difference

in a muddy little lake, miles out of earth, a fish was born. from the beginning, the shoal noticed a difference. they didn’t have a word for the difference then. they mostly only noticed its effects. the shoal covered lesser distance when they swam with her. & they now, only barely made it out of the attack of bigger fish. by a smaller & smaller margin every day. they were observant enough a lot to have attributed these changes to the new member. they decided to call this difference- “slower”.

fish know about evolution. even miles out of earth, the universe is cruel. & it only has room for those that can make room. a slower-fish could ruin the entire shoal’s shot at life & love. they decided to take matters out of the hands of the universe. they would perform the selection. they decided to stop waiting for her. they now identified “speed” (which they defined as the lack of slowness) as the meaning of survival. the meaning of living. when a predator appeared, the aim was to create as much speed as possible. soon, speed came to inescapably define their lives. they made competitions of speed in sport & game & called them “races”. this became how they elected their leaders. how they chose a mate. 

slowerfish liked her new name- she thought it had a nice ring to it. she didn’t particularly mind it when they all bolted in a flurry when a big fish appeared, & left her alone behind. she still continued to just barely make it out in time. not much had changed. in fact, she thought the new arrangement gave her a lot more space & choices of directions to flee into- a small privilege. she was, however, worried. she saw these concepts of slowness & speed completely transform their lives. the shoal hardly ever swam together anymore- a near-religious imperative up until then. she watched as a hierarchy of speeds developed, & fish began treating each other badly because of their speeds. she needed to find a way to render speed itself useless. 

slowerfish had excellent vision. the rest of the shoal, & even slowerfish, weren’t particularly aware of this. her abilities to detect a wider range of frequencies & make accurate distance calculations were mostly useless to them. she, however, realized something one day while trying to escape a bigger fish long after her shoal had swam away. she found that when she swam in a random zig-zag pattern, at certain angles, the bigger fish seemed to momentarily be unable to track her, & slow in confusion. 

quickly, she noticed, this happened when the light reflected off her silver scales in a way that momentarily seemed to displace her, bending through water. this wasn’t an effective strategy in that she would have to be able to predict every movement of the bigger fish and align herself accordingly every time. but she also realized a possibility- if all the fish swam together, in a very precise formation relative to each other, they could probably devise an organization in which all the light reflects off each other and the water in a way that ensures they appear either invisible or displaced from almost all angles.

excited, slowerfish, calculated all the positions and hurried to the shoal leaders with her findings. they didn’t care to listen to a fish of her speed. so instead, slowerfish collected all her friends with lower speeds & proposed her solution. several fish were skeptical & left for the security of their speed training instead. but some stayed & verified the calculations. they decided to test this in their small group during the next attack. 

they did. & it worked. nearly perfectly. they needed more fish to cover more angles. & soon enough, they did find more, intrigued by their ideas & success, slowly joining the alliance. the idea had a simple appeal- it reduced energy spent for the fish that did have high speeds, but more importantly, it could free the slower fish that were subject to the tyranny of the fish with higher speeds. 

& that is what happened. soon, speed was a forgotten concept as it had no more relevance to their lives. the shoal finally found itself healing in its newfound interdependence. all was good.

well, atleast until the fish without the shiny scales was born.