Socket 2 - The Training of Socket Greeny

by Tony Bertauski

  He doesn’t answer, just thumbs at the door. I check the evolvers on my belt. Fat man doesn’t seem concerned that I’m armed. I stop at the peeling red door.

  Bzzz-zzzz. Bz.

  The door opens on its own. I walk up the creaking steps, the walls covered with graffiti. Ice shatters, one blurb reads. Seems like I’ve heard that before.

  Another behemoth at the top of the steps, the heels of his boots wedged on the bar stool. He jerks his head at the crystal-knobbed door behind him. The door thumps, rhythmically.

  “In there,” he says.

  “Who?” The word puffs out of my mouth.

  He does the same jerky motion with his head.

  A black fog rolls in through the door at the bottom of the steps. It stops, but continues to swirl, the tendrils twisting and curling and waiting like it’s just cleaning up behind me. No hurry, take your time.

  The man sees the cloud, too. “Too late, now.”

  I wrap my hand around the angular doorknob. It jiggles with a pounding bass, vibrating in my palm, sending a tickling line through the tendons in my wrist.

  Music bursts from inside in loud synthesized dance beats, vibrating deep in my chest. Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom. Over and over. The black cloud roils on the top step behind me.

  The club looks the same, but the crowd is different. They’re younger, packed together with their hands in the air, hopping to the mad, driving beat. The bartender stands with his arms crossed, the vivid red light illuminating his white shirt. He jerks his head towards the crowd and mouths the words over there. I don’t hear anything over the drowning beat.

  The crowd notices me, one at a time, as the rumor of my arrival spreads. They’re expecting me. It doesn’t slow them down, but they’re looking. I know them. A girl leans over and shouts, “Come on!” It’s Carmen, from my eighth grade history class. I had a crush on her, but she moved to California. She’s waving at me, like she wants me to join the party.

  Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom.

  One person isn’t dancing. I see the top of the brown head ducking behind the ocean waves of the dance floor. Without breaking stride, the crowd parts. Pon has his arms locked behind his back. His expression is hard. So many times I’d seen that look push me harder, challenge me, tell me time was precious and it was running out. But this time the look mingles with something else, something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a smirk, one that belongs to someone else. It belongs to a traitor. Pike.

  He mingles into the crowd behind him, getting lost in the hard bouncing bodies. Hands in the air.

  Dssssszth-dssssszth-boom.

  I follow.

  The crowd cheers my first step, reaching for me, the roar of their approval rising above the music. Slaton, a lanky kid that was in one of my gym classes, scruffs the top of my head. Then there’s Jane, my old babysitter, rubbing my shoulders and celebrating with a wooo-hooo! Next to her is Albert, a quiet kid that was my bunkmate at summer camp. He never said more than ten words a day and picked his nose when he lay in bed. But he was making plenty of noise now, smacking me in the back.

  The black cloud gobbles up the bartender and crystal-knobbed door.

  Up and down the crowd goes, sloshing back and forth. They gently tug at me, congratulating me, hugging me. There’s Shelly right in front, his blond hair bouncing in his face. He reaches into the crowd and pulls a girl out by her wrist, spins her around and grinds his hips into her. She turns her head. Chute. She doesn’t look happy, doesn’t look sad. Shelly’s hands crawls up her belly, over her breasts—

  I blast him.

  It’s effortless, just a thought exploding from my gut, hitting him like a telephone pole, driving him through an endless corridor of dancing bodies, arms flailing, until the crowd swallows him up. Chute is gone.

  Deeper I go.

  I reach the end. It’s the silver podium where Streeter inserted the key. An arching outline is on the wall. The party rages on behind me.

  “He’s in there.” Streeter’s on my left. I’ve heard him say that before.

  “Who?”

  “Your teacher. He went through the doorway.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “We’re all here.” Chute’s on my right. “You have to follow him,” she says.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Too late for that, now,” Streeter answers.

  The thumping fades. My ears ring as the music stops. The sea of people have solemn expressions. The black cloud roils at the far end of the room. Any day now.

  “You have to follow,” Chute says again.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  She’s sad. But it isn’t her. Not really. None of this is really here. Right?

  I step to the podium. The surface is cold and smooth on my fingers. The podium connects with my nervous system, recognizing me. The archway on the wall begins to glow.

  Whatever is on the other side seems more frightening than anything I’ve ever faced. I don’t want to go, but the black cloud is losing patience. It furls over the crowd, obscuring their faces as it advances. I slide my hand off the pedestal.

  “Goodbye, Socket.” Chute doesn’t wave. Part of me wants to run back and hold her. But that’s not Chute. The black cloud is going to take her from me.

  I have to go through that door.

  It’s too late for anything else.

  I pass through the doorway. It’s not a leaper this time. It’s a bright, circular room. The walls are reflective, like hazy mirrors. My reflections look back with fuzzy edges. Doors are evenly spaced around the perimeter.

  I walk along the room, the doorways won’t open. Pon’s not here. Maybe he went through one of the doors, but I’m not going to make this into a game of Hide and Seek. Those doors could go anywhere. I turn to go back to the club, but the archway is gone. In its place is a blank space.

  I slam my fists on the wall. “Where are you, goddamnit?”

  There’s a silver podium now in the center of the room. It wasn’t there when I entered, as if it magically appeared, identical to the one in the lobby. My reflection is perfectly clear on its surface. I dip my fingers in it, my image ripples. The taste of aluminum tings in my mouth.

  And then the podium opens to my awareness.

  The room spins like a carnival ride. Data courses through my fingers, ticking through my nerves like grains of sand, expanding my awareness, filling me with thoughts and images. My mind grows out the top of my head like tentacles. The air whistles as they swing around. More emerge from the back of my head, then along my neck and back.

  I wrap them around the podium and smash it into the ceiling. Now this is telekinesis. My True Nature. This is what the Trial is about. I’ve been released from my body. I am pure power. And Pon thinks he can hide from me?

  ME?

  The podium crashes, its post spiking into the floor, fragments twinkling around the room. I plunge my slithery mind into the podium. The surface splashes. Currents of information surge through me. I let my awareness absorb it. Become it.

  I’m everywhere, like the multi-faceted vision of an insect. There are thousands of virtualmode rooms throughout the underground of Charleston and they’re all connected to the room of mirrors. It all starts here.

  It all starts with me.

  I am the room. I am the conduit. I am everything.

  The rooms are filthy little prison cells with patrons lying on piss-stained mattresses. Their bodies are wasting away and forgotten. Maybe I know these people like I knew the ones in the lobby but I don’t pay attention. I don’t care. None of them taste like Pon.

  I go room to room, sniffing with my mind, searching for the one soul I came for, the one that will quench my thirst. I need to find Pon. I can bring him back, I can send Pike away. If he would just stop hiding.

  PON! My thought shakes the walls. DON’T RUN FROM ME!

  The corridors are networked like an ant colony. My awareness spreads throughout. I can taste the foul f
lesh of the gear-addicted voids. I plunge deeper. It’s colder and the rooms are smaller. The voids are shriveled and weak, but I storm past them. Room after room, life after life, I taste them all. And when there are no more rooms, when there’s nowhere left to look, nothing left to taste, it’s clear to me. He’s gone.

  POOOOOONNNNN!

  The gear-addicts quiver, twitching to life. They moan like babies pulled off their mommy’s tit. I feel their cries inside me, but ignore them. They want to go back to their virtualmode life of dreams and fantasy and I don’t give a fuck what they want. I hate them. They’re the ones filling me with rage. It’s them. It’s their fault.

  “Come, you shitbags.” The walls crackle. “Come and see what you’ve become.”

  I absorb their essence, interweave through their minds and bodies until I’m one with them. They’ll come with a simple wish. A single thought.

  I open my eyes back in the circular room. The podium is shattered at my feet. The reflections on the walls and doors are crystal clear, the hazy fog lifted from the polished mirrors. My face looks back in every direction.

  Come.

  They cling to their beds. But I have no mercy. If I’m going to drown, they can join me.

  Come to the light.

  The first body falls through a door on my right. I feel him smack on the floor like wet meat. His skin is gray. What’s left of his long white hair is frayed and matted over his face.

  “Please,” he moans. “Leave me.”

  He tastes old and neglected. Forgotten. He’s wasted, near death, but somehow he won’t die. He paws at my feet.

  “Please…”

  I’ve got every intention of wasting him, but there’s something so familiar about him. His heart patters and I feel it in my chest, fluttering with fear. I feel the cold floor beneath his palms, the sting of air on his oozing wounds. When he moves, it stirs inside my gut like a spear twisting and breaking.

  Who is this?

  I hook my finger under his chin. The hair falls from his face.

  I fall back a step.

  Me.

  He reaches a clawed hand. It’s my voice. “Please…” The word slips from his cracked lips, but I feel them rattle in my throat. I feel his pain and loneliness.

  Another body falls into the room and there’s stabbing pain in my knees. He sits up, throws his hair back, and I look directly at my face again. Three more tumble in like the living dead and they’re all me. I feel each of them, all their pains and fears swirling in my stomach.

  I thought they were just voids hiding from life, but they’re me. And now I can see them and feel them. I’ve become them. And now I want them to go back. I want to forget.

  “Go.” I flick my hand like that would make them disappear. “NEVER SHOW YOUR FACE AGAIN!”

  But they keep coming. Some older. Some have longer hair, others missing teeth. They climb over each other, cling to me, tear at my shirt. They wail and cry, each moan vibrating in my throat until I don’t know if it’s them or me. I don’t know which ones are reflections and which ones are real.

  Who am I?

  I try to disconnect, try to wish them dead, but they won’t die. Their hearts thump in my chest.

  “GET AWAY!”

  A burst of telekinetic energy slams them against the walls. The mirrors crack. I push with all my will and the cracks run beneath my feet.

  I push harder.

  They have to go back. I close my eyes, mumbling incoherently, listening to them scream, feeling their bodies squirm. One of them steps out of the crowd, impervious to my will. He comes closer. I open my eyes.

  Pon.

  He’s motionless, hands behind his back. Eyes placid. There’s no trace of Pike’s menace inside. But he’s unconcerned about the hell I’ve uncovered. Hopelessness howls inside me and everyone in the room moans like they feel it, too. Collectively, we stare at our mentor. We wait for him to speak. Wait for him to save us, to lead us out of this forsaken place. But he does nothing.

  And it’s all so hopeless.

  I hate him.

  He’s going to leave me again. He’s going to watch me drown.

  I wrap my hands around his neck, press my thumbs into his windpipe. I squeeze until the tendons ridge from my wrists. Pon’s face quickly darkens. His eyes bulge, but he doesn’t resist. He gives himself to me.

  And I squeeze the life from him.

  I pull him close to look deep inside his eyes, to watch him die. The pupils are bottomless. Soulless. I feel him with my mind, taste his waning essence. It’s not the essence of Pon I taste. Nor is it Pike. It’s something so much more familiar. Something I’d forgotten. And then I see the reflection in his black eyes, the reflection of my own face.

  I hold him out at arm’s length. Pon’s face has become my own.

  I’m strangling me.

  I am my own master.

  “Don’t.” The strength drains from my hands. “Don’t do this.”

  The floor crumbles beneath me and I fall. I hold onto the edge but can’t climb out. Below my dangling feet is a mine shaft. Its bottom disappears in the darkness.

  Pon is back, standing over me. He doesn’t offer a hand as I slide from the edge. He doesn’t reach for me as I fall into the darkness. And as I slide down the ever-tightening shaft, the light above becomes smaller. I descend ever deeper. Ever colder. And before the opening above disappears from sight, people are watching. It’s not the voids. It’s Mother. It’s Chute and Streeter. They watch. The walls cave in around me.

  The earth crushes me. And before the last gasp of air leaves my lungs, I can utter only a word. It’s the single word that I heard myself mutter in a cold dream weeks earlier. A word that seems stuck inside.

  Help.

  Reborn

  The hole is a funnel. The deeper I sink, the tighter it becomes. There is no hope. Only sinking.

  And pain.

  Slimy mud shoots up my nostrils and packs my sinuses. It courses down my throat and fills my mouth. There’s no space to gag, no way to puke the fluid forced into my stomach, into my ears.

  Things snap. Muscles tear. If there was space to wish for death, for unconsciousness, I would’ve called for it, cried for it, begged for it, but I know only agony. There’s no escape. No way out.

  Falling. Forever. And ever.

  Open, a voice calls.

  No. I won’t open, not to this torment. I won’t allow this misery. I fought all my life. I’ll resist to the end.

  But what if there is no end?

  I have to get out, back to the top. Mother’s up there, she saw me slip into this trap. She had to be digging after me. I just need to give her space to find me, to pull me out, to take me back to where I was. The way I was.

  I pull my awareness inward. What’s left of my flesh I could pull to the surface, we could still save it, we could rebuild it just like it was. I just need space. I focus inward, find the timeslicing spark glittering brightly. It’s smaller and brighter than ever. I wrap my awareness around it and call on its power. When every bit of me is pulled inside, I pull it tighter still. I’ll blow the earth away. I will escape.

  Allow, the voice says.

  NO! There is no space for allowing! I need to escape the pain!

  I release the pressure of telekinetic energy quaking inside the timeslicing spark and sonic waves rumble through the planet. They’d feel it in Australia, at the bottom of the ocean and the top of Everest. The force will trigger landslides and tsunamis, the universe will feel my wrath. I’ll destroy in the name of freedom.

  But light doesn’t shine from above.

  In one cascading moment of utter annihilation, my body is completely crushed. My organs spew. My cries lost in the silence of obliteration.

  And yet, death does not come.

  I remain fully aware, buried alive. My body couldn’t be functioning, yet I feel every nerve. I feel the burning suffocation of my lungs and the crushing pain. Utter devastation. There are no boundaries to my body anymore yet I ca
n’t escape it. Every thought of struggle, each movement of resistance flares with fiery agony. And every thought of escape brings more pain.

  More weight.

  More hurt.

  (sob.)

  My cries echo throughout eternity, throughout all that has been and all that ever will be. It brings impressions and memories, flavors of my past; fleeting images of my youth scroll past. Each episode carries its own flavor. Some bitter, others sweet. As I experience each one, they release their energy, revealing their essence.

  The mirrors are clear.

  I am complete.

  I see clearly.

  Listen, the voice says.

  I listen. I open.

  I allow.

  I begin to thaw, percolating through the earth’s pore space, trickling deeper, filtered of impurities, finding the resting aquifer of my True Nature.

  Water flows. The essence of bitter sadness transforms into sweetness. I expand, no longer my body because I no longer exist. Being is my body. Existence my True Nature.

  I expand until thoughts are no longer. There is just being.

  I just am.

  Humming in the great, endless void of space.

  Galaxies emerge in spinning wheels. Planets, stars, black holes and light spread out before me. I’m not separate from them, I am them. I can traverse the entire plane of existence simultaneously because I’m not separate from anything.

  All the possible pasts and all possible future events exist in the present moment. The future paths spread out like endless veins on the fabric of existence. I could return to any path of my choosing.

  Come.

  The voice calls from everywhere. Calling me back from another dimension. Yet, if I want to stay in this blissful moment, I can remain for eternity. But something draws me to follow.

  I answer. Yes.

  My answer rings through the heavens. The stars sparkle with renewed life, like points poked through a dark cloth. I recede from the endless expansion of knowing, focus into a point in space and time.

  There is earth below my feet.

  A coyote calls.

  I raise my hand.

  A fire burns within a ring of stones, illuminating cacti and desert. Beyond the light, in the fringe of darkness, is a man. His hair is long. I can’t see his face, but I know his presence. Pivot.