The Goldfish at the End of the World

The apocalypse had a peculiar rhythm to it, Marcus discovered — somewhere between the erratic pounding of his own heart and the fluorescent buzz of office lights that refused to die even when the world outside had gone so thoroughly dark. Three weeks since the outbreak, and here he was, still swimming through spreadsheets and quarterly projections, as if Excel could somehow quantify the end of everything.

His cubicle neighbor, Sarah, had been the first to point out the absurdity of it all. "We're basically zombies anyway," she'd said, months before any of this started, nursing her third coffee of the morning and eyebags that seemed permanent. "Corporate already ate our brains. This is just redundancy."

She'd made it through the initial chaos, pulled him into the break room when the first scream shattered their Tuesday complacency. They'd barricaded the door with vending machines and file cabinets, sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor as the sounds of — whatever was happening outside — drifted through the walls like weather.

"I never learned to actually swim," she confessed quietly, somewhere during hour eight of the siege. Marcus blinked, surprised by the non sequitur. "My parents tried. Lessons every summer. I just — I couldn't trust the water to hold me up. Always waiting to sink."

He'd reached over and squeezed her hand, something he'd wanted to do for two years of water cooler conversations and casual lunches. "I've got you," he'd said, and the simplicity of it frightened him more than the screaming had.

Now Sarah was gone. Three days ago she'd volunteered to scavenge for water from the executive restroom, and she just — never came back. The break room door remained open when he finally worked up the courage to look. No blood. No body. Just absence, heavier than anything he'd ever felt.

Marcus found himself at his desk again, unable to stay away, as if the familiar glow of his monitor might offer answers that the apocalypse wouldn't. That was when he noticed the goldfish bowl on the desk across the aisle — Dave's desk, before Dave became — whatever Dave was now. The fish stared back at him through glass, mouth opening and closing in silent remonstration.

"You're stuck too, aren't you?" Marcus whispered. The goldfish, living its entire life in twenty inches of water, had more freedom than he did. At least the fish didn't pretend it was going anywhere.

He reached through the cubicle wall, the move automatic, practiced — he'd done this a thousand times to borrow Dave's stapler. His fingers closed around the fishbowl, and the goldfish darted, alarmed. "Come on," Marcus said, already knowing this was the most irrational thing he'd ever done. "Let's find somewhere with real water."

The corporate zombie was dead. The friend was gone. But Marcus, cradling a glass bowl against his chest as he stepped into the ruined sunlight of the hallway, was finally, finally swimming.