Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny

by Tony Bertauski

  I touched my tongue to the fleshy skin of the fruit, the sweetness ignited the taste buds in my mouth. Inside me, rapture exploded.

  I devoured it like a starving beast, juice flowing down my chin, the meaty pulp sliding down my throat, filling me, scintillating my nerves. I sucked at my fingers and licked the drippings off the floor. I could smell the ocean wafting into the house along with a loving presence. I heard soft laughter.

  It was no dream.

  She tricked me. I couldn’t resist it any longer. In the end, I willfully took it. But now I was thinking clearly. I knew where I was because eating the fruit had connected me with this world. It was no longer empty. It was real. It made sense.

  This isn’t Earth.

  A Happy Family

  The truth.

  I was pulled from the wormhole just before arriving home, redirected to another part of the universe and absorbed into an alien world. I didn’t know how or why it happened, but I knew this much: this world is artificial.

  The entire planet was composed of cellular nanomechs that formed everything I saw and touched, heard and tasted. That wasn’t the sky above. Not sand or water or rain. Not even a tree. It was just the generic stuff made to look like those things. It was my office on a global scale. How this was even possible I did not understand. All I knew was that I was somewhere inside it.

  I knew these things because I had eaten the fruit, partaken of this world, and now I was merging with it. That’s how I knew these things. My being –my essence, my soul – was interweaving with this artificial world. I was becoming one with it.

  This was no ordinary automated world, either. It was not like my office that only responded to my commands. There was an intelligence that was inseparable from it, a feminine being fused into every single nanomech, as if she was this world. It was her will that formed the ocean, and grew the trees, her will that sent the moon across the sky. She was everywhere.

  That feminine energy was in the room. The woman in white was standing just inside the house, facing the torrential storm. Her arms were crossed, her fingers drumming her biceps.

  “Manumit is making quite a mess,” she said, without turning.

  Manumit. I knew who she was talking about. There was another presence in this world that was separate from her. He was the reason the sky was black. Why it was raining in paradise. She called him Manumit, but now I recognized this presence. I’d known him all my life. Pivot.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “You know who I am.”

  I knew this world, how it worked, that it was artificial. But I didn’t know her. Didn’t know her thoughts, where she came from. Why she was part of it.

  “You don’t know everything?” She smirked.

  She knew my thoughts, taunting me with her secret. I didn’t even know her name.

  “Fetter,” she said. “Manumit called me Fetter. And he calls you Socket. You call him Pivot.” She looked at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were blue like the deep part of the ocean. “Aren’t we one big happy family?”

  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.
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br />   “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.”

  The Lie and the Liar

  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.

  Just like them.

  It made sense, now. It was how I easily merged into this planet. How I was able to carry Pivot inside me like data. It was how I had been so exceptional among humans. I was the one that extinguished the duplicate race. I was the only one that could see them because I’m one of them. But I couldn’t see myself. I was so perfectly human – with my flaws, my ability to love – that no one suspected I was duplicated. That I wasn’t human. Not even me.

  I couldn’t see where I was going. Water was around my ankles. The next wave crashed into my knees. I fell. But I got back up again. The house was a smattering of lights. I wasn’t going inside, I’d run past it, maybe into the mountains. There was no escape. But I’d still keep running.

  Another wave. This one hit me waist high and began dragging me out. The undertow pulled me down and I let it. But a strong pair of hands latched around my wrists before the sea could fill my lungs.

  Fetter lifted me like a child.

  I coughed up salty water, my legs weak and wobbly. She led me towards the house. I tried to yank away.

  “No. I’m not. I’m not you… I’m just, I’m caught in this… THIS SELF-CENTERED DREAM!”

  I twisted my arms, sidestepping and wrenching out of her grip. My back was to the house. The lights lit her face. She looked sad, almost tired. Almost compassionate.