Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (75 page)

His life was not much different than mine,
the struggles were similar, the details different. He was
introverted and righteous, carried a deep yearning to know the
meaning of his life, always sensing something greater was out
there, but found himself stuck in life’s mundane moments.

He got very ill during a swine flu
epidemic.

Fell out of a tree and broke his arm when he
was ten.

Caught a twelve pound bass in Tannerville
Lake.

Hiked Pike’s Peak in Colorado on a family
vacation, had his own dirt bike, carried his sister home when she
was hit with a rock, one he threw, her face covered with blood, the
scar still above her left eye, won an art contest in third grade,
stole a book from school, changed his grades, kissed a girl behind
the garage…

His life settled in my awareness like a new
body of water. Deep and clear. Still.

The darkness was calm.

And I remained. I was still there. I was
still me, still intact.

Complete.

And my consciousness gathered back in
Scott’s room. Perhaps I disappeared during the experience. Or maybe
I was there the entire time, experiencing it on another level. But
when I returned, my feet were on the carpet and my hands at my
side. Scott was on the floor. His eyes rolled back and
twitching.

I picked him up, lay him on his bed. Even in
the solitude of unconsciousness, his mind was coping with the
reality of his new memories, the awareness of his true birthright.
He was only human.

You are more than human,
Pivot told
me.
No human could do what you have done, and yet I needed a
human to do it.

I sat next to Scott. He was no longer a
mystery, his mind completely available to me, for he was no longer
separate. I moved my awareness inside his mind and soothed the
conflict rumbling through his being, sorting through the new
memories trying to find a place to be accepted. I gathered all
those memories that he received from me and hid them in the
darkness of his subconscious. One day, he would know them, when he
was ready to see the truth, they would emerge, slowly. One at a
time. But for now, he needed to just be Scott.

Thank you,
I said to him. To me.
Sleeping peacefully in his bed.

I peeked into Maddi’s room where she was
sound asleep, squeezing a doll against her cheek with her thumb in
her mouth, her tongue clicking.

I snuck downstairs where their father was
watching Sportscenter and mother was reading a magazine. They
didn’t hear the floorboards creaking as I stood unnoticed in the
doorway, taking one last moment to experience the family essence
centered in the room. I slipped outside, still unnoticed.

In the middle of the brick street, under the
buzzing street light, I stood on a manhole cover. The stars filled
the sky and night fell quietly on the small town of Tannerville. I
took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the breath of the entire
world, feeling its struggles, its pain and happiness, loss and
gain, birth and death. The human essence contained the beauty of
life, the essence of which contained darkness and light, the pure
joy of life, hidden only by a lack of understanding. But it was
there, not to be gotten, not something that was missing. Only
something that needed to be seen.

And somewhere in the world, I felt every
consciousness struggle with its own existence, each soul rightfully
searching for itself. And among them, I sensed the awareness of
Pivot, like he was everywhere, as if he had yet to gather his body
in a particular place in space and time.

There was another presence out there. This
being was intimately familiar, shining like a beacon, calling me to
join him. He was in Charleston. And he was waiting for me to
arrive. It was a bald man that walked freely down a sidewalk.

L E G E N D

Game changer

Downtown Charleston.

Tourists crowded the sidewalk, holding hands
and walking casually past art studios, pausing in front of picture
windows. They lined up outside Hymen’s Seafood for a late bite or
crowded at Comiskey’s for desert. Just another night.

I was in front of the long market, the
building painted mustard yellow and Charleston green. Pike was
somewhere in the crowd, his presence scattered like a game of
Hide-and-Seek.

A street vendor sawed away on a beat up
fiddle, curled up against the wall with a box of coins in front of
him. Tourists occasionally stopped to toss in a bill, and the guy
nodded curtly. I walked past him, looked down the street left of
the market, recalled the vision of when Pike walked free, trying to
remember what side of the market he was on. But there were no
details in the vision. Just the street. And the girl.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the
building. He has been here already, I could feel him, but what was
he waiting for? In the vision, it was dark and the streets were
crowded with slow moving traffic. A rickshaw bicycle rang a bell.
And there was no fiddle playing, either.

“You want a rose?” A kid held out a palm
leaf torn and folded to look like a beige rose. “Ten dollars for
one, twenty for two.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“All right, how about five dollars for
one?”

The music had stopped. The musician’s box
was still on the sidewalk, filled with coins and his violin. A note
was tucked between the strings.
Looking for me?

Pike’s presence was smeared on the paper
like a fingerprint. He was disguising himself as the fiddle player,
but how? I looked around and then closed my eyes, reaching out with
my mind, feeling each individual presence mingle throughout the
market. I felt their movements, their desires and fears, but none
were Pike.

A stick poked between my fingers. I looked
at the palm rose in my hand. The boy was twirling one. “You want to
buy another?”

“I didn’t buy this one.”

“That guy over there bought it for you, said
you looked lost, like you needed a friend. Said you’d buy
another.”

“Where?”

“Buy another and I tell you.” He held the
rose up to my face. “Ten bucks.”

I knelt in front of him, gently took his
shoulders. I knew his life, and it had been hard. But I couldn’t
change him, couldn’t tap him with a magic wand to make it better.
At the moment, I just needed to see what the man looked like and
where he went. I scanned his recent memory and saw the man was bald
with dark glasses, smiling at the kid like he was looking at
someone else, like he knew I’d see the memory.
You’re so
close.

I looked to the left side of the market
again. There, along the sidewalk, people were hustling out of the
way. I ran across the street, around traffic, between the parked
rickshaws. Up ahead, the bald man.
Pike.
He scattered the
crowd like a bad smell. And then my vision materialized.

The family and the little girl, pulling her
gum out of her mouth, her mother chastising her for it, reaching
down to yank her hand back, not seeing the little man whose force
slammed into them. The father was thrown against a parking meter
and his wife back into him, but the little girl’s hand slipped from
her grip. She tumbled into the road, in front of a car that was
going too fast.

I cut into time, freezing it the instant the
bumper reached her forehead, inches from splitting it open. I
walked through the silent night and removed her from danger, lay
her at her mother’s feet.

Pike’s gone, again.

I returned to normal time. The tires
screeched. The mother screamed. A crowd gathered around the
frightened girl, crying on her mother’s shoulder. I stood beneath
the awning of the storefront where the owners rushed out to ask if
anyone was hurt, they had already called the police. But the
assailant was gone.

Suddenly, I caught a whiff of his presence,
floating on the wind. Across the street, he’d entered the long
market, slipping beneath a canvas curtain. Traffic stopped. A cop
had already arrived on foot, taking a description of the strange,
bald man. I walked unnoticed between the cars, pulled the canvas
aside and stepped inside.

During the day, it was crowded with vendors
and tourists, but at night it was empty and lonely aside from a
bird searching for a place to nest. The city sounds were muffled by
the canvas walls. At the far end, near the side road that crossed
between the buildings, a short man was hunkered over a fat woman
and a display of sweetgrass baskets.

[Please, leave.]
I planted the
thought in the woman’s mind.

She looked at me across the great distance.
Months of hard work lay on the ground in front of her, and I was
suggesting she leave them behind. Pike slowly turned his head, his
black glasses like holes on his face.

“Do you mind?” he said. “WE’RE
HAGGLING!”

The basket woman placed her bundle of grass
on the ground and got up, dusting off her dress, and walked
away.

“Great,” Pike said. “That’s just great. Do
you know how hard it is to find a quality sweetgrass basket these
days?” He shook a dark banded basket at me. “They weave these
motherfuckers by hand and charge a ton of money. And she was going
to give it to me for free. For free, you understand?”

He was a projection, that’s why I couldn’t
locate him. There were no projectors around, so I didn’t know how
he was doing it, I just knew I couldn’t locate him. I attempted to
penetrate his image, follow it back to the source, but it was
empty. Pike dropped the basket and spread his arms, as if to
help.

“It’s like magic, isn’t it?” he said. “In
case you’re wondering, and I know you are, I’m taking advantage of
the plethora, that’s right I said plethora, of virtualmode portals
in the downtown area. I’m using them to project this wonderful
image in front of you.” He spread his arms, again. “It’s a little
trick you might learn one of these days, if you’re lucky.”

“Is this a game to you?”

“It’s all a game, wouldn’t you say?” He
dropped his arms. “I mean, everything is useless, just a game for
the gods. And where does it end, huh? Where does it all end,
wonderboy? Because now you know the truth, don’t you. You know who
we’re doing our little song and dance for.” He pointed up.

He’s known all along. He knew I wasn’t
human. He knew Fetter was out there. Why hadn’t I seen it
before?

“Look at you,” he said, clasping his hands
over his heart, “all grown up and realized. You’re a big boy now,
your master must be proud. Is he? Is Papa Pivot happy that his boy
is all grown up and out there saving the world?” He swung a left
and right hook through the air. “You’re out there fighting the good
fight, looking for the bad people, eh?”

“He’s not my master.”

“Oh, but isn’t he divine and wonderful? All
pure of heart, like an angel sent from heaven to save the human
race, wouldn’t you say?”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know?” His piercing laughter
bounced around the enclosed market. “How did I… oh, that’s rich,
wonderboy. How did I know? I knew from the second I saw you.” The
canvas walls fluttered. “I saw through you that very first day you
came to the Garrison, wonderboy. All doe-eyed and goody, I smelled
Pivot on you like a seven day corpse.”

“You’ve known all this time?”

“Who do you think I am? Seriously, for being
wonderboy, you’re not that bright—”

“You need to exit the market.” A man stepped
into view. “No one’s allowed… ”

Pike turned on the man, his anger impacting
him like a wave of atomic heat. It was only the embrace of my mind
around him that kept Pike’s wrath from stripping his mind clean,
but it still knocked him backwards and out of sight.

“You can’t save them all,” Pike said.
“Besides, what’s the point? They’re all heading for the great black
planet in heaven anyway. You only delay the inevitable.”

“How could you know about all this? How
could you elude the minders and the Paladins?”

“Everyone knows! Every one of these
skinbags, these buckets of worm food, know their life is futile, a
waste of effort! They all know, wonderboy, right here, they feel
it.” He thumped his chest. “They know there’s something wrong with
their existence, that their gods are just playing them. They just
refuse to face the fact that they’re rats in the wheel.”

“That’s why you hate being human, is that
it? You want to be absorbed by Fetter, just to get it over
with.”

“You still don’t get it? You don’t see?” He
yanked off his glasses and marched closer, white eyes blazing in
the dim light. “Let me know when you do.”

I still couldn’t feel him.
Couldn’t feel
him
. He had a presence, but no sensation of essence. But that
could only mean… “You’ve already converted.”

“Oh, you’re getting warmer.”

“You’re a duplicate.”

“You’re red-hot!”

There has always been a mystery about Pike.
They wouldn’t kill him. He endured torture beyond what was humanly
possible. He was never meant to survive, but he did. He always
survived. Because…

“You’ve always been a duplicate.”

“WE GOT A WINNER!” He whooped and hollered
and leaped and danced, swinging his arms over his head in wild
celebration.

Outside, the sirens rang out and voices
crowded around the market. A few people peeked around the corner. A
policeman walked inside with the father of the little girl. He
nodded at Pike who was now doing something of a foxtrot.

“Can I speak to you a moment, sir?” the
policeman asked.

Pike stopped mid-step. He put on his black
glasses and wiggled his eyebrows. He pursed his lips as the
policeman slowed his approach, putting his hand on his sidearm,
sensing danger.