On the morning before my first voyage, I received a message from Kitty.

“I hope you’re learning a lot at Thunderbird school,” she said, through the recording in my helmet. “We could really use ya back here. The UU’s assignments have seemed endless lately. Like there is literally no end. It feels like we’ll be doing this into infinity.”

She didn’t know how right she was. You see, even though the UU was mainly concerned with its own universe, its purview was still infinite, whether or not they knew that. If I couldn’t free the Cheshire from their imposed position, the crew would be stuck there until death. Just like those unsuspecting, ignorant locals down on the ground of the many planets I had visited, the UU was itself naive. It thought, as a collective, that if it rode its citizens and governmental workers hard and long enough, they would eventually arrive at a point of completion. They would finally have catalogued the whole known universe. Little did they know that this was a pipe dream and they had sent the Cheshire and ships like Her on a wild goose chase.

My purpose on the Cheshire finally felt substantial, listening to Kitty’s words on the recording. They needed me and my Thunderbird skills, if I could first accomplish the tasks of the Order.

The gravitas of this thought grounded me, as I readied my mind, body and spirit for my first long voyage. It held as my North Star, beckoning me home, should I get lost out in the fray.

As much as the Cheshire needed me, I needed them too.

Voyaging was no small feat, I must say. It combined all of the skills I had learned as a Thunderbird thus far. My retrieval skills were paramount to orient my location, should I find myself in a place with no bearings whatsoever. Dabbling as a marauder provided some sense of security should some alien violate my personal space. A good Thunderbird never harms another life form, but can certainly defend itself. I’d often pass nefarious characters through my back door, casting them to the sweet randomness of obscurity, should they breach my threshold. And my booth dude skills kept my leaps clean, so as not to disturb whatever far-flung world would host me. Even the faintest of traces left by Thunderbirds out in the furthest of shrouded corners could come back to haunt the Order. Toward all lives, all worlds, all cultures the Thunderbird held deference.

They had to balance this while seeking new realities altogether. My mind spun at the possibilities. And then, when it finally rested, clarity washed over. I remembered that beautiful paddock at the foot of the Twelve.

***

For some reason, however, I couldn’t manifest the Twelve’s destination. I had accidentally arrived on that inaugural landing. And I couldn’t seem to replicate that special recipe that would open the cellar door once again. I was well ahead of my brethren—I knew the place existed. But it lied just out of my reach, consciously at least.

My thoughts then raced to my personal Drop, and I was whisked to Its epicenter in a wink. This was my center. No matter the far reaches my being would travel, I held the Drop in the heart of my soul. The Drop was a place, but also my mantra. And I chanted it often for comfort.

As I found myself sitting in the center of my most sacred of places, I looked around. I saw the Cap and Guillermo’s lush garden in the 12 position. Just to the right, in the 2, sat Donna and Edward’s slick city speakeasy where they met. At 4, lied Ron and Rachael’s rendezvous point—a luxurious bay club by a marina, where sailboats would slide by just outside the window. In the 6, directly behind me, was my back door. At 8, Kitty and Keith’s infinite baseball diamond. And, finally, at 10 lied Jacob and Gabe’s suburban home living room, where we slipped through to enter the town of Shermer and descend down to Wednesday night storytelling at the tavern, with the guys.

I held all six places in my mind’s eye at once, like aligning the chakras, and a glimpse of the Twelve faded into view. But it was subtle, as I said. And I went to seize it for a leap, the faint idea vanished as easily as it had drifted into my daydream. I lost it, and the impossible gravity flung me well out of known multiverse. Movierain torrented past me in mystifying blurs. I became disoriented and finally fell into the pull of some droplet world. It was an Earth I had never known or could have conceived. I landed in a wooded area, just outside a settled, sleepy town. I had no bearings.

A family discovered me, passed out. I had hit my head upon entry. Luckily, they took care of me—their quaint home was nearby, and they carried me. I woke up in one of the kid’s beds. At the time, it would have seemed similar to when I first awoke in the Cheshire’s engine room those many moons ago. And like that fledgling time, I once again had no memory. The leap had slung beyond any reality I had ever known. And lack in frame of reference unravaled any thread of my former identity. Luckily they were good to me. They were a good family. Maybe I’ll tell you about them someday, but that’s no matter for this Thunderbird journal.

What I will tell you about that bewildering time, is how I finally found my way back. If it weren’t for Bryan Florian, I’d probably still be living with that nice family. But he somehow detected my trace. The violent blunderbuss of a leap had tore a rift in space-time that was detectable. So much for being a good booth dude. But the trail of existential destruction left faint traces for a savvy Thunderbird tracker in Florian. It also helped that we were entangled. It took him several years on that Earth’s surface for him to find me. Once I laid eyes on him—he had leapt directly into my bedroom the family gave me one evening just before bed. He materialized just above me, hovering. Our eyes locked. Instantly, my Thunderbird memory flooded back into my mind and my helmet manifested just above my crown. As nice as the family had been to me those desperate years, I still elected to make an Irish exit with Florian. I left a note on top of my neatly made bed expressing how much gratitude I had for taking me in, but I knew it wouldn’t do them justice. Thing is: once your illustrious history of Thunderbird training floods back into the purview, terrestrial reality suddenly flattens in complexity. You feel like you’re trapped in some feeble video game. Florian had freed me, and I couldn’t wait another moment to reignite my Thunderbird life.

We left that night and I escorted Florian back to my Drop. We sat, facing in the lotus position at the epicenter.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said to Florian, who gently nodded as if it was nothing. “The last thing I remember before descending into obscurity was a brief glimpse of the Twelve’s paddock. And then it was gone.”

“That place would certainly be a worthy destination for any voyager, the way you’ve described it to me,” he said. “Just curious, but was your immediate thought following that glimpse?”

“I thought of this Drop,” I said. “Well, all the fixture locales you see around us in the clock positions to be exact.”

“Hmmm,” he pondered. “Perhaps to arrive at as divine a destination as the Twelve’s, you have to hold all locales in mind at once.”

I hadn’t thought of that yet.

“Florian,” I said. “You may have saved me once again.”

***

NEXT UP: The UU continues its futile pursuit to encapsulate every nook and cranny of the known universe like Google Maps, per Kitty. Bill can’t save the Cheshire soon enough from their hellish ennui.

***