I was up late the night of the day I awoke a shrimp to the use of human reason. To get my mind off things, I decided to go to school for anthropology.
Four years later I was spelunking the recently unveiled Mayan caves in the forests of Guatemala and Yucatan. They were tunnels of amber-colored rock which seemed to go on forever, winding up and down, side to side. The tunnels weren’t quite as human-shaped like I remembered in the documentaries I'd watched with my friend, where the pathway interestingly had a little extra space for the head and shoulders; they were more like the shape of an eye, which is also like the meeting place of a Ven Diagram turned sideways. In fact, the floor and ceiling were so smooth they were almost polished, as if by water. There was a long way to go, so we went fast, almost running, up and down, side to side. I spelunked those caves, let me tell you; I spelunked them all the way to Australia.
In Australia, my research team and I stood on a
very bare, light-colored beach on a bright, sunny day. I had almost forgotten
about the team; they, a man and a woman, were always behind me to my right and left, even though I
was the youngest member and not the leader. We were there to survey the
wildlife, looking out for anything unusual. But before getting started, I stared
off into the ocean horizon. It was peaceful, the only sound
coming from the long gentle waves. I almost forgot why I was here. Eventually, I
noticed that the team was talking about a creature that washed up in front of
my feet.
My eyes took a few moments to adjust to what I was seeing. We
gazed with the same stillness as I had over the water. Their comments and questions were no interruption to the gentle pace of the waves, searching for words and not finding them. "Look at that..." "How about that..." "What is that?..." "Could it be a...?" "It might be a..." Least of all did I know how to feel about it. I felt many feelings. It was eerie and fascinating, but at the moment it was as if I hardly reacted.
It was a crustacean; that much seemed obvious. If I had to narrow it down to one creature which I know exists, my first thought would have been a lobster. But that can’t be all; its face was much too human. But it wasn’t a human face. It was as if the shell over the face of the crustacean had been reshaped to have just the essential proportions and features—blurred together as they were—of a human face, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, but without it awkwardly jutting off from its body. It had a pinkish shell over most of its body, but the face was almost white. What expression did it have? Or, did it have an expression, really? It was, after all, just shell over the flesh of its face, wasn’t it? Was it simply a blank, motionless face, or had some shock moved it to this frozen stupor? The creature was completely still, my body was still, even my eyes were still upon the creature, but the image would not stay quite still on my mind. It shifted, my mind toyed with it, it danced; it shifted color, it became transparent, it lost color; it dimmed, it brightened. Once I think it moved like a typewriter: click, click, click, ding! Shhhhoonk! There was no drama about it; sometimes I forgot I was looking at it and thinking about it while it was before my eyes. The face also slightly reminded me of a cat’s face, probably owing to its meeting somewhere between that of a man and a crustacean. But its body was more like the size and proportions of a fat housecat. That crustacean was so fat and meaty, the ridges of its shell-segments were all pressed and flattened together. Many of its features confused me about just where it fit in the animal kingdom, but in the final analysis, its legs and crust declared its station.
The more I looked, the less my mind cared to know what it was doing. I don’t remember what happened between here and our return to the eye-shaped cave tunnels, but that was our next destination, home. I trusted one of the more senior team-members had either taken the creature or whatever samples or pictures were necessary. We were rushing even more quickly this time, I suppose because it was getting late, but it didn’t seem entirely necessary. It isn’t as if we depended on sunlight in here. Come to think of it, I’m not sure where our dim light was coming from in there, but the team was always behind me, pushing me on. Apparently, we took a different tunnel back, because we were just going up and up and up. Why didn’t we take this way on the way over?
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