The fluorescent lights above flickered once, twice, then finally held steady with a low electrical hum that Gordon could feel in his molars. He squinted up at them, hands on his hips, brow furrowing beneath the creases of his weather-beaten forehead.

"Still buzzin' like a beehive full'a bad decisions," he muttered, making a mental note to fix it for the fifth time this week. He added it to a mental list already longer than a supermarket receipt from '87.

The studio was quiet for once—not the eerie kind of quiet it used to be, when the halls were haunted by garbled laughter and too many blinking puppet eyes—but a gentler, humming peace. A kind of contented lull. In the distance, someone was badly tuning a ukulele. Maybe Norman again. Maybe Doug. Hard to tell these days; they were all getting braver, experimenting with their roles now that everything wasn’t on the edge of falling apart.

Gordon scratched the back of his neck, the cotton of his flannel catching briefly on calloused fingers. He still dressed the part of the handyman, even though no one paid him to fix things anymore—not officially, anyway. Now he ran the place. Studio lead, they called him, though he’d spat coffee all over the desk the first time someone said it.

Didn’t feel real. Still didn’t.

He turned on his heel and walked the long stretch of hallway past the rehearsal rooms. Bright posters lined the walls—new ones. Fresh print. He and Ricky had worked on them together, the puppet clumsily wielding safety scissors while Gordon grumbled about paper cuts and licensing rights. “A Friend for Every Day!” one read, in cheery block letters above a smiling lineup of puppets, each one holding hands. Gordon had to admit, it didn’t look half bad.

Not like the old days. The rust. The stink. The darkness.

He still had dreams about it, now and then. Not nightmares, exactly, but those fuzzy, underwater thoughts you wake up from feeling like you missed something important. Like he’d forgotten to clean the blood out of his overalls or unplug the typewriter before it exploded again.

He passed the control booth and paused in front of the big red door leading to Studio A—the main stage. The door handle was still a little sticky from when the goop problem got out of hand, but it turned smoothly under his grip. A low mechanical whirr answered as the hydraulics inside the stage floor clicked into place, revealing a puppet-sized cityscape: foam buildings, paper clouds, even a little post office that Gordon himself had rebuilt with toothpicks and spite.

They were filming again today. A full episode. First one in... how long? Years. Decades. The broadcast team was testing the signal last night, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t static on the monitors. It was color bars. Real, bright, alive color bars. Someone out there was going to see these puppets again.

And somehow, they had Gordon to thank.

“Alright, ya weird little Muppets,” he grunted, stepping inside and setting his heavy toolbox down with a clunk. “Let’s make some magic.”

The stage lights blinked on.

From the wings, he heard a few hushed giggles. The puppets were already assembled, early, for once. Eyes blinking. Yarn mouths curling into excited grins.

Gordon sighed. The kind of sigh that comes after decades of wrong turns, near-death experiences, and one incredibly ill-advised deep-sea ventriloquist fight. He ran a hand through his graying hair, tugged once at the hem of his shirt, and adjusted his belt—more out of habit than need.

Then he grinned. Not a big grin. Just enough.

He flicked the ON AIR switch.

“Let’s give the world somethin’ worth watchin’ again.”