Socket 1 - The Discovery of Socket Greeny by Tony Bertauski Page A

data.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
Preserved
    Weeks passed. Then months. Instead of getting
on a bus for school and falling asleep in front of the TV, I was
somewhere else in the world where they administered tests and I
went to sleep on a weightless bed looking out so called windows
with views of canyons, oceans or whatever scenic view was on tap
for the night. Sometimes I forgot it was just a picture, that few
things I saw were actually real. Then again, I wasn’t trying to
think all that much. If I really thought about what was happening,
I’d unravel. So I did what they told me, went where they wanted me
and shut up for once.
    I thought a lot about Pike. Not so much the
part where he tried to rip my mind in half, I tried to forget that
part, but the question he asked: Who are you ? I think he
meant to find out if I was a spy or something, but I kept hearing
it a different way. Who am I? I thought I was some sixteen
year old latchkey kid growing up in a broken home. I figured I’d
end up drilling holes in sheet metal for a living and die in a
retirement home. Not exactly the American dream, but there were
worse fates.
    But now who am I ? Really, who am I?
Does anyone really know who they are? Are we just a
collection of behaviors we learned as babies that run us around
like wind-up toys? Or does anyone know why we’re here? Is there a
purpose to any of this besides getting a piece of gold and a boat
and hot wife to put on it? There has to be more to life than just
this.
    I sat in my little room sometimes pondering
all that, but I always ended up on that one question: Who am
I? Somehow it didn’t feel like it had an answer, but it was a
question that had to be asked. Over and over. If I didn’t ask it, I
felt crazy. And I had to hang onto every shred of sanity I could
because this place made little sense. And everything I thought I
was didn’t exist anymore. So who am I now?
     
    * * * * *
     
    My testers were never the same person.
Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Never Pike. Thank the lord in
heaven. They were never friendly, never rude. They took blood
samples, tissue samples, made me run, walk, do push-ups, asked some
of the goofiest questions I’ve ever heard. “Have you ever noticed
cockroaches following you?”
    “What?”
    He or she would ask the question again,
almost as if they just wondered if I liked vanilla or chocolate ice
cream.
    Sometimes the interviews were more formal. We
would face each other in chairs, they’d ask questions, I’d answer.
Sometimes they would ask if I saw certain colors, or heard a
certain thought. Sometimes, I did. I felt psychic pressure, but
nothing like what Pike did; that was like a grown man trying to
squeeze his fat ass into a baby’s onesy. The testers would ask me
to open my mind and asked what came up. The first couple
times I sat there and daydreamed. The third time, I saw something. It was like my mind had become a three-dimensional
staging area. A reddish object appeared.
    “What did you see?” the tester asked.
    “An apple.”
    The tester said nothing. Wrote nothing down.
But I was right. He was thinking of an apple and I saw it.
    The next day, I knew how to read thoughts.
That’s right, I could look into someone’s mind and see what they
were thinking. I could even shut the thoughts out, if I wanted. It
wasn’t doing me a damn bit of good around the Paladins that had
full control of their thoughts. Opening my mind to them was like
trying to find out what a wall was thinking. But I could read their
thoughts if they let me.
     
    * * * * *
     
    “How do I stop time?” I asked.
    The tester sat quietly, hands on his thighs.
“You will have to look deep inside yourself,” he said, calmly,
softly, almost mechanically. “Inside there will be a metaphorical
mechanism, a symbolic trigger, you can use to alter your
metabolism. Some experience this as a spark found in the solar
plexus.”
    I closed my eyes, focused on my gut. I
remembered that sparkly feeling I