It’s now understood that they were released when a small iceberg calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. But interviews from December 7, 2046, are consistent, it felt like they just appeared. A boy onboard the Borealis Expedition, a voyage for the filthy rich to touch the last penguin, spotted them first. He took a picture because they looked like clouds trapped in the inky sea. Over clam chowder and club sandwiches he showed the photo to his Grandma, the owner and founder of the Borealis Expedition. She told the captain, who dropped his gherkin mid-bite and ran to the bridge. In the recording of his mayday call we hear him saying, “a dozen masses have been spotted, coordinates are zzzzzz [the audio can’t be deciphered]. They’re three times the size of a blue whale and don’t appear to be moving.”
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Jess and Bri slip down the muddy bank. Bri’s yellow boots and matching slicker are splattered with dirt. Jess’s feet are bare, her brother’s Air Jordans left stuck in the muck. The drainage pipes drip with the last rainwater as the girls set-up their plastic buckets and new nets bought special from the mall. When it rains the stream at the end of their cul-de-sac becomes a raging river, then retreats, leaving pools filled with minnows, crawfish, turtles, frogs and snakes. The girls come to capture this aquatic life for Jess’s makeshift aquarium where, despite her careful research, all her pets end up dead within twenty-four hours.
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The Royal New Zealand Navy responded first, concerned about foreign vessels and territorial disputes. Despite repeated radio outreach from the Borealis, which paused their expedition—penguins be damned, the Navy never replied. Those documents are still classified. A group of marine physicists arrived next in a large vessel funded by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to study the ecosystem of crustaceans under the Ross Ice Shelf. They launched an autonomous underwater vehicle and streamed a live-feed, the very one we still watch today.
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Bri tries netting a crawfish under a rock as Jess scoops up what she thinks are two baby water snakes, but once in the bucket, she realizes they are eels.
“Bri, quick, I found my new pet!” Jess says.
“Eels! That’s a first.” Bri says.
The two tiny black bodies swim in elegant circles around the bottom of the orange plastic bucket.
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What the live-feed shows is now common knowledge; twenty-one prehistoric marine reptiles from the Cretaceous period, frozen in the Antarctic water like ants in amber. But what was it like on board those ships then, floating above teeth the size of Great Danes, scales that glistened in unfamiliar colors, so close to creatures previously unknown until that very moment? Phones and cameras fell into the water as people leaned over the railing in an effort to look down. Within twenty-four hours of the live-feed launch, there were thirty-nine separate “man overboard” incidents, all with no survivors. The boy who took the picture and his Grandma Jess jumped first. Witnesses said they plunged in holding hands. In the archival footage they enter the frame, two little black shadows, kicking towards the dinosaurs. Together they make a last finger-tipped lurch to touch them before going limp.
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Bri’s Casio watch beeps, breaking their trance, her parents are making Hamburger Helper for dinner so they only have a few minutes to climb the oak tree. She sets down the path and calls, “come on!” while Jess puts a rock in the bucket for her pets. One of the eels swims to her hand and nestles onto her palm. Its slippery body remains still as she brings it out of the water and places it into her training bra, wanting to feel its warmth. As she runs it moves against her chest but settles when she hoists herself onto a branch. The girls climb higher and higher until the branches narrow to the size of their thighs and sway with their movement. From this perch the stream looks like a squiggly line. Jess removes the eel, its skin now sticky with cotton fluff, and shows it the sky. The eel opens and closes its mouth, in wonder, Jess is sure.
