Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (66 page)

Enough. I’m not entertainment.

Understand your environment, one of the
first lessons I learned as a Paladin. Without understanding your
Self or your surroundings, you are a ship sailing without a
compass.

I tracked puddles into the house. The
pillows on the nearest couch were soft velvet, but firm. I centered
the largest one near the opening on the back wall and folded my
legs.

My breathing quickly became rhythmic while I
settled into the present moment. Soon, thoughts faded away. I was
aware of the objects around me, the emptiness of the house and
angry sea. Occasionally, the sky cracked with thunder.

I would sit in the moment until something,
or someone, revealed the truth.

Where am I?

Hours went by.

There was nothing but the steady rhythm of
the rain, the rise and fall of my chest and the occasional bump of
the tree banging its fruit-laden branch against the glass wall. The
waves had taken on a foamy white crest. I had no expectations, made
no effort to escape where I was. I just remained open.

And the world remained empty and
mysterious.

I sensed a faint presence of another being
somewhere in this world, likely the woman, but I couldn’t feel
exactly where she was. It was like she was everywhere. And out
there, somewhere, was somebody besides the woman. It was a man, his
presence somewhere on the horizon.

My back ached and my legs became numb.
Thirst burned my throat. I considered finding water, but there
would be none. The fruit hung tantalizingly.

I sat. The rain continued.

And the fruit continued to knock on the
glass like a stranger, wanting to come inside. The metaphor was all
too obvious.

Paradise.

The Tree of Knowledge.

Thump. Thump-thump.
The fruit said
yes.

The splinter of glass woke me.

I’d fallen off the cushion. My tongue was
like a piece of meat stuck in my mouth. I tried to swallow. I
couldn’t remember passing out.

I glimpsed the woman standing in front of
me, holding out the fruit. I blinked and she wasn’t there. I was
hallucinating, but now my mouth was full of saliva. I could smell
the fruit, its tangy citrus scent penetrating the humid breeze
blowing off the storm-ridden coast.

My head was on the floor, pain pulsing
through my ear. I scratched at the floorboards. Waves were
punishing the beach, pushing closer to the house. The window was
cracked where the tree branches smacked the house, swinging the
heavy fruit like a wrecking ball.

She wants me to eat the fruit. I’ll die
right here on the floor like a dog, shrivel up like a salted slug,
before I eat it.

But I didn’t die.

I kept on living.

The agony wiped out any thoughts of home. Of
Chute, the kids, my mother. I was just writhing on the floor,
doubled over as dehydration cramps pull me into a fetal position.
Sometimes I heard the rain and thunder and the constant banging. I
could feel the hardness of the floor.

I could also hear voices. The woman was
calling. I sensed the man out there, too. He was just watching.

And I imagined the taste of the fruit.

This seemed to go on forever.

And then it was there, on the floor in front
of me. The fruit was as red as a shined apple. I was dreaming of
reaching for it. I didn’t have that kind of strength, the kind to
even slide my hand across the floor, but then I felt it in my palm
and sensed the promise of life inside it. I punctured the skin with
my fingertips, watched the sweet juice dribble onto the
floorboards. My throat contracted.

I touched my tongue to the fleshy skin of
the fruit, the sweetness ignited the taste buds in my mouth. Inside
me, rapture exploded.

I devoured it like a starving beast, juice
flowing down my chin, the meaty pulp sliding down my throat,
filling me, scintillating my nerves. I sucked at my fingers and
licked the drippings off the floor. I could smell the ocean wafting
into the house along with a loving presence. I heard soft
laughter.

It was no dream.

She tricked me. I couldn’t resist it any
longer. In the end, I willfully took it. But now I was thinking
clearly. I knew where I was because eating the fruit had connected
me with this world. It was no longer empty. It was real. It made
sense.

This isn’t Earth.

L E G E N D

A Happy Family

The truth
.

I was pulled from the wormhole just before
arriving home, redirected to another part of the universe and
absorbed into an alien world. I didn’t know how or why it happened,
but I knew this much:
this world is artificial
.

The entire planet was composed of cellular
nanomechs that formed everything I saw and touched, heard and
tasted. That wasn’t the sky above. Not sand or water or rain. Not
even a tree. It was just the generic stuff made to look like those
things. It was my office on a global scale. How this was even
possible I did not understand. All I knew was that I was somewhere
inside it.

I knew these things because I had eaten the
fruit, partaken of this world, and now I was merging with it.
That’s how I knew these things. My being –my essence,
my
soul
– was interweaving with this artificial world. I was
becoming one with it.

This was no ordinary automated world,
either. It was not like my office that only responded to my
commands. There was an intelligence that was inseparable from it, a
feminine being fused into every single nanomech, as if she was this
world. It was her will that formed the ocean, and grew the trees,
her will that sent the moon across the sky. She was everywhere.

That feminine energy was in the room. The
woman in white was standing just inside the house, facing the
torrential storm. Her arms were crossed, her fingers drumming her
biceps.

“Manumit is making quite a mess,” she said,
without turning.

Manumit. I knew who she was talking about.
There was another presence in this world that was separate from
her. He was the reason the sky was black. Why it was raining in
paradise. She called him Manumit, but now I recognized this
presence. I’d known him all my life.
Pivot.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You know who I am.”

I knew this world, how it worked, that it
was artificial. But I didn’t know her. Didn’t know her thoughts,
where she came from. Why she was part of it.

“You don’t know everything?” She
smirked.

She knew my thoughts, taunting me with her
secret. I didn’t even know her name.

“Fetter,” she said. “Manumit called me
Fetter. And he calls you Socket. You call him Pivot.” She looked at
me over her shoulder. Her eyes were blue like the deep part of the
ocean. “Aren’t we one big happy family?”

I pushed off the floor. There were no aches
or numbness. I felt in total control of my nervous system. In fact,
I felt like I could move the environment with a thought like
fingers and toes. I looked at a footstool and willed it to slide
near me. It came to a stop in front of me. I contracted my
awareness, trying to disconnect from the environment.

I’m becoming this world. Like her.

“I’m not staying here.” I said it like that
would make it true, like I would wake up if I heard myself say
it.

She smirked, again. “Have a seat, make
yourself comfortable and I’ll tell you everything you don’t know.”
She strolled over to the right where there was now an open kitchen.
She pulled the silver door of the refrigerator and said while she
searched inside, “And some things you don’t want to know.”

“I’m fine standing.”

“You sure?”

Lightning struck nearby. Glasses clinked on
the counter and the woman named Fetter pulled liquor bottles from
below the counter, began mixing drinks. She looked up because I was
staring. Smiled.

“You know, if you just open to me I won’t
have to explain it. You’ll know the truth for yourself. You know as
well as I do, darling, the truth is always waiting for us. We just
have to open to it.”

I felt the texture of the transforming world
and Pivot crashing through it, but I was holding back, even if I
couldn’t disconnect. She cocked her head like she was thinking
have it your way
and took a sip.

She poured a bit more liquor in one glass
then prepared a plate of cheese and crackers, carried them over to
the long leather couch facing the ocean. She placed coasters on the
antique table and put the drinks down. She patted the seat next to
her.

“That’s for you.” She slid the drink a few
inches in my direction.

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

She sipped the drink that simulated a
euphoric sensation. Even though she could make herself feel that
way by willing it, she preferred the process of drinking. Maybe she
wanted to feel human. Or maybe she was nervous and needed to rely
on old habits. Her energy quivered with a subtle hint of doubt
while she watched the storm. It wasn’t the weather she
contemplated, it was Pivot. He was doing this.

“We made this world, darling.” She pondered
a bit more. “We have existed, Manumit and I, for an eternity. I
know that doesn’t make sense to your mind, how can we exist
forever? But you’ll understand that time is relative when you truly
blend with the universe. This planet was our home. And now that
he’s back, it’s our home once again.”

She nibbled on a cracker. I was
motionless.

“I know this doesn’t make sense. Trust me,
you’ll understand with time. Right now, just accept what I’m saying
and stay open to the truth. The details of how we did this are
irrelevant. What’s important is how the story began.”

She pointed her drink at the weather before
taking a sip.

“It’s a love story, darling. True love.
Manumit is my yang. I’m his ying. Together, we’re one. Apart,” she
gestured again to the storm, “we’re chaos.”

She savored the taste on her tongue and
gazed outside, lovingly. Then I understood.
She’s the ying. The
night.
I hadn’t been sleeping through the day. It was
continually night in this world. Pivot was the day. Had it been
night since he left?

“Night and day,” she said. “Yes, you’re
beginning to understand.”

“Good and evil?”

“Perhaps. Although good and evil are human
concepts. Evil often results from a lack of understanding, and
humans lack plenty of that. Your mind is still too human to
comprehend what I mean. Dark and light, that makes more sense.”

Lightning illuminated her face. She had
everything she could possibly want. Even now, she was enjoying the
brewing storm, even though she couldn’t control it. But if all this
were true, if she was exactly what I thought she was, if she was
this entire world and if indeed I wasn’t dreaming, then what else
was there to desire? Maybe the unpredictability of the weather was
something new. Finally, something she could experience that was
outside herself. How lonely it must’ve been when everything she
experienced was herself. No one to share it with. She needed
Pivot.

But still, this was all artificial. And so
was she. She was like the intelligence that molded the walls of my
office, only she was self-aware. She could choose how to mold it.
And now she was saying Pivot was artificial, too. That, somehow, he
always has been.

“You’re not real,” I said. “This is all an
illusion; it may as well be a dream. You’re making your own
reality. Your delusions feed themselves. You’re a machine that
believes it’s real.”

The furniture chattered like an earthquake
rumbled underground. Fetter’s face darkened for a moment. Maybe,
for just a second, she saw the truth, that I was right, that she
was a just a dream. That if she woke up to the realization of her
true nature she would disappear and the only way she could exist
was to stay asleep and keep dreaming.

“We’re more than real, darling.” She said it
like she was including me. The rosy glow returned to her cheeks.
“You don’t know just how real. Not yet.”

She walked towards me and gently ran the
back of her fingers down my cheek, smiling. Her fragrance was
intoxicating, like a morning after a thunderstorm of
vanilla-scented blossoms.

She walked around the room, paused at an
abstract painting that hung over a monstrous fireplace. The oily
colors were a montage of seemingly random swipes that swirled with
emotion.

“We were once human, in a sense. Long ago,”
she said. “But we became gods.”

“You’re artificially infused into this
world. You’re nothing more than technology. You’re more like a
program and you know this. You didn’t create that painting, you
only copied it from a memory. It’s a duplication of a Pollack.”

She stood in front of the painting a bit
longer before walking to the center of the room to sit at a grand
piano that wasn’t there a minute ago. She softly played.

“It’s like a duplicated human, I suppose?”
It was a question, but she posed it like a statement.
Think
about that.

She knew that humans had managed to convert
their bodies to inorganic machines composed of nanotechnology,
cell-sized machines that imitated organic bodies. Their memories,
their consciousness, were implanted into these bodies and they
existed like they were alive. They thought and breathed and bled
like they were still human. But they wouldn’t get sick, would not
succumb to disease or the whims of the environment because they
could will their bodies to do what they wanted. Fetter was saying
that, yes. She was like a duplicated human, only her body was a
planet!

But duplications lacked a soul. They weren’t
real. And they knew, somewhere deep inside, that they were
artificial and lacked what their human lives contained:
beingness
. Inside, they were hollow. They craved
realness.