Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (13 page)

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.

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.

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.

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
.”