Okinawa

The winter months had felt lonelier than ever before.
Since the disappearance of Mr. Friend Vix had just fallen into a new kind of psychic coma. The days blurred together and nothing seemed to be important enough to even think about doing.
He knew that this couldn’t go on for much longer.
He’d lost interest in most of the things he used to care about, and the blurry window to the world that was his computer screen gradually lost its transparency as the days passed. Now he could spot his own reflection in the glossy screen more often than he would get transported through it and out into the vast world of digitized information.
The only bookmark he had added during the last few months read: ‘Okinawa’.
It all started when he stumbled upon a travel site by chance, and found himself clicking around on different holiday pictures of scenic views and clear, green waters.
Instantly he had thought of the usual disasters lurking behind such poisoned eye-candy: tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes and the like.
But then he had found one picture, all these thoughts had disappeared, and he found himself strangely at ease just looking at the picture.
Above it, bright red letters spelled out: ‘Okinawa’.
Soon the word would become a magical mantra for Vix.
At any time he felt uneasy, which wasn’t really that often anymore, as he was too indifferent to even feel uneasy at most times. Maybe the feeling was more restlessness than unease when he came to think of it. But anyway, when this feeling of unease turned into restlessness crept in, he would simply say the word ‘Okinawa’, and everything would be OK again.
Although it had become a way out of his waves of restlessness, the magic of saying ‘Okinawa’ only transported him back to the grey, muddy soup that was his daily life, and somehow this wasn’t enough.
He almost missed the fear and panic attacks from the time before that day when he let it all rip and let so much of the fear out of his system.
He didn’t really miss it that much, though.
Around him, it had become summer again without him taking further notice. It only gave him a feeling it wasn’t the first time this had happened to him, and that this wasn’t a particularly good realization. Next thing he would know, the winter would do the same, and then he would be really screwed. He knew he couldn’t stand yet another winter in this place.
He had to do something about his situation.
Some major changes had to be made.
And he was up for it.
There was nothing more to lose anymore.
The more he contemplated on this thought, the more euphoric he felt, like a rush building from pure thought and entering his bloodstream.
He got out of his chair and stood in the middle of the room.
Then he said: “Either you follow the rules, or you break the rules.”
He straightened out his back as if to hold a public speech – his first ever - and added: “Or you make the rules!”
Then he went over to the washing basin on the wall, and stood facing the dirty mirror above it.
It was there, in front of the dusty blur of his own reflection, that Vix made up his mind that, before the end of the summer, he would be moving on.
“I am Salmon”, he said out loud to the mirror.
And in that very instant, Vix decided to change his life forever.

Abducted

The vast night sky opened up above him.
All across it, stars were scattered like dark, fluorescent magic lanterns.
As he stared upwards into the infinity of his imprisonment, he suddenly saw them:
Huge dark shapes hovering a few miles above ground. Hiding like giant, black jellyfish with their massive undersides cunningly decorated with fake night sky.
Alien supreme technology.
Extra-terrestrial smoke and mirrors.
He enjoyed the sight, even though it gave him chills down his spine. It was still beautiful, and left him awestruck.
Little did he know that they would soon be onto him.

The blinding light seemed to shine from within every atom in the room. His limbs were frozen, and the most terrible fear he had ever encountered filled his whole being.
The Alien stood before him, as if hovering in the middle of the room, with sinister black endless eyes penetrating his earthbound mammalian nervous system like a razor.
Vix tried to scream, but the scream just backfired on him, and turned into yet another wave of horror inside him.
He could do nothing.
He was completely in the creature’s power. Alien power.
His fear was multiplied by his helplessness. What next? Probes? Visions of Apocalyptic horrors? Implants?
Or death?

“You are Salmon!” the creature suddenly said, mind to mind and soundless, his starman tongue messing around inside Vix’s head.
“S… salmon?” Vix thought back. Frozen.
“Salmon”, the Alien repeated, without the slightest trace of human emotion.
Vix stared as puzzled as he could possibly stare, unaided by functioning facial muscles, back at the creature.
“You are the Salmon of the Galaxy”, the Alien continued, and then added: “You know what Salmon is, right?”
“R…red..f…f…fish?”, Vix suggested.
“Never mind the colour. It is irrelevant. As most of your human associations usually are.” His black eyes and strict facial expression instantly made Vix agree. Then the starman said: “What does Salmon do?”
“S…wim?” Vix suggested.
“Swim”, The Alien repeated, then said; “Swim. And wander. Salmon wander. Their whole existence is dependent on their wandering, dependent on constant movement. They need to move, to obtain oxygen, and to be exposed to uncertainty. To be exposed to danger. They need all this in order to experience. To grow. Growth is the purpose of All. And Salmon, like all creatures, need purpose.”
Vix could feel his body lose a fraction of the weight of the paralysis - though just a fraction.
The Alien continued; “Instead, the human breed chooses the opposite. You choose to stay in confinement. To ‘settle down’. Build structures that weigh you down further. You rather choose to create an artificial world around you than to live in the one that’s already there. The one that would give you the lives that would allow you to be in tune with yourselves. The lives you were born to live.”
Vix tried to think “OK”, as if just to make sure they already agreed, but the Alien went on: “You call this artificial world your ‘culture’. Your ‘civilization’ - a system that facilitates communication from human to human, exclusive of all other life forms. A system that experiences nothing but what has already been experienced by the very same culture. Errors. Repeated. Multiplied. And you start confining other creatures too, like Salmon - another highly migratory species like yourselves.”
Vix started to fear he’d been abducted by some intergalactic fishing enthusiast, deeply unhappy with the way his prey had settled down and removed the cat-and-mouse factor from his hunting game.
“Do you know why the Salmon you breed in your fish farms are ridden with illness and defects?” the Alien asked.
“No”, Vix replied.
“Because of the very fact that you attempt to breed them in fish farms.”
“Oh.”
“It is the whole basic idea that is wrong. It is not some detail or some undiscovered ‘solution’. It is rotten at root-level. Like with your own lives. You only create fear for yourselves and the other creatures you trap inside your discordant culture. Don’t you see that?”
Vix didn’t see that.
The Alien stared at him and made him go back to the totally frozen state once more.
“What does it take to get through to you?” the spaceman shouted inside his mind, and Vix feared that his time as a Salmon-like organism in the Galaxy was up.
Instead, there was a long pause.
And then, the initially terrifying extra-terrestrial being clapped his hands, and some strange music started playing.
And before Vix could react to this sudden shift, the Alien had started dancing, and to an even greater shock, after a few more bars of music, he started singing:

These boots are made for walking
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna
Walk all over you

And then, everything went dark again.