The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

PART 1 THE ARCADE - Chapter 1 VICTOR

PART 1 THE ARCADE - Chapter 1 VICTOR

“Come on, little bastard, bite it!”

Amber T. Matthews, biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, could not understand the tiresome persistence of that damn fish. For weeks, at first randomly and then with gradually increasing astonishment, she had been watching the intriguing phenomenon represented by Victor.

By the way, why Victor? Why had she chosen the name, she couldn't really tell, but it looked, no doubt there, like a "winning son of a b***h" and Victor had seemed from the start the right name for that Japanese goldfish.

A couple of months ago, Victor and a dozen of its fellows were added, with no problems, to the large aquarium dominating Dr. Sakamura's office (after all, what else should be found in the room of the Director of Woods Hole Marine Laboratory?) and, from the start, it was Amber who had to deal with them.

Usually, as soon as she arrived and right after her morning coffee, she went to the plush office of her boss, opened the windows over the MBL busy road below and addressed a few words to her little friends before giving them breakfast.

That morning, "Hello guys", she said, as cheerfully as always "25 degrees, clear water, no traffic, what more could you possibly want?” At first she did not pay attention, not much anyway.

"Ready for your meal?"

At the side of the aquarium, there was a container full of shrimps, algae and other mouth watering treats suited for any true fish's taste. Amber threw a spoonful of feed into the water which immediately began to froth, as all the fishes were greedily rushing towards the food. The Ryukin fishes,tough fat bodies and large bulging eyes, were twisting and pushing, as in a mad rugby game, trying to seize as much precious morsels as they could. With the boldness granted them by two billion years of evolution, they were enacting a script as old as the world itself: the art of plundering.

The compound was just dried nourishment, long dead, but what did it matter to them? It was the primary source of their survival, no point in being choosy. "Wow guys, what an appetite today!".

Amber was almost horrified. She knew people that lost control of their impulses at the table, exactly like those frantic fishes. There were the greedy ones, that tried hurriedly to swallow all the food they could in the shortest possible time. Then there were the listless ones, torturing the food in the plate with the fork like remorseless sadists and, then again, the lazy, the inept, the dumb ones, dumb like the stupid fish that stood on the side instead of trying to grab some food like the others.

That was the first time Amber noticed Victor. After that, their friendship would become very, very special.

* * *

Amber was well over forty, quite tall and slender, one of those people that time favours with just a few wrinkles, asking nothing in return in the matter of physical and mental agility.

She wore clothes in pastel colours, casual and comfortable, but had lost her personal battle against her hair, now abandoned to its unbeatable destiny. As a young graduate, she had served aboard the research vessel Constellation as a simple marine biologist, but, later on, her researcher side had prevailed and she had joined the genetic studies project for the realization of enriched plankton at the Marine Biological Laboratory. It was a major project, supported by the American government itself and handsomely funded by some of Earth's worst polluting industries. For years she had travelled all over the Atlantic Ocean, looking for the effects of the genetically modified plankton, later on renamed Super-plankton by the media.

It had all started twenty years before, when her studies led her to isolate and improve some common plankton, which was afterwards illegally released into the sea, where deep water streams carried it to every single ocean in the world.

In truth, the experiment was the mere result of a brilliant intuition, but proved to be an unexpected success. The mixture, astoundingly dynamic, easily adjusted to the deep water habitat conditions.

The aquatic fauna could once again rely on tremendous quantities of herrings and anchovies (the next link in the food chain). This plankton's reproductive rate was 300 % higher than the common one's , it was about ten times more active, more motile, more resistant, and, most of all, six hundred times more nutritious than the untreated plankton. Therefore, it brought the greatest benefit to the sea creatures that fed on it, the simplest as much asthe most complex ones. No species would ever again risk extinction. But success was even more astounding from the financial point of view. The multinational food groups (the first in recognizing its potential), even at the earliest stage of the operation, were able to increase their business volume 10 times over.

The newspapers defined the case in various ways. Some wrote that it was a complete and total victory of genetic engineering over hostile nature, but emphasizing that it was solely the result of a single, bright intellect's work. Others said that we were witnessing the end of world's famine problems thanks to a benevolent divine intervention. Other were careful not to comment at all, like the representatives of those companies that were able to exploit the excess of food, making enormous profit at almost zero costs. The success was indeed great, but very poorly managed. As was to be expected, Dr. Sakamura, an astute, ambitious Japanese bureaucrat and Amber's boss, had no scruples in taking credit for the whole project. The complaints of the real creators and developers were totally disregarded. But, in acknowledgement of their generous contribution, Amber and her gifted staff (as mentioned in bold letters in a foot note of the official report) were given unpretentious houses near the Centre compound and apparently prestigious, but totally useless assignments.

Of course, life in Woods Hole was not as interesting as it had been during the years of research aboard the Constellation. There would be no more seasickness or sleepless nights at the microscope, but it was there that she had met her partner, geologist Jason G. Thornsen, later to become her loving husband. They had even found the time to start a family with the birth of the twins Flavus and Lucius, now twentyish, sometime clueless, but capable of deep insights.

At this point in life Amber was no longer angry with the world. Her new found serenity allowed her to almost forget the professional injustice suffered in her youth. Life had granted her far greater satisfactions; she had told herself this so many times that she had started to believe it.

* * *

At the moment she stood there perplexed, watching Victor, who represented a really challenging puzzle. The fish was not ill (that was the first thing she checked), therefore its peculiar behaviour was not caused by physical ailment or genetic faults.

He was a handsome male. Fat, like all Japanese Ryukin goldfish. Well-fed, sexually mature, receptive, lively, with a good mobility. He mated regularly, had no parasite or fungi, and possessed a very good sight that allowed him to look beyond the aquarium walls. And indeed there he was, staring at the biologist with those funny crossed eyes.

He was born into the school, where he was well integrated. He had never encountered fishes of other species and, ultimately, Victor didn't seem different from his aquarium companions, if not for his peculiar behaviour. Maybe it was the small details, only significant to the trained eyes of an expert ichthyologist, but Amber had never observed a fish like him. And, boy, hadn't she studied fishes in the thousands!

And so, that morning, she decided to apply a new strategy, especially designed for Victor. For weeks, always at exactly the same hour, she had been feeding her bunch of hungry ones. As soon as the lights were on, there they were, surfacing with their huge mouths already open to grab the food. A unanimous behaviour but for that single exception. During the following days, she kept marvelling at how all the fishes responded as expected, all Ryukin goldfishes...but Victor.

Intrigued by the result of the last test, she stopped to stare at the small creature, whose large bulging eyes stared back at her, mirroring her own wonder. He looked like he was trying to learn from the micro-habitat he was living in. This anomaly, though, was something Amber was not yet ready to accept. This fish had not his species typical behaviour, was different, but actually undistinguishable from the others. His diversity seemed to come from the inside (assuming that a goldfish could have a personality). She was a scientist and positive that the ambiguous attitude of the Ryukin had to be the result of some fault in her experimentation method. She had used the wrong approach, no other explanation was possible.

* * *

That morning, Amber had a very special smile on her face.

“Little rascal, this time I've got you!” she thought with a little touch of malice.

Those dumb fishes were going to feast on feed imbued with a strong anaesthetic that will immobilize them. Her purpose was to discover if the little devil would this time be fooled, since he had already proved able to tell good food from foul one. No later than the day before, he detected with no hesitation the inedible substances contained in the feed. Two weeks previously, he had frantically dug among the rock to get the shrimps he had hidden there and fed at leisure, leaving nothing to the other fishes. Another time, he had been the only one to notice the tiny hook disguised inside a shrimp. On that occasion, another fish was quite hurt and Victor, to show his displeasure, rejected the food for days. Only three days before, under her disbelieving eyes, he had carefully chewed the jelly around an appetizing shrimp, spat it out with a series of complex contortions, and then calmly proceeded to eat his loot.

Amber was baffled. Her scientist mind was at loss processing Victor's strategies, but Victor was there, under his rock, ready to challenge her.

* * *

“Come on, little bastard, bite it!” she whispered. But, like all the things that should go smoothly, this did not. That morning, tired after a sleepless night at work, she inadvertently added to the fish food a very toxic substance instead of the chlorofromosin (a common muscle relaxant) she was supposed to and was about to release it into the aquarium. Then she noticed Victor, floating belly up and motionless on the water surface. Surprised and disappointed by his sudden death she made the move to scoop him up when he mockingly flipped over and hid back under his rock. She dead-stopped. “This is not possible. You cannot behave like this, your brain is not equipped for it”.

Then she looked at the feed and smelled it. Without taking her eyes off Victor, she touched it with her lips. The sour taste was unmistakable. She had used the wrong substance, putting a cyanide element instead of the chlorofromosin, no doubts whatsoever.

“What the hell have I done?” she thought, going downstairs. The Cytology Laboratory was empty. The medical cabinet confirmed her suspicion. The cyanide and the relaxant labels were similar and the droppers almost identical, but for the skull and bones, symbol of poison. She remembered having noticed that, but then, in haste, she had evidently taken the wrong one.

She went back to the aquarium and, still disbelieving but now calm, she stared at Victor, who stared back with anhopeful expression. He hadn't moved from under his rock and he seemed now to be almost smiling at her.