Agent Pike eyebrows shifted again. More pressure.
The dimpling sensation was deeper, more intense. I grabbed the bottom of the chair. A line of sweat popped up on my lip. That last wave went deep, like the dentist forgot to numb me before drilling.
“Only Paladins have the ability to cease relative time,” he said. “It is not magic. We have the ability to alter our metabolism to move and think infinitely faster than the ordinary human, to experience time stopping. The ability can be performed only in short bursts before the body consumes all its energy. You were very hungry after timeslicing, were you not?”
He paused. We know this to be true.
“Your timeslicing ability was activated by an unknown presence that approached in the form of a shadow. This person was traced to the Garrison, but we do not know the identity.” His nostrils flared, blowing hot air. “Tell me who the shadow is.”
I barely remembered what happened; how would I know who the shadow is? This guy was a moron if he thought—
My eardrums popped. The air thickened.
“You are sixteen years old.” Agent Pike’s voice was now unusually loud, slightly echoing. “Paladin cadets do not timeslice until they are twenty. Your activation is an anomaly.” His lips moved softly, no more than a whisper, but the words rang. “WHO ARE YOU, SOCKET GREENY?”
[Agent Pike, back down the mental pressure.]
His stare locked me in the chair. I couldn’t move. It was a full blown seizure. The chair legs rattled.
[Agent Pike! You are ordered to back off! The subject is unstable; you must stop the pressure immediately!]
A black tunnel collapsed around me. My head split. No, not my head. My mind. Pike went looking for answers. Psychic fingers pushed inside like cold spikes. I let out a howl that died in the dense air. Memories hurtled out of the blackness, falling at random. Things I’d forgotten played like movies.
Two years old. Dad pulled me from the car and Mom came around. The room was large and dank. Musty. The parking cave. Dad carried me and his footsteps echoed. A man greeted him. Shook his hand.
“He’s showing signs,” Dad said.
The man ruffled my hair. His breath minty. I hid my face in Dad’s shoulder. “We’ll keep an eye on him,” the man said.
Icy pain cut me. Pike dug deeper.
I was four, holding Dad’s hand. The carnival lights illuminated the night that smelled like straw and sugar. I ate something fried on a stick. Dad tore off a piece, popped it in his mouth. “You want to go on that one, Socket?” he said.
A capsule ride shot straight up, disappeared above the lights.
“Trey,” Mom said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’ll get scared.”
I held his rough hand and we climbed inside the capsule. It was humid and smelled like puke. We strapped into the seat and I was thinking Mom was right. I grabbed Dad’s arm when we blasted off, buried my face in his coat.
“It’s all right, Socket,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
Mom waited for us when it was over. She was wringing her hands but she was smiling. Smiling.
Pike plunged deeper. Memories popped like bubbles, overlapping each other. Confusing one with the other. I was spinning. Faces passed. Days went by. The memory wheel stopped.
I was five. The colorless sky was cold.
Men were dressed in dark uniforms with white gloves, standing in line. They lowered a casket into the ground, draped a flag over it. Dirt thudded on the lid. A few people cried, but most were expressionless, like soldiers that knew the line of duty. Mom was dressed in black. Her face was sallow. Eyes were sunk in the dead zone.
A man rustled my hair. “Your father was a good man.”
His breath was minty. My stomach was hard and cold, that block of ice I would carry the rest of my life had already formed.
Memories fell faster, each one stacking on top of the next. Pike flipped through them like playing cards, each one ripped from somewhere dark and quiet. The catalogue of my life reeled in front of me.
I was tearing.
He was coming in. I couldn’t keep him out. I wasn’t big enough to contain him.
The memory of the Rime appeared, fast forwarded to the shadow. The view was fading. Pike grappled with the memory, trying to bring it into focus. His mental fingers grew colder. Sharper.
WHO IS THE SHADOW?
It just hurt.
Too much.
“You are not authorized to enter this room!” Pike slithered out of my mind.
I was back in my skin, slumped in the chair. Empty and violated. Several people entered the room, emerging from the seemingly solid walls. Their hair was short. Their uniforms tight and black. Two of them wore black glasses. They stepped on each side of Pike like bookends. Pike jumped up, his chair falling back and dissolving. Spindle wrapped his arms around me and kept me from falling.
“You were ordered to back down twice!” Mom shouted. “YOU WILL NOT BREAK HIM!”
“I am in charge of this preliminary!” Pike retorted with equal venom. “You have no right to be in here!”
“He is my son!” Mom shot back. “And this has become a psychic lynching! You were not authorized to probe deeply!”
“There is a traitor in the Garrison. I will use whatever methods necessary.”
“This preliminary is over. You will be removed from this assignment.”
His face reddened. “I am primary minder. I decide methodology. I assess traits, my decisions are final. Understand, civilian, I will not go.”
“You can have this conversation with the Commander, if you like, but either way, we are finished.”
Pike turned, the glasses slipped, revealing white eyeballs. No iris. No pupil. He fixed his glasses and stared at Mom, but she didn’t flinch. She stood in front of me, her hands clenched. Veins pulsed in Pike’s neck. Tension hissed.
“Try it.” Mom stepped closer to him, her nose almost touching his. “Go on, get inside me and try it.”
The room charged with static. Her hair floated out.
“If you dare to penetrate my mind, you will not see the outside of a prison cell for eternity, I will see to that, personally, Agent Pike. If you do not contain yourself in the next few moments and leave this room, I will bring a team of minders in here to incapacitate you for the rest of your life. If you don’t believe me, then try it.” Her lips were very thin. “Back. Down.”
The vein throbbed on Pike’s neck. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. He calmly adjusted his black glasses. He sucked air between his teeth, took his time turning and glided through the wall. The two black glasses-wearing men followed as did three black suits. Two men stayed in the room, hands behind their backs. At attention.
My mind was still cleaning up the memories Pike uncorked, trying to put them in their rightful places. They swirled like papers finding their way back to the ground.
“Get him to the infirmary,” Mom said to Spindle and the men. “I want a medical minder to begin decompression wave therapy immediately. Have the medical mechs monitor his vitals and administer sedatives but do not put him to sleep. Once normal brain activity resumes, I want him asleep for twenty-four hours. All activity is to be sent to my office, keep me updated of every second, Spindle. And I mean every second.”
A stretcher floated inside the room. Servys laid me on it, guided it down the short hall to the leaper. Mom and Spindle walked along side.
“I will be updating Commander Diggs with what just happened,” she said. “Contact all my appointments for the rest of the day and reschedule for tomorrow.”
“But you have an appointment with the Director of—”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I need some time with the Commander.”
I took her hand. It was hot. Wet.
She pushed her hair back. The rigid muscles loosened along her jaws and around her eyes. She stopped the stretcher before it went inside the leaper, squeezed my hand and pushed the hair off my forehead.
“Y
ou made it,” I croaked.
She nodded, feeling my forehead. She whispered, “Get some rest.” She stood back. “I’ll be with you soon.”
We moved onto the leaper. She watched from the hallway. She would not rest. Not tonight. There was too much to do.
* * * * *
II
Time does not exist.
There is only the present moment.
The past and future are merely thoughts about the present moment. If you think about it, you have already missed the point. One must live life in the present moment to be real; otherwise, your life is a collection of thoughts.
No different than data.
* * * * *
D I S C O V E R Y
Preserved
Weeks passed. Then months. Instead of getting on a bus for school and falling asleep in front of the TV, I was somewhere else in the world where they administered tests and I went to sleep on a weightless bed looking out so called windows with views of canyons, oceans or whatever scenic view was on tap for the night. Sometimes I forgot it was just a picture, that few things I saw were actually real. Then again, I wasn’t trying to think all that much. If I really thought about what was happening, I’d unravel. So I did what they told me, went where they wanted me and shut up for once.
I thought a lot about Pike. Not so much the part where he tried to rip my mind in half, I tried to forget that part, but the question he asked: Who are you? I think he meant to find out if I was a spy or something, but I kept hearing it a different way. Who am I? I thought I was some sixteen year old latchkey kid growing up in a broken home. I figured I’d end up drilling holes in sheet metal for a living and die in a retirement home. Not exactly the American dream, but there were worse fates.
But now who am I? Really, who am I? Does anyone really know who they are? Are we just a collection of behaviors we learned as babies that run us around like wind-up toys? Or does anyone know why we’re here? Is there a purpose to any of this besides getting a piece of gold and a boat and a hot wife to put on it? There has to be more to life than just this.
I sat in my little room sometimes pondering all that, but I always ended up on that one question: Who am I? Somehow it didn’t feel like it had an answer, but it was a question that had to be asked. Over and over. If I didn’t ask it, I felt crazy. And I had to hang onto every shred of sanity I could because this place made little sense. And everything I thought I was didn’t exist anymore. So who am I now?
My testers were never the same person. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Never Pike. Thank the lord in heaven. They were never friendly, never rude. They took blood samples, tissue samples, made me run, walk, do push-ups, asked some of the goofiest questions I’ve ever heard. “Have you ever noticed cockroaches following you?”
“What?”
He or she would ask the question again, almost as if they just wondered if I liked vanilla or chocolate ice cream.
Sometimes the interviews were more formal. We would face each other in chairs, they’d ask questions, I’d answer. Sometimes they would ask if I saw certain colors, or heard a certain thought. Sometimes, I did. I felt psychic pressure, but nothing like what Pike did; that was like a grown man trying to squeeze his fat ass into a baby’s onesy. The testers would ask me to open my mind and asked what came up. The first couple times I sat there and daydreamed. The third time, I saw something. It was like my mind had become a three-dimensional staging area. A reddish object appeared.
“What did you see?” the tester asked.
“An apple.”
The tester said nothing. Wrote nothing down. But I was right. He was thinking of an apple and I saw it.
The next day, I knew how to read thoughts. That’s right, I could look into someone’s mind and see what they were thinking. I could even shut the thoughts out, if I wanted. It wasn’t doing me a damn bit of good around the Paladins that had full control of their thoughts. Opening my mind to them was like trying to find out what a wall was thinking. But I could read their thoughts if they let me.
“How do I stop time?” I asked.
The tester sat quietly, hands on his thighs. “You will have to look deep inside yourself,” he said, calmly, softly, almost mechanically. “Inside there will be a metaphorical mechanism, a symbolic trigger, you can use to alter your metabolism. Some experience this as a spark found in the solar plexus.”
I closed my eyes, focused on my gut. I remembered that sparkly feeling I had at the Rime, the first time I sliced time. I searched this part of my being but felt nothing but chaotic energy. I imagined I was a traveler, hunting a valuable gem, flying through inner space. Lights blurred past, curled out of my grasp like hyper fireflies. I went after them, one direction then the other, but they were nothing but tiny lights. No spark.
“You cannot chase it,” the tester said. “You must allow it space; then, it will appear.”
So I sat there. Minute after minute went by. Pretty soon I was thinking of lunch because the food in that place was outstanding. I could order just about—
“Bring your focus back.”
I went back to my mid-section and let the fireflies do their dance. They stopped running away and began circling around me. Faster and faster they went, streaking inner space with curves brilliant and lasting. There was a twinge. My ears pricked with excitement. A bright light sparked. It was small and intense, like a quasar glowing somewhere inside. I brought all my awareness to this tiny flare.
“There.” The tester barely spoke. “Wrap yourself arounddd…”
My hands involuntarily clenched. The spark grew brighter. Brighter, still. And then it happened. The spark ignited, engulfing me in a psychic blast. When I opened my eyes, the tester was still, his mouth partially open, caught in mid-sentence. I looked around the room for more proof, but I turned cold. And hungry.
“You are not strong enough to sustain a timeslice.” The tester was standing over me with the hint of a grin. “But you found it. Nicely done.”
No one would tell me what they were looking for when they tested. Told me nothing, in fact. Not who the Paladins were or what they were trying to protect the world from. Mom was the least helpful. I saw her more in those months than I had the previous year, but she had only one answer for every question: “I can’t tell you anything right now, Socket.”
I thought about Streeter and Chute a lot. We’d been friends forever, like family. Chute and I were, as Streeter put it, a girlfriend-boyfriend thing. I missed them both. Maybe I should’ve missed her more. I tried to call them, but the nojakk no longer worked. The Paladins shut it down. Standard procedure. Maybe they were afraid I’d call and say You’ll never guess where I’m at! I can stop freaking time! I probably would’ve.
I wondered if they were worried. Not so much Streeter, but Chute. What was she going to think when she heard I was a freak? Who was I kidding? She was never going to find out. She might never see me again, even if Mom said I would see her soon. Soon. That was as specific as she got. That could mean never.
In between tests, Spindle and I played games. We played chess with holographic pieces and ping-pong on a table that materialized from the floor, complete with paddles and ball. He taught me a game called Reign. The animated pieces moved around seven levels of chess boards and chopped each other to pieces. Blood would squirt and the pieces would die moaning. Very cool.
I was restricted to the transforming rooms, leapers and corridors. No matter what shape or form they became or what illusory views I could see through the windows, it was stuffy. It beat school, yeah. And it beat sleeping in front of the TV on empty pizza boxes. But no matter how big the room, I was still inside a mountain. I hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. Pictures of it, sure, but not the real thing.
“You have been cleared to enter the Preserve,” Spindle announced in the third month, I think. For all I knew, we weren’t even on a twenty-four hour schedule anymore. He waited for me outside a testing room where a man had asked if I could move a set of round objects
with my mind (he gave me ten minutes but all I did was stare at them and wonder what he did for fun). Stupid.
I stepped quickly to keep up with Spindle, his gait so smooth and effortless. “Recreation is important,” he said. “I think you will enjoy this very much.”
We stepped inside a leaper.
I didn’t know what a Preserve was, but it had to be better than staring at balls that wouldn’t move. “No more tests?”
“You have no more tests today.” The colors formed a rough smile on Spindle’s face.
The leaper opened. I expected another white room, maybe a view (real or not) of the hills. At the very least, I’d hoped we might go out to the field Mom drove (or flew) across when she brought me to the Garrison. At least it was wide open. I just wanted to feel the wind on my face. We didn’t go there; we went someplace so much better. We stepped outside where the sun was bright, the air humid and earthy. We were in the outside world, but one where I’d never been. One I never thought possible.
No illusion this time.
We emerged from the side of a cliff. From our vantage point, the tropical forest had been carved out of the mountain like a stone bowl. Trees, birds, palms… the whole deal.
“The Preserve is a man-made, enclosed environment supporting the growth of over ten thousand botanical species.” Spindle spoke louder to clear the screeching call of a toucan or howler monkey or something else wild. “In addition, there are numerous exotic species of birds, mammals and aquatic creatures.”
“Enclosed environment?” Blue sky was peaking between the clouds. “You mean that’s not real?” My heart sank.
“Do you see those?” Spindle pointed to a barren limb on top of a large tree. “Those are magnashield generators disguised as part of the tree. There is one every five hundred square feet. They power an overhead force field that encloses the Preserve. Nothing can get in. Nothing can get out.”
Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga Page 5
