Origin

There is something test pilots learn that most people never have to — how to hold very still in the middle of something terrifying.

When an experimental aircraft loses power at thirty thousand feet and the ground is rushing up like a wall and the instruments are all screaming at once, a test pilot cannot panic. Panic eats up the seconds you need. A test pilot breathes. Thinks. Acts.

Hal Jordan was the best test pilot at Ferris Aircraft, and he had been very still in the middle of very terrifying things more times than he could count.

Which is probably why the ring chose him.

It was a Tuesday morning in the California desert, and Hal was walking across the tarmac toward his jet when the sky changed.

It didn't darken — it tore, slightly, like a piece of paper that catches on a nail. A streak of green light came down at an angle too steep for any aircraft, too fast for a meteor, and hit the desert floor about two miles east of the runway with a sound like a thunderclap played backward.

Hal was already running.

He found the spacecraft half-buried in the sand, still steaming, its hull scored with damage that looked ancient — like something that had traveled very, very far before it gave out. The hatch was open. And inside, slumped against the control panel, was a being unlike anything Hal had ever seen.

He was humanoid — that is, he had a shape like a person — but his skin was deep red and his eyes were two steady green lights and he wore a suit that shimmered as if it was made of woven starlight. On his finger was a ring that glowed with a green so pure and steady it made everything around it look slightly dimmer.

He was alive, barely. And when he saw Hal, something in his posture changed — not relief, exactly, but recognition.

"My name," the being said, slowly, in words that somehow arrived in Hal's mind already translated, "is Abin Sur. I am a Green Lantern. Guardian of Sector 2814." He paused to breathe. "Which includes your world."

He reached out and removed the ring from his finger. It floated from his hand on its own, turning gently, as if examining the air around it, and then it moved — unhurried, deliberate — toward Hal Jordan and settled onto the fourth finger of his right hand.

It fit perfectly.

Abin Sur said, "The ring chose you. Bravery. Honesty. The ability to overcome great fear." He closed his eyes. "Take care of my sector."

Hal wanted to say: wait, I have questions, there are a lot of questions. But the ring pulsed once against his finger, warm and certain, and the suit came — green light flowing up from the ring and over his body like water poured upward, shaping itself into something that fit him exactly, finishing with a mask and a symbol on his chest: a circle with a beam of light cutting through it.

He looked down at himself and then up at the desert sky.

Then he was moving. Not flying — launching. The ring knew where to go before he did. It carried him up through the clouds, through the upper atmosphere, through the last thin skin of air at the edge of space, and then into the silence beyond.

He had thought space would be cold and frightening. It was immense, yes — you cannot comprehend the immensity until you are floating in it, with the whole curved blue world below and the stars blazing in every direction. But it was not frightening. It felt, Hal realized with some surprise, like freedom.

The ring carried him to Oa.

A world at the center of the universe — that was what it felt like, even if the navigational data pulsing through the ring suggested a more precise coordinate. A world of towers and light and thousands of beings from thousands of civilizations, all wearing the same green and the same symbol, all connected by the same power: willpower. The determination to do what must be done when everything is frightening.

The Guardians of the Universe received him — ancient, small, blue-skinned, impossibly old. They looked at him for a long time.

One of them said, simply: "Sector 2814 needs a Lantern. You are the Lantern."

Hal stood very straight and recited the oath, which the ring fed him word by word:

"In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware my power — Green Lantern's light!"

The ring flared. The Guardians nodded.

Hal Jordan, test pilot, a man who had learned to be still in terrifying moments, became Green Lantern — protector of an entire sector of the universe.

He was the same person. Same laugh. Same quick grin. Same voice that said "okay, let's figure this out" when everything went sideways.

But now he had a ring that could build anything he could imagine.

And he had a very big imagination.