She readjusted the stranglehold. “I’m taking you by the office.”
“Awesome,” I muttered. I didn’t want her to hear that, but it was so silent in that car you could hear a sand flea fart. But she didn’t take the bait, just kept her eyes ahead with one hand on the wheel and the other tucked under her arm. She was hiding her right hand.
“Thought you quit that,” I said.
“Nothing wrong with a moody,” she answered.
She fidgeted in her seat, then calmly put the moody cube in her purse and drank from a bottle of water. Her thumb was red and swollen. I knew about moody cubes, heard the warnings in school every day. Some company convinced the FDA that a little black square could stimulate dopamine production by relaying messages through the nervous system and relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety. They argued that because the brain was essentially a poppy field producing natural happy sedatives, it was nothing like narcotics. The FDA said sure, but it should at least be prescribed and the company responded, Yeah, we’re okay with that.
I sometimes pressed her into giving up the habit because that couldn’t be good. But sometimes I couldn’t stand that dead-zone look on her face and just let her get some relief. I looked back out the window and watched the ships below, wishing I could smell the water or the salty South Carolina breeze but there was nothing getting inside that car. It’s like we were sealed inside a tomb.
* * * * *
Mom drove through downtown, waiting more often for College of Charleston students and tourists then actual traffic. We passed the art dealers and law offices and souvenir vendors and old retired horses pulling antique-looking carriages full of New Yorkers and Mid-westerners listening to the driver, sitting backwards on the front, telling ghost stories and rehearsed jokes about the good old South and the charm of the Holy City.
Her office was a block past the regal steps of the Custom’s House. It was just a simple black door wedged between an art gallery and a chocolate shop. No sign hanging on a rod perpendicular to the building or a window to see inside, just small letters on the door. Paladin Nation, Inc.
They were in desperate need of an advertising agency; they were barely a step up from a manhole. In fact, if you didn’t look right at the door, you didn’t notice it. I walked past it three times once. Mom slowed up to the curb just as a man stepped out of the door. A young guy in good shape with a proper haircut opened the car door for her. He didn’t bother with me.
Mom waited at the office door. She pushed her hair behind her ear, it fell back, and took a deeper breath than usual. I thought she was more distant that usual. In fact, she felt cold. No, she tasted cold, like some sort of essence. I shook it off. Don’t want to go there. I’d been grounded in my skin for a whole hour and preferred it that way. But I couldn’t help noticing her coldness brought a taste of sadness with it. Sometimes I didn’t even feel related to her, like she was just a stranger watching over me, like I was some sort of orphan. Good times.
* * * * *
The door led up creaky steps to a tiny room. There was a receptionist area behind a counter with a computer, desk, and files but there was never anyone there.
Mom told me to wait for her, she’d be right out, then went through the only door to the left of the receptionist area. I never went beyond that door. I had a vague memory of going beyond once with my dad when I was real little, but there wasn’t much but a short hallway with three doors. The only thing I remember after that is a blue light and then I fell asleep, dreaming of caves and jungles.
I sat in the waiting room and slouched down. No magazine rack, no television or pictures of beaches with birds. I crossed my arms and laid my head back and closed my eyes but the slightest motion in my stomach made me bolt upright. Not going there. Nope.
I slid my fingers over the iHolo strap around my wrist that looked more like a black hospital bracelet. An image illuminated above the strap like a holographic screen no matter which way I turned my wrist. I pushed the icons around, looked at a play list I’d put together earlier that week and uploaded it to the nojakk, then booted up the music. While an acoustic guitar echoed inside my head, I went to my email and noticed the news headline. International Virtualmode Blackout.
The story began in a virtualmode network hub inside a warehouse with a single isle going between lines of blue, pulsing orbs, five feet in diameter, encased in clear boxes with lab technicians wearing white coats and hardhats inspecting them. I’d seen portals before, the school had one in a basement below the Pit. It was the powercell that transported a user’s awareness into virtualmode. I’d heard physicists explain how the intense power and density of portals allowed them to transcend time and space and interact simultaneously. Trippy shit. But no one cared how they worked, just that they worked.
“Sometime around 10:43, eastern standard, virtualmode experienced its first blackout,” a reporter’s voice announced as the lab technicians observed the portals. I turned the music down and sat up. “According to sources, a surge from somewhere in the world caused an international crash of all virtualmode worlds. Authorities say the balance of power has been restored and that normal activity has resumed, although there seems to be some confusion as to where the surge originated.”
That’s when the rip occurred. Did I make the whole thing crash? Impossible. Those portals were like a thousand nuclear reactors doing some sort of cold fusion. How in the hell—
Zzzzzsthhhp.
The iHolo image scattered for a second then returned to normal.
I shut down the music; felt the floor shutter. It came from the door. I was remembering the blue light again when the door opened and Mom was followed by a man. She stood to the side and let him pass. I jumped up.
The man walked fluidly. He was a bit older than Mom. His hair streaked with gray and his face clean-shaven, what most women would call a handsome man with a smoldering attraction. He stopped only a few feet away, but the room was so small he couldn’t get much farther away. I wondered if I should bolt for the stairwell just in case a mugging was about to go down.
But then I tasted a taste, an essence. It was deep and sort of minty. Potent. I’d experienced that before. Maybe seen this guy before. Behind the door?
I looked at Mom. Christ, no one was saying anything. This was beyond awkward. The man was looking through me, studying me, like a doctor without the stethoscope and white coat. If he asked me to take my shirt off it was going to be stairway city.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Socket.” He extended his hand. I shook it. “Now that you’re grown up.”
I nodded, wondering why it felt like I was meeting the President.
“My name is Walter Diggs.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“It’s been awhile since I saw you last, but I’m sure you don’t remember. You were only that big.” He put his hand down, the universal sign of a short person.
I was struggling with the memory of going through the door when I was that big and linking it to the minty essence, but the memory ended up in the caves and jungles. Then I remembered colored bats coming out of the trees. A real fucked up dream.
“I knew your father,” Walter said. “He was a fine man, he was. I was damn proud to have known him. No one could replace someone like Trey Greeny.”
Oh, shit. Is this the stepfather talk? I’m not trying to replace your father, Socket, no one could. But I’m in love with your mother and you’re going to have a new baby brother. Now go clean your room, asshole.
Walter started laughing. He looked over at Mom who returned his laughter with just barely a flicker of the corner of her mouth. He looked back at me. It was getting weird.
“What I’m trying to say is if you’re half the person your father was, you’ll have a lot to offer the world. But I suspect you’re twice that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Diggs, but I’m not sure what any of this means.”
“Things are a little sketchy, I know. But it’ll make sense real soon. Your mother is goi
ng to take you to meet some people in our facilities.”
“I don’t even know what you do.” I shuffled back until my leg hit the chair.
“You will, soon.” Wink.
No one winks when something really shitty is about to happen. Right? “Should I be worried right about now?” I looked at Mom. She was still cold. Walter offered a smile that, compared to Mom’s, was like the sun.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you grown up. I look forward to working with you.” He squeezed my shoulder, made eye-contact with Mom, and then was through the door from where he came, closing it behind him.
Mom opened the door to the stairs.
“Wait, what just happened?”
“There’s a lot to explain,” Mom said. She was itching for that moody. “I’ll tell you everything on the way.”
“We’re not going with him?” I asked.
“The facility is a long way from here,” she said. “But it won’t take long to get there.”
“We’re flying?”
“No.”
Now what in the hell does that mean?
Wormholed
The parking attendant was waiting out front with the door open. Mom took the first left turn and then another left down a narrow alley wedged between tall buildings. No one would notice it from the street, and if they saw it, wouldn’t think to drive a car down it. It ended at a brick wall and backing out would seem impossible without swiping a door handle. There was a garage door on the left, which would’ve been directly below the office.
I had a feeling we were going wherever minty-man Walter Diggs went, although getting back in the car for a trip around the block made no sense. Mom had a whole life of secrecy. When she wasn’t home, I’d go through her files, look under her mattress and through her closet to find out what she was doing. Now the gig was up and I was minutes away from everything. I always thought it would be more fun to find out.
The garage door opened and she eased into the lightless space as the door closed behind us. “This is going to feel funny,” she said.
“You mean funny, ha-ha?” I answered. I was starting to squirm. The falling feeling was coming back.
“We’re going through a wormhole, like a puncture in the fabric of time and space.”
“Where we going?” I said, almost casually. Why not? Today wasn’t making any sense, why not finish it with a trip through a rip in time. And space.
Mom laughed, sort of. It was mostly a hiccup, but not a smile, and certainly no joy.
A door in front of us began to open, blue light spilling out. “Close your eyes,” she said. “And make sure your tongue is pushed against the roof of your mouth.”
The blue light engulfed me. I clenched my eyes shut, grabbing onto the door. I felt like one of those cartoons getting steamrolled flat as paper. Thought I was going to scream, then puke. I didn’t see blue. I didn’t see anything. My lungs were burning and I gulped for air, drooling on my shirt when I realized we were through.
“Oh, Jesus,” I blurted.
It was night. We were still in the car, although it wasn’t moving. Instead, we were idling on a flat piece of ground with miles of boulder-strewn wasteland ahead of us without a road in sight. At the far end was a sheer-faced cliff. The full moon revealed streaks of ochre like ancient blood stains. It stood like a monolith, like God had plopped down a massive block of granite and said, “End of the world, fuckers.”
“This society has existed for as long as history’s been recorded.” Mom took a breath and touched the center panel. Lights appeared on the speedometer, holographic images illuminated the dash with maps and data and green dots and red dots and bullshit that looked more like a fighter jet than car. “We protect humankind from extinction.”
“From what?”
“Once upon a time, it was natural disaster and plague and wars. In this era, the threat of extinction comes from humans.” Her eyes appeared deeper-set in the moonlight and the glow of the instruments. “Humankind lacks understanding. As a species, we are still in our infancy. Out potential is limitless, but first we must survive to realize it.”
“Are you one of them?”
“In a way.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the answer is complicated. There’s a lot to understand, you’ll have to be patient. For now, just know that we can do things that normal people can’t.”
She touched the control panel. Something thumped beneath the car. And then we were moving forward, only we weren’t rolling. We were hovering. The car was flying. Not fast like spaceship fast, it was more like a slow hover that crossed over the impossible terrain. The wheels had folded beneath the car. No one was getting across this ground without one of these.
“You got to be shitting me.”
“Watch your language, Socket.”
I sat back, realized I was still holding onto the door. We were halfway to the red cliff when I relaxed. “What’s this place called?” I asked. “This club, or society.”
“The Paladin Nation.”
“This is it, here?” I pointed at the looming cliff.
“No, it’s all over the world. This is just one of the compounds.”
I watched the cliff get closer. “We’re not in South Carolina anymore.”
She almost smiled, I could feel it.
* * * * *
There was no door in the side of the mountain. Instead, we passed through it, like it was only an apparition, into an enormous cavern. Mom touched a few buttons on the console and the car gently sank to the ground.
The cavern was dome-shaped, complete with authentic dripping stalactites. Caves and jungles? Maybe that wasn’t a dream.
Mom pushed the steering wheel up and locked it out of the way. She gathered items from the backseat. I still hadn’t let go. I had just taken my first ride in a flying car, hit a transportation wormhole, and now I was parked inside a mountain somewhere in the world that had mountains.
A large, gray sphere emerged from the wall. Several more appeared, floating inches above the ground like super sized lookits. They took position around the car, waiting.
“Servys,” Mom said. “Technology is a bit more advanced here. You’re going to see some things that don’t exist in the outside world yet.” She had her thumb buried in the moody, again. A look of eerie relief was on her face.
“I wish you’d stop that.”
She closed her eyes, pushed her thumb in deeper. “There’s so much to do, Socket. I just need to catch my breath.”
“You don’t have to save the world.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Sometimes the world needs you and you have to be there. You’ll understand one day. And I hope you find more strength than your mother.”
I gently pulled her thumb from the moody, red and swollen. “You’re plenty strong.”
“Let’s hope so.”
She opened her door and stepped out. I turned to mine—a silver man was at the window. He had no face.
Faceless
His egg-shaped head was featureless. No eyes or nose, mouth, ears or chin. Just a smooth, egghead with an eyelight pointed at me.
“Welcome to the Garrison, Master Socket.” He waved a silver hand. “Do you need help exiting the vehicle?”
If I didn’t see the colors move on his face, I would’ve sworn a real person said it. He looked like he was from a movie, standing six feet tall on two legs: A humanoid mech. The arms and legs were sinewy like an Olympian. And to top things off, he wore a loose plum-colored overcoat, sleeveless, cinched at the waist. But sure, why not. This was already shaping up like a dream, why not send in the flying dragons.
Mom was out of the car, explaining something to him. The servys repositioned themselves around her. One went to the back of the car, returned with her briefcase firmly gripped by an arm that had grown from its spherical body. The robe-wearing silver mech pointed at me. I was still grabbing the door. So far I’d looked at everything through
the safety of a window. Getting out was another level. I reluctantly opened the door.
I’ve been here before.
It was the smell. Pleasantly musty and wet. Ancient. I was here long, long ago. Maybe it was take-your-kid-to-work day. I always thought it was a dream. Same cave, same smell.
“Socket,” Mom said. “This is Spindle.” The silver mech placed his hand on his belly and gestured with a small bow. “He’s my assistant. He’ll be your guide for the day.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have to attend an urgent meeting.” She touched my arm, like an apology. “Afterward, we’ll meet in my office.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re just going to leave me here with… with…” Spindle’s eyelight stared at me. “You can’t do this to me, Mom. This isn’t right. I’ve got crazy things in my head and you’re flying a car and then there’s the wormhole.” I paced around, thought about taking a hit from her moody. “This is bullshit.”
“Don’t curse.” Her left eye ticked. “We’ll discuss it later. In the meantime, Spindle will escort you to security assignment. You’re going to like him. You’ll be safe.”
Oh, great. Telling me I’ll be safe meant I was in danger, like when someone says they ain’t scared means they’re really scared shitless. But Mom wasn’t prone to signs of affection. It didn’t happen often, so I was caught by surprise when she gently placed her hand on my cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
[It’ll be all right.]
That’s what she was thinking. Instead of telling me where I was and why, she just wanted me to know it was all going to be all right. The last time she said that, she took me to the doctor for shots. While I waited, the nurse told me we were waiting on a little stick, then rammed a needle in my ass. I would’ve preferred a better explanation, then and now, but her touch and smile seemed to be enough for the moment. What else was I going to do? I didn’t know how to fly that car and even if I did, where the hell was I going?
Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny Page 3