The Making of Socket Greeny: A Science Fiction Saga

by Tony Bertauski

  “Use one of your rooms?” Streeter asked.

  “Booked, my man.” Chief looked at his computer. “Get you in tomorrow.”

  “Just need a monitor.”

  “You come here for a monitor?” Chief said. “You grounded?”

  “Need some anonymity. Nothing big, just a side project.”

  Chief sighed. For a second, it appeared he would say no. “Just, uh… all right. No illegal activity. No hacking, racking or stacking of identities. No duplications or ratting.” Chief recited the rules for the thousandth time.

  “Yeah,” Streeter said. “We’re not going out.”

  “Then why you here?”

  “I don’t need eyes.”

  Again, Chief appeared to think twice about giving the keys to one of his portals to Streeter. No one came to Gearheads just to use a computer, you came to go out on virtualmode. He had a good reason to be suspicious. And it was Streeter, so he had two.

  “School project,” Streeter said. “We need it on the down-low, know what I mean?”

  “My ass,” Chief said. “Gum it up and you pay.”

  “Nick my account if I do.”

  “Dump your account if you do.”

  We followed Streeter into the back. The virtualmode rooms were behind closed doors. They varied in size, from solo rides to group outings. We went to the back room, where curved monitors were stationed against the walls. It was a poor man’s way into virtualmode, a three-dimensional visual of the environment without immersion.

  “Over here.”

  Streeter led us to the corner and turned the monitor so the few kids in the room—a couple ten-year-olds totally soaked in a game—wouldn’t see what we were doing if they happened to look up. He plugged in a flash drive.

  “Somebody messed with Buxbee’s library,” he said.

  This wasn’t news. We put ourselves deep in the hole and somehow nothing happened? Chute and I cleaned up twenty books at most, and the entire stack had been sorted and cleaned when we got out. That didn’t happen spontaneously.

  “We know,” Chute chided. “Anything else?”

  “Just watch.”

  He looked back over his shoulder and turned the monitor a bit more. We watched a scene of our generic sims walk through the library and gawk at the view out back before coming back to clean up the mess.

  “That’s it?” Chute asked.

  “We didn’t go back to clean up,” he said.

  “Yeah, we know.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange?” Streeter whispered. “Someone went to a lot of effort to rebuild the time line so that no one knows what happened? That’s not easy to do, Chute. I’d say it’s impossible. But here we are.”

  “If you want to send someone a thank you card for saving our asses, I’m in. Otherwise, bye-bye.”

  He grabbed her arm. “You think that was Jack and Josh’s big surprise? Sucker us into plundering the family vault then erase everything and act like nothing happened? Come on, Chute. Something big is here, admit it.”

  “Oh, I’m admitting it. And now I want to leave it alone.”

  “Hold on.” He grabbed her again. “Just… just watch, okay. One more thing.”

  This time he zoomed the view on our sims walking out to the portico, the futuristic cityscape twinkling in bright detail. Our generic sims sauntered off to the left in casual conversation, no hint of us sneaking off to the right. We never went to the left. We stood there the entire time, and then I heard the sims to the left. That was Streeter’s distraction. And then I saw it.

  The wrinkled air.

  A heat wave baked the space above the portico for less than a second. And then our sims went back to the library.

  “See that?” Streeter said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Yeah? You saw it, Socket?”

  I was nodding. “I saw that in the hallway before we went in.”

  “You saw the footprint?” Streeter said.

  “Footprint?”

  He rolled the footage back and pulled the view toward the stone flooring of the portico. A few keystrokes slowed the action. Then he rolled a heat-sensitive overlay onto the scene.

  “This was the pivotal scene,” Streeter said. “So I ran it through an array of diagnostics and got lucky right… about… there.”

  The timestamp measured its appearance as only lasting two milliseconds. It was the damp impression of a bare foot. It occurred just after the heat wave, but Streeter didn’t seem to think that was weird.

  Or didn’t see the heat wave.

  “Evidence.” He sat back. “Someone entered the library under some cloak and rewrote everything. The question is why.”

  “No, a question,” Chute interrupted. “Just a thank you.”

  “Whoever did this has real power, Chute. This shit’s above the law and it ain’t the government. We’d have been arrested if it was.”

  “You admit it!” She leaped up. “You almost got us arrested!”

  The kids on the other side of the room looked over. Streeter pulled her down and leaned in. “Okay, you’re right,” he said just above a whisper. “I got us in the shit, but why did someone bail us out, huh?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We need to know.”

  “No, we don’t. We need to stay as far away as possible because we got lucky.”

  “There’s no such thing as luck. We attracted real power, Chute.”

  “Breaking the law doesn’t attract real power, Streeter. It attracts law enforcement.”

  “We didn’t get arrested, did we? Right, Socket? Am I right?”

  I didn’t know which way to flop. On the one hand, Chute was right. We got lucky; we shouldn’t push it. I was all for a little trouble, but I didn’t want to go to jail or, worse, put my mom through a legal battle. A fight here and there was just kid trouble.

  These are big-boy rules.

  But there was something going on. And deep down, I wanted to know. Deep down, I’d always felt like there was something bigger to life, some truth behind the curtain that I wanted to know. I wanted to know, needed to know my true nature. My original face. My real self.

  I’m behind the curtain.

  “The air,” I said. “It wrinkled just before the footstep.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” Streeter punched a fist into his open palm. “Wait, what?”

  “Back it up.”

  It took three times before he saw it, the subtle heat waves that roiled the atmosphere. He seemed to be going along with it at first, just to keep me on his side.

  Then I told them about the hallway.

  And what happened when I disappeared in the vault room. The tentacles and the memories. The flapping colors and silver flashes. The strange grip on my arm just before I vanished.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Chute said softly.

  “Sounds like you fell through a trip world,” Streeter said. “Maybe some sort of virtualmode bleedover or fracture, I don’t know. Why were you holding out?”

  “I needed time,” I said. “It just feels… I don’t know.”

  “What?” Chute asked.

  I didn’t want to say it. It was more likely Streeter was right, that I was going through some reality confusion, the overlap of virtualmode environments and reality. A sort of burnout for virtualmoders.

  But I couldn’t help feeling this way.

  “It feels like I’m remembering,” I said.

  “Remembering what?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Memory extraction.” Streeter snapped his fingers. “You said it felt like the whips rooted in your head just before you disappeared, right? Someone pulled you out. Someone doesn’t want anyone accessing your memories.”

  “What memories?” I said.

  “Or maybe they don’t want you to remember,” Chute added.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Streeter said dreamily. “But why you?”

  He sounded jealous. He was virtualmode royalty, not
me. Why would anyone want to protect what was in my head. I just pounded energy drinks and binge-watched videos. I was an average teenager.

  There was something behind the curtain. And the curtain almost got pulled aside. Someone was there to stop it.

  Someone above the law.

  “What makes you so special?” Streeter mused.

  “Reel it in, narcissist,” Chute said.

  “Don’t use big words.”

  “Reel it in, dick.”

  “I’m just saying, why would someone with this much power be protecting us? Or Socket, if that’s what it is.”

  “You’re missing the obvious,” I said.

  They both stared for different reasons. Streeter wanted more. Chute wanted it to stop.

  “That wrinkled air,” I said. “It happened in the hallway. And under the bleachers, too.”

  It took a moment to sink in. That sort of anomaly in virtualmode could be chalked up to coding error, even with this strange rewrite of the timeline. But in the skin? We could blame it on brain burn, that I was starting to cook, but all of this happened in the skin and in virtualmode. It wasn’t just a hallucination. Something was out there.

  Someone is steering.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Streeter answered. “But we’re going to find out.”

  “Play back the library.” I scooted my chair forward. “There has to be more evidence, a thread we can follow.”

  “Are you both tilted?” Chute said. “You’re actually going to follow this?”

  “I’m sorry,” Streeter said. “This is for people with balls.”

  “I’m going to stuff you in my shoe.” She snatched the flash drive out of the computer. “And keep you from finding more trouble.”

  “And you think I don’t have a backup copy?”

  She stared at the miniature memory stick and shook her head. A deep sigh. “Why?” she said. “Why do this?”

  “Why climb a mountain?” Streeter said. “Why go to the moon? Because it’s there, Chute. Something out there wants us to climb it.”

  “Someone’s watching,” I muttered.

  “Who?” she asked, begging. “Why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Socket has a secret,” Streeter added.

  “I do?”

  He nodded. “They’re protecting your memories from getting out. Even you don’t know what it is. But we’re going to find out what’s in there. What makes Socket Greeny tick.”

  He held out his hand. Chute tossed the flash drive back. We were going to follow the bread crumbs. We might end up boiling in a witch’s cauldron.

  Or find a pot of gold.

  As it would turn out, no one could guess what was behind the curtain. Least of all, me.

  6.

  Laundry was flapping.

  My neighbor down the street, Mrs. Higgins, was old school that way and clipped her laundry to a cord strung between her back porch and the privacy fence. I helped her put it up a few years ago.

  It was hot. A scorcher for summer. I was soaked in sweat when a fierce wind came out of nowhere. Sheets snapped off Mrs. Higgins’s line; towels rolled through the grass. She needed to get them inside before—

  WHOOMP.

  I shot up from the couch; an empty bag of chips crinkled beneath my feet. It took a moment to catch up with my surroundings, my heart pulsing in my ears. I was at home with the television on—a sci-fi flick I’d seen a thousand times about artificially intelligent machines and the illusion of reality.

  The ceiling fan wobbled overhead, the chain dancing in the uneven churn. I couldn’t remember turning it on that high, but it was welcome. I was burning up, my hair matted across my forehead, shirt soaked through.

  The rustling of bed sheets returned.

  I was dreaming that. It was the sound of Mrs. Higgins’s laundry on the line, the snapping of linen and tumbling of wet towels on a blazing hot afternoon—

  There. I heard it again.

  This time behind me.

  All the lights were off. The house was dark except for the television. Shadows danced off sharp corners, splashing eerie images off the windows.

  I muted the volume.

  Listened.

  It was coming from Mom’s bedroom. The door was closed, no light beneath it.

  “Mom?” My throat was tight. I sounded prepubescent and tried again, deeper this time. Manlier. “Hey, Mom. You home?”

  The thought of announcing I had a man-eating dog with me crossed my mind. I pushed my hair out of my eyes, damp and sticky. I was parched with fever, my throat gritty.

  I stood outside her door, hand on the knob, and counted to three. Then ten. Then started over, swearing if I didn’t hear anything that I’d just leave it alone.

  “This is stupid.”

  I threw the door open and stepped back. My pulse crashed in waves. The room was spotless.

  As usual.

  I found the light switch. The bedspread was without a wrinkle. The pillows fluffy without a dent. Everything just as she left it a week ago. I stepped inside. A surge of endorphins kept me hyperalert, my ears targeting every little sound. Someone had been in her room, I could feel it. Yes, I feel it.

  But there was no evidence, no nothing.

  I’d been sleeping alone in the house for a week, and now I had a raging fever with the insatiable urge to shed my skin like an old suit. These feelings were hallucinations, not premonitions.

  Her dresser was clean, no knickknacks. A lamp at her bedside with a glass of water waited for her return. Nothing was out of order, unlike the rest of the house trashed with pizza boxes and empty bottles of energy drink, a not-so-subtle way of punishing her extended leave of absences from the job of Mother.

  A job she hardly seemed to care about.

  I looked through the closet, under the bed, in her dresser drawers. I wasn’t going back out to the couch without a full inspection. Any other noises I’d chalk up to hallucinations and enjoy the ride.

  Outside it was dark.

  It was close to midnight. I pried apart the blinds with two fingers. The outline of a maple was barely visible in the dark, the gray branches slightly lighter. I let go of the crinkled slats when something flashed.

  My heart jumped.

  That feeling was back, the one that told me someone was in the room. Someone was watching. Only this time there was evidence. Something flashed a pair of golden orbs. I saw them in the tree’s canopy.

  And another pair.

  Three, altogether.

  It could be a cat. Well, three cats. All of them sitting in the tree and staring at me. And blinking very slowly.

  Shit.

  This wasn’t a dream. I checked the window to make sure it was snapped closed and locked, then backed out of the room and went to the kitchen. I turned the television off and sat back in the dark to let my eyes adjust. Easing over to the back door, hand on the light switch, I paused.

  Took a breath.

  [Hey.]

  My thighs liquefied.

  I flopped onto the countertop and threaded my fingers through my hair. My heart was exploding.

  [What’re you doing?] Streeter’s voice came through my nojakk implant, vibrating in my head.

  I touched my cheek. “Dying.”

  [Nice.]

  I flipped the switch. Light flooded the backyard and the neighbor’s cat leaped over the fence. Everything was creepier in the dark. Even cats.

  “It’s midnight,” I said.

  [I been thinking and noticed you were awake. Am I ruining your beauty sleep?]

  “You’re ruining my health.” I chugged a cup of water and downed two ibuprofen. “Should I ask what you’re thinking?”

  [Always.]

  Of course, he’d been planning the next attack. He didn’t call it that, more of a seek-and-discover mission, but it included ways to get back at Jack and his brother. I half-listened as I fell onto the couch and booted the television on.

&nb
sp; [We go back to the vault,] he said.

  “Chute will kill you.”

  [She doesn’t have to know.]

  “She’ll find out. Then she’ll kill you.”

  [She’s not the mom, Socket. Get some balls.]

  I called up a list of messages on the television. Mom left one every day. They started with an apology, something came up, make sure I brush my teeth and get my homework done. It was bad long-distance parenting, like she was reading from a script that she wanted to feel but couldn’t, a fake-it-until-you-make-it attempt that had been stuck in fake mode since forever.

  “Why you doing this?”

  [You have lost your balls.]

  “You lost your mind.”

  [It’s the challenge, Socket. It’s fun. Something happened we don’t understand, come on now. Let’s go discover something, right?]

  I queued up Mom’s last message, the one that told me to clean up the house.

  [I want to help you.] Streeter said.

  “Me?”

  [Yeah, man. You’re always there for me, you know. A little late sometimes but always there. I’m there for you, bro. You’re no trip, Socket. You’re the real and I’m just here for the ride.]

  “Look who’s tripping now.”

  [Be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for gold. Whoever duped us has some big guns that I’d like to cop, but you’re the key to it all, see? You feel that? That whole scene at the vault was triggered by your memories. Something was unlocked that someone didn’t want you to see.]

  “The truth is out there sort of thing.”

  [You’re not curious?]

  Was I curious? I was more scared. To see your true nature is a hell of a show. What if I didn’t like it? Would it be better to just suffer in ignorance than take that chance?

  As it would turn out, I wouldn’t have a choice. When it came to true nature, none of us do.

  “Get Chute on board,” I said. “I don’t want to be on her bad foot.”

  [No. Of course you don’t.]

  “What’s that mean?”

  He took a long pause. [Gearheads on Friday. I got us three seats.]

  I tapped out and leaned back, yawning. The pills were already taking the edge off the aches. Instead of calling up the television, I played Mom’s last video message, the one where she apologized, told me to clean up, asked me to call her back, she couldn’t help being gone. She looked so tired, so stressed. It was just like the rest of the messages, except for the last part.