Imagine an endless strip mall, a desolate suburbia. Cars roar by - there are no other means of travel. Every house, a cyclic, interchangeable unit. The perpetual smell of flowers and gasoline.

Once upon a time, this place changed the world. And people, young people, dropped their lives to rush here, where reality was so thin that you could reach and almost feel the future.

The kids are now sixty miles North. Those who were kids are pushing 60, pushing their babies' baby-strollers, pushing through their 9-to-5 existence at Old Money Corp, a place built on past glories.

I did not enjoy working in Old Silicon Valley.

My brief stint seemed too short to justify moving my lab, so I had no tools. I was ill-equipped to deal with an urge to create something, anything to break up the grinding, dull-grey monotony.

This story is about a search for color.

One day I went to Fry's Electronics and discovered the remote-controlled fishblimp. It brightened my mood.

now i know which featureless cubicle is mine.

I had cast Consumerism, to dispel the sameness. But anyone could. I had to do more.

Did you know an American quarter weights about 5.67 grams? A dime averages 2.268 grams. I fed coins to my fish until it sagged from excess. Five dimes and a quarter, a 17 gram payload.

Did you know that Lithium AAA batteries weight less than alkalines? The difference is 4 grams. Now I could carry 21 grams.

21 grams is not a lot of bling. But through the efforts of Old Silicon Valley, 21 grams is a lot of electronics. Perhaps enough electronics to help the fish express itself. I would give it a voice.

I had no tools at home so the fish swam to Old Money Corp's lab.

we were underwater. the electronics were waterproofed. it was very expensive.

Through Bluetooth, the fish would learn to sing. Its adornments were as such:

Bluetooth audio receiver
Tiny battery
Tiny speaker

I wanted to shake the fish's body with tactile transducers. Its body would then, poetically, be the speaker. But even the smallest tactile transducers needed an amplifier, and the added weight was too much. Instead I used half of a KSC75 headphone, wired directly to the Bluetooth audio receiver.

The circuit was now trivially simple. Battery, Bluetooth, headphone. Simple enough to ride on a fish.