Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (17 page)

I blended back into the normal crowd at
school. People stopped staring. Even the bleeders forgot about me,
throwing food at other people. Everything was back to the old days.
I went to my hiding spot every day after school to watch Chute
practice. I wanted to see her, sure, but more than that I had to
stay out of the house. The longer I sat around by myself, the more
I started thinking. The slightest Paladin-related thought turned
into a headache that could last for hours. But if there was a
distraction, it was easier not to think, but then after awhile I
would wonder why I wasn’t thinking and remember the clamp.

Headache.

The nights were the worst. Sleep came in
small chunks. The clamp even monitored what few dreams I had, and
anything that crossed the line pounded my ass. I spent hours going
through meditative breathing exercises to empty my mind. I couldn’t
even think about when the Authority was going to rule. It should’ve
happened weeks ago. All I could do was stay in the moment. But the
moments were getting longer.

Streeter slept over every other night, and
that helped. We stayed up late watching movies. I was careful not
to catch any news reports. It was hard enough to keep from
wondering who may or may not be a duplicate at school; I didn’t
need to be reminded about it on the TV. I caught the news once by
accident and watched it long enough to see protesters fighting for
the right of virtualmode duplication. There had to be a few in that
crowd, or maybe all of them. One was a frizzy-headed dude that got
plowed by the cops when he threw something. Did it hurt when the
cops planted his face in the street and cuffed his hands behind his
back? Could they control pain? Were they like computers?

The clamp taught me not to think about
that.

I wanted it out. If that meant moving my
shit into the mountain and never seeing Streeter and Chute again,
I’d do it. This was no way to live. But even when I asked Mom when
they would decide, she wouldn’t tell me what was taking so
long.

But the whole world was about to find
out.

It was the week before finals. There was a
pep rally for the inaugural tagghet season at the end of school but
no one seemed to care except for the taggers wearing their jerseys
to class. There was more talk about football and that was five
months away. The tagghet season was only going to be two months
long and go through the summer so it wouldn’t interfere with more
important sports, like lacrosse, baseball, basketball, football,
soccer, tennis and softball. Tagghet seemed to rank just above
tetherball for the time being.

It was the period just before the rally. I
went to virtualmode studies in the Pit, a steep, circular
auditorium with a domed ceiling. Buxbee was down at the center
table. I made my way to the front where Streeter was waiting with
his transporters in hand. I left the seat empty between us. Chute’s
seat. She wasn’t in class very often. She’d been doing the
assignments in the evening when she had time. I sat in her seat
once before and Streeter insisted I move over. I thought maybe he
thought it was gay if we sat too close. Maybe he did, but I think
he missed her. He wouldn’t admit it.

Buxbee was a round man with a bald head and
a horseshoe of hair around the outside. He tended to plump his
bottom lip when he thought. He had a finger in one ear talking on
his nojakk, his brows pinched together.

“You promised you’d launch today.” Streeter
handed me a pair of transporters.

I had gone virtualmode only once since I got
back and it was weird. Just as my awareness was pulled from my
skin, there was some back and forth chatter between the
transporters and the clamp like they were telling secrets about me.
It didn’t get any better once I was in my sim. I started skipping
virtualmode lab after that. Headaches, I said. Then I’d go to the
nurse and she’d let me lay in a dark room until my migraine
settled. Turned out that wasn’t much better because I’d start
thinking and end up with a real migraine.

Streeter watched me trace the edges of the
transporters. He sighed super loud. Twice. He already had one empty
seat next to him. He didn’t want two. He once grumbled that I’d
changed, that he wanted it to be like it was before I went on my
vacation.
Ditto that, brother.

“All right, all right,” I said. “I’m going,
like I said.”

Class was running ten minutes late. Buxbee
was still chatting on the nojakk with fingers in both ears to hear
over the class. We tried to launch into virtualmode, but the
transporters weren’t active. Streeter was already being accused of
crashing the school’s portal.

“Attention!” Buxbee held up both hands. “I
have an announcement. Everyone, I have an announcement.” He walked
around the center with his arms up like he was signaling touchdown.
After one trip around, he dropped his tired arms. His bottom lip
plumped out and tension tightened his forehead. “Virtualmode is
down for the day.”

He didn’t bother talking over the moans and
groans and Streeter getting blamed for it. This was the last week
of school when everyone had a free pass to virtualmode anywhere and
the school had one of the best portals in South Carolina. The
experience was ten times richer than any home connection or any
commercial connection in the tri-county area. Now Buxbee was
telling them it was a no go. “Don’t do this to us, Mr. Buxbee,”
someone wailed.

When it was quiet enough for someone to ask
why things were shut down and it was quiet enough for Buxbee to
speak, he explained. “This is not a local blackout,” he said.
“Virtualmode has been shutdown
globally
.”

Another uproar, this time with a trace of
curiosity mixed in. People were looking back and forth like they
just heard the front end of a juicy rumor. Buxbee held out his
hands, calming the class.

“I’ve uploaded the final assignment to your
accounts. You can complete it when it’s back up.”

When, why and what happened? All those
questions were met by Buxbee’s plumped lip and a shake of the head.
When it was clear he didn’t have the answers or wasn’t willing to
part with them, everyone broke out the laptops and tablets to look
at the Internet on a screen. Buxbee was back on his nojakk with a
finger in his ear. Everyone was getting updates and I didn’t want
to hear it. The clamp was beginning to throb.

Streeter pulled out a collapsible touchpad
and stretched it open on his lap. Three-dimensional images
projected on the surface. He activated the sound on our nojakks. A
global virtualmode blackout was the same as closing all the
airports. It didn’t take but a second to find the news. The reports
claimed that a third of users were unable to launch into
virtualmode that morning at approximately 6:32. At first, it was a
minor inconvenience. Connections were typically re-established
within minutes. Typically, a portal facility experienced a small
anomaly, something like a sunspot that was easily corrected. But
then complaints started coming in from all over the world,
threatening transportation and financial trading. At 7:29, the
entire virtualmode grid went dark.

“That’s never happened before,” Streeter
said.

I was rubbing the ache in my neck. I
should’ve looked away. Knowing more wasn’t going to help, it was
only going to make the banging between my vertebrae louder. But I
couldn’t look away. And I couldn’t help thinking. I let the
thoughts come.
A third of virtualmode users? Did the Paladins
block the world from virtualmode? And if they did, why? It had to
have something to do with the dupes. Maybe they were beginning to
distinguish the difference between people launching onto
virtualmode from the… dupes? But why shut down virtualmode?

The clamp slammed into that thought. I
clenched my teeth. But I kept watching.

At 9:55 that morning, there were reports of
federal testing of employees at a portal facility. Agents would not
comment on what they were testing for since drug and euphoria-gear
tests were made public. The testing was not met kindly by the
employees and arrests were made at an independent portal facility
where riot police were called. They charged through the doors into
a warehouse of glowing portals.

The scientists and laborers didn’t look
surprised. In fact, they looked ready for them. They had weapons.
Forty-two police were killed. There were a lot of dead workers,
too, but the footage was censored even though police were required
to fully disclose all public news footage. However, the report
claimed all lookits stopped operating in the warehouse like they’d
been shut off.

I was holding the back of my neck with both
hands. I needed to get some air, needed to get out and clear out
the thoughts, but the last scene caught my attention. I had to grit
my teeth just a little longer. I had to make sure what I saw was
right.

“Rewind that,” I said.

Streeter wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
I turned the view on his lap and expanded a close-up on a
white-coated scientist at the very back of the facility when the
riot police made their entrance, before the bullets started flying.
We both leaned closer to make sure what we were seeing. It was low
resolution and pixilated. But I was right.

“That’s impossible,” Streeter said. “That’s
instant death.”

Yeah, it was impossible. For real
humans.

The scientist had his sleeves rolled up. His
arms were plunged up to the elbows inside an open portal. That
amount of energy was enough to vaporize flesh from a human being,
but that wasn’t a human doing it. The dupe in the white coat was
glowing blue.
What the hell is going on?

I ran up the steps. I don’t remember getting
to the doors. Everything was blotted out by the bright light of
pain.

D I S C O V E R Y

I couldn’t stop the thoughts. They needed to
be assembled before I could forget them. I needed to make some
sense out of what had come up at the Paladin Nation, what kept Mom
from coming home, what kept the Authority’s decision in limbo while
I held my neck with both hands to keep it from exploding.

The Paladins were raiding portal facilities
to test for duplicates. The Paladin Nation must’ve made police
forces around the world aware that something was up, somehow
tricked them to help flush out the enemy without them knowing what
they were really looking for. But why did that guy in the warehouse
have his arms plugging into the portal? Did the dupes need access
to virtualmode to survive?

“Socket?” Streeter said. “Are you all
right?”

I must’ve slid down the wall. I was sitting
on the floor in the hallway with my knees against my chest. I held
out my hand, told him to give me a minute. I managed to turn the
mind-scrambling pain into a dull reminder with several deep
breaths. The thoughts clamored for attention but I didn’t give them
a place in my mind to cling and felt them dissolve.

Streeter helped me up. “Let’s get out of
here,” he said. “I’ve been helping Buxbee install security updates
on the school’s virtualmode portal. Let’s go down to his lab.”

The empty hall was much less stuffy. A
slight breeze cooled my sweaty face. I concentrated on walking,
breathing and holding the clamp down.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he
asked.

I muttered something and kept moving. I was
seeing spots but things were clearer. I couldn’t manage a
conversation. But Streeter filled the awkward silence with a
question that started the avalanche all over.

“What’d you think they’re testing for?”

The clamp thumped a warning.
Don’t go
there.
“I can’t talk about it,” I spit out.

“Can’t talk about what?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I can’t talk about
it.”

“But why can’t you—”

“Goddamnit!” I grabbed the back of my neck.
“Just stop, will you?”

“All right, all right,” he said. A teacher
looked up from his desk as we passed his class. A lookit showed up
a minute later. Streeter flashed a pass to Buxbee’s lab and it
buzzed away. We went down the hall quietly.

“So what’s wrong with your neck?”

“Stop asking questions!”

“What the hell is wrong with you, man? I’m
sick of you snapping at me all the time. Ever since you got back
from your
vacation
you hardly talk and you never do a
goddamn thing. You half-baked on some euphoria gear or
something?”

“Do I look like I’m having a good time?”

“You look sick. In the head.”

“I’m going home.”

“That’s great.” Streeter stopped in the
middle of the hall. “Go home then, forget about me.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what?”

I couldn’t let go of my neck. The lookits
returned and told us to shut up or we were going to the office
instead of Buxbee’s lab.

“Just forget it,” Streeter finally said. “Go
home and do whatever you do. Clearly, you got more important things
to do.”

“I can’t talk about some things, but that’s
just the way it is, Streeter. There are things you just can’t know
about
.” Jesus Christ, who does that sound like?

He looked at my neck. I still hadn’t let go.
He tapped his teeth together; the question he’d been holding back
for weeks filled his mouth. He could hold it no longer.

“Where’d you go on vacation, Socket?”

“Streeter… don’t.”

The floor sloshed up and down like a
one-winged airplane. I started toward the exit, pulling my head
down to steady the bucking clamp.

“Your mom told us to let you work it out on
your own, but all I see you do is go home.” He stopped me before I
reached the exit. “Where’d you go, Socket?”

My brain was going to hemorrhage.
Bump,
bump, bump.
“I can’t do this.”