The Last Kyle Shane Story, pt 3. (Endings)

[Kyle Shane]

All Things Must Pass. 

So far this is looking like an article I'll never get to write, so I'll just make the notes here... all of the debate in one's head over what kind of hero a certain someone is goes out the window when you're hip deep in a mess of their unfinished business. But when you get right down to it, the questions raised by this are profound. What does being good really mean? When you're as fascinated by what you leave behind as Kyle Shane, how did it feel to try and balance the good with the darkness, and what kind of steps did you take? Was he ever able to truly know when he had done enough one way or another, or was there ever a point where he stopped and said that it was too much? Maybe it was always too much. Maybe the human condition is just too dark, and it's a fool's dream to aspire to be more. The loftiest goals of rising above your station and leaving something behind to be remembered, even revered can turn bleak. Sometimes the gentle touch you put into action can be the closed fist that crushes the plant you're trying to nurture. And... and...

I'm going to die here, in this repository full of Kyle Shane's old memorabilia help me please if you find this tape God please there's still a chance that I'm hiding under the -

She pulls out her own sidearm and lets off a few shots. Eldon has us pinned down. Brandy, thinking quickly, upended a table, spilling mannequins with old wardrobe on it to the ground. In the cacaphony, you can just barely make out his voice, goading it on. "All I had to do is find which house the old woman had holed up in, Brandy, you led me right to that..."

"Are you insane, Eldon? Your sick, sightless mother is here in the orrery with us and you're coming in like it's Rio Bravo?" Brandy shouts, back against the table, ready to pop up and fire off another few rounds.

The holoproj- is on it's side, playing a broken Kyle Shane message from long, long ago, you can only see his head, the projection skipping words like a manically glitched game. " -talk ab-t facin- a sumo's -rat- as if th- s-pos- to be some kind of thr-t, the fat f- is so obese that if I want-d to get really f-ck up I'd challenge him to an I Quit match and make h- walk up a flight of st-"

Eldon responds to Brandy's taunt by shooting a hole in the table. Brandy allows herself a worried gasp, and I, well, can't hold back a scream.

His voice comes through gritted teeth, it's clear that he's a momma's boy... in that, he and his father are much alike. So he of course is conflicted about the possibility of hurting her, but at the same time... He blinks back emotional sweat coming down into his eyes. "It is his fault that she's here, Brandy. And I'm sick of you defending him."

"I'm defending him because no matter if you think what he did was good, evil, or neutral, our dad's work was important, Eldon," she shot back, exasperated, "I mean, think of all the research he accomplished, think of all the important work he could do once he realized if he just stopped that corny wrestling gig and went to work on what he was meant to do with his life. -Ahem-"

"Work like what? Work like leaving his family behind? Work like not paying attention to us?" His voice cracks, "To me?"

Brandy rolls her eyes, completely done with the petulant white boy's nonsense. I try hard to dissuade her from sassing him, but I can't stop her from shooting back, "That's all this tantrum is about, isn't it. A jilted little kid inside that's all twisted up mentally because he never got his father's approval. You idiot, don't you know that's exactly the same type of person our father was?!"

He seems to feel a sting in that which, makes him silent, chewing over that barb, but he still looms in the periphery. Despite his blonde hair, thin, wormy lips, and ridiculous mercenary combat outfit, he looks very much his father's son.

His voice comes through, bitter. "I didn't make him walk away from me. From mom! God, Array, you stupid old woman, you still have stars in those burnt out eyes, despite what you've seen. What you saw, in your last ever moment of vision! He abandoned us. He took the power in that God damn Macguffin that he and Hiro Sasuke concocted in their lab and he used it to split. Ta-ta, thanks for the memories, nobody. Come around here and tell me I'm not right."

She stands up. I'm shocked, but the sick, worn, frail body of what used to be, according to accounts, the most beautiful girl Kyle Shane had ever seen in the world; rises from her hiding place behind a column. She wrings her hands, afraid of whatever fate is coming, but just facing this frenzied progeny, she's braver than, hell... I am.

"Oh, my boy... my poor, lost, boy." She totters over to him, across no man's land, and in his surprise he goes to her, despairing at her condition.

"Hiroshi Yuki-s an also-ran in the Und-gr-d division anyway, I mean, all that t- spent there and what did he even show for it -" said the glitching Kyle Shane head holo, as if in reaction to this scene. Tensely, Brandy watches Array come closer to Eldon, touching his face with her fingertips tenderly.

"You're wrong about him, you know, he never abandoned me, Eldon. He didn't abandon you, either. What he was, ahhh. He was like a sailor. He always found his way out to sea. But he always came home. When I was young I couldn't handle that. I wanted that out of my life. But I think, a lot of my time I watched for him on the horizon, just out of the corner of my eye." Smiling, she touches under one unseeing pupil. "And, in time, he came back. Because if something is important to you, you let it go, and then when it comes back you know it's a treasure."

"But - but he didn't... He didn't!" Eldon said. "That's ridiculous, you old - He didn't treasure us!"

She squeezed her burned out eyes closed. "If one had a wish in their heart..."

He threw his hands up in the air. (He still had a gun in one.) "Don't tell me you believe that daytripping nonsense about the Eden taking him back."

"Don't you?" She asks earnestly, "Or otherwise why are you searching so hard for it?"

He waves her off. "No, I don't believe that he'd go back to make things right with you. I don't believe he'd go back to make a new start as a husband or a father. If this cube gave him the power to affect reality and go back in time he would go back to when he was young, and rich, and by himself. Because he is selfish. He didn't care about you."

She gingerly takes his hands, hers are trembling. "Son, I've seen what happens. The power they contained in that cube, the energies in it were so brilliant... but I saw. That night in the alley..."

I sat up, intrigued. I was getting the answers to what happened that night. Array closed her eyes, remembering.

"The board was coming to shut the project down. Hiro, myself, and your father, we smuggled it out of the lab. And we were old, past our prime, and we each had so many regrets. Hiro regretted breaking away from Kyle, not continuing the legacy of the Game Boyz in all the rest of his endeavors. I, I regretted that we had spent so much time apart, and despite being married, would never settle down with him if we continued to run, and hide the cube... and he... He just wanted, more time."

She continued, "If the Eden was whole it would have the power to alter time on a fundamental level. So they each took hold of it... and they hit it against the curb, until it cracked in two. But that caused the energy inside to start arcing over the pieces of the Eden. The time wish energies were going uncontrollable, and each one of the boys held one in their hand, and they knew, they had to use them then. They couldn't go back to the lab, representatives from the board were already coming to search through their notes. And there wasn't time to hide it elsewhere, or find a way to repair the cube" My mind's eye conjures up the image, the two old friends side by side, each holding a glowing object that's building to explode. "Their first instinct was to break it. Idiots. My idiots."

"To use their wish there... to go wherever they could think of... project it into the broken pieces of Eden... make the wish reality... go to the first time they could think of..." She sighed...

"They put their fingers together in the old Game Boyz salute... and they made their wish... The light... it burned us all... it burned Hiro, made him scream as it consumed him, and it got so hot... my last image... was of him, it was him walking into a big closet full of light... and he turns back to me... and mouths... 'I love you, prettybird', those were... the last words I saw, and then the light got too hot..." tears are coming from her sightless eyes now. Eldon takes his burned, blind old lady by the shoulders, like she's fragile goods.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Eldon's eyes are incredulous, searching hers deeply, "All these years, twelve years, you never told me about that night, you refused to - " He swallows... "Where did he go? And why did he leave you behind? Leave me? Just a little boy, growing up in this stinkhole of a town of his..."

"I wanted to... he wanted to, he just, he had to leave... it was his time to leave... All things have a time, son, they - "

His jaw sets stonily. He pulls himself back from the blind woman. The gun comes up, the muzzle presses into her midsection, and both Brandy and I see it. Brandy kicks the table over as she rises, roaring "NOOOOOO" and stretching a hand out.

The silencer makes a whisper as it shoots, piercing the older lady's gut.

I Was Once Like You Are Now. 

His eyes are sorrowful, but flinty as chips of obsidian as he cleans off the muzzle. Array groans, holding her midsection. He looks down at her, mouth puckered down in a funny moue.

"And my god, why would I ever buy Al-dra Tamora as a legit threat when her story sounds like the bad ver-n of a Doctor Who scr-t," the inane talking head intones, from somewhere in the back. My head is swimming. I'm holding a rapidly bleeding woman who's been scarred by arcane energies in my hands, and she's slipping away faster than I can do anything.

Roaring with rage and pain, Brandy launches a fighting kick at Eldon's head. He blocks. The two exchange fists and kicks. Brandy comes at him hard and fast, but her eyes are streaked and she is wild. She loved Array, despite everything, the kindness the old woman embodied spoke volumes about why she was so special.

"You're sloppy, Brandy. Why the affection for Him? He ever spend time with you when you were growing up across town at whats'er'name's house? Maybe played that one old game with you," He blocked a kick with his elbow, stopping it from taking off his head. "The one with the dark wizards and the white dragons, remember?"

"STOP TALKING!" Brandy shouted, "You hurt Krista, your hurt your own mother, all of this, why?! Why did you do this?"

"You're short-sighted," he snarled, "And you lose." He got inside her reach with a kick, grabbed a fistful of her curled hair, and punched hard in the back of her head.

"I have been looking for this for years, little one," he taunted Brandy, who was laid out on her stomach. "I've been searching for it. Mom was hidden away in this house. And none of the executors of the old company wanted to give me access to any of their records. So I had to get... a little more direct."

He whirled my way, and pointed, "You. Biggest media outlet in the world. Back in the days of that stupid hacker group he got involved with, he always toyed with the idea of getting his story out by hacking the airwaves. Your bosses, gave me that idea. I could draw him out of hiding..."

"But- but I don't know where - " my eyes began to well up, as I was holding the still body of Array. "I don't know where he could be! I was investigating the disappearance! We thought he died in that alley! That his body burned to a crisp in that energy blast, or - or I don't know! I don't know where he went!"

He looked around, looking suspiciously at the walls. He ripped some old title belts from wrestling days off the wall. "He didn't go, anywhere. He was biding his time... For... his moment."

"Please, don't - I don't," I'm babbling nonsensically at this point, and he knows it. He starts reloading his gun.

"He hid it. The Eden. It's not broken," he muttered to himself, "And I will find it. Or his research, that he and Hiro created the cube with. When I find it, I'll test it for myself. And when I find out the power works, I'll go back and grant my fondest wish. I'll erase Kyle Shane from existence, forever. I will unmake this entire wretched life. Because none of it matters. Nothing will be better than growing up alone, abandoned, and unwanted."

"I'm sorry I made you feel that way, son."

We both look down in surprise. The holoprojector, which had been playing a looped recording of one of those promotional trash talk dealies for an old wrestling promotion, suddenly spoke clearly and concisely. What's more, the mechanism rights itself, and the Kyle Shane hologram begins growing, expanding.

Eldon's eyes widen in terror. "No... it can't be you, you weren't gone?..."

The Kyle Shane that's appearing now is older, like he was in the last message, from his later days.

"You went to all of this trouble to kill your old man, and - God, I've been there. In fact, I was once in the exact same situation that you were now. You spend a lifetime growing up, and it's a guarantee no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will fall into some ugly patterns. You will become what you grew up with, even if you're careful. And I - I just can't express how, sorry I am that I became that for you. I know what it was like. To grow up under a shadow. Under a cloud. Your mom goes away. Your father doesn't seem to want you. Treats you as something beneath him. I know how crippling it can be. How it can stunt you from ever achieving anything... because your simplest desire when you were a boy was always to make someone proud who you could never reach."

"You- Your'e SORRY? SORRY?" Eldon's voice gets high, shrieky, and he kicks aside the projector like a beach ball. despite this, the hard light vision of Kyle Shane, big as he is, stays in place, despite it's movie projector having been sent flying and crashing.

I cradle the head of Array, and her breathing is shallow. I'm trying to figure out how he's doing this.

"But all of the people you hurt have to be paid for, son... a price has to be paid." His eyes go down for just a moment, and it's hard to tell if this is sinister or not. "And no one should pay that, more than me."

"What?!" Eldon rages.

Calmly, the vision explains, "I didn't take enough time with you as a father because there was a company. There was inventions. There were achievements to unlock, there were always new frontiers and horizons to expand, and I was greedy. I am greedy, to a fault, about that," His hologram gets a faraway look in it's eyes. "I always looked to what I could have if I pushed hard for it tomorrow, and sometimes I never stopped and was thankful for what I had today. I don't apologize for that in theory, but in practice, I know that that tends to leave some things behind, that I would rather not have left. That the process of building steps towards grabbing achievements leaves broken pieces behind along the way."

"What are you saying?" Then, another thought seems to occur to him, "How are you speaking to me right now?"

"The piece of Eden, fulfilled my wish to put me where I needed to be..." he said, and then, we were both aware of a brilliant golden glow from behind us.

"To make a new start for me and my boy." A deeper, resonant voice finishes, and when myself and Eldon turn, we're greeted by the real Kyle Shane, as he is more or less in the projection, but more. He seems to have internalized a massive amount of energy so much so that he's glowing with an intense golden light, making him hard to look at. Eldon's jaw drops.

In my hands, Array stirs, and as the light washes over her, she begins coughing.

Brandy moans a little off to one side.

"The power of the cube sent me to where I could do the most good. And I thought," said the golden god, "If I had a wish, it would be to improve myself, because that, ultimately, was always the endgame. To be better before than when I left myself. To be a better father." His eyes are kind, and his smile burns. It's hard to look at him when the light is taking you to pieces. "That was always the story of Kyle Shane, after all. What I hoped would be left when I was gone."

He turned towards me, "You were hired to find out all of this, weren't you?" I nodded my head, numbly, not able to speak.

He looks skyward, eyes processing something I can't see. "So maybe this is the takeaway from it. My journey was always about not just the human heart meeting the fantastic elements, but the fantastic imagination learning to be human. That's what being your own god really means. It means making yourself better, so that you can walk with real humans as your best self. Do you understand?" And when he grins, I can't help but see the persuasive, devil may care boy he once was. And I love it.

He turns back to his son, "Will you let me take you?"

He's weeping openly now, a miserable, wretched look on his face, "To where? I don't deserve - After all I did - "

"To start again. To do things better this time. To get it right. Always trying to get it right. That's all. When we get it right, they won't be hurt," he looks down at Array, "You won't be hurt... it may take time after time, but we can get it right in the end. Shall we?"

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes." he breathes out, nodding, and he steps forward.

And the light grows brighter, up into white.

Maybe some revision on what it means to be god is in order. Maybe it isn't being perfect. Maybe it isn't about whether you fit perfectly into one end of the moral spectrum. Maybe there is no difference between god and man, and all there is is just someone trying to make the best he can. It's an interesting take, at least. For now, the question of what to do with the last Kyle Shane story sits in the back of my head... but I can't help feeling that the answer lies in going back from the start, and trying all over and and making it better.

Yeah. Imagine that.

"Did I do it right, daddy?" says the little boy, frowning at the row of cards he's laid down on the table. Their lacquered surfaces are all turned up, showing a unique array of monsters and magical traps.

"Well, kiddo, did you trust in the heart of the cards?" He chuckled. The boy, so serious and so self-sensitive, frowns across the table at him, but there's a sense of closeness and bonding to this scene. "You know I don't watch that dumb show, dad."

"Well, it has a meaning to it, deeper than just the show. If you trust deep down in what you believe in your heart, you can't go wrong."

"So I take this... Blue Eyes White Dragon, and play it face down?" the boy squints at a card in his hand.

"No, kid, you turn it sideways, in attack formation," he pokes his son, to let him know he's not yelling and all is well, "How did you learn this game, anyway?"

The boy has a smile as he says, "Well, I had a good teacher."