Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny

by Tony Bertauski

  I stopped. My pursuit stopped, too. They saw the Paladins materialize from a timeslice. I understood they had temporarily stopped time but the others didn’t. They were trying to process how these hard men just appeared and what they were doing with the spikes in their hands. Why were they sticking them into the ground and why was a yellow laser beaming straight into the dark sky?

  “CLEAR THE AREA!” I pushed past the gathering crowd and their blank stares. I clenched my hand, searching for a grip on a timeslice but couldn’t get there. “SOMETHING’S IN THE TRU—”

  The explosion was bright.

  Then it was dark.

  It sounded like a high pitch.

  I couldn’t remember what I was going to do. It was something. Something urgent.

  The darkness took form. First it was just that some blobs were darker than others. Then there were lighter colors flapping through the darkness. It looked like snow drifting out of the sky. I had that feeling like I needed to wake up for school or something. A blurry face popped up like a puppet.

  “We got to go!” Streeter’s voice was far away.

  I could taste the tang of blood. The fluttering white things, they were debris: paper and cups and popcorn bags. Panic crawled over me. The atmosphere tensed. Streeter pulled me up. “Are you all right?”

  I touched my head. The bleachers were partially shattered. People were running. They were screaming. I saw people pulling limp bodies from the wreckage. I saw some bodies that were just laying there.

  “We got to go, get up.” Streeter pulled some more. “Get up, man. WE GOT TO GO!”

  I got up and the world was wobbling. The Paladins were setting more spikes that looked like yellow bars circling the flaming truck. Beyond that, the school walls had crumbled. Half of the dome over the Pit was missing. With each spike and yellow bar, the heat from the roaring fire cooled. They were sealing off the site, protecting the civilians. They only had six up when the thing blew again. I could hardly feel the second explosion except through the ground. What would the place look like if they had got here a minute late? Would there be anything left?

  Maybe they weren’t protecting the public. Maybe they were here to catch something.

  Streeter led me onto the field. I stumbled after him. People ran past. Half a dozen taggers lay in the grass. Chute was one of them. I pushed Streeter off and ran, sliding into her on my knees, wrapping her in my arms. A blue knot was on her forehead, blood trickling between her eyes.

  She touched my lip. “You’re hurt, Socket.”

  “We have to get out of here,” I said. “Can you stand?”

  She saw Streeter behind me. “What’s happening?”

  The ground shook from a muted explosion, this one not as intense. The yellow bars had contained most of the sound as well as the impact. “Socket.” Streeter pawed at my arm. “Socket, Socket… you got to… you got to see this.”

  The dome had completely collapsed, and fire erupted from it, licking the sky. Something was poking out of the burning trailer. It looked like a tree branch, but it wasn’t burning. It was growing out of the flames, red-hot and pointing up, and then it bent on a hinge as it cooled. It grew longer and bent at another hinge several feet below the first. More of them emerged, bending at angles until they were long enough to reach the ground and lift an oval body from the carnage. The giant daddy long leg spider stepped out of the flames, its glowing body cooling.

  The crawlers had come with the Paladins. They would save us. But something wasn’t right. Why were they coming from the truck?

  The Paladins locked the last of the spikes in the ground, sealing in the heat and sound from our side of the parking lot. Their evolver weapons unfolded around their hands, glowing blue, then engulfed them in protective bubbles just as the crawler reared back. The bottom of the crawler’s body opened. I could hear it through the ground, the sound the thing let loose was shrill and deafening. It vibrated through the bottom of my feet. The Paladins faltered but the shields held.

  Chute latched onto my sleeve. “Who are those people?”

  I wanted to tell her they were the good guys but I was watching them spread out while a second set of legs emerged from the flames. The crawler backed up like a mother protecting her newborn in a burning nest as the Paladins set to attack. I think Streeter or Chute might’ve asked what those things were. I thought I knew what they were, but the Paladins were attacking them. They were sent by an enemy.

  The duplicates are coming.

  Pillars

  It was a scene from a movie. People were running. Screams and cries and hysteria soaked the air. Bodies were all around. Some were dead. Sirens could be heard in the distance and the first of many emergency vehicles started down the road. And there were still only three Paladins. Three! Where were the rest of them?

  That’s what didn’t make sense. A disaster like this and the entire Paladin Nation should be here treating people. Instead, there were three of them and they were barely holding their own against the duplicated crawlers oozing non-stop from the burning wreckage. The fire flickered red, yellow and blue as it burped out one spider after another. The agents sliced and diced them but some escaped and made for the giant hole in the Pit.

  The spot on my neck warmed. I touched Rudder still working on the clamp. As he deactivated it, knowledge seeped from him as our minds intermingled. It came to me not as thoughts but more like a stream of memories that imbedded themselves in me, as if he were melting into me. I saw what he saw, knew what he knew. And then I understood.

  The duplicates were attacking worldwide.

  While the duplicates had dissolved into the general population, Paladins discovered they needed to stay in touch with virtualmode as if it was some sort of life force. They didn’t know exactly how or why they needed periodically get back into virtualmode, they just knew that if they cut them off they would die like weeds without roots. Paladins installed worldwide code that kept duplicates from logging into virtualmode, and when they tried it was poison. After that, the Paladin Nation went about flushing the duplicates out of hiding, even alerting public authorities about illegal virtualmode activity. It was only a matter of time before they starved. And the duplicates knew this. They were cornered.

  It was fight or die. They chose to fight.

  The crawlers were doing the duplicates dirty work. They’d sent them to seek out access to virtualmode. Schools, cafes and businesses across the planet were being attacked simultaneously, hoping one of them could circumvent the security patches, get to the inside of virtualmode and unlock it for the rest of them. The duplicates were waiting for the life-giving taste of virtualmode. They held their last breath, hoping.

  Paladins didn’t see the wide-scale attack coming. Of course not. They didn’t have their fortuneteller anymore. Pivot was still missing. But Pivot saw. And that’s why he sent Rudder to free me. He needed me for a reason. He needed me in the fight.

  “They’re after the portal,” I muttered.

  Streeter and Chute were staring at me with mouths open. I forgot to tell them all the details, but what was I going to tell them? They were witness to it all. I just pointed over my shoulder and said, “That’s what I couldn’t talk about.”

  Streeter was sort of nodding, watching the ongoing fight, the sounds muffled by the pillars. Chute was staring at me, though. I could feel her fear, taste it like a bitterness at the back of my throat, a rotten energy eating at her stomach. She was freaked by the death and destruction, and she was wondering what I was. She felt guilty for fearing I would leave her again despite the misery all around. I took her hand. Her energy flowed down inside me and I opened to let it flow back into her, mingling with the fear that rolled inside her. [It’s all right.]

  I didn’t force the thought into her mind. I didn’t make her believe it. I just laid it out for her to see. She blinked. The smile of relief didn’t show on her face, but I felt it rise inside her.

  “Why are those things climbing into the Pit?” Streeter sai
d.

  “I think they’re accessing the portal.”

  “But… that’s like twenty feet below ground and encased in hardened steel. They can’t…”

  His thoughts trailed off. Maybe he realized he was watching spiders climb the wall and that reality was doing a 180 on him.

  For some reason, those things were going after the portal. And the Paladins desperately wanted to stop them. “Is there any way to access the security patch?” I asked Streeter. He looked at me, but his glassy eyes were unfocused. “Streeter, how can I get to the portal security?”

  His lips quivered but his thoughts were a mess. I needed answers quicker than that. I started for the pillars.

  “You’re not going in there.” Chute’s voice was firm.

  Maybe if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve tried to slip between the pillar beams. But what was I going to do once I was in there? I had no weapon, no training. I couldn’t even slice time yet. I was just going to get in the way. So I stood there looking at the endless parade of crawlers flow from the fire and the Paladins tireless efforts to control them. But they were starting to tire. They weren’t blinking into timeslices anymore. They were conserving their energy, fighting them in real time.

  “I’m not going to lose you again.” Chute stepped next to me. Her cheeks were glowing in the yellow aura. “I don’t care who you think you are or what you can do, you’ll die if you go in there.”

  Panic was clenching my chest. What could I do then? What? If the duplicates got through the portal, what was next? Something in Rudder’s knowledge told me the Paladins didn’t have a backup plan. They had gambled on their move to end the existence of the duplicates and now the whole world was on the table. Winner takes all.

  “We can get to Buxbee’s lab.” Streeter felt lucid. The slack in his face had taken up.

  “What do I need to do?” I asked.

  “The security shells need to be completed.”

  “How do I do that?”

  He looked at me. “You want me to tell you now?”

  “Just… just think it.” I closed my eyes, focused on his mind. I could absorb what he knew the instant it came up, but it was a murky cloud of thoughts.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Streeter said.

  “I got to know how to finish that security shell or those things could get into virtualmode.” I stepped toward him. “They’re dupes, Streeter.”

  Like that was all I needed to say, he would figure out the rest. But he was staring at me like there was a tiny dragon attached to my neck.

  “I’ve got to finish the security updates,” I said.

  “No, you’re not,” Chute said. “You see what’s going on back there? You’re not going anywhere near that school. Neither of you.”

  “Buxbee’s gear is only coded for me,” Streeter said. “It’ll reject you. You can’t get on.”

  That was a problem, but I’d figure it out later. If Rudder would get the clamp completely deactivated, I could slice time and have plenty of time. Come on, Rudder. Faster. I felt him twitch, impatiently.

  “Look, there’s no danger if I go,” Streeter said. “Buxbee’s lab is all the way on the other side of the school. Those yellow beams got that truck barricaded around the Pit. Whatever’s on the inside isn’t getting out. We can go log in and get it done, in and out. If you’re helping, I can finish in like five or ten minutes.”

  “I’m going,” Chute said.

  “No, you’re not,” I snapped.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Look.” I gently gripped her bicep. “This is—”

  She yanked her arm out. “I’m going with you. Try to stop me.”

  “I will.”

  Sometimes she hit me in the arm when I acted like an asshole. Sometimes she just set her feet. Always, she got her way because she usually made more sense than me, thought clearer. This time, I was right. But this time, she didn’t swing and didn’t dig in to get her way. I felt her energy soften.

  “Don’t make me stay out here,” she said. “I can’t just wait.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I can help.”

  “I wouldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you.”

  “Neither would I.”

  I took a breath and looked around. Truth be told, I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want to be away from her, not when this shit was going on. Maybe it was selfish to let her come along, but was she any safer out here? I would never know the answer to that.

  We started for Buxbee’s lab.

  Walking on Shells

  Lights were on a portion of the hall, but beyond that it faded to black. Dust drizzled down like mist. Buxbee’s door was partly open. The classroom was so dark the desks and chairs looked like lumps waiting to jump us.

  “What now?” I said.

  “We virtualmode,” Streeter said. “It’s the only way to finish the upgrade.”

  “I thought virtualmode was shut down.”

  “Yeah, unless you’ve got high-security access. That would be me.”

  “You can’t just call it up on a monitor?”

  “Maybe.” He sounded thoughtful. “But I’m not sure.”

  “Can you do it or not?”

  I could see him turn to me but couldn’t see his expression. It felt hot.

  “Look, we can’t afford to leave the skin,” I said. “I don’t care if those things are trapped out there or not, we need to call it up on a monitor.”

  “Well, now’s a perfect time to experiment, wouldn’t you say?” he snapped. “I’ll boot up the monitors and break out the manual so we can work in the skin. Got a light?”

  I didn’t like it, either. Streeter was staring at me, waiting for an answer. Which is it? Somehow, I had become the leader and he was waiting for my blessing. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. They shouldn’t be here. They should be at home or out there with the cops and EMTs. This was a bad idea to bring them along, but I had to get honest, I couldn’t do it alone.

  Chute’s touch broke the tension. Her fingers slid down my arm and laced with mine. “How long will it take if we virtualmode?” she asked.

  “Five minutes,” Streeter said. “Maybe ten.”

  “What’d you mean ‘we’?” I said. “You’re not going.”

  “I’ll stay and watch things, make sure it’s all right. You and Streeter go, get it done. We’re wasting time.”

  Her smile was forced. Streeter said, “Then make that twenty minutes if she’s not coming.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Look, you want to sit here and debate every possible scenario? Jesus Christ, we’d be done if we jumped on as soon as we got here.”

  “All right! Let’s get on.” I dropped into a soft seat. “But you’re staying, Chute.”

  She gave me that same smile.

  * * * * *

  Streeter grumbled as he sat down and stuck the transporters behind his ears. As soon as I applied them, I was in my sim. The gray space around us went on forever. Streeter’s giant sim stood next to a hovering bluish ball.

  “This is a replica of the portal,” he said. “There are shells around it that monitor access. The only way to virtualmode is through it. Anyone, or anything, that tries to access it illegally will not get through. If those things reach the portal below the Pit, they’ll have to come through this in order to virtualmode onto the worldwide Internet. If they don’t get through this, then they’re just stuck in a hole with nowhere to go.”

  A black figure flickered between us, and then Chute was standing there. She pushed the dark cowl from her head. “Hey.”

  I just shook my head. She knew how to play me. Now it was either argue with her about getting off while the clock ran or shut up. “Let’s just get this over with,” I said.

  The portal was enclosed in several translucent shells, the last one partially complete. “We need to finish the final shell to make the portal impenetrable,” he said. “Then we get off. Done.”r />
  Streeter reached into the empty space beside him, his hairy fingers grasping something invisible. He took several breaths, closed his eyes and muttered something as though he were wishing for something. Then, between his dirty fingernails, a curved puzzle piece appeared. He hunched over and slid it into a gap in the unfinished shell.

  “Anything we can do?” Chute said.

  Streeter twitched. The piece dissolved. He let out a deep breath and bowed his head. “Yeah, how about not scaring the shit out of me?”

  “Do you really need the giant sim with the fat fingers?” she said. “There’s no one here to fight, you know.”

  “Oh, sure. Give me an hour and I’ll build another sim.”

  “Don’t give me that, you’ve got generic sims in reserve. I’ve seen them.”

  “You don’t know what I—”

  “Can we get on with this?” I said.

  Streeter blew a curly lock of hair from his eyes and stared at Chute. “I have to recall the pieces and fit them into the shell. You can hold each one in place for about ten seconds or until the piece stitches while I retrieve the others.”

  He held up his hand and, again, a piece appeared between his fingers five seconds later. He bent over, carefully placing it. Chute put her finger on it and he created another piece, put it in place and I held it. He did it again. Now Chute held two of them. I let go of my piece to grab the next and it disappeared.

  “Longer, Socket,” Streeter said. “You got to give the stitching code time to lock it in place.”

  “You said ten seconds.”

  “I said about ten seconds,” he said, bringing another piece to where the first one just evaporated.

  I kept my finger on this one as long as I could. Streeter pulled them down faster, sliding each one in place and barking at us to hold them tighter and longer. We had no more fingers left. Streeter paused to give the pieces extra time to stitch. When they were a shade darker, we let go and he started after more.

  “Halfway there,” he said.

  We took deep breaths and began again. It was getting stuffy. Buxbee’s lab must’ve been overheating. Streeter had most of our fingers occupied when the gray space trembled and two pieces crumbled from the shell.