There are many advantages to being a Thunderbird. You can rescue lost souls trapped between this world and the next. You can tag possible dimensions within the Grand Akashic Index for better understanding of our illustrious multiverse. You’re a gravitational wave surfer whose energetic essence traverses third-dimensional realities like a smooth, flat stone skips over the water’s surface—with ease.

It gets old.

There are only so many worlds one can visit. Though limitless existence implies infinite possibility, patterns do emerge and ultimately trap a jaded Thunderbird under the prison of His own paralysis of choices.

Thank God I happened upon the Cheshire. The crew had succumbed to the impossible gravity of a rather large black hole, attempting to lens its space-time further out into the multiverse than had ever been recorded previously… at least in this dimension. Like Kid Icarus, they flew too close and got burned. Sucked up out of existence, or they would have been had the accident not triggered my distress beacon. At that time, I was working as a black hole rescuer. An exceptional ability to walk gravity ripples proved useful for such recovery missions.

At the speed of thought I leapt to the event horizon of their fated black hole. Such velocities don’t come without some sacrifice. Forfeiting my physical identity to cover impossible spans of space and time, I materialized in the good ole Cheshire’s engine room, but not before retrieving the spacecraft from spaghettification and setting it safely just outside the black hole’s ominous gravitational pull.

I was born again—from pure energy into a juvenile, physical body with amnesia. I was but a boy who could not explain to the Captain nor Her crew how I had entered their engine room. Luckily, though, they weren’t so concerned with a stowaway, having brushed with oblivion not a moment sooner.

***

It’s ironic that you are reading this passage at the beginning of my Thunderbird log. It was the last journal entry I had made aboard the good ship Cheshire. Every preceding entry detailed my journey to becoming a Thunderbird once again. Before total recall (a full soul actualization), I had to complete the five trials in order:

1. Learn to surf
2. Zen in the Drop
3. Leap dimensions
4. Navigate the Dew
5. Teach the Crew

This is the story of how I climbed that ladder.

***

Now, in this account of what transpired to reacquaint me with the Thunderbird Order, I will periodically reference my Cheshire journal. It’s just easier than reiterating thoughts originally recorded. There are fewer things a Thunderbird laments more than repetition.

The question is where to begin in this log. As mentioned, rung one in the ladder was learning to surf. I do remember previous life flashbacks flooding my mind on the first Cheshire mission that prompted a déjà vu, but let’s backtrack even further a bit.

I found myself in the Cheshire’s engine room, bewildered, staggering out of an electrical storm throwing sparks from the internal oscillator’s bowels. A boy no older than 12.

Crew member Sully found me first.

“What’d you do??” Sully said.

“I-I don’t know. Where am I?” I said, holding my head which was aching profusely.

“Dude, somebody or some entity just saved our ship. We were for sure spaghettified in that black hole. But then we weren’t. Once the commotion settled and we were at a safe distance, I heard stirring down here in the engine room. I came down to investigate, thinking maybe I’d find the culprit responsible for our salvation, and instead found you: a little kid.”

“I have no idea how I got here, or who I am.”

Sully’s face washed stoic at this sobering statement. He craned his neck, pointing his head back up the metal ladder that had brought him to me, and yelled, “Cap, we got an amnesiac down here!”

I remember feeling oddly comforted at Sully’s sheer lack of astonishment. Here I was, freeloading on the Cheshire ship with neither explanation nor permission for my presence there. And he didn’t even bat an eye.

Upon review of my journal, I found this entry from soon after my first encounter with Sully. I had copied it from the ship’s technical manual:

“An engine room capable of producing energy vortices that traverse dimensions has been fabled to, on the rarest of occasions, produce spontaneous outputs of entangled particles. Usually just random space debris from an altogether distant realm. But the smallest of possibilities could align and berth a whole human, for one instance. There have been several recorded accounts of this phenomenon.”

That’s how I became Lucky No. 13 on the crew aboard the good ship Cheshire. Little did any of us know that this guy possessed Thunderbird potential. In fact, all 12 of the original crew only knew one thing for sure: that I was an annoying, ne’er-do-well stowaway, who shouldn’t even be there.

No one talked to me much in those days. The silence hurt, and their actions were even less friendly. They set me up with a cot in the supply closet off the engine room, until they could find a place for me on the nearest habitable planet or Dyson space station that rounded celestial bodies like Saturn’s rings. Yet an inkling urged me to remain aboard. And I knew I had to prove my worth quickly.

In the words of the Captain: “Be useful, or be gone.”

I’ll never forget the first of many times that she scolded me. They had tasked me with mopping below deck. I had accidentally spilled the slop bucket’s disgusting contents on some sensitive wiring, requiring our engineer Joey to fix it. Her words scarred me so much that I had to write them down. I’ll never forget her furrowed brow, from which these words were delivered:

“Everybody here pulls their weight. Some, in more ways than one. Look at Sully over there. He’s our pilot and he also cooks. What can you do? Nothing yet. You better find some way to contribute and quick, or we’ll have to leave you at a checkpoint. Now, you are no doubt some sort of memento from our dramatic black hole rescue. Perhaps your existence here on my ship is penance for that. But, the simple fact is: we don’t have room for freeloaders on the Cheshire.”

***

NEXT UP: Bill accompanies Captain and Crew on their first assigned mission from Danny V. He experiences a flashback from Thunderbird training—skateboarding experts instructing would-be TB’s how to skate with elegance and balance—that’s triggered from the required tasks. Then, he figures out how to transcend dimensions in space to expand his meager digs within the closet, into a much bigger Drop, where he eventually achieves zen (the second trial).

***