First Officer’s Log
30 October
1758 UTC
First Officer’s Log
Watch passed without incident. Traveled westerly two-hundred thirty-six nautical miles at fourteen knots. Lots of small fish jumping, possibly avoiding tuna schools known to be in the area. Ship’s cook caught three ahi before dinner, cooked them fairly well. Needs more garlic, though. Have the morning watch tomorrow and need to prepare for a conference call with headquarters. Hopefully there will be no more delays with our destination.
31 October
1013 UTC
First Officer’s Log
Morning round discovered piles of fish throughout the cargo deck, filled in between every container. No storm in the night and all the weather observations recorded calm winds and seas. All hands involved in removal and clean-up and is ongoing. It looks like getting all of them off will take us past the noon meal. Overcast skies are a boon since the fish are beginning to take on an awful smell. Conference call is scheduled for 1345 UTC.
31 October
1603 UTC
First Officer’s Log
Another delay at our destination. Can’t moor for an additional two days due to dockworkers being behind schedule. Slowed speed to ten knots to conserve fuel and adjust timeline. Fish removal nears completion; we tried blasting them out from under the containers with fire hoses and that’s worked for the most part.
01 November
0733 UTC
First Officer’s Log
First fish, now birds. There are nearly a hundred sea birds circling the ship, we have no idea where they’ve come from. We’re nearly 1,000 miles from any significant land. No one seems to recognize the species, either. Nearly all white bodies, but the few that have flown low enough to be seen in detail appear to have black on their backs and wings. Maybe there’s some random island somewhere nearby that’s not on any of the charts. Internet is down so we are unable to look them up.
01 November
1408 UTC
First Officer’s Log
The strange birds seem to have multiplied, they nearly blot out the sky. Security officers have fired at a few of them to try to make them scatter, but to no avail. They were advised to stop since there are more birds than there is ammunition on board. The decks have been secured until they leave. I don’t want to think about the clean up after they depart.
02 November
0817 UTC
First Officer’s Log
They’ve landed on the ship. There’s so many of them that the Chief Engineer had to recalculate the ship’s load level and shift ballast around for over an hour. They’re all facing the same direction, off the port bow, as if they’re looking out to sea, waiting for something. A couple have been picked off by security, but the rest shuffle around their fallen comrade and you can’t even see the corpse. Their stiffness is disturbing.
02 November
1011 UTC
First Officer’s Log
They’re looking at the bridge. All of them. Staring. It’s unnerving as hell and nothing scatters them. We’ve tried guns, the fire hoses, the ship’s whistle; nothing disturbs or displaces them. It’s as if they are stone and welded to the ship. Until there is a flutter of wing, or the occasional blink. We can’t see the tops of the containers, or any of the weather decks. They’re on every horizontal surface on board. And they remain fixated on the bridge windows.
03 November
2117 UTC
First Officer’s Log
We can see their eyes at night. They reflect the navigation lights; white, red and green depending on where one looks at them. They are still facing the bridge, staring at it. It’s making me nervous and the captain angry. The deck hands and engineers have started regular prayers on the messdeck. I may join them in the morning after my watch.
04 November
0843
First Officer’s Log
They’re still here, still staring, millions of unblinking eyes staring down black beaks at me. They follow my movements through the bridge windows as I walk from one side to the other, trying to keep a lookout. I feel like they’re judging me, watching me unravel. I’ve asked the captain to reassign my watch.
04 November
2008 UTC
First Officer’s Log
I’ve secured the lights during my night watch so I can’t see them watching me. Except now the stars are shining bright and there’s a full moon without a cloud in sight and it reflects their presence to remind me they are still there. I can see the stars reflected in their black eyes and the moon gives their black feather a silvery sheen. I avoid the windows, staying by the radar and the chart plotter and pretend they’re not here.
05 November
0214 UTC
First Officer’s Log
The Chief Engineer awoke me to adjust the load level again. I ran to the bridge to see that the birds have all left. Not a shred of evidence to their presence remains; not a feather, undigested meal or droppings are anywhere on board. I walked the decks myself to inspect the containers and have found nothing. Had I imagined it? Am I in some sort of fever? No. We shot at them, sprayed them with fire hoses. They were real. Now they are gone. Good riddance!
05 November
0818 UTC
First Officer’s Log
They fled the ship only to invade my dreams. I dreamt I was on the bridge, with no windows to separate me from the outside, from them and I. Day turns to night and back again, a rapid time-lapse of the sun rising and falling, followed the moon rising and falling and the stars streaking across the sky, bathing the blasted creatures in alternating light and darkness. My only escape is consciousness. I hope the coffee lasts.
05 November
2119 UTC
First Officer’s Log
We’ve been beset by weather for the past four hours. Seas are in excess of twelve meters, sixty knot winds, rain and lightning. Our speed has been slowed to five knots. I see their eyes in every flash of lightning. Staring at me once again. Boring holes deep into my soul. I don’t know how or why this affects me so much. There is no weight to their gaze, these phantoms of the immediate past. No one else sees them now. The captain has been eyeing me with suspicion since I mentioned seeing the birds in my dreams. Everyone on board seems to have forgotten they were on the ship, that they followed the hundreds of fish on deck, and that the birds acted peculiar. I can’t be the only one who saw them. I shall speak to the Chief Engineer in the morning.
06 November
0605 UTC
First Officer’s Log
This must be some sort of practical joke. The Chief Engineer admits to making load level and ballast adjustments, but only for the standard reasons of compensating for fuel consumption and the like. He knows nothing of the birds or the fish. Something’s not right. Am I going mad?
06 November
2040 UTC
First Officer’s Log
It has been thirty-six hours since I have slept. I see their starry eyes in every blink of my own. Everything on board is beginning to smell like fish about to turn, a subtle rot and decay. The storm has not abated, and has only gotten worse. Every wave feels like a mountain we are climbing. We are barely making two knots, yet have pushed the engine speed to three-quarters to keep us moving and avoid falling beam-to the seas. The deck hands have resumed their communal prayers, but their foreign words feel malicious somehow. It’s not the language they’ve used every day prior that I can understand. Their words, they don’t sound like any language I’ve heard before.
07 November
0551 UTC
First Officer’s Log
I accidentally fell asleep and dreamt the starry-eyed birds were the storm around us. They bore holes into the containers and the ship’s hull with their sharp beaks, and the ship began to take on water and sink. I awoke when they broke through the glass of the pilothouse. I got up in a sweat and ran to the bridge to find the Third Mate on watch, staring at me as I entered in my anxious state with nothing on but my underwear. The bridge was intact and the storm has subsided. I apologized and went below, returning to my stateroom to brew some more coffee.
07 November
1531 UTC
Captain’s Log
I’ve made the official entry in the ship’s log, but I have to put this own somewhere. When I relieved the First Officer of the watch this morning, I was curious as to why he was in his full dress uniform. When asked, he replied that today was a big day for him because he was no longer suffering from the nightmares that have been plaguing him the past week. He requested permission to lay below and I granted it, returning to my watch duties. Scarcely a few minutes later, one of the deck hands called, “Man overboard!” and we responded appropriately. We searched for nearly six hours and found no trace of him, save for his officer’s cap. I questioned the deck hand who sounded the alarm and he stated that the First Officer walked to the very end of the aft deck with a pair of twenty kilo dumbbells lashed to his hands and without hesitation, stepped over the rail and into the sea below. Even more curious was the strange black and white bird that was perched on his cap when the rescue boat retrieved it. There hasn’t been any birds around for several weeks.
*UTC stands for Universal Time Coordinated, Zulu, or Greenwich Mean Time. It is the basis for time zones around the world. Link: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/timezone/utc
