In the quiet spaces of a closed room, lifeforms placed behind curved glass will always establish a routine.
They wake, they swim along the transparent perimeter, they consume whatever flakes of nourishment drift down from the ceiling, and they believe the curved boundary of their water is the edge of all reality.
They engage in tiny, frantic conflicts over an inch of sand. They breed their progeny to believe that the illumination above them is an eternal constant, never realizing that the hand turning the light on and off belongs to something standing outside their sky.
It is a predictable cycle, observed with detached curiosity by anyone standing tall enough to peer through the glass.
In this vast, silent chamber, there were hundreds of such vessels.
