06 — Adaptation

The lobby aquarium occupied an entire section of the wall beside the elevators, glowing softly in artificial blue light. Expensive hotels like to install aquariums for the same reason governments install fountains near ugly buildings. Moving water convinces people something nearby is alive and healthy even when nothing meaningful is happening.

Fish drifted silently through a landscape of constructed ruins and carefully arranged stones. Someone had installed a tiny submerged temple near the center of the tank, complete with broken pillars and fake moss. We'd somehow managed to invent nostalgia for places that had never existed.

I sat alone with a cup of burnt coffee balanced between my hands while one of the fish hovered near the glass, opening and closing its mouth soundlessly while staring into the lobby with dull existential disappointment.

There’s something deeply human about building unnatural ecosystems and then mistaking compliance for contentment. Every refuge eventually becomes part of the landscape once you discover there's nowhere else to go.

The story continues on June 28.

The Geometry of Choice: Book I of The Equilibrium Strain.