#empty notebooks

“We found another one,” James handed me a small glass bottle, sealed by green wax, “the wreck down there is from some really wealthy family. Like, really wealthy.”

I nodded, “Thank you, James. Tell the crew to begin preparing for nightfall. We’ve done enough for today.” He saluted lazily and left. In front of me, spread out across my desk, were dozens upon dozens of sheafs of paper. I popped open the bottle James gave me with an old letter opener, unrolling the aged paper. In emerald green ink, were the words: I wish I could afford more clothes. From, Lily

My heart aches for Lily, as it did for Emelaine, and June, and Caleb, and Henry, and all of the others who wished for more food, more freedom, more family. I wrote down Lily’s name and wish in the log and began to gather the small pages into a pile and into a box, the box went under my desk, thus dictating the end of my very long day.

As I emerged from my quarters, cheers erupted, led by James, who was holding a small cake. “Happy birthday, Alex,” he smiled. I laughed, blowing out the small circle of candles that bordered the cake. The rest of the crew cheered louder, jubilantly singing ‘Happy Birthday’. James enveloped me into a big, feathering tiny kisses on the crown of my head. I missed nights like these, parties and cake and terrible, terrible singing. Nights like these reminded me why I became who I was, forever sailing the seas, my sole purpose being to grant wishes made by the small children of the world.

The night went on for hours, until it was no longer night and the only ones awake were the fuel laborers and me, keeping our beloved ship afloat and on path for our next stop. “Good morning,” I greeted the sun as it rose from the horizon, just as exhausted as the rest of us.

I expected no answer, but received one anyways, “Good morning, Capt’n,” Chef Meyers groaned as they emerged from the sleeping quarters, “aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

I shrugged, “We’ll be greeting land soon, I can’t miss that. Plus, I’m the captain, Death will be the only one to slumber me.” Meyers laughed, muttering something under their breath as they retreated back to their kitchen.

As reluctant as I was to announce the sighting of our destination and wake my peacefully sleeping crew, it was impossible for me to bring the ship to an appropriate halt without them. From above, I witnessed dozens of sailors pour from the belly of the ship and run to their stations, ready for my command.

For a second I merely watched, admiring my crew and their evergreen dedication to wish granting. They were more than I could have ever asked for in a crew and it was made apparent when I gave the slightest of nods, and they hastily acted upon my silent orders.

We docked our ship in a grove of mangrove trees, and I snuck inland, my footsteps burdened by a heavy sack of fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats, with enough seeds to cover a mountain in growth. With only the small distant light of my wisher’s home to guide me, I navigated the harsh terrain, finally understanding why Mary wished for fewer nights without dinner. There was o way anyone could cultivate this unforgiving forest into a farm without any help.

I reached the quiet home, it’s inhabitants still sleeping with likely empty stomachs, just as the morning began to call itself afternoon. Carefully, I placed the sack of food on the doorstep, dropping Mary’s wish in the bag attached to a note from the crew:

“Dearest Mary,

It pains us to know that you and your family are suffering like this. We hope that this small donation of food will sufficiently feed your family until you are able to acquire more food.

Wish Granted, The Crew”

With that, I began to retreat back into the woods where I came from,but was stopped when the sound of a door squeaking open brought my movement to a halt. Out came a little girl with blonde braids, rubbing sleep from her brown eyes. She looked out into the woods, searching for the source of the noise she must have been awakened by. It pained me to not show myself and greet the child with a hug and a promise that everything would be alright now, but it was against the rules. So when her eyes met mine, I settled with a short nod, hoping that she would know what to do. Mary smiled, and I turned my back, disappearing into the forest.

I stared at him, silently pleading that he would be the one to break the agonizing stalemate. Instead, he shouldered his bag and turned to leave, forcing me to become the brave one. “Wait!” I clambered out of my chair after him, “Please don’t leave me.”

He stopped, and through a clenched jaw, he said, “I can’t be here while you torture yourself like this. This wasn’t a part of the plan, Avery.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I laughed nervously, “This was the entire purpose of the plan! Zach, you can’t be serious.”

Zach turned to face me, his eyes were stormy and every muscle in his body was visibly taut. “If this was a part of the plan, then why did you leave me, your best friend, completely fucking clueless?” I couldn’t stop the tears as they welled up in my eyes, flooding my lashes as I tried to blink them away, “I thought I knew you, Avery.”

“You do, Zach. You know me better than anyone that has ever existed. Please,” I sobbed, “please don’t go.”

Slowly, mournfully, he approached me, cupping my face in his hands, wiping my tears away, “I trusted you, Avery, with my entire being. I loved you, Ave. You could have told me. If you had just trusted me enough to tell me what you were going to do, I could have helped you. We could have come up with a different plan.”

Violent sobs racked my body, “Please, Zach. It doesn’t have to end like this. We don’t have to end like this.”I reached out to grab him, to stop him from reaching the door he was mere feet from.

“No, it doesn’t. It never should have ended like this. We were supposed to survive everything. We were supposed to escape this life and grow old together. Fuck, I should be fucking stopping you, Avery, before you kill us all,” his voice cracked as he choked back tears on the last word.

“Then stop me, Zach,” I said, my tears dry and my face as solemn as stone. “Stop me. Because you and I both know that that as soon as that door closes behind you, it will be too late.” My gaze drifted away from him, chuckling darkly, “Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps this is just the beginning of the end.”

With that, his face sobered and he turned, his eyes keeping straight ahead as he walked away. I flinched as the metal doors slammed shut in my face. My eyes screwed shut as I forced myself not to cry. What have I done? I cursed myself, this is all my fault. As I sunk to the ground, a memory from our past wiggled its way into my mind. Zach and I ran around the playground, we were mere children, still unaware of the horrors of the world. I had volunteered to scale the side of the brick school building to retrieve a soccer ball one of the other kids kicked up there. Zach fought to keep me on the ground, relinquishing only when a crowd of students began to form around us, “But in the end,” he sighed, “I love you too much to stop you from doing this.”

At the time I was clueless about the hidden meaning of his words. Not anymore. Now, it was as if he had highlighted it in neon marker and covered it in stickers and arrows. Now, I knew.

It was a day few would forget. The day the Athena I would reach its destination at long last. Beth remembered reading about it for the first time when she was a second year. Mrs. Clyves lingered on the short chapter for only a moment before carrying on with the lesson, but Beth had become entranced by the impossibilities of the mission: a crew of astronauts spending hundreds of years traveling to the planet Earth had colonized decades before they were set to arrive. When school for the day, Beth and her mom went to the library and checked out every book relating to the Athena I mission. She remembered staying up all night reading those books, even though they were far above her reading comprehension level.

That was twenty years ago, and now Beth found herself staring out of the window, watching the sky for an early glimpse of the shuttle that was meant to land within the day. Her mother had told her not to worry, for the Athena I had already been sighted on satellites around their planet and its moons. Yet, she couldn’t help but feverishly check her watch every few seconds, ignoring the strange looks she received from her coworkers. They simply weren’t aware of the importance of the day for her.

Hours passed, and still no news of the impending arrival, except for the fact that it was impending. Beth was starting to lose hope, maybe they predicted the arrival date wrong? The reporters and scientists did stress that while it seemed like a very likely prediction, it was still only a prediction. Maybe it's tomorrow, Beth wondered, or next week. Tomorrow or next week could still mean that the scientists were close to their prediction. What if it still has a decade left on its journey? A nagging voice echoed in her head. A decade was too long. Beth needed this shuttle to arrive today, She needed it to be today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not a decade from now. It had to be today. Beth checked her watch again, 8:25 p.m. There was still plenty of time until midnight. She turned on her TV, flicking almost immediately to the news channel. One of the reporters was talking about how some of the crew still hasn’t even woken up from cryosleep yet. “Let’s give some slack to the equipment at work, though,” the reporter joked, her eyes a little too bright and her hair a little too blonde for the wrinkles on her hands, “these cryosleep pods that we all use so often now was first put in place for the Athena I mission, nearly five hundred years ago. Five hundred! Can you believe it, Fred?” The other reporter laughed, shaking his head in agreement. Five hundred years. Beth’s grandmother made the trip when she was eight in only a year. She wanted to be there when her great-great-great-great-grandfather landed. Beth’s grandmother died two years ago today, and still no Athena I. It was nearing 9, and Beth was losing hope.

Then the ground began to shake, and her kitchen lights grew brighter and brighter until they went out one by one with loud pops and the sound of glass shattering. As Beth ran outside, unbothered by the shards of glass in her feet, she watched as Athena I slowly made its descent onto the highway outside her neighborhood. Beth couldn’t help but be enamored by the beauty of the massive ship as it towered over the buildings surrounding it. Inside her house, the excited cheers of the two reporters erupted from her TV. Seconds later, Beth found herself running. She wasn’t even remotely athletic as her asthmatic lungs furiously reminded her. It's here, she reminded herself, finally, it's here. That seemed to keep the burning tightness in her chest at bay.

By the time she reached the mountain of bright orange steel, an ocean of people and cars had already formed around the door, anxiously waiting for them to open and reveal the crew of forty astronauts. They would be the oldest humans to ever live, thanks to the cryosleep chambers they all spent five hundred years in. The questions that came to form in her head drowned out all of her surroundings, almost to the point where she missed the hiss of steam as the doors slowly slid open.

They emerged from the darkness with furrowed brows, whispering to one another in a strange language. As she pushed her way to the front, Beth craned her neck to try and catch even the smallest of glimpses of the strangers. Those around her whispered to one another, gossiping like it was an Olympic sport, and they were favored to win gold. Few protested as she broke through the front lines and took in the sight that she was witnessing.

All of them looked so human. As if any one of them could be a random bank teller or her manager at work. That was what they wanted though, regular people who were willing to leave behind their entire lives, everything they had ever learned, and travel to a distant planet millions of light-years away and begin a colony for the rest of us. We just beat them to it, thanks to advances in technology. Yet, still, it was hard for Beth not to fall back on the magazines she had read about the Athena I mission, and the wild theories the celebrities and interviewers would exchange. Would the astronauts have green skin? Black eyes and bulbous heads? Would they even understand us? Would they speak a different language entirely? Beth would always scoff at how stupid it all sounded, she couldn’t help herself.

“Excuse me, Miss,” one astronaut said, yanking Beth back to the events currently happening, “Excuse me, but can you tell me if this is the planet Delta 781? My crew and I think we somehow missed our destination.”

He looked at Beth with anticipation, all she could do was stutter out her answer, “Uh, yeah, it is,” she glanced down at his name patch, and nearly fainted, “My name is Beth, I’m your great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. My grandmother, your–”

“Great-great-great-great granddaughter. God, how long have we been traveling?” Her grandfather sighed, collapsing to his knees.

“Five hundred years, sir. But the Athena II mission arrived two hundred years ago, in under a decade,” Beth spoke quietly, patting the now sobbing man on his shoulder.

“Oh God,” he cried, “I promised her I would see her again. I promised Maggie that we would see each other again! And now I’m–and now she’s–” he broke down into violent sobs as more and more people began to appear from the ship. Beth looked around at the crowd of onlookers that had surrounded her and her inconsolable grandfather. As she glanced back at him, she noticed that he couldn’t have been any older than thirty, a sobering realization for Beth.

“So what do we do now?” someone in the crowd shouted. This began an eruption of questions that all seemed to be aimed at Beth and her grandfather. She wished that she had just stayed home because then none of this would be happening. She could have gone to bed peacefully and woken up to the news of the landing of Athena I, and this wouldn’t be happening.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. It wasn’t aimed at the frantic crowd or her grandfather or the confused astronauts behind her, in fact, Beth didn’t know who she was apologizing to, or even why she was apologizing. The words just felt right with all that was happening.