Another Earth

Prologue

Exactly one hundred years, five months, three days, seventeen hours, and two minutes ago the first shuttle containing humans landed on the Moon. After the moon came to Mars, then a small shuttle on Jupiter, an even smaller shuttle on Saturn, and some people are even living on Uranus. Funny, I know.

They say the galaxy is always expanding, and I guess humanity is too. Wherever we can go, we go. If we can't go there, we wait a generation then someone finds a way to get there.

I used to read these old "science-fiction" stories when I was younger, the kind that my mom and my grandparents read. The kind where cities were built underwater and civilizations on the moon were attacked by aliens. Movies where a guy gets stuck on Mars or people got trapped in space.

I used to laugh at them, at their imaginations back then. All their ideas of what the space age was going to be like. All their failed attempts to see other planets, other galaxies. Their endless hunt to find another "Earth". They never could find their other Earth, but they made sure they wherever they went, it always felt like home.

My home.

All I've ever known.

Is Earth.

While other kids go to Mars for their birthdays or whatever, I stay here, in my small house by a small lake, in a small city, all by myself. I've never left the planet. I've never even gone outside of the country before.

So, while I'm here, on Earth, I listen to all these wonderful things about other planets. I close my eyes to dream of what it would be like when I first step off the rocket, my feet pressing down softly on the rocky surface of the moon, or of Mars, or of anywhere that isn't the Earth.

One day I'll go up there, to see everything for myself. I'll bring a notebook and write down things that have already been written. I'll bring a camera and take pictures of things that have already been photographed. I'll come home and tells my friends and parents everything that has already been said before.

I'll be just like everyone else. But for now, I'm myself.

My lonely, Earth-ly self.

One day I'll see the stars.

One day I'll see my other "Earth".

But that day isn't today.

Or any other day coming soon.

The one and only, Isaac B.