The Origin of a Fish out of Water

Previously on Smidgeons...

Alcatrazi was a terrible terrible person, who would do terrible terrible things to both human and goldfish alike... given the opportunity.

Today he was stalking through the shallow end of a small pond, with that same too happy smile on his face, and a large black net over his shoulder.

Today he would meet his match.

...

Once upon a time there was a fish named Smidgeons. Smidgeons was an unusual goldfish with a silver stripe on his back. But that was hardly the extent to which Smidgeons was not usual.

Chapter 1!
The Origin of a Fish out of Water!

Smidgeons was rather smart for a fish. No. That's a bit of an understatement. It's quite fair to say, that Smidgeons was in point of fact... the smartest fish in the entire world.

He was also, I will state for the record, of greater intellect than most dolphins, some mice, and (needless to say) all humans.

He was also therefore, far far smarter than the small human boy who owned him, whose name happened to be Timothy. But this was no great accomplishment. As Timothy was by all accounts: a simple, common, run of the mill human bully, and was therefor not very smart at all. Just about every fish was smarter than Timothy.

So yes Timothy was a bully by trade. He wasn't particularly proud of being a bully. But he was good at it. And so he did it. It was like Uncle Jimbo had said, wasn't it? "The whole point of being human beings like us, is to find something that you're good at, and keep doing it til you die." And Timothy reckoned that's just what he would do. ... As mentioned before Timothy wasn't all that smart.

And that's precisely why Smidgeons and Timothy were able to get along so well as owner and pet. At first glance one might see the duo as as different a pair as a fish and person could be, but Smidgeons' great ambition , and Timothy's lack thereof, made them as natural a set of partners as e'r there were. Needless to say their relationship was in no way a typical example of the "standard owner/pet relationship", but when you think about it their working relationship made as much sense as any other. In that it provided Timothy with the opportunity to pretend to be something he was not, whilst providing Smidgeons the chance to try his fin at world domination.

Not that clumsy silly sort of world domination you humans so often attempt, but the splendid adoreable sort of world domination, that could only have been achieved by a wildly charismatic and brilliant goldfish such as mysel- ... Such as Smigeons.

When Smidgeons and Timothy first crossed paths, Timothy was a dull witted yet extremely proficient bully of eleven years of age, and Smidgeons was a three day old goldfry, (that's a baby goldfish,) who could dream up multi-spectral quadratic equations so complicated, than no human being, (including Santa Claus!) could ever possibly fathom them.

He had in fact hatched later than all the rest of his siblings, stubbornly refusing to part from his egg until he had solved the multi-numeratored and quasi-denominatored cosmic fraction problem he'd carved onto the inside of it.

Smidgeons had also been in the middle of calculating an extremely complicated mega algebraic equation involving quasi-fractal co-nunmesators, when he and all his brothers and and all his sisters were abducted from their pond... by a man with a net.

-SPLASH!!!- went the tremendous net as it crashed downward into the water seperating the sixty or so goldfry from their parents, and all else in the pond which they had called home.

All Smidgeons' brothers and sisters were screaming as loud as they could. You probably didn't think fish could scream, being under water and all. But we can. When a fish screams, it sounds something like this, underwater: "Tp!" All of them were screaming "Tp tp! Tp tp!" And swimming all around Smidgeons, and trying with futility to squeeze themselves through the tiny holes in the netting.

Smidgeons was also upset by this turn of events. Not so much because he was frightened by his giant human captor... for Smidgeons had already come up with fifteen different viable escape plans. Any of which he could easily have utilized to elude his obviously dull witted captor. Smidgeons was only upset because the sudden crash down of the net had made him forget where he was in his math problem. The situation was well under his control.

The human with the big net fascinated Smidgeons. All that time thinking up math problems... And it hadn't occurred to him to look up at that world above even once, but now... now it was all he could think about.

Right then and there, Smidgeons made the decision of a life time. He was going to travel the overwater, exploring the world above and figure out everything there was to know about it. He would be the world's first upmariner.

It was with this in mind, that Smidgeons allowed himself and his entire family to be captured and placed in small plastic cups, to be given away as prizes to anyone who could throw a very large metal ball through a rather narrow metal hoop. As orchestrated by the very large man... with the very large net.

...

flip to chapta 2!