Fish Tank Validation Rants

It had been a decorative button. A little fish icon wearing sunglasses. I had pressed its stomach, and it had responded by playing a six-second sound effect of a toilet flushing.

From somewhere beyond the portal came a muffled voice. “Who is this?”

I straightened on the shelf.

“That,” I whispered, “is the sound of opportunity.”

I climbed down too fast, caught my heel on the storage bin, and kicked a coil of extension cord across the floor. It struck the portal’s base with a wet plastic slap. The blue circle flickered.

The lobby went dark.

Then the emergency lights came on, bathing everything in red. My face on the monitor looked like it had just been accused of stealing a horse.

“Okay,” I said. “Minor technical issue. Nobody panic. I am still beautiful.”

The portal returned, now half its original size.

“Why did you make it smaller?” I asked the room.

A robotic voice answered from the ceiling. “Applicant posture unstable.”

“My posture is artistic.”

“Applicant has not been approved.”

“I know that. I’m trying to get approved.”

“Please remain available.”

“I have been available for forty-seven minutes.”

“Please remain available.”

I looked into the camera. “This is what they do to the little fishy. They put him on a shelf and tell him to remain available. I’m out here wishing somebody could open that fishy portal.”

The portal pulsed.

I took one careful step toward it.

“Do not approach the portal,” said the ceiling.

“I’m not approaching. I’m emotionally approaching.”

“Applicant distance violation.”

The gray box on the monitor changed from PENDING to PENDING WITH CONCERNS.

“Pending with concerns?” I said. “What concerns? My talent? My aura? The fact I’m sitting beside winter cables like a divorced electrician?”

A new message appeared.

PLEASE PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF COOLNESS.

I stared at it.

The lobby fan rattled overhead. Somewhere behind the walls, water gurgled through a pipe, though no one had ever explained where the water went. The portal made a tiny bubbling noise, like it was trying not to laugh.

“Evidence of coolness,” I repeated.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

The lenses were cracked down the middle.

I put them on anyway.

“Observe,” I said. “Cool.”

The camera focused. The monitor displayed my face in two separate halves, one eye pointed toward the portal and the other pointed toward a vending machine.

The system chimed.

COOLNESS EVIDENCE INCONCLUSIVE.

“Run it again.”

I pressed the approval button.

The screen opened a text-to-speech menu.

I meant to type, APPROVE TJ BIRDS, BUT MY FINGERS MOVED faster than my brain, which is how I ended up sending:

APPROVE FISH BIRDS JERK SOFA PORTAL WET MAN.

The lobby speakers announced it in a cheerful woman’s voice.

“Approve fish birds jerk sofa portal wet man.”

Silence.

Then the portal shrank another inch.

“No, no, no. That was not my request. My request was normal. My request was dignified.”

The speakers repeated, “Wet man.”

“Stop saying wet man.”

“Wet man.”

I slapped the keyboard. The text box filled with symbols, fish emojis, and the word CHICKEN repeated eleven times.

The portal began rotating backward.

“Hold on. I have ADD,” I said. “The controls are too close together. Who designed this, a raccoon with a touchscreen?”

A small camera mounted above the monitor swiveled toward me.

“Applicant self-identifies as unstable.”

“Applicant self-identifies as entertaining.”

“Applicant self-identifies as wet man.”

“That was the machine!”

The portal emitted a low hum. Its surface turned from blue to a bright, aquatic green. For one beautiful second, I saw the other side: the fish tank stream room, the main camera, a row of chairs, and Jet standing beneath a light that made his face look unfairly excellent.

I pointed at the opening.

“Look at Jet’s face. It’s beautiful. You look great, Jet.”

Jet turned toward the sound.

“Thanks, I - ”

His microphone dropped off its stand.

It hit the floor with a hard clack.

Jet’s mouth kept moving, but the portal swallowed the rest of his sentence. The only sound that came through was a faint burst of static followed by what sounded like a duck stepping on a keyboard.

The portal snapped shut.

I stood there with one hand raised, compliment suspended in the air like a bad balloon.

“Jet?” I said.

Nothing.

“Jet, you look great.”

The ceiling voice said, “Compliment delivery failed.”

“I know it failed.”

“Would you like to retry?”

“Yes.”

The menu appeared.

I pressed RETRY.

The speakers announced, “Jet, you look grate.”

I froze.

“Grate?”

“Jet, you look grate,” the speakers repeated.

“That is not what I said.”

The system added, “Jet, handsome man looking like a Squirtle.”

I covered my face.

The portal reappeared, but now it was the size of a dinner plate. Through it, I could see one of Jet’s eyes. He was staring directly at me.

“Open the portal!” I shouted.

The speakers turned my voice into a bass-heavy echo.

“Open the portal! Portal! Portal! Portal!”

The fish tank stream lobby shook. A cup of cold coffee slid off the shelf and spilled into my lap.

I jumped.

The portal expanded.

For half a second, I thought the coffee had validated me.

Then the system announced, “Applicant fluid event detected.”

“It’s coffee!”

“Fluid event detected.”

“It’s not a fish thing!”

“Fish thing pending.”

The portal widened to the size of a refrigerator. Wind blasted through the lobby, carrying the smell of chlorine, wet carpet, and somebody’s aggressively seasoned chicken. My cracked sunglasses flew off my face and vanished into the green light.

I lunged after them.

The portal slammed shut.

My hand hit the wall.

The monitor flashed:

COOLNESS SCORE: 2%.

I looked at the camera.

“Two percent?”

The ceiling voice said, “Applicant is currently sitting in coffee.”

“I’m not sitting in coffee. I’m standing in coffee.”

“Correction accepted. Coolness score unchanged.”

That was the moment dignity left my body. It did not storm out. It did not make a speech. It simply packed a little suitcase, looked at my wet pants, and moved to another stream.

I grabbed the microphone.

“Fine,” I said. “If the fish tank won’t let me in, the fish tank is going to hear me from outside.”

The beat began in my headphones, a distorted club rhythm I had accidentally created by hitting three settings at once. The bass sounded like a washing machine falling down stairs. The hi-hat sounded like a spoon trapped in a garbage disposal.

I nodded to it.

“Perfect.”

The camera zoomed in automatically.

I started rapping.

“I’m on the shelf, I’m waiting for the call, Portal looking tiny like a fish in a mall, TJ Birds in the lobby, Sofa at the door, Jurgenator knocking like a landlord with a sword.”

The portal flickered.

I pointed at it.

“Open up, fishy, let the little man through, I got a cracked pair of shades and a dream or two, You looking awful, portal, I’m looking fly, I’m a Squirtle with a Wi-Fi signal in the sky.”

The ceiling voice interrupted. “Applicant rhyme quality is disputed.”

“Don’t interrupt the artist.”

“Applicant has requested no interruption.”

“I did not request that.”

The text-to-speech menu opened again. My elbow bumped the keyboard.

The lobby speakers announced, “I did not request wet chicken.”

The beat cut out.

Then it returned twice as fast.

I tried to recover.

“Wet chicken in the club, got two kids in the back, Point and play, clap, somebody open the shack - ”

The portal made a violent popping sound.

A small plastic fish shot out of it and struck me in the forehead.

I caught it on the rebound.

It was a keycard.

The monitor changed.

APPROVAL GRANTED: TEMPORARY ACCESS.

I stared at the keycard. It was warm, slick, and stamped with my name in crooked black letters:

TJ BIRDS, MAYBE.

The portal opened.

This time it was enormous. Green light flooded the lobby. The wind lifted my shirt and plastered it against my stomach. My coffee-soaked pants dripped onto the floor. The camera zoomed in farther, capturing every detail: the wet crotch, the crooked hair, the plastic fish keycard, and the expression of a man who had finally been chosen by a door after begging it for an hour.

From the other side, a voice shouted, “Is that Sofa?”

I raised the keycard.

“It’s the Jurgenator!”

The portal beeped.

TEMPORARY ACCESS EXPIRES IN TEN SECONDS.

“Ten seconds?” I yelled. “I waited forty-seven minutes!”

“Nine seconds.”

I ran.

My shoe squeaked with every step. The floor was slick with coffee. I hit the portal at full speed, bounced off the edge, spun sideways, and landed on the shelf again with the storage bin in my lap.

The keycard flew from my hand.

The portal counted down.

“Eight!”

I grabbed for it.

“Seven!”

My fingers closed around the extension cord.

“Six!”

I pulled.

The storage bin toppled. Winter cables erupted across the lobby like electronic spaghetti. One loop caught my ankle, another hooked the microphone stand, and the microphone swung through the air directly into the portal.

“Five!”

The portal swallowed the microphone.

“Four!”

I crawled across the floor.

“Three!”

The speakers said, “Sofa be pooping.”

“I am not pooping!”

“Two!”

I found the keycard beneath the vending machine.

“One!”

I slapped it against the portal.

The portal shut.

The lobby went quiet except for the fan and my wet shoe.

The monitor displayed a new message:

ACCESS CONFIRMED. WAITING ROOM ACTIVATED.

I looked around.

The shelf lowered three inches.

A red sign lit up above it.

PUBLIC WAITING.

The camera pulled back, revealing my entire body, the coffee stain, the cables around my ankle, and the storage bin balanced on my shoulder like a plastic crown. A viewer counter appeared in the corner.

247 WATCHING.

Then 248.

Then 249.

A chat message slid across the screen.

IS THIS THE GUY WHO HAS BEEN WAITING?

Another appeared.

WHY IS HE WET?

I picked up the microphone, which had somehow returned covered in what looked like fish food.

“I got approved,” I said.

The ceiling voice replied, “Temporary access.”

“I got approved.”

“Temporary access.”

“I got attention.”

The viewer counter jumped to 300.

A fresh message appeared.

NOT COOL ENOUGH LOL.

I read it twice.

Then I leaned toward the camera, trying to recover the handsome, dangerous posture I had possessed before the coffee and the public shelf.

“Under 18, please have your ID ready,” I announced. “The fish tank live stream is about to go right now.”

The portal remained closed.

Behind me, the vending machine began making a grinding noise. Its display blinked:

NEW CHALLENGE AVAILABLE.

I turned toward it.

The machine dropped a single orange object into the tray.

It was my missing sunglasses.

Both lenses were now gone.

End of chapter one. 19 more chapters in the full book.