The Omnicosmic Odyssey of Sonicus Maximus

Part One, Chapter One, Act One

SCENE THREE - Closing Time

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“Look, I know that was brutal," Amanda said, "but considering what we're talking about doing, I have to know you can handle the unexpected.”

"I understand," I assured her, perhaps trying to reassure myself.

Amanda hailed the waiter. She pointed to the beer she was drinking. She turned her eyes to me and widened them as if to ask if I wanted one. I nodded assent and she used two gloved fingers to signal "two" to the server.

The suit Amanda wore was incredibly unusual attire for a Pennsylvania bar, but I resolved to only ask her about it she invited me to do so. Amanda was hardly going to stand out while I was nearby, wearing my own deliberately ridiculous combination of dress clothes and wrestling gear.

Amanda looked at her glass, disgusted.

"Is everything ok?" I questioned.

“Oh sure, like I said, you're fine," she answered, "It's this beer. What's this called? Youngling?”

“I think you mean 'Yuengling'", I said, "But the color and appearance of what's in that glass looks more like an IC Light to me.”

Her bright green eyes practically glowed as she asked, "Taste it to see?"

My fear of germs cost me dearly in my youth. Then one day, I just refused to let my disorders hold me back any longer. Wrestling rings were hardly sanitary, and I had to overcome my reservations to be able to function inside them. Heels would sometimes put their fingers in my mouth, stretching my face as part of their rulebreaking offense.

Over the course of my information technology career, I have engaged in my share of "Happy Hour" rituals. Occasionally, when asked, I have overcome my intense obsessive-compulsive disorders long enough to sample the drinks of others.

If I did not die from the Cuban Assassins pulling my face with their fingers, and also survived drinking after coworkers at happy hours, I had no reason not to take a single sip from Amanda's glass.

She smiled as I reached forward to grasp the drink, as if to assure me that a woman who looked like her would never jeopardize my life with poison.

“If I were blindfolded, doing some kind of blind test taste," I said after taking a sip, "I would definitely say this tastes more like an IC Light.”

“Wait," she laughed, "'CC Sonic' says it's an 'IC Light' and I am supposed to pretend this whole thing is not completely rigged?”

Amanda scoffed and declared, "I'm not going to buy any more of the CC Light or the Jingling. Good thing I brought my own beer."

I ignored the intentional misnomers, but I had questions about why she brought her own beer to a bar. Even so, Amanda seemed to want to continue the interview, and I had no desire to interrupt her.

“So, you want to quit pro wrestling and make video games full time," she asked, "and you believe it is worth making a trip to the actual real-life Amazon to promote the game?”

“Correct," I confirmed, "I am saying goodbye to wrestling. I fully expect that tonight was the last wrestling show in which I will participate.”

Amanda responded, "That makes sense based on what you posted on your social media, but I had a few questions about you, and I hope the answers are as hilarious as I think they might be."

I braced for additional laughter at my expense. "Ask away," I invited her.

“CC Sonic," she asked, "I assume the first part is your initials...your old initials, at least.”

I nodded to confirm.

"And the Sonic part..." she continued.

“I was training to become a pro wrestler in Lima, Ohio in the summer of 1995," I answered, "and was being trained by a guy named D-Lo. Pro wrestling has a certain prescription for visual communication. Motions need to be twice as large, but executed at half speed, to maximize the ability for the crowd to see what's taking place. I always had so much adrenaline inside the ring that it proved difficult for me to slow down. D-Lo started calling me 'ferret.'”

Amanda laughed, partially spitting out her most recent swig of beer, obviously wanted to hear what would follow that revelation, as I continued:

“From childhood, my experience with nicknames is that once you get one, they are tough to shake. For some guys, it's just easier to go by the nickname all through life. In the town where I graduated from high school, there is a prominent attorney and entrepreneur who still goes by his childhood nickname...which he got because they said he looked like an owl when he was young. More significantly for me in wrestling school was that some of the people training with me were already adopting the nicknames they got at Bodyslammers Pro Wrestling Gym as their professional gimmick names.”

I summarized it, "Can you just accept that I did not want to spend the foreseeable amount of my future aspirations being called 'CC Ferret?'"

“That's great," she snickered, "but how did you end up at 'Sonic?'”

“I drove there," I ventured, "there was one right off the interstate and I was hungry, so...”

"Smartass," she responded, trying not to encourage me by laughing.

“Seriously," I continued, "Al, the owner of the gym and main trainer, was reviewing our progress one day. He noticed how fast I was going and told me to slow down, and D-Lo noted that he had already been telling me that. D-Lo reiterated that I looked a ferret to him, but Al said I reminded him of Sonic the Hedgehog, the video game character known for his speed.”

“I KNOW who Sonic the Hedgehog is," Amanda snapped back before grinning and accepting the inevitable conclusion, "and to you, Sonic was better than Ferret. It's all coming together now.”

"Next question," I offered.

“It's my understanding you stopped wrestling...then eventually went back to it...and I was led to believe that returning was extremely difficult for you," Amanda asked, "So why are you quitting again after putting in that much effort?”

“There was no place in wrestling for me today," I answered. "I had a lot of ideas about what it would be like to work in a paradigm where you can share matches on social media. One of my favorite matches from my first run was against a guy named Jamie Howard, in West Virginia. I was not sure about this kid at first. But he persuaded me to push myself, and we had a great match that night. He went on to prove himself and ended up working internationally and even in the largest domestic promotions. Our first match was billed as the 'Battle of the Wild Things' because he entered the ring to the original 'Wild Thing' song, by The Troggs I think, and I came out to the cover by the punk bank X. When I went to borrow the videocassette to make a copy, the promoter told me they had not recorded the match. That was frustrating. I knew that could not happen today. The match in which I just participated was recorded in various angles from multiple devices and posted to social media.”

I elaborated, "It was a different feeling back then. In 1996, despite what was happening nationally in the Monday Night Wars, in smaller towns, you could still work as if everyone in the crowd believed what they were seeing, as though it was still the 1980's. But today, many of the people in the crowd, and most people in the locker room, likely never experienced that. I thought bridging that gap would be easier than it was. One night I shook hands with someone in Pennsylvania, and he mocked my handshake, calling it the 'brother handshake' though it was the standard one used by wrestlers where I had worked in the 1990's. That was the night I accepted that I simply did not belong there. There was unfinished business, including transitioning to being a supervillian manager, but the eventual exit strategy materialized that day."

I felt good about the direction of the conversation. She was getting her questions answered, and I had not done anything stupid to offend or alarm her. If I didn't hear "the voices" messing with me again, I believed I could come out of this night with an enormous win.

“Tonight, you were a manager," Amanda inquired, "and that has something to do with the Amazon?”

“Yes," I responded, "I was a psychotic heel manager, feuding with a face named Happy Hour...”

I was about to ask if she understood "face" and "heel" which historically were the most basic "inside" wrestling terms, but she cut me off. She heard something else of immediate interest.

“Happy Hour," Amanda asked, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree, "The guy who comes to the ring with beer in his hand and hails from a brewery?”

“Yes," I answered, "He actually is a brewer in reality, and--”

“I love this guy already," she interjected, "because I brew my own beer. As I said earlier, I brought my own.”

I previously avoiding asking this, unwilling to risk offending her, but it was fair game now. "You brought your own homebrew," I asked her, "to this bar?"

“Yes," she confirmed with excited pride, "And it's way better than anything this place has on tap tonight. I call it 'MK Ultra' and it will absolutely mess with your mind!”

“After we leave, I'll give you a sip," Amanda happily declared, "And explain the backstory of the name.”

"For now...tell me about the match against Happy Hour," she demanded.

“Well," I said, "We had been 'feuding' on social media leading up to the match, and before the match he offered me a beer, hoping it would make me less crazy, but I promptly swatted it from his hand, spilling it in the ring.”

Amanda interrupted, "I would have cheered for him to punch you for real."

I continued, "That was the idea. But I was the manager, and in the match, he was actually facing my minion, Exodus, The Killer Agent."

I braced myself for laughter at the next part.

Continuing, I said, "So Exodus wore a suit...and I controlled him with a magic staff..."

As if on cue, she laughed and spit her beer. "Sonic's magic staff controls his minions," she said, "and you think you need ME to help you market games?"

I waited patiently for the amusement to subside, fighting back laughter of my own, knowing it got better.

“Exodus hailed from 'The Amazon' which I believe is a callback to an iconic pro wrestling videogame character," I continued, "so my final goodbye to wrestling will see me redeem myself, making a final face turn, by returning the magic staff to the Amazon, putting all back into balance, and there I will announce my full dedication to PlayerPla.Net, a new site I'm creating as the hub for my video games.”

"Putting everything back into balance," Amanda confirmed.

She continued as if some grand epiphany had taken place, "It all makes sense now."

Amanda's charm had disarmed me. I was surprised how quickly I had recovered from being pranked by her. We seemed to have a rapport that facilitated smooth, effortless conversation.

And when I am most at ease, I am most prone to saying something unpalatable to other humans.

Exodus' gimmick was that he was an anthropomorphic lizard, a government experiment gone wrong or something along those lines. He had several outfits and even a realistic looking monster reptile mask, and occasionally worked as Agent X.

On social media, variations of "controlling the lizard with the staff" had been a running gag as Happy Hour and I taunted each other.

Though I had answered Amanda's questions, I thought she would appreciate me adding the lizard reference. It seemed right in line with everything else she found amusing.

“So Exodus wore a suit designed to resemble an anthropomorphic lizard," I told her, anticipating at least some snickering if not a complete belly laugh over the silly innuendo, "So I used my magic staff to control my lizard...”

I paused for the response, but my statement was met with stone-faced silence.

Soon, Amanda's countenance had changed to a stare of concentrated condemnation. It was almost like the one she had given me right before giggling over the wheelchair prank, but this was more intense.

Though it would make no sense in current context, I expected her to once again burst into laughter, proclaiming that she was just kidding. I wanted her to do that, and I quickly became concerned when she did not.

My heart sank again. What did I do wrong here? What did I say?

Had I gotten this close to passing her interview, only to blow it with an inappropriate joke? She was laughing about the "magic staff" innuendo earlier. This made no sense.

I felt as though I could pass out from the stress.

As I reviewed my words for a culprit, I heard the voice from before once again.

"Threat," it told me.

There was not much I could do with that enlightenment at the moment. I wished the new friend in my head would have given me something I could leverage to get myself out of the current situation. Ideally, if I could return to the point where I said...whatever I said...that derailed the conversation... I did not need a council of disembodied voices in my head. I needed a time machine so I could rewind and make this right.

"Eliminate," it offered up.

Nothing made sense at that moment. Either this situation was insane, or I was.

Every moment that passed without Amanda saying anything or changing her expression was like another heavy stone stacked upon my chest. I was smothering. Again, I felt like just giving up and going home.

I tried to comfort myself by reasoning that it could not get any worse.

Then I looked over and saw a man shambling toward us.

It was absolutely about to get worse.