Short Story: Fish Tank

Short Story: Fish Tank

Without Google I am like a fish without a bicycle. Say, why would a fish need a bicycle? It's obvious. Fish need no bicycles. They live underwater, have no legs and stuff: they swim. But believe me; I heard them once, bubbling in a fish tank that sat on my friend's desk, about the advantages of using bicycles. One of them, a guppy I suppose, was trying to convince the other inhabitants of the tank, that what they needed to do was write a petition, yeah, you can’t believe it can you, fish writing a petition, but there they were bubble, bubbling about writing a fish petition, with fish pens, on fish pieces of paper in a fish tank; a petition to God, no less, asking him to send them a bicycle so that they could harness a hamster to it to amuse themselves. The other fish listened carefully, and some of them, like the sucking loach, who is always glued to the glass of the tank, no matter what happens on the other side of it, thought it might be a great idea to have a hamster cycling on a bicycle; much better than getting another fish who would reproach him for doing nothing all day except stare at the world outside. ‘A dreamer,’ he heard them say, ‘always in a world of his own, oblivious to the great ideas us ‘Fishosophers’ are conjuring up.’ Onlythe loach himself knew how wrong they were about him. In fact he became so absorbed with the idea of getting a bicycle and harnessing a hamster to it, that he didn't realize all the other fish were gone. 'What the heck?' he thought, 'where is everybody?' He had forgotten it was feeding time; the big two legged creature, their personal slave, and my friend, was sprinkling food, the best of the best, into the tank. Only the loach was free. He was not enslaved by the sweet ambrosia that fell onto the surface of water. He ate shit, and he enjoyed it much. As he continued to watch the funny two legged creature he realized they needed no hamster. If they could so easily enslave this creature and make it feed them, then it was equally possible that they could insert another idea into its mind; IT could amuse them on a bicycle. Oh, how cunning he was! He gathered all his thoughts and started to think really, really hard channelling his idea into the creature’s mind and...just as he was almost there he... blew up! The others, having already forgotten all about the hamster, had returned to their natural state of swimming, eating and saying ‘hello’ to each other every few seconds. They were most surprised by the sudden and unexpected explosion of their friend…but not for long. Without Google I am like fish without a bicycle. I need it. Yeah.