Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (40 page)

“What are you?”

“I am a—”

I grabbed his sleeve and yanked him onto the
pedestrian ramp. “We’re going to draw a crowd.”

“I just want to be polite.”

The girls followed. “Is he yours? What’s his
name? Hey! Don’t be a jag, we just want to see him.”

We got up the ramp before they slowed us
down. I just wanted to be invisible, which usually wasn’t a
problem. I should’ve know this was going to happen.

“He’s a prototype,” I said. “No big
deal.”

“Who are you?” the girl said.

“Nobody.”

“You don’t go to school here, I can tell you
that,” she said, looking at my white hair.

“You’re right.”

“I like your coat.” One of the girls had a
hold of Spindle’s sleeve.

“Do you really?” Spindle said. “It came
recommended from a website on popular culture…”

“Spindle!” I stood on my toes and tried to
whisper. “What’re you doing?”

“Your name is Spindle?”

The girls were waving more people over. This
needed to be addressed. I flooded their collective awareness with
thoughts of boys and cars and food and homework. Their expressions
emptied into the storm of pressing thoughts and the emotions that
followed. Two seconds later, they were fixated on some boys and
forgot they ever saw a one-eyed humanoid.

“From now on,” I said, “let’s be a little
less polite and more invisible.”

“I do not want to be rude.”

“Just because you don’t say hi, that doesn’t
mean you’re rude.”

We walked to the top of the ramp and through
a short corridor. The stadium seats surrounded the entire field and
enclosed skyboxes with black windows looking down from the top. The
bleacher seats were steep and filling quickly.

A lookit floated down.
“Do not block
corridor.”

I pulled Spindle along like a six-foot kid
with attention deficient disorder. The crowd was less rowdy in the
seats at the ends of the field, where green scoring cubes hovered
off the ground inside bluish domes. We found seats near the top
with people that looked like grandparents. Old people couldn’t care
less about humanoid mechs, and even less about freakishly dressed
students.
Perfect
.

I nestled into the soft, moldable seat – no
expense spared – and placed a program on the seat next to me, just
in case Streeter showed up. A couple had their interactive program
open in front of me, watching imbedded vid of their grandson
scoring a cube from last season. Spindle’s eyelight was bright
again, scanning the crowd.

“Explain to me,” he said, having to lean his
head against mine to be heard over the crowd, “the various
subcultures.”

I described high school students and how
like-minded personalities were attracted to each other and formed
group mentalities. There were the gearheads, the bombers, crossers,
and brainers, to name a few. I avoided explaining the burners and
droppers since they were in the parking lot because then he’d want
to know why they weren’t supporting the team. I pointed to people I
remembered, told him who used to hook up with who and who was
popular and who wasn’t. And why.

“What about those kids?” Spindle stood and
pointed at the band of misfits walking down the isle, all dressed
in black. I yanked him down before they came over and made a
scene.

“Those are bleeders,” I said.

“They appear to have neck wounds.” His
eyelight brightened. “If they are not treated, they could become
infected.”

“Those aren’t wounds, just fake tattoos on
their necks to look like puncture wounds. It’s a whole vampire
thing.”

“Vampires do not exist.”

“Yeah, well, tell them.” I stopped him
before he did.

“I do not understand. If, in fact, vampires
did exist, why would those boys and girls want to walk the earth as
the undead?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” I smacked his
leg. “Kids these days, huh?”

“Which group did you belong to?” he
asked.

“None of the above.”

“You know what group I believe is right for
you?” Spindle crossed his arms, surveying me with his red eyelight.
“The potters.”

“The what?”

“The potters.” His eyelight dimmed, as if
squinting. “Surely, there must be a gang of kids that follow the
story of Harry Potter, the famous wizard of Hogwarts. It was a
worldwide phenomenon.”

“And you think I’d be in that group?”

“Why not, Master Socket? I can see it now,
you and your friends dressed in your long, flowing robes and knobby
wands at your sides, practicing spells between classes…”

“You lost your mind.”

I looked over the edge of the stadium while
Spindle continued on with his favorite Harry Potter book. I
recalled the day when the duplicates attacked the world. I was
wearing a dark hoodie, watching Chute in her very first tagghet
game.

“You see that over there?” I interrupted
Spindle’s analysis of Professor Snape. “That’s where the truck
erupted.”

His faceplate sparkled, recalling the
incident from his database. He probably had a fully detailed
account of the incident from lookit vids that captured the entire
ordeal, but he listened to my firsthand account. How the
eighteen-wheeled truck caught on fire. How the explosion destroyed
the old bleachers and killed people. How the crawlers spewed from
the flames like a volcano of freakish spiders, tossing parked
vehicles to get to the school’s portal underground to let the
duplicates have access to virtualmode before they died.

Now, instead of the domed roof there was a
tower encircled with dark windows, like the school was looking in
all directions. It was the Paladins’ clever design to remind the
public we kept them safe. That we were always watching.

The crowd stood and cheered. The Hilton Head
Hightide rode onto the field on hovering jetter discs, swinging
sticks curved at the end over their heads. The self-balancing
jetters whizzed at dangerous speeds and the team circled the entire
field before huddling at the opposite end.

“
Socket!”
Chute’s voice rang in my
head. “
Where are you?”

“On the home team end, behind the goal at
the top.”

Whatever she said next was blotted out by
the roar of the crowd. The Charleston Rapid Foxes blazed onto the
field, sticks in the air. Their heads were projected as a hovering
three-dimensional image as they hit the field. The players pumped
their fists. They were twice as nimble as the last time I’d seen
them.

Chute was the last one out and the crowd
announced her arrival with an explosion of cheers and the signature
shhhhooooooooot
. Her projected head looked in our direction
with a bright smile. I stood on the seat and pulled Spindle up.
Wave, wave
, I told him, and Spindle raised his arms, bright
colors dancing inside the hood. She saw us and pointed, but her
teammates pulled her into the huddle. I was still standing when the
crowd sat. And Spindle was still waving. I pulled his arms
down.

They started pre-game, doing a double
figure-eight and passing three tags. They formed a large line at
center pitch and, one at a time, flew toward the goal. Each person
cut back and forth with their own display of evasion skills, taking
a pass from the sideline and throwing it at the green cube inside
the electro-magnetized dome. The tag went through the dome and
stuck in the cube. Some rode to the top of the dome and fired the
tag through it.

Chute worked the jetter like it was an
extension of her feet, cutting turns sharply, quickly and
precisely. She executed a double-spin move, took the pass blindly
with her stick behind her and bounced a shot off the ground that
stuck in the center of the cube.
Sweet.

The crowd was on its feet again.

“Should I wave?” Spindle asked.

“No!” I stood on the seat. “Just shout!”

Fans cupped their hands around their mouths.
Spindle put his hands inside the hood and let out a baritone roar
that shook the seats, sounded like a goddamn cargo ship. The entire
section looked at us.

The energy was exhilarating. I called
Streeter and got his voice mail, again.

“Locate.” My nojakk reported he was there,
at the school,
at the game!
“Where are you?” I said on his
voice mail. “Spindle and I are sitting behind the home goal at the
top! Get here before the tag drops!”

But as announcements were called and the
teams took the field, Streeter’s seat was still empty. The
announcer’s voice was barely audible over the crowd. A lookit
hovered over the center pitch with the tag. A player from each team
squared off underneath. Holographic numbers counted down over them.
On zero, the tag dropped. The stadium shook. Another tagghet season
was underway.

I called Streeter again without luck. I
wasn’t going to leave another message. There was little chance he’d
find us in the madness. I called to locate him and get a closer
look on his location. I could go get him while Spindle held the
seats. He was so fixated on the game, he might not even notice I
was gone.

“Locate, Streeter.” The noise was drowning
out the volume in my head. I sat down and covered my ears, called
the command again.

“
The recipient’s GPS is blocked,”
it
replied.

Streeter shut off his GPS since I left a
message. He didn’t want me to know where he was.

My neck was beginning to chill.

T R A I N I N G

Void

Streeter was definitely losing his mind if
he thought he could hide from me. Did he forget what Paladins can
do?

I activated the imbed, felt it connect with
my eyes. I was encouraged not to use it in public because my eyes
would be brighter than normal, sometimes even sparkle if it was
dark enough.

[Locate Streeter,]
I thought.

A virtualmap platform of gridlines stacked
in the air, then curved and formed a sphere. Blue oceans and terra
firma developed and planet Earth was now rotating in front of me.
The Paladin’s version of Google Earth was finely detailed, but
unlike Google, it was a live feed. The view zoomed into the United
States, South Carolina, Charleston, and finally the stadium. A tiny
figure was highlighted on the far end of the parking lot.

“Come on.”

I pulled Spindle out of his seat and we
pushed through the crowd. The imbed locked onto people as we passed
and automatically downloaded their history, identifying objects
with glowing outlines. Spindle didn’t ask questions. He sensed the
urgency in my step.

When we entered the parking lot, the burners
stared at us; their hair was no longer than mine but it was knotty,
unwashed and hanging in their eyes. One of them blew a long cloud
of smoke at us. The distinctive smell of burning skin lingered in
the smell of cigarettes, the sort of smell that would emanate from
slow-roasting meat. That was the gear cooking their brains, ever so
slowly. Most people wouldn’t smell that, but most people didn’t see
what I could see. Or smell.

I didn’t recognize any of these people from
school, but the imbed immediately downloaded their histories along
with names, whereabouts and criminal records. They were mostly
small-time punks with dim futures, although some of them were good
kids hanging around bad people. Small discs were tucked behind
their ears that emitted a low drone and convinced their brains they
were happy and good. They were burning on mood gear, cooking their
brains like a meth lab.

We were heading for the low-riding black
pick-up truck parked in the grass with the tailgate down. Streeter
had his back to us, talking to a guy with artificially tanned skin.
His face was sort of shrink-wrapped over his cheekbones like he’d
sucked on the end of a vacuum cleaner.

“This won’t take long,” I told Spindle.

He slowed his pace and let me approach the
truck that reeked of cologne. I reached for Streeter as he put
something in the tanned guy’s hand.

“What’re you doing over here?” I asked.

Streeter jumped back when I touched him and
yanked his arm away, breathing heavily. There was another guy
sitting on the tailgate that looked lean and dangerous with veins
bulging down his forearms. He closed in on me; his muscles tensing.
The imbed reported he was a mixed martial artist and a registered
bodyguard.

“It’s all right, Edward.” Vacuumface put his
hand up and karateman stopped; then he stared at me for several
long seconds, keeping his hand up like he was holding back an
attack dog but might change his mind. My reflection looked back
from the black sunglasses. Most people wouldn’t be able to see with
lens that dark, but he wore them to protect his eyes from light,
not to look cool. Even moonlight was too bright for him.

His birth name was Patrick Black and he was
a virtualmode dealer, a guy that pushed mood gear to the loitering
burners. He was also called a void merchant because he helped
people avoid their lives, to get rid of pain and seek pleasure. In
reality, he helped them empty their lives until they were void of
realness, but his victims wouldn’t know what hit them. By the time
they were strung out, they wouldn’t know the difference between
dream and reality. And Streeter was making a deal with him.

Vampires do exist, Spindle.

“My friend,” Patrick said, flashing a
pearly-white smile, “I’m afraid I only work by appointment. My
assistant gets a little nervous when people barge in, you see.
You’ll have to wait your turn.”

“I’m not here to see you, I only need a word
with my friend.”

“Well, then you and I are mutual friends.
Mr. Street and I have spent a lot of time together as of late.”

Streeter sort of cringed and turned
away.