Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny

Tony Bertauski

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Tony Bertauski

All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

This book is a work of fiction. The use of
real people or real locations is used fictitiously. Any resemblance
of characters to real persons is purely coincidental

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* * * * *

Dedicated to truth.

* * * * *

Life won’t take you where you want to
be;

It will take you where you’re needed.

Like it or not.

Pike

To love deeply is to risk grandly.

One cannot be without the other.

Chute

Those who know, don’t tell.

And those who tell, don’t know.

Buddhist proverb

* * * * *

Dreams rarely came to me when I slept.
Visions were a different story. I could see them and feel them.
Smell them. They were a glimpse of things to come.

This night while I slept, I saw a man walking
down a crowded sidewalk, a man that hadn’t seen daylight in years.
A man destined to never see it again. But in the vision he was
there, walking among people with the sun on his face. I wouldn’t
believe such a story anymore than Jack climbing a beanstalk. But
this was a vision.

My visions were rarely wrong.

I sat up in a massive chair, my forehead numb
from the desk, but it was nothing compared to the cold tingling
sensation in my neck, a side-effect of visions, a dense
uncomfortable numbness that took hours to fade. I rubbed my
neck.

I rarely made it to bed. My desk served as a
poor substitute. My office was oversized, to say the least. A
hundred feet long, maybe fifty wide. The walls, floor and ceiling
were made from microscopic nanomechs the size of skin cells and
equipped to mold any object, create any environment or situation.
It was also buried under a billion tons of granite beneath Garrison
Mountain, home of the Paladin Nation.

Currently, the room was glowing blue from the
intricate web of lines that represented naturally-occurring
wormholes throughout the universe. It was the soft glow and
pulsating stars that made me drowsy, but now I was awake with the
image of a free man branded on my brain. A man that, given me the
choice, would no longer be breathing. No going back to sleep
now.

[Off,]
I thought to the room.

The blue threads and twinkling stars
disappeared, leaving me alone in the darkness. I called for the
room to connect me with the man in my vision.

The walls bled brown from beneath the
surface. I walked around the desk. The ceiling turned a deep shade
of violet and a chair grew from a blackened floor. It was solid
with stout armrests, immovable and empty. I paced to the end of the
room with my hands locked behind my back and stared at the blank
wall. The vision remained sharp and detailed, like a lighthouse
illuminating deadly shores. And the dull sensation hung over my
neck like a blanket of chains.

“Can’t sleep?” a voice sang.

The chair was now occupied with a frail, bald
man. His glasses were black, meant only to cover the white
sightless eyes beneath, for the benefit of others.

“You should try warm milk,” he said. “Dip
some cookies in it, the ones with the creamy filling. They’ll hit
your stomach like a bomb, blow you into the next morning.” He
folded his legs. “At least, that’s what they tell me.”

Three hairless men appeared behind the chair,
wearing black glasses. They were blind minders, as well, seeing
with psychic vision instead of eyes, but they were no friends of
the one in the chair. They stared at the man now pretending to dip
cookies into a glass on his lap.

“You’re dismissed.” I waved at the three
minders. “This exchange will be private.”

The one in the middle said, “Request denied.
Pike is to be kept under continual surveillance.”

Constant surveillance?
Pike was hardly
a threat. After years of imprisonment and minder pressure, the
fabric of his mind had been stretched and frayed, his thoughts and
motivations splayed open like a butchered pig. His brain struggled
to function and what few thoughts he had were hardly coherent.
There was no need for three minders to contain his mind, hardly a
need for one.

But he’d fooled us all before.

They resumed their focus on the man now
double dipping imaginary cookies, shoving them in his mouth. “Uu
unt sum
?
”

“At least back up,” I said. “Give us some
space.”

The minders considered my request. Ignored
it. Pike cowered under the intensified psychic heat that restricted
the expansion of his mind. He looked over his shoulder like he just
got slapped with a ruler.

“I call them Mo, Larry and Curly, you know.
Larry’s on the left and Mo’s in the middle because he’s the boss.
And that’s Curly there.” Right shoulder. “I used to call him Shemp
because he’s not funny.” A very serious look stretched over his
face. “But Curly’s my favorite. So, you know.”

His favorite episode was
The Three Stooges
Meet Frankenstein
. I knew that because he told me. And now he
was going through it, scene by scene, and quickly seemed oblivious
to me, as if telling the story to himself.

I walked closer to Pike’s image and began to
sit slowly, allowing the room to form a chair below me. It was
wider than the one that confined Pike. I sat forward, resting my
chin on my knuckles, allowing my mind to surround and penetrate
Pike’s mind. Even though he was just an image in front of me,
something constructed by the room, it was projecting his presence
from a secure location. It was no different than if he was sitting
right there in front of me, laughing about the way Mo hammered
Larry and Curly. His essence still flowed through the image, much
like a voice travels through a phone. I could follow it with my
mind, all the way back to the prison cell he shared with a rotation
of minder guards.

Is there something the minders aren’t
seeing? It would be impossible for him to hide anything, but he’d
done it before. He couldn’t escape one of these minders. And three?
Impossible.

I needed to see for myself, just to see if
there was something they were missing. While he ranted about Mo’s
comic genius, I penetrated his mind like vapor. His thoughts were
so disjointed, randomly appearing in a mix of memories and
delusions, separated by basic impulses of hunger and sleep, that if
he could escape he wouldn’t know what to do in the free world.

His energy was jagged and broken, no longer
the cohesive mindfield that he once was, no longer resembling the
treacherous mind he used to deceive the Paladin Nation. A mind that
could kill with a thought or hide secrets of betrayal. A mind that
once tried to kill me. In his prime, it took a dozen minders to
contain him. Now, he drooled on himself. But predators often lure
their victims with deceit.
Good traps never look like
traps
.

“What are you looking for?” Pike asked.

He caught me peeking, distracted by my own
thoughts.

“No need to search far and wide for my
thoughts. No need to be sneaky, it’s open season on Pike,
everyone’s taking a turn. Why shouldn’t you?” He pointed to the
crown of his head. “You can look, but I’m afraid you’re a little
late, the cupboards are bare.”

There were no dark corners left in Pike. No
thought left unearth and analyzed. I retracted my mind and sat
back.

“Don’t like what you see, then? You’re all
powerful, the next coming of the world’s savior. Right? Right? What
are you doing, wonderboy, looking inside old Pike? Do you think
there’s a single thought these savages haven’t raped? There’s
something left of me? I assure you there is not. I’m sure you
already knew that.” He turned his head slightly, awareness
returning sharply, not so childlike. “So what are you looking for,
wonderboy? Really.”

“Tell me something,” I said, “why did you
betray the Paladin Nation?”

“
Booooring
.” He rattled off a long
raspberry. “Whatever your real inquiry is, just look inside again,
will you? Take a peek and see why I despise humanity. Go on,
wonderboy, have a look. Have-have a look, won’t you?” He punched
the side of his head. “HAVE A GODDAMN LOOK!”

Spittle drooled over his lower lip. He leaned
forward and the heat of the minders filled the room. Pike was
yanked back into the chair by invisible restraints. His chest
heaved, laughter gurgled in his throat, coming out in short bursts.
He threw his mouth open, laughing silently.

To see a mind unravel was dreadful, but Pike
was not worthy of pity. He betrayed humanity, tried to sell us to
the artificially intelligent race of duplicated humans. He betrayed
all those that trusted him and almost destroyed us. And for that,
his mind deserved to be unwound and dissected. For that, he could
not be allowed to go free.

The vision returned to me; the lighthouse
swinging its beam around, projecting the details for all minds to
see. I clamped my mind down, snuffed it out but not before Pike
caught a glimpse.

He took a sharp breath. “You had a vision?
Oh, you are a bad boy. A bad-bad boy, wonderboy. A bad, wonder boy
you are, coming here to tell old Pike about a vision. The bosses
are going to be pissed that you came here, yes they are.”

Sloppy work, Socket
.

“You had a vision about old Pike, didn’t you,
wonderboy. Didn’t you? Oh, yes, I believe, I believe you did. You
did, you saw me and you come here to see what old Pike would think
about it.” He twisted around and winked at Larry, then Curly, gave
Mo the okie-dokie. “He had a vision about me, boys, you hear that?
Good old Pike, gone but not forgotten.”

Pike’s location was undisclosed. Only a few
knew where he was imprisoned. He could be in a cell a thousand feet
below ground, or in a satellite circling the planet. With constant
minder presence creating psychic static, I couldn’t ascertain his
location but, whatever the circumstances, no one could escape the
Paladin Nation. Not even Pike on his best day. Still, I needed to
know…
is he hiding anything
?

Pike bounced in the chair. “Let’s play a
game. A game, a game. A guessing game, what’d you say, wonderboy? A
game, shall we?”

He looked at the ceiling, thinking hard,
really trying to find the answer floating somewhere above him.
Would it matter if I told him? No vision was guaranteed, there were
so many variables.

“You saw something in the future,” Pike said,
“about me, I think. Do I get fat, is that it? I hardly get exercise
in this chair. I complained to the warden but no one listens to old
Pike, say that’s what you get for betraying your species, or
something like that, I don’t know. Or I get relocated again, to
another cell. You know, I like this one. I think it’s the color.
Brown just works. They turned it pink once and I didn’t like that
one bit, wonderboy. I started shitting myself and Mo don’t like
cleaning grown man underwear so they changed it back. You don’t
mess with old Pike’s cell— Wait, I know.” His smile was wide, the
gums bright red. “
I kill your girlfriend
.”

He projected a thought and had I not been
open and looking through his mind while he rambled, it never
would’ve reached me. His thought was harmless, but clear to see. It
was Chute, her sweaty hair stuck to her forehead. Pike had a knife
to her neck. I squashed the thought.

Pike drummed his fingers across his pouting
lip. “It’ll hurt when I kill her, wonderboy. It’ll hurt-hurt pretty
bad, I think. And just imagine how your heart will feel after I
strangle her, you know. How I lean over and suck the last breath
from her lips.” He inhaled, deeply, and closed his eyes. “It’ll
probably taste like cherry lip gloss. Your hearts will hhhhrr…
it’ll hurrrr….” He licked his lips. The smile died. “Hurt forever.
Wonderboy.”

I punched out with telekinetic force and his
image rippled in the gale force of raw energy as it travelled
through the image and found his body somewhere in the universe. I
slid my mind inside him like a cold shank. He clenched his teeth
like 120 volts shot up his ass.