On his run down to Australia across the Pacific Ocean, Sonic began to contemplate his very existence.
Just a few years back, he had received a DM on Facebook from a complete stranger who didn't even have a profile picture.
"I've got some videos you might want to see," the stranger told him. And he sent over the videos.
They were videos taken in a sterile-looking, dark laboratory. The names of the videos were "PROJECT BLUE," underscore, and then the date, starting with about ten years prior. It looked like they were filmed over the course of roughly six months. There were seventeen videos in total, ranging in length from just a few seconds to an hour. Sonic watched them in chronological order.
In the first few videos, there was a normal-looking hedgehog. Except there were scientists performing experiments on it. They injected it with chemicals and bathed it in vats of glowing liquid. The hedgehog slowly but surely started looking blue and more and more humanoid. Sonic began to realize that the hedgehog in the video was himself.
He never found out who the scientists were though, or why they were performing the experiments in the first place. Their faces were out of the camera shot and their voices were distorted. In fact, he had no memory of even being there. They must have somehow wiped his memory before they set him free.
But it made sense. Sonic had no recollection whatsoever of his childhood. And he had no family (that he knew of). Sonic's past was a void to him. So he made it his mission these past years to find out more about his origins. But to this day, he hasn't found out very much. Just breadcrumb trails leading to dead ends. And then he's right back where he started: clueless. And then, of course, the giant Godzilla goo monster attacked, and he was rather occupied with that whole fiasco.
The stranger on Facebook had immediately deleted their account after sending the videos. They must have been an insider at the laboratory shown. How else would he or she have gotten their hands on the videos? But then what was this insider's motivation in sending the videos to him? Sonic couldn't sleep at night wondering who this mysterious figure who had landed in his DMs was. And he couldn't for the life of him remember their name on Facebook.
All this and more played out in his mind on repeat as he ran across the Pacific Ocean. Despite being the world's fastest living creature, it was still a long run. Sonic could still only run at a speed approaching the speed of sound. Except for when he achieved Super Sonic state, at which point he could travel at a speed approaching the speed of light.
He also found himself thinking about his old flame: Amy Rose.
Roughly ten hours later, upon his arrival, he decided to load up on calories. So he stole food from the local big box store. That was an advantage of being so fast that no one could catch you. Not even the cameras. He stole just about everything that was ready to eat already because he did not have access to cooking utilities.
He then decided to catch a concert at the Sydney Opera House. Because he had nothing really better to do. Of course, he didn't have to pay the entrance fee. He was able to sneak right in unnoticed. The Sydney Philharmonic was performing a piece by Verdi.
While he was impressed by the Opera House's architecture, Sonic quickly grew bored and left. See, this was one of Sonic's major shortcomings. He had the attention span of a gnat and very little patience. So he was always on the move. He could be almost anywhere he wanted to be at any time he wanted. So this major convenience not available to everybody else also ended up being a disadvantage for him, at times.
Not that missing out on this Verdi concert was a high-stakes matter. Of course not. Still, though, Sonic would find himself unable to sit down and have an intellectual conversation about great art. Such as this performance he decided to leave prematurely.
He spent the rest of the evening (and night) at a club, in which he danced to excessively loud house music and drank copious amounts of alcohol.