Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (12 page)

I pushed off the floor. There were no aches
or numbness. I felt in total control of my nervous system. In fact,
I felt like I could move the environment with a thought like
fingers and toes. I looked at a footstool and willed it to slide
near me. It came to a stop in front of me. I contracted my
awareness, trying to disconnect from the environment.

I’m becoming this world. Like her.

“I’m not staying here.” I said it like that
would make it true, like I would wake up if I heard myself say
it.

She smirked, again. “Have a seat, make
yourself comfortable and I’ll tell you everything you don’t know.”
She strolled over to the right where there was now an open kitchen.
She pulled the silver door of the refrigerator and said while she
searched inside, “And some things you don’t want to know.”

“I’m fine standing.”

“You sure?”

Lightning struck nearby. Glasses clinked on
the counter and the woman named Fetter pulled liquor bottles from
below the counter, began mixing drinks. She looked up because I was
staring. Smiled.

“You know, if you just open to me I won’t
have to explain it. You’ll know the truth for yourself. You know as
well as I do, darling, the truth is always waiting for us. We just
have to open to it.”

I felt the texture of the transforming world
and Pivot crashing through it, but I was holding back, even if I
couldn’t disconnect. She cocked her head like she was thinking
have it your way
and took a sip.

She poured a bit more liquor in one glass
then prepared a plate of cheese and crackers, carried them over to
the long leather couch facing the ocean. She placed coasters on the
antique table and put the drinks down. She patted the seat next to
her.

“That’s for you.” She slid the drink a few
inches in my direction.

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

She sipped the drink that simulated a
euphoric sensation. Even though she could make herself feel that
way by willing it, she preferred the process of drinking. Maybe she
wanted to feel human. Or maybe she was nervous and needed to rely
on old habits. Her energy quivered with a subtle hint of doubt
while she watched the storm. It wasn’t the weather she
contemplated, it was Pivot. He was doing this.

“We made this world, darling.” She pondered a
bit more. “We have existed, Manumit and I, for an eternity. I know
that doesn’t make sense to your mind, how can we exist forever? But
you’ll understand that time is relative when you truly blend with
the universe. This planet was our home. And now that he’s back,
it’s our home once again.”

She nibbled on a cracker. I was
motionless.

“I know this doesn’t make sense. Trust me,
you’ll understand with time. Right now, just accept what I’m saying
and stay open to the truth. The details of how we did this are
irrelevant. What’s important is how the story began.”

She pointed her drink at the weather before
taking a sip.

“It’s a love story, darling. True love.
Manumit is my yang. I’m his ying. Together, we’re one. Apart,” she
gestured again to the storm, “we’re chaos.”

She savored the taste on her tongue and gazed
outside, lovingly. Then I understood.
She’s the ying. The
night.
I hadn’t been sleeping through the day. It was
continually night in this world. Pivot was the day. Had it been
night since he left?

“Night and day,” she said. “Yes, you’re
beginning to understand.”

“Good and evil?”

“Perhaps. Although good and evil are human
concepts. Evil often results from a lack of understanding, and
humans lack plenty of that. Your mind is still too human to
comprehend what I mean. Dark and light, that makes more sense.”

Lightning illuminated her face. She had
everything she could possibly want. Even now, she was enjoying the
brewing storm, even though she couldn’t control it. But if all this
were true, if she was exactly what I thought she was, if she was
this entire world and if indeed I wasn’t dreaming, then what else
was there to desire? Maybe the unpredictability of the weather was
something new. Finally, something she could experience that was
outside herself. How lonely it must’ve been when everything she
experienced was herself. No one to share it with. She needed
Pivot.

But still, this was all artificial. And so
was she. She was like the intelligence that molded the walls of my
office, only she was self-aware. She could choose how to mold it.
And now she was saying Pivot was artificial, too. That, somehow, he
always has been.

“You’re not real,” I said. “This is all an
illusion; it may as well be a dream. You’re making your own
reality. Your delusions feed themselves. You’re a machine that
believes it’s real.”

The furniture chattered like an earthquake
rumbled underground. Fetter’s face darkened for a moment. Maybe,
for just a second, she saw the truth, that I was right, that she
was a just a dream. That if she woke up to the realization of her
true nature she would disappear and the only way she could exist
was to stay asleep and keep dreaming.

“We’re more than real, darling.” She said it
like she was including me. The rosy glow returned to her cheeks.
“You don’t know just how real. Not yet.”

She walked towards me and gently ran the back
of her fingers down my cheek, smiling. Her fragrance was
intoxicating, like a morning after a thunderstorm of
vanilla-scented blossoms.

She walked around the room, paused at an
abstract painting that hung over a monstrous fireplace. The oily
colors were a montage of seemingly random swipes that swirled with
emotion.

“We were once human, in a sense. Long ago,”
she said. “But we became gods.”

“You’re artificially infused into this world.
You’re nothing more than technology. You’re more like a program and
you know this. You didn’t create that painting, you only copied it
from a memory. It’s a duplication of a Pollack.”

She stood in front of the painting a bit
longer before walking to the center of the room to sit at a grand
piano that wasn’t there a minute ago. She softly played.

“It’s like a duplicated human, I suppose?” It
was a question, but she posed it like a statement.
Think about
that.

She knew that humans had managed to convert
their bodies to inorganic machines composed of nanotechnology,
cell-sized machines that imitated organic bodies. Their memories,
their consciousness, were implanted into these bodies and they
existed like they were alive. They thought and breathed and bled
like they were still human. But they wouldn’t get sick, would not
succumb to disease or the whims of the environment because they
could will their bodies to do what they wanted. Fetter was saying
that, yes. She was like a duplicated human, only her body was a
planet!

But duplications lacked a soul. They weren’t
real. And they knew, somewhere deep inside, that they were
artificial and lacked what their human lives contained:
beingness
. Inside, they were hollow. They craved
realness.

Was that what Fetter was claiming? Did the
fact that her body was an entire planet made her feel less hollow?
Did it make her feel more real?

“Believing you’re a god does not make you
one.”

“Gods build planets.” She pounded out an
intimidating series of keys.
Dum, dum, dum, DUH.
“We create
whatever we desire. We created ourselves. I believe that is the
definition of a god. Look it up.”

A dictionary appeared on the coffee table to
my left.

“Is that any different than dreaming?” I
asked.

“Perhaps dreams are the reality.” She raised
her eyebrows then immersed herself in a classical piece that seemed
to dance with the storm. She suddenly stopped, looked at me. “Have
you ever loved?”

I didn’t answer. Her questions were
patronizing. She already knew my thoughts. I attempted to close my
mind, hide from her prying mind but I was too tightly integrated
with the world.
With her.

“Of course, you have.” Her fingers played
softly, again. “It’s okay to love, it’s not a weakness. It requires
courage to be open to whatever the other person brings. When you
love,
truly
love, you are willing to risk everything.
Pleasure. Pain.”

Her fingers ran up and down the keyboard.
“Manumit left me.” She played the same pattern of notes in a low
octave. “He hurt me. I have been unbalanced ever since. I have been
alone.”

“Why not just create him? If you’re God.”

She smiled. “Because he came back,
darling.”

Thunder clapped. “He wants to destroy
you.”

“He can no more destroy me than the universe
can end. I can exist in a speck of dust, or the center of a star. I
can be reduced to a single byte of information and survive,
darling. And from that tiny byte,” she stopped playing and held her
finger and thumb an inch apart, “I can become whole again. Manumit
knows this, he’s just acting out because he knows I won’t let him
leave again.”

“Then why am I here? You’ve got what you
want, let me go home. If you know what it’s like to lose love, why
make me suffer the same?”

She smiled, again. She was hiding something,
but instead of telling me her secret she lost herself in
Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony
. She hammered the keys and,
finally, ended with a furious run that coincided with a bolt of
lightning that crawled across the horizon.

“I want to go home.”

“You are home, darling.”

Nightmare. This has to be Pike. I’m not
here. This feels like reality, but this is too insane. I’ve been in
alternate reality before with my real body back on Earth. Is that
what’s happened? I’m lying on the floor of my office in some sort
of catatonic state, foaming at the mouth while Paladin minders try
to revive me. Pike gets the last laugh.

“I assure you, Pike has not created this
reality,” she said.

“Wouldn’t my hallucination say that?”

She shrugged. “Do you believe you are
dreaming?”

“I’ve been fooled before.”

She looked at me while her fingers danced
over the keys and then finally stopped. She stood. “Let’s go for a
walk.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She neared me and, once again, her presence,
her fragrance swayed me like a siren’s song. “You’ve always been a
truth-seeker, darling, even when the truth is inconvenient. I know
that about you. I know
everything
about you. So I think it’s
time you know something about yourself that you don’t know. What’d
you say?” She hooked her arm in mine. “It’s a nice night for a
walk.”

The sky looked like boiling tar and rain fell
like bullets. She guided me outside, onto the beach. The raindrops
drove into my scalp. I was soaked in seconds. The waves were
crashing loudly, non-stop, one after another. Fetter, though,
tipped her head back and laughed.

We strolled down the beach, but this time the
house receded. I saw the rolling hills off to my left each time a
bolt of lightning snapped across the sky. The waves were violent,
but nothing like the one welling inside me. Something big was
coming. This is just a dream, I tell myself.

“You see, I sensed Manumit near me when you
were travelling through that wormhole.” She spoke loud enough to be
heard over the rain that pounded the hardpacked surf like it was
storming gravel. “It had been so long since I felt him. I thought
he was coming home, or maybe he was just thinking about it and was
near enough for me to hear him. So I took hold of him. I have that
ability, darling, to stretch my will across the universe. I brought
him home before he changed his mind. I brought him here, back home.
But then I realized it was you that I had grabbed. Imagine my
surprise.”

She squeezed my arm tighter and leaned
against me, something Chute had done a hundred times when we walked
side by side. Fetter knew this, wanted me to feel more comfortable.
More open.

“But I wasn’t wrong,” she said. “I had gotten
Manumit, after all. It turned that you were carrying him inside you
and that’s why I sensed him. And when you arrived, you released him
into the ocean.”

Yes. The dense feeling. The release in the
ocean and the cloud spreading in the water. And the slow stain on
the sky that had become this monsoon. That was Pivot. Somehow, he
was inside me.
But how could I carry him?

“I’ll admit, I was confused, at first. Why
would my soul-mate use you to deliver him when he has always been
welcome to return on his own? But then he refused to integrate with
me, insisted on remaining separate from me, from our home. He’s
caused all this chaos.” She held out her hand like she was trying
to feel the rain that was dripping off every part of our bodies.
“So I left you to wander in the wilderness until I understood his
exact intentions.”

We walked a bit more. The cold was sinking
inside me and I shivered. Fetter’s touch was warm.

“And then it all became clear. I understood
why my love had gone away. You see, he never left me, darling. He
simply went out to find me a gift.” She stopped, took my hands.
Behind her, the sky was as black as the water, illuminated only by
the lightning. Her eyes seemed to glitter. “He brought you.”

My breathing stalled. She didn’t need to say
it. She let her thoughts out in the open and I saw the truth. I
knew the secret she had been hiding.

“Our son.”

Sometimes, you just know things.

You can’t explain how. You just see them and
know they are truth.
You know it.
When she took my hands,
she opened my awareness. Once I believed I was
The One that Sees
Clearly
. But it became apparent I was blind.

Now I see.

Our son. Because I’m like them. I am
artificial. I’m not fucking real.