He looked at me quizzically. “The what?”

My mind was frazzled. “Uh,” I said, “You know, from the nursery song, Sing a song of six pence, pocket full of rye?”

“There’s nothing about a bloom of god in that song, Ben.”

“Sure there is,” I said, trying to place the lyrics. “The pie opens and then it goes on that…the birds began to sing…uh… wasn’t that a dainty dish...” my voice trailed off. I couldn’t find it.

The ring was still there outside the enclosure, the fins ascending slowly back to their original, skyward positions. The bright colors at their apices darkened to indigo and then slate. I must have only been out for a millisecond, but it was long enough. I never wanted to feel that again. Perhaps Patton was right – maybe I had shorted out, suffered some kind of trauma-induced syncope. I wrapped my arms around my chest to recover from the penetrating cold, only to realize that I was perfectly warm.

The ring reverberated and fell apart. The mass moved again, herdlike, but… coordinated, as with birds in murmuration.79 There was an unavoidable presence when the group was assembled, that went beyond the stunning visual display. A sentient swarm. Mass consciousness. Communion.

Tendrils formed of smaller, corpuscular units – I can’t help but think of them as boids now – reached out from the swirling whole and slithered toward our enclosure. Individual cells ranging in size from grapefruit to suitcase circulated in and around these curious extensions, filling spaces vacated by others that were absorbed back into the swarm.

Upon reaching the outer walls, the tendrils moved curiously, changing the vantage of their inspection while still shifting, morphing. Colors in every hue pulsed up from the gentle tips. These creatures had some sort of chromatophore analog that allowed them to change color almost as quickly as they altered their shape. Unsure how to respond, I approached the clear membrane and pressed my hand to it – a gesture of peace and kindness as one does in a movie. I held it there nervously, allowing a tendril to tenderly consider it. Patton did the same and was ignored.

This massive creature exuded tremendous power, and was surely able to – if it wished – crush our enclosure, and us inside, with the slightest of gestures. I was scared, but told myself that if it wanted us dead, it wouldn’t have sprung for custom bondage suits with feeding tubes and butt plumbing.