NickFletcher

In Death Valley, California, in the very middle of the desert, is a deep crack. Deep in this crack is a relatively small puddle. In this puddle lives a species of fish. It's called the Devil's Hole Pupfish. There are about 300 of these fish. It's about the size of a goldfish, to which it is closely related, and the only remotely interesting thing about it is that it only lives in this one puddle. In a crack. In the middle of Death Valley. In this fish's imagination, insofar as a fish can be said to have an imagination, the entire universe is divided into two pieces, the larger and more important one being the puddle, and the other being, well, everything else. In the fullness of time, the puddle, the crack, and perhaps Death Valley itself will go away entirely, and the fish will be wiped out, which is a bit unfair to the fish, which doesn't know any better. But, hey that's just the way the cookie gets stomped on and completely obliterated. The fish has no way to avoid its fate. It's only a fish, and therefore lacks the imagination to grasp the size of the universe, or conceive of the idea of streams, ponds, lakes, rivers, oceans, and so forth. It can only look outside its puddle, and dimly grasp that, gosh, it's awfully hot and dry out there, and there isn't any water to breathe. Why would anyfish want to go out there? Well, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of obvious answers, but the problem is they are all predicated on the fish becoming something other than a fish. Not only to take advantage of those answers, of course, but to even be able to understand them, which requires some level of imagination beyond that of your typical fish. A fish can't understand what's out there, because the answer is, well, literally everything, and what sort of possibilities "everything" entails is simply beyond the imagination of a fish. When fish left the ocean, they became something more than fish, you see. And now we have things like fire, and the wheel, and civilization, and those automated massage chairs that can do your back, your feet, and your scalp simultaneously. The fish couldn't understand that, of course. Because they're only fish. What's your excuse?