Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny (3 page)

“Did you do this, Streeter?” someone shouted.
“Did you crash virtualmode?”

“Psssht. Noooo.” He wasn’t guilty, not this
time. Streeter walked faster as wads of paper came flying.

* * * * *

Perp Alley consisted of five plastic chairs
against the wall. A heavy door with wire-imbedded glass was across
from the plastic chairs and behind that were the offices of the
Dean of Boys, the Dean of Girls, various assistant principals, and
the principal. This trip had the Dean of Boys stamped all over
it.

I was feeling better after walking down the
hall. The lookits wouldn’t let us talk and that was all right, it
gave me some time to think. Streeter had already asked what the
hell happened.
What happened? I was haunted by a ghost, that’s
all. Oh, did I mention it was my dead dad? Yeah. Oh, and I stopped
time and connected with the entire universe and experienced a
moment of spiritual oneness. Any questions?

Once we sat, I told them about the shadow,
that time seemed to stop and the world split open, that it must’ve
been some special weapon the Rimers set off, and blah, blah, blah,
I don’t know what happened, either. Crazy shit happens all the time
in virtualmode.

“The world split open?” Streeter asked. I
described the black crevasse. “That’s serious, Socket. I mean, if
you fell inside that rip you could be disembodied, your awareness
floating somewhere in the in-between forever and ever. They did a
special on Discovery, virtualmoders that lay there like vegetables
for months and months after they got swallowed in a crash.”

I didn’t bother telling him I did fall
in.

Chute was looking more through me, sort of
like a cop looking for the truth. I buried my face in my hands when
the room started spinning. I wasn’t falling, but both my feet
weren’t exactly on the ground. Chute rubbed my back. I just wanted
off the ride.

“I want revenge,” Streeter said.

“Just stop,” Chute snapped. “We hacked into
their world and they taught us a lesson and that’s the end of it.
Besides, you said it yourself, we crashed the world so it probably
doesn’t even exist anymore. You should be worried they’ll find us
and make us pay for it.”

“Naw, they’ll have safeguards against a
hiccup like that, it’ll snap right back together. Besides, those
shitheads aren’t going to report us because they were duping. Those
little black things were automated versions of a dupe to avoid
detection, like empty manikins with a single mission. They probably
blew up Socket. Hell, we could report them to the cops and have
them arrested for duping. But that wouldn’t be any fun. I’d rather
make them pay.”

“They can dupe if they want to, it’s a
private world.”

“Um, hello. Duplicating is illegal, in any
form or fashion, read your virtualmode code laws: Any attempt to
duplicate your identity, whether for business, recreation or just
plain whatever, is not allowed under any circumstances. Period, the
end. You know it, I know it. I don’t give a shit if they did it in
their dreams. You can’t dupe.”

“I really don’t give two craps,” Chute said.
“Why would anyone care what they do in their world? Stupid.”

He walked several steps away, scratching his
thick shag of brown curls like he needed a timeout from stupidity.
When he returned, he had the intense look of concentration that
flattened his face, made him look more like a frog than usual. He
said slowly, “You don’t listen in class, do you. First of all, I’m
just going to ignore the improvement in safety that virtualmode
laws have done, just forget all that. The world is going digital,
Chute. In five years, half the world’s population will be able to
virtualmode, creating a digital reality with digital bodies and
digital homes and everything, get it? People will be doing business
from their homes, commerce and manufacturing and colleges will all
be in virtualmode. If people start duplicating their identities,
how the hell are you going to know what’s real and what’s not? You
won’t! So you can’t dupe, Chute. Get it? You want to write that
down so you don’t forget? No. Duping. Period.”

Chute jumped out of her seat and shook her
finger right in his face. “Don’t do that tone with me. I don’t live
and breathe for the virtualmode like you, so I don’t know the
stupid laws. Next time you talk like that, I’m stuffing you in a
locker.”

Streeter surrendered. “Hey, don’t take your
sexual frustrations out on me. I didn’t blow Socket’s mind.” He
snapped his fingers. “Socket, come back from the dead, buddy.
Anytime now.”

I looked at Streeter snapping. I shook my
head, returning from a dreamy state.
I’m back in the skin
, I
had to remind myself. Maybe Streeter was right. There were already
studies suggesting that excessive virtualmoding was causing a
disconnect between mind and body, where one would have a hard time
distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

I needed a three-day suspension. Maybe stay
off virtualmode the whole time. Streeter would bitch, but I needed
a break.

Flip-flops slapped from around the corner and
a girl with short, black hair flip-flopped in our direction.
Streeter stared up at her with his tongue about to roll out. She
had to walk around him, flicked her eyes at Chute rubbing my back
and went into the administrative office, but not before a sudden
drop in altitude pulled my stomach through the floor. I hung onto
the chair for dear life.

[Socket Greeny, in trouble again?
Shocker.]

“Did you hear that?” I said. “Did you hear
what she was thinking?”

Chute clenched my arm tighter. Streeter and
Chute looked at each other, exchanged knowing glances, then he sat
on the other side of me. “Dude, you sure you’re all right? I mean,
you’re starting to scare me a little with the wacky talk. You sure
your nojakk isn’t flaring up.” Streeter tapped his cheek. “You hear
me now? Hear me now?”

My cheek vibrated and I heard him through the
nojakk seed imbedded in my cheek. But I heard the girl thinking. A
thought was a thought, not a goddamn voice chiming from a nojakk. I
waved him off and buried my face in my hands, again.

“Listen, buddy.” Streeter dropped his hand on
my shoulder. “You’re not hearing voices or thoughts or stopping
time. You’re just in a fuzzy area, right now, reconnecting with the
skin. It happens all the time, don’t press it. Take some deep
breaths, in with the good air, out with the bad.” Streeter
demonstrated deep breathing. “Don’t crack on me. I need you.”

“You’re not taking him back to the Rime,”
Chute said.

“Don’t be hasty. And you’re not his mom.”

I did take some deep breaths and did feel
better. This was like a bad dream that took longer than usual to
fade. The office door opened. The secretary stuck her head out.
“All right, ya’ll. Mr. Carter wants to see you now.”

We got up. I felt fine but suddenly realized
I was mad-crazy starving. I could feel my ribs poking through my
shirt, like I hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe I was getting a bit
hypoglycemic. There was a girl in my social studies class that was
hypoglycemic and she had symptoms like that. Maybe she forgot to
mention the hallucinations. And thought-reading.

“Not you, Socket,” she said. “Your mother
will pick you up at the curb in a few minutes. You need to go right
out.”

“My mom?”

“She called right after ya’ll got caught
doing whatever you were doing and said you have a family emergency.
Don’t worry, you’re still going to be suspended.”

“Oh, man.” Streeter stepped away from me like
he might get infected.

I watched the two get escorted inside and
past the secretary’s desk. Chute turned and pointed at her cheek,
mouthed the words call me. Streeter and Chute wouldn’t be feeling
too bad about their fate. Streeter lived with his grandparents and
he would make up a story as to why he was home and they would
believe it. Chute’s dad would be upset, but he was always easy on
her. But my mom?

Shit storm.

Mom pulled into the parking lot. Her car was
a silver, square thing. It didn’t look like any model I’d seen on
the road, certainly not one Ford or Chevy manufactured. It came
from work, and like most things concerning her employer, I was
clueless.

She was looking at the soccer field where a
bunch of students were testing hovering jetter discs. Some new
company donated them to the school, said the jetter boards had
anti-gravity boosters that could carry 300 pounds and they wanted
the virtualmoder students to learn how to ride them. They said they
were sponsoring a new game that would revolutionize sports. Tacket
or tagghet or something like that. Ordinarily, that would get my
interest but anything that had to do with school and/or school
spirit was immediately off my to-do list.

When I got in the car, she handed me two
breakfast bars in white wrappers. “How’d you know I was
hungry?”

She didn’t answer, just eased through the
parking lot. I tore open the first one and nearly swallowed it
without chewing. My mouth filled with saliva and my stomach roared.
It was like a shot of adrenaline tingling under my scalp. I chewed
the second bar and lay my head back. Finally, I felt back to my
skin.
What the hell are in these things?
The wrapper had no
writing on it, no label, and no ingredients. I licked the inside of
it.

We were on the Interstate heading towards
Charleston. Mom gripped the wheel like it offended her. The skin
over her knuckles pulsed. But she grabbed everything that way:
coffee mugs, doorknobs, and little soft, innocent puppies. She
stared blankly through the windshield. Maybe I was in trouble, I
wouldn’t really know for a while. We didn’t talk about things that
involved feeling.

That’s the Greeny way.

I tapped up music on my nojakk and watched
the traffic.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, we started over the
five-mile, cable-stayed bridge that crossed over the Cooper River.
“We going shopping or something?” I asked.

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.