Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (71 page)

I needed to find Pike.

My physical expansion spread out over the
Lowcountry of South Carolina, reaching into the outer limits of
Charleston, merging with the wetlands and egrets and brackish
water. I focused, feeling everything in existence between my body
and my destination and, with a thought, relaxed into the ether and
felt my body dissolve one more time.

I came together in front of the high school.
The front doors were open, students were frozen in mid-stride.
School was out.

I solidified inside the grassy circle of the
turnabout where buses were lined up. Three flagpoles were behind
me. The flags were swept in a non-existent breeze, as if molded
from bronze.

The sun was partially obscured by broken
clouds. There was no way to measure the amount of time I spent in
the timeslice, but I had grown accustomed to the sound of my breath
and footsteps, absent was the sounds of daily living.
Did I even
need to breathe?

Slowly, the fragrance of grass and the
sounds of people intensified as I returned to normal time and
molecules began to drift. The flags snapped overhead and the first
bus in line began to creep ahead. Shouts and playful screaming
started slow and came to full speed as my body synchronized with
Earth’s regular time and those that lived in it.

Hundreds of students fled for freedom,
racing into the parking lots, their thoughts a random collage of
desires and fears, locked into their identities of geeks or jocks
or queens or studs, gearheads, burners, gamers or flamers. I felt
their lungs expand and vocal chords vibrate. I absorbed their
concerns about parties and clubs, who was doing what and who was
dating who. I was a distant shadow that tasted their experiences
and absorbed the essence that was their life.

The natural tendency to steal their essence
was suddenly repulsive. I may not be human, but I wouldn’t become
Fetter. I had to stop.

In the mix of it all, a pair of girls came
out to the flagpoles and began winding down the flags. Shannon
Quigley and Stacy Parker, they’d been best friends since second
grade, spending the night with each other almost every weekend.
Right now, Stacy wanted Charlie Nelson to ask her to prom and
Shannon was secretly jealous, hoping he wouldn’t but telling Stacy
something supportive because that’s what best friends do. But if
she got a date—

I snapped back. I was already siphoning
their essence again, along with their thoughts and memories.

They lowered the flags, not a foot away from
me. They didn’t notice me or my shadow next to theirs. They were
folding the flags and on the topic of homework when I felt Chute.
She was on the second floor, coming down the steps with two
friends, holding her books to her chest. She slowed down as she
approached the bottleneck at the front doors, past the security
guards.

There she is.

She lit up the yard like another sun, her
essence beaming brightly, sinking warmly into my chest. My fading
heartbeat quickened, as if remembering what it once was.

She laughed at something Suzy Keller on her
left said, then looked at Jonie White on her right. Chute’s
ponytail whipped from one shoulder to the next. They stopped at the
curb and looked both directions. The buses were loaded and gone.
Cars honked and Denny Stillbee hung out the window of his car.
Chute and the girls laughed. I felt her joy inside me. And as the
yard cleared, I watched her walk with her friends to the parking
lot. Suzy was going to take her home. Cars passed between us. She
was almost out of sight. I was going to let her go. But then she
stopped.

My chest thumped.

She tipped her head, unsure of what she saw.
It was what she felt that made her turn around and look. She shaded
her eyes, searching. I don’t remember becoming visible, but somehow
she saw me. She called over her shoulder to Suzy to hang on a
second, she’d be right back. When she crossed the roundabout road,
she ran.

She jumped into my arms. I tightened, afraid
she would see me for what I was. But her essence was so
intoxicating; I forgot for an instant that my world had
imploded.

“Are you picking me up?” she asked.

I put her down and she grabbed my hand. I
backed up but she pulled my hand to her. It must’ve been the look
on my face that changed the energetic colors around her. Her
essence suddenly contracted and soured.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

I lightly jerked my hand from her grip,
hiding the new fingers behind my back like it was all the evidence
she needed. The slashing weapon. Fingers falling.

LIAR.

I backed up a step.

“Why are you acting so weird?” she asked.
“Did I do something?”

“No.” I took her with my other hand. “You
didn’t do… everything’s all right. I’m just a little tired, that’s
all.”

“Well, what’re you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see you. And talk to
Streeter.”

“He’s in the virtualmode lab, as usual.” She
pointed at the front doors. “You’ll have to call him, security
won’t let you back in the school.”

Amanda Flenner shouted at Chute, said
something about leading the student cabinet meeting next week.
Chute hollered back. Her complexion was so fair, the freckles
highlighted on her smooth cheeks. The skin crinkled between her
eyes when she laughed.

She reached out without turning while
talking to Amanda and hooked her finger with mine. I stared at our
hands, recalling the vision of when we were older.
Not all
visions come true.

“So, are you taking me to the Garrison?” she
said, swinging our hands back and forth.

“What?”

“I’m going to play tagghet with the kids
today, remember? Spindle was going to pick me up at my house, he
didn’t think you’d be back yet.” She shrugged, girlishly. “I’m so
happy you’re back.”

“I, uh, no I forgot. I’m sorry, I just went
through a lot today, there’s a lot on my mind.”

“Did your meeting go bad?”

“It wasn’t good.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe we can go out and cheer
you up. I was talking to Janette and she wants the four of us to go
out. We could do it tomorrow!”

Suzy pulled through the roundabout and
honked, looked at Chute strangely and said, “What’re you doing,
talking to flagpoles?”

“Oh, that’s not nice,” Chute said, not
getting it.

“I got to go, I don’t want to be late,” she
said. “Will you be at the Garrison later? I want to play with the
grimmets and they’re always more fun when you’re around.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She kissed me on the corner of my mouth and
frowned. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re so cold.”

I nodded and kissed her back.

Then watched her go.

It hurt when she left. The beating faded in
my chest. The hum grew louder.

L E G E N D

No Mask

“I just need to go to the office, man.” It
was Jake Studard, starting left tackle for the football team. He
was trying to shoulder his way past the security guard. “Just call
the coach, he’ll explain.”

“You call the coach.” The security guard
played the same position ten years earlier, now he had three kids
and a wife and a bit of a drinking problem. He wasn’t budging. “It
ain’t my problem. Once you’re out of the building, you stay
out.”

The security guard hooked his thumb in his
belt. I slipped past him just as he stopped Meg Chansey with the
crazy idea she could get back inside because she was class
president.

The hallways were mostly empty. A few
students hanging out at their lockers and a small group of teachers
were outside the office. The essence of their experiences drifted
into me, charging the hum in my chest. The three of them looked
around like a ghost just passed.

I turned the corner and tread up the wide
steps to the second floor. No one was within a hundred feet, except
at the end of the hall, behind the vault door of the virtualmode
lab. Four people were in there. My insatiable essence-hunger fled
into the walls and lockers and classrooms, feeding on the memories
of past students, their fears and apprehension, the joy of being
asked to homecoming by the right guy or the panic of getting one’s
ass kicked after school. They saturated the wood like blood; buzzed
inside me.

The door slid open and Mr. Buxbee walked
into the hall, looking over his big round belly at the shiny floor
as he semi-waddled toward me. His lower lip plumped out and he
hummed a quiet tune, something he always did when few people were
around. My favorite virtualmode instructor passed me without
looking.

I stopped outside the door and stared at the
scanlock where a key could be waved. Not many keys were given out
to that room. The gear inside was worth more than the entire
school. I could feel the circuits inside the lock and followed them
with my mind. I didn’t need a key. I simply asked the door to open.
And it did.

The room was half the size of a regular
classroom and twice as cold to keep the gear from overheating.
Workbenches lined the walls. A large silver table was centered in
the middle. Streeter and Janette stood on each side of it, staring
at the half-spherical black object, their hands pressed flat on the
table, mumbling to each other a checklist before they tested the
locator again. They didn’t look up, consumed with the project at
hand, assuming I was Buxbee returning for something he forgot.

Slowly, I allowed them to see me.

“Holy shit!” Streeter stepped back. “How’d
you… when did you get here?”

“My meeting ended.” My voice was eerily
quiet.

He came over, hand out, and slapped it into
mine, clasping his other hand over it and shaking. I automatically
felt a connection with him. He felt a tug in his belly. I let go of
him before I started sipping on his essence, but not before he
shook his head, a little dizzy, not sure what just happened.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“All you got to do is ask.” He stepped back,
rubbing his stomach. “Give me a second, I’ll get the technician
started on a setup.”

Buxbee’s assistant, Peter Hammel, had a
college degree in networking and virtualmode world building. And
Streeter was telling him what to do. Peter didn’t seem to mind.
Janette was listening, making sure she understood what they were
doing.

I wandered to the wall where a shelf
displayed several awards. Five of them recognized the school’s
exceptional development of virtualmode training and execution,
which was primarily because of Buxbee, but two had Streeter’s name.
The larger of the two awards was a three-dimensional prism. I took
it down, the colors switching through the transparent surface.
State Champion Codebreaker.
Best high school codebreaker in
South Carolina. Did he know his endless potential?

“He talks about you all the time.” Janette
stared at the glittering trophy. “Socket this, Socket that. I wish
he would talk about me the way he talks about you.”

I looked into the award like it contained
the lifetime of memories with Streeter, each one more entertaining
then the next. I wish I could put those memories inside her so that
she could feel the same joy.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

I didn’t realize I was grinning, so I shared
a memory with her. I told her when we were in kindergarten, we
stayed the night at each other’s house so much that we each had our
favorite cereal at each house. We’d be buried behind our box on
each side of the table, slurping milk and reading the back of the
box for the hundredth time. I was a Corn Pops kid. He was Fruity
Pebbles.

“I’m glad you’re around to keep an eye on
him,” I said.

“Why? Where are you going?”

I took a long breath. “I’m not sure.”

We stared at the awards for a while longer,
then she tugged me away to the table and told me about their
progress with the locator. It was on a little stand. Their
appointment with NASA was only a week away and, aside from when it
screwed up with me, it had been operating flawlessly. It could also
mean a lot of money. She opened a holographic circuitry layout that
stretched over the table.

“What’s up?” Streeter walked up.

“Just showing Socket the locator plans.”

“Socket could figure this stuff out in his
head,” Streeter said. “You wouldn’t believe what he can do.”

Neither would you.

“So what’s the favor?” Streeter asked.

“I’m sorry, Janette, but can I speak to
Streeter alone?”

“Yeah, oh, sure… I can, I’ll just be… I’ll
go—”

“If you want to help Peter, I’m not sure he
fully understands what I need him to do,” Streeter said. “We
probably won’t be long.”

She said goodbye, grabbed her things and
left. I paced around the table, thinking where to start. How to
start.

“You all right?” Streeter asked.

“I would never ask you for this if it wasn’t
important.”

“Well, what is it? You need money? Help
codebreaking?”

“I just need to use the school’s virtualmode
portal.”

“That’s it? That’s not a big favor.”

“I might snap some alarms.”

He cocked his head. “What kind of
alarms?”

“I’m not sure, but it might get you in
trouble.”

“I’m always up for trouble.” But he drummed
his fingers on the table. “Is it that important?”

“I wouldn’t ask.”

He nodded. And drummed. Then pointed at one
of the oversized chairs against the wall. “You can’t do anything I
can’t handle. Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

“All right.” He laughed, nervously, then
said with a squeaky tone, “Should I be freaking out about now?”

Yes.
“I’ll explain in a minute.”

“That’s not helping.”

“Sorry.”