Rainfall Chronicles: Amelia Reinhart

Chapter 2: My Dream's Genesis

Amelia: Chapter 2 — My Dream's Genesis

I'm sorry if I sound like such a pessimist.

I really don't mean to turn people off whenever I tell them my story, but it really is just the way it is. How about we go to a more light-hearted topic?

My story feels like it's much bigger than the person whom I was meant to be. Somehow, I don't feel like some abandoned child on the streets, but... maybe I'm just overthinking things.

That line of thinking originated way back to when I first started educating myself about the so-called "wonders" of life.

Remember how I told you about Amelia Earhart? Well, there's more to her than her flight across the Atlantic. Allow me to give you a brief lesson:

Amelia had set countless records for her time, especially for a woman born at the end of the 1800s. Another notable achievement of hers is being the first aviator in the world to fly from Hawaii to California in the year 1935.

I've always wondered why the object of my interest was always her. I never really thought of myself as an airplane type of girl — ahahaha...

I guess... it's from all the times I've looked up in the sky back then. I've always slept out in the streets, so I'd occasionally see planes in the sky. I was never particularly fascinated in them, but I guess, deep down, I'd always admire how free and unrestrained they looked.

Seeing a huge aircraft soaring through the sky without anything stopping it really hit me deep somewhere inside. Someday, I want to be something like that: a person who goes where the wind takes her. Considering my situation now, however, I highly doubt that's happening anytime soon, but, hey, a girl can dream, right?

Back to Amelia, though, another reason why I was so attached to her was because we shared the same name. It was less about the fact that she was a woman, but more on the fact that I felt some kind of connection with her because of our names.

So much for that, though, because I named myself from the name "Amy" inside of my locket. I guess seeing how coincidental it was was kind of funny.

Reading about Earhart's childhood made me feel slightly envious, however. According to the encyclopedias, she's been adventurous since the start. She was the outlandish, full-of-energy type, and her family knew it.

A bizarre contrast to whatever the hell I turned out to be. I'm completely enclosed and introverted. The only "adventures" I've had were ones of me running away from people trying to hurt me or from the authorities.

Before she worked as an aviator, she was engaged in arduous nursing duties— working day-in and night-out— during the Spanish flu Pandemic in the 1920s. Her caring and determined personality only drew me towards her even further.

After that, she took interest in becoming a pilot, and become a pilot she did. It eventually culminated to her wanting to have her legacy mark itself in the history books. With that, she took it upon herself to complete the mission of circumnavigating the globe along with her navigator, Fred Noonan.

The mission would start in California and end in California. They would make many different stops around the world, but only to refuel. After that, it was back to the mission. The flight would've taken her about thirty thousand miles of flight time spanning of about forty days.

Could you imagine repeating the same thing over and over for that amount of time? Just sitting around in a floating room looking at nothing but the clouds. It sounds like it would be dreadful, but, honestly, it doesn't sound too different from the life I've been living until now.

Hell, I'd much rather take the skies and explore the world than live my life down here with nowhere to go, and nobody to care for me. The sky doesn't ask for anything. I don't have to focus on trying to be something — I can just be. Whenever I look up into the sky, I feel safe and calm — as if it's like a place away from all of my problems down here.

Anyways... Earhart and Noonan were about to make their final departure back to California; only around seven thousand miles from their goal. It felt like it was home stretch. They were about to make history if they successfully finished their mission of flying around the globe.

Little did they know was that they were going to make history... but in a different way than they had imagined.

During the middle of their flight, the radio operator on the other end would occasionally check in on them for a report, but overtime, their reports would get less and less frequent. The operator would send more and more transmissions, but there was never any reply.

Earhart would eventually send transmissions of her own, but they would be convoluted and seemingly panicked. Her demeanor was frantic, but the eeriest part was that up until what happened, she had claimed that her status was okay.

Then suddenly... the transmissions stopped coming. The station expecting Earhart's arrival would be shocked to know that she had never arrived. Multiple operators would attempt to establish contact to no avail.

She, along with Noonan, had disappeared. To this day, neither they nor their aircraft were found. They definitely did try though, as multiple search parties were sent on a mission to find the missing two, but, again, nothing ever came up, thus marking the beginning of the nearly century-old mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

Eighteen months after her disappearance— with no other clues or discovers being found about her fate— Earhart was declared dead during the winter of 1938.

There have definitely been theories speculating about Earhart's fate:

The most commonly accepted one is that she had just ran out of fuel, and crashed into the Pacific.

Another is that they had become castaways over a nearby island and died due to the lack of supplies, nor anybody finding the island to rescue them.

Another plausible one is that she and Noonan were captured by enemies of war since there were multiple Japanese-controlled islands during that era in the Second World War.

There are also some crazy theories as well: one being, well... aliens... abducting her...
Yeah, I can't really get behind this one.

But one of the craziest ones is that she was actually a government spy who worked for some government organization, stole classified information about the war, and faked her death to live a new life with a new identity. If that's true, then that is the longest long-con I have ever read about.

Well, in the end the only people who knows what really happened were Earhart and Noonan. The mystery of their disappearance might never be solved, and it's only up to people like us to speculate whatever the hell happened.

What I'm concerned about, however, is that people today only seem to care about her because she brought upon this big, mysterious investigation. I understand why, but I feel like there's more to her than just her end. She's had an eventful life, setting records impressive not just from her time, but even impressive even today.

That's what my dream is: I want to be able to make people remember me, even years, decades, centuries in the future. Someday, I wanna get out of here and do something for a change. I want to be able to look down at what I've done and say that my life here on Earth was meaningful.

Just like the Amelia before me... My name is Amelia Reinhart, and I want to live!

But...

Where do I even begin...?