In the summer of my junior year at college, I served as intern of the Daily Digest (then known as the Daily Update) and I first learned about Boy F.

The illustrious M, who has now ascended to the ranks of Head Editor, was at the time my supervisor. He had just made his noontime entrance, stopped and stared.

BKG, he said. I realized he was eyeing my shirt, an old black number featuring the techno band in question, their signature blank blue masks. The sleeves were ripped - they were bought that way. The whole outfit was distressed. Those were the days. You're a fan? I asked. It might have been pushing the dress code a bit. Although, M himself was in flip-flops.

No, he said. You remind me of a kid. A kid you knew? No. Some kid who disappeared in the starfall.

Over the course of many slow news days, the story unfolded. During his own junior phase at the Daily Digest (then known as the Daily Reader) M found himself trailing the case involving a far off town, a cursed road, a singular astronomical event, bones, clovers and portals, and floating in the matrix, a missing boy. M had never met the kid, but he had seen pictures, printed those pictures, and absorbed all the hopes and disappointment and spending records of the investigation. The boy himself was never found.

By the time I'd heard of it, the case was already cold. The story stuck with me for a while; maybe it was the association made between me and the missing, casual as a coffee order. It didn't stick forever, though. A quick check of numbers: this spring, the case turned 12 years old. I was due a reminder. Everyone was.

That sweltering summer of my internship, I joined a chat group with M and his other lackeys for communication purposes. Since I graduated and began other work, and the group long since sank to the bottom of my feed. The last message was M's, wishing us luck as we headed back to school. A fitting enough sendoff - no need to reply. So it was a jolt when last week I woke to see the ancient thread hauled back to the surface by an update:

for anyone that remembers that boy F, he's been found.

1.

When travelling from the Central to C-South, there are three main routes: the southbound highway that hugs the coast, the rail which cuts through the mountains, and the cross-country tunnel. Outside those, smaller inland roads trickle over the hills, today servicing more memories than traffic. Fewer and further between them, are towns.

Archway is one such town. It sits on Highway 81, which links Central's north exit to C-South's east gate. A litany of abandonment lines the roadway: overgrown towns, ruins of resorts, a destroyed power plant. But Archway persists. Nestled on a rocky bluff over a thin spread of woodland, the population scrapes 300 when the college kids visit home. It is no metropolis, but, my assistant notes, as we drive into the town's communal car park, it does have a certain charm. It is quiet, the structures quaint but well-cared for; roaming the streets is like walking through a vintage film. And with its altitude and slight incline, just enough to overlook the trees, it's a great vantage point for stargazing. We get there a little after sunset and the silhouette of the town cups a sky where stars are needle-sharp, and each crack of the moon is in fine relief.

F's mother admits us, with tea and a cookie tin, on a lace-covered table. (F's father passed away a few years back.) She has the box out ready. I remember M talking about it; an old fruit crate that houses mementoes, photographs, letters and CDs, the remains she has of her son, in lieu of anything concrete. It's dusty; hasn't been touched for a while, but she knows know its contents by heart, and immediately draws out a handful of pictures when asked. As the photos show, Boy F around the time of his disappearance was a wispy 18-year old, pale with straggly hair to his shoulders and a large silver ring glinting on right hand. He was highly likely to have been wearing an all-black ensemble, ripped sleeves and baggy jeans. (In the photo we were given, his tee bears the logo of Twisted Roses, not BKG.) He scowls at the camera. It's a good scowl, genuine, befitting of his chosen style.

F's mother recites to us his virtues; he was a good soul, a gift from above. A quiet child. Creative. Earnest. More obliquely: born under a lucky star. Heavensent. It's rare to hear a word like that nowadays. A baby photo surfaces. He has a stardust cloud behind his neck - a patchy birthmark speckled with pale spots, one slightly cross-shaped. I remember M mentioning this detail as well: public knowledge in case a body had to be identified. It was that and the ring. The distinct silver ring in many of his photos was a gift from an aunt. A moldavite crystal from a meteor, supposedly.

I wondered, for a time, if the stars were just taking him back. She looks at boy F again, in the photo of the baby, then of the almost-grown man in black. She looks at me, then my assistant. He looked so much like you, she says.

To my assistant.

My assistant smiles. He is neatly coiffed, in a tailored suit. I've never seen him in a t-shirt, let alone a black, distressed one. She clears her throat, catching herself. I just thought that, suddenly.

It's like she knew.

So where is he? Her eyes catch me now. You said you found him. Why isn't he here?

2.

Boy F, or F__ St_______ was born when his parents were over 45. The couple, one a teacher and one shopkeep, had resigned themselves to childlessness in their age, so when she says heavensent, it's in earnest. But blessed origins didn't preclude F from harm. F often came to school bruised and surly, but what went on behind closed doors was a family's business - a community agreement, and F's treatment was far from unique. Unfortunately, shared experience garnered little camaraderie with classmates, who saw F as a coward: condescending, overly critical while offering little in recompense. While some admitted that they admired his independent spirit (he once earned valor for lashing out at a cruel teacher; who left the school in tears) he was hardly approachable. Classmates were not impressed by the dark clothing or perpetual frown, nor the recordings and posters of 'devilry'. (While the Roses came into vogue in Central those years, the outer towns were not as keen.) Potential friends were often drowned out by the thundering sounds that filled F's headphones.

Still, the kids were known to band together on the right occasion. Social media had made its way to Archway, and while they certainly had the scenic backdrops, in order to truly match the photographs of their city brethren, they needed the crowds. The starfall alluded to by M was to be one such gathering. In a phenomenon that had never been recorded before, two simultaneous meteor showers were going to fall above the town that night, a miracle crossing another miracle, and in a stargazers' town it was going to be a night to remember. The local news could hardly find anything else to talk about, and his mother remembers that even cynical Boy F was stirred; reading up on astronomy and considering bargain telescopes. On the night of the starfall, he finished dinner with his parents, donned his usual black and, carrying only his wallet, departed from the house.

At the border of town was an abandoned quarry - a pre-cleared cup of land free of trees and skyward obstructions. The cusp of the pit was a perfect perch to watch the stars fall. F's house was near the quarries, so he walked to the meet-up, while many of his classmates drove. Accounts in the days to come confirmed Boy F did make it to the gathering. In one photo, a cup in his beringed hand, he half-grins before a bonfire.

F's mother had told him to call if he wanted to stay out after midnight. He didn't call. She wondered if he was bunking with friends; the rain was coming down harder than expected. But a day later, he still hadn't returned. No news. Boy F was gone.

It was not until two days after the fatal starfall that his parents contacted authorities, which in Archway consisted of a single sheriff. Some cursory questioning and posters went up, then nothing. The classmates said F had made an appearance that night, but none of the fifteen kids could remember when or how he left. It had begun raining shortly before the meteor shower, so many left early themselves.

A hint of irritation began to take hold of F's ordinarily even-tempered mother. She phoned her sister, the aunt from the city who had gifted F the ring. She needed to vent. It was this aunt (she refused to be interviewed for the story) who took the case to the city authorities, but the file almost immediately became lodged in the police assignment queue. So she took it to the media. A smattering of journalists made the drive out; our own M being one of the early takers. It was a week later when the first national news crew thought to take a look. But none of the initial coverage revealed much. Archway was very quiet in those days. Locals had no theories. Not even the usual dismissals: He's done this before or he'll turn up. And no tears. The media picked up on that. It was callous. It was suspicious. But it was, practically, nothing.

3.

Roughly one year after the starfall, which is to say, a year after the laggy and lackadaisical start to the case, some small string of tension snapped in Archway.

A girl W___, who had been in F's graduating class and the starfall gathering, and had become a university student in the Core city, was visiting home for the summer. There she encountered a boy of the same year, who had remained in town. What began as a cordial reunion in the supermarket descended into a fistfight in the parking lot. Authorities were called, and among the pointed fingers and tearful apologies, a new story came to light:

The night of the starfall, an argument broke out between Boy F and the others. It was after the drinks and snacks, after the smiling photo - when the rain began to fall. The meteor shower was forgotten. The boys proposed returning to the cars and began cajoling girls of their choice to join them. Boy F was incensed. We're going to miss the starfall. It might never happen again as long as we live. The others were nonplussed. Graduation was also once in a lifetime. We'll never be in highschool again either. Boy F had plenty to say about that as well, as was his custom. So one of the boys punched F into the pit of the quarry.

He just went down. It was dark and wet and I didn't see him. I thought if someone did, they would be the one to say....

He was probably just scared, he should have just said he didn't have a car with him. The girl W___'s tell-all, printed a mere 8 hours after the fact, includes a photo of the college coed's tearful face, an ice pack, bruised temple and split lip. Her male companion is in even rougher shape.

So that was it. F was knocked into a pit that stormy, starry night and did not surface. News of the quarry, which was being filled that year, had been the trigger for the parking lot melee. The two involved in the incident, along with three other classmates who volunteered information, brought detectives (and the revitalized raft of reporters) to the spot in question, which was unfortunately one of the few parts that had already been paved. It didn't matter. F's attitude and past transgressions didn't matter. After hiding the truth so long, they owed it to him, and themselves. The quarry had to be dug up. Everyone agreed. Well, almost everyone.

4.

While the excavation was underway, another year passed, every day in Archway a storm of drills and dust clouds. It was under these conditions local man R_____, who had been hired as a digger, was finally compelled to make a startling confession: he was sure Boy F was not buried in the pit, because he had encountered and attacked F at the edge of town on the night of the starfall.

R_____ had come home later after a long day of work on a Central site. When he emerged from his car it was near midnight and raining heavily. His home was on the lowland outskirts of town, near the western exit that leads to Highway 81 - less than a mile from a lake at the quarry base. R_____ saw a figure in black slouching down the street and felt a chill. There had been a rash of break-ins in the area, attacks on women and children, and as R_____ noted, the thing was almost in front of my house, and stopped like it was challenging me. I had a family to protect. So R_____ hurled himself at the figure, battering it with his fists, feet and forehead. When the figure began to run towards the highway, he let it go. Couldn't make out words but the voice sounded young, the man is reported saying. That's why I stopped.

He didn't remember the starfall at all. He didn't remember seeing much in the dark and the downpour. The kid was alive, though. He absolutely remembered that.

There were suspicions both in favor of and against this new thread. His descriptions were vague. Was it really F? Was he hiding something else? Perhaps he'd killed and was hoping to drive attention elsewhere.

And so the lake was dredged. The forest along the highway was searched. The man's house and yard were upturned. (As recent as six months ago, the place was graffitied with accusations of murder - the artist apparently unaware R_____ had moved out long ago.)

The quarry dig continued. Boy F remained missing.

5.

Further down the highway from Archway are a cluster of farms: enormous fields of grain and corn, with red and black roofs peeking over the growth, almost apprehensively. The investigation, by then consisting of full-fledged search teams with sniffer dogs and helicopters, expanded here too.

Dogs, pigs and flies. The unholy trinity, chortles farmer S____, in his evening news interview. The spry septuagenarian is not simply there to give color commentary. Yes, I saw him, shuffling around the mud, trying to hide behind the corn. Like that was gonna work. Dark clothes. Grey face, hair all out and wild. Didn't really look like a person. I thought he might have been, you know. Extraterrestrial. 'Cause he was walking all janky too, everyone was talking about the big space event. The farmer snorts a laugh. Anyhow, I fired a warning shot.

The refurbished hunting rifle sits proudly beside him for the interview. The farmer claims that the noise caused the shape to slip back into the field. S____ pursued him, fired again. Eventually he lost track of the intruder but he swears, with some satisfaction, that the runner had left spots of blood on the leafy stalks. I got him, alright. Couldn't have made it far. But the rain and dark made tracking impossible.

Why didn't you call the authorities? No reason to. He walked off, didn't he? Never heard some kid was gone. Didn't even know there was a search, til the flies started coming. I mean the helicopters, he adds, seriously.

A search ensued, but no bodies surfaced. And any alleged blood had long been washed up, absorbed, and scattered by years of growth and harvests. By then, Boy F had been missing for 4 years.

Present day, as we pass the farms on our way to Archway, my assistant snaps a photo; an wave of yellow stalks under a pastel sky. I wonder if F would have done the same - but remember he came through in the dark of night.

A phone wouldn't have helped much, besides. Even today, reception on Highway 81 is scattershot at best.

6.

Around the time S____'s farm was being combed, or perhaps a month before (by their estimate) a family was roadtripping along Highway 82. This road runs nearly parallel to Highway 81, the two joining up in the west as they near the coast, though for the majority of the run they are separated by a good amount of forest, grassland, and the enormous cordoned-off wasteland left by the power plant meltdown. Miles from where F was last seen.

Midday, the family van pulled up to a white-painted shack-turned-rest stop. The weather was good, sunny with a slight breeze ruffling the woodland, and the family's two children, then aged 7 and 9, sat outside on the porch while their father went in to barter for directions. Their mother watched from the car. After losing a battle for the coveted swinging bench (her brother wanted to put his feet up), the younger settled down on the steps, picking at flowers.

The steps were old, boards going to pieces. Some had holes worn through. Under the holes, where sunlight could seep down, clovers were growing. The girl recalls seeing a large four-leafed specimen through the rotted planks, and when she reached down to get it, her hand brushed something cool and hard.

From the shadows under the clover patch, she drew out a tarnished silver ring, adorned with a muddy green crystal.

Her brother took notice, and their battle began anew. Until the mother intervened, told them to get back in the car, and zip it or we're turning around and going home. The girl would show her parents her new treasure when they reached their hotel, but there was no breakthrough to be had. At the time, none of them had heard anything about Boy F and the investigation of Highway 81.

7.

After completing my internship with the Daily Digest, I managed to earn my diploma, and entered Central's City Investigator Program. While Investigator participation is limited in active cases, a vast library of historical files are open for viewing and contribution. I was able to revisit Boy F's 8-year disappearance in this manner; the interviews and photographs, star charts, news clippings and staggering cost breakdown of the quarry project. The case was cold as ice, but the fledgling days of the Investigator Program left me much time for reading.

On a whim I leafed through incident reports around the evening of the starfall. There were an exceptional amount of road accidents - little suprise considering the hard rain, and distractions in the sky. A particularly gruesome crash occurred on Highway 81 a few miles away from the farm F supposedly passed through.

A blue convertible, westbound, lost control and hit a utility pole. The tiny front engine folded like an accordion, both passengers found deceased. The driver had died on impact, hands still on the wheel. His passenger was flung out the windshield with such force he landed in a tree several meters away. The body inside was charred, but rain had extinguished the flames long before the crash was discovered.

Although the car was a two-seater, there was speculation of a third passenger. The driver had died instantly and the second passenger was thrown - but behind the passenger seat, there was a half-melted cell phone with the emergency hotline 999 keyed in. What would have been its fifth attempt - a handful of calls, presumably for help, had been made on the same phone just minutes apart, to no avail. Reception in this area was nonexistent.

Neither of the deceased would have been in any condition to use a phone after the accident occurred. So perhaps some third party, who had been sharing a seat with the flung passenger, had tried and failed to call in the accident, crawled out the shattered windshield, walked off, phased out of existence - who knew. Perhaps the two foresaw their own deaths. Perhaps it was aliens. Or werewolves.

8.

By then, the middle portion of Highway 81 was beginning to take on the moniker of the Cursed Stretch. This was not entirely due to Boy F's disappearance or the unusual crash, though both events seemed to merge easily into the swirl of legends.

It's likely that the superstitious nature of the area stemmed from the influence of the National Church, which still maintains a few strongholds in the mountain ranges to this day. At the time when the story of Boy F was picking up steam, local publications were quick to propose demons as the ultimate culprits - pointing out the boy's dark clothing and runic scrolls (later reported as a misinterpretation of a Twisted Roses' flower iconography on wall posters). Once the story reached the Core Cities, demonic accusations fizzled out, though cosmopolitan theories were no less fanciful.

Just a year before Boy F's disappearance, a damaged femur was found in the woods by the southmost farm. In the months to follow, more bones surfaced and finally half a human skeleton. Experts concluded the marks were made by the teeth or claws of a large animal; a mountain lion perhaps, or a wolf. However, since the formation of the nearby wasteland, no large predators had ever been seen in the area. The only beasts seen roaming Highway 81 were humans. Thus sparked a legend - the beast was hiding in plain sight. A human that, when overcome by bloodlust, became that giant wolf or lion. In the dark, under the celestial anomaly, perhaps. And naturally, the bruised and bloodied F would make easy prey. Whether or not it began as a joke, serious studies were made. However, no lycanthropes were ever unmasked.

A monster that was found out, however, was a vicious slayer of young women who, either by coincidence or hope to camouflage, had come to Highway 81 to dispose of human remains. In an abandoned shack, he gouged rough marks into the bones and scattered the pieces in the nearby fields. But the imitation was altogether unconvincing to the medical examiner and werewolf scholars. When trying to get a refund for a broken chisel at a hardware store, he was quickly apprehended. After his arrest, oddly enough, no more bones surfaced, marked by wolf or otherwise.

We also have time-travel, and the portals. Linked more by aesthetic than observation; rumors of the former came when a tattered glove was found in the rock wall a few miles from the quarry. A slab that washed up the shores of the lake was broken open to reveal what might have been a leather luggage tag. A recent scan by an archeological society found human shoeprints - and one mangled shoe - encased underground near the farms very near a patch of fossilized ferns. Portal sightings came from less certain sources, travellers who reportedly saw circles of light from the road on dark, almost exclusively stormy, nights. Chases were fruitless as the entity would soon vanish or the searcher would run up against the chainlink fence of the Harmony wasteland, where the flat terrain made it clear there was nothing ahead, for miles. So weird anyone else seen this or is it just me? Dozens of photographs exist online, blurry and ambiguous. But numerous, unrelated occurrences must mean something. Right? More on that later.

Then there's the advent of the wasteland itself. Before Boy Y was born - before his parents were born - when cross-mountain rail line was just a blueprint, the Harmony Electric Company established an experimental plant along Highway 81. The story goes: Harmony had been given a grant by the Central Controllers to trial a revolutionary source of clean energy, but merely six years after the plant was completed, some internal malfunction triggered an enormous explosion. The fireball vaporized the building and the campus around it almost instantaneously, and tore its way down the hills, through a chunk of Highway 81 and consuming nearby town before burning out. In all, nearly 80 sq km was decimated.

As expected of a government project, a coverup ensued, while Harmony scrambled to distribute suspiciously large compensations. But of course, such an obvious disaster couldn't simply be swept aside. Independent committees and activists sent teams in to assess. The mystery of what Harmony had been housing attracted scientists, magicians and theorists of all kinds. Interestingly, even the most skeptical found that whatever this clean energy source was, detonation had left no ecological damage outside the blast zone; the edge was remarkably clear-cut. Local elders, familiar with arms tests not-so-long-past, remarked that they were surprised all fire and smoke dissipated within minutes of the event. Jokingly, some were disappointed they'd missed the spectacle entirely. The nearby farms were subject to serious inspection that revealed no foul to the soil or crops. Once cleared, farmers celebrated the destruction of the plant. Discontent did rise from the lowball estimate of casualties, but the number was revised three times until interest waned. Whatever tragedy or relief came to individuals of the area at the time, the fact is that the Harmony wasteland never regrew, never recovered, and remains a scar between two highways in an otherwise lush countryside.

The only change to the wasteland, if it could even be called a change, came two years after Boy F's disappearance. From below the sand and scorched earth one day came a terrifying crunch, like ice breaking. The vibrations caught the attention of army seismologists, who brought in ground-penetrating radars (GPRs) and made a haunting discovery. The explosion half a century ago had melted the minerals in the ground below the wasteland to form a hard semi-crystalline sheet. 70 years after initial investigations, the GPR brought a stark new view: a monstrous shadow sunk in the earth. Like sand melted into glass, covering such an enormous area it was hard to tell from above that anything unusual lay beneath. Over the years, and natural tectonic shifts, multiple cracks had formed. The big one, the audible one, had split the plate nearly down the middle. There was no telling when and where sinkholes would open. So the wasteland was fenced off - to little fanfare. The land was unsellable due to the obscure nature of its damage. It was unattractive even to trespassers: too flat to serve as a hiding place, and it led nowhere interesting - unless you were looking to fall into a crevasse.

Woodland formed around the wastes, a welcome mask between an ugly past and lives that had to go on. But the story remained, merging into myths, the curse, the Cursed Stretch. Boy F's mother wondered if he'd fallen into the sands - after all, he'd gone missing before the fence went up. GPRs had indeed uncovered human remains during their scans. But her son's were not among them.

9.

About a year and a half ago, the Daily Digest (then known as the Daily Resolve) began recycling old articles into video content. Editor M dug up his old coverage of Boy F, consolidated the reports, and handed over a script to the filming department. The case was over ten years old and sourced from a small town; it wasn't expected to do numbers. It didn't. But one of those views came from 16 year old K______, a high schooler in Central's upper suburbs. Something about Boy F's description rang a bell: not his face, but the silver ring. She had a ring like his - found on a childhood trip along Highway 82.

K______ got in touch with the Daily, and the ring was turned in as evidence, and new theories began to bubble up after years of stillness. The ring, perhaps with Boy F attached, somehow came from a farm on Highway 81 to a rest stop on Highway 82 - over 30km northeast. His body could be further north than anyone had thought. But interest in the case had dried up and nobody was willing to commit to another expensive search, especially reflecting on how much it cost to undo the quarry.

The Daily had also become less liberal with travel expenses. M had video scripts to finish, there was no time for a wild goose chase into the northern woods. In a haze of medication (his back problems had just begun) the enterprising M had an idea for a story - what if he could lure out another link in the chain? A kidnappers or mugger perhaps, looking to cover tracks. From his desk, M put out a swathe of ads to any platform willing - a lost-and-found notice: unique ring found on Highway 82. A bit of blood, some very clear fingerprints. A little suspicious, but it looks sentimental. Will turn in to the police if no takers.

The first taker was Boy F's mother. M had forgotten to tell her about his little scheme. Felt my stomach drop like a rock the second I heard her voice, M told me. But it was nothing compared to the next caller.

10.

Boy F, now just F__ or perhaps Mr. F__ to his employees (he's dropped the surname), meets us at a pricey glass-walled cafe. He is in public relations, and has just come from a meeting with one of Central's biggest child stars. The celebrated moldavite ring is settled on his index finger and when he turns we can see the birthmark, the mottled cloud of stardust behind his neck.

It is him. Found.

My assistant notes the ring has switched sides from the old photos, and we get to confirm the farmer in the cornfield had not lied about hitting his mark. F had arrived in hospital with a gunshot wound to his left hand, and he learned to write with his right during recovery. Took a while, F says with an easy, charming smile, another feature missing from many of his old photos.

My assistant also compliments his suit.

As we unwind over coffee, F answers our questions. The beginning of his journey, as we came to call it, matched the early witnesses' accounts. He was knocked into the quarry after an argument. He walked into a lowland neighborhood, where he was chased out by the man returning from work. He entered the cornfields, and was attacked. He fled onto Highway 81, in the westward direction.

By then he'd suffered a gunshot wound and severe head injury, and had little idea of where he was headed, confusion compounded by the heavy rain, darkness, and strange lights in the sky. On the dark road he was spotted by a couple in a small car who ushered him in, apparently horrified by his injuries. As he lay on the cramped front seat with the passenger he recalled them bawling, No answer, no answer, and felt they were not giving him time to respond. Then things went dark for a while.

I tell him about the crashed convertible and the failed emergency calls.

That explains how I got so far. F speaks in a clear, even tone, faltering once when he learns of his doomed rescuers, and again at the proposition of werewolves. The portals, however, he takes seriously. And that explains how I got to the other side. He woke from the crash faced with a seemingly endless ocean of stars. It was like the world had inverted, he tells us, and the sky was now underfoot. There was a sensation of rain, dampness, and a sort of constant white noise, too loud and all-encompassing to be normal rain. He stepped out into the ocean and felt an intense lightness, and took another step. Despite its glossy sheen and the scattering of bright lights shooting through it, the ground was soft. He walked for some time, glittering lights rising and falling around him, before his path was engulfed in darkness once more. He headed for the only light remaining, not even light per se, but a grey shape in the fog, coming closer and closer until it loomed over. But as he reached forward to touch it, he tripped and lost consciousness.

This time, he awoke in a hospital bed, in Central city. The nurses claimed that he was dropped off by an anonymous driver around 4a.m., saying he'd found the boy collapsed on the stairs of a rest stop along Highway 82. The charitable citizen sped off before any further questioning. F's memories were a mess. F remembered his first name but not his family name. He remembered parts of his journey, but not where he'd come from. He was also without any identification - the anonymous driver had likely taken his wallet - and Archway had not yet been subject to the government fingerprinting of newborns.

He was sent to a youth shelter with a partial name and a small stipend. It sounds like a nightmare when I say it, but becoming a blank slate was liberating. Especially, he tells us, when the alternative was a void. A new path was paved for him, and he kept busy. He entered a community school, and applied for a prestigious transfer for a laugh - but the transfer went through. Not many hospital-verified amnesia cases were applying, he jokes. He's become a joker. He was placed in a secretarial role where he made friends that got him into his current line of work. The memories came back in patches, but he didn't think to pursue them until now.

I saw the ring ad while shopping for a girl, he says. Don't know who thought to file it under Used Jewelry, couldn't believe it - heavensent. Echoes of that Archway upbringing.

It's been 12 years. F celebrated his 35th birthday not long ago, he is pleased to learn that his real birth date places him younger than the government-estimated birth date, and he'll be able to have a second celebration this year. He agrees to a DNA test, and to meet his mother.

11.

A few days later, we're on the road with F. We dodge the exit for the cross-country tunnel, and instead embark on the much less practical - but infinitely more picturesque - Highway 81. Clouds are gathering overhead. My assistant checks the forecast: rain is due, but not until evening. We break at a gas station.

F parks his own black electric vehicle in the lot nearby, and waits with my assistant. When I go to join them, they are taking photos. Although we are not deep in the hills yet, the view is spectacular: the gas station faces a shallow valley, the grass cast blue with shadows from the hanging clouds. The land behind the mountains looks golden - maybe it's the farms, in a distant mist.

Seemingly hypnotized, F remarks, and to think they call this road cursed. Does he know why? He shakes his head. Never thought about it. Not a trace of irony. I tell him it's a long story.

We don't get into the story. In fact, F never makes it to Archway at all. Perhaps there was something about the view, or maybe I should not have spent so long on gas. Whatever it was that tempted fate, F's phone began to ring, yanking us from daydreams about curses and valleys in the shade.

F is surprised. There's reception in this area now? And the phone comes out and F is off. Figuratively and literally - he heads for his car within minutes, waving at us in hasty farewell. In between an argument with his caller, he shoots us snippets of an explanation. There's been a sudden disagreement, he needs to be in Central. The board meeting must be today. He might not be able to make it back in time if it rains. I read these roads aren't made for rain. Accidents. He's not wrong. But what about his mother? Archway? Tell them for me, is what he says before he jets back toward Central. He doesn't include what it is we're supposed to be telling them.

I notice before he leaves that he's not wearing the ring. I suppose it doesn't fit his style anymore. The music emanating from his radio is soft jazz.

12.

My assistant and I continue to Archway without F, to hand over the results of the DNA test to F's mother, as well as various papers for closure of the investigation. We also have to tell her why he didn't come. The reason is so shockingly mundane she forgets to be offended. Imagine it: Your long lost son has an important business meeting. We also have recent photos of F. She finds similarities between him and my assistant before seeing the printouts. Again, it's like she knew.

As the stormclouds burst overhead, I give editor M a call from a near-empty diner. He seems disappointed that there was no tearful reunion to report, but readily accepts we can't force F into anything. He adds sardonically that it's no less disappointing than when werewolves and portals and time travel were ruled out of the story.

Were they?

We're back on the highway by 9pm, rolling through the dark. Over the rumble of thunder, my assistant, ever the optimist, insists we do not write F's survival off as droll coincidence. If you think about it, stars really aligned that night. He could have died five times over, but came out with just an injured arm. Who's to say there weren't greater powers at play? He stares into the darkness, water droplets flying by. Consider the alternatives.

He may have been invoking an earlier case of ours, one involving a UFO cult. The founder, a longtime abuse victim, suffered hallucinations somewhat similar to what F described, and met an incomparably tragic fate after developing a reliance on his perceived aliens. Although, in F's testimonies he never explicitly suggests his experience was extraterrestrial. If anything, he's uninterested, unquestioning about his ordeal. Perhaps that's why he so readily turned back. Past is past. Perhaps that's something to be thankful for, in all.

The road is dark, and the rain falling in sheets that periodically wipes all visibility. My assistant goes quiet, likely hoping I'll focus so we can avoid the fate of the duo who first attempted to rescue F. Until he can't resist. Portal alert.

I stop the car and in a moment I see it too. A light, a blue-ish flattened disc, hovering in the distance, beyond the sodden grassland, somewhere in the trees. I cut through the trees and find myself at the perimeter fence of Harmony wasteland. I run up just in time to see the portal waver and fade. My exasperated assistant (later I learned his brogues were destroyed by the mud) catches the last glimpse. Stars aligned. What we saw was the portal, or rather, the moon, floating like a sheet on a sea of stars. The water seemed to stretch for miles and miles, fringed with chain-link. With the falling of raindrops, the surface twinkles brightly.

Under Harmony's wasteland lies a hardened plate. Massive, glasslike. In heavy rain, water is trapped at the surface, creating a vast, mirrorlike pool - an ocean cloaking a desert. But the spectacle is brief: the pool quickly drains when the rain lets up, or if plate and sand underground shift to create a drainage point - hence reports stating that the portal vanishes by the time it is reached. It's rare for this region to get hard rain, and the weight of the rain when does fall likely exacerbates the plate's damage. Each time, the miracle fades faster. And year by year, fewer people pass by.

We know that ten years ago, a major section of the plate snapped and caused the area to be fenced off.

But Boy F came this way two years earlier. Before the fence; before the plates broke in a big way. The portals were open longer. The rain that accompanied the starfall was the heaviest in a hundred years. It stands to reason, then: F was thrown from the car on Highway 81, survived, and crossed the desert - the pool, stars underfoot, leaving no tracks - to Highway 82's rest stop where he was found and taken on a less eventful drive, the one that brought him to Central.

It all sounds banal, put to words. My assistant and I attempted photographs, but with darkness, rain and shifting water, all our phones could capture were blurry streaks. It's likely Harmony, Central, and army geologists already knew about this phenomenon. Anyway, the pool was only one phase on F's journey that night.

But what I can say is that the flooded wasteland under the starfall - the spectacular disintegration of two meteors from opposite ends of the space; in the crossfire of curses and blessings shooting overhead and underfoot; before phones had good cameras and before suits and soft jazz came into the picture - it must have truly been a sight to behold. The one-time event that he fought so hard to see - worth the pain? F, it seems, doesn't question it for a second.

R.K.
Contributor
Movie buff, coffee aficionado, and longtime associate of the Daily Digest. He has penned columns on topics ranging from pets to celebrities to coffee shop reviews. A lifelong resident of Central city, R lives in the revitalized warehouse district and works as an investigator with his assistant, S.C.