Nothing in this water is scripted. Every turn of the school is a decision made by no one and all of them at once.
Kept by the attendant of tank nº 26. The specimens below were given three rules and a body each; everything else — the folding, the fleeing, the patience — they arrived at themselves.
No individual decides to turn. At 09:14 the school folded around the hunter like cloth around a blade — one hundred twenty separate panics, indistinguishable from choreography. Each fish watches perhaps seven neighbours; that is the entire government. Drop a pellet and the parliament dissolves. Hunger is the only motion they perform alone.
She patrols the mid-water at a third of the school's speed and never once has to hurry. Where she goes, the water empties in a perfect circle — a vacancy that follows her like a name. I have watched her for six full cycles. She has caught nothing. I am no longer certain that catching is the point.
The kelp keeps the only honest time here. Every current that has passed through this water today is still written in its sway, decaying gently, the way a room remembers a conversation. At night the fronds go nearly still, and the plankton light their small lamps among the blades.