We don’t ask for permission to serve.
At the top of the steps, another man on another stool. Not as round, but just as big. He stared at us all the way to the top. Streeter held out the disc. He pressed it to his glove without taking his eyes off Streeter.
He nodded, then held the disc up like a communion wafer. Streeter, unsure, plucked it from his fingers. The guy didn’t move. The door behind him was old and peeling, too, but this one had a crystal doorknob. Streeter put his hand on it, turned slowly. Heaven’s inside.
The room inside was reddish, long and narrow. A bar was along the left wall. A bartender leaned on the polished surface; another guy was on a barstool. His tie was loose. He had no drink.
Booths were along the right, filled with people. Most were young, some were locals. They had their fingers dipped in a black saucer in the center of each table. Some had their heads back, some slumped over, their eyes glassy and aimless. Moody bowls. Unlike the moody discs Patrick was dealing, moody bowls were legal mood enhancers. The body’s natural opiate. Make life feel better, dip into a moody bowl today.
The government ruled years ago that moodies were no more dangerous or addictive than a cup of coffee. “It’s just a little escape,” the woman in the commercial used to say, with her frizzy hair and crying baby. “Who doesn’t need a vacation now and then?” She looks back at the baby, then puts her thumb in a small moody bowl. Her eyes close. “I know I do.”
The booths had teenagers and adults, some with clothes that needed washed, and others looked like lawyers or doctors. They could’ve been my next door neighbors. Escape had them mesmerized, escaping whatever they were running from. They tricked the brain to boot out good feelings, that the world was all right, just like it was when they were kids watching their favorite show. I love you, you love me…
The crowd in the middle of the room was more sophisticated. They belonged in the five-star restaurant instead of the moody den. They sat at elevated tables or stood in groups swaying to the soft notes of a piano playing somewhere in the back. They smiled and laughed, spoke in hushed tones. They all looked around every few seconds, like they were waiting for something.
We politely worked our way around the tables and between the well-to-do people that ignored us like kitchen help. One lady grabbed my hair and let it fall between her fingers. “Nice hair,” she said. Her pupils were enlarged, but she still had irises. Not yet a void, but on her way.
There was a doorway on the back wall and a silver podium facing it. A woman walked out of the doorway as if the archway was a solid outline on the wall. Like Garrison technology. A gentleman and his date shoved past us without an apology. He placed a disc similar to Streeter’s on the podium. The silver surface absorbed it and the doorway started glowing. The couple rushed through it.
Streeter approached the podium, next. There was no one stopping him. He did like the guy before him and the doorway responded. He took a deep breath and looked back, then walked through it like a curtain of water. Gone.
I went through the cold archway and stepped next to Streeter into a tiny elevator room. There was slight nausea in my belly and the atmosphere became slightly more humid and cooler. The wall lit again.
This is a leaper! They have access to Paladin technology!
Streeter took another long breath, but I stepped through the lit wall first.
This room was gray and damp, mold in the corners, big enough for a bunk bed and two chairs. The stench shot up my nose, like something rotten hovered just below a heavy dose of sterilizing solution. The mattresses were bare with large yellowish stains. Stains layered upon stains. Empty life support jacks on the wall were options for long term virtualmode living, lines that would pump nutrition into veins for weeks, months or however long a client’s bank account held up.
Putrid memories haunted the room. No joy ever remained, yet the promise of such was always present.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Streeter said, his voice wavering. “But I’m not here for a long trip.” He sat in a chair, sinking in as the ultra-molding pads reformed to his body.
“You’re not using their transporters, are you?”
“I have to.” He took two discs off the table between the chairs and slid a transparent film over them. “But this will sterilize them.”
He was lucid enough, not too desperate, to realize that transporters in a void-ridden place like this would have leacher technology that gave the user a taste of that connection and left him wanting more. People thought heroin was addictive? Try leacher gear that left an imprint on your brain, like a permanent brand with instructions to come back for more. No cure for that and guaranteed repeat customers. Ask those that pissed on the mattresses.
“I’ve got extra sterilizers for you,” he said.
“No, thanks.” I tapped the back of my neck. “I’ve got an imbed.”
Under normal circumstances, he’d want to know everything about imbed technology. He’d heard of it, so what was it like? When could he get it? But he didn’t flinch. He pressed the transporters behind his ears and lay back. Unlike the moody discs that the burners placed behind their ears, the transporter discs pulled Streeter’s awareness from his skin into virtualmode. I sat in the chair – the remnant energy of all the addicts that sat in it before me crawled over my skin like ants – and activated my imbedded portal.
I left my skin and arrived at the Gates of the Dead. Streeter was already there. For the first time ever, he was in a sim that looked like his actually skin body, back when it was plump and healthy. I felt hopeful.
Leaves crunched under my feet, I stepped next to him, looking into the black depths between the bars.
“I didn’t plan on this happening.” His gaze was blank. “But when I saw them…” He swallowed.
“I understand.” I didn’t understand, but he needed to hear that.
“When I saw them, something snapped inside me.” Focus returned to his eyes. “You ever seen your dad?”
I shook my head.
“You should try it,” he said. “It’ll fuck you up, bro.”
The gates opened. The blackness behind them swirled and details took shape. Streeter took one deep breath and marched through them. Grass sprouted under our feet. Live oaks from before the time of the Civil War lined the large expanse of turf. Traffic cruised outside of that. Tourists were looking over the wall at crashing waves and a barge slowly cruised into the harbor loaded with containers. We were standing at Battery Park, right downtown, where tourists could see Fort Sumter across the harbor.
Streeter was stoic, eyes fixed straight ahead. The park was filled with the usual crowd. A couple college guys were tossing a Frisbee and some kids were throwing food to the seagulls. Streeter watched it like a movie.
“This world is addictive.” He held out his hands, turned them over. “The details are better than anything I’ve ever seen. I can smell the ocean and feel the breeze, like I’m really here. You start to forget what’s real.”
“The Battery is just three blocks away in the skin, let’s get out of here and go.”
He pointed. “They won’t be there.”
On the far side of the park, a couple was holding hands. They walked at a leisurely pace. I recognized them from a picture in Streeter’s house; it sat on a shelf in the den, right above his grandfather’s desk. Streeter was two years old, sitting on the beach with the tide rushing in. His dad had curly hair and a big round face, what his grandfather called swarthy. His mother had blond hair and her lips red; she smiled big and there was lipstick smudged on her teeth.
Streeter always said that was his favorite picture. I never knew why, it wasn’t all that flattering, but then after awhile I got it: It was real. Nothing pretend about it, those were real people with their son at the beach. The same two people walking across the park.
“You see, this is where the trip always ends,” Streeter said. “I see them across the park.” His father, still a hundred yards out, waves at us. “They wave
. Then it ends, the world goes black and I ended up back at the gates, starting all over. You know what it would cost for me to get closer?”
“By the look of that crowd in the lobby, I’d say half a million.”
“Close.” His lower lip started to tremble. “The security of this world is tight, I couldn’t hack my way past that point without paying and I ain’t got half a mil cooling in my pocket. And once I got a taste, I couldn’t stop. I went night after night trying to codebreak the security, just so I could get a little closer, but I couldn’t pull it off. I stripped the safety features off my gear. I know it’s dangerous—that I’ve started gear addiction. I stopped going to school because if Mr. Buxbee saw me, he’d lock me up. I’ll go to detox, Socket, I swear I will. But not until after.”
They were fifty yards out. His mother waved this time. Streeter made an odd sound, like he got punched in the stomach, started to reach for his face, seemed unsure about what to do.
“I made a deal with the devil, Socket. I wrote some difficult code to get this key and Mr. Black is going to use it to rob some innocent people with it. But I had to, you understand?” His eyes were wet. “I just had to.”
I squeezed his shoulder. I understand.
He took a step, slow and frightened that the trip would end. When the ground was still under his feet, he took another. On the third, he was running. His parents put their arms out. Streeter crashed into them. He buried his face between them, his body convulsing. They hugged him tight, held him an arm’s distance away like long lost ones trying to see what their boy had become. Streeter was trying to talk, but just made weird sounds. He was in a full-on meltdown.
I was feeling it, too. I felt guilt mixed with relief. Guilt for not understanding. Relief he found what he needed. Guess there was a lot more buried in him then I thought.
flicker.
The world crinkled.
I grabbed a bench for support. Streeter was still there. His parents, too. But the traffic was gone, so was the water.
Flick, fiililckkkk.
I lost contact with my sim, floating in the in-between. I pulled my awareness back into my skin and sat up. My nostrils had soured in the room’s rancid odor. Streeter was still in virtualmode, tears streaming down his face. The doorway to the leaper was glowing.
“Socket?”
“Chute!” I touched my nojakk cheek.
“Is Streeter all right?”
His lips were moving, tears still flowing. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s going to be all right.”
A cold chill leaked down my neck, voices gurgling. My body was alight with tension, the timeslicing spark dancing in my belly. I shook my head to clear the confusion. I couldn’t leave Streeter, but I was pulled in forty directions. I bent over, closed my eyes and held my head together. Chute was saying something.
“…glad Streeter’s with you. Where are you?”
I was going to answer. I was thinking of meeting her down at the market, at the outdoor café. Streeter, maybe he would be up for telling her about it. We could reconnect, all three of us.
The chill froze my neck, harder than ever.
The voices.
Heeee’s in there, is what it said. Or maybe Chute said it.
“What?” I answered.
Chute said something, but I couldn’t hear through the voices. I needed to hear what that cold chill was telling me. It was Streeter’s voice, was he speaking on the nojakk? No, it was… from somewhere else, some time else…
CRACK-flash.
It was a blunt object. A club.
The back of my head.
I sensed it, at the last second, and tried to slow time. But the world spun.
My face numb.
I had faceplanted into the floor. Blood gushed through my lips to the back of my throat. There were people in the room, like a dozen, swimming back and forth. I couldn’t count them all. Maybe three. I just, couldn’t… focus. I flopped over; Streeter was in the chair, oblivious to what was going on. I squeezed time to stop it, but couldn’t get a grip. There was little feeling in my body.
A tanned face hovered over me. “Hello, friend,” he said, his voice far away. “You didn’t think I could smell a fucking Paladin?”
I tried to sit up, but the bottom of a boot knocked me down. The back of my head exploded on the floor.
Time?
There was only a brown face in front of me. No details. No room. Just a smudgy face. Someone spat. Something wet splattered on my cheeks. “We don’t fear the Paladin Nation.”
My lips were too fat, but they tried, quaking and bubbling. Couldn’t get them to work. I couldn’t utter a single word, couldn’t send a single lucid thought to Spindle sitting safely in the car. Couldn’t do anything but let the dead silence of my confusion flounder. I managed a sound, but it was nothing.
“Call all you want.” The face receded. “We’ve isolated your communications. No nojakk, no thoughts, no nothing. It’s just you, now. Deep underground. You’re in our world, friend. And you’re not going home. Not tonight.”
My lips, fat and bloated, split as I smiled. They cut my communications.
Commotion in the room.
My communication is my lifeline. If there’s no lifeline…
Something crashed on the wall. A body fell over me.
Screams.
He hears my heartbeat.
Silence.
When he can’t hear it…
A silver face hovered over me.
…he comes.
“We are leaving, Master Socket.”
Drown
It was like a throbbing metal rod had been rammed up my nose. Pain and pressure rhythmically spread over my face.
The bridge of my nose, broken. My cheek, fractured. They had to secure two of my front teeth and reattach nerves along with bone mending. I was told that’s what happened on the first day. I only remembered half of the second. On the third day, I woke to the brutal reality of a broken face.
“You have been denied pain control,” they told me. “Orders from Trainer Pon.”
Pon still hadn’t returned from Pike’s relocation, but he was giving orders. There was no explanation with them, but then again there didn’t need to be. Deal with pain. Oh, and that’s what you get for being a fuck-up. You get pain. I told you that you can’t go home. Should’ve listened.
I sat up in bed and my sinuses swelled. I paused before my face exploded. Mother could override this order to keep me out pain if she took it high enough, but then what? I had to deal with it on my own, that’s what Pon was teaching me. I started to grind my teeth, resisting Pon’s apparent wisdom but this only sent a spike through my brain. I don’t know what I hated more: When Pon was right or when it hurt this much. Both.
I took a cup of water from the nightstand without leaning over. I wasn’t sure if I had the balance to keep myself upright if my momentum started in any one direction. My throat was parched from breathing through my mouth. I chugged the water in three gulps.
What a joke.
I was nearly destroyed by a goddamn void merchant, a piece of shit that rarely came back to the skin. Face it, if Spindle wasn’t there, they never would’ve found me. And Pon was training me to go into the world to save it? I can’t even save myself.
No matter how much I wanted to deny it, I was still human. I still had emotions and I was still fucked up. Maybe I was too hard on Streeter. I mean, I got every expert in the world, maybe the universe, to help me deal with daily problems and look at me: I’m racked up in the infirmary. Streeter was on his own, dealing with emotions that didn’t make sense the only way he knew how. And not just Streeter, all those burners in the parking lot and those people dipping into a moody bowl, they just wanted to ease the pain and emptiness of life, that’s all. What chance did those people have if I was still an idiot with a more evolved race of humans at my disposal?
Pain is part of life, Pon would say. There’s much to learn from it.
Once my head found peace with the
upright position, I touched my feet on the floor and eased my weight forward. The pulsing pain diminished. It was getting from horizontal to vertical that hurt.
I was in a one-bed infirmary with a single window. The view was projected from the side of the Garrison’s sheer-face wall that faced the wormhole that led back to South Carolina. The sun was high and the grass shivered in the breeze. I asked Mother for the view. I needed something that would remind me of the way home because I was pretty sure I’d never see it again.
“The Commander is very disappointed,” she told me.
She had paced at the foot of my bed. I’d let the Commander down. Let the Paladin Nation down. Worst of all, I let her down. She trusted me.
“You went into a known duplicate-sympathizing club with Streeter!” she said. “How irresponsible!”
The graffiti. The leaper. And the bouncer at the top of the steps was running an imbedded portal. And Patrick? Those weren’t headlights I saw reflecting in his pupil-engorged eyes, that was a sparkling imbed. He knew exactly who I was and where I came from the second I arrived.
I should’ve aborted the whole thing, but no one was going to understand. Streeter was going in there and I wasn’t stopping him. I took a chance and failed. Streeter’s life was not worth the life of a Paladin cadet, my superiors might believe. Ordinary people were as common as raindrops. A Paladin was rare. Do the math, Socket. You made the wrong choice.
“Streeter?” I had asked. “He’s okay, right?”
Mother had stopped her pacing. “Yes.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“You are not allowed communication with Streeter. Or Chute.”
The emptiness of her expression spoke volumes. Pon had total control now. She once had the advantage, but that was long gone now. You’re too emotionally involved, Kay. You will be allowed to check on Socket, but Pon now has complete authority to squash him like a mosquito. Sorry about that, but it’s his fault.
Pon’s first order: a heaping dose of pain. Let Socket reap the harvest of his mistake and feel each nerve cry. And forget about home. Not even pictures. All he gets is training, starting now. Welcome home to that.
Socket 2 - The Training of Socket Greeny Page 11
