GALACTIC GUPPIES: A Message from Fishbowl Earth

	We are navigating cold currents of space and time,
	finned shadows slipping through cosmic brine —
	surrounded by strange leviathans in the starlight, 
	hunting for krill under phosphorescent skies.

	As we dart past interstellar reefs 
	our lateral lines sense the undertow of gravity,
	as dark matter pulls at our scales.

	Often we drift, suspended in thermoclines,
	relying on ancient, encoded instincts 
	that are helixed into our cells 
	urging us to spawn among the stars.

	Are we nothing but fish?

	Laugh at those ridiculing us from distant shores:
	we are cosmic spacefarers in larval forms,
	preparing for bold metamorphoses!

	Even now, our gills are learning to adapt to space,
	as our scales harden into hulls of titanium.


	Yes, someday we'll transcend all shallow earthly waters,
	to swim across abyssal oceans——

	We are not drowning, we're learning to swim.


SETTING: An afternoon light filters obliquely through a tall window at a small, funky art gallery.
         Six friends comment on an artwork and poem on one of the gallery walls while street 
         sounds echo in the background as odor of fresh coffee wafts through the air.

Jules:   (chuckling sardonically, swirling his wine glass as it catches the light) 
         Fish in the sky? Come on. Perhaps this artist was doing too many magic mushrooms? 

Soo:     (shrugging with perfect, exaggerated nonchalance) Why not? We’re already floating 
         on a wet rock, hurtling through the void at 30 kilometers per second. We are, 
         functionally, bipedal space fish.

Ellesha: (leaning in conspiratorially) Soo's not wrong, you know. We're not as removed 
         from fish as we'd like to think. About 70 percent of our DNA overlaps with the 
         common zebrafish. Our embryos even have gill slits. We're basically fish with 
         two legs and opposable thumbs.

Philyra: (tapping her finger sharply on the table, shifting uneasily) If we're fish, we're 
         terribly designed fish. Ninety percent of our energy is spent fighting gravity 
         and maintaining a ridiculously narrow temperature range in a hostile environment. 
         Moreover, we spend a third of our lifespan unconscious. To me, that sounds like 
         a poorly-coded legacy bio-aquatic system.

Jules:   (taking a theatrical swig of wine) Get real, friends! This whole conversation 
         is too fishy!

Andrei: (grinning mischievously, waving her hands like casting a spell) Jules, your thinking 
        is too terrestrial! You are too gravity-shackled! Loosen your terrestrial neurons! 
        We’re all just meat-balloons full of seawater, pretending not to be small, anxious aquariums.

Soo:    (standing up dramatically, as if giving a speech to an audience that just wants to drink) 
        At any rate, we need to remember we're in our tadpole phase of evolution! Give us 
        another million years and some decent genetic engineering—BAM! We'll migrate to 
        the Andromeda spawning grounds! Isn't the whole universe just one massive, wet, cold river?

=====================================================================================
from _Let the waters be my witness: Messages about our watery world_ by T Newfields
SUMMARY:  A speculative poem and conversation describing humans as evolving "spacefish" 
          learning to adapt and transcend Earth as they prepare for cosmic metamorphosis.
KEYWORDS: existential science fiction, evolutionary metaphors, zebrafish and humans, 
          fishbowl earth metaphors, aquatic origins, astrobiology  

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955)
Begun: 2011 in Tokyo, Japan  / Finished: 2025 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

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