The Spark Lands

Note: This story was adapted from issue one of the four-part PixelPals: Origins comic book given out at the Orlando Friends for Life Conference (2026). To read this story in comic form, click here.

For centuries, there have been whispers.

Whispers of a world hidden right beside ours. A world of hope and light and encouragement, meant for everyone.

There were stories, too. Stories about the ones who crossed into it. Stories about a scientist named Johan, who one day simply vanished.

Most people decided it was a legend.

Lily and Scott didn't.

They found his workshop. Inside were maps of impossible places and notebooks full of unbelievable discoveries. And there was something else - a device that opened a portal to... somewhere. A bridge of color, leading off to faraway lands.

Johan was out there. On the other side. They were sure of it.

So they made their first journey across the Color Bridge.

Here is what they found.

Lily and Scott stepped off the end of the bridge and stopped. In front of them, under a sky full of stars, a whole city sprawled out as far as they could see. Gears as big as houses turned slowly on the sides of buildings. Clock towers ticked. Pipes ran everywhere - up walls, over streets, across rooftops - hissing little clouds of steam into the night.

And there were robots. Lots of robots.

"Where are we?" Lily whispered. "This is..."

"Amazing," said Scott.

They walked into the streets. Robots rolled past them, clanked past them, whirred past them, all going about their business like two kids appearing out of a rainbow was perfectly normal.

Then one robot stopped.

It was small and round and bright orange, and it pushed its way through the crowd toward them as fast as its little legs would go.

"I knew you would come!" he said. "They didn't believe me, but I knew it!"

Lily blinked. "Well... hello! Who are you?"

"I'm Rivet! And this is the Spark Lands!"

"What is this place?" Lily asked.

"I just told you. The Spark Lands." Rivet was already turning around. "Come on! Let me show you the workshop!"

The sign over the door said BOLT BUDDIES WORKSHOP, and inside it was the best kind of mess. Tools on every wall. Parts in every bin. Half-built things on every table.

"Hey guys!" Rivet called. "I found some new friends. Let me introduce..."

Four robots looked up from their work. "Cogs," Rivet said, pointing out a small, round robot. "Jolt." This one was tall and lanky. "Tinker." He was so tiny Lily almost missed him. "And Whirry!"

But Scott wasn't looking at the robots anymore. He was looking past them, at something huge sitting in the back of the workshop under a canvas tarp that didn't quite cover it.

"Is that..."

"A space shuttle!" said Rivet proudly.

Scott's mouth fell open. Rivet didn't give him time to close it.

"Come see what I'm working on!"

He led them to a workbench covered in gadgets and stopped in front of a box with a lot of wires and one very big, very red button.

"What is it?" Scott asked.

"It's an E.M.P.!" said Rivet. "It knocks out all electrical power!"

Lily took a careful step back.

"Don't worry," Rivet said. "It's safe. As long as you don't press this button." Rivet, in his excitement to show them the button, actually pressed the button.

Click.

"Oops," said Rivet. "I think I pressed the button."

ZAAAAP.

Blue electricity crackled out of the box and arced across the whole workshop. It jumped from tool to tool and robot to robot. Whirry stopped mid-spin. Cogs stopped mid-roll. Everyone froze.

Then it was very, very quiet.

"What just happened?" Lily asked.

"It worked!" Rivet cheered. "All electronics are shut down!"

Scott looked at him. "Then how are you moving?"

Rivet thought about it.

"That's a good question." He looked at all his friends. They were frozen in time.

Scott pushed open the workshop door. Outside, the whole city had gone dark. The lights were off. The windows were black. Robots lay still in the streets, right where they'd been standing.

"Everything is shut down," he said slowly.

Jolt had wobbled over to the window behind them, the only other robot still upright. "The power station too," said Rivet. "Not good."

"What do we do?" Lily asked.

"Restart the power station."

"Is that hard?" Scott asked.

"I have no idea." Rivet smiled a big smile.

The power station was easy to find. It was the biggest thing in the city - a massive iron tower looming off in the distance.

"It's not far," said Rivet. "This way!"

They walked through the silent streets. Nothing moved. Nothing hummed. Then, up ahead, something went tick.

"Why is the clock tower still working?" Scott asked.

"Let me guess," said Lily. "It's wind-up."

"Exactly," said Rivet. "And the steam-powered machines will be running too. We need to be careful."

They went another twenty steps.

"Watch out!" Rivet yelled. "Street cleaner!"

A huge mechanical street cleaner came barreling out of an alley, brushes spinning, steam blasting. Lily and Scott dove one way. Rivet tried to get out of the way, but the cleaner barreled right into him, tossing him to the curb. Then it rumbled past and disappeared around the corner.

"Whoa," said Rivet, shaking his head.

Scott picked himself up off the cobblestones. "Didn't you just warn us about that?"

They ran the rest of the way. The tower got bigger and bigger.

"There's the tower!" Lily said. "We're getting close."

"WAIT!" Rivet shouted.

A big brass truck came puffing through the intersection right in front of them, painted with bright letters: BRASS BITE STEAM DOGS. Lily was right in its path! Scott reached out, grabbing her jacket and pulling her back just in time.

"What was that?" Lily gasped.

When they turned around, Rivet was holding a hot dog. Or something like a hot dog. It had a bolt in it.

"Food truck," he said. "Comes every twenty minutes." He held it up. "Bolt dogs! Yum! Want one?"

Next came the canal. There was a drawbridge across it, but the bridge was stuck pointing straight up into the air, with a wide stretch of dark water underneath.

"The drawbridge!" said Lily. "It's stuck!"

Scott measured the gap with his eyes. "I guess we have to jump."

They backed up. They ran. They jumped.

They made it - barely - and landed in a heap on the other side.

Then Lily looked back. Rivet was still standing on the far bank, all by himself.

"Rivet!" Lily said. "He can't jump!"

RUMBLE.

The drawbridge creaked, groaned, and lowered itself neatly into place. Rivet strolled across it.

"One-minute cycle," he said. "Very reliable."

Scott stared at him. "You knew?"

"You could have told us," said Lily.

"You didn't ask."

THE POWER STATION.

Up close, it was even bigger. The three of them stood at the bottom and tipped their heads all the way back to see the top.

Rivet tried the door. It didn't budge. "Locked," he said. "I guess we climb."

"Climb up THAT?" said Scott.

But Lily was already on the scaffolding. "Up is easy," she called. "It's down that hurts."

So they climbed. Lily went up like she'd been doing it her whole life. Scott went up very slowly and did not enjoy any of it. Rivet, it turned out, was surprisingly good at climbing.

At the very top was a hatch. They pulled it open and looked down into darkness.

"Now we go down," said Rivet.

Scott frowned. "I thought you said down was the part that hurts."

"Only if you fall," Lily explained.

"So don't do that," said Rivet, smiling again.

They tied off their ropes and lowered themselves into the dark.

"It's fine," Rivet said. "Just don't look down." A pause. "I looked down."

At the bottom was the main control room - a huge hall full of gauges and pipes and control panels, stretching away into the shadows.

"This is it," said Rivet. "The main control room."

They split up and searched.

"I found a switch!" Lily called.

"Here's another!" said Scott, from the other side.

Rivet's voice came from a third panel, very far away. "We have a problem. I've got two switches, and I can't reach them both."

Scott looked at the distance between them. Too far. Way too far. "Now what?"

Lily was quiet for a second. Then she said, "I've got an idea."

"Does it involve fire?" said Rivet hopefully. "Please say fire."

It did not involve fire. Lily pulled some more rope out of her bag. "We can make a grappling hook. I just need the hook part."

Scott pointed to a piece of metal attached to the wall. "This might work if we can get it off."

Rivet ran right up to the metal, reaching out to pull it off the wall.

"Should we think about this first?" Scott asked.

"Why start now?"

SNAP!

He held out the piece. It was exactly hook-shaped. "See? Everything's fine."

Lily tied it on tight. "Hope this holds. Here goes nothing!" She wound up, swung, and threw.

The hook flew across the room, caught, and held onto the further lever. The line stretched tight from one side of the control room to the other - and now Rivet's second switch was in reach.

They took their places. Three kids - well, two kids and a robot - and four switches.

"On three," said Lily. "One..."

"...two..." said Scott.

"THREE!" shouted Rivet.

They pulled.

RUMBLE.

Deep under their feet, something enormous woke up. The turbines groaned, then hummed, then roared. Electricity surged through the pipes in bright blue ribbons. Every gauge in the room spun up at once.

Rivet watched the lights dance across the ceiling.

"Ooh," he said. "Pretty."

Outside, the Spark Lands lit up.

One window at a time, then one street at a time, then all at once. The clock towers glowed. The gears turned. Robots sat up in the streets, blinked, and went right back to whatever they'd been doing.

"I knew it would work," said Rivet.

"You had no idea," said Scott.

"I had a feeling."

Lily grinned. "Let's get back to the workshop."

"Everything's running again," said Scott, as the city hummed around them.

Back at the Bolt Buddies Workshop, everyone was waking up.

"Hello?" said Rivet.

"That was unexpected," said Cogs.

Jolt sat up. "Did I miss anything?"

Tinker was staring at his workbench. "Who touched my tools?"

Whirry, sitting all alone in the corner, said very softly, "I had the strangest dream."

Later, they all sat around the big workshop table. Lily had been waiting to ask her question all night.

"When we got here," she said, "you said you knew we would come. Has someone like us been here before?"

"Yes," said Rivet. "Johan."

Scott sat straight up. "Johan! He was here?"

"Yes. He was looking for something."

"Did he find it?" Lily asked. "What was it?"

"Some device. He found part of it, but not the whole thing."

"Any idea where he went?" Scott asked.

"He said he was going to search the Creative Lands."

Lily and Scott looked at each other. Then Rivet looked over at the back of the workshop - at the space shuttle under its tarp - and brightened right up.

"Hey! I know how you can get there super fast!"

He pulled the tarp off the engine. Inside it, something round and blue was glowing, slowly turning, humming softly.

"Does it fly?" Lily asked.

"Better than flying," said Rivet. "I'll show you. It's my poof engine."

"Your what?" said Lily.

"It makes you go poof."

"That does not sound good," said Scott. "What exactly does 'going poof' mean?"

"You go poof here and show up anywhere you want."

Scott thought about it. "So... a teleporter."

"Watch, I'll show you!"

Lily and Scott, both remembering the problems that came from the previous push of a button, dived toward Rivet.

"WAIT!"

POOF.

A gigantic cloud of smoke burst out and filled the entire workshop. When it cleared, Lily and Scott were standing right where they'd been, hair blown straight back, blinking. The ship was just gone.

"And that," said Rivet, "is the poof engine!"

Lily stared at the empty space in the back of the workshop.

"Wait. Where did the ship go?"

Somewhere in New Mexico, under a sky full of stars, there was a space shuttle sitting in the middle of the desert. Little puffs of smoke drifted up off of it.

A girl named Luna found it there. She looked at it for a long time. Then she climbed aboard, all by herself.

POOF.

The ship appeared outside an observatory. A boy named Cosmo came out to look - and Luna waved him in.

POOF.

The ship landed in a backyard. Orion looked up from the grass, very surprised.

POOF.

The ship set down beside a river at sunset, where Nova was waiting.

POOF.

The ship landed in a rainy parking lot. Starry looked up at it through the rain, and waved.

Five kids. One ship. A whole sky waiting for them.

Meet the StarPals.