On The Difference Between Wants and Needs In Life. (TIIT #2)
Jun 3, 2019 4:35:31 GMT -5
The Anarchist and Gerard Angelo like this
Post by Kyle Shane on Jun 3, 2019 4:35:31 GMT -5
I'm not where I should be, where I need to be.
But right now, I'm where I want to be.
The club is in the middle of the Common, ground zero for college students, even on a Tuesday, and there's a circle in the middle of the dance floor like a Roman colosseum of old, where the ring gives it's voracious, vivid thumbs up or thumbs down to the sport in the middle of the circle. They roar like a thing alive, and the lights of the club play over their faces, illuminating them all as they cheer for me, and only me. This is everything I have given up since I walked away, and right now I am thriving for it. These sauced white frat bros in neon colored polos and slutty dressed sorority sisters are all out, drinks in hand, living it up like there's no tomorrow. And I, in the center of the storm, am reveling in it, even as I furtively pat my pocket midstep to ensure that the tiny little plastic baggie is there; it's to make sure that the night goes as planned. And I smile, happily and finally into my element.
"Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X gives way to "Con Calma" by Daddy Yankee and the party bros cheer along with me, as I grab the hand of a cute petite blonde and spin her into the circle with me. She gives half a second's protest before she's swept up in the fun and we stand side by side in the circle. She matches me move for move, throwing little looks to her side with a coy lip bite as we get in step, popping and locking, in perfect matched synchronicity, then seguing into a side-by-side floss, running man, and sprinkler. The frat bros lose their minds. I take her by the hand and spin her, then draw her in closer. She looks up at me with doe eyes, and I twirl her away, then I finish off strong with a spin onto my side into a casual pose.
Classic Overlord. I still got it, baby.
My knees crackle a little as I get up, and I accept the help of a frat boy, who is quick to congratulate me by pressing a beer in my hand and shouting over the music "Sickest I ever seen bro" but I'm paying no attention to him, I'm following my blonde dance partner. Now that the dance number is over, she's retreating back through the crowd to go join her friends, and I'm a trifle annoyed by the number of these people that suddenly want to get in my way.
"I know you, don't I - " says one white boy, the kind that would pay fifty dollars for a bag of weed. And I flash him my brightest, cockiest most Kyle Shane smile, while still keeping scan of the room for the tiny blonde. "You should, bro. I'm famous as hell."
It is perhaps not best in keeping a low profile, but I didn't come to this cesspit of Sigma Tau scum to keep a low profile. Still, what I had intended as a sign off was picked up on, and the dudebro, looking with dawning comprehension like for all the world he is seeing Joss Whedon at Comic con, and he points at me. "Yooo you're that guy you are!" I blink, and hang my head, because he is high. But he gets some of his other friends nearby looking, and they are all asking questions now.
"You're a WREStler, aren't you - "
"Been called worse, I suppose, but - " I'm trying to extricate myself from the sudden press, and over a stupid haircut I see the blonde girl, happily talking to her friend at their table. I have a second's appreciation of her curve in the low-cut black dress.
"-Haven't you been on TV -
"Yes, and you can see me on a pay-per-view very soon - " I assure them, giving them my best gladhandling man of the people smile as I try to move past, the unspoken 'please get out of my way' implicit in my voice.
"Are you kidding me, bro, this is Kyle Shane, Boston's own!" crows a boy with a thick Southie accent. He claps me on the shoulder. "I'm gonna get ya a Redd's Apple Ale, you wanna - "
I can feel my face getting hot, and I want to explode in his face, but I instead laugh it off as best I can, they're just well-meaning fools. They know not what booty they are keeping me from scoring. And I don't care about damaging Kyle's relationship in the slightest, so finally getting fed up, I snarl that they need to get the fuck out of the way. The broad Irish boy's face goes a sea change from hurt to pissed, but I'm pushing past him. He calls "Whatta townie prick, I bet he don't even live in the city." Ugh, that a partner of mine ever came from these jabbering monkeys. That was always the strangest part of mine and Kyle's dynamic, it really - really, shouldn't have worked at all. Different worlds and all that.
My phone beeps, and I check it. I have a text from - hah, Hiro's phone - and Kyle-as-Hiro is sending increasingly panicked texts reading "Hey "brother" just so you know not that it's important or anything but your pretty much crime lord father is telling me that the budget for your division is going to be liquidated and everything in the lab is going to be scrapped or sent for parts, so no pressure on you getting back here and undoing the switch." I disdainfully leave that text on read, so he can see the "Seen at 1:08 am". Curiouser, I have two missed phone calls from a number I do not recognize. I lock my phone and go back to looking at the girl. I try to make it obvious I'm not checking out her hind end but I am absolutely drawn to it. And if some distant part of it does hear Kyle shaming me for it, saying things like "You're a father..." well, no, I am not. I don't have to care anymore. He is, just like he is in charge of a division that is about to be ashes thanks to the ruthless unforgiving nature of Ichiro Sasuke.
Look, I'm not stupid, alright. I know Kyle thinks I live in the past. And that whenever we're together all we ever talk about is old memories, old nostalgia from the Game Boyz era, but I refuse the narrative that I peaked. When we were together, I was the breakout star of the team. I won the Warriors Pride roster rumble for our tag team. I won the Intercontinental title. I pinned multiple champions. All Kyle Shane ever did in my day was carry my bags. But still he was my bruddah and I loved him for it. And we had our best setup, we played COD, talked shit about forums and chatrooms, sold weed and sometimes went to class. Then, Kyle decided he wanted to break away on his own and he got kicked out of school for Array. (Although, having had a sweet taste of that the other night, now, I completely understand.) Kyle was the one who betrayed everything good we had going for us, and he stuck with wrestling. And like with Array, for the longest time I did not understand his reasoning.
But I look at my life. All of the promise I showed, in academics, in developmental training, when I started working under Rumiko and impressed father enough with my portfolio for him to start letting me handle financial assets and headhunting lucrative opportunities. I did damn well for myself by the age of 25. And Kyle? Despite Kyle moving on from company to company and racking up title wins, Kyle Shane was someone I always felt was lost. Adrift. He cut himself off from his friends with regularity, and he pushed love away. He lived a life that made me shake my head and just pray one day he would find a way to get it all together. I hadn't needed his life. I needed to be happy, and happiness was something that Kyle had never seemed to possess.
As I stood one table over, trying not to be conspicuous about checking little miss blonde thing's rear out, I asked what, though, was happiness? We may have covered in the broader philosophical sense what man needs in Psych. So no, none of this is what I needed. But I can't lie to myself anymore. Being my father's son, going home to a nagging wife and a perpetually sick baby is not what I wanted to be, either. And I think about what Kyle has. He has nothing I've ever needed, but whenever we get to talking and reminisce the old days, I remember all I ever used to want. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to matter. I wanted girls to take notice of me and swoon at the feet of the intellectual mastermind. And I just wanted to crack jokes and play video games with my best friend.
Why does Kyle look down on that so much, now? Why does he act like it's something cringy for me to want to relive those days where we both had everything we could ever want?
I figure I'm about to make my move on her when the damn phone rings again. Hello straight to voicemail, I swipe it off. And, getting focused, I get ready to move.
**
In the car, Krista looks at the phone, then back to Array. Array is typing away on a laptop, her mouth a straight slit of determination and pure rage. Krista gently touches Array on the shoulder, a boundary cross which she kicks herself for as Array jumps. The younger girl settles, huffs, and looks across the seat and mutters she's sorry.
"No, I'm sorry, Array. Are you sure you're up for this?" the doctor's brow is furrowed with worry. "If you want, we can talk about - "
"No," the girl insists. "Keep driving, the phone finder is giving me the address," Krista narrows her eyes at Array. "And why do you have a phone finder set to track Kyle's phone?"
She grimaces, looking out the window, and her voice has a hitch in it for a moment. She stops, then starts again, and she looks down bitterly at the laptop and mumbles "You don't want to know how many answers to that question there are."
Krista doesn't let the point go, but presses, gently, asking "I know that you're telling me you're fine, but Array, you seem to be papering over a very real sense of hurt and trauma with a determined facade. If what you said Kyle -"
"Not Kyle - " she repeats, almost a fanatic's mantra, "- that was not Kyle. " she screws her eyes shut. Takes a deep breath, shakes her head, and looks over the console. "Listen... I know... that wasn't my Kyle. It may have been A person that looked like Kyle, and if I have my suspicions over what I heard on the phone call - not important. We find the person, and we find out how to get Kyle back. It's that simple."
Krista arched an eyebrow as she drove, not able to let therapist mode go, "Are you more hurt that a stranger was the one who... did this to you... or are you hurt because deep down, with him looking like Kyle, it made you think that Kyle was capable of doing the same thing?"
There was a heavy, uncomfortable weight in the air between them for the longest time as the younger woman just looked straight forward. At length, she turned her head over so slowly the veins in her neck creaked, her brow clouded, her lower lip pooched out with an expression of hate for the insight. "Just drive."
All things considered, it was better to be strong right now in the car, than weak when she found him and didn't know what to do, she reflected.
**
"Hey," I say, putting on my suavest voice, giving her a slight shoulder touch and the most meaningful up-looking sweet look. "You danced well out there."
"Oh, thank you," the blonde says, although she doesn't look thrilled about my arm on her shoulder, she's still cordial. I can finesse this. I'm the Overlord dammit. I'm in a handsome, arguably rich white boy's body. And I got moves. But, I do notice her friend is giving me a stank face from around the circular standup.
"Katy, do you - " her friend starts to ask but I smoothly move over to young Katy's side and schmooze with her, giving her a charming grin. "Katy! It's Katy. Such a lovely name for a lovely dancer, truly the best tribute of this spring bacchanal."
Katy smiles unsurely. I just grin at her. "Can I get you a drink?"
Her friend moves over, trying to put herself in eyeshot of Katy, and points out, "Uh, we have drinks thank yo- "
I cut that moose off, smoothly touching Katy under her chin. "Come now, sweet maiden, don't you want to - "
"Can you please... not touch me?" Katy says, in a brittle little voice as she pulls her head away from me. I don't understand. "I don't understand. We danced so well together."
"That was just - dancing - I don't know you?" And she's looking from me to her friend as if asking for help. I can't keep thinking that I don't understand, but I genuinely cannot reconcile this behavior, as if I've made some misjudgement and her come on eyes were not inviting me to try this. I'm at a loss for the first time. I thought for sure... I mean, our dance, and the chemistry we shared, the looks she was giving me on the dance floor, surely those were clear indicators she wanted to jump this scrawny set of bones. I frown, not able to make sense of it all. Her friend, built like a linebacker as she is, is mugging at me now in triumph.
"She said that she doesn't want what you're selling, creeper, now why don't you just - "
I feel something snap, and I whirl on her, baring my teeth. "Back off, I'm not trying to hurt her. She just doesn't understand. She needs to understand."
I notice more people in the club are turning towards her. In solidarity a few more members of a local girl gang are all looking our way, coming closer, and I'm realizing in a Me Too sort of way that I'm being looked at unfavorably. I try to smooth things over, and I nervously laugh, trying to calm the glaring harpies down. Trying again, more earnestly, I turn to the blonde, Katy.
"Can I please buy you a drink, and we can part as friends?"
She rolls her eyes to her friend, the big moose girl, who has her arms crossed unhappily, and she looks back to me, speaking as if she doesn't know why she's doing this, "Patron, lime twist."
The girl gang portion of the room is still eyeing me warily and with some salt as I take this as a win. I clap my hands, grinning. "Ma girl!" and head over to the bar.
I'm analyzing the whole encounter as I get in line, looking back. Katy and her thick bellied friend are huddled, talking seriously with some others and they glance my way. I just smile and wave back. Why was she so tense around me? I mean... I remember the days in college when me and Kyle used to pull chicks numbers all the time, right? Those wild, crazy adventures. And Kyle had been keeping in practice, up until a year or so ago he had been keeping his dance card full while him and Array were on one of their breaks by banging whatever slutty chick he met off Tinder. Kyle had even hooked up with girls using a dating app I bankrolled, had fucking scored on my yacht during a party. So it wasn't Kyle... and it couldn't be me, could it?
No. It could not. I was more rico suave than Kyle could ever have been in my prime. I could always pull better girls numbers. These young college girls just don't understand what I'm trying to do here, that's all. I had a little party favor in my pocket that would loosen things up.
After all, I've lucked into everything I've ever wanted. In changing places with Kyle I can really live like I'm 21, hell 19 again. No responsibility, no ball and chains, no rules. I don't think Kyle even appreciates how much freedom and power comes with it, but I'm seeing it now. I won't be a mopey, emo boy trying to escape from my past. With me in the drivers seat I will be a better Kyle Shane than he ever was.
I smile internally as I think of how the Remastered Kyle Shane, new shiny improved and forever chrome will be sooo much slicker, faster and outrageous than dusty old Kyle with his soap opera relationship drama was getting to be. Because I know what people want. They wanna see crazy out there sci fi, banter with the wit of ten Han Solos, and lots and lots of titties. It's going to be so awesome. I step forward to the bartender, thinking of all the rad promos ideas in my head and you know - I can't remember why I ever walked away from any of this. I was so good at it for so long, and I let the white boy in my shadow go on to become the more famous one of the Game Boyz. Well, no more. This new Kyle is gonna be unstoppable, because I've finally balanced what I thought I needed to be in life with what I actually, really want. And now that I've figured it out, who gonna stop me?
Like this tournament Kyle got me entered into. I actually like that Justin Michaels dude, seems like he has a lot of fun stories about what his time was like back when he was a main player before he walked away but those other two dorks? They do not matter to me. Statistically there isnt any way beating a dude like David Hunter is going to be harder than outlasting the entire field of Warrior's Pride - I mean, remember when I did that? David Hunter can't even keep hold of an Underground division with literally four people in it, and yet he calls himself a King. I love the arrogance of him, but it is not exactly backed up by skill. Or Dominator, big, scary badass who's run through competition and always managed to keep his name in mind as some unstoppable juggernaut... and yet he's been here exactly as long as Kyle Shane had in Pure Class Wrestling and has less than half the accolades. Both David Hunter and Dominator showed a tendency to break, to fall short, to be unable to get the big win when it mattered and validate all the big hype they put behind themselves. But the Overlord had never had that problem, in fact I justify the hype behind my name by backing up every single thing I've ever said I was going to do. I did it before, and now that I am getting back into being who I really should be, I'll do it again.
Really, what David and Dom have versus what I have, is a simple case of want versus need. There, it's reversed. I don't just want to do good in this tournament. This is my first test in a long time. I am coming awake from a dream of a life of corporate mediocrity, shackled impotence and seeing the existence you thought was best for you turn out to be a nightmare and I cannot go back to what I was. I need this, more than anyone had ever needed anything.
It is going to be awesome, I told myself.
Annoyed by another text, I pulled my phone out, to see yet another message from Kyle-as-Hiro, my phone number, "So hey this is cool, your sister and her goons are walking me down to the lab to disassemble EVERYTHING, Hiro, nice while it lasted huh?" Whatever. Seen 1:32 am.
When I get to the bar, I'm confronted by quite possibly the most statuesque, striking girl I've ever seen. Definitely college age, with a bit of that pop punk vibe I know Kyle would have flipped for in her band tee and tight skinny jeans, she looms over the bar over six feet, decently muscled on her long limbs, and her piercing blue eyes and mane of lion's hair catch my eye. "What can I get ya," says the bartender girl.
I smile my most charming smile, thinking if I wasn't trying to make my play for Katy... still, you always want to be kind and tip your bartender, right? "Patron with lime, for the uh, young lady over there, please?"
She's pouring, and her eyes cut back up at me. "What's your deal, dad?"
I blink, "Whatever do you mean?"
"I mean, you look like you're thirty," she nods at my face, "Crow's feet, that haircut, the clothes look like 2009 Hot Topic - " my jaw drops and I want to protest, but the bartender, roasting me as she is, still places the drink on the bar. But doesn't take her fingers off of it.
"- And you're hitting on that girl, who I know I carded and has a fake ID so she has to be at least ten years younger than you. And she shut you down, didn't she. And now you're buying her a drink."
I give an insulted little headshake, and then I place my elbows on the bar, leaning in to her. "Listen - uh what's your name?"
She begins cleaning out a set of pint glasses, but looks back up at me with humor. "It's Marki."
"Marki, right." I point across the dance floor to the blonde, who is now standing by with an anxious expression and looking like a colt about to flee, "I am just purchasing libation for my good friend Katy, and it is your purview as a bartender to render me said libation for a decent little tip, what is it to you why we -?"
Marki shrugs her tattooed shoulders, considering and discarding the question, "The purview of a bartender is to make sure that underage girls aren't preyed on by thirty year old predators."
I have to suck in a breath and give her a blink and double take because, whoa, whoa, what. Marki continues wiping out a glass, nonchalantly. "And you have the demeanor of somebody who has spent the last five-six years behind a desk and is trying so hard to hang in there with the college kids, I've been watching you all night. What is it, do you feel nostalgia for how it was when you were in school, is tonight the night you let your wife watch the kiddos and fall asleep watching Fifty Shades of Grey and you snuck out?"
I basically snatch the Patron glass off the bar. "You don't know me."
"Know your type," Marki calls at my departing shoulder, and it's enough to make me seethe.
No. She doesn't know me. And Katy's moosey friend doesn't know me, but she's still giving me dark looks. And the people cutting glances my way don't know me. I take my glass from the main view into a shadowed area beside a support pillar and put it on a table, so I can retrieve my little party favor. I'm already angry and sick of them judging me, because none of them Understand, I just wanted them to Understand. Katy and me would get along fine without any of this. I have come to a rubicon, and I've just now decided as Marki's look is beating into my retreating back that I've had enough of trying to play rules the way they are governed now. It always used to work fine like this. Back in the day, the Game Boyz had wild, experimental adventures with drugs, and I am not simply justifying it by saying that if I just give the girl a little nudge, we won't be better friends, come to an understanding. It worked every time before.
I am not a predator. I see that so clearly. I may be using a little help, and I may be playing the game the way we used to in college, but I am a new Kyle Shane living the best life; the life I want to live and the life I should have been living instead of wasting my years giving my creativity and genius to my father's payroll. I'm doing and taking anything I want, and if they can't understand...
A sudden, strong hand snatches onto my wrist. It bends my hand away from the glass, and the plastic baggie with the powder falls onto the table. I groan in pain as the muscled tattooed hands of the valkryie bartender are twisting my wrist. "Not cool, dad," Marki says, her good humor giving way to righteous, matriarchal fury.
**
"It's here," her voice rises in excitement, and she slaps at the driver to indicate towards the neon lit sign.
"Are you sure?" Krista cranes her head under the sun visor to squint at the sign, "the kids on the sidewalk all look like they're in high school."
Array is staring purposefully at the address and the blinking dot. Krista turns to her, as if wanting to make sure if the girl is in the right frame of mind to do this, but the look of grit and molten fury Array has in her eyes is only matched when they see the door in the alley open, and a familiar figure get pushed out.
**
I can't believe this is happening.
This cannot be happening to me.
This boudicca has my wrist strained to the breaking point, she's gone full bouncer as she leads me out the side door. "Can't we talk about this?" my voice comes out so much more plaintive and wounded than I wanted. I know, if I was in control of the situation there would be nothing I couldn't talk my way out of... I was the Overlord dammit... I was so smooth, so slick with my words I could - I could -
I cry out again. I'm almost positive she's trying to break my arm.
"You are lucky - I don't call the police for the Rohypnol, you piece of shit," she growls, and she slams me against the stone wall. I cringe, and I think of college. It used to be fun. They had based at least two promos about slipping Spanish fly into someone's drink and having funny Hangover-esque adventures, I mean... those were good times, people had fun when we did things like that in the past. I don't - I don't understand why this is happening. I wasn't going to hurt Katy. We just were going to have fun.
I'm feeling like a trapped animal now. Marki has released the clamp on my arm, but she still has me pinned to the wall. I buck her off and shove her. She smashes into my face with a punch that peels my lips back from my teeth. No. This can't be. I am stronger. I am more skilled. I am in Kyle Shane's still tightly maintained, highly toned body, I should be able to -
The bartender rains down two more punches to my face, battering me against the wall. I feel blood pouring down from my pulped lips, my throbbing, broken glass nose. This. Cannot. Be happening to me. I am tired of trying to make people understand, all I wanted - all I wanted was it to be like it was before. I grit my teeth and snarl. If I'm an animal, then I'll fight her like an animal, and rip her to shreds.
And then, before I can step forward, putting my fists up to fight her, something sticks in my side like a spear, and my entire body convulses and spasms with an explosion of white going off behind my eyes.
And then everything goes black.
**
"Didn't need you to do that," Marki huffs, wiping her forehead, "I wasn't going to let him walk away without losing some teeth."
Array, still holding the taser, looks conflicted as she stares down at the battered, up-turned face of Kyle. But then, a feral look peels across her lips, and she plunges the taser down into his ribs and lets go with another charge, and the fallen inhabited body jerks and spasms on the ground in the aisle. Doctor Krista Miller steps forward to put a stop to it. Marki Staley waves a hand up to stop Krista's advance.
"No, no. I'd say he deserves this. And she clearly has some issues to work out."
She digs the taser in a third time and the electronic scorpion bites, making him shake.
He doesn't move anymore.
**
I finally come to, and the fluorescent lighting and cork of an elevator are soundtracked by... a familiar voice crackling over speakerphone. As I get my bearings, groaning, I find that I'm bound by spider-straps from the boot of a car into a rolling desk chair, and I am surrounded by women. The penny taste of copper is still leaking into my sinus where... that big woman hit me.
"- So that's got us all up to speed?" a precise, clinical and fast-speaking white lady's voice comes, and I try to crane my head to see her.
"Mmmyep, your buddy Kyle Shane here switched minds with a Japanese friend from college thanks to their proximity to an AI-human download machine during a freak electrical storm," and I recognize that voice immediately, the cutting, sardonic and husky tones of the bartender woman, she stands there behind me, arms crossed over her chest. "Gotta say, you people roll weird."
"Trust me, compared to some of the stuff I've been through with Kyle, it's not that weird," comes from my left, and while it's distant and more reserved as if with lots of conflicted emotion, I pick out Array. She's at my side, and I can see she's still got the taser in her hand. It makes me wince. I almost feel like she made my hair gel catch fire.
"So, yeah," comes Hiro Sasuke's voice over the speakerphone that Krista Miller is holding in the air for the group, "That's where we're at. Oh, and Sidebar; please hurry because HIRO, your sister and her goons want to strip the lab for parts."
He hangs up, as if under duress, and the doctor lady I don't know looks worriedly at her two Charlies Angel wannabes, she's worried. "If they disassemble the mind interface machine then that would mean we can't undo the switch, not without the lab techs that created the blueprints."
"Ah, yeah, let me stop you there, glasses," I hear myself saying, not even knowing why at this point I'm antagonizing them, but maybe the Kyle Shane in my body is reaching up and taking control, "I know for a fact my father was going to be slashing my budgets and eliminating my department, he probably already fired them."
"Well that's just great," the bartender growls, "So we've got a bunch of sci-fi junk in there and no eggheads that know how to work it?"
Array leans in to my face, her lips pulled back in a scary way. She had been putting on a calm, distant face but she is seriously on the edge. I mean... why, why is she even angry at me for? "Bullshit, this son of a bitch ordered it built so he can walk us through connecting everything up."
I sigh. "Look, it's not that simple as all that," and as much as I can with my arms spider-strapped down I gesture at them, "Yes, I know about how to get us in the machine and connect the helmet... but what caused the switch seemed to be our proximity to it during that storm, and uh, you ain't got enough volts to power such a sudden surge."
Array snarls at me, lifting the taser up to my eye level and letting a little sting of electricity sizzle between the prods as she growls "Wanna bet?"
Gulp. Panicked, I hold my hands up, trying to do anything I can to stay execution. And maybe, just maybe, if I talk my way out of this... nothing will have to change. Because I liked my new start over, and, dammit... I didn't want to let this go. Because in the new body, as a new Kyle Shane, I could have made an entirely new life away from here, in this ruined, gutted shell I inhabit. Here, I have nothing. "Hear me out before we go up there."
The doctor leans, curious. "Listening..."
"Have you considered the fact that Kyle and I aren't different at all? Really... having Kyle live my life will probably have given him a new appreciation for life. It's only been two days, and yet in that time my marriage has fallen apart more than usual, and my father thinking I've wasted his money enough for the last time has cut all my funding. I have literally nothing. I'm... lost. In life. And here's Kyle. Life of luxury. Hot girlfriend. Handsome, articulate. Okay, he's a little wordy and a little emo. But he lives in the past just as much as I do. He's haunted by it. He just denies he does that, but he does like to live in the good ol' days as much as I do."
The bartender puts a strong hand on my clavicle, and squeezes so hard that I have to suppress a groan. "Yeah. But you cross boundaries and violate a lot of consent laws. But sure. You're so not such a bad guy, just misunderstood and sad."
"What I am trying to tell you is me and Kyle are the same. We are both - broken, in the same exact way, and maybe it was our fathers, or our fathers fathers, or our family experiences that shaped us, but - "
"Shut up," Array says, in disgust, "I've heard enough," but I break through, passionately, "Maybe I'm just giving Kyle some appreciation for the life he has but still manages to feel lost in. Maybe I'm giving him appreciation - for YOU, Array."
This time it's Array who cuffs me, strong across the jaw, and I sit there, turning in my chair, tasting it.
"You aren't like him," Array says adamantly.
"Just to be clear though, baby girl," Marki asides to Array, "There are still... a lot of problematic power dynamics in yours and the real Kyle's relationship, I mean your entire relationship is built on a foundation of profound imbalance in life experience. I mean, he's no saint either, compared to mister Spanish fly here."
Array doesn't have anything to say to that. The elevator mercifully dings and opens it's doors, and they walk and push me forward.
As soon as we enter the lab space, two guns whirl in our direction.
"WHOA," Kyle-in-my-body shouts over the two goons, and Rumiko, exasperated, waves for them to put them down.
"Are we going to have a problem here?" Array says. Tiny 5'3 Array, wielding a taser as if it's a battle axe and backed up by a strong pop punk girl in a tank top, steps forward as if to throw down.
Rumiko, businesslike and cold, looks across and down at them, and smiles fractionally. "No. We were waiting on you. All of the other machinery in the lab is to be stripped, but first, there's something you must do."
Kyle Shane -in my body - turns his head, squinting at Rumi, and looking confused, "Wait... Rumiko, you know about the human-AI interface? What it can do?"
Rumiko keeps looking at me, gauging me with a smile as I sit there, defeated, and in my chair. "No. But I know that you are not my brother." She nods. "That one is."
"Hi sis," I say, waving with a sheepish little smile.
The tense standoff thaws just a little bit as the three girls all look at each other and nod. Rumiko motions for me to be unstrapped, and the two topknots come to pull the straps off of me. As soon as I can get a hand, I reach in to the chest holster on the nearest suit, and pull free his gun. "Ha HA, bitches. Overlord!"
The other goon draws his gun. Kyle-in-my-body leaps up, trying to get in front of the henchman before he can get off a shot. "NO, don't damage my body!!"
"Now I'm getting out of here, and Kyle, you take good care of the Hiro Sasuke brand, remember to moisterize twice a day, my skin is very sensitive to the sun, and I found a good cucumber lotion, so if you could find that - " I'm telling him as I wave the gun at all of them, trying to keep my back to them all so I can get to the elevator.
Array moves like lightning, kicking me between the legs, drawing all of the wind out of me once again. And the gun goes flying from my hand, and I go down. Fuck me.
It's over.
They all stand around me, the tension bleeding from the room. I can see the doctor Krista examining the human-AI interface clamshell chair. The bartender Marki looks nonplussed at the disassembled lab, and peeks over at the topknot henchmen. "So, I'm super confused. Who, exactly, is this Hiro Sasuke?"
I look up at the face I see too often in the mirror, staring back down at me, with sorrow in my eyes. From my own lips, I hear Kyle say, "He was my best friend."
Then nothing else.
But right now, I'm where I want to be.
The club is in the middle of the Common, ground zero for college students, even on a Tuesday, and there's a circle in the middle of the dance floor like a Roman colosseum of old, where the ring gives it's voracious, vivid thumbs up or thumbs down to the sport in the middle of the circle. They roar like a thing alive, and the lights of the club play over their faces, illuminating them all as they cheer for me, and only me. This is everything I have given up since I walked away, and right now I am thriving for it. These sauced white frat bros in neon colored polos and slutty dressed sorority sisters are all out, drinks in hand, living it up like there's no tomorrow. And I, in the center of the storm, am reveling in it, even as I furtively pat my pocket midstep to ensure that the tiny little plastic baggie is there; it's to make sure that the night goes as planned. And I smile, happily and finally into my element.
"Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X gives way to "Con Calma" by Daddy Yankee and the party bros cheer along with me, as I grab the hand of a cute petite blonde and spin her into the circle with me. She gives half a second's protest before she's swept up in the fun and we stand side by side in the circle. She matches me move for move, throwing little looks to her side with a coy lip bite as we get in step, popping and locking, in perfect matched synchronicity, then seguing into a side-by-side floss, running man, and sprinkler. The frat bros lose their minds. I take her by the hand and spin her, then draw her in closer. She looks up at me with doe eyes, and I twirl her away, then I finish off strong with a spin onto my side into a casual pose.
Classic Overlord. I still got it, baby.
My knees crackle a little as I get up, and I accept the help of a frat boy, who is quick to congratulate me by pressing a beer in my hand and shouting over the music "Sickest I ever seen bro" but I'm paying no attention to him, I'm following my blonde dance partner. Now that the dance number is over, she's retreating back through the crowd to go join her friends, and I'm a trifle annoyed by the number of these people that suddenly want to get in my way.
"I know you, don't I - " says one white boy, the kind that would pay fifty dollars for a bag of weed. And I flash him my brightest, cockiest most Kyle Shane smile, while still keeping scan of the room for the tiny blonde. "You should, bro. I'm famous as hell."
It is perhaps not best in keeping a low profile, but I didn't come to this cesspit of Sigma Tau scum to keep a low profile. Still, what I had intended as a sign off was picked up on, and the dudebro, looking with dawning comprehension like for all the world he is seeing Joss Whedon at Comic con, and he points at me. "Yooo you're that guy you are!" I blink, and hang my head, because he is high. But he gets some of his other friends nearby looking, and they are all asking questions now.
"You're a WREStler, aren't you - "
"Been called worse, I suppose, but - " I'm trying to extricate myself from the sudden press, and over a stupid haircut I see the blonde girl, happily talking to her friend at their table. I have a second's appreciation of her curve in the low-cut black dress.
"-Haven't you been on TV -
"Yes, and you can see me on a pay-per-view very soon - " I assure them, giving them my best gladhandling man of the people smile as I try to move past, the unspoken 'please get out of my way' implicit in my voice.
"Are you kidding me, bro, this is Kyle Shane, Boston's own!" crows a boy with a thick Southie accent. He claps me on the shoulder. "I'm gonna get ya a Redd's Apple Ale, you wanna - "
I can feel my face getting hot, and I want to explode in his face, but I instead laugh it off as best I can, they're just well-meaning fools. They know not what booty they are keeping me from scoring. And I don't care about damaging Kyle's relationship in the slightest, so finally getting fed up, I snarl that they need to get the fuck out of the way. The broad Irish boy's face goes a sea change from hurt to pissed, but I'm pushing past him. He calls "Whatta townie prick, I bet he don't even live in the city." Ugh, that a partner of mine ever came from these jabbering monkeys. That was always the strangest part of mine and Kyle's dynamic, it really - really, shouldn't have worked at all. Different worlds and all that.
My phone beeps, and I check it. I have a text from - hah, Hiro's phone - and Kyle-as-Hiro is sending increasingly panicked texts reading "Hey "brother" just so you know not that it's important or anything but your pretty much crime lord father is telling me that the budget for your division is going to be liquidated and everything in the lab is going to be scrapped or sent for parts, so no pressure on you getting back here and undoing the switch." I disdainfully leave that text on read, so he can see the "Seen at 1:08 am". Curiouser, I have two missed phone calls from a number I do not recognize. I lock my phone and go back to looking at the girl. I try to make it obvious I'm not checking out her hind end but I am absolutely drawn to it. And if some distant part of it does hear Kyle shaming me for it, saying things like "You're a father..." well, no, I am not. I don't have to care anymore. He is, just like he is in charge of a division that is about to be ashes thanks to the ruthless unforgiving nature of Ichiro Sasuke.
Look, I'm not stupid, alright. I know Kyle thinks I live in the past. And that whenever we're together all we ever talk about is old memories, old nostalgia from the Game Boyz era, but I refuse the narrative that I peaked. When we were together, I was the breakout star of the team. I won the Warriors Pride roster rumble for our tag team. I won the Intercontinental title. I pinned multiple champions. All Kyle Shane ever did in my day was carry my bags. But still he was my bruddah and I loved him for it. And we had our best setup, we played COD, talked shit about forums and chatrooms, sold weed and sometimes went to class. Then, Kyle decided he wanted to break away on his own and he got kicked out of school for Array. (Although, having had a sweet taste of that the other night, now, I completely understand.) Kyle was the one who betrayed everything good we had going for us, and he stuck with wrestling. And like with Array, for the longest time I did not understand his reasoning.
But I look at my life. All of the promise I showed, in academics, in developmental training, when I started working under Rumiko and impressed father enough with my portfolio for him to start letting me handle financial assets and headhunting lucrative opportunities. I did damn well for myself by the age of 25. And Kyle? Despite Kyle moving on from company to company and racking up title wins, Kyle Shane was someone I always felt was lost. Adrift. He cut himself off from his friends with regularity, and he pushed love away. He lived a life that made me shake my head and just pray one day he would find a way to get it all together. I hadn't needed his life. I needed to be happy, and happiness was something that Kyle had never seemed to possess.
As I stood one table over, trying not to be conspicuous about checking little miss blonde thing's rear out, I asked what, though, was happiness? We may have covered in the broader philosophical sense what man needs in Psych. So no, none of this is what I needed. But I can't lie to myself anymore. Being my father's son, going home to a nagging wife and a perpetually sick baby is not what I wanted to be, either. And I think about what Kyle has. He has nothing I've ever needed, but whenever we get to talking and reminisce the old days, I remember all I ever used to want. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to matter. I wanted girls to take notice of me and swoon at the feet of the intellectual mastermind. And I just wanted to crack jokes and play video games with my best friend.
Why does Kyle look down on that so much, now? Why does he act like it's something cringy for me to want to relive those days where we both had everything we could ever want?
I figure I'm about to make my move on her when the damn phone rings again. Hello straight to voicemail, I swipe it off. And, getting focused, I get ready to move.
**
In the car, Krista looks at the phone, then back to Array. Array is typing away on a laptop, her mouth a straight slit of determination and pure rage. Krista gently touches Array on the shoulder, a boundary cross which she kicks herself for as Array jumps. The younger girl settles, huffs, and looks across the seat and mutters she's sorry.
"No, I'm sorry, Array. Are you sure you're up for this?" the doctor's brow is furrowed with worry. "If you want, we can talk about - "
"No," the girl insists. "Keep driving, the phone finder is giving me the address," Krista narrows her eyes at Array. "And why do you have a phone finder set to track Kyle's phone?"
She grimaces, looking out the window, and her voice has a hitch in it for a moment. She stops, then starts again, and she looks down bitterly at the laptop and mumbles "You don't want to know how many answers to that question there are."
Krista doesn't let the point go, but presses, gently, asking "I know that you're telling me you're fine, but Array, you seem to be papering over a very real sense of hurt and trauma with a determined facade. If what you said Kyle -"
"Not Kyle - " she repeats, almost a fanatic's mantra, "- that was not Kyle. " she screws her eyes shut. Takes a deep breath, shakes her head, and looks over the console. "Listen... I know... that wasn't my Kyle. It may have been A person that looked like Kyle, and if I have my suspicions over what I heard on the phone call - not important. We find the person, and we find out how to get Kyle back. It's that simple."
Krista arched an eyebrow as she drove, not able to let therapist mode go, "Are you more hurt that a stranger was the one who... did this to you... or are you hurt because deep down, with him looking like Kyle, it made you think that Kyle was capable of doing the same thing?"
There was a heavy, uncomfortable weight in the air between them for the longest time as the younger woman just looked straight forward. At length, she turned her head over so slowly the veins in her neck creaked, her brow clouded, her lower lip pooched out with an expression of hate for the insight. "Just drive."
All things considered, it was better to be strong right now in the car, than weak when she found him and didn't know what to do, she reflected.
**
"Hey," I say, putting on my suavest voice, giving her a slight shoulder touch and the most meaningful up-looking sweet look. "You danced well out there."
"Oh, thank you," the blonde says, although she doesn't look thrilled about my arm on her shoulder, she's still cordial. I can finesse this. I'm the Overlord dammit. I'm in a handsome, arguably rich white boy's body. And I got moves. But, I do notice her friend is giving me a stank face from around the circular standup.
"Katy, do you - " her friend starts to ask but I smoothly move over to young Katy's side and schmooze with her, giving her a charming grin. "Katy! It's Katy. Such a lovely name for a lovely dancer, truly the best tribute of this spring bacchanal."
Katy smiles unsurely. I just grin at her. "Can I get you a drink?"
Her friend moves over, trying to put herself in eyeshot of Katy, and points out, "Uh, we have drinks thank yo- "
I cut that moose off, smoothly touching Katy under her chin. "Come now, sweet maiden, don't you want to - "
"Can you please... not touch me?" Katy says, in a brittle little voice as she pulls her head away from me. I don't understand. "I don't understand. We danced so well together."
"That was just - dancing - I don't know you?" And she's looking from me to her friend as if asking for help. I can't keep thinking that I don't understand, but I genuinely cannot reconcile this behavior, as if I've made some misjudgement and her come on eyes were not inviting me to try this. I'm at a loss for the first time. I thought for sure... I mean, our dance, and the chemistry we shared, the looks she was giving me on the dance floor, surely those were clear indicators she wanted to jump this scrawny set of bones. I frown, not able to make sense of it all. Her friend, built like a linebacker as she is, is mugging at me now in triumph.
"She said that she doesn't want what you're selling, creeper, now why don't you just - "
I feel something snap, and I whirl on her, baring my teeth. "Back off, I'm not trying to hurt her. She just doesn't understand. She needs to understand."
I notice more people in the club are turning towards her. In solidarity a few more members of a local girl gang are all looking our way, coming closer, and I'm realizing in a Me Too sort of way that I'm being looked at unfavorably. I try to smooth things over, and I nervously laugh, trying to calm the glaring harpies down. Trying again, more earnestly, I turn to the blonde, Katy.
"Can I please buy you a drink, and we can part as friends?"
She rolls her eyes to her friend, the big moose girl, who has her arms crossed unhappily, and she looks back to me, speaking as if she doesn't know why she's doing this, "Patron, lime twist."
The girl gang portion of the room is still eyeing me warily and with some salt as I take this as a win. I clap my hands, grinning. "Ma girl!" and head over to the bar.
I'm analyzing the whole encounter as I get in line, looking back. Katy and her thick bellied friend are huddled, talking seriously with some others and they glance my way. I just smile and wave back. Why was she so tense around me? I mean... I remember the days in college when me and Kyle used to pull chicks numbers all the time, right? Those wild, crazy adventures. And Kyle had been keeping in practice, up until a year or so ago he had been keeping his dance card full while him and Array were on one of their breaks by banging whatever slutty chick he met off Tinder. Kyle had even hooked up with girls using a dating app I bankrolled, had fucking scored on my yacht during a party. So it wasn't Kyle... and it couldn't be me, could it?
No. It could not. I was more rico suave than Kyle could ever have been in my prime. I could always pull better girls numbers. These young college girls just don't understand what I'm trying to do here, that's all. I had a little party favor in my pocket that would loosen things up.
After all, I've lucked into everything I've ever wanted. In changing places with Kyle I can really live like I'm 21, hell 19 again. No responsibility, no ball and chains, no rules. I don't think Kyle even appreciates how much freedom and power comes with it, but I'm seeing it now. I won't be a mopey, emo boy trying to escape from my past. With me in the drivers seat I will be a better Kyle Shane than he ever was.
I smile internally as I think of how the Remastered Kyle Shane, new shiny improved and forever chrome will be sooo much slicker, faster and outrageous than dusty old Kyle with his soap opera relationship drama was getting to be. Because I know what people want. They wanna see crazy out there sci fi, banter with the wit of ten Han Solos, and lots and lots of titties. It's going to be so awesome. I step forward to the bartender, thinking of all the rad promos ideas in my head and you know - I can't remember why I ever walked away from any of this. I was so good at it for so long, and I let the white boy in my shadow go on to become the more famous one of the Game Boyz. Well, no more. This new Kyle is gonna be unstoppable, because I've finally balanced what I thought I needed to be in life with what I actually, really want. And now that I've figured it out, who gonna stop me?
Like this tournament Kyle got me entered into. I actually like that Justin Michaels dude, seems like he has a lot of fun stories about what his time was like back when he was a main player before he walked away but those other two dorks? They do not matter to me. Statistically there isnt any way beating a dude like David Hunter is going to be harder than outlasting the entire field of Warrior's Pride - I mean, remember when I did that? David Hunter can't even keep hold of an Underground division with literally four people in it, and yet he calls himself a King. I love the arrogance of him, but it is not exactly backed up by skill. Or Dominator, big, scary badass who's run through competition and always managed to keep his name in mind as some unstoppable juggernaut... and yet he's been here exactly as long as Kyle Shane had in Pure Class Wrestling and has less than half the accolades. Both David Hunter and Dominator showed a tendency to break, to fall short, to be unable to get the big win when it mattered and validate all the big hype they put behind themselves. But the Overlord had never had that problem, in fact I justify the hype behind my name by backing up every single thing I've ever said I was going to do. I did it before, and now that I am getting back into being who I really should be, I'll do it again.
Really, what David and Dom have versus what I have, is a simple case of want versus need. There, it's reversed. I don't just want to do good in this tournament. This is my first test in a long time. I am coming awake from a dream of a life of corporate mediocrity, shackled impotence and seeing the existence you thought was best for you turn out to be a nightmare and I cannot go back to what I was. I need this, more than anyone had ever needed anything.
It is going to be awesome, I told myself.
Annoyed by another text, I pulled my phone out, to see yet another message from Kyle-as-Hiro, my phone number, "So hey this is cool, your sister and her goons are walking me down to the lab to disassemble EVERYTHING, Hiro, nice while it lasted huh?" Whatever. Seen 1:32 am.
When I get to the bar, I'm confronted by quite possibly the most statuesque, striking girl I've ever seen. Definitely college age, with a bit of that pop punk vibe I know Kyle would have flipped for in her band tee and tight skinny jeans, she looms over the bar over six feet, decently muscled on her long limbs, and her piercing blue eyes and mane of lion's hair catch my eye. "What can I get ya," says the bartender girl.
I smile my most charming smile, thinking if I wasn't trying to make my play for Katy... still, you always want to be kind and tip your bartender, right? "Patron with lime, for the uh, young lady over there, please?"
She's pouring, and her eyes cut back up at me. "What's your deal, dad?"
I blink, "Whatever do you mean?"
"I mean, you look like you're thirty," she nods at my face, "Crow's feet, that haircut, the clothes look like 2009 Hot Topic - " my jaw drops and I want to protest, but the bartender, roasting me as she is, still places the drink on the bar. But doesn't take her fingers off of it.
"- And you're hitting on that girl, who I know I carded and has a fake ID so she has to be at least ten years younger than you. And she shut you down, didn't she. And now you're buying her a drink."
I give an insulted little headshake, and then I place my elbows on the bar, leaning in to her. "Listen - uh what's your name?"
She begins cleaning out a set of pint glasses, but looks back up at me with humor. "It's Marki."
"Marki, right." I point across the dance floor to the blonde, who is now standing by with an anxious expression and looking like a colt about to flee, "I am just purchasing libation for my good friend Katy, and it is your purview as a bartender to render me said libation for a decent little tip, what is it to you why we -?"
Marki shrugs her tattooed shoulders, considering and discarding the question, "The purview of a bartender is to make sure that underage girls aren't preyed on by thirty year old predators."
I have to suck in a breath and give her a blink and double take because, whoa, whoa, what. Marki continues wiping out a glass, nonchalantly. "And you have the demeanor of somebody who has spent the last five-six years behind a desk and is trying so hard to hang in there with the college kids, I've been watching you all night. What is it, do you feel nostalgia for how it was when you were in school, is tonight the night you let your wife watch the kiddos and fall asleep watching Fifty Shades of Grey and you snuck out?"
I basically snatch the Patron glass off the bar. "You don't know me."
"Know your type," Marki calls at my departing shoulder, and it's enough to make me seethe.
No. She doesn't know me. And Katy's moosey friend doesn't know me, but she's still giving me dark looks. And the people cutting glances my way don't know me. I take my glass from the main view into a shadowed area beside a support pillar and put it on a table, so I can retrieve my little party favor. I'm already angry and sick of them judging me, because none of them Understand, I just wanted them to Understand. Katy and me would get along fine without any of this. I have come to a rubicon, and I've just now decided as Marki's look is beating into my retreating back that I've had enough of trying to play rules the way they are governed now. It always used to work fine like this. Back in the day, the Game Boyz had wild, experimental adventures with drugs, and I am not simply justifying it by saying that if I just give the girl a little nudge, we won't be better friends, come to an understanding. It worked every time before.
I am not a predator. I see that so clearly. I may be using a little help, and I may be playing the game the way we used to in college, but I am a new Kyle Shane living the best life; the life I want to live and the life I should have been living instead of wasting my years giving my creativity and genius to my father's payroll. I'm doing and taking anything I want, and if they can't understand...
A sudden, strong hand snatches onto my wrist. It bends my hand away from the glass, and the plastic baggie with the powder falls onto the table. I groan in pain as the muscled tattooed hands of the valkryie bartender are twisting my wrist. "Not cool, dad," Marki says, her good humor giving way to righteous, matriarchal fury.
**
"It's here," her voice rises in excitement, and she slaps at the driver to indicate towards the neon lit sign.
"Are you sure?" Krista cranes her head under the sun visor to squint at the sign, "the kids on the sidewalk all look like they're in high school."
Array is staring purposefully at the address and the blinking dot. Krista turns to her, as if wanting to make sure if the girl is in the right frame of mind to do this, but the look of grit and molten fury Array has in her eyes is only matched when they see the door in the alley open, and a familiar figure get pushed out.
**
I can't believe this is happening.
This cannot be happening to me.
This boudicca has my wrist strained to the breaking point, she's gone full bouncer as she leads me out the side door. "Can't we talk about this?" my voice comes out so much more plaintive and wounded than I wanted. I know, if I was in control of the situation there would be nothing I couldn't talk my way out of... I was the Overlord dammit... I was so smooth, so slick with my words I could - I could -
I cry out again. I'm almost positive she's trying to break my arm.
"You are lucky - I don't call the police for the Rohypnol, you piece of shit," she growls, and she slams me against the stone wall. I cringe, and I think of college. It used to be fun. They had based at least two promos about slipping Spanish fly into someone's drink and having funny Hangover-esque adventures, I mean... those were good times, people had fun when we did things like that in the past. I don't - I don't understand why this is happening. I wasn't going to hurt Katy. We just were going to have fun.
I'm feeling like a trapped animal now. Marki has released the clamp on my arm, but she still has me pinned to the wall. I buck her off and shove her. She smashes into my face with a punch that peels my lips back from my teeth. No. This can't be. I am stronger. I am more skilled. I am in Kyle Shane's still tightly maintained, highly toned body, I should be able to -
The bartender rains down two more punches to my face, battering me against the wall. I feel blood pouring down from my pulped lips, my throbbing, broken glass nose. This. Cannot. Be happening to me. I am tired of trying to make people understand, all I wanted - all I wanted was it to be like it was before. I grit my teeth and snarl. If I'm an animal, then I'll fight her like an animal, and rip her to shreds.
And then, before I can step forward, putting my fists up to fight her, something sticks in my side like a spear, and my entire body convulses and spasms with an explosion of white going off behind my eyes.
And then everything goes black.
**
"Didn't need you to do that," Marki huffs, wiping her forehead, "I wasn't going to let him walk away without losing some teeth."
Array, still holding the taser, looks conflicted as she stares down at the battered, up-turned face of Kyle. But then, a feral look peels across her lips, and she plunges the taser down into his ribs and lets go with another charge, and the fallen inhabited body jerks and spasms on the ground in the aisle. Doctor Krista Miller steps forward to put a stop to it. Marki Staley waves a hand up to stop Krista's advance.
"No, no. I'd say he deserves this. And she clearly has some issues to work out."
She digs the taser in a third time and the electronic scorpion bites, making him shake.
He doesn't move anymore.
**
I finally come to, and the fluorescent lighting and cork of an elevator are soundtracked by... a familiar voice crackling over speakerphone. As I get my bearings, groaning, I find that I'm bound by spider-straps from the boot of a car into a rolling desk chair, and I am surrounded by women. The penny taste of copper is still leaking into my sinus where... that big woman hit me.
"- So that's got us all up to speed?" a precise, clinical and fast-speaking white lady's voice comes, and I try to crane my head to see her.
"Mmmyep, your buddy Kyle Shane here switched minds with a Japanese friend from college thanks to their proximity to an AI-human download machine during a freak electrical storm," and I recognize that voice immediately, the cutting, sardonic and husky tones of the bartender woman, she stands there behind me, arms crossed over her chest. "Gotta say, you people roll weird."
"Trust me, compared to some of the stuff I've been through with Kyle, it's not that weird," comes from my left, and while it's distant and more reserved as if with lots of conflicted emotion, I pick out Array. She's at my side, and I can see she's still got the taser in her hand. It makes me wince. I almost feel like she made my hair gel catch fire.
"So, yeah," comes Hiro Sasuke's voice over the speakerphone that Krista Miller is holding in the air for the group, "That's where we're at. Oh, and Sidebar; please hurry because HIRO, your sister and her goons want to strip the lab for parts."
He hangs up, as if under duress, and the doctor lady I don't know looks worriedly at her two Charlies Angel wannabes, she's worried. "If they disassemble the mind interface machine then that would mean we can't undo the switch, not without the lab techs that created the blueprints."
"Ah, yeah, let me stop you there, glasses," I hear myself saying, not even knowing why at this point I'm antagonizing them, but maybe the Kyle Shane in my body is reaching up and taking control, "I know for a fact my father was going to be slashing my budgets and eliminating my department, he probably already fired them."
"Well that's just great," the bartender growls, "So we've got a bunch of sci-fi junk in there and no eggheads that know how to work it?"
Array leans in to my face, her lips pulled back in a scary way. She had been putting on a calm, distant face but she is seriously on the edge. I mean... why, why is she even angry at me for? "Bullshit, this son of a bitch ordered it built so he can walk us through connecting everything up."
I sigh. "Look, it's not that simple as all that," and as much as I can with my arms spider-strapped down I gesture at them, "Yes, I know about how to get us in the machine and connect the helmet... but what caused the switch seemed to be our proximity to it during that storm, and uh, you ain't got enough volts to power such a sudden surge."
Array snarls at me, lifting the taser up to my eye level and letting a little sting of electricity sizzle between the prods as she growls "Wanna bet?"
Gulp. Panicked, I hold my hands up, trying to do anything I can to stay execution. And maybe, just maybe, if I talk my way out of this... nothing will have to change. Because I liked my new start over, and, dammit... I didn't want to let this go. Because in the new body, as a new Kyle Shane, I could have made an entirely new life away from here, in this ruined, gutted shell I inhabit. Here, I have nothing. "Hear me out before we go up there."
The doctor leans, curious. "Listening..."
"Have you considered the fact that Kyle and I aren't different at all? Really... having Kyle live my life will probably have given him a new appreciation for life. It's only been two days, and yet in that time my marriage has fallen apart more than usual, and my father thinking I've wasted his money enough for the last time has cut all my funding. I have literally nothing. I'm... lost. In life. And here's Kyle. Life of luxury. Hot girlfriend. Handsome, articulate. Okay, he's a little wordy and a little emo. But he lives in the past just as much as I do. He's haunted by it. He just denies he does that, but he does like to live in the good ol' days as much as I do."
The bartender puts a strong hand on my clavicle, and squeezes so hard that I have to suppress a groan. "Yeah. But you cross boundaries and violate a lot of consent laws. But sure. You're so not such a bad guy, just misunderstood and sad."
"What I am trying to tell you is me and Kyle are the same. We are both - broken, in the same exact way, and maybe it was our fathers, or our fathers fathers, or our family experiences that shaped us, but - "
"Shut up," Array says, in disgust, "I've heard enough," but I break through, passionately, "Maybe I'm just giving Kyle some appreciation for the life he has but still manages to feel lost in. Maybe I'm giving him appreciation - for YOU, Array."
This time it's Array who cuffs me, strong across the jaw, and I sit there, turning in my chair, tasting it.
"You aren't like him," Array says adamantly.
"Just to be clear though, baby girl," Marki asides to Array, "There are still... a lot of problematic power dynamics in yours and the real Kyle's relationship, I mean your entire relationship is built on a foundation of profound imbalance in life experience. I mean, he's no saint either, compared to mister Spanish fly here."
Array doesn't have anything to say to that. The elevator mercifully dings and opens it's doors, and they walk and push me forward.
As soon as we enter the lab space, two guns whirl in our direction.
"WHOA," Kyle-in-my-body shouts over the two goons, and Rumiko, exasperated, waves for them to put them down.
"Are we going to have a problem here?" Array says. Tiny 5'3 Array, wielding a taser as if it's a battle axe and backed up by a strong pop punk girl in a tank top, steps forward as if to throw down.
Rumiko, businesslike and cold, looks across and down at them, and smiles fractionally. "No. We were waiting on you. All of the other machinery in the lab is to be stripped, but first, there's something you must do."
Kyle Shane -in my body - turns his head, squinting at Rumi, and looking confused, "Wait... Rumiko, you know about the human-AI interface? What it can do?"
Rumiko keeps looking at me, gauging me with a smile as I sit there, defeated, and in my chair. "No. But I know that you are not my brother." She nods. "That one is."
"Hi sis," I say, waving with a sheepish little smile.
The tense standoff thaws just a little bit as the three girls all look at each other and nod. Rumiko motions for me to be unstrapped, and the two topknots come to pull the straps off of me. As soon as I can get a hand, I reach in to the chest holster on the nearest suit, and pull free his gun. "Ha HA, bitches. Overlord!"
The other goon draws his gun. Kyle-in-my-body leaps up, trying to get in front of the henchman before he can get off a shot. "NO, don't damage my body!!"
"Now I'm getting out of here, and Kyle, you take good care of the Hiro Sasuke brand, remember to moisterize twice a day, my skin is very sensitive to the sun, and I found a good cucumber lotion, so if you could find that - " I'm telling him as I wave the gun at all of them, trying to keep my back to them all so I can get to the elevator.
Array moves like lightning, kicking me between the legs, drawing all of the wind out of me once again. And the gun goes flying from my hand, and I go down. Fuck me.
It's over.
They all stand around me, the tension bleeding from the room. I can see the doctor Krista examining the human-AI interface clamshell chair. The bartender Marki looks nonplussed at the disassembled lab, and peeks over at the topknot henchmen. "So, I'm super confused. Who, exactly, is this Hiro Sasuke?"
I look up at the face I see too often in the mirror, staring back down at me, with sorrow in my eyes. From my own lips, I hear Kyle say, "He was my best friend."
Then nothing else.
