“Thanks. It takes a long time to get used to. Years. And your thoughts are still a little scattered. You’re heavy, you know? Colorblind.”

“You can’t see color?”

“Not the way it used to be. Fifteen years… You don’t look like I thought you would.”

“I’m no looker.”

“… Not what I meant.”

Still a little shocked at this. “Where have you been this entire time?”

“Around. That’s something else. You don’t feel the time pass, but you know that it does. You can’t do anything but… stay. Try to think. Practice and wait for the time when somebody finally sees you.” He smiles, and I can see the trees through his teeth. “I’m glad that it’s you.”

It’s still amazing, seeing him. So amazing that I finally relax, in spite of being awestruck by the bells and whistles of his return. “It is good to see you again.” Back. He’s back. All these years, and he’s back. I can’t take my eyes off of him, clinging to this image of a forgotten age, a living symbol that has long since died.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years without him.

So we talk.

“Okay, catch me up with your life, then.”

“Not much to tell.”

“You’re keeping up with your training, I hope?”

“I have to start helping out soon; Rotor is schooling me in how things are run. I’m so behind. I feel like I wasted so many years already.”

“No. You were the one who did exactly what you were supposed to. You were a kid.”

“Other than that, okay, I’ve been lazy with it.”

“You do look a bit flabby. Plenty to eat around here?”

“Flabby?!”

“You’re growing a second chin; come on, kiddo!”

“Hey, bad student, worse teacher.”

He laughs, sounding like air passing through a funnel. “I missed this.”

“Wild, huh?”

“You’ve changed so much. More hair and… grown up and all that.”

“So have you. I don’t just mean… you know, but from what little I do remember, you were a lot more…”

“Immature?”

“Good word for it.”

So typical of him, he accompanies with an exaggerated shrug “Time heals and time kills and doesn’t know the difference,” and nothing else. Sonic really hasn’t changed too much. I recognize it all, but what is new is his sagging posture, the lack of brightness in his eyes. He isn’t really having fun. He doesn’t look like he’ll ever have fun again.

Probably a side effect of dying. Something twisted and wrong on basic levels. We have avoided it talking about it up until now.

“How does all this work?”

“Hmm?”

“This ghost business. In general. What do you feel, how do you move, how can you talk, so on and so forth.”

He shrugs again. “Got me.”

“Come on, throw me something else here. I want to hear more. Is it that embarrassing?”

“No, just hard to explain. There’s no weight, so I could probably do whatever I wanted if…”

“If?”

“If I could. But there’s a thing… holding me here. Sure, so much is different, and man… I’ve already forgotten what it’s like to be young. I feel like my time on Mobius finished.”

“Technically, isn’t it?”

“… Not quite. I guess.” He tries to touch the side of his head but his transparent hand goes right through it. “Solid air. That’s all I am.”

I nod until I can no longer fill the silence with it. “More. I want to know more about it.”

“You will one day.”

“No, don’t hand that to me. Tell me what to expect.”

“Too bad, I’m not going to ruin the surprise. It might be different for you, anyway.”

“Whatever.”

He sighs deeply. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, the ghost is useless. The living want a romantic death, they can’t help it. But there’s no such thing as dying with dignity. My death, for example, ugh, don’t even get me started.”

“Can’t remember, can you?”

“Not really, no.”

“Stand up for a second…” Close examination, pinpointing what’s bugging me about his appearance. “Yeah, your legs. Walk around a bit. They look… unusual.”

“This is a ghost you’re talking to.”

“Even for a ghost. The way they move, they almost look…”

“Mechanical?”

“… Interesting choice of words.” I suddenly don’t want to pursue this anymore. “You’ve just been in the forest?”

“Yep.”

“So you haven’t gone to the outside?”

“Outside?”

“Yeah. The outside.”

“… Huh?”

“You really don’t know? You’re not messing around with me?”

“I really don’t know and I’m not messing around with you.”

“The bubble.”

“Uh huh… not ringing any bells, kid.”

“Uncle Chuck set it up fifteen years ago, around Knothole and the Great Forest just before the explosion, after the Robotropolis prisoners were evacuated and-”

“Wait, wait, wait, explosion?!”

“Yeah… Sal said Robotnik had this device that he was going to use on the planet to obliterate all organic life-”

“I thought I stopped that.”

Oh no. “… No… you didn’t. You just… slowed it down.”

He collapses back onto the ground, looking for once like he still belongs here. “I tried… I tried so hard to save everyone…”

“You did. You gave everyone enough time to get out, to… safety…” No words will save this moment. I fucked up. “That’s what Sal was saying,” I finish lamely.

“Sally…” He puts his head in his hands, trying to smother the sudden anguish. “Sally-girl.”

“You really haven’t gone outside of the forest, have you? You haven’t been to Knothole… to see her.”

“No. No. I can’t go back.”

“As in…?”

“By choice.” He exits his palms and looks up at me again, appearing to have calmed down. “Too many memories. And if more than one of them see me… bad idea.”

“Shame. It would be nice to have proof that this isn’t all in my head. I think they have enough reasons to lower their eyes when I talk to them.”

“… I’m real.”

“Yeah, sure you are. Because?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I lean closer to him. “You should come back with me. It would be good for both of us. Seriously. No one runs fast now. Your legs were what turned the planet, and when you died, it just… stopped.”

“Don’t get all sappy on me. You’ve had years for that.” He stands to his feet. “What we do now is make up for lost time, figure out why on Mobius I’m still here.”

“You’re certain it’s for my benefit?”

“I’m sure.”

There it is, then. “You’ll be here?”

“Right here. All these years of waiting, I can wait longer for you to return.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

As mush as I don’t want to, as much as it feels like ripping muscles away from bone turning away from him, I do it, heading in the direction of Knothole. His voice stops me in my tracks one more time.

“Tails.”

“Hmm?”

“I have more memories of you than you do of me.”

“… Uh-”

“It doesn’t mean what you think it does,” he turns away, embarrassed. “I’ll tell you next time.”

It’s a ten minute walk back to Knothole, and when I reach the clearing, that tingling feeling hits me. I sober up. I replay the entire encounter.

I didn’t act like myself around him. I held back. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, but I can feel it returning, the way I was feeling when I entered the forest hours ago. The deep, unrelenting contempt for the rest of them, for all of Knothole village. Heat transfer. Going cold now.

I don’t know what it is about being alone that makes me feel like…

There are too many lies around here, too much false sincerity, and not enough feelings to go around. Now I have the rest of this to deal with. All of this coming at me, I can’t concentrate, and when I can’t concentrate, I somehow get it into my head that I need to rely on some outside force in order to remain whole. But it shouldn’t be that hard. If life is a test, I don’t want to fail.

And I was fine. I was doing just fine, glazing over in my own paranoia, my own distrust, and now this shit happens and I have new feelings to compare it with. Doubt. I have to deal with doubt again.

I failed to mention it to him; more has changed. I’m angry that I would be too afraid to say it, that I don’t subscribe to his old way of life at all anymore, the hero thing, saving the lives of total strangers. I was young when he died, granted, but enough stories have been told by Sal that I know enough. Not my life. That isn’t me. Not saving those I love. Not saving anybody. That’s why I haven’t kept up with the training. I don’t see a point to it.

Is that why he came back?

I knew what Sonic meant when he said he couldn’t leave the forest. Don’t ask me why, I wouldn’t be able to answer you. The Forest holds me there too, and I don’t even go past the edge of the swamp or venture further than five klicks north. There’s a tranquility that I get lost in, where time passes faster than I can perceive. I forget all about Knothole and everyone in it, I forget why we’re stuck here and why I won’t see outside of the sky dome until I’m fifty years old, when it’s finally safe; nothing exists except for the forest, and even the forest recognizes that nothing really matters. It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t expect. It hides me from the eyes of the sky.

When I’m by myself, I don’t notice how idiotic my own thoughts are.

Cylinders turning, heating up, picking up speed, overheating… ahhhhhh, there it is.

It’s hard to be passionate about anything other than my own regret, rolling my experiences over and over in my head like a wad of dough until I begin to see shapes and patterns I can cut out and use or learn from, and it all turns out to be useless and I end up jerking off in front of her, her, her. The memory is still fresh; it hasn’t gone stale over the years, and on days like this, when the bubble is completely clear and everything looks an almost normal, fresh, vibrant blue, I can remember it forwards and backwards. There’s nothing I can do to forget it, and it’ll probably occupy my mind until the very end, when the very last brain cell winks out. On days like these, the sky doesn’t look half bad.

That’s it. After all that preparation, it’s over with one conversation. My life, the life I worked so hard to keep, to call my own, falls apart in one afternoon.

There are two brains. One I have learned to live with for the past fifteen years. He is familiar. This other one, this intruder who appears out of thin air, as if he himself brought Sonic back from the dead, is an unwanted visitor. He can’t be here. He is dangerous to the-

I move quickly back to my hut and shut the door, lock it, before the rest of them see me and they’re all given another chance to put on a brave face. The darkness of my home comforts me in familiarity. I’m swallowing deep breaths of air. My fingers are pressed hard against my throat, trying to see if I’m still alive.