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.

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 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 tge whole universe just one massive, wet, cold river?