Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (15 page)

Another image appeared in my mind, this one
of a blue planet, similar to the countless ones that had been
drained of life.

[The grimmets were creatures we never knew
existed. They contained this amazing intelligence and beamed with
an intensity of essential life like no other. They were immune to
us, but they could not stop us from sucking the rest of the planet
of life.]

The image of a vibrant, thriving environment
quickly dried up. Plants shriveled. Skeletons littered the
landscape. Dust blew over the red mountains where the Grimmet
Outpost now sat on the lifeless planet.

The grimmets sat on the limbs of dead trees
watching a man and a woman walk across the deserted plains,
preparing to return to the black planet. Fetter was the first to
dissolve into the air like a figure of sand, followed by a blue
flash in the gray sky. But Manumit turned and looked over his
shoulder. The grimmets caught his attention.

[Before we were finished, the grimmet
species left me with a thought.]

His eyes narrowed.

[They gave me the answer.]

His posture softened. He looked over the
world he’d just decimated like he was seeing it for the first time.
He saw what he’d done.

[They showed me home.]

I saw the image they had put in Manumit’s
mind. I saw a planet that was blue and green. I saw forests and
buildings, rivers and oceans and deserts. And I saw the people
there. I recognized this planet.

“Earth?” I turned and walked toward him. “How
could this be your home?”

[The Paladins launched the space program to
find life in the universe. The original space pioneers traveled
sideways in time while Earth had barely aged. For my people, eons
passed.]

“The original space pioneers… they’re
Paladins?
”

He bowed his head.

“They created you.”

[They could not foresee the events that led
to our creation.]

“But, how could they not know?”

[We were lost, how could they?]

It was true. As powerful as the Paladin
Nation was, they were nothing compared to the secrets of the
universe. How could they know they’d created the black planet? How
could they know they were responsible for a cosmic disease?

[After the grimmets, I returned to the black
planet, but what they showed me would not fade. I began to remember
my original face.]

I saw the child run down the corridor.

[At first, I considered erasing the memory
like corrupt data, but the longer I held it, the more pressing it
became. The compulsion to remember my original self was too great.
I knew there was an end to our ceaseless journey, our unending
thirst, in remembering our true nature. I knew the black planet
would have to end. Fetter, though, was not convinced.]

“You’re human, again?”

[No.]
He turned his head, slightly,
self-conscious of his dead eyes.
[But there is hope.]

“You think you’re going to heaven?”

[I don’t know where I’m going.]

“You betrayed me.”

[As I’ve said, there is much to atone.]

Anger twisted inside me, the currents
punching dents in the invisible walls of the ship, warping bubbles
in space. The ship wailed, shifting in the dune and tilting toward
Pivot.

“So you wanted to save the day, but needed to
bait the hook, so why not me? I’m not real, not a person. I’m
inorganic, just like her. Throw me in front of the runaway
train.”

[You did something no other being could
do.]

“I’m a machine.”

[No machine could do what you did. It is
your ability to love, to open and become vulnerable, that allowed
you to do so. You are very human.]

I lifted my hand, displayed the new fingers,
lifted my shirt, revealed the stripes of new flesh. Not flesh.
Nanomechs pretending to be flesh, pretending to be everything that
was me: my thoughts, my mind, heart, all just a script.

“You call this human?”

[I spent eons in seclusion, searching for
the right human to carry forth my plan. In all the universe, you
are that person.]

“STOP SAYNG THAT, GODDAMN YOU! I’m not a
person!”

[You were cloned from a person.]

“Then use him!”

[Because no human could withstand the pain
and suffering that you have endured. No machine could, either. You
are the machine that became human.]

“The machine that
thinks
it’s
human.”

[You have a mother—]

“I DON’T HAVE A MOTHER!”

[— that loves you very much.]

“Tell that to my clone.”

[It is not the human race that needs you. It
is all of life.]

He raised the cube, as if the responsibility
was mine. I slapped it out of his hands and punctured the wall. A
hissing stream of compressed air shot into the desert. Pain sliced
my earlobe again as the cube bounced over the floor.

I shielded my eyes from the sunlight, picked
up the cube. It was impossibly heavy to lift. It was only my
telekinetic ability that allowed me to hold it in my palm where it
gyrated with low frequency. It contained a god.

My earlobe buzzed again.

“I wish you luck,” I said. “Heaven’s filled
with a lot of pissed off people.” I placed the cube in Pivot’s
hands. “Hell, too.”

[Please, understand.]

I walked around, felt the smooth walls of the
ship with my mind. I put my finger through the hole. It was time to
stretch out. I had been contained long enough. As easy as striking
out with my fist, I willed to be free.

The side of the ship exploded.

The ground thundered.

Black shrapnel from the ship’s wall fell from
the sky, slicing into the sand hundreds of yards away. The heat of
the desert whooshed into the ship. I stood at the jagged edge, the
sand several feet below. The air dried my nostrils and my physical
presence soared over the dunes, sprung from the ship like a failed
dam. I merged with each particle of sand, merged with the lichens
surviving on the stones, the scorpions and spiders and snakes and
cacti, the jackrabbits and lizards and coyotes. I felt it all.
Connected with them. Became them.

The sand crunched between my boot and floor.
Pivot gently touched my arm.

[I can only isolate Fetter for a period of
time. The data needs to be reconfigured and returned to the black
planet to shut down all systems. If she escapes, Earth will be
next. I have risked much for this moment.]

“And you need me to take her back?”

[I require your assistance.]

I sucked the hot air through my nostrils,
looked thoughtfully into the barren desert. “You wanted a machine
to be human, Pivot. So I’ll act human. Flawed and
self-centered.”

[You are the only hope.]

“Then you failed.”

I took the first step off the ship, landing
softly in the sand. Into the desert I walked. Pivot remained in the
ship, still and silent. He had said all that needed to be said. And
I had listened.

What else could he do?

Nothing
.

It was such a relief when I stepped out of
the ship. My telekinetic presence pushed outward like a star. I
connected with all the Mojave Desert. The ecosystem and organisms
in it remained separate, their own existence, but I felt their
movement, their compulsion, hunger and pain and pleasure.

I stopped at the top of the nearest dune.
Desolation was as far as I could see, but the desert teamed with
life at the cellular level. My presence continued to expand,
crawling across the desert, its reach going farther and farther,
knowing and becoming the physical world for several miles. Fetter
had changed me, stretched my senses beyond the limitations of human
existence. I was now like the universe, expanding outward. Becoming
everything.

The sun was still overhead, but I didn’t feel
it. I was utilizing and storing the sunlight, converting its heat
into energy. The universe had the potential for endless giving. I
was channeling that energy into my being.

I sliced time, speeding my metabolism at the
cellular level. The sun stuck above me and the slight breeze died
in the stillness of earth’s frozen moment. The world would not
resume their lives while I walked the desert. I needed it to be
still for a while. It would be a long walk.

I willed the sand to whirl in front of me,
blowing out of the way and forming a flat path. There was a time I
pondered the purpose of life. I didn’t like pain. I didn’t like
emptiness, couldn’t understand why anyone would exist to suffer, it
wasn’t rational. Why try? Could I just get my life over with? We
all had to end, so what’s the point of suffering until then? When I
discovered my Paladin powers, I understood the inseparable oneness
of us all, the immortal existence of the present moment, how each
life was precious and that I could help others understand that
truth for themselves. That with understanding, all people could
find peace, experience the pure joy of their existence.

But I’m nothing like them. I’m just a
signpost, an image, a reflection of their potential. Just a
program.

I willed the dunes to flatten out before me.
I uprooted scrub and rolled away boulders with a flicker of
thought, walking straight across the endless desert. I walked for
miles, and in all that time the sun did not move. My body did not
exhaust in the timeslice. Not only was I drawing on the sun’s
energy, I was taking it from the life around me – the insects and
snakes and rodents – as they became part of my existence,
connecting telekinetically with my body. I took from their
mitochondria. I took from the atoms that constructed their being,
from the magnetic balance of protons and electrons, took from the
neutrinos, up quarks and down quarks. I took essence.

I am a child of Fetter. The black planet.

So be it.

And with the endless supply of essence, the
secrets of the universe unfolded in my mind. I saw the fabric of
space-time, how time was simply a direction of space. How the
interconnection of all life was dimensional fabric that could be
traversed in any direction like the flatness of the desert
plain.

I saw my life spread out in this fabric,
sensing each moment, each memory like a byte of data, all connected
like a string that made up Socket Greeny, dangling behind me. And
the future was a vaporized bit of existence coming together as I
chose my path. Where would it lead? Was it already predetermined?
Did Pivot draw my life in the fabric of space-time like a stick in
sand and set me loose like a mechanical mouse, trained to go where
it was supposed to go? And while the desert crunched under me, I
saw the very beginning of my life, when it first started. The
moment of birth.

Pressure on my head. Pushing from behind and
then viscous sliding.

My chest inflates.

Images blur in front of me. A single face.
The details are blurry, but Pivot’s presence is unmistakable. I
feel it in my core, know its love.

I am born.

Suddenly, there is a tremendous sensation of
separation. I am missing something, pulled away from a presence
that I have always known. Something I have always been.

And now it is gone.

Born? Could that be my clone, my original
self’s memory? Could that be what I have always felt was missing,
the presence of my original self? Even at birth, I knew my
essential self was somewhere else. I didn’t feel real. Because I’m
not. I was just an imitation.

There is much discomfort as I grow. Hunger,
ear infections, exhaustion. I learn to cope. And, often, I find
comfort in the faces of my mother and father, looking down on me in
the crib, in the car seat, sometimes stern, sometimes joyous, but
always supportive. Always loving.

I am always with them.

I’m sitting on my father’s lap as Fourth of
July fireworks light up the sky. Mother is laughing somewhere.
Later, I put on his boots that rattle on my tiny feet. I am looking
down a flight of steps and the world tumbles. The bottom step hits
hard on the back of my head. I feel Pivot’s presence as I draw in
the first long breath to bellow the alarming cry. He does not help,
but he is there as my mother and father arrive, carry me back
inside the house. I can feel him.

I couldn’t see Pivot, but he has always been
there. He has always managed to avoid being seen, to be anywhere he
wanted. To follow and watch. Did he shove me down the steps, just
so I could experience life’s pain?

I am five, watching television. Mother is
letting me watch television when I should be in bed, but she’s in
her bedroom crying. I knock on the door, to ask if she’s all right,
but she’s talking to someone. I don’t hear anyone answer, and she’s
barely able to make sense, her words are garbled in sobs. I don’t
know who’s with her, but I sense it’s someone familiar, but it’s
not my father.

My babysitter stays with me the next day.
And then Mother tells me about Father. She tells me he’s not coming
home anymore. I’m confused. Why won’t he come home?

Because God took him, she says.

Why would he do that?

From then on, the emotional hole was bigger
than ever. I was born with something missing, and now it was as
deep as the ocean. The joy of life was gone. Mother didn’t smile.
Father’s boots weren’t around. And the emptiness consumed me, until
I didn’t smile, either.

“
I don’t think about them, much,” Streeter
says. “But I wish they were here.”

We’re seven, climbing into his treehouse to
look at magazines.

“
At least you got your gramma and grampa,”
I say.

“
Yeah, but their Christmas presents
suck.”

“
That’s why you want your parents back?
Better presents?”

He laughs, but his attempt to avoid the
emptiness in his being fails. He nervously lifts the magazine, then
shows me a cool skateboard ramp for the backyard. His emptiness
resonates in my stomach.