Late finish today. Link and I stayed until the early morning with some new nocturnal arrivals. They glowed with enough brightness to illuminate the tank without extra lighting. .
Fish this small usually do not need much attention. But these had a rubbery orange sack near their tail that kept inflating, to the extent they hung askew in the water. Link has dealt with them before. He reckons the Stitch sends their defense mechanisms out of whack. His resolution is a gentle tap below the gills.
After ten hours or so they settle down. But until then our job involved standing and jabbing for all the hours of darkness. One of his toys flew overhead the whole time. A plastic bird with real feathers on the wings.
I still need to find the right topic to engage with Link. All our chats involve monologues on the Stitch, his toys, and Mr Chamson. I hate to think how much time I have spent nodding in silence. But all those free cherry ices, and his help with unruly arrivals deserve something more.
Then I remembered today was clip day.
Between pokes I steered the conversation about how my Butter Mouse footage was synching together. My theories on if these were dreams, random electronic signals, or actual footage of another dimension. This got heavier than expected, but he smiled.
'I am going to be honest. There is still so much that we don't know about anything that falls through the Stitch. We have the research, and I've worked here long enough to have a good idea about what might appear, and what we need to do to keep them alive. Bit we still run a mystery jackpot machine.
'Think about this as well Venus. If your clips are synching together, what does that mean? That the Butter Mouse has this vision planned out in her head, and is feeding us little bits? That there is some kind of grand vision in her subconscious, and random pieces are somehow connecting together? What wins the bizarre race? Intelligence? Random chance? Electronic stimulation?
Don’t fret is my advice. Mr Chamson did so much after the bomb went off to get this place running. He always says it was a tough few years, but look what he created! Look at the city now! Sometimes progression must trump answers.
That's the water. That's the ocean. You keep on swimming, and never stop finding new discoveries.’
So not the most successful attempt at cracking his monologues. He let me fly his toy though, which was fun.
We took a break from our deflation, and decided to visit old TBM herself. 1619 glowed under the lights of the city. She rolled around the tank, banana tail whipping back and forth. The flipper on the left was less ripped and feathered than before, and tiny cracks ran through her scales where the wound had healed.
'Still going to be a while before that flipper is fixed.' Link said. 'You might get to the end of your mystery.'
Watching her in the tank was mystery enough.
We said goodbye at dawn. The bird making digitized snores on Link's shoulder. I don't even know where he calls home. If has a family, or lives alone. I like to think toys line the shelves alongside pictures of the sea.
Clip: Nothing we have not seen before. But that being floating in the water makes me cry. Hope they are OK. The beauty of a different dimension.