Tragedy of the Restaurant Pond

Tragedy of the Restaurant Pond

“Hey boss! Boss!”
“Yeah, Ronald?”
“The humans are not feeding us anymore!”
“What?”
“Eddy’s been watching the sun go by, and the humans are not dropping food at their usual times anymore!”
“That’s odd…”
“Yeah, and you know what’s more strange? I don’t see any of their faces looking at us from above anymore.”
“I wonder what’s going on in the surface world? Eddy! Eddy!” Boss called, his fins closing around his mouth like a megaphone.
“Yeah boss Tony?”
“Is it true that the humans’ve stopped looking at our bottom world?”
“Yes, sir! I can confirm it! I’ve been looking up for the food they drop and so far none have come—not even to give us a speck of pellet!”
No more humans.
No more humans.
Tony played this idea in his mind. No more humans… no more humans…
“Ronald! Eddy!”
“Yeah, boss!” they answered.
“Gather all the goldfish and tell them to meet at the pond’s center when the sun reaches its peak at top!




The fish gather at the center, awaiting their large Koi leader to appear and make his announcement. Oh, what will he say, what will the solution be to the sudden shortage of food and the stoppage of its supply? Where are the humans? How will they live? A loud commotion from them arose in discussion, but was then silenced by the presence of the boss. Tony, the large white Koi has arrived, the leader of the pond’s goldfish clan.
“Boss!” One of the fish, Laura, yelled, “What’ll happen to us?! How will we eat?”
“Yeah, what’s going on, boss? We’re ending up real hungry here!” Donald yelled as well.
The loud commotion rerose, and the same old questions were asked. “How will we live? Survive? Eat? Where are the humans?”
But with one quick shush from Tony, all the fish became silent.
The large Koi is going to speak.
“First of all, we still have a lot of food.” He moved from the crowd into a rock on the craggy walls of the pond and pushed it aside, and as he did, from it poured the thousands of pellets that had become the goldfish’s food. “But wait!” Tony saw the frenzy in their eyes. All that food. The hunger. Oh, they were so hungry. “But wait!”
“From now on,” he continued. “We conserve this food as long as possible. It’s not unlimited, you know. So, from now on, each day, each fish will get a ration of five pellets.”
Five pellets?
Five measly stinking pellets?!
“That’s not enough!” one fish cried, and others joined in. “Yeah!” “How can we survive on five pellets a day?!” “You’re sick, Tony!” “Bastard!”
“Stop!”
The fish stopped yelling and waited from a response from their great Koi leader. What’s he got planned this time? What will he say?
“By saving this food, we’ll live longer. We’ll be able to plan anew; we may be able to find new sources of food!”
The other fish grew silent and talked amongst themselves again.
“What do you mean?” Roberto asked Tony.
“Ladies and Gentlemen… we may be free.”




“Free?”
“What do you mean free?” Roberto asked again.
“I’ve heard about this once,” Tony answered. “A couple humans were sitting beside the pond and talking about all-out nuclear war. They said it’ll be the war that finally kills all of humanity and leaves almost nothing behind. The surface world may be a giant wasteland now for all we know. Maybe it’s the war. That’s why humans haven’t been coming around anymore.”
Shouts of disbelief was heard throughout the fish community. A nuclear war? How farfetched! That’s not it, it’s gotta be something else.
“But…” Laura spoke up again and everyone looked at her. “Maybe… he has a point.”
Everyone looked at Laura. “What do you mean?”
“Well… you guys know I’m friends with Hector the turtle, right? He came up to me and said that he’s going to the surface to check out what’s going on. It’s been… six hours and he’s not back yet… I’m worried, you know? But if the nuclear war thing Tony said is true…”
Laura cried and stopped there.
“It makes sense then… if the surface world is contaminated and radiated… nothing would live… even Hector…”
Every fish in the pond was silent.
“Well… Tony… I don’t know if it’s nuclear war or… whatever… but something HAS changed on the surface world. Whatever it is… do you have any plans about it?” Roberto asked.
“Plans?” Tony asked. “Plans…”
“You don’t.” Roberto sighed. “Ah well, at least we still have that food to live by while we think of something to do.”




“The surface world is a scary world.” Laura said. “I don’t know how humans are able to live there. You jump up a little, and suddenly you forget how to breathe. You can’t breathe!”
“I’d imagine that humans can’t live in water like us.” Eddy added in. “I’ve seen lots of humans come and go up there, but none of them has ever tried to live down here with us.”
“They’re too big.” Ronald said. “I bet they have their own large lake to use as homes.”
“But they’re not even wet!” Eddy said.
“Guys!” Tony came suddenly in his large Koi form, excited. “I have a plan!”
The rest of the fish surrounded Tony excitedly to hear about their leader’s plan. “So, it’s like this, guys—Eddy! Eddy! Stop looking at the surface world!”
“But guys… there’s a human up there…”
Everyone looked up, a human? Now? A human? They don’t believe it, don’t want to believe it, but there he is. A human.
“What’s he going to do…?” Laura asked.
The human grabbed a large net, and with it, he scooped up Eddy to the surface world.
“Help! Help! Heeeelp!”
“Eddy!” Tony yelled. But what can he do? Other fish try to hit the net, bite it, charge it, but Tony, with the most experience out of them all know that it does nothing against a net like that; except if they were sharks or something, which they were far from.
And in a matter of minutes, Eddy is lifted out of the pond.
Silence poured in the fish pond, broken by Laura’s crying voice. “What the hell happened!?”
“The humans are back! They’re here to take away our freedom again! We must defend!” Tony yelled in panic, his eyes seeming wider than ever before.
Every fish gathered around to listen to Tony’s plan. Every fish…
Except Roberto.
“No…” he said. “They’re not going to enslave us… they’re not going to take away our freedom!”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re going to take us to heaven!”
Every fish in the pond who heard looked at him.
“Heaven?”
“Yes… heaven. I’ve heard about it. A land of glass where the fish are fed everyday, green plants and colorful rocks color it. Fresh water with all the fresh air we’ll ever need! Heaven! The Aquarium!”
“No, Roberto, you’re wrong! They’re not—““SHUT UP YOU OLD FOGEY KOI!”
Roberto’s jaw dropped, listening to such disrespect.
No fish has ever disrespected him this way, the wise old Koi.
And there began the split between the Pond goldfish.


Some of the fish believed in Tony’s theory and went to his side of the pond. Laura was there. Another believed Roberto’s and moved to his. Ronald stood loyally by his boss. Some fish stood undecided on the matter and sat in between.
“When the net comes next time,” Roberto preached, “One of you swim right in it. They’ll take you right to heaven. I swear. You’ll be happy there.”
“When the net comes next time,” Tony said, “You all avoid it. We need to be here long enough to execute our plan.”
Slowly, but surely, the in-betweeners thinned, and joined a faction. Shortly but surely, they all took the notion they thought to be true and joined it.
Soon enough, the middle pool was empty.



What happened next was extremely sudden, no fish expected it, they had no way to.
But hordes of humans with nets came and knelt down beside the pond. All of them with the large nets that took Eddy away.
“Here they come…” Roberto said excitedly, his followers followed.
The humans dropped their nets into the water and half the pond fish swam to them. Accepted their fate, whatever it was, inside the net. The other half, though, persisted.
“Run! Run!” Tony instructed to the others. “Don’t let the net catch you!”
“Kelly! Run! Swim faster! No! No!” Ronald yelled as Kelly was brought to the surface world. “No!”
Everywhere, fish swam to and fro, avoiding nets, swimming, swimming, swimming. Yet one by one…
The humans with the nets caught them.
And only Tony, the largest Koi was left there.
Angry, frustrated, tired, he kept swimming, moving his large body from the nets, and each miss a closer one then the last.
“You won’t catch me! You won’t catch me!”
He avoided a net directly in front of him by turning left, yet as he turned, another net in front of him.
No.
He was swimming too fast. He can’t avoid it. Suddenly, Tony’s body stopped as he hit the net head-on.
‘Go the other way!’
Yet behind him, was another net.
It’s done. The Koi leader has been caught.


The fish were being transported in large buckets. The humans carried them inside a building. “Where are we going?” Tony worried about this again and again.
Suddenly they were dumped into a case. A glass case.
Could this possibly be the Aquarium Heaven Roberto was talking about?
“It’s not.”
Tony turned around and saw Roberto and the other fish looking through one side of the glass case. Staring. A look of horror on their faces.
“We came here first, Tony.” We saw everything… everything they’re doing to our brothers.”
Tony swam to see what they were seeing, and what he did see made him want to puke.
Eddy, on a dish, a golden brownish color, surrounded by vegetables and other food.
Laura, frying on a pan not far from Eddy, her eyes empty and wide, her mouth opening, she wants to scream, scream loudly, loudly, she’s in pain!
But she cannot.
“What are they doing?!” Tony yelled.
“They’re cooking us…” Roberto answered. “They’re going to eat us…”
Humans? Eats us? But… but…
Oh… The barbarians!
Barbarians!
The fish in the glass case lost all their hope, all their fighting spirit.
All they can do now as the humans took them one by one was sit quietly.
What else can they do?
Even when Roberto was grabbed with a net, he did nothing. Nothing at all.
“I could’ve run away.” He mumbled. “I’m fast enough…”
And the grand Koi leader himself, Tony, just submitted to his fate.
Yet as a man was about to grab him, another human talked to the cook. They talked, they talked some more, and the glass case was taken to another room.



Again, Tony was dumped somewhere else, but…
This glass case is a different place.
It was a clear, clean, fresh place. Full of green water-plants, colorful rocks… even a statue of an angelic human.
The air in the water is good. Fresh. No mold was seen anywhere, food was abundant. Food pellets everywhere.
“Tony!” A familiar voice. Tony turned around to see Hector swimming towards him. “I thought you won’t make it out!”
“Hector… we thought you’d died.”
Hector just laughed. Tony gave a small chuckle.
“Where are we, anyway?” Tony asked.
“The other Koi here said that this place is called… an Aquarium. We’re in… heaven.”
“Heaven…”
Roberto’s heaven?
The heaven Roberto dreamed of with its colorful floors and greenery abound?
Yet if this is heaven…
Why is he able to see humans, large humans, sitting on chairs near a large table…
Dining on his brothers?