Goldfish Bowl

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For other uses see Goldfish.

Goldfish Bowl is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein, first published 1942, and collected in one of Heinlein's anthologies, The Menace from Earth.

In the story, two oceanographers and a navy ship investigate a pair of massive pillars of water in the Pacific which may be natural phenomena or they may be formed by aliens. One such pillar takes a column of water up into the sky, the other returns water to the ocean. Eventually, one by one, the two men each ride the up pillar and find themselves in a featureless environment where they are provided with bland food and tasteless water. They conclude that they are in the hands of other intelligences, possibly alien, possibly a much higher form of Earth life. Apparently they are not even being studied but are merely kept as pets, much as humans might somewhat carelessly keep a pet goldfish. They may even have been put together in the hope that they will breed, suggesting that the intelligences know nothing of human biology.

When one of the scientists dies and his body is removed, the survivor realizes that the only way back is to die. He scratches a message on the only medium available to him - his skin. The message is "Beware. Creation took eight days", meaning that there is an intelligence beyond Man, who was created on the sixth day. His body is recovered from the ocean, but the message is not understood.