My Library

Gills … I’m a fish, a very big fish!… I can feel my stabilizing fins waving gently to keep me in place, my vision is split, I can’t see exactly straight in front of me … behind me is almost a blind spot, but my peripheral seeing is tremendous, detail is exquisite, but not many colors, only one or two … I try moving, just thinking about it, and I speed forward very rapidly, turn right, left, roll, steep climb, then dive … wait, something on the surface when I climbed, gotta go back, grab it, hungry, hungry … I shoot uncontrolled through the surface, mouth open, gulping in something as I do … then out of the air and back into the water, diving with a great sense of satisfaction and something wiggling and crunching in the back of my mouth … a bug?… deeper, but it’s not dark as I thought, I can still see wonderfully … I am aware of another fish diving with me, tail and back of the body sculling, sculling strongly … am I doing that, too?… I am!… it just takes care of itself … I just think and it works, like walking or running in a physical human body … I stop. Ahead of me is another fish, it is coming at me … no, it’s gigantic, the water is deceptive, it’s incredibly bigger than I am … it has hunger signals radiating … go, go, it’s after me, swim, swim fast, it’s coming after me … up to the top, up, up faster … signal in from my sides, another fish swimming violently beside me … signal from the stripes on my sides … (RAM, when you’re in the air, skip! Skip!) I broke through the surface into the air, reached out, and stretched. CLICK! I was just above the water, and I saw the body of my fish, with a second one alongside it, arch through the air and reenter the water with the smallest of splashes … but immediately there was a rushing, a swirling under the surface. (Fun, huh?) It was BB beside me. I couldn’t reply, I was shaking so hard, so he went on. (I guaranteed AA I wouldn’t let you go through the end of it. He had a percept you weren’t ready and he was right. But you asked her about the food chain …)