The Book of Form and Emptiness

Benny spends the day at home recuperating after going to the hospital. The Book relates a day when Benny stayed home sick from school and watched a show on robots with Kenji. Kenji would often talk about watching the 1969 moon landing as a child. He once wanted to be an astronaut but became a musician instead after he realized “Everything is so beautiful right here” (318) on Earth.

Benny is excited to remember this day with Kenji and recalls the lunar globe that Kenji bought him. They played a game in which one of them would spin the globe and stop at a random point then have to tell a story about it. Benny recalls Annabelle’s story about the Sea of Fertility. After a trip to the moon, a female astronaut returns to earth and finds that she cannot stop having children. The more children she has, the harder it is to convince the children to stay on earth. They want to return to the moon, and the mother has no choice but to watch them leave. Benny remembers being upset by the mother in the story being left alone, so he and Annabelle write an alternate ending in which one son stays behind with his mother.