Guppy Love

by Lori Alward


It had taken a bit of research to figure out just the right combination of drugs. Alison wanted to
make sure that, despite his disorientation and sensory distortion, Morgan remained aware of his
surroundings. She decided to use a ball gag rather than duct tape so that Morgan could breathe
around it, just in case he caught a cold from being submerged up to his chin. She also obscured
his vision with swimming goggles coated with Vaseline and blocked out ambient noise with
noise-canceling headphones. It took a while to figure out how to prepare the tank so that Morgan
wouldn't drown or get hypothermia. After all, Alison didn't want Morgan to die. That would
defeat her purpose. She just wanted him to know what it was like.

They'd only been married a month when Morgan showed Alison his laboratory. She was still in
love with him then—besotted, really. He was a genius, a pioneering medical researcher who was
going to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, and Parkinson's. Alison gazed at her husband adoringly as he
guided her through his computer lab, where supercomputers analyzed metadata and tested
hundreds of drug protocols simultaneously. Alison was fascinated by the lab, which seemed to
her an extension of Morgan's prodigious intellect. Scarcely able to believe that she was married
to such a generous, gifted man, Alison was enthralled with everything that Morgan showed her,
until he ushered her into the Guppy Room.

“These fish are a kind of neural chimera. They're guppy-human hybrids,” Morgan explained.
“We inject human stem cells into the guppies to create more human-like brains, so we can test
protocols for treating diseases like Parkinson's.”

Alison looked at the rows of aquariums, housing thousands of guppies. Aghast, Alison
stammered, “How ... how can you do this?”

When Morgan started to explain the technical aspects of stem cell injection, Alison blurted out,
“No! I'm asking a moral question. How can you, in good conscience, create these creatures?
What if they're conscious?”

Morgan laughed, “Alison, they're guppies!”

“No, they're not. You said so yourself. If they have human-like brains, they could be aware of
what's happening to them. They're trapped ... and then you give them a disease...”

“Alison, you're being silly. They're guppies. Besides, we don't even understand how
consciousness works.”

“Precisely! You don't know. No one does. Maybe you've created self-conscious fish. And they
couldn't even tell you. My God, Morgan!”

If Alison had to pinpoint when she stopped loving Morgan, it would have been that moment. As
her husband chided her with amused condescension for her misplaced sentimentality, Alison
wondered if this was how Mrs. Mengele felt when she found out what her husband was up to.
That night, Alison slept on the couch, but not soundly. She woke several times, groaning with
dread. The nightmare soon became familiar. In the dream, Alison could breathe under water
but, lipless, she could neither speak nor scream. Without hands, she could grasp nothing, and
without feet, she could not escape her watery prison. In a state of confused paranoia, she twisted
her body this way and that, surrounded by similar creatures, who mirrored her own mute terror.

As her nightmares increased in frequency and gruesome intensity, Alison knew she had to act.
She consulted a divorce lawyer and a realtor, but soon realized that distance would not solve her
problem. Her nightmares would not stop until Morgan stopped his horrifying experiments. That
was when she began building the tank.

Bound hand and foot, unable to speak, Morgan stared at Alison with bewildered panic. As she
lowered her husband into the tank, she explained, “I'm only doing this so you'll understand,
Morgan. I don't know why, but you have no empathy. You don't know what it's like.” Before
she placed the headphones over his ears, Alison added, “I'm not just doing this for the guppies.
I'm doing it for you, too. It's really for your own good. Someday, you'll understand that.”​​

​