“Socket?” Streeter said. “Chute? Can you hear me?”
I told Streeter what happened. I told him about the awareness transference, and how our sims had become skin. We couldn’t log off. We could smell things. We could feel.
“Impossible.”
“The portal, Streeter… there’s something about the portal being a transporter. When I touched it, our sims became skin. We’re here, Streeter. We’re not back in the lab, we’re actually here.”
He babbled on, argued and shouted. “I told you not to touch—”
“Listen!” I cut him off. “None of that’s important. It’s done! Now, how do we get out of here? There has to be a way to get back to our skin.”
“The portal. If you destroy the portal it’ll send you back. It pulled you out of your skin, you should return if it’s destroyed.”
“Can you redress us?” Chute let go, her teeth clicking together. “We need dry clothes, Streeter. Warm, dry ones.”
“Yeah, yeah… I can do that.”
The hard frozen clothes faded, simultaneously replaced with identical garb and a hot, soft coat. Cold still penetrated my bones. I went back to the crater. The portal was there. Steam hissed from cracks along Broak’s blackened body.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, Socket,” Streeter said, softly. “I thought… I didn’t know he was real.”
“I know.”
“Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he bolted back to his skin and I fried his sim. That’s all I was trying to do, you know.”
But Broak didn’t return to his skin. He was at the bottom of a burned-out hole. The look on his face said he hadn’t even seen it coming. I doubt he felt a thing.
“I’m sorry,” Streeter said. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t kill him, did I? I’m not—”
“He probably escaped, Streeter,” I lied. “Now tell me, how do I destroy that thing?”
There was a long pause. “Use your evolver,” he said, uneasily. “Just cut the thing in half.”
Chute stood next to me, wrinkling her nose. The unmistakable smell of fried skin wafted up from the pit, clinging to the back of my throat. I breathed through my mouth without pinching my nose and sat on the crater’s edge. I slid down the side a few feet and avoided touching the body. I fumbled for the portal, coaxing it with my fingertips. It was stuck. I slid closer, hooked my hand around it. It broke away with a wet snap. Chute stepped into the crater and held out her hand. Something yanked me back.
“Socket!” Chute screamed.
Broak had my arm. Bones protruded from his crispy fingertips. His head turned and crackled, and flakes of blackened skin fell away. His eye sockets were empty, and his tongue darted out, licking what remained of his lips. He pulled me closer.
“Dear Socket…”
His hand trembled. The tongue fell back into his mouth.
No. Broak did not make it back to the skin.
Buried
We lay the portal on the ground. I pulled the evolver from my waist and let it unfold around my arm, piercing my nerve lines. Never before had I felt an evolver tap into my nervous system. I imagined a weapon: A long, arching saber emerged from my hand. I curled my damaged hand against my chest and raised the weapon with my other arm. Heat radiated from the blade. Chute stepped back.
The blade sunk in. The portal swelled. It turned purple. Red. Blue-green-violet-yelloworangeblue. The saber spat back, blasting the evolver from my arm. I landed hard on the frozen ground, jolting the loose bones in my leg. It took several tries to breathe again. The evolver half-folded back into a handle, coughing electrical arcs.
Chute helped me sit up. When I was breathing normally, she asked, “What now?”
Long pause. “I can, uh, well… I can build another lightning bolt with twice the voltage. The portal won’t survive that, but the website might crash.”
“If you crash this website,” I said, “won’t that release us?”
“Not necessarily. If for some reason it doesn’t destroy the portal and crashes the website, you could end up in-between.” Another long pause. “I need to think about this.”
A fire grew from the ground, courtesy of Streeter. Flames crackled off the dry wood, sending up sparks like glowing bugs, which dissolved in the bitter air. Snow began to fall again, dusting the frozen mud.
Chute had that look. Her forehead was tight. Her lips pinched.
“You all right?” I said.
She nodded, rubbed her hands together. We listened to the water fall. “Are we going to get out of here?” she finally asked.
“We’ll get out of here.”
She spread her hands out toward the flames. She silently debated whether to believe me. There was no reason she should.
“Why do you think he did it?” Chute gestured at the crater.
I thought hard about Broak, with his perfect breeding and his perfect smile. He was a perfect specimen of a human being. But that was the rub: he was still human. He might’ve had perfect genes, but he’d been raised like a servy. He became just like a mech, following the rules. He was supposed to be perfect. But he could not be perfect. He was human. Somewhere in his teenage brain he was letting Mom and Dad down. A mom he never had. A dad that never existed.
How could the Paladins be so short-sighted? They were a greater race of humans and they couldn’t figure out they’d raised a monster?
“He was a little messed-up in the head,” I said. “He was just a kid.”
“I don’t care, he wasn’t good.”
“No.” I pushed a stick into the fire. “He wasn’t.”
The fire blazed. The heat stayed right there by the flames, not dispersing into the wintry air. Steam no longer rose from the crater as it slowly filled with snow. It was cold out there. I shook the snow off my head and limped toward Broak.
At the edge of the crater, I held my breath and ignited the evolver. It refused to completely unfold. I squeezed it harder and it finally fused to my arm, shooting sparks in protest. I formed a spade and jabbed at the frozen ground, the blade thumping through it a chunk at a time. Each time I opened the earth with another swing, I cursed the Paladins for creating Broak. I cursed them for their ignorance. Cursed them for what they did to him.
“What’re you doing?” Chute said.
“He should be buried.”
“I don’t think he deserves it. Not after what he did.”
I turned to breathe clean air, wiped my eyes. “Maybe.”
I didn’t know what to think. Broak might’ve been the leader of the dupes, for all I knew. He might’ve single-handedly led the human race into extinction had Streeter not roasted him. The Paladins dealt him an impossible life, but where was he supposed to take responsibility? At what point is it his fault and not theirs? In the end, he was just a stupid kid, believed he was the center of the universe, that he was indestructible like all the rest of us.
I mean, it’s not like we’re born with the manual on how to live life. No one gives us a clue how this is supposed to be done so can any of us be blamed when it all goes to shit? Think about it, we grow up being told there’s a fat man dressed in red that lives at the North Pole that gives us presents for free, and if we question the absurdity of it, they tell us we just have to believe and it’ll be true. Are you fucking kidding me? Reindeer don’t fly and jolly fat men don’t shove presents down the chimney. But just believe and it’ll be true. NO, IT WON’T!
Maybe Broak had the manual to life. He just read it wrong, took it too literal. He wanted life to be perfect and that wasn’t possible. Life was perfectly imperfect.
I took another chunk of ground from the shallow grave. No sense deciding on blame. The boy needed a proper burial. Fair or not. The ground thumped again. Chute pried up another piece of the ground with her battle stave. We tossed frozen earth into the crater. The dirt clods were like bricks. We buried him, along with the crawlers, as best we could, then shoveled snow on top when we ran out of earth.
We stood at the lip of the crater
, our heads bowed. “God help us all,” I said.
Chute laid her head on my shoulder, wrapped her arm around my waist. We let the snow pile on our heads and shoulders until the cold seeped inside.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get back to the fire.”
* * * * *
We stayed warm in front of the endless fire, waiting for Streeter to come up with an answer. We didn’t talk much. I wished there was something to say so that I could stop thinking about Broak, the way he bubbled in the bottom of the pit. The way he said my name at the end, almost with an edge of final regret. It was so complicated, I just wanted to stop thinking about it, but there wasn’t much to say, either. So we sat in silence until a dirt clod rolled off the grave.
I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t a big deal. Surprised I even noticed it with the wind howling above the trees, but when the second one tumbled off, I tensed up. I limped around the crater’s edge. A jointed stick poked from the fresh snow, feeling the grave like a blind man’s cane.
“Streeter!” I hobbled back to Chute.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Streeter!” I tapped my cheek. “Streeter! Get us out of here!”
All the frozen clods rumbled. A seven-legged crawler stood, legs kinked and wobbly. It fell to one side, tried to stand again. Its scarred body undulated. The burn wounds and deep gashes sealed. It was healing.
“The crawlers, Streeter! They survived!”
Snowdeaf
A second crawler rose up from the grave, its body pulsing. The evolver unfolded onto my arm, but it was sputtering. I summoned hot whips, I’d lash the things to pieces, but a weak flame only flickered in my hand.
“You guys need to run,” Streeter said.
“Are you out of your freaking mind?” I shouted. “My leg doesn’t work! You need to build us something… a transporter, a cruiser, anything!”
“I’m busy with the lightning, I can’t do it all!”
“If we don’t get out of here, LIGHTNING WON’T MATTER!”
A third crawler squirmed, running in a circle like a fly with one wing.
Chute shoved the portal into her pouch and slid her arm around me. “We have to try.”
We headed past the cave and into the trees. Each step throbbed with agony, and I was panting after only a few yards. There was a narrow trail winding uphill. The going was easier, but the pain worse. Behind us, the crawlers screeched, weaker than before the lightning strike, but at just the right pitch to twist my nerves.
“I can’t.” I covered my face. “I can’t… I can’t do this…”
“STREETER! GET US SOMETHING NOW!” Chute shouted at him like he was a god looking over a forsaken world.
“Come on, you can do this,” she urged me in a softer voice.
“I can’t, Chute.” I turned so she wouldn’t see my face. “It just… it hurts too much.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I’m only going to slow you down.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Socket Greeny!” She placed both hands on my face and forced me to look at her. “I’m never leaving you, so if you want to save me, you got to save yourself.”
Her cheeks flamed red. The look was gone—the worried look—replaced by steely courage. I couldn’t move and deadly spiders screeched behind us, but all I wanted at that moment was to kiss her on the lips.
She held out her hand, and hoisted me up, hip to hip, and together we started up the path. I closed my eyes, searching for strength to match what I’d seen in her eyes. The spark grew brighter, the power centers of my awakening whirring along my spine. If it would work, if I could stop time, I could save us.
Metal clashed as the space in front of us twisted and warped. If a crawler was materializing before us, there was no use running. We watched something assemble from empty space. Pieces sprang from the air, clinging together as more pieces emerged, rolling, turning, and clicking into place until a round platform hovered inches off the ground.
“It’s all I can do,” Streeter said. “Take the jetter and go. They’re on the move.”
“It’s enough,” Chute said. “I can get us miles away before they get this far.”
She helped me onto the back edge of the jetter and climbed onto the front. I wrapped my good arm around her waist and lay my chin on her shoulder. The jetter sagged under our weight.
“Go to the tundra,” Streeter said. “There’s a power dome that will protect you. It’s indestructible. Once you’re in, nothing can touch you.”
“Tundra?” I said. “Build it right here, Streeter, right in front of us! We don’t have time to get to the—”
“JUST GET TO THE GODDAMN TUNDRA! I can’t build it right in front of you. It’s complex code, I don’t have time to build it from scratch!”
The jetter hummed loudly, lifted and surged forward. Chute tossed her lookits and followed them. The sharp wind blurred my sight. My inner ears ached, but Streeter’s voice, calmer, sounded clear in my head.
“The power dome is remnant code from an earlier battle on the tundra, that’s the best I can do.” Screeches blasted from all around. “So please… just get to the tundra.”
* * * * *
Chute leaned forward and pushed the jetter at top speed. How could she see? Her hair whipped my face and I clung to her tightly. We reached the top of the ridge and followed a sloping path to the left, gently slaloming left and right.
A lookit returned. “We’re going into the trees,” she shouted back. “It’s the quickest way!”
The forest was dark and dense. The going got slow. We painfully bumped trees, stumps and logs. I squeezed tighter. The forest rumbled. Tremors traveled deep underground.
They were coming.
I didn’t need to say it. She heard it, too. Go faster. If we hit a tree and damaged the jetter, it was over. Streeter didn’t have time to build another. But still, go faster.
Up ahead, the shadows gave way. Light poked through the impenetrable forest. “We’re almost there!” she shouted.
We leaned into a tight turn and ducked beneath a low branch. The crude path widened beyond the last turn. Chute took the corner tight, caught a twisting vine hidden in a snow drift. The jetter turned a full circle, tipped back, and couldn’t right itself.
A bell rang.
It was ringing in the darkness.
Something picked me up. Shook me.
“Get up, Socket!” a voice said. “Don’t quit on me! It’s right there… It’s—”
It wasn’t so bad, where I was. I didn’t know where that was, but it wasn’t so bad. Maybe a little chilly. I couldn’t see in the pitch black, but at least it didn’t hurt.
Where am I? Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something? We were trying to get… something… or somewhere. We?
A light twittered, like a lighthouse beacon going round and round. It was sparkly. I urged myself closer to it. It was curious and bright. It wanted something. The next time it came around it glared like the sun. I tried to look away before it burned out my eyes, but it was impossible. I had no eyelids. The light was everywhere. I wanted to run and hide, to sleep. The light refused to let me.
It rushed into me. Filled me.
Power centers burst to life and energy surged. I had a body but I wasn’t in it. It was broken. I saw my shattered knee and, with a thought, healed it. The bones and cartilage fused together as good as new. The wrist was damaged, too. I commanded it to reassemble. Nerves repaired. Muscles healed.
I am awake.
In a single thought, I returned to my renewed body. Cold tightened my skin and took my breath. Time was not moving. Motionless snowflakes glittered like diamonds in the air. The waning sun cast an iridescent shine on the snowdrifts, like ocean waves in moonlight. Chute was crouched over me—stuck in time—her face turned to the sky, mouth open, about to cry for help or curse our fate. Jagged energy enveloped her.
A yellow dome, like a vibrant igloo, squatted amidst the snowdrifts on the far si
de of the tundra a thousand feet away. I wouldn’t be able to timeslice forever; weakness had already entered my legs as the timeslicing metabolism devoured me. I had to get to the power dome, had to squeeze every second out of the spark that I could. The crawlers weren’t far behind.
I picked up Chute and started over the white desert, carving through the waist-deep drifts, hopping when the snow was over my knees. Snowflakes bounced off my face. Snot ran over my lips. Chute got heavier.
Halfway there, I began to quiver. How far could I push it before my body was sucked dry? As far as I could. I plowed onward, going around the deepest drifts. Exhausted and numb, Chute slipped. I tumbled over her.
The dying sun brightened. Snowflakes jolted sideways. A breeze washed over me.
The dome was fifty yards away. I could do it. I picked her up and started up the deepest drift yet. My breath streamed out in a long cloud. I blinked several times to focus. The drift ended abruptly and we went down again. So numb, my legs were nothing. Gravity intensified. I tried to lift her, but couldn’t get her past my knees. The world quaked.
Can’t do it.
The timeslicing spark slipped from my grip. The wind sheared the feeling from my face. Snowflakes struck like rocks. Chute sat up, dazed. I took her hand and tried to lift her. “The dome… we’re almost there.”
She understood and helped me up. I pretended to run but could barely throw one leg in front of the other. We fell again. She shouted, but the wind blasted her words away. I started to crawl. She tried to pick me up.
Trees exploded on the far side and crawlers blasted onto the tundra like galloping creatures from another planet on twitching legs, their stride distorted by missing limbs. The pitch of their screeching was perfect. It made the gale force wind seem like a summer breeze, slamming our nervous systems, cutting away any strength we had left. We dropped like the dead.
The sky swirled darkly over us. Lightning crackled in the clouds but did not come down.
Scccreeeeeeeeeee!
The portal slipped from Chute’s pouch. I took it and crawled. Chute was next to me, her ragged hair hanging over her face.
Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny Page 18