Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (68 page)

Darling.

Her fingers dipped into the water and
penetrated my chest. I felt the breeze on her cheeks. We were no
longer separate. I am her, she is me. Exhilaration vibrated inside
her/me.

Take me.

Balance returned to the world. Water gushed
through me like fresh air. My mind dissolved in the vast ocean. And
it felt good. Felt right. Fetter’s love was warm and embracing. I
will be happy here.

As I integrated further into the world, I
began to see in all directions. I saw through Fetter’s eyes. She
was looking down at me, my face below the water. I also saw through
my own eyes. I was looking up at her. Lightning gathered in a knot
in the blackened sky. It crept from all directions until it was a
ball of electric light directly above us. Fetter sensed it, or
perhaps saw it through my eyes. She saw it too late.

Lightning exploded down like a javelin. For
a nanosecond, I expected it to pierce through her chest, a bolt
from a god striking another god at just the moment of
distraction.

It plunged through
my
chest!

The last of my vision caught the look of
Fetter’s shock. The lightning then took my sight. An enormous
vacuum pulled at the hole in my chest, followed by an excruciating
sense of expansion.

Bones breaking, flesh tearing.

I sensed the fading of the details around
me.

There was silence. Blackness. Emptiness.

Then a flash of blue and the compression of
a wormhole.

L E G E N D

Truth

I remember screaming.

The sensation of bursting. Blood. Sand.

There is a vision of a black, lightless
planet. Somehow, I absorbed Fetter. She existed only in the
circuits that made up that planet, like an electronic ghost. She is
a program, but somehow she is immortal. She didn’t need the black
planet to exist. And she can’t be destroyed. I know this because
she’s inside me.

The black planet is dead without her. Pivot
struck when I integrated with her. For I am not a gift. Not a
son.

I am a weapon.

L E G E N D

When a dam breaks

I was on my back. Eyes closed.

I felt enormous. Not the fat-bloated-tearing
enormous, more like my presence filled the inside of the black ship
that had taken me through the wormholes. I felt interconnected with
the smooth curvature of the discus-shaped walls. It was half buried
in a sand dune.

But I wasn’t just expansive and connected
with the ship, I was experiencing everything within the ship, like
I was interconnected with
all
physical existence. I was the
floating dust particles, the bits of debris on the floor, the stray
body hair and shed skin cells and the micro-organisms. I was
interlaced with the structure of every molecule inside the ship,
including the person standing inside it.

Pivot. The grimmets stormed the Outpost for
him, they sensed he’d returned. They knew he was inside me. Did
they know he created me?

Fetter was no dream. Pike had not poisoned
my mind, no matter how strange and hallucinogenic it was. I was
back on Earth, and I carried the truth of my true nature.
I’m
not human.

It’s strange to realize your entire life has
been a lie. That, in fact, I’m nothing more than circuits and
fluid, that my brain is a processor that thinks and believes it’s
alive, that my memories are just data. That when I die, it won’t
matter. Not really.

I sat up, opened my eyes. Pivot was there,
fourteen feet away in the sunny portion of the invisible-walled
ship, just as I knew he was.

My hands looked slightly different. I
wiggled my fingers. The ones that were cut off and regenerated, the
new ones, were a lighter color than the original skin on my other
hand. Long bleached lines ran down my arms like they had split open
and new flesh filled in. I pulled up my shirt. My chest was
striped, too. There was as much new skin as there was original. I
exploded. But the king’s men put me back together again. The king,
standing in the sun, waiting for me to awaken.

I got up, gingerly. Pain sliced through my
earlobe. I expected blood to be on my fingers but the ache faded
when I reached for my ear. I stepped to the line of sunlight that
cut across the middle of the ship. I remained in the shadow of the
sand dune.

[You could not know your true
nature.]
Pivot’s thought resonated in my head.
[You never
would’ve reached Fetter if you had. That is something you couldn’t
hide.]

My lips curled over my teeth. “Why?”

[You absorbed all of her and brought us
back. Fetter is now here.]
He took his hands from behind him,
displayed a black cube. It absorbed the sunlight, bending the space
around it, appeared more like a square hole in space than an actual
object, its mass pulling light back to it.
[Her existence needs
to end.]

Waves of warm, healing energy emanated from
him. I didn’t want an apology or sympathy. I wanted fucking
answers. “You…
created
me. You built me to carry you to her
so you could… get revenge? This is about fucking payback?”

[It is about all of life.]

“Don’t hand me that shit! I’m talking about
what you did to me! You built me!”

[You were born.]

“No, I was
built.
You say it, Pivot.
I wasn’t born, I was manufactured. Say it.”

Silence hardened between us.

“SPEAK TO ME, GODDAMN YOU! Look up and speak
to me! You tell me why you did this! You tell me how any creature
in this universe deserves this! You tell me how you can live with
yourself, how you could build and love a… a…”

Thing. I’m a thing.

For the last year, I felt Pivot near me.
Always sensed his presence, his warmth and caring. I had no father;
I psychologically craved someone to take his place. Pivot was that
presence, he filled that need. I looked for his acceptance and
guidance; I followed his footsteps because I believed in him. Was
that the plan, to be a father-figure so I would follow him? For
that to happen, my father had to be dead.

“You killed him.”

[I did not.]

“You tell the truth, did you murder
him?”

[Your father was a beautiful man.]

“But it wasn’t a bad thing he died. How I
had this enormous emotional hole for a father, someone to look up
to, and there you were. Was that a coincidence? Because none of
this is random, Pivot. This is all one big fucking master plan and
Pike knew this. How did he know, Pivot? How did Pike know this was
going to happen? Is he part of this, too?”

Pivot didn’t respond.

“You’re behind it all; you’ve been steering
me like a mule. I’m just bait, dangling on a hook for Fetter to
snap up. Well, now the puppet knows he’s a puppet. What now?”

[The universe is lucky to have you.]

“SHUT UP WITH THAT!” The ship shuddered.
“The universe is no luckier to have me than a rock or a hammer, so
I don’t want to hear about love and the rest of your lies. That’s
for humans, Pivot. That’s for things that
exist,
that are
real. That matter.” Sand trickled down the dune. “Not self-aware
things
.”

[You do not understand—]

“I understand the only reason I exist was to
carry you into Fetter. There’s nothing else to understand, no other
reason for my life! YOU USED ME!”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Anger
thundered from my chest, thudding against the walls. “How could you
do this to me?”

He only stood there, head down, allowing my
energy to pound the ship. My presence wrapped around him. The air
became my body and I felt his entire being. I latched onto every
cell in his body. I could throw him through the wall, crush him
into powder, dissect him like a high school science project. But I
did none of that. I only forced him to look up. With a thought, I
pushed his chin up. His hair fell off his face, exposed an
expression of remorse.

“Speak.”

[I lost the ability to speak.]
He
shook the hair from his eyes.
[And see.]

“Why?”

[Some things cannot be undone.]

“So it’s true, what Fetter said. You and her
are… you think you’re gods?”

[No longer.]

“But you’re not real, any more than me.”

[Fetter and I created the black planet, but
I realized the folly of our existence. I escaped in order to
correct my error.]

“You want to destroy her?”

[The time has come.]

“What gives you the right?” The ship creaked
under pressure. I took a deep breath, let my pain and confusion
penetrate his awareness so that he could feel what he had done.

“What’s it like to be so callus, so
unfeeling? To behave like a machine?”

[I have not lied to you.]

“Have not lied?” Sand slid over the top of
the craft, trickling along the side, casting a flowing shadow over
the floor. “Your concept of honesty is warped.”

[If you knew your true nature, Fetter never
would’ve taken you inside, never would’ve opened to you, merged
with you, allowed you to absorb her. To trap her.]

I charged into the sunlight.
“
YOU LET
ME LOVE!
”

His eyes moved, but did not focus. His lips
parted, but there were no words. Only a thought.
[I have much to
atone for.]

I spit on him. “Manumit is your name.”

[I accept that.]

“You are nothing. Pivot is dead.”

[I understand.]

“You couldn’t possibly. No one in existence
could understand what this feels like.” I grabbed his face with one
hand. “I don’t want to know why you did this because I don’t care
about your petty war. I loved you.
How
could you do this to
me? That’s what I don’t understand. How could you do this to
anyone?”

He opened his mind, thoughts drifted toward
me. Images of his past. Effortlessly, and spitefully, I pushed them
away. “Don’t touch me with your mind.” I stepped closer, he could
feel my breath. “Just explain.”

[If you wish to understand, you must
see.]

His milky eyes looked directly at me. His
thoughts waited. He would not force them on me. In fact, he
couldn’t force me to do anything. I had become more than him. I
walked away, feeling anger seethe like a pyre. My presence pushed
against the confines of the ship. The walls buckled. I didn’t want
his touch, didn’t want his presence. But I wanted to know.

I walked to the back of the ship where it
was dark, trembling. When all was still, I opened my mind. Visions
of his past drifted toward me and melted into my consciousness. I
closed my eyes.

I saw his life.

[My ancestors were pioneers.]

The space craft was the size of a stadium
and sparkled with lights where people lived normal lives. It was
large enough to grow crops and raise animals, everything to sustain
life. The ship travelled through thousands of solar systems by
finding natural wormholes in space.

Eventually, they uncovered the secret to
space and existed in a vacuum of time that moved sideways instead
of forward. Many generations were born and raised on that ship
before those on their home planet aged a second in time.

[Their mission was to find a habitable
planet besides their own. It became their only mission. However,
they had become lost and, despite their navigational technology,
they could not find their way back home.]

The ship hovered past planet after planet,
some with water and ice while others were hot and dry. When the
conditions were deemed habitable, they transported to the surface.
But the environments were still harsh where wind punished
igloo-shaped buildings under a sulfuric yellow sky. Scientists
studied data, hoping they could find a way to survive without the
aid of suits and equipment, hoping that one day they could leave
the ship.

Instead, each planet brought sickness and
death.

[My people discovered so many solar systems,
but so many were lost and so little was learned. They simply
couldn’t adapt to another planet. They were destined to remain on a
decaying ship. Hope faded. Until I was born.]

On board the ship, a child ran through the
corridors, chased by older kids. This boy had sandy hair. His eyes
were clear blue. The kids caught this child and even though they
were bigger, he deftly avoided their clutches, striking at their
knees and slipping between their legs until he escaped.

This child was eighteen when he took command
of the deep space colony. The population had dwindled and there
were few left to challenge him, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Some
men are trained to lead. Others are born. His visage was calm yet
demanding. He was reliable, always at his post. He led all
explorations. When they returned, he personally went to each family
to express his sorrow for their loss. Afterwards, he sought
quietude with a woman.

As the years went by, they had a daughter.
Some nights, he watched his family sleep. And some nights, the
captain silently wept. He wasn’t supposed to be weak; he was
expected to embody strength and fearlessness. But his people were
running out of time.

Even heroes falter.

[There was a choice to be made: watch my
people die or embrace technology. After generations of searching,
it was clear we would never be able to adapt to another planet. Our
bodies were organic. Vulnerable. If I chose technology, we could
survive. But there would be no turning back. In my mind, the choice
was simple.]

The captain was in a laboratory, strapped
onto a white bed, his head secured with steel bands. A crew of
scientists watched from behind a glass wall. His wife was among
them. She did not chew on her fingernails or tap her foot, for she
was the wife of the captain, and his duty included risk.