The Goldfish at the End of the World

The zombie at the desk next to mine—that's what I called him, anyway—had been staring at the same spreadsheet for three hours. His name was Arthur, and his soul had been slowly extracted by the fluorescent lights and quarterly reports until nothing remained but the mechanical motion of his fingers across the keyboard.

My goldfish, Prometheus, had more life in him. He swam in circles in his bowl on the windowsill, his orange scales catching the morning light. Sometimes I thought he was mocking me with his endless revolutions, a scaled reminder of my own circular existence.

Then she walked in—Elena, with her sharp features and eyes that missed nothing. We called her the fox behind her back, not just for her russet hair but for the way she moved through the office, calculating every advantage. Today she carried a thick black cable in her hands, the internet cord that had been strung across the hallway like a tripwire for dreams.

"They're finally going wireless," she said, dropping the cable on my desk. "No more tethers."

I looked at Prometheus, who pressed his mouth against the glass, opening and closing it in silent testimony.

"You know what goldfish are famous for?" I asked Elena.

She paused, hand on the cable. "Being flushed?"

"Three-second memories. Which means every circuit around that bowl is the first time. No past, no future. Just now."

Elena looked at me then—really looked at me, like I was suddenly more than another zombie in the hive. "Maybe we're the ones doing it wrong."

Outside, a real fox darted through the parking lot, wild and purposeful, chasing nothing we could see. And for a moment, the three of us watched it—me, Elena, even Arthur turned from his spreadsheet as it passed beyond the glass.

"What do you suppose it's hunting?" Elena asked.

I looked at Prometheus making another circuit of his bowl, at the coil of black cable on my desk, at the spreadsheet that had held Arthur captive for half a decade.

"Something that isn't dead yet," I said.

The fox vanished into the woods, and Arthur returned to his numbers. But later, when I came back from lunch, Elena's goldfish bowl sat on the desk next to mine. And something in the air between us had changed—electric as a live wire, promising a story we hadn't written yet.