Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (12 page)

They were punishing me, I think. But there
was something else. Something had changed. When I felt angry, I saw
something in their eyes. Something well-disguised, well-hidden, and
controlled, but something nonetheless. They wouldn’t admit to it,
but it was there. I saw it.
Fear
.

I penetrated Spindle’s database and that
shouldn’t have happened. They feared something about me. Maybe it
was my potential. Maybe it was my unpredictability. Was I their
obedient servant? Or a time bomb?

I would get a few hours of sleep and then
they had me up again. I refused to cooperate. If they wanted me to
play their Paladin games, then they needed to meet me half way.
First, bring back Spindle. And he better be unharmed. But every day
there was no Spindle. And every day I told them to get fucked. My
anger sometimes exploded in waves of heat. They could feel that. I
know they could.

Eventually, they turned to their best weapon,
Mom. She sat me down, gave me the cold facts: They’d keep testing
whether I cooperated or not. They’d keep testing and testing. I
wasn’t going anywhere. I would become an old man inside this box
and she wasn’t bullshitting. But, she said, they will consider
releasing Spindle if, and only if, I cooperated.

I held out some more, but in the end they
won. Mom was right. I had no leverage. No matter how powerful I
thought I was, all they needed to do was send in a guy like Pike
and I’d be pissing in my pants again. And I had a feeling they had
a lot of Pikes. That night I answered their questions. I read their
thoughts, sliced time and did whatever they asked, just like a good
boy. Whatever they wanted, I did it for what seemed weeks. I’d been
inside so long I had no idea if it was Christmas or summer
vacation. When I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate.

In between, they tested the shit out of
me.

* * * * *

Spindle woke me one morning. He just walked
into the room and the light came up. “Good morning, Master
Socket!”

I rolled over, squinting.

“It is time to wake. I have wonderful news
for you!”

Spindle opened a drawer embedded on the wall
and brought pants, a shirt, underwear and socks to the bed. Neatly
folded and neatly stacked.

“Spindle?” I said, shaking the sleep out of
my head.

He turned his head, cocked it curiously.
“There were adjustments made to my programming to account for your
extraordinary skills, but I have been cleared to interact with you
again. Is that not wonderful?”

He pulled the sheet off the bed and helped me
up. He brushed lint off my arms and held me by the shoulders. “I
have come to inform you that your test results are complete. The
Commander will meet with you tomorrow.”

You’re mad, Socket Greeny. You think you can
stop time and believe human duplications are taking over the world.
We’ll need to chop your head off.

“According to my records, you have been
sequestered inside the Garrison for twenty-five days. I thought you
should come with me to the Graveyard this morning. It is our
mechanical maintenance and manufacturing center. One of my duties
is quality assurance. I can show you where your father worked. I
think you will find it very interesting.”

I think I sat there with the covers on my lap
trying to decide if this was a dream. But there he was, the
faceless one, all happy and glowing. He seemed more human than most
people I’d met in the real world, but he was just a machine. He
would hold no grudges for what happened. In fact, he was probably
just happy to be back in the game. And I was, too. “I’ll
shower.”

“Great!” He pumped his fist. “I will have
breakfast waiting. Eggs, grits, bacon and poached salmon.”

* * * * *

Spindle handed me a pair of earplugs before
the leaper opened, strongly recommended I “insert them into my ear
canals”. We stepped into the Graveyard and the noise shook me. The
plugs blotted out most of the sound. My hearing would be gone
without the plugs.

Discarded machinery formed precarious walls
on each side, loosely forming corridors. The ceiling was too high
to see. The air was clogged with hovering platforms carrying parts
and tools and equipment. Green servys rode on the platforms,
steering them in every direction, giving the atmosphere the look of
a well-organized hive.

Spindle waved for me to follow.

The corridors went in several directions.
Openings in the spare-part walls revealed rooms without ceilings so
platforms could drop in, deliver a broken something or haul a
refurbished something away.

When we entered a room, the noise from
outside stopped like there was a sound barrier. Each room was
filled with fastidious green servys repairing, building or
delivering. The first room manufactured cell-sized nanomechs,
spewing them like molten clay on conveyor belts. It was packaged in
boxes, barrels and vats and hauled off by an endless string of
hovering platforms. A person supervised the room, standing behind a
network of consoles, monitors and switches. Spindle walked along
the conveyor belt, stopping to assess the products. He touched the
clay. His face turned colors. He seemed satisfied, waved to the
supervisor. The supervisor waved back.

“Did my father work here?” I asked before I
fastened my ear plugs.

“Your father was Director of Operations.”

“He never got his hands dirty?”

“On most days, he did not. However, he
serviced one servy quite frequently.” Spindle stood taller, his
face brighter.

The clay-like nanomech stuff was shipped to
the next room where it was piled onto a shiny platform. Some sort
of current was infused into the blob that made it quake, then
shimmer. It began to shape itself into a round oval, and then long
jointed legs grew from it, four on each side, lifting the body off
the ground like a giant daddy long leg spider with a glowing
eyelight. It was ushered off to the side to make room for another
blob.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That is a crawler. They monitor the Garrison
outside the cliffs and accompany Paladins on certain missions.”

Servys floated around the newborn crawler,
working with the end of its legs. “Spiders are tremendous hunters,”
Spindle said. “They have the ability to move fluidly through any
environment. They are excellent protectors.”

Spindle visited the supervisor situated in
the corner behind a wall of equipment. The supervisor guided us
through the room, pointing out the various functions they tested:
weapons, surveillance and the ability to rip most living things
apart. The supervisor constantly looked at me, then looked away
when I looked back.
Is that the Greeny kid?
I didn’t hear
him think that, it was written on his face.

* * * * *

At some point, we got to the weapons room.
The supervisor sat at an island podium. She couldn’t keep her eyes
off me, and not in a good way. Spindle climbed onto the podium and
I walked to the back of the room. At that point, I’d been looked
over by every single supervisor. It was good to see that Paladins
weren’t immune to gossip. They were still human.

The servys weren’t bothered by me. Most of
the stuff was inner mechanisms and didn’t resemble things too
dangerous. Although, once assembled, they looked plenty lethal. It
was the club-like handles in the back corner that got my attention.
They were like the handle of a samurai sword missing the blade.
They looked familiar, like the evolvers I used in virtualmode
battles.

The servy gripped a white one. The handle
unfolded inside-out, reshaped and fused to its arm. An iridescent
dagger emerged. The servy diced a metal cube. There was no smoke,
just thin slices of metal. The evolver dagger split in two,
reformed into pinchers. The servy picked up a sliver of steel and
squeezed it into a neat metal bowtie.

Evolvers were for real. After everything I’d
seen, I still wouldn’t have guessed that.

A bright light flashed somewhere far across
the Graveyard. The floor shook. The flow of hovering traffic
shifted, turning in the direction of the accident. Even Spindle and
the floor advisor looked.

“There’s been a change of plans, dear
Socket.” Broak was behind me, arms folded behind his back.

The air tightened. Automatically, I was on
the balls of my feet, knees slightly bent. Broak strolled toward
me, dragging his fingers over the bench. The servys backed
away.

“What’re you doing here?” I said.

“Regretfully, I have come to deliver a
message.”

The mental pressure tightened, spilling
warmth into my chest. Broak manipulated my psyche, but he was no
Pike. I tightened my mind, blocked his efforts.

“You see, dear Socket, I haven’t had the
opportunity to educate you. Allow me a moment, will you?”

“What?”

Perfect smile. “The Paladin Nation protects
this world. We are the good guys who fight the bad, but we are more
than that. You see, our aim is not just protecting the human race.
Our primary business is perfecting it.” He stopped, looked up.
“Does this make sense?”

Of course not.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re
better than them, I get it. How about we discuss our global
dominance on the tagghet field?”
Where I’ll never go
.

“I know it is difficult to comprehend, but I
am trying to help you understand the message, dear Socket. We’re
not better than ordinary humans, we’re more evolved. We want the
human race to become advanced, like us. Nature does the same, you
see. Inferior species die off. Stronger, more adapted ones live on
and multiply. We’re helping the human race become stronger and more
adapted for life in the universe.”

“I get it.”

“But every once in a while, even nature takes
a wrong turn. It churns out the retarded and disfigured. And if
their DNA is allowed to remain in the human gene pool, the race
becomes less-equipped to survive. That is logical, wouldn’t you
agree?”

He rolled an evolver back and forth across
the bench. His tone changed, words sharpened.

“The Paladin Nation has to be diligent, dear
Socket. Sometimes we have to come to Nature’s aid, to weed out her
mistakes.”

Most of the hovering traffic moved toward the
thundering flashes that continued to shake the floor. The
timeslicing spark glittered in my gut, moving on its own, trying to
get my attention.

“Great, Broak,” I said. “You’re making total
sense, I’m in total agreement with you, but I’m done with science
class and not interested in taking it again. I’ll catch you
later.”

“Pivot is a mistake,” Broak said. He was a
horrible listener. “But he is useful. You are also a mistake, dear
Socket. We clearly don’t know what you are, but you were not
designed by gene scientists. You were a fluke of your father’s
tinkering. In other words, you are a mutation. There’s a name for
mutated DNA.” He took another step. “It’s called cancer.”

“Step away, Broak.” I clenched my fists.

“You see, you threaten me without
understanding the message. You are unpredictable and unreasonable.”
He turned his head, daringly. “Do you think you can fight me and
win? I was designed to fight. I know fourteen styles of
hand-to-hand combat. I know every weapon in this room, intimately.
It would be foolish to attack me.”

“I can stop time. That’s all I need.”

His jaw muscles tensed and the pressure
intensified, dumping adrenaline into my bloodstream. He could beat
me in a straight-up fight, I’ll give him that, but what good was
that if he couldn’t stop time?

Broak walked down the bench while my emotions
boiled. He was getting inside me. I tried to fight the pressure,
even opened my mind to read his, but it made things worse. I didn’t
know how to close myself from this mental attack. He was
manipulating my emotions. He wants me pissed off.

Spindle was in the tower with the supervisor,
still looking at whatever was flashing and rumbling. The tower
elevated high above to get a better view.

I backed away from the bench, touched my
cheek. “Spindle, come for me.”

But he did not hear me. I took another step,
every instinct telling me to run. I would
walk
away, not
run. It was the smart thing. I turned—

“They murdered him, you realize,” he said.
“Your father.”

My throat tightened.

“His workmanship was ghastly. Mechs leaked
fluid, weapons jammed, cars whined. I’m sorry to report that your
father was quite pathetic. So the Paladin Nation ordered his
death.”

Now I just couldn’t walk away from that. If
he wanted an ass beating, then all right. Let’s talk.

“Murder seems quite drastic, I know,” he
said. “But do you know why they did such a thing?” He faked
concern, drawing his eyebrows up like he cared. “His incompetence
would eventually cost a Paladin his life, dear Socket. It sounds
reprehensible to you, I realize, but if you weigh the balance of
your father’s life with that of a Paladin’s, it was an easy
decision, really. We had to weed out the weak and incompetent. For
the good of the human race.”

I was going to break his perfect freaking
nose. “You’re lying.”

“You may check the records,” he said. “It’s
all there.”

I stopped inches from him. The timeslice
spark crackled. “I don’t know what your game is,
dear
Broak,
but I’ll give you one last chance to end it. Then I’m breaking your
teeth.”

“I told you, I’m simply here to deliver a
message.” He did not flinch. “I just want you to understand.”

“I understand, all right. You don’t have
parents and you got some unconscious ax to grind but you don’t know
who to blame. So you pick me, the one with no dad, and open that
wound to make yourself feel better. You’re coping with subconscious
pain. You’re projecting it onto me. However the therapist wants to
explain it to you, you need help. I suggest you get it before
something goes wrong. Before you get dirty.”