Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (67 page)

Was that what Fetter was claiming? Did the
fact that her body was an entire planet made her feel less hollow?
Did it make her feel more real?

“Believing you’re a god does not make you
one.”

“Gods build planets.” She pounded out an
intimidating series of keys.
Dum, dum, dum, DUH.
“We create
whatever we desire. We created ourselves. I believe that is the
definition of a god. Look it up.”

A dictionary appeared on the coffee table to
my left.

“Is that any different than dreaming?” I
asked.

“Perhaps dreams are the reality.” She raised
her eyebrows then immersed herself in a classical piece that seemed
to dance with the storm. She suddenly stopped, looked at me. “Have
you ever loved?”

I didn’t answer. Her questions were
patronizing. She already knew my thoughts. I attempted to close my
mind, hide from her prying mind but I was too tightly integrated
with the world.
With her.

“Of course, you have.” Her fingers played
softly, again. “It’s okay to love, it’s not a weakness. It requires
courage to be open to whatever the other person brings. When you
love,
truly
love, you are willing to risk everything.
Pleasure. Pain.”

Her fingers ran up and down the keyboard.
“Manumit left me.” She played the same pattern of notes in a low
octave. “He hurt me. I have been unbalanced ever since. I have been
alone.”

“Why not just create him? If you’re
God.”

She smiled. “Because he came back,
darling.”

Thunder clapped. “He wants to destroy
you.”

“He can no more destroy me than the universe
can end. I can exist in a speck of dust, or the center of a star. I
can be reduced to a single byte of information and survive,
darling. And from that tiny byte,” she stopped playing and held her
finger and thumb an inch apart, “I can become whole again. Manumit
knows this, he’s just acting out because he knows I won’t let him
leave again.”

“Then why am I here? You’ve got what you
want, let me go home. If you know what it’s like to lose love, why
make me suffer the same?”

She smiled, again. She was hiding something,
but instead of telling me her secret she lost herself in
Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony
. She hammered the keys and,
finally, ended with a furious run that coincided with a bolt of
lightning that crawled across the horizon.

“I want to go home.”

“You are home, darling.”

Nightmare. This has to be Pike. I’m not
here. This feels like reality, but this is too insane. I’ve been in
alternate reality before with my real body back on Earth. Is that
what’s happened? I’m lying on the floor of my office in some sort
of catatonic state, foaming at the mouth while Paladin minders try
to revive me. Pike gets the last laugh.

“I assure you, Pike has not created this
reality,” she said.

“Wouldn’t my hallucination say that?”

She shrugged. “Do you believe you are
dreaming?”

“I’ve been fooled before.”

She looked at me while her fingers danced
over the keys and then finally stopped. She stood. “Let’s go for a
walk.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She neared me and, once again, her presence,
her fragrance swayed me like a siren’s song. “You’ve always been a
truth-seeker, darling, even when the truth is inconvenient. I know
that about you. I know
everything
about you. So I think it’s
time you know something about yourself that you don’t know. What’d
you say?” She hooked her arm in mine. “It’s a nice night for a
walk.”

The sky looked like boiling tar and rain
fell like bullets. She guided me outside, onto the beach. The
raindrops drove into my scalp. I was soaked in seconds. The waves
were crashing loudly, non-stop, one after another. Fetter, though,
tipped her head back and laughed.

We strolled down the beach, but this time
the house receded. I saw the rolling hills off to my left each time
a bolt of lightning snapped across the sky. The waves were violent,
but nothing like the one welling inside me. Something big was
coming. This is just a dream, I tell myself.

“You see, I sensed Manumit near me when you
were travelling through that wormhole.” She spoke loud enough to be
heard over the rain that pounded the hardpacked surf like it was
storming gravel. “It had been so long since I felt him. I thought
he was coming home, or maybe he was just thinking about it and was
near enough for me to hear him. So I took hold of him. I have that
ability, darling, to stretch my will across the universe. I brought
him home before he changed his mind. I brought him here, back home.
But then I realized it was you that I had grabbed. Imagine my
surprise.”

She squeezed my arm tighter and leaned
against me, something Chute had done a hundred times when we walked
side by side. Fetter knew this, wanted me to feel more comfortable.
More open.

“But I wasn’t wrong,” she said. “I had
gotten Manumit, after all. It turned that you were carrying him
inside you and that’s why I sensed him. And when you arrived, you
released him into the ocean.”

Yes. The dense feeling. The release in the
ocean and the cloud spreading in the water. And the slow stain on
the sky that had become this monsoon. That was Pivot. Somehow, he
was inside me.
But how could I carry him?

“I’ll admit, I was confused, at first. Why
would my soul-mate use you to deliver him when he has always been
welcome to return on his own? But then he refused to integrate with
me, insisted on remaining separate from me, from our home. He’s
caused all this chaos.” She held out her hand like she was trying
to feel the rain that was dripping off every part of our bodies.
“So I left you to wander in the wilderness until I understood his
exact intentions.”

We walked a bit more. The cold was sinking
inside me and I shivered. Fetter’s touch was warm.

“And then it all became clear. I understood
why my love had gone away. You see, he never left me, darling. He
simply went out to find me a gift.” She stopped, took my hands.
Behind her, the sky was as black as the water, illuminated only by
the lightning. Her eyes seemed to glitter. “He brought you.”

My breathing stalled. She didn’t need to say
it. She let her thoughts out in the open and I saw the truth. I
knew the secret she had been hiding.

“Our son.”

L E G E N D

The Lie And The Liar

Sometimes, you just know things.

You can’t explain how. You just see them and
know they are truth.
You know it.
When she took my hands,
she opened my awareness. Once I believed I was
The One that Sees
Clearly
. But it became apparent I was blind.

Now I see.

Our son. Because I’m like them. I am
artificial. I’m not fucking real.

Just like them.

It made sense, now. It was how I easily
merged into this planet. How I was able to carry Pivot inside me
like data. It was how I had been so exceptional among humans. I was
the one that extinguished the duplicate race. I was the only one
that could see them because I’m one of them. But I couldn’t see
myself. I was so perfectly human – with my flaws, my ability to
love – that no one suspected I was duplicated. That I wasn’t human.
Not even me.

I couldn’t see where I was going. Water was
around my ankles. The next wave crashed into my knees. I fell. But
I got back up again. The house was a smattering of lights. I wasn’t
going inside, I’d run past it, maybe into the mountains. There was
no escape. But I’d still keep running.

Another wave. This one hit me waist high and
began dragging me out. The undertow pulled me down and I let it.
But a strong pair of hands latched around my wrists before the sea
could fill my lungs.

Fetter lifted me like a child.

I coughed up salty water, my legs weak and
wobbly. She led me towards the house. I tried to yank away.

“No. I’m not. I’m not you… I’m just, I’m
caught in this… THIS SELF-CENTERED DREAM!”

I twisted my arms, sidestepping and
wrenching out of her grip. My back was to the house. The lights lit
her face. She looked sad, almost tired. Almost compassionate.

“I know this is hard,” she said, much like
my mother once said to me. “Your whole life has been a lie. You’ve
been told you’re something else and that’s not easy to accept. But
you’ll understand, darling. With time. Just stay open, you’ll
understand.”

It took all my strength to resist her, to
stop from going to her, to feel her embrace. Not as a lover, but as
a mother. She wanted me to accept the truth. She didn’t want to see
me in pain, didn’t want me to suffer. She wanted me to accept her.
To accept this planet. This reality.
Her
reality.

Why would Pivot do this? Why would he
keep this secret? Why isn’t he here, right now, standing next to
her? If I don’t open and accept this reality, will this world stay
out of balance?
Will it be chaos until I do?

“Let day follow the night,” she
whispered.

“This isn’t real.”

“Only if you don’t accept it.”

“Acceptance doesn’t make it real.”

I wiped the rain from my face. There was
nowhere to go.
But I’ll never accept this place, I’ll never open
to a world that—

“Socket?”

Chute.

“Listen, I know this is hard to understand,
but you’re exactly where you need to be. I’m here. We can be
together, here forever. And ever. You know it’s all I’ve ever
wanted.”

Suddenly, my chest became hot, warming my
belly. She pushed her wet hair from her face, her slim fingers
freckled like her cheeks. I sensed the familiar essence of Chute,
like it was her.
It’s really her.
I want to take her, feel
her warmth against me—

“No.” I shivered.

“It’s me, Socket.” She reached out, took my
hand. Her essence jolted inside me, shook a sob from my throat. I
wanted to go to her. “It’s me.”

My vision. Is that what it is? We’re here,
in this planet, visiting some stump with a flower?

I won’t accept this. I won’t.

I tightened my mind, shrank from the
goodness, the warmth of the women standing with me in the rain.
None of this was true. I’m not artificial. This world is not
possible. I would wake up. I’d survive this hallucination and wake
up—

“YOU FUCKING LIAR!” Chute slammed the edge
of her hand into my windpipe. “You’re going to leave me out here,
alone? So that you can keep pretending that none of this is real?
You going to fucking lie to yourself forever while I sit out here
alone, is that what love is to you? Is that how you’re going to
treat me?”

My throat swelled, my breath wheezing
through it. Chute’s face was red, her hands clenched at her
sides.

“Do you feel the pain?” Fetter asked. “Is
that not real? Did you not feel pleasure, love’s warmth when you
saw her?”

Chute’s face softened. Her hands relaxed.
Suddenly, I felt the urge to take her, again. But then I stood
taller, swallowed. I shook my head, unable to speak. A sense of
peace filled me.

Lightning glinted off the silver blade
slicing through the air. Chute brought it down.
The vision is
fulfilled.
I only had time to raise my hand. The blade cut
through my outstretched fingers, cleanly severing them at the
knuckles. There was a dull pinch, followed by sudden numbness. The
fingers of my right hand tumbled into the water that receded around
our ankles.

At first, there was only the white meat of
muscle and the gleam of bone. Then the blood came, warmly. The rain
washed it away, but didn’t stem the flow that poured into my
palm.

I circled around, walked backwards towards
the sea while shock weakened my knees.

Fetter grabbed my wrist before I could
cradle my hand. “Focus, darling. You can be new again.”

I stepped back, further into the encroaching
water.

“Open to your true nature,” she said. “You
are not human. You can be whatever you want.”

Her grip was too strong. I simply fell to my
knees, sinking into the shifting sand.

“Accept your true nature, darling.”

I tried to resist her words, but the pain
striped away my resistance. I felt the angry nerves at the end of
my bloody stumps. I felt the torn flesh and muscle. I’m present
with it, connected with it. Not separate.

“There you go,” she said, softly. “Whatever
you want.”

I willed the flesh to rebuild, the muscles
to regenerate. The nerves to branch out. I wanted it to stop; I
didn’t want it to be true. But I couldn’t deny true nature.

And just as I willed the flesh and nerves to
become new, the blood stopped. Lightning flashed and the stumps
elongated. I felt the sting of fresh nerves and new flesh. Knobby
knuckles formed and fingernails grew. The skin was lighter than
before. It was new.

“Ask,” she said, “and you shall receive in
this world.”

Humans can’t regenerate. I can.

“Welcome home. Son.”

Truth.

It’s not open to interpretation. It just
is.

If this is a hallucination, then I accept it
as reality. I feel it. I am it. It is my new reality.

The last shreds of resistance gave way. I
opened to Fetter, felt her presence swarm inside me. No more
separation.
I am this world.

The rain stopped. Sudden silence. The sky
was completely black, not a star above. It thundered in the
distance like God approved of my acceptance.

I lost my balance and fell into the shallow
surf. A wave pushed over my face. Fetter gargled in and out of
detail as the tide pushed and receded. The water flowed into me and
through me. Fetter bent over, her face close to the water. Her lips
moved.