Socket 2 - The Training of Socket Greeny (9 page)

“Locate Streeter,” I said, touching my cheek.
My nojakk linked up with Streeter’s and calculated his
location.

“
Streeter is currently at 724 West Market,
Charleston, South Carolina
.
”

A house call was in order.

The white house was thirty feet from the
road. The shades were drawn. The driveway was empty. Streeter’s
grandparents never parked in the garage because there wasn’t room.
It was strictly storage. They never threw anything away and I’d dug
through that mess with Streeter a thousand times looking for a
plate or lamp his grandmother just knew she’d put in there.

I stepped onto the front porch, past the
wicker chairs and potted ficus trees, stopped at the door and
listened. Nothing stirred inside. Maybe my nojakk was wrong and he
wasn’t there, or maybe he was just late for school and missed the
bus. Maybe his grandparents took him.
So why am I
tip-toeing?
Because the energy around the house was foreboding,
like a ghost was in the attic.

I knocked. It echoed inside. Knocked,
again.

There was a key under the ficus. It had been
there since I was five. I could use it, but it would be hard to
explain if his grandma came home and, on the chance Streeter wasn’t
home, I’d be wandering around inside.

The small surveillance eye, about the size of
a marble, was still above the door. The surface swirled. It was
still working. Something wasn’t right. The house just felt…
dark.

I hopped the privacy fence and crept up to
the first window. The shade was drawn on Streeter’s room. I cupped
my hands against the window and peered through a gap below the
shade. The desk and dresser were covered with clothes and the floor
wasn’t visible under books, papers and Internet gear. Nothing had
changed.

The bed was in the corner with a mess of
covers. I thought about going around back and looking through the
kitchen window when the bed twitched. A hand was sticking out,
fingers twiddling on the mattress. A cable stuck out from under the
pillow.

Virtualmoding.

He was on the Internet, virtualmoding in his
giant sim. He knew I was at the front door, that surveillance eye
would’ve reported the view to him. In fact, there was another eye
somewhere outside his window, watching me watching him.

“Streeter!” I tapped the window. “I need to
talk to you, get up!”

His fingers stopped twitching.

“I see you, I know you’re in there.”

It wasn’t enough.

“I’ll get the key,” I said. “I’ll let myself
in and drag your ass out of bed.”

He still wasn’t moving. Maybe the key wasn’t
there anymore. Slowly, the mound came to life. Streeter sat up.

No way.

He was still short but thirty pounds lighter.
His face was dark. He rubbed his eyes and stretched, pulled the
over-sized transporters from behind his ears. He sat on the bed,
slumped over. Thinking. Maybe I was going to have to get the key
after all. But then he stood. He used to be built like a hot air
balloon. He sprung a leak.

The door was open when I got to the front
porch. Streeter was walking away.

“You all right?” I followed him to his
bedroom.

“I’m not feeling well.”

I touched the lamp on his desk, lighting his
room. Dark energy pulsed around him. His breath was shallow, as if
it didn’t matter whether he stopped breathing all together.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I got the flu or something?”

“Flu? Dude, you’re half gone!”

“Yeah,” was all he said. He wouldn’t look at
me. “I’ve been puking a lot.”

“Have you been to the doctor?”

“It’ll pass.”

“But you’ve lost all that weight. Something’s
not right, you got to get it checked out.”

“Maybe I’m on a diet.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” I
said. “I haven’t seen you in three months—”

“Look, I’m sick!” He bristled with hot energy
now. “What’d you want me to say?”

I pulled the shade and flooded the room with
light. His color was all wrong. He blinked at the bright light, sat
back down on the bed. I grabbed his face with both hands, forced
him to look directly at me. His pupils were dilated; the rims of
the irises were blurry.

“How long have you been virtualmoding?”

“I’m not gear-addicted.” He knocked my hands
away.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I know what I look like, I’m not
addicted!”

“Look at the signs, man! Your eyes are the
first to go! You look like a freaking withered up gearhead.”

“Yeah, and what do you know?”

“Face facts! Do you want to feel better or
what?”

“Don’t pull that Paladin shit on me! I know
more about virtualmoding than you’ll ever know!”

“What?”

He struggled to stay still. He pulled the
shade down, sat at his desk shaking his leg. He wanted me out of
there in the worst way, but knew asking wasn’t going to do it. It
wouldn’t be hard to pick a few thoughts from his mind, they were
scattered like fallen leaves. It would be as easy as dragging a net
through a school of minnows. My mind reached around him, gently
applying pressure. I didn’t want to get inside him, just see a
loose thought or two.

“Don’t pull that bullshit on me!” he
said.

“What’re you hiding?”

“I got a life so just stay out! You wouldn’t
know about it. You and Chute.”

“What’re you talking about?”

He sat there drumming his fingers on the
desk, grinding his teeth, finally said, “You’re not around, Socket,
so it doesn’t matter. Neither is Chute. It’s just me. Just me, bro.
So why don’t you leave me the fuck alone.”

“I’m here to see you, not somewhere halfway
around the world, you nut.”

“Where you going to be next week?”

His eyes were larger than ever. He was
sensitive to thoughts, even though he couldn’t control them. That’s
how he felt me looking inside him. And that’s another sign of gear
addiction. He needed help.

“You got to stay off virtualmode, man,” I
said. “It’s killing you.”

“I’ll do what I got to do.”

I looked at the box on his dresser. “I’ll
take your transporters.”

“You don’t think I have backups?”

“Streeter, this isn’t right. I’ll bring Chute
here, if that’s what it takes. She’ll make you do it.”

“Give me a break, she doesn’t have time.” He
held his belly and burped. “I got to puke now. You know the way
out.”

He crossed the hall and slammed the door on
the bathroom.

He was always vigilant about gear addiction.
In fact, he always made sure Chute and I had safeguards on all our
gear before we went virtualmode. He checked records to maintain
proper hours. In fact, the only way to abuse virtualmode was to
disable the safeguards. Virtualmode would shut down if it sensed
addictive symptoms. What was he doing? Better yet,
where
was
he doing it?

It sounded like a dry heave in the bathroom.
How long would he fake that until he thought I was gone? I grabbed
the disc-shaped transporters off his dresser wired to the black
box. It was cheap ass gear. Nothing was wired these days, but
Streeter could make anything work. This was crap he got down at a
gear swap for next to nothing. It was probably easier to disable
safeguards so he could virtualmode endlessly.

I slid the transporters behind my ears, felt
them suck against the skin and search for my nervous system. My
awareness left my skin sitting on the bed, floating through the
bodiless in-between until I landed in a giant sim.

I was ten feet tall in a small white room
with no furniture or monitors. Streeter’s gear didn’t even
recognize I wasn’t him. The enormous body felt sluggish and
powerful. The environment was cartoonish and senseless: no feeling,
no smell.

“Take me to the last destination,” I called
in a deep, gravelly voice.

The walls jiggled, searching the coordinates
for the last place Streeter was at. The walls weakened, then
crumbled. An imposing metal gate appeared before me. It was thirty
feet high with sharp staves on top of the bars, hinged to
ivy-covered brick columns. Beyond was solid darkness. The night sky
was covered with clouds, but a full moon peaked through an opening,
illuminating the weedy path in front of me.

“State your target,” a creepy voice spoke
from the other side.

“Where am I?”

“The Gates of Death.”

“What’s that?”

Pause. “If you need orientation to navigate
this world, please enter the room on the right.” There was a
mausoleum buried in overgrown vines. “Otherwise, state your
target.”

“Just tell me what this place does.”

Another long pause. “Gates of Death is a
database of all those deceased. You may visit celebrities,
historical figures, family or friends.”

Family.
“As long as they’re dead?”

“State your target.”

This wasn’t Streeter’s style. He was a smash
and bash guy. He went to battleworlds, not historical. He didn’t
look back, he looked forward.

“Take me to my last target.”

The gates opened slowly. The dark beyond took
form. Colors and shapes emerged from the darkness. Water sloshed in
an ocean. Trees sprouted—

click.

The world disappeared.

I was yanked through the in-between like a
fish snagged on a hook and slammed back into my skin. I tumbled off
Streeter’s bed. My stomach churned. Streeter’s dirty socks hung off
the ends of his feet near my face. He held the transporters in his
hand.

“What were you doing?” he said.

“You can’t rip those off like that. My
nervous system—”

“
What were you doing?”

I leaned against his bed, took a moment to
catch my breath. “I saw the gates. Is that what this is all
about?”

“You have no right—”

“I’m your friend, Streeter. I’m not trying to
take anything from you or… or… listen, you’re a goddamn mess, man!
You can’t keep doing this.”

He turned his back on me, faced the corner
like he was in timeout.

And then I knew.

“You’re looking for your parents.”

He twiddled the transporters in his fingers.
“This is none of your business.”

I didn’t budge. Instead, I emitted a soothing
energy, filling the room with a calming, loving, embracing essence
that permeated his radical aura. The energy settled around him. He
started to say something, but the sweetness of the essence felt too
good, penetrating his jagged mind. Calming it. Relaxing.
Opening.

When his posture released the tension, his
shoulders dropped and his fists opened. He fell into the chair at
his desk and slumped over, dropping his face in his hands, rubbing
his tired eyes.

“I was doing research for history class and
stumbled onto the gates,” he said. “I talked to Einstein about the
atomic bomb and his theory of relativity, pretty standard shit. He
didn’t tell me anything new, really, but the details were good. I
was about to leave and just had a thought. I didn’t really think
they’d be there…”

He didn’t finish. Streeter never talked about
his parents, even when we were little. They died when he was five,
about the time my dad died, but he said he didn’t remember much.
Always figured he felt the same way I did about my father, really.
It happened a long time ago, so what’s the point of bringing up
memories? That was then. Now is now.

“That’s all?” I said.

Energy spiked off him. “THAT’S
ALL
?
”

“No, I just mean—”

“Imagine your dead fucking dad walking into
the room, right now. You think you’d be a little freaked out? You
think you’d be like, oh, hey pop, how’s it hanging? YOU THINK
THAT’S HOW IT’D GO?”

“What I mean is the gates is just a game
world, it’s not real. Those weren’t your parents, it was just an
image. You’re talking to data.”

He twisted in the chair and stared a long
time. “You think you’re better than me, is that it? Or do you just
not have feelings anymore? Which is it, Socket? Huh? Are you just a
robot programmed to save the world now, is that it?”

He shoved me against the bed.

“I’m no superhero, Socket, I can’t control my
thoughts and feelings or, or… stop time or any of that horseshit.
I’m like everyone else, just trying to get by. So, yeah, it’s just
game, I’m sorry. I can’t handle my feelings, boo hoo. But I didn’t
ask you to come in here. I didn’t ask you to give a fuck. I GET
IT!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I just thought…”

“You thought it shouldn’t matter, seeing my
parents? You don’t understand, that virtualmode world is as close
to being real as this right here.” He thumped his chest. “I thought
you might get it, but clearly you’re not human anymore. It matters
to me, superboy. It matters to me.”

The front door opened. Bags rattled somewhere
in the house.

“You need to leave,” Streeter said.

“Hang on a second—”

“Granny?” Streeter called.

His grandma looked into the room. “Are you
feeling all right, darling— oh, you have a friend. Good.”

“He was just leaving.”

“Hi, Granny,” I said.

“Hello, darling.” She looked confused, held
out her frail hand. “What’s your name?”

I’d been coming over to the house all my life
and she’d forgotten me after a year with the Paladins. I shook her
hand gently.

“I’m not feeling good,” Streeter said. “Could
you take him to the door?”

“Certainly, sweetheart.”

He stood in the corner and watched me leave.
His grandpa was in the kitchen putting away the groceries. He waved
as I passed. What else do you do to a stranger but wave?

Granny stopped on the porch. “Please come
back,” she said. “He needs company.”

I should’ve told her to unplug the
transporters, but Streeter would find a way to fire them back up.
We spent many nights in virtualmode without them knowing. And what
was I going to tell her? Your grandson is visiting your dead
daughter? Oh, and I think he’s gear addicted.