Whenever Leland Hawkins showed up anywhere in the Etherium, doors slammed a little more. The nearest sun was either too hot or too cold. You could tell you were close to him whenever there was a cramp in your toes. Others would dismiss it as symbolic superstition, grown out of folktales, grown out of hasty explanations.

The truth was, fate had a stern glare and an icy disposition whenever there was a squeaky cog of a man on a deck, a floor, or a foot of soil.

—-

That evening, Jim sat back on a couch in the lounge of the Benbow Inn and read some thick wordy thing on tactics for school. He tried not to think that tomorrow was the day he wouldn't be a child anymore. There were other things to think about. For example, as his mother Sarah stammered into the room on slippers with a pot of hot hell-knows-what for a guest, Jim couldn't help but ask— "Mom, there was a lot of racket last night."

"Yes," said Sarah with a sigh. "Your father tried to burn the place down while you were asleep, I tied him up in the basement, I'm really busy now, can we talk later?"

Jim blinked.

He put his book down as Sarah rushed back into the kitchen to get something else, among the clattering of plates and other utensils. BEN shouted something obscene as dishes fell within.

If Jim knew his mother correctly, which he was certain he did, and his father really had returned to try to kill both of them, and he really had been apprehended— this conversation would have involved leagues more of sobbing, there would have been a screaming argument in the middle of the night that would have woken him up, and even the guests would know something horrible was afoot. But they continued to shove unmentionable cuisine of other planets down their throats and Sarah came out with a few more dishes.

Jim knew better than to prod his mother further while she was working, so he thought it over for himself. It had to be a joke. But now that he was almost 18, he was allowed in the basement, and a trip down there was never really a bad idea per se.

—-

The light switch in the stairway into the basement from the outside was dry as Jim flipped it, and as the crystals began to hum and glow above the mess, there in the racket was a man tied to a chair, with a gag on his neck that had previously been over his mouth. Next to him were a few empty cans of rocket fuel.

He had a noticeable gut now. His hair was gray, he had grown a beard, and his face was covered in scars. But this was definitely—

"Dad," said Jim. The situation was still horrendously unclear to him. Not only did his mother joke about the man she missed so much coming to kill them, but she wasn't joking at all. Leland Hawkins was here, and this wasn't a big deal.

Had Jim been younger, he would have broken the bastard's neck on first contact. The offer was still pretty tempting, and he felt his fists tighten at his sides against his better judgment.

There was no response, only the sound of Jim's trembling footsteps.

"I need to know what's going on, right now," said Jim to his father.

Then, the first words he'd heard from his father in over a decade, through a voice soaked in alcohol: "I can't tell you, James."

"Well, you're going to have to, or I'll be a happy camper if you starve to death down here."

Leland looked left, then right. Then he looked into Jim's eyes and shrugged. "I can eat the rats."

Before he could think about anything else, Jim punched the man in the nose and broke it. When his voice came out after a few seconds, it was cracked and loud. "Why, did you try, to burn down the Benbow Inn?"

"It's for your own safety, James. There are things worse than death."

"Worse than—" Jim flailed his arms around and tried not to snap like a fool. He failed at the task. "You were trying to kill me? You haven't even been around long enough to have a reason to kill me!"

"I can't get into details. You're going to just have to trust me."

"That's impossible. There's no way I can trust you, not after what you put mom and I through."

"All right!" shouted Leland, in a commanding sort of voice that froze Jim in his tracks. He hadn't been frozen like that since he was a young boy— and this command came from a man tied to a chair. "Look. James. I can try to explain it to you, but—"

"Then do it!"

Leland sighed. "All right, here goes nothin'. It started when you were—"

There was a flash of light, and the ropes fell down from Leland's side— because he wasn't there anymore. He had disappeared into nothing.

And then, from the entryway, there came a few more familiar voices, perhaps too familiar—

"Jim?" called Dr. Doppler.

"We need to go to the mountain," said Captain Amelia.

Jim ran back to the door and up the stairs—

"What the hell?" he said aloud, not intending to.

As the sun set behind them, all of his friends stood before him in a line: his mother, Silver, Doppler, Amelia, BEN, Morph, even Mr. Arrow— and he was dead, but apparently not anymore.

Jim just stared at the group— the third weird life-changing what-the-hell that happened so far.

"This is too confusing," said Jim. "I'm going to go to sleep."

"You can sleep in the landboat," said Sarah, her eyes more dead than alive. "We have to get to the mountain."

"What?"

Silver stepped forward and placed a sad robotic arm on Jim's shoulder. "Jimbo, no matter whot happens in tha next two hours— yer a good lad."

Jim was led to a hovering landboat, a longer one than he had seen before, where the two robot policemen he had run into so many times in the past waited for him at either side of the open boat.

As the rest of the crew boarded, Jim looked them over. Jim thought he'd have been happier to see Silver. What's more, Doppler and Amelia didn't even have their kids. As for Morph, even he had the expression of someone freshly hit with a brick.

As the engines hissed and idled, the officers restrained Jim and handcuffed him.

"What'd I do this time?" said Jim.

"NOTHING. YOU WERE A MODEL CITIZEN." said one.

"Okay… then why are you handcuffing me?"

"YOU DID GOOD," said the other.

And still, he was led on board over the hollow wood gangplank as a prisoner.

The boat sped on, past the old factories. Jim said nothing, for he knew that no matter what he could say, none of this would make sense unless he waited and found out why everyone on the boat was giving him arbitrary loving glances, and having awkwardly dead-pan conversations about what a good boy he is, without mentioning specifics.

Soon, the Sun had completely set over Montressor. It had been an hour since the boat last left the Benbow. Jim couldn't see his own hands.

And sure enough, there was a mountain. But it wasn't so much a familiar rough triangle as it was a smooth, black, god-impaling obelisk into the stratosphere, only a few hundred feet wide at the base. Jim never heard anything about this type of mountain anywhere on Montressor.

When they disembarked just at the edge of the mountain's base, Jim was led off the gangplank by Silver and Morph, who uncuffed him. They walked in the darkness to the unclimbable wall at the base.

Silver lit a small flame from his arm, the only source of light between them, and ignited his pipe. "Now Jim," said Silver, "it's best ye think about the answer to this question very careful-like."

"…okay," said Jim.

"Did ye have a good life, Jim?"

Jim thought about that question, but only one answer could come in his head, and he didn't like it. "Why are you asking me this?" said Jim. "Is this one of those symbolic nightmares where I wake up and I have to change, or else I'll have it again?"

"Begging your pardon, Hawkins," said Amelia in the background, "but Silver's inquiry is of the yes-or-no variety."

"Well… yeah, I did, but—"

"Good," said Silver, as he raised his cyborg foot. "Well, it was nice knowin' ye."

Light was behind him. Jim looked, and Morph had turned into an oval hole that led to a blazingly clean white room that hurt his eyes. One door, no windows.

And before Jim could ask about Silver's statement, Silver kicked him into the room.

Morph dissolved, and the portal was gone. Jim ran back to the wall and pounded on it with his fist, but Morph was on the other side of the wall now, and the wall was padded several feet thick with hell-knows-what.

With no other options, Jim, with the slowest gait he could manage, made it to the thin metal door and turned the knob.

Another white room was just beyond. But there was no way out of this room either, and it wasn't much different, save for a small flat computer screen on a nightstand, the likes of which he had never known.

If there was going to be any way out, it would be on that screen.

He ran up to it, and read the rough gray text on a background of black.

BEGIN/
RUN/_/18PROTOCOL/
USER/ ANGEL_OS
PASSWORD/ ••••••••••
CONFIRM/ ••••••••••
/directory search_H
/HARO_SOLA /HARR_GALA /HAWK_ETHE/HAYE_UNIV/(show more results y/n N)
/HAWK_ETHE/
/deadline reached—begin /HAWK_ETHE/ extraction y/n Y
/following executables will be reformatted for other participants/AMEL_ETHE/ARRO_ETHE/DOPP_ETHE/SARA_ETHE/SILV_ETHE (show more results y/n N)
enter_final_confirm
/RUN ALL ABOVE Y/N Y
/-THIS WILL TERMINATE PARTICIPANT /HAWK_ETHE/- CONFIRM Y/N
Y

Something grabbed him from behind.