Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (22 page)

A fat hand gripped my arm.

The fog thickened, turned gray to black.

I left.

To the in-between.

* * * * *

Walls built from out of the dark and
surrounded us in a wood-paneled room. Stuffed heads of antelope and
grizzly bear formed on the walls. A fireplace blazed. Broak was
gone.

“What happened?” Chute pushed the cowl off
her face.

Streeter lay sprawled on the floor, his head
wedged against the couch. The glowing portal peeked from a gap in
his stomach, and lit up his chest. Broak’s limp, white arm lay
across him, fingers stuck in the portal’s shell.

“I got news for you,” Streeter said. “Broak’s
not a good guy.” I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him to his
feet. “Don’t bother. He destroyed my spine. I don’t have time to
rebuild it.” He pulled the portal out of his sucking guts, pushing
back his intestines. He plucked Broak’s hand from the portal shell
and tossed it against the wall where it smacked like a piece of wet
liver. He handed the portal to me. “You’re going to have to take
it.”

Several more pieces of the basic shell fell
away, exposing the bare portal beneath.

“Make sure you don’t touch the portal
directly,” Streeter said. “Buxbee always warned if the shells
failed to never, ever touch it. He didn’t say why, he just warned
us. But he also said the shells would never fail, so maybe he
doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Chute looked out the cabin’s frosty window.
“Is this the Rime?”

“It was the first place I could find in my
virtualmode history. I didn’t have a lot of time to evaluate
locations. There was an arm in me at the time.”

“But the Rime?” Chute turned on him. “They’re
going to know we’re in here and then what?”

“Hey, let me stick my fist through you and
see how clearly you think.”

“You’ve been back here, haven’t you? You’ve
been hacking back into—” Chute ducked just as one of Streeter’s
battle hatchets helicoptered over her head. It buried in the wall.
I stopped her before she staked his head into the floor. She walked
off counting out loud.

“That guy wasn’t planning on protecting the
portal, Socket,” Streeter said. “I don’t care what you say.”

I didn’t know what Broak was doing. He was
the Paladins’ darling, so maybe he had orders to protect it at all
costs. After all, it wasn’t like he was trying to kill us, just our
sims. But Streeter was right, there was something off, no need for
superpowers to see that. The guy was a head case, but he was up to
something. I cradled the portal carefully, holding it up to my ear.
The screeches echoed far away.

“It might take them five minutes or so to
figure out the portal is in the Rime,” Streeter said. “Virtually,
this is a large world and that means it contains a lot of data.
They’ll have to sort through it all to locate the portal,
especially if you hide it somewhere. Find a waterfall—something
with massive dataflow.”

“What’re you going to do?” I asked.

“Stay here, what else? You couldn’t carry me
with a tank.”

“I don’t like leaving you.” Chute was across
the room, arms folded and fingers tapping. Poking him with her
stave was one thing, but leaving him with those things was
another.

“It’s just a sim,” Streeter said. “I’ll build
a new one.”

“Yeah, but you said they might be able to
hurt us.”

He smashed his elbow through the wood floor,
sending splinters up to the ceiling. “I’ll hide under the cabin, if
that makes you feel better.”

I dropped to my working knee, and helped him
pull up the floor. “You sure about this?”

“We don’t have a choice. You got to keep that
portal safe as long as you can. Whatever you do, don’t let Whitey
get it.” Streeter rolled from the floor onto the frozen ground
beneath. “Head west, along the ridge. There’s a network of caves at
the foot of the hills. Don’t ask how I know. Get lost and maybe
they’ll never locate the portal.”

The floorboards rebuilt themselves, dirty and
scuffed, as though they’d been there the whole time. “GO!”
Streeter’s muffled voice shouted through the floor.

* * * * *

Chute watched me limp onto the porch. She
took the portal from me and tucked it into a bag. We stopped at the
edge of the weathered steps and looked up at the gray sky and
blowing snow.
Seems like just yesterday.

“Maybe one of us should get back to the
skin,” I said. “Maybe—”

“Forget it,” Chute said. “I’m not
leaving.”

I clenched my fist, hoping I could timeslice,
but the spark wasn’t bright enough. Face it, I was more like her
than I was a Paladin. She tossed her lookits and they zipped into
the trees. She loped down the hill like a deer, hit the trickling
stream at the bottom and started up the other side, the pregnant
sack bouncing off her leg. I followed, half-stepping with my left
leg, the knee still not working. She slowed down just so I could
catch up.

The trees all looked the same and soon the
path ended. We slowly picked our way through the forest until we
reached the next ridge. We stopped on a stone outcropping that
overlooked ten thousand acres of white treetops. Walnut-sized
snowflakes blotted out the sun.

Streeter was right, the Rime was huge. With
all the dataflow needed to keep it running, we would be like grains
of sand on a long beach. A lookit spy returned from the trees and
warbled in her ear.

“There’s a small cave a quarter-mile down
this side.”

The hill was steep. I couldn’t slow down, not
with the gimpy leg, and ended up rolling half the way. I bounced
off trees and tumbled from rocky ledges. Chute hooked an arm around
my waist, hauling me to level ground. We splashed through a stream.
My leg was hardly working by then.

The water weaved between snow-covered
boulders and fell over a cliff. We stopped at the edge of the
waterfall, the water dropping twenty feet into a pool of rising
steam.

“It’s over there,” she said. The opening to
the cave was partially obscured by heavy spruce branches. “Let’s
follow it into the mountain. Streeter said the more we get lost,
the harder it will be to find us.”

We leaped together, arm-in-arm, torpedoing
down the waterfall to the bottom of the pool. Our battle gear was
too heavy for swimming, so we climbed out. Chute wrung out her
cape, throwing it over her shoulder. We were well protected by
ancient conifers and cliffs. The wind howled high above, but at the
mouth of the cave it was as still as dawn.

“Come on.” Chute moved ahead, dotting the
virgin snow. “Let’s get inside before we freeze solid.”

Ice crystals formed on my nose. My pants
crunched. Chute held the branches out of the way and I hobbled into
the dreary darkness. The portal glowed through Chute’s pouch,
silent ever since we left the cabin.

“Got a light?” I said.

“Hold on.” She felt around. “It’s in here
somewhere.”

Just pull out the portal. Or forget it;
we’ll walk in the dark.
I never said either of those things. A
snaky sensation rolled in my guts and seized my mind. Something was
in there—with us.

“Will this do?” A dim light flickered in
someone’s palm, glowing brighter, illuminating his white face and
body. “Dear Socket?”

We ran from the cave but I fell headfirst
into the snow. Chute stooped to help me to my feet. “Go!” I yanked
away. “Take the portal and go!”

Chute pulled me through the snow. Behind us,
Broak watched with his hands on his hips, both arms intact.
Slit-mouth turned up.

“What’d you want?” she shouted. “You want
this?” She tore away the pouch. “You want to save the world by
yourself, is that what you came for? Well, here, go save the world,
hero!”

“No!” I caught the corner of the pouch and it
landed at my feet. “Don’t give it to him.”

“He’s going to shred our sims, so what?” She
squatted down, put her arms around my chest and sat me up.

“I’m going to be saving the world, indeed,”
he said, “though perhaps not as you envision.”

Broak eased the portal out of the pouch. His
generic face radiated pale blue. He turned it around, admired the
swirling colors. He snapped off a piece of the shell and sank his
fingers into the portal. It jiggled like a gooey mass and jumped
away, at first, then oozed up his wrist. The opaque whiteness of
his skin darkened. Blue flames ignited from inside the portal,
creeping up his arm. Veins pulsed up his shoulder, bulging like
slithering purple snakes. The flames wrapped around his shoulders
then engulfed his entire body, the whiteness giving way to fleshy
color. The details of his skin-body took form and absorbed the
flames and then he was there, the real Broak. Black eyes, black
hair and perfect teeth.

He stretched, admiring his hand, front and
back. Smiled. “Welcome to a new era, dear friends.”

“What just happened?” Chute’s voice
quivered.

The portal was the same colors as the
wormhole Mom drove through. The same as the sacred portal deep
below the Garrison that ripped me from my skin, took me somewhere
through space and time. The portal was a transporter, too;
transporting our awareness from skin to sim. But he was, in a
sense, making direct contact with it. Did it transport
him
?
Was that really Broak? Did he bring his skin into virtualmode?

He twirled around, head back and arms
extended catching snowflakes on his tongue. Snow crunched under his
feet as he giggled. He didn’t want to save the portal, he wanted to
use it. Broak had nothing to do with the Paladins. And if he wasn’t
a Paladin…

“You’re a duplicate.”

He bent down next to me. “That is very
astute, dear Socket, but incorrect. I am not a duplicate, but it is
true I am no longer associated with the Paladin Nation. They will
find my skin in the Garrison connected to a portal, but it is of no
use to me now. That heart need beat no longer.”

“You never had a heart. You’re a
traitor.”

“Of course I had a heart. I am flesh and
blood, but never was my heart with the Paladins. I find them to be
soiled and imperfect.” He tilted his head, looking for the right
word. “Too
human
.”

“They created you. How could you betray
them?”

“They
created
me.” He chuckled. “Do
you hear yourself? They
created
me
. Does that sound
human to you?” His lip quivered. “They
built
me,
manufactured
me, put breath in my lungs and told me what to
do. Does that sound human to you? Mmmm?” He nudged me with his
boot. “Mmmm, tell me, does it?”

Chute slid back, pulled me with her. Broak
planted the tip of his boot into my shattered knee. My leg flopped
like a rag, crackling like a bag of rocks.

“DOES THAT SOUND HUMAN TO YOU?” he
bellowed.

His smooth cheeks flushed with rage, he went
to the cave and stared into the darkness, collecting his thoughts.
He was feeling something, needed to get it under control.

When he turned back to us, his smile was a
perfect mask. “The duplicates showed me the way. If life is good,
why waste it with imperfection? Duplicates make decisions based on
fact, not feelings. You will see, dear Socket. The world will be a
better place when the duplications make decisions. There will be no
more corruption, only perfection.”

“They’re imitations. Not real.”

“Who says they’re not real? They think, they
laugh, they feel. I believe those are the characteristics that
define you and me as human, isn’t that so? Mmmm?”

“Who said we’re supposed to be perfect?”

He tilted his head, looking all too much like
Spindle. “Who says we shouldn’t?”

Screeches called from the portal. Broak held
it to his ear, swayed back and forth. His eyes fluttered and
closed. “Let’s get on with the task at hand, shall we?”

He yanked me toward him with effortless
strength—so quickly that Chute fell over my shoulder. She boxed him
in the middle of the face, pulling me away with her other arm.
Broak grabbed my hand. He casually wiped the blood trickling out
his nose and looked disgusted.

“They wanted to kill you, dear Socket. The
duplicates wanted their crawlers to unlock the virtualmode and kill
you at the same time.” He shook his head, tsking. “Those darn
imitations are so efficient. Always multi-tasking.”

“Why do they want virtualmode?”

“Why, to get back to the source, of course.
They share the same desire as humans, you see. They crave to be
connected with the source of their creation just as humans seek
peace in their so-called soul. They were born of the virtualmode
universe, they cannot survive without it. Paladins sought to cut
them off from their life source, but they did not foresee the size
of the snake they were taunting. The duplicates cannot be stopped.
There are just too many of them. Too bad they didn’t have that
dirty rat Pivot to tell the Paladins this truth.” He leaned in and
whispered, “The world is ours, now.”

I struck with my rigid fingers, aiming to
split his face in half. He caught my wrist and broke it, my fingers
went limp, and then in one smooth motion he plunged my hand into
the portal. Blue flames crept up my arm to my shoulder. My teeth
tingled. I struggled, but Broak held me firm. Chute swatted at the
flames walking around my neck, encircling my chest. Veins swelled
on the back of my hand. White hair fell over my face.

My sim doesn’t have white hair.

The flames stalled and flickered, then rushed
around me and Chute like we were bales of dry straw. My hand
burned. My smashed knee ached.

Cold nipped at my cheeks.

Frozen fabric pressed against my skin.

Chute screamed.

The pain came all at once. Shattered bones
and broken nerves radiated like nails into my knee. Chute squeezed
tighter.