Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny Read Online Free PDF Page B

larger. Streeter worked them
like a street performer, waving his hand around and around. It
started to come down to pick a winner—
     
    Thunder rumbles through the sand under my
feet. The next flash of lightning illuminates the silhouette of a
figure in front of me. The heavy rain blurs the details, but I
notice the knife in the right hand.
     
    “You there, in the pink shirt.” Streeter was
pointing at me. People were staring. “Yeah, you. I’m talking to
you. Wake up. What’d you say?”
    I was still leaning against the wall but
couldn’t feel my legs. I don’t know how I managed to keep from
sliding down to the ground. My entire head was ringing like a bell.
I was moving my mouth but nothing was coming out. Now the kids
watching the holographic battle turned around and looked.
    “Hey there, stranger.” Streeter came over. He
laughed nervously, looked back at the crowd and pulled on my shirt.
“That’s a nice shirt. Isn’t that a nice shirt, folks?”
    They laughed nervously, too.
    I managed a single step and it reverberated
to the top of my skull. It hurt, but it brought me back, flushed
away the heavy dullness.
    “What’s your name, stranger?” Streeter
asked.
    “Um. Socket.”
    “Boy, you nervous or just excited?” The crowd
laughed, went along with the joke.
    “Just, um, a little nervous, I guess.”
    “Nothing to be nervous about, my friend.” He
held up the gear. “Now I’m going to ask Socket to visualize someone
in his family. That person is going to materialize in front of us.
Now, normally, only Socket would see this person, but I’ve
calibrated the gear to project it for all of us to see. But first,”
he put the gear in my hands, slightly heavier than a paperweight,
“we need the locator to find Socket in time and space. Once it
finds him, standing right here, it’ll seek out his mystery
guest.”
    Others joined the crowd to watch the pink
shirt, funny-name kid holding a paperweight. All I could think
about was the thunder and the lightning and the knife, how the
figure felt familiar. And how I’d never had two visions in one day.
Panic began to rise, along with a thought: Not again. Something was changing in me and I didn’t understand it. Things
like that made me nervous.
    “Close your eyes, Socket,” Streeter said.
“Let the locator connect with your being, much like a virtualmode
transporter pulls you from your skin.”
    I took a deep breath and relaxed. I was
already feeling normal again. The last thing I wanted to do was
freak a whole bunch of people out. I closed my eyes and gripped the
locator tightly. I could feel it travelling through my arms like
filaments, searching through my nerve lines for all my organs and
the awareness of my being. It was a good prototype, but now I
understood why Streeter chose me. It wasn’t ready to fully connect
with a normal person. He needed extra-perception, someone like me
to assist its communication. So I fully engaged with the gear,
letting it merge with my awareness.
    “There we go,” Streeter said.
    I opened my eyes. A hologram of Earth
materialized in front of us, turning on the axis, like it had done
with the others.
    “So the locator is finding Socket, it’ll show
us where he is, and then we’ll ask him to…”
    The crowd began laughing. A dot was glowing
in the United States, but not in Charleston, South Carolina. It was
in the middle of Illinois.
    “You’re only off by 800 hundred miles, kid,”
someone said.
    Several people walked off, someone tossing
in, “Good luck in Washington. Loser.”
    “No, just a second.” Streeter took it from
me. “I forgot to reset the… it’ll still work…”
    But he lost them. They were heading for their
seats. The ceremony was going to begin in ten minutes anyway.
    “Man, why’d you have to go and do that?” He
scowled.
    “I didn’t do anything,” I said.
    “Because I made fun of your pink shirt?” He
stared at it. “Why are you wearing a pink shirt?”
    I showed him