Hey guys I'm back. Did you miss me?
Joe opened his eyes to find himself inside an ordinary house. It was quiet until a small explosion shook the house.
"Kyle, please be careful! We just cleaned the ceiling up there yesterday!" A woman appeared and stood at the base of a small flight of stairs. Her hair was brown and greying, and was tied back in a tight bun, strands of hair sticking out here and there despite her best efforts.
"Sorry mom. I'm almost on to something!" The woman rolled her eyes and nodded her head.
"Of course you are dear." She smoothed her skirt (and her hair) and quickly retreated back to a tiny kitchen. Joe laughed a little, and looked over to find Kyle, as he knew him, at his side.
"Yeah that's my mom."
"What are you doing up there?" Joe asked curiously.
"Chemistry set. I was the cat that was killed by curiosity and I had run out of my nine lives." Joe only smiled as they climbed the stairs to see a teenaged Kyle. The boy was closely examining a beaker with dark smoke rising from the rim. The edges of the glass were blackened, and his face was dirty. "Chemistry fascinated me when I was that age. Soon when I got to college, all of the sciences were my specialty. Then I became an inventor, and well...it goes from there." The boy and the house disappeared and they were standing in a clean entryway to a large building.
"What are we doing here?" Joe asked.
"Just wait." They stood facing the doors to the building and soon a young man came hurrying through. He was neatly dressed and clean shaven. "Yeah, that's me." Joe nodded. "This is where I used to work. A government job, inventing...weapons. This is not a very good day for me as you'll soon find out. They hurried after the younger Kyle. They came to a stop in a small office where a large man sat in a chair behind a thick desk.
"Kyle Anderson! What a pleasure to see you again my boy." Kyle stood as stiff as a board in front of the desk.
"You wanted to see me sir?"
"Yes, yes I do. Sit down son!" Kyle hurriedly seated himself in a spindly chair and wrung his hands nervously.
"Kyle, I'll get right to the point. You're inventions are...amazing." Kyle's face brightened.
"Thank you sir! I'm sorry this last one took so long. I'm sure it will get faster as I master the process of making it."
"Speed is nothing Kyle, we got all the time in the world." The man's facial expression turned to disappointment.
"Something wrong sir? If there are any bugs, I'm sure they'll be easy to fix." The man shook his head.
"Kyle, the device is perfect, just perfect. The thing is...it's too expensive to keep making."
"To...too expensive? But you have tons of money to make things!"
"Yes, but not unlimited. We can't use all of the money for one single thing. We need to use it to develop things like armor like products, and devices to detect hidden machines and traps and all kinds of things." Kyle frowned slightly.
"Sir, you don't have to speak down to me. I'm not a child." The man raised his eyebrows and nodded.
"Sorry. Look Kyle, it's not just this one invention of yours. All of them are too expensive to keep in production." Kyle sighed.
"If you're firing me, say no more. I got the message loud and clear." The man sighed heavily.
"Yes Kyle, I'm sorry. I would love to keep you on but-"
"Money is more important. Yeah I got that much."
"I never said that!"
"If you think about it, yeah you did."
"Now listen Kyle," Kyle's face no long held it's placidity. Instead it was becoming red with anger.
"No, you listen to me. I waited my whole life to get a job like this. A job that would allow me to experiment, make new things that could actually be of use to someone. But now I hear that my creations aren't worth the price it takes to keep them. If they were as wonderful as you say they are that wouldn't be the case. You spend way more on vehicles that don't even work, than you would spend on my weapons which do work. Don't try to salve the wounds, Mr. Baker, by telling me that it was 'too expensive'. A simple 'they weren't good enough would have been enough."
"Kyle..." Kyle said nothing more as he picked himself out of the chair and stalked out of the room. Joe and the present day Kyle followed.
"I'll show them, I'll show them that they are good enough. I'll get the backing, I'll get the precious funds. There'll be someone who wants the stuff I could make and when I start being a huge success they'll be sorry they had ever let me walk out." Again the scene disappeared and reappeared in a basement. Kyle and several other men were sitting in a circle making plans.
"Ok, we just need to convince the president of the company that we are a wise investment."
"How?" Kyle grinned and pulled a little machine out of his pocket.
"With this. I tested it on my good for nothing father. I actually convinced him not to go to the bathroom. He wet himself, poor guy." All of the men snickered their approval.
"Where will our laboratory be?"
"Somewhere secret. We don't want those fools knowing exactly what we'll be planning to make."
"Right, so what are we making?"
"A time machine." Kyle's eyes brightened at his announcement. "So we can escape to the future where things will be fresh and new, and nothing could stand in the way."
"What if you don't like what you see boss?"
"What's not to like? Who knows, maybe I'll be successful already and all I'll have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride." Some of the men looked at him skeptically. "What? We're not dropping our weapons research, don't worry about that. I want to help this country whether they want it or not. Our inventions are for the better."
"What if we can't sell him Kyle?"
"Other countries might want them. If ours doesn't want it, then they'll pay the price when a country we're at war with has the upper hand."
"You would want our country to suffer!"
"Punishment for passing up a good deal don't you think? Not my fault that the country I sold it to wants to use it to hurt mine. I didn't tell them to. I'll need a buyer and if they were first to make a bid then hell, no skin off my nose." At this some of the men got up to leave.
"Kyle, you've gone mad. Ever since you lost that job-"
"Shut up."
"Why should I? I'm not the one trying to kill off my country just to get revenge on some overweight government official."
"I'm not trying to purposely kill my country, I'm trying to make a profit. Besides we're not even at war right now so sit down and quit being an idiot." The men that stood up reluctantly went back to their seats.
"We should think of a name for our company." Someone suggested.
"That'll be hard if we're a secret company." Another replied.
"Why not have a name for us to call ourselves. A name that we can talk about in public without having to make up things on the spot you know?" Kyle nodded at the man who suggested it.
"Well any ideas?" Kyle asked.
"Black like a shadow!" someone called out.
"Invisible like a ghost!" another said.
"That's stupid!" a third man criticized. Kyle laughed.
"Well do you have any better ideas?" The man hung his head.
"No..."
"Then it's settled. Why don't we call it Black Ghost." Everyone murmured their approval, and rose to leave. "I'll see you all tomorrow right?" They all said their yeses and agreements as they climbed the stairs of the basement, leaving Kyle by himself. The scene vanished and Joe and Kyle were back in the autumn season, park. Joe was speechless.
"Scarl is me Joe. It was hard for me to take what I became, and I'm sorry for what I did to you."
"Black Ghost isn't you Kyle. He's what's left of you."
"I'm afraid not Joe. That's me alright, and if you didn't notice I already had the 'the world can kiss my ass' attitude. No, what I became was very real, and very believable. That group of guys you saw, only a couple of them stayed with me until the end. Their end that is. I found a way to preserve my mind, if not my body as you already know. I had developed Cyborg technology before you even existed on the earth. With you, the trick was making a Cyborg out of a living human, which apparently, I was successful in doing."
"Yeah, Kyle you nailed it." Joe said bitterly.
"I'm sorry for what I did to you and your friends. That's the only sight I could think of that's worse."
"Worse than what?"
"Seeing what I did to other people is worse than seeing what became of myself." They were both deathly quiet as they heard footsteps approaching.