There is no night or day here. No one leaves and turns the lights off, like the lab-people do. There's just a continuous stream of artificial light. The fish here are quite friendly, just bored of swimming around the same territory everyday. We're blocked by huge glass walls and a walkway is built in between tanks. Only sharks, stingrays and some fish can get over the partition.
The past few hours were spent furnishing my new home, within a nice cluster of corals and around some really tasty sea sponges. There aren't many other nudibranches here. Things feel really congested after a while and it seems like the fish never seem to stop passing by the window of your house.
There's also a small television kept on all the time, so that the security guard has a bit of music or something to listen to. Sometimes a channel called National Geographic is turned on and I got a glance at other wildlife. Lions and tigers, apes, snakes, spiders, camels, horses, all swept up in the currents of human rampage.
Of course, I could never hear anything, just the murmurings of all the other fishes. Then came a screening of unrealistic fishes. A clown fish couple torn apart by a shark. The father was left with a single scarred baby clown fish. Then humans took the son to the surface, to be sold in a pet shop. When the young clown fish tries to escape with the help of his other captured friends, little does he know the dangers his father faces to find his son. At last, the family is reunited, although the other marine animals end up in little plastic bags floating up on the currents near the dock, unable to reach their original habitat.
I suppose that's how life will end for me and the rest of the fish in this tank. Wasted a way so that others can tap at the glass, staring at us as though we're some freak show. Once in a while though, a person has this weirdest expression. A sour look of fascination, if there is one. As though the life we're living represents the wild we came from or were born away from.
It is a sad scenario. But I have an idea that I may as well take my days in my stride. Its useless to try and escape from this. What can a slug do to change her life against such odds?
Etana Chromodoris
