Soquo was feeling peaceful. The simple thoughts of these tiny-brained Cods always helped him to relax and concentrate on using his eyes instead of the hum. Sometimes the hum was quite practical, such as when there was an attacking shark, yet frequently it was just bothersome.
Every thought on every mind and every memory, however fleeting, crossing a being's mind was on Soquo's as well. He knew from a peak into other's minds that his brain was much more complex than other organisms': he could focus on different constant streams of thought, no matter how many, at exactly the same time. Even though this was true, there was sometimes not enough room for his own thoughts. This infuriated him.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he swam with the repeating mantra the fish though in union: swim swim swim swim swim swim swim…
The chant was quite rhythmic. He liked it. From time to time, he would find his inner eyelids closing slightly as the song hypnotized him into a small trance. Sometimes he found his own thoughts joining into the hymn. They continued lazily through the curving southward current, which would ultimately turn east, as the fish knew.
The best part was that none of them asked about his carry-on items, which most fish normally did. hi didn't feel like explaining again, for the thirteen-hundred-and-twenty-second time.
Swim swim swim swim…
They swam nonstop for seven days, idly chanting the same mantra as they ambled through the vast blue. The bright orb above the surface of the water made its routine arc over the ocean and, ever so slightly each day, became higher in the sky during its apex. The water grew warmer and the current began to slope eastward.
Soquo stopped suddenly, as if a large leash had suddenly snapped around his wrist and pulled him in the opposite direction of the cod, making him come to a dead stop. The cods' dull thoughts were fading into the distance as the waded there in the deep. Then they were gone. He looked down at his left hand, the source of the tug, which was sprawled behind him, keeping the leash taunt.
He tried to tug his hand out of the invisible noose, but only prevailed in straining his muscles. He looked in the direction of the cod, begging with his mind for them to come back. Alas, none came.
Suddenly, his hand came alive.
The patterns on his hand swirled with a newfound velocity, his hand contorted, moving of its own accord, twitching, clenching, and finally, pointing in the direction of the source of the invisible leash.
Soquo stared in wonder and awe as the tattoo continued to twist and twirl like it had never done before at such a speed. The spirals flexed and the dots jumped out at his face, as if they wished to free themselves. He couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed that his hand was glowing with a dull grey light, vibrating out of the very center of his anatomy. His hand suddenly began to shake, as if from strenuous activity, and suddenly... went limp.
The spirals stopped contorting and the dots came to a standstill.
The leash was gone.
He pulled his hand to his side and tried its functions, flexing his fingers, relaxing, and gripping. Everything was quite alright in his hand, as far as he could tell. There wasn't even a hint of what had just happened.
Soquo relaxed slightly and looked into the direction of where the leash had come from. Northwest. He looked back in the direction the cod had gone and looked forward again. It was outside of the swimming channels, the direction was cold and against the tide. No fish swam there, so Soquo had never been near it. He swam forward slightly and stopped suddenly, grasping his head in his hands and gasping like a fish out of water.
It was as if someone had knocked his head over with a frying pan--a memory which he had accidently gotten from a piece of a rusted frying pan. Every thought in his mind, except for his own, had stopped, had come to a grinding halt in his mind, smashing against the front of his head in a second of pure agonizing pain.
His body writhed about himself, acting like the hand had not two seconds ago. His souvenirs smacked against his body and the tip of his makeshift spear punctured a hole in the flesh of his lower leg, but he didn't notice it. The shroud of lifesaver worked itself loose and floated towards the ceiling of the Ocean, a neon speck in the never-ending blue, he only saw it out of the corner of his eye as his eyes rolled around without control.
His head jarred from side to side, trying to shake the notion of the two truths that his now-inhibited thought processes could define:
There was no hum. And it scared him.
After fifteen minutes of hellish pain and a few more of harrowing panic, Soquo was able to stop twitching and warily collect his thoughts about himself, he still shook slightly from the impact of the thoughts in his brain. He loosened his hands from his head and dared not swim back the way he came, nor did he dare to swim forward. His own thoughts reconstructed themselves, reconstructed about the loss of his hum, which his mind had been dependent on for his entire known life.
He felt like an alcoholic who had just terminated his use of the bottle. He vomited.
As soon as he finally was able to function again and the grinding pain had turned to a dull throb, he took inventory of his possessions. Other than the life vest, everything was in its place, with one casualty.
The mirror had collided with the art book and was now sporting a large crack on its once-flawless surface. Soquo picked it up and looked at himself in the fragmented mirror, seeing hundreds of Soquos, each a fragmented piece of himself. He wrapped it in the rope that had held the vest to keep the mirror pieces from falling out and put it back in its place.
When he finished securing it, he set about figuring out what to do.