Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (53 page)

But there was no
over there,
there
was just here. I wasn’t any more special now than when I was
thirteen. But now I understood that. I didn’t need train tracks to
get there.

Mother stood in the doorway. She had lost
weight, too. She approached and, after a long pause, put her hand
through my hair. She worked her fingers around my head, not looking
in my eyes. Not yet. She eased into the moment, like she was making
sure it wasn’t a dream. She clamped her lips tight, brushing my
hair around like she was getting me ready for school pictures.

I took her hand.
I’m alive.

In that moment, just being near her,
touching her hand, I knew her. In the clarity of my awareness,
where nothing was separate, I knew her thoughts, felt her emotions,
and saw her experiences. It wasn’t like taking her thoughts; it was
just a passive knowing, like her memories were as much mine as they
were hers.

She had watched my Realization Trial, and
while she could not see the torture I experienced in my mind, she
watched my body collapse. She watched it convulse and shrink while
I experienced rapid degradation in a prolonged timeslice. She
didn’t move from her seat, ignoring Spindle’s pleas to get some
rest. She saw the end nearing for me and felt the devastating pain
a mother feels for her dying son.

The servys ushered her to a safe haven when
the war broke. And when the duplicates converted the entire
Garrison into their command, the servys turned on them. They
escaped deep underground. She sat in the darkness while the
duplicates were outside the door. She didn’t know if I survived.
Didn’t know if she would.

And when it was over, the doors opened. The
Garrison was in chaos. She ran from room to room, where servys lay
deactivated. The arena was covered with bodies. The surviving
Paladins were covering the lifeless. Mother pulled the sheets off,
going to each and every one, but not finding me. In the center lay
Spindle’s body, his eyelight snuffed. He deactivated himself before
he was converted to serve the army of duplicates like the rest of
the servys. Mother knelt next to him, brushing her fingers over his
textured faceplate, staring at the blank space next to him where
Pon activated a trapdoor for our escape.

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. You’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.”