A Voice In The Gray.

[Kyle Shane]

They sat side-by side on the park bench, letting the world around them ebb and flow, and Kyle blinked his eyes at the surreality of what he was seeing.

It was, and wasn't the Boston he knew. Everything shimmered and smoldered like a fever dream of hell. People passed by, their speed varying from swimming through molasses to a hummingbird in flight, from moment to moment, and throughout the ephemeral mirage was the same symbol, repeating, always in the corner of his eye or moving just as he glimpsed it, the red, electric, glowing eyed symbol of the Purge mask. He looked at his companion, who was sitting on the opposite end of the bench, doe eyes fixed innocently at a point over the rim of the latte she casually blew on. She could not project a more pointed expression of nonchalance if she tried. Kyle fumbled for a bottle of pills in his coat pocket, trying to look at the ingredients. She had dosed him with something - ! Had to be. That was surely the only explanation for reality twisting and bending in ways that would make a Tim-Burton directed reboot of Inception pale in comparison.

There were so many questions that sprang to mind, starting with, what the hell. He had been grabbed, drugged, and now sat hallucinating as the world spun and the people flowed around him like a river. And yet, the therapist that had just been installed in his life sat beside him, calmly drinking coffee. Before he could give voice to the scattered puzzle of thoughts in his head, though, Krista raised a placating hand and said, "It's time we talked, Kyle... and don't worry, it doesn't have to be a long one."

"What did you do to me, you witch?"

Krista smiled drily as she gulped her latte. The red mask symbol burned bright like a cigarette cherry for a second in the air. "For us to talk about why you're here, you have to have a certain understanding about the world we live in. C'mon. Walk with me." She rose, and held out her hand. It was such a simple gesture, but so fraught with trust that he wasn't sure he could give. He hesitated, but she didn't press him, and that was enough to engender trust. As they walked, the entire scene was breaking down and rebuilding around him, changing from the quad on the Boston Common to the financial district. Big, monolithic buildings began growing up like trees, but one in the center of the hallucination, a giant black stone building, lorded over them all. It bled an aura of blackness that radiated off it like a fog, and as it loomed over them, it's shadow spread, a cancerous rot that made trees wither. A street vendor's cart, bearing loads of flowers, blooming in beautiful pastels, began blackening on the stem, and Kyle shivered.

"This is the center of all the ills in the world. In every city, monolithic corporations have taken a foothold at the center of the world's financial structures. Big money capitalists that buy and sell stocks worth billions. Rich old men that control the lives of entire countries with their influence. Who use the blood money leached from people all the way to the very bottom, who can barely afford to afford housing, while their overlords make in an hour what they make in a year."

Kyle retracted his hand. "That's a pretty simplified explanation for the way the world works, Krista. I mean, the American dream is capitulated on those people at the bottom one day finding a way through their means get themselves up to that top level."

She looked embittered. "But they never will, because don't you see, Kyle, we are at the mercy of puppet masters that keep stringing the people along. It is a sickness, a rot, the Black. But then you have the opposite end of the spectrum. The people at the bottom, the ones broken by the system, who don't want to live under the rules of a capitalist society. Who don't want to be governed by debts to anyone. Who just want to be free of this new form of slavery that has become the 21st century, of forever being bound to the yoke of a wheel that is destined to never move more than a quarter of the way uphill. It isn't that I, or you, or anyone is going to become the new 1%. What I'm getting at is one, true anarchy. The collective rule of the many. The ability for us as a collective to govern and rule ourselves using the basic rules and beliefs of society as a whole, instead of ones written on a piece of paper or judged by the elite. People thinking and doing for themselves, instead of bowing before some demagogue spouting lies. Power corrupts. The United States way of "ruling", if you can truly call it that, leaves people burned out, afraid to dream for fear that they'll step out line. In this holy land, those in power need the people to believe in only one thing, the Right's superiority, because their belief in that is what gives them power. In the land of do as you please, those on top are powerless, and THAT, my friend, is what they are afraid of. Being powerless."

Krista jabbed a finger at the black building spreading the rot. "That building is indicative of our mission, they are behind some of the most powerful dealings. They have so many senators, foreign dignitaries and shell companies in their pocket, they're in everything. Shinron Industries. I'm sure, it wouldn't surprise you to know, that Shinron even has a controlling industry in the very company that you signed a contract for? That's right, Kyle. You were talking earlier about wrestlers being beholden to bookers, being beholden to company presidents, being beholden to the TV networks, being beholden to cable corporations. Well the money behind all of that, all the way to the conglomerate that owns the biggest chunk of it, even more than General Electric, is Shinron. They own you."

"Nobody owns me, lady." His voice was stubborn. "And what you're saying is bullshit. Shinron is just a company. For crying out loud, Hiro Sasuke works... there..." And it was then he realized that he hadn't spoken to Hiro in quite some time.

As they walked down the distorted, decaying street, he scrubbed his eyes at the things he was being shown. A limo with open doors was parked in front of a bistro, with foul looking cherubs and a pot-bellied pig in a pin-striped suit staring out at him. A tentacle pulled the door to the limo and shut it fast. The darkness, the cancer from the Nightmare Shinron building was engulfing everything around him. The city was becoming embers and ash. "Enough!"

She shrugged, and with a wave of her hand in front of her, the world bled out, and the blackness receded, and he found himself in a place that was peaceful and tranquil, but so bright. "Of course, there are alternatives. Do like many are endeavoring to do, to get away from the Black. Go off the grid, unhook yourself from the daily rigors of being sold every thought, every idea, having everything from your ideology to what clothes you need to be wearing dictated to you by a corporate run media that even controls what you think of your political leaders. Detach yourselfl from the world completely. After all, it's what you wanted to do, what you tried to do for so long..." She shook her head sadly. "Poor little wounded boy, never wanted to get close to people again after losing his mother, so he made the entire world his game system and everyone around him a NPC."

Kyle bit his lip. Krista's tone was harsh, snarky, and he didn't appreciate it, but he had to admit that, ouch, it was a fair assessment. "Or?..." he ventured.

"Or you can do like those in our cause have been doing. Making it easier for those who live in the white to break free of the black, because we are bound to neither. We are a voice for everyone in the middle, who want to fight back and tear those scum-sucking corporations to the ground. A voice in the Gray. And you could be, too. With your influence, Kyle, having walked in both worlds, having connections that run all the way up top, you could strike a blow against the Rot, against the Black, that will cripple them. You could bring Shinron and monopolies like them that held a strangehold over media and money and power to their knees. You could bring the entire world out of the dark and into the White."

Kyle's mouth puckered, then twisted in a wry, scathing moue as he rolled his eyes. "You can't possibly be this naive, Krista, or this brainwashed into hearin' your own shit."

"Not brainwashed, little boy. Just passionate."

"It's interesting, you choose to call yourself gray, the halfway point between white and black. Cause no matter how white you think you are, gray's still got more black in it. And it doesn't matter how much white you put in there, the Gray will always contain some Black." And yet... as he looked around him, this peaceful meadow, the rolling green hills and the sunlight so bright it was almost white... it gave him a calm feeling. Like somehow, in some way, this is a place he would want to end up.

The abrasive doctor put in, "Now who's being naive?"

Kyle turned to her, trying to block out the enticing... niceness of this mirage, this beautiful expanse. "And just what would I get out of joining some Occupy terrorist anti-capitalist league? What do I gain from joining you, Krista? Why should I trust you?" His eyes searched hers, but she remained bristly, unreadable, flinty.

"How about this: how are you liking your new contract with Pure Class Wrestling, Kyle?"

For a second he was so taken aback by the rapid change in conversation that he didn't even follo the line of thought. "It's been moderately successful so far, but it just doesn't feel the same," he admitted, "Try as I might I didn't come in and rocket right into people's attention like I did the last time, and I can tell I put people off by being as brash and outspoken as I was - (why am I telling you this?...) -"

Krista's smile was easy, reassuring, but she had a spark in her eyes that said gotcha. "That's because you're still trying to give them WGWF Kyle Shane. You're trying to replicate what brought you success in your last federation, when wasn't it you that came to me in our therapy sessions that was saying, that being that person was killing your motivation to do anything?" She pressed on, and he turned, scanning the horizon of the surreal meadow, as she continued. "Because wasn't that anathema of what you always claimed to be about? Changing, growing? You were in a rut 'cause you weren't doing anything new. The gamer had finally run out of challenges. You reached a point where you stopped growing, and stopped trying. When you could look at the new chapter of your life as a brand new challenge. You have endless possibilty, these people don't know you, therefore the easiest and yet most satisfying thing in the world would be to create yourself, reinvent yourself on a weekly basis right in front of the eyes of a whole new audience."

"You think?" He said with a frown. "But, I'm still running into a brick wall. The entire reason I came to PCW was because it seemed like such a laughable bizarro world, where people like Dan Fierce and Nathan Saniti who were out-and-out jokes that lost matches to everyone, here are viable, strong contenders. And then, to my surprise, was the fact that Lunacy transplanted his entire Anarchy stable up and dropped them here, and changed nothing, and yet he stands here a two-time Underground champion. Does that say something about a lack of skill in the WGWF, or a lack of recognition of real talent in PCW, or what?" He plucked at a blade of grass on the ground, let it float away on the wind.

"All I know is that fighting Lunacy in the WGWF helped kill my motivation more than any other tactic. And I'm sure he'll take credit for it, say he weakened my resolve because he exposed me to his madness, whatever. But the truth is, I was paired against Lunacy on a weekly basis for months, it seemed, and I always found a way to kick the crap out of him. Lunacy is a Kim Possible game for Game Boy Advance on Easy Mode. It took about, five minutes to suss out that he doesn't know what he's talking about at any given point in time, and after that, figuring him out was a cakewalk. You look at what he did at Collision Course, he point blank would not have won the Underground Championship if not for having two big, mindless, leg-breaking goons accompany him to the ring in a tank. Now, he's going to boast about that, he's going to say he upset the natural order and introduced anarchy. But much like your ideals, that isn't what anarchy is."

She knelt beside him in the grass, put her arm around her knees casually, listening. "So I'm facing him, and every week I have to find some different kind of way of saying this, Lunacy, you're a little chickenshit, Lunacy, you don't even know how to portray an insane character even if you were handed all the reference material in the world, Lunacy, you're a pathetic little shitheel that despite having some nebulous and overblown backstory as being a Special Forces military man (because of couse he does, that way the Deadpool pastiche is complete) can't win an actual fight without bringing Mark Maylock out to the ring to rub baby oil on your nipples and kick people's faces for you. Lunacy, you absolutely ARE a ripoff of Deadpool, and the simple fact is that you're not smart or imaginative enough to make something like this work speaks volumes. And on, and on, and on. Every week, he never beats me, and I have to do it all over again later." Kyle rolls his eyes, and then makes an understood gesture, "And him! He's just repeating himself. Kyle Shane, you're a hero to these people. You come out here and you kiss their asses, you shake their hands and you play to them. You reassure them that you are in control but ANARCHY means Control Is A Lie. Do you want to bet he has these PCW feebs buying into his Control is A Lie narrative? Would you believe he is telling the same exact story he was in the WGWF, this idiotic "war" against the authority figures because He wants to destabilize the company? Can you believe he's been saying the same shit for two years?"

Kyle shakes his head a little. "So, yeah. Maybe there's something to what you say, about not changing. Maybe I got stuck in a stagnant little rut the way Lunacy has there, and it's why I was so comfortable letting it end. I'll grant you that, Krista." He looks sidelong over at her. "But that's the problem. How do I say these things to him when in every way I can look at him and I can see the failings that befall me if I ever get as lazy and as wasted potential as him?"

Krista looks soft for the first time in this entire meeting, not tender, but she has let the hard-edged clinical psychologist barrier drop. "Hm. Well, I can tell you this, you don't have to worry about that because, from a clinical standpoint, Lunacy is nothing more than a poseur. He's in love with the aesthetic of madness, but every single thing he says and does is just the work of somebody who's only diagnosis is petulant childish narcissism. Everything, from the simple fact that he names himself Lunacy and yet in bold letters proclaims that he's nothing like any other "crazy character, ever", because, what, I suppose he's smart and calculating and ruthless.The simple fact is that anytime someone even attempts to hint at the fact that they're clinically insane it makes therapists snort derisively. I would love to read his case file," she finishes with a short laugh. And now, Kyle is looking at her in a whole new light. The fiery anarchist rhetoric has fallen back a bit while he's talking shop. He doesn't know how to read this moment, but while he's deciding whether to go for it, her edge comes back, bit by bit.

"But Kyle, think of what you could do, the power you could have. Working with us and our cause by day, then becoming a champion by night. You are the one who has a foot in both worlds. And I know, that you're always looking for a new challenge."

Kyle groaned. And, for a second among the billowy clouds rolling over the hill, he saw, not the sun, but the mask symbol which made the entire meadow sky flare red.

"You could be a voice for everyone in the middle for PCW. Not a member of Seromine's flock. Not beholden to Rick Majors or the DWO or any corporate master. A symbol of both the best and the worst potential. A true voice in the Gray."

He rubbed his chin. "And in return, you want me to what, use my clout as the PCW's new golden boy to get a meeting with Shinron?"

"Among other things." She said. She was pushy, impatient, now, and he was starting to question her agenda. And with that, she stood, and extracted a card from her purse. She brushed her dress off primly, and the hard-edged clinical armor was back in full force. The card, Kyle noted, was embossed with a glowing version of the red mask, and he just had time to note that he had touched a card like that in her office when she touched the symbol. The world around them swirled, colors faded and reformed. The meadow went away, and the park began building itself back up, cobblestone bricks and planted trees came back. Kyle goggled at her, and then she held the card up. Hallucinogenic light show activated by touching the paper on the card and the treated symbol. Kyle looked around him, at a world slowly returning to normal. And yet, the wistful feeling of that meadow, that happy place lingered in his mind.

And so, disturbingly, did the Nightmare Shinron building, the giant, folding tower that built itself over the city, choking it with inky cancer blackness.

He focused back on her. "But what's most important to us in the Gray, Kyle... no, what's important to me, is that the man behind the curtain here is very familiar with you. And I think when this all shakes out and Shinron is destroyed, you and me can take him down together..."

His mouth twisted in a dubious smirk. "And who might that be."

"He calls himself Patrick. Says he's your brother." She said, off-handedly. "Look, I don't know, but I do know this much. I want to be free. From everybody. And you could help me. You help me, I'll help you, right?"

He hadn't heard anything since the word Patrick. He was all business now, as he said coldly, "I want to see him."

They walked on down the street, but Kyle took one look back. Krista had discarded the little card, and it burned there, the eyes of the Purge mask as red as simmering coals against the grass of the common, as Kyle turned and trotted on after Krista. The card lay there burning, for quite some time after.