rubble, was the stump of the grimmet tree. I felt like I was still down there, in Fetter, like I’d been split in two. Part of me flying through the sky, the rest of me trapped in her. She was solid, like concrete.

  Chute scurried back, stifling her cries. She took cover.

  I saw a grimmet divebomb and felt another convulsion when it hit Fetter. My vision became clearer. I saw more details. I had another vantage point from above that was circling around.

  Fetter staggered back to the rock she was sitting on, held it for balance. My view circled in front of her, near the ground. The color disappeared from her face, her expression was sour. Her hands quivering.

  The grimmets emerged from the clouds. Hundreds of them flew together in formation. And then they began to descend, corkscrewing in a long line. They hit her, one at a time, their leathery wings snapping like windswept flags. Her body jolted as each one passed through her. And with each strike, every jolting thump, I had more views from up above, saw more detail, soared upward. And less of me was back in the body, more of me taking flight. Inside the grimmets.

  Like a rapid-fire weapon, they consumed what was left of her body until I was part of every grimmet.

  They gave Pivot the answer.

  They showed him a way back to his True Self. They showed him a way to put an end to the falseness. An end to the black planet.

  They carried my consciousness. They were technological masters, psychic titans, with the ability to absorb a machine. I saw through each of their eyes, focusing my vision from any angle I chose. We went higher, where the air was thinner, where the sun was brighter. Far below, Chute looked like a speck.

  And from the cloud of grimmets, Rudder fell. He dropped from the sky. I was part of him, saw through his eyes. He shot back to the ground and circled her, pulled up and landed on her shoulder. He wrapped his long tail around her neck. Perhaps she saw inside him, felt me looking back. Felt me touch her cheek with Rudder’s little hand, wiping her tears.

  An urgency to fly called from above. Reluctantly, Rudder took flight. One slow pass around her, then up he went, joining the mass of grimmets that contained me. We circled the black wormhole pulsing in the sky. They were holding it open. They had been holding it open all along. Not so that Fetter could return home. So that they could deliver her.

  [You were never my pawn.] Pivot’s voice echoed in my mind, his faint presence becoming stronger, as if he finally arrived. [You were never a weapon.]

  The grimmets began to enter the wormhole, their bodies jumped through space. A part of me disappeared with each one of them, my vision dimming as they went. They arrived and dispersed through the black planet. Part of me was still in the Preserve, but it was fading. Chute was watching the grimmets disappear.

  [You have always been the key.]

  She was just a faint figure, a gray body in a white fog, but I could feel her heart beating. Rudder was the last to circle around the wormhole. The last to enter the cold door across the universe. And when he did, when I could no longer see her, when I only experienced the blackness of space, I took hope. For somewhere inside me her heart was still beating.

  All grimmets had arrived. They delivered me like a gift. A gift to the universe.

  [You are the key to humanity’s salvation.]

  A new vision emerged, this of the black planet, its multitude of wormholes flickering around it, penetrating every dimension of space, drawing light from the universe. It was as dark and as black as could be. A hole in space. Forever absorbing life.

  But cracks developed.

  Fractures crept over the surface and light spilled out. They widened and brightened. The black planet pulsed, no longer humming but beating to the time of a human heart. It became louder. Brighter.

  Somehow, I had transformed into something that captured Fetter. Whether it was merging with Scott or the love and sadness or the selfless acts or what, I don’t know. Pivot knew. He knew that I was the key Fetter’s self-destruction. Or maybe I was the key to her enlightenment.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the planet stopped beating. It paused. And, in a soundless explosion, the black planet erupted with the light and power of a quasar. There was only light shooting in every direction, down every wormhole, to every dimension of space, to everything tainted by Fetter. That light was the message.

  And that message was this. Life.

  Perhaps it was understanding that did it. Maybe it was a command that told Fetter that she was not real. That without soul, without legitimacy and value, there was no existence.

  Fetter never was. And is no more.

  And I bathed in that light, in the message, until I merged with it. And then realized, all along, I am the light. I always have been.

  Fading

  The light consumes my mind and thoughts, my very existence, and yet I’m still here. But what am I, without a body? Without a name?

  I have no wish to move, no desire to go, because there is nowhere but here, this very moment. In parts of the universe time appears to move from past to present, side to side, even backwards. But here, where I am, it’s just light. Time does not move. There is no measurement of how human time is experienced compared to my timeless existence.

  None of this makes sense to an ordinary mind. This reasoning, this rambling of paradoxical thoughts, has no place in the physical world. How can there be only now when the past and future exist? Do they? Or are they just thoughts?

  Words can only point to that realization.

  But in this existence, in this totality of luminescence, I have thoughts. And these thoughts sometimes stretch out over time and space.

  Pivot. I send the single thought out, resonating through the endless light. Is this it? Is this the end?

  He does not answer. But his presence is strong. Perhaps the non-answer is the answer. That existence could not be explained in words, could not be found in a book or summarized in thought. That existence is pure experience.

  At times, I feel the tug of thoughts. I even experience movement like I’m being pulled through the bodiless in-between toward a body, but then I return to the timeless experience where all is one.

  Thoughts occasionally arise, piecing together the thread of my past life. Pivot’s masterful plan is unfathomable. A feint within a feint within a feint… so much hidden deceit, so many complex moves, countless pieces in place, each of us unknowingly executing our parts with perfection.

  Even Pike.

  The game of Reign was, indeed, the answer to my question. He told me that nothing was what it seemed. Was he part of the plan? Did he assume the unsavory role of pure evil, with no regard for life, to be there at that moment to release Fetter from my body? To embody Fetter? To fool Fetter that this was not a trap, was that it? Did he absorb the life from all the Paladins like a gluttonous villain to deprive Fetter of such strength, to further convince Fetter his body was safe? And was the relief he expressed that of a condemned soul or a weary soldier asked to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, for the sake of all existence?

  Perhaps, in the end, he just wanted it to be over.

  I return to sleep in pure light. Each time I’m moved by thought, another piece of my life wants to be remembered, to be cherished and recognized. I remember it all, memories of a good life. But each episode of remembering brings fewer details.

  My father was an honorable man. I tried to keep up with his long footsteps, even after he died. His unshaven face and silent laugh brought comfort and peace. But then the details of his face become gray and I remember just a man with whiskers.

  My mother was asked to carry on, to serve life without the thin
gs that mattered most. She loved me, even though she knew I was a duplication of her only son. Eventually, I recall a worn woman with short hair. And then I remember just a woman.

  Streeter, a true friend. A genius. He was always there for me. I recall all the trouble we got into, all the times we laughed so hard our stomachs hurt. The times he was there to listen to me. There was a lot to remember, but then I just remember a short boy that used to make me laugh, someone I once knew in my younger years. Then, just a boy.

  But of all the thoughts and memories, it’s Chute’s that returns frequently. I can see her in great detail, the freckles on her cheeks in summer and the way her skin wrinkled between her eyes when she laughed. Her smooth complexion, blue eyes and strawberry red hair waving past her shoulders. I felt so close to her.

  None of the memories fade easily, but they all vanish. In the end, I only remember Chute. After I can no longer recall a mother or a father or a good friend, when there is no recollection of anybody or anything that matters, when I can no longer remember that I was once a being with a name, a name I can longer recall, I can still see her face. I can still feel her heart.

  But then I cannot recall her freckles.

  Her eyes become gray. Her hair colorless.

  In the end, I cannot see her face at all, cannot recall one aspect of her beauty, but I cling to the beating of her heart, listening to it play out her life as if calling me back, begging me never to forget. To never leave.

  Bum-bum. Bum-bum.

  Bum-bum.

  Bum.

  And then it is only the light. No thoughts. Nothing but awareness.

  Pivot is still present, his essence intermingles with mine, but even that becomes indistinguishable from the light. I recall, in the final moments, I’m artificial. I’m not real.

  But in the final moments, I don’t know what I am. I only know the light.

  Awakening

  “Socket.”

  There’s rough fabric against my cheek. Something rustles next to my ear, but my body is too heavy to move, my eyelids sealed shut. The roughness fades.

  “Time to wake up, Socket.”