Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (42 page)

“Yes, Master Socket.”

I locked the car. Streeter was fidgeting on
the curb. “You know where we’re going?”

“There’s a moody club around the corner. The
virtualmode den is in the back.”

“We’re not old enough.”

He held the disc between his fingers. “We
are now.”

Streeter led the way. We worked our way
around tourists gawking through windows and licking gigantic ice
cream cones. We got to the end of the market and turned the corner
where bars and restaurants lined the street, the doors open to the
sidewalk.

A five-star hotel was on the corner. Nothing
but suits and dresses sat in the first floor restaurant with padded
menus that didn’t have prices. Next door, techno music thumped
where singles got their freak on. Sandwiched in-between the
five-star restaurant and techno bar was a door with peeling red
paint. A barrel-shaped man sat on a stool in front of this
door.

Streeter held out the disc. It took the man
a moment to even see him. He scrunched his face like he was about
to tell him to beat it until he saw the disc. He looked twice,
thought about smacking Streeter for the hell of it, then pressed
the disc into the palm of his glove. He handed it back and simply
nodded.

Above the red door, in small, old-school
neon lights, was a sign.
Judgment Day.
Behind the door was a
flight of stairs. Streeter took a hesitant step inside and I
followed. The door slammed behind us, sealing out the traffic and
music like a tomb. The stairwell smelled like 500 years of mold,
made my head light as if memories of the building tried to get
inside me. A single light bulb hung at the top of the steps.
Someone had gouged
Stairway to Heaven
into the first
step.

The walls were smeared with graffiti. Most
were names immortalized with the tip of a knife or a Sharpie, or
just statements of who loved who forever and ever. Then there was
one that hit me.
Paladins Feed on the World
. And if that
wasn’t clear enough,
Paladins Suck Ass.

I wanted to put my fist through the wall.
Without the Paladin Nation, the world would be dead. And they
embrace the enemy? Pon’s voice echoed from somewhere deep in my
brain.

We don’t ask for permission to serve.

At the top of the steps, another man on
another stool. Not as round, but just as big. He stared at us all
the way to the top. Streeter held out the disc. He pressed it to
his glove without taking his eyes off Streeter.

He nodded, then held the disc up like a
communion wafer. Streeter, unsure, plucked it from his fingers. The
guy didn’t move. The door behind him was old and peeling, too, but
this one had a crystal doorknob. Streeter put his hand on it,
turned slowly.
Heaven’s inside
.

The room inside was reddish, long and
narrow. A bar was along the left wall. A bartender leaned on the
polished surface; another guy was on a barstool. His tie was loose.
He had no drink.

Booths were along the right, filled with
people. Most were young, some were locals. They had their fingers
dipped in a black saucer in the center of each table. Some had
their heads back, some slumped over, their eyes glassy and aimless.
Moody bowls.
Unlike the moody discs Patrick was dealing,
moody bowls were legal mood enhancers.
The body’s natural
opiate. Make life feel better, dip into a moody bowl today.

The government ruled years ago that moodies
were no more dangerous or addictive than a cup of coffee. “It’s
just a little escape,” the woman in the commercial used to say,
with her frizzy hair and crying baby. “Who doesn’t need a vacation
now and then?” She looks back at the baby, then puts her thumb in a
small moody bowl. Her eyes close. “I know I do.”

The booths had teenagers and adults, some
with clothes that needed washed, and others looked like lawyers or
doctors. They could’ve been my next door neighbors. Escape had them
mesmerized, escaping whatever they were running from. They tricked
the brain to boot out good feelings, that the world was all right,
just like it was when they were kids watching their favorite show.
I love you, you love me…

The crowd in the middle of the room was more
sophisticated. They belonged in the five-star restaurant instead of
the moody den. They sat at elevated tables or stood in groups
swaying to the soft notes of a piano playing somewhere in the back.
They smiled and laughed, spoke in hushed tones. They all looked
around every few seconds, like they were waiting for
something
.

We politely worked our way around the tables
and between the well-to-do people that ignored us like kitchen
help. One lady grabbed my hair and let it fall between her fingers.
“Nice hair,” she said. Her pupils were enlarged, but she still had
irises. Not yet a void, but on her way.

There was a doorway on the back wall and a
silver podium facing it. A woman walked out of the doorway as if
the archway was a solid outline on the wall.
Like Garrison
technology.
A gentleman and his date shoved past us without an
apology. He placed a disc similar to Streeter’s on the podium. The
silver surface absorbed it and the doorway started glowing. The
couple rushed through it.

Streeter approached the podium, next. There
was no one stopping him. He did like the guy before him and the
doorway responded. He took a deep breath and looked back, then
walked through it like a curtain of water. Gone.

I went through the cold archway and stepped
next to Streeter into a tiny elevator room. There was slight nausea
in my belly and the atmosphere became slightly more humid and
cooler. The wall lit again.

This is a leaper! They have access to
Paladin technology!

Streeter took another long breath, but I
stepped through the lit wall first.

This room was gray and damp, mold in the
corners, big enough for a bunk bed and two chairs. The stench shot
up my nose, like something rotten hovered just below a heavy dose
of sterilizing solution. The mattresses were bare with large
yellowish stains. Stains layered upon stains. Empty life support
jacks on the wall were options for long term virtualmode living,
lines that would pump nutrition into veins for weeks, months or
however long a client’s bank account held up.

Putrid memories haunted the room. No joy
ever remained, yet the promise of such was always present.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Streeter
said, his voice wavering. “But I’m not here for a long trip.” He
sat in a chair, sinking in as the ultra-molding pads reformed to
his body.

“You’re not using their transporters, are
you?”

“I have to.” He took two discs off the table
between the chairs and slid a transparent film over them. “But this
will sterilize them.”

He was lucid enough, not too desperate, to
realize that transporters in a void-ridden place like this would
have leacher technology that gave the user a
taste
of that
connection and left him wanting more. People thought heroin was
addictive? Try leacher gear that left an imprint on your brain,
like a permanent brand with instructions to come back for more. No
cure for that and guaranteed repeat customers. Ask those that
pissed on the mattresses.

“I’ve got extra sterilizers for you,” he
said.

“No, thanks.” I tapped the back of my neck.
“I’ve got an imbed.”

Under normal circumstances, he’d want to
know everything about imbed technology. He’d heard of it, so what
was it like? When could he get it? But he didn’t flinch. He pressed
the transporters behind his ears and lay back. Unlike the moody
discs that the burners placed behind their ears, the transporter
discs pulled Streeter’s awareness from his skin into virtualmode. I
sat in the chair – the remnant energy of all the addicts that sat
in it before me crawled over my skin like ants – and activated my
imbedded portal.

I left my skin and arrived at the Gates of
the Dead. Streeter was already there. For the first time ever, he
was in a sim that looked like his actually skin body, back when it
was plump and healthy. I felt hopeful.

Leaves crunched under my feet, I stepped
next to him, looking into the black depths between the bars.

“I didn’t plan on this happening.” His gaze
was blank. “But when I saw them…” He swallowed.

“I understand.” I didn’t understand, but he
needed to hear that.

“When I saw them, something snapped inside
me.” Focus returned to his eyes. “You ever seen your dad?”

I shook my head.

“You should try it,” he said. “It’ll fuck
you up, bro.”

The gates opened. The blackness behind them
swirled and details took shape. Streeter took one deep breath and
marched through them. Grass sprouted under our feet. Live oaks from
before the time of the Civil War lined the large expanse of turf.
Traffic cruised outside of that. Tourists were looking over the
wall at crashing waves and a barge slowly cruised into the harbor
loaded with containers. We were standing at Battery Park, right
downtown, where tourists could see Fort Sumter across the
harbor.

Streeter was stoic, eyes fixed straight
ahead. The park was filled with the usual crowd. A couple college
guys were tossing a Frisbee and some kids were throwing food to the
seagulls. Streeter watched it like a movie.

“This world is addictive.” He held out his
hands, turned them over. “The details are better than anything I’ve
ever seen. I can smell the ocean and feel the breeze, like I’m
really here. You start to forget what’s real.”

“The Battery is just three blocks away in
the skin, let’s get out of here and go.”

He pointed. “They won’t be there.”

On the far side of the park, a couple was
holding hands. They walked at a leisurely pace. I recognized them
from a picture in Streeter’s house; it sat on a shelf in the den,
right above his grandfather’s desk. Streeter was two years old,
sitting on the beach with the tide rushing in. His dad had curly
hair and a big round face, what his grandfather called swarthy. His
mother had blond hair and her lips red; she smiled big and there
was lipstick smudged on her teeth.

Streeter always said that was his favorite
picture. I never knew why, it wasn’t all that flattering, but then
after awhile I got it: It was real. Nothing pretend about it, those
were real people with their son at the beach. The same two people
walking across the park.

“You see, this is where the trip always
ends,” Streeter said. “I see them across the park.” His father,
still a hundred yards out, waves at us. “They wave. Then it ends,
the world goes black and I ended up back at the gates, starting all
over. You know what it would cost for me to get closer?”

“By the look of that crowd in the lobby, I’d
say half a million.”

“Close.” His lower lip started to tremble.
“The security of this world is tight, I couldn’t hack my way past
that point without paying and I ain’t got half a mil cooling in my
pocket. And once I got a taste, I couldn’t stop. I went night after
night trying to codebreak the security, just so I could get a
little closer, but I couldn’t pull it off. I stripped the safety
features off my gear. I know it’s dangerous—that I’ve started gear
addiction. I stopped going to school because if Mr. Buxbee saw me,
he’d lock me up. I’ll go to detox, Socket, I swear I will. But not
until after.”

They were fifty yards out. His mother waved
this time. Streeter made an odd sound, like he got punched in the
stomach, started to reach for his face, seemed unsure about what to
do.

“I made a deal with the devil, Socket. I
wrote some difficult code to get this key and Mr. Black is going to
use it to rob some innocent people with it. But I had to, you
understand?” His eyes were wet. “I just had to.”

I squeezed his shoulder.
I
understand.

He took a step, slow and frightened that the
trip would end. When the ground was still under his feet, he took
another. On the third, he was running. His parents put their arms
out. Streeter crashed into them. He buried his face between them,
his body convulsing. They hugged him tight, held him an arm’s
distance away like long lost ones trying to see what their boy had
become. Streeter was trying to talk, but just made weird sounds. He
was in a full-on meltdown.

I was feeling it, too. I felt guilt mixed
with relief. Guilt for not understanding. Relief he found what he
needed. Guess there was a lot more buried in him then I
thought.

flicker.

The world crinkled.

I grabbed a bench for support. Streeter was
still there. His parents, too. But the traffic was gone, so was the
water.

Flick, fiililckkkk.

I lost contact with my sim, floating in the
in-between. I pulled my awareness back into my skin and sat up. My
nostrils had soured in the room’s rancid odor. Streeter was still
in virtualmode, tears streaming down his face. The doorway to the
leaper was glowing.

“
Socket?”

“Chute!” I touched my nojakk cheek.

“
Is Streeter all right?”

His lips were moving, tears still flowing.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s going to be all right.”

A cold chill leaked down my neck, voices
gurgling. My body was alight with tension, the timeslicing spark
dancing in my belly. I shook my head to clear the confusion. I
couldn’t leave Streeter, but I was pulled in forty directions. I
bent over, closed my eyes and held my head together. Chute was
saying something.

“…
glad Streeter’s with you. Where are
you?”

I was going to answer. I was thinking of
meeting her down at the market, at the outdoor café. Streeter,
maybe he would be up for telling her about it. We could reconnect,
all three of us.

The chill froze my neck, harder than
ever.