Hawking

Hawking was a member of the Brotherhood of Guardians and son of Mathias and father of Tobor. Hawking was responsible for the creation of the Hyper-wave Projector, and used it to transport the population of Angel Island to seperate zones when the island suffered radioactive contamination. He personally oversaw the cleanup of the island following its corruption of nuclear fallout. At the time of Knuckles' birth, Hawking was the second-oldest member of the Brotherhood still alive, and became increasingly physically decrepit and weak. As such, when he was forced to use the Projector to bring Echidnaopolis and the Dingo population back to Mobius, Hawking, having greatly overextended his natural abilities in recent days and suffering extremely old age, succumbed to his weakness and fell into a coma from which he did not wake. He eventually was escorted to the "next evolution" by his ancestor Steppenwolf and in turn escorted his son Tobor when he died.

Early Life
Hawking was trained by Deo Volente, the father of Semper Fidelis and grandfather of Archimedes. Hawking became close friends with Deo, and this friendship lasted for the rest of his life. With his wife Sonja-Ra and son Tobor, Hawking was loving and caring to both of them, and spent a great deal of time with them both (unlike other Guardians who often put duty ahead of their personal lives), and was especially close with Tobor.

In his youth Hawking was quite like Knuckles, sporting, stubborn and eager for a fight, but at his physical prime, Hawking became a much more level-headed individual, and overly-sensitive to the consequences of his actions as Guardian. While many of his forefathers were more concerned with the ongoing conflict with the Dark Legion, Hawking was more concerned with the Dingoes, the Echidnas' violent and unstable neighbours who were constantly using increasingly more violent methods to achieve their goal of victory over the Echidnas (this conflict going back centuries to the point the island was created).

The skirmish war reached its boiling point when the Dingoes raided Echidna armories and "acquired" Overlander nuclear warheads with the intension of directing them towards, and wiping out, Echidnaopolis. Hawking, knowing there was no other choice, delved into the forbidden knowledge of Dimitri the Echidna and created a powerful laser defensive system to destroy the approaching warheads and thwart the attack (forcing him to suffer great guilt and work with his estranged father). This worsened the problem, as the nuclear fallout quickly began spreading and affecting all life on the island. With no hope to protect the Echidna and Dingo people from the fallout, Hawking was driven to use Dimitri's research notes on "zones" (alternate dimensions) and access the abandoned technology of the Grand Conservatory to create the Hyper-wave Projector and use it to save the Echidna and Dingo populations (the latter ironically being affected by their own weapons), by teleporting the cities of both races to safe, and separate, zones to protect them while he began and supervised a cleanup effort with the other Guardians. The population of Echidnaopolis honored Hawking with a statue dedicated to his actions and his creation, the Projector, in the city square.