TV host interviews a smiling woman in a green fairy costume

The Jolly Roger had weathered storms that would make Poseidon himself shiver. Yet this time, it was not the wrath of the open sea that tested her timbers, but a swirling vortex that wrenched ship and crew from their world entirely. They did not reappear upon some distant ocean, but at the mouth of the Hudson River, year 2026. Under bewildered skies and escorted by a stunned United States Coast Guard cutter, the legendary pirate vessel was guided upriver like some misplaced relic of myth. Tugboats circled cautiously. Helicopters thudded overhead. News crews lined the waterfront. By the time they reached the Brooklyn Bridge, the impossible had become undeniable. There, amid steel cables and roaring traffic, the Jolly Roger dropped anchor and was secured to a modern pier. Weather-beaten hull pressed against concrete dock. Tattered sails rustled in the wind funneled between glass towers. Captain Hook stood at the rail in full regalia, crimson coat blazing against the grey skyline, hook hand gleaming beneath the bridge’s vast Gothic arches. Below him, crowds gathered in awe, phones raised like lanterns of a new age. For all his voyages across treacherous seas, Hook had never beheld a harbour such as this… nor felt so far from the world he ruled. And after all this, of course it was the Today Show!