Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga

by Bertauski, Tony

  The Commander, bleeding but alive, put a hand on her shoulder. “We need you, Kay,” he said.

  She was brought to the Preserve. Paladins lined both sides of the wide stone leading to the grimmet tree. My body lay beneath it. Rudder sat on my chest. The grimmets filled the branches, watching her approach. They would not let anyone near me, guarding my body like a sacred treasure. But they didn’t stop her.

  She knelt next to me, felt the weak pulse in my wrist and knew my heart was not beating on its own. Rudder did not have to tell her that he was keeping me alive. It was his essence that beat in my chest and pumped my blood. Without him, all would be still.

  “Please,” she said to those within earshot, “bring help.”

  The Paladins set up a life support station under the grimmet tree. For three days and nights, she sat next me. Rudder did not leave and Mother refused to move. They waited until I returned from beyond, where the dark and light danced. They waited until my heart, on its own, beat again.

  Those were the things she did. And there was joy in her heart to touch me, to see me standing and smiling back. That’s what I knew about her.

  “It’s been six weeks,” she said. “The Garrison is undergoing a purging; nearly all technology has been shut down while we search for dormant code that might reawaken duplications. We have to expect they were prepared for this sort of thing.”

  “That’s why the nojakk and imbed aren’t working?”

  “Yes. And as you can imagine, the public is outraged, they want explanations. The Paladin Nation is keeping silent until they clean up their own house. First, we need to develop testing to assure Paladins are human before appearing in public again.”

  I pried the blinds apart, no cars were moving. People were walking down the middle of the road. Two houses down, three boys leaped off their porch and hid in the bushes with squirt guns and water balloons. If duplicates reawakened, like Mother said, what would stop them?

  “Why am I here?”

  “Right now, this is the safest place in the world.”

  I imagined crawler guards perched on the roof like pigeons, but that was impossible. They’d be deactivated along with the servys. Along with Spindle.

  “Pon?” I asked.

  She paused, but didn’t need to answer. She never saw his body at the grimmet tree; it had been removed before she got there. She didn’t see him like I did.

  “He wasn’t a traitor,” I said.

  “We know that now.”

  “He saved us.”

  “He shouldn’t have kept his knowledge secret.”

  She spent the last year watching him grind me down and despised the brutal tactics. I could tell her Pivot had put Pon in charge of me; that he was responsible for my development and protection. That he gave me the ability to become what I am. That he kept his secrets and endured endless torture because that’s what life demanded. He did those things so the Paladins would see the truth for themselves. But forgiveness did not come easy to her.

  “How did he even escape to come for me?” I asked.

  “We don’t know much about what happened during that period. The minders that were guarding him were duplicates, but we have reason to believe he somehow overcame them before the battle.”

  The boys’ father walked on the porch and casually down the steps. The boys ambushed him. Balloons exploded on his back. He retreated and they pursued until they ran out of balloons and resorted to squirt guns. He chased them and they screamed and laughed.

  “I saw Father.” I touched the scar behind my ear. She didn’t say anything, but I felt her breathing stall. I explained how Pivot had set up the scenario, that it was some other dimension and that it wasn’t really him I was talking to, but it may as well have been. “He looked exactly the same, like he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. He even did that thing where he smiles with his eyes.”

  She hummed in response, that was it.

  “You know, I always thought I was okay with his death. We sat around this fire and talked about stuff, and then…” I recalled the emotional swelling in my chest. I let go of the blinds. “I miss him.”

  Mother was looking at the floor, all too familiar with that feeling.

  “What do you miss most?”

  “When he came home at night.” She leaned against the wall and folded her arms. She was still looking at the floor without seeing it. “Every time I heard the door open, I knew he was safe and we’d have another day together.”

  “Did you know he was going to die?”

  “This is a dangerous business. I never took anything for granted.”

  “So you weren’t surprised?”

  She imitated a short laugh. “You can’t prepare for that, Socket.”

  Sadness rumbled through her. I let her experience those traumatic memories, how long ago they shook her like earthquakes. Now they were just tremors, but they were still there.

  I gently took her hand. She put her hand over mine. We stayed like that for a while.

  Slap. A red sticky grimmet hit me square in the face and latched onto my cheeks. I backed into the wall while Rudder hugged my nose. He pulled his head back and stared into my left eye then hugged me again, squeezing my cheeks with his hands and feet, then gnawing on my nose. I grabbed him by the tail. He squirmed and wriggled.

  “You sleep a lot, you know that?” I said.

  Rudder giggled that rapid-fire laughter, so infectious even Mother couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Are the rest here?” I asked.

  She pushed the door open to the front room.

  They were everywhere. Sleeping under the coffee table, hanging from the lamp, drinking from full-sized cups, ripping apart magazines and tossing wadded pages around like volleyballs. The rest were wrestling on the floor and kitchen table, climbing across the ceiling and flying around. It looked like the zoo for the really weird.

  When they saw me, it was immediate silence, like someone shouted freeze and meant it. They looked back and forth, not sure if they were in trouble, waiting for my reaction.

  “All I want to know,” I said, “is where you’re pooping?”

  Long pause.

  Laughter.

  Like the funniest thing they ever heard. They fell off the lamps and rolled off the tables, bouncing on their bellies while the walls shook.

  They took wing and stormed around the room like a school of fish and out the back door, torn paper and empty cups rattling behind them. We followed them into the backyard. Hundreds of grimmets flocked into the maple tree, hiding behind the broad leaves. They couldn’t stay quiet any more than those kids down the street. We sat on the back steps and watched an enormous free-for-all on the lawn.

  Our neighbor looked over the privacy fence. Mother waved to him. He waved back, mouth open, then went back to fertilizing his lawn. The grimmets made him forget what he just saw. The most powerful creatures on this planet – psychic giants, technological wizards, mental titans – playing like children.

  “The answer was right in front of us,” I said. “The grimmets were waiting for the truth to unlock them, only needed someone to channel their power. They needed someone to see clearly. All this time, no one knew.”

  She shook her head. For once, she didn’t have an answer. “Why didn’t they use Pivot?” she asked.

  Yeah, why not Pivot? But I knew the answer was beyond my comprehension. There was a plan out there, and I was part of it. That plan needed me to unlock the grimmets. Pivot was just there to guide me. Where did the plan go from here?

  “I don’t know,” was all I could say.

  We sat quietly, for some time. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. Mother wouldn’t return to the Garrison for weeks. Neither would I. So we watched the grimmets slug it out. Eventually, I chased after them and they cheered and clapped and wrapped their tails around my legs and tripped me and mauled me. They gnawed on every part of my body like needle-toothed puppies until I grabbed them, one at a time, and threw them high into the air. Yo
u’d think that was the greatest thing in the world, to be thrown up like that. When they came back down, they said Higher, go higher.

  “Oh, you want to go higher?” And I’d throw them again. They laughed and laughed, their bellies filled with joy.

  Mine, too.

  T R A I N I N G

  Ice cubes

  The weeks went by at home. The first couple days I slept like an old dog, but after that it was time for business. Mother was taking meetings in her room. Then we’d both take meetings in the living room with Paladins projected in front of us. The tone was somber; we lost a lot of good men and women in the battle. A lot of families were disrupted; children were going to grow up without a mother or father, some both. My heart ached for the experiences that lay ahead of them, like coming home to an empty house or a single parent struggling with loss. Some would grow stronger because of it; others would struggle with the emotional holes left behind.

  The grimmets made a mess of the house until I called a meeting and set them straight. They were cooped up, accustomed to a forest to romp around, not this stuffy little room and the backyard. They sat quietly while I lectured them, occasionally swinging their tails or kicking their legs. They listened to my impassioned speech about keeping the house in order. I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. A year ago, I was stacking empty pizza boxes as high as the dirty laundry. But the grimmets, led by Rudder, turned their restless energy to housekeeping and our home became immaculate.

  The time neared to return to the Garrison. The Paladin Nation needed every single person available. More than that, I think they needed my presence for morale. And I was ready to get back. There was so much to do. But before I left, there were still a few things left to attend.

  I was not leaving my life behind. It was as much a part of me as those galactic experiences of spiritual oneness.

  I showed up at Streeter’s house unannounced. It wasn’t like he and Chute weren’t calling every day, wanting to come over. I wasn’t physically ready to leave the house. I got winded just taking a shower. Death takes a lot out of you, even with a grimmet breathing life back in.

  Streeter’s backyard was a lush garden with crape myrtles, bamboo, roses and such. His grandfather taught horticulture and spent most weekends tending to his private paradise. Streeter rarely helped. He rarely went outside even though they had a swimming pool with a deck and a pergola covered with jasmine. We used to swim all day when we were little, even before we could touch the bottom, but then we got older and virtualmode came along and the pool became nothing but an expensive chore.

  But when I got there, Streeter was sitting in the sun on one of the lounge chairs, sucking on an ice cube and hunching over a small table. He gained a few pounds, but was still a skinnier version of his plump self. And, he was tan for once.

  I unlatched the back gate, came up the side steps to the deck. He was muttering to a small gear box on his lap, poking it with a tool, slurping the ice cube.

  “That’s illegal, you know,” I said.

  “Ho!” He jumped back in the chair. The gear box and tool skittered to the edge of the pool. “You need a bell around your neck.”

  I picked up the gear and put it on his lap. We took a moment, looking each other over, adjusting to the new looks. Had that much time gone by? He was there when my dad died. He was at every after-school fight, sometimes the only one on my side. But now there we were, remembering what it used to be like.

  Streeter shoved the chair back and held out his hand. We latched with hands up, then he pulled me close and sort of hugged. It was the first time we’d ever done that.

  “Shit, man,” he said, “it’s good to see you.”

  I knew his thoughts the way I had with my mother. I knew how he’d suffered gear addiction withdrawal, how his eyes ached for weeks, how his entire nervous system hurt while he adjusted to being back in his skin full-time. I knew how he carried a guilty weight for the incident at the Judgment Day club, that what happened to me was all his fault. I also knew the loneliness inside him, like a block of ice in his stomach. I knew that ice block, too. Streeter hated it, fought against it, but now he was finally acknowledging it.

  He was back. Good old Streeter.

  “You look different,” he said.

  I grabbed my short hair. “It’s the shampoo.”

  “Well, there’s that. But there’s something else.” He moved his hand in front of him like a magic trick was coming. “It’s the whole package, you feel different.”

  “Look who’s talking. What, you weigh a hundred pounds now?”

  “I’ve never weighed a hundred.”

  “You did when you were a baby.”

  “True.” He laughed the old Streeter laugh, and nodded thoughtfully like he was looking through me. Chute must’ve taught him how to do that.

  “So, how’s things?” I asked.

  “Some good, some bad.” He tapped his nojakk cheek. “I’m guessing this technology blackout is your fault.”

  “Sort of. But not really.”

  Streeter lay back in the lounge chair. “I want details.”

  “You don’t want to know.” I pulled up a chair. “It’s boring, really.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Fighting deathmatches with assassins with flaming swords and laser canons is boring shit. That’s the last thing I want to hear.”

  “Besides, what’re you doing with a gear box? I thought you were in therapy, you shouldn’t be virtualmoding yet.”

  “What, this?” He turned the black box over. “This is just a nojakk generator. You know, there’s a huge reward for the first pirate generator to override the blackout. It’s like $10,000 or something.”

  I took the box and sensed the circuitry, could feel the basic structure was correct but his coding was too primitive. He’d probably make it work.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, taking the box back. “But the therapist wants me to do things outside as long as it isn’t virtualmode. I can use the nojakk and Internet. I even helped with the garden, pulling weeds. Believe that?”

  “You can’t do virtualmode ever again?”

  “Eventually. Right now, the therapist wants me to talk about feelings and other bullshit. Mainly about my parents, but there’s other things.” He rotated the box around and around, like it might tell him the future. “We’ve been talking about you a lot.”

  That wasn’t easy for him to say. Tension wrapped around him. He didn’t expect to go there with his feelings with me sitting right in front of him; it took him by surprise. But he stayed with it.

  I said, “Hey, well what can I say? I’m honored.”

  Over and over the gear box went. He shook his head, looked at the clouds. “You know what it is?” he said, his throat tightening. “It’s just, you’re not afraid of anything, Socket. And I am. I’m afraid of everything. You fought my fights, were always there and now I got to do this shit on my own and I’m hating it, man. Freaking hating it.”

  He twisted his fingers like pretzels.

  “Streeter, I can walk through the worst neighborhood in the world and nothing can touch me. Nobody and nothing can hurt me. But I still experience fear. I’m no different than you.”

  “Right. You walk on water and I’m crying in the therapist’s office because I miss my mom and dad.” He looked away, didn’t mean to say that, either. “Yeah, we’re exactly the same.”

  “What I mean is just work with what you have. That’s all you got, just be there with it. Don’t be comparing yourself to me or Chute or the President of the United States.”

  “Yeah, well don’t quit your day job. You’re no therapist.”

  “Never said I was.”

  “I’m not so sure about your day job, either. What happened at the Judgment Day club? I wake up, you’re gone and then I hear you got thumped. What gives?”

  “Yeah, well, I got distracted.”

  “You’re a freaking Paladin!”

  I laughed loudly. “You’d be
surprised just how human we are.”

  He fished an ice cube from his cup. Long pause. “I know you didn’t understand my obsession, you know, of having to go see my parents, you being a Paladin and everything, I’m sure you got that all figured out, but us mere mortals got to do things the hard way.”

  Oh, I understand, Streeter.

  “Why, Socket Greeny!” Granny walked onto the deck. “Where have you been hiding all this time, young man? I thought you moved away.”

  “He’s in disguise, Granny,” Streeter said.

  “I can see that.” She rustled my hair. “You mustn’t do that, you’re like family here.” She handed me a tall glass of sweet tea. “Are you going to spend the night?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve got to be home, tonight. My mother’s expecting me.”

  “Well, if your mother’s home, by all means.” She looked at Streeter. “Are you all right, dear? Do you need another drink?”

  Streeter said no. Granny said it was nice to see me and went inside. There was no more fade, people knew me once again, like I reclaimed my former life. Now it was a part of me, not something I left behind. I was fully aware of my entire being, had completely integrated all facets of my Self, and I chose not to fade. I’m not sure all Paladins reached that level of understanding and were able to do that.

  “You going back to the Garrison?” Streeter asked.

  “Not for a while, it’s getting renovated.”

  He asked about Spindle. About Mother. About all the cool things I’d been doing. I answered in generic truths, avoided the details that mattered the most. Someone once told me the public doesn’t really want to know the truth around us. They just want to feel safe.