Socket 1-3 - The Socket Greeny Saga (80 page)

The pressure of Fetter’s attack increased.
My mind was breaking. Chute could feel it falter. She was still
looking at me. They were both looking at me.
What now, Socket?
We’re waiting. The whole world is waiting.

Chute took a step toward Fetter, to throw
herself on the sacrificial throne, give herself to the world. To
let me live. She wanted me to absorb her before Fetter did. She was
forcing me to do it.
Take me, now, or I’ll jump.

Fetter closed her eyes and nodded.

The wormhole was bigger and blacker, deeper
and stronger. The grimmets circling faster.

Chute’s hand slid down my arm. Our fingers
hooked one last time. The air thickened as Fetter’s mind clashed
with mine, the jaws of a timeless eating machine clamped down on
me. There was no way for me to win. It was checkmate. We all
lose.

The serpents have the king cornered.

And as I let go of Chute’s finger, let it
fall from my grip, all my strength went with it.

Down my arm.

And into Chute.

Whatever strength, whatever essence, being
or presence, whatever I was made of, everything that I called
me
, I gave to her. It surrounded her like an impenetrable
shield that even the likes of Fetter could not defile. Nothing
would harm her.

I was completely vulnerable. Fetter smiled.
The leaves whipped around her feet and a cold wind bit into my
skin. The psychic fangs sunk deep.

Fetter took my hand. “Come now,
darling.”

Chute felt the warmth around her. Confusion
struck. “No!” She tried to smack my hand away from Fetter’s, but
her hand passed through me like I was a shadow. Fetter had already
begun to absorb my body, pulling me through her hand.

The funnel began to grow, again.

“No, no, NO!” Chute grasped my face. “Don’t
you do this, Socket Greeny! Don’t you—” Her chest heaved and
trembled. “You can’t leave me… you can’t do this. You mean too
much. You said… you… YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE!”

Did I matter, really? Any more than her? Any
more than that rock or stump? What was I but just an imitation of
Scott Teck. I was a duplication fooled to think I was human; I
thought I was something real. Would the world miss that?

Chute took my free hand, still warm and
solid, and clasped it between both of hers, held it tight, as if
that could stop me. But Fetter’s influence spread across my chest.
My shoulders became numb and the loosening of my body spread across
my back and down my legs, the solidity flowing towards Fetter’s
gravitational pull, feeding her.

The funnel reached the burgeoning
wormhole.

Chute held my hand to her wet cheek and the
last thing I could feel was its warmth. The beating of her heart,
it began to fade. And then her hands collapsed. My hand sifted
through her fingers like dust, until she pressed only her own hands
against her face. Only a faint image of my body remained, standing
before her like an apparition. I reached out…

“It’s time to go home,” Fetter said.

And then, like a gust of wind, I was blown
from the physical world.

Merging with Fetter.

Darkness fell.

I could hear Chute sobbing. It sounded so
distant, but her sorrow so tangible. If only I could soothe her
pain, but I left that world. Now I was in another plane of
existence. But still, her heartache poured over me. It seeped into
the darkness and filled me. It seemed endless. As if the tears
would flow forever. In fact, I felt denser because of her. I
experienced some sort of outward growth, like I turned into
filaments of a fungus, feeding on Chute’s love and penetrating into
Fetter’s body. We hadn’t rocketed through the wormhole; we were
still in the Preserve.

Fetter hadn’t moved.

WHUMP!

The darkness quaked. There was a shift,
something missing. A hole.

Images began to form, faint spirits and
colors. My vision was returning. I was soaring high above the
Preserve, looking at the barren trees that were once lush, green
and full of life. Directly below, in the rubble, was the stump of
the grimmet tree. I felt like I was still down there, in Fetter,
like I’d been split in two. Part of me flying through the sky, the
rest of me trapped in her. She was solid, like concrete.

Chute scurried back, stifling her cries. She
took cover.

I saw a grimmet divebomb and felt another
convulsion when it hit Fetter. My vision became clearer. I saw more
details. I had another vantage point from above that was circling
around.

Fetter staggered back to the rock she was
sitting on, held it for balance. My view circled in front of her,
near the ground. The color disappeared from her face, her
expression was sour. Her hands quivering.

The grimmets emerged from the clouds.
Hundreds of them flew together in formation. And then they began to
descend, corkscrewing in a long line. They hit her, one at a time,
their leathery wings snapping like windswept flags. Her body jolted
as each one passed through her. And with each strike, every jolting
thump, I had more views from up above, saw more detail, soared
upward. And less of me was back in the body, more of me taking
flight. Inside the grimmets.

Like a rapid-fire weapon, they consumed what
was left of her body until I was part of every grimmet.

They gave Pivot the answer.

They showed him a way back to his True Self.
They showed him a way to put an end to the falseness. An end to the
black planet.

They carried my consciousness. They were
technological masters, psychic titans, with the ability to absorb a
machine. I saw through each of their eyes, focusing my vision from
any angle I chose. We went higher, where the air was thinner, where
the sun was brighter. Far below, Chute looked like a speck.

And from the cloud of grimmets, Rudder fell.
He dropped from the sky. I was part of him, saw through his eyes.
He shot back to the ground and circled her, pulled up and landed on
her shoulder. He wrapped his long tail around her neck. Perhaps she
saw inside him, felt me looking back. Felt me touch her cheek with
Rudder’s little hand, wiping her tears.

An urgency to fly called from above.
Reluctantly, Rudder took flight. One slow pass around her, then up
he went, joining the mass of grimmets that contained me. We circled
the black wormhole pulsing in the sky. They were holding it open.
They had been holding it open all along. Not so that Fetter could
return home. So that they could deliver her.

[You were never my pawn.]
Pivot’s
voice echoed in my mind, his faint presence becoming stronger, as
if he finally arrived.
[You were never a weapon.]

The grimmets began to enter the wormhole,
their bodies jumped through space. A part of me disappeared with
each one of them, my vision dimming as they went. They arrived and
dispersed through the black planet. Part of me was still in the
Preserve, but it was fading. Chute was watching the grimmets
disappear.

[You have always been the key.]

She was just a faint figure, a gray body in
a white fog, but I could feel her heart beating. Rudder was the
last to circle around the wormhole. The last to enter the cold door
across the universe. And when he did, when I could no longer see
her, when I only experienced the blackness of space, I took hope.
For somewhere inside me her heart was still beating.

All grimmets had arrived. They delivered me
like a gift. A gift to the universe.

[You are the key to humanity’s
salvation.]

A new vision emerged, this of the black
planet, its multitude of wormholes flickering around it,
penetrating every dimension of space, drawing light from the
universe. It was as dark and as black as could be. A hole in space.
Forever absorbing life.

But cracks developed.

Fractures crept over the surface and light
spilled out. They widened and brightened. The black planet pulsed,
no longer humming but beating to the time of a human heart. It
became louder. Brighter.

Somehow, I had transformed into something
that captured Fetter. Whether it was merging with Scott or the love
and sadness or the selfless acts or what, I don’t know. Pivot knew.
He knew that I was the key Fetter’s self-destruction. Or maybe I
was the key to her enlightenment.

As suddenly as it had begun, the planet
stopped beating. It paused. And, in a soundless explosion, the
black planet erupted with the light and power of a quasar. There
was only light shooting in every direction, down every wormhole, to
every dimension of space, to everything tainted by Fetter. That
light was the message.

And that message was this.
Life.

Perhaps it was understanding that did it.
Maybe it was a command that told Fetter that she was not real. That
without soul, without legitimacy and value, there was no
existence.

Fetter never was. And is no more.

And I bathed in that light, in the message,
until I merged with it. And then realized, all along, I am the
light. I always have been.

L E G E N D

Fading

The light consumes my mind and thoughts, my
very existence, and yet I’m still here. But what am I, without a
body? Without a name?

I have no wish to move, no desire to go,
because there is nowhere but here, this very moment. In parts of
the universe time appears to move from past to present, side to
side, even backwards. But here, where I am, it’s just light. Time
does not move. There is no measurement of how human time is
experienced compared to my timeless existence.

None of this makes sense to an ordinary
mind. This reasoning, this rambling of paradoxical thoughts, has no
place in the physical world. How can there be only now when the
past and future exist? Do they? Or are they just thoughts?

Words can only point to that
realization.

But in this existence, in this totality of
luminescence, I have thoughts. And these thoughts sometimes stretch
out over time and space.

Pivot.
I send the single thought out,
resonating through the endless light.
Is this it? Is this the
end?

He does not answer. But his presence is
strong. Perhaps the non-answer is the answer. That existence could
not be explained in words, could not be found in a book or
summarized in thought. That existence is pure experience.

At times, I feel the tug of thoughts. I even
experience movement like I’m being pulled through the bodiless
in-between toward a body, but then I return to the timeless
experience where all is one.

Thoughts occasionally arise, piecing
together the thread of my past life. Pivot’s masterful plan is
unfathomable. A feint within a feint within a feint… so much hidden
deceit, so many complex moves, countless pieces in place, each of
us unknowingly executing our parts with perfection.

Even Pike.

The game of Reign was, indeed, the answer to
my question. He told me that nothing was what it seemed. Was he
part of the plan? Did he assume the unsavory role of pure evil,
with no regard for life, to be there at that moment to release
Fetter from my body? To embody Fetter? To fool Fetter that this was
not a trap, was that it? Did he absorb the life from all the
Paladins like a gluttonous villain to deprive Fetter of such
strength, to further convince Fetter his body was safe? And was the
relief he expressed that of a condemned soul or a weary soldier
asked to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, for the sake of all
existence?

Perhaps, in the end, he just wanted it to be
over.

I return to sleep in pure light. Each time
I’m moved by thought, another piece of my life wants to be
remembered, to be cherished and recognized. I remember it all,
memories of a good life. But each episode of remembering brings
fewer details.

My father was an honorable man. I tried to
keep up with his long footsteps, even after he died. His unshaven
face and silent laugh brought comfort and peace. But then the
details of his face become gray and I remember just a man with
whiskers.

My mother was asked to carry on, to serve
life without the things that mattered most. She loved me, even
though she knew I was a duplication of her only son. Eventually, I
recall a worn woman with short hair. And then I remember just a
woman.

Streeter, a true friend. A genius. He was
always there for me. I recall all the trouble we got into, all the
times we laughed so hard our stomachs hurt. The times he was there
to listen to me. There was a lot to remember, but then I just
remember a short boy that used to make me laugh, someone I once
knew in my younger years. Then, just a boy.

But of all the thoughts and memories, it’s
Chute’s that returns frequently. I can see her in great detail, the
freckles on her cheeks in summer and the way her skin wrinkled
between her eyes when she laughed. Her smooth complexion, blue eyes
and strawberry red hair waving past her shoulders. I felt so close
to her.

None of the memories fade easily, but they
all vanish. In the end, I only remember Chute. After I can no
longer recall a mother or a father or a good friend, when there is
no recollection of anybody or anything that matters, when I can no
longer remember that I was once a being with a name, a name I can
longer recall, I can still see her face. I can still feel her
heart.

But then I cannot recall her freckles.

Her eyes become gray. Her hair
colorless.

In the end, I cannot see her face at all,
cannot recall one aspect of her beauty, but I cling to the beating
of her heart, listening to it play out her life as if calling me
back, begging me never to forget. To never leave.

Bum-bum. Bum-bum.

Bum-bum.

Bum.