Fragment. Warren Fahy
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he was going to be late. Now the researcher was practically jumping out of the phone.
‘Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Did you see it?’
‘See what? Take it easy, Angel.’
‘You saw SeaLife, right?’
Geoffrey groaned. ‘I don’t watch reality TV shows.’
‘Yeah, but they’re scientists.’
‘Who go to all the tourist spots, like Easter Island and the Galapagos? Come on, it’s lame.’
‘Oh my God! But you heard about it, right?’
‘Yeah…’
‘So you know half of them got slaughtered?’
‘What? It’s a TV show, Angel. I wouldn’t be too sure about that if I were you.’ Geoffrey stepped out of the cleansuit as he spoke. He nodded as a technician took it from him.
‘It’s a reality show,’ Angel insisted.
Geoffrey laughed.
‘I recorded it. You’ve got to see it.’
‘Oh brother.’
‘Get back here! Bring sandwiches!’
‘All right, I’ll see you in half an hour.’ Geoffrey hung up the phone, and looked at the technician.
‘Did you see SeaLife last night, Dr Binswanger?’ she asked.
1:37 P.M.
Geoffrey entered the office he shared with Angel carrying a few bags of sandwiches from Jimmy’s sandwich shop. ‘Lunch is ser—’
He was shushed by a cluster of colleagues from down the hall who had gathered to watch Angel feed his mantis shrimp.
Watching a stomatopod, or ‘mantis shrimp,’ hunt was truly a spectacle not to be missed.
Geoffrey aborted his greeting immediately and set down his helmet and the sandwich bags. In the large saltwater tank, Angel had placed a thick layer of coral gravel and a ceramic vase decorated with an Asian-style depiction of a tiger. The vase rested on its side, its mouth pointed toward the back of the aquarium.
Angel pinched a live blue crab in forceps. ‘Don gave me one of his blue crabs. Thanks, Don.’
‘I think I’m already regretting it,’ moaned Don as he nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
‘Whoa!’ several exclaimed as Angel’s pet emerged.
‘Banzai!’ Angel dropped the unfortunate crustacean into the tank. Morbid fascination compelled everyone to watch.
The ten-inch-long segmented creature moved like some ancient dragon. Its elegant overlapping plates rippled like jade louvers as it curled through the water. A Swiss Army knife’s worth of limbs and legs churned underneath. Its stalked eyes twitched in different directions. The colors on its body were dazzlingly vivid, nearly iridescent.
‘Here it comes,’ Don groaned.
The blue crab sculled its legs as it sank through the water, and halfway down it saw the mantis shrimp. It immediately swam for the far side of the vase but the mantis lunged up and its powerful forearms struck, too fast for the human eye. With a startling pop, the crab tumbled backwards. The carapace between the crab’s eyes was shattered and the crab hung limp in the water.
The mantis shrimp moved in and dragged its quarry back into its vase.
The audience ‘wowed.’
‘And that, my friends, is the awesome power of the stomatopod.’ Angel sounded more like a circus barker than a stomatopod expert. ‘Its strike has the force of a .22 caliber bullet. It sees millions more colors than human beings with eyes that have independent depth perception, and its reflexes are faster than any creature on Earth. This mysterious miracle of Mother Nature is so different from other arthropods it might as well have come from an alien planet. It may even replace us someday…Bon appetit, Freddie!’
‘Speaking of which, Jimmy’s has arrived,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Yay, Jimmy’s,’ said a female lab mate.
‘Glad you’re here,’ Angel told Geoffrey. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
Everyone took sandwiches. A computer monitor on the lab counter showed a cable newscast with the volume turned down. The SeaLife logo flashed behind the newscaster.
‘Hey, turn it up!’ someone called, as Angel simultaneously cranked up the volume.
‘It’s only two miles wide, but if what the cable show SeaLife aired last night is real, some scientists are saying it might be the most important island discovery since Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos nearly two centuries ago. Others are claiming that SeaLife is engaging in a crass publicity stunt. Last night the show gave a tantalizing live glimpse of what appeared to be an island populated by horrific and alien life that viciously attacked the show’s cast. Network executives have refused to comment. Joining us is eminent scientist Thatcher Redmond for an expert opinion on what really happened.’
Everyone in the room groaned as the camera focused on the guest commentator.
‘Dr Redmond, congratulations on the success of your book, The Human Effect, and your Tetteridge Award which you received just yesterday, and thank you for giving us your insights tonight,’ gushed the newscaster. ‘So, is it for real?’
‘Photosynthesis in action,’ Angel said. ‘The man grows in limelight.’
‘Come on now, Angel,’ Geoffrey said facetiously. ‘Dr Redmond knows all.’
Thatcher smiled, showing a row of recently bleached teeth in his ruddy face. He wore his trademark cargo vest and sported his famous red mustache and overgrown sideburns. ‘Thank you! Well, Sandy, I only hope that life on the island can withstand discovery by human beings, to be perfectly frank.’
‘He’s got a point there,’ muttered one of the female researchers, as she bit into her sandwich.
Thatcher continued. ‘So-called intelligent life is the greatest threat to any environment. I don’t envy any ecosystem that comes in contact with it. That’s the thesis of my book, The Human Effect, as a matter of fact, and I’m afraid if this SeaLife show isn’t a hoax of some sort, I’ll soon have to add another tragic chapter to illustrate my point.’
‘Oh brother,’ Geoffrey groaned.
‘Gee, I wonder if he wrote a book or something,’ muttered Angel.
‘But do you think it is a hoax? Or the real thing?’ persisted the newscaster.
‘Well,’ Thatcher said, ‘I wish it were true, of course–as a scientist, that is–but I’m afraid that, as a scientist, I have to say this is probably a hoax, Sandy.’
‘Thank you, Dr Redmond.’ The newscaster turned as the camera cut away from Thatcher. ‘Well, there you have it…’
‘No way,’ Angel insisted. ‘It’s not a hoax!’
The others chattered about the controversy as they carried their lunches back to their offices.
‘OK, Geoffrey, you’ve got to see this. I’ve got the clip right here.’
‘OK, OK.’
Sitting beside Angel in their cramped office overlooking Great Harbor, Geoffrey watched the chaotic images of the last minutes of SeaLife that Angel had recorded.
If someone were trying to stage a schlocky horror film on a very low budget it would probably look something like this, Geoffrey decided. Frankly, it looked like that movie The Blair Witch Project, as though the cameramen were deliberately trying to avoid taking a good look at the cheap special effects.
‘I can’t make out much of anything,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Wait.’