Reinventing Logan Roy
Madison Ellingsworth
I am an inventor. I create things that benefit people, but do not attract much attention. Though I studied engineering and computer science at the University of Vermont, my first invention after I graduated was a silicone cup. I have been living off the money from its patent for decades. One could place a piece of garlic wearing its flaky skin outfit into the silicone cup, then roll the cup around, and take out a naked piece of garlic.
Most of what I invent is small in size. There is not much need for medium inventions anymore. Society would definitely benefit, though, from some huge inventions—like one that sucks smoke and smog and carbon out of the atmosphere and shoots it into space without making more smoke and smog and carbon. But my fellow inventors cannot seem to figure that one out.
I rarely think about how much smoke and smog and carbon I must be pumping out into the atmosphere. It only comes to mind when I fly on my yearly trip to Antigua. I look at the engine through the plane window and think about all the black sticky microparticles that are being shot out all over the place, and I feel ashamed.
I forget about all of that when I land in Antigua, though.
Two years ago I was 29 years old and still living in Burlington, Vermont. I tinkered with my small inventions, ate at my local Caribbean restaurant, and relaxed under often cloudy skies on the beaches of Lake Champlain. I was almost always alone. So, for my 30th birthday, I adopted Logan.
Logan is my goldfish. His full name is Logan Charles Roy. He is named after one of the lead characters, Logan Charles Roy, in the hit show, Succession. I have never seen Succession, but I enjoy watching its dramatic trailers in between reruns of The Re-Inventors. When I brought Logan home from the pet store, I noticed a resemblance. Same disappointed eyes. Same frown.
That said, Logan is a very handsome fish. He has long flowing whiskers on his fish face, like a thick orange mustache. A sleek crest, flecked with gold, runs along his back, and his gray eyes shine with intelligence. He is enchanting to look at.
I kept Logan in a tank the size of my kitchen counter, in the hopes that he would grow big and strong. When I adopted him he was only the size of my thumb, but he eventually grew to be as big as a Thanksgiving turkey.
I had to get a fish sitter for Logan when I went on my trip to Antigua that year. I felt ashamed leaving him behind to stare at nothing and no one for 23 hours and 45 minutes a day, but I could not bring him on the plane. It read explicitly on my ticket, “No fish on the plane.” How did they know?
While in the Caribbean, I did what I always had. I purchased yet another shirt with waves and seashells on it. I snorkeled four times a day, then showered four times a day in my outdoor waterfall shower. I ate saltfish marinated in fruit juice and chilis at a beach-side restaurant.
I even met a nice young man with whom I could spend a few hours pleasantly. His name was Vernon Harris—no relation to the Antiguan football player. He was having a drink at the table next to me, having just finished his shift at the restaurant bar.
“I like saltfish, too,” he told me, unprompted. He was drinking a rum-based variation of a cocktail called “Sex on the Beach.”
“It reminds me of my pet fish,” I responded without thinking. “I don’t think I can finish it.” I had not thought this before saying it, but it was true.
“May I?” Vernon asked, scooting his chair closer to my table. He had the clearest skin I had ever seen. It was without blemish or scar. It was strange but beautiful, like a sky without stars.
“Absolutely,” I said, pushing my plate toward him. The waiter came over to make sure everything was all right. “I’ll have one of whatever he’s drinking,” I told him.
After a few more drinks, Vernon and I headed out to the ocean and lounged in the sand. He told me about his dream of owning one of the beach-side restaurants.
“But I never will,” he said. “It is more likely I will stay indigent forever.”
“No,” I told him, placing my hand on his. “I am an inventor. I will invent a restaurant for you. I will invent money for you.” Like I said, I drank quite a few “Sex on the Beach”-es.
“You wouldn’t,” Vernon said.
“I will,” I countered. “I will go back to Vermont and invent a restaurant for you, and I will come back and you will live your dream.” Vernon’s eyes were tearing up. I was already crying.
“You are the greatest inventor ever,” Vernon said.
“Not yet,” I shook my head. “But someday.”
I woke up the next morning and felt like I had a hot lead ball melting through my insides. I took a shower in my outdoor waterfall shower and I went snorkeling. I had a few more showers, a few more snorkel sessions, and I ate dinner at another beach-side restaurant. I ate alone, as I did not know what happened to Vernon Harris.
But none of these things were making me as happy as they had on my trips in the past. Guilt gnawed at my insides. When I took a bite of my marinated filet, I was reminded of Logan. When I saw myself in my new shirt, I was reminded of Logan. Every fish in the entire Cades Reef seemed to remind me of Logan.
When I returned home, I was ecstatic about seeing him. I nestled a palm tree figurine I bought in Antigua into the pebble bottom of his tank. He was ambivalent.
“You thought this would be enough?” he seemed to say. I was beside myself.
Why had Logan Roy been forced to stay home while I got to enjoy the beauty of Antigua, I wondered. Why did Logan Roy have to stay home all day, all the time, no matter what I was doing? Why couldn’t he sit with me at my favorite Caribbean restaurant, and down by Lake Champlain, and on the plane to Antigua? Why couldn’t he eat at the beach-side restaurant with Vernon Harris and me?
* * *
Then I had an idea.
I had never invented something as complicated as what I made for Logan Roy. It was the first post-graduate invention for which I used my degree. I spent weeks perfecting the microchip, computing system, and wiring, and it took me even longer to translate our languages. Then I had to construct the suit. Shaping the silicone, polymer, plexiglass, and steel was difficult, for I had to make sure that the outfit was watertight. Then I had to install the oxygenating pump.
A year later, my invention was complete.
I outfitted Logan with the microchip first. It was held inside a pair of waterproof earphones, which I nestled around Logan’s head, above his inner ears. He did not look very happy about having to wear them, but he never looked too happy anyway. I set a waterproof microphone in the rocks at the bottom of Logan’s tank.
At the end of the earphones was a walkie talkie. This held part of the computing system. The other half was inside of Logan’s outfit, but I needed to make sure the tank half worked first.
I pressed the talk button on the front of the walkie talkie.
This was the culmination of my year of work. It was the purpose of my degree. It could change my life.
I could finally have a friend.
“Hello, Logan,” I said. I tried to keep my voice calm. Inside of the tank, Logan looked unbothered. However, his penetrating gray eyes were fixed on me.
“How are you feeling today, Logan?” I asked him. I worried that I had not wired the walkie talkie correctly. Or that the earphone microchip was not translating into Logan’s language. Perhaps goldfish have more than one language. Perhaps my months of translating were for nothing.
“Hello.” Logan’s voice came through suddenly, deep and robotic, out of the walkie talkie. “I am fine.”
I could not help myself. I leapt with joy.
“Logan!” I cried. “Logan! Wow!” I was beaming. Logan’s expression was blank as always, but I thought I could see a glimmer in his eyes.
“Loud. You are loud.” Logan swam to the back of his tank, as if to get further away from me. I quickly turned my input volume down.
“So sorry.”
“I am hungry,” Logan said.
With this, our communication started.
I tried to learn as much about Logan as I could, and share whatever he wanted to know about me. I learned he liked sleeping on a pile of pebbles, which is why he stacked them in the corner of his tank. I also learned that he did not like the fish sitter. She tapped on his glass and reached her hands in to try and pet him. He had no interest in being petted.
It also turned out that Logan did not like every type of fish food I fed him. His favorite were the frozen blocks of tiny worms. He absolutely hated the blue colored flakes in the flake food. This seemed the perfect time to broach my next subject.
“Would you like to go out for dinner with me?” I asked Logan. “Not as a date, just for fun.”
“Out?” Logan asked.
“To a restaurant,” I explained. “We can eat a meal together.” Logan seemed hesitant.
“No air out there.” His frown had come back. I recalled the experience of bringing Logan home. He had been in a plastic bag for hours, going from the pet store to the car, then to the house, then to the tank, then sitting in the tank while his temperature adjusted. The water in the bag must have been stale by the time he was released into his kitchen counter home.
“When I take you out this time, there will be plenty of fresh air,” I told Logan. “Maybe even more than that.” I did not want to promise too much, in case things did not go according to plan.
“I am hungry,” Logan conceded. “We shall go out.”
I had to use a clear garbage bag and both hands to move Logan from his tank to his outfit. He was heavy like a watermelon. I was careful not to disconnect his translator.
“No dropping,” Logan said, over and over. “No dropping, no dropping, no dropping.”
“No dropping,” I agreed. Quickly, with a small splash, I situated the garbage bag in the suit. I waited for Logan to tell me when he felt comfortable, then I poured him out of the garbage bag. He was suspended inside of a plexiglass gumball machine top, standing on two little steel legs, with two little steel arms hanging at his sides. He stared out of his plexiglass at me. In his mind he had gone from one tank to another.
“Very fresh.” He nodded approvingly. I could not help but smile. I had been smiling the whole day. Everything was going to plan. I flicked a switch on the back of Logan’s outfit, closed the lid on top, and took a step away.
“Think about swimming towards me,” I told Logan. “Think about holding out your fins.”
Then, like my primitive ancestor many millennia ago, Logan took his first steps on the land.
I did not order the fish at my local Caribbean restaurant that night. Logan and I split the plantain fritters. I was so nervous, I only managed a few mouthfuls.
I was reminded of that Antiguan evening so long ago, when I shied away from the saltfish that brought Vernon Harris and I together. My mind settled for a moment on the memory, recalling Vernon’s beauty, our bodies in the sand, and the restaurant I had promised him.
I was snapped back to attention by the restaurant workers.
“You are so funny!” our Jamaican waiter said, after Logan told him that he once knew a flounder with the same accent.
“And so good-looking,” the manager added. “You have excellent style.”
It was really my style, as I had purchased Logan several boy’s bar mitzvah suits from the synagogue down the road. They had been holding a charity drive, and so I bought him one green, one blue, and one black three piece. Logan was wearing the blue, which made him look a brilliant orange. The gold in his crest shone.
The next day I took Logan out on the town. I thought he might enjoy learning more about the area, so I brought him to the ECHO Nature Museum. He wore his green suit. Everyone at the museum was even nicer to Logan than the restaurant staff had been. The children asked to take pictures with him, the adults raved about how intelligent and friendly he was, and the museum workers were flattered that he had come to visit their center for his second day out. They even asked him if he would like to take a job application.
“We aren’t hiring, but I’m sure we could find something for you,” the manager told him.
It was easy to forget that Logan was in any way different from oneself, if they just looked at him from the neck down. So, as the week went on, Logan grew more and more comfortable with being in public. He learned to run, jump, and talk as well as anyone. It would take a long time for him to learn to read and write, but he was enjoying listening to audiobooks and sitting on the often cloudy beaches of Lake Champlain with me.
But, with the passing days, Logan and I stopped hanging out as often. He filled out the job application and was immediately hired as the Aquatic Translator for the museum. He was helping to improve the living conditions for the fish by asking them what kind of furniture, wallpaper, and meals they would like. Quickly he became busy with work.
For his first few shifts, I dropped Logan off at the museum. But I felt like I was infantilizing him, so I taught him how to drive. The hardest part was teaching him how to brake slowly enough that he would not slosh against his plexiglass.
When not at the museum, Logan spent a lot of time with his young coworkers. They would drive to hike in the country and go out to bars. He learned how to pickle himself in his gumball machine top, and more than once I had to pick him and the car up because he was too drunk to swim, let alone drive.
I had been worried about dealing with insulting comments or physical threats directed towards Logan, but everything was going better than I could have asked for. Maybe even better than I wanted. The friend I thought was guaranteed seemed not so guaranteed after all.
Logan met his future wife, Maria Fontaine, while at a tapas bar with his manager. She was having dinner with a friend at a table next to the bathroom, and Logan saw her when he went to freshen up his water. Her hair was the same glimmering orange as Logan’s, and when they locked eyes—as she would later write in her vows—she “knew that he was the one.”
Logan moved out of my house soon after he and Maria started dating, and he began using her car instead of mine. I could barely believe that it had only been a few months since I completed my invention and plopped Logan into it.
Alone once again, I kept myself busy. I focused on miscellaneous inventions that I had been putting off over the previous year, like a timed kitty kibble dispenser, and a pouch one could pin inside their hat to store chapstick and credit cards. I laid on the beaches of Lake Champlain under a cloudy sky, and I ate at my local Caribbean restaurant. I shied away from fish, stuck with plantain fritters, and thought of my night with Vernon Harris every time.
“Where is Logan?” the servers would ask. “Where is the fish-man?” But I could only smile and shrug.
“Maybe next time,” I would tell them, though I grew less and less sure that there would be a next time
I had been lonely for so long, falling back into my old patterns was easy. But I found myself looking at the empty tank on my kitchen counter, feeling an ache where there had never been one before.
Three years passed this way. I could have gone to visit Logan at the ECHO museum, but I chose not to. If he wanted to see me, he knew where I was.
The next time I saw Logan, he seemed different. I heard my doorbell ring, and when I opened it, there he stood. He was wearing a new suit. It was gray, just like his eyes.
“Did you get taller?” I asked him. “I swear you were no taller than this.” I held my hand up to my belly button.
“Lifts,” he told me. “I did it years ago—glued several onto the bottoms of my legs.”
“That just won’t do,” I said. “I will fix it for you,” and led him inside.
While I sawed at Logan’s steel legs, he told me about what his life had been like the last few years. I learned that he had been promoted to Senior Aquarist at the ECHO museum and was engaged to Maria Fontaine.
“I want you at the wedding,” he told me. “It wouldn’t be right without you there.” I stopped sawing. I did not know what to say.
“But what about these last three years?” I asked. Logan looked uncomfortable. If his legs had not been disconnected and placed on my hobby horse, he would have been pacing.
“It may hurt you to hear this,” he started, “but I needed to make a life apart from you. I needed to be more to you than just your pet.”
It did hurt; a needle of shame weedled into my chest.
“I wanted you to be more than my pet,” I told him.
“I know—” he began.
“I wanted you to be my friend,” I interrupted. “You were always more to me than that. Did you not want to be my friend when you could have others?”
Logan was silent. His fish mouth was frowning and his eyes were sad. His expression told me everything: the idea had never occurred to him. He took a moment before responding.
“Without you, I never would have found my calling. Without you, I would never have met my wife,” he said. “For those things I owe you it all.” He paused again, thinking.
“But you are more to me than that. You are my friend, because you made me this way, just to bring me happiness. That is the reason why I am here.” Logan pulled a paper from his jacket pocket. “This is the other reason.” He unfolded the paper, then handed it to me. I set the saw down.
On the paper was a penned drawing of a machine. Part of it looked to be solid steel, but much of it was polymer, plexiglass, and silicone. Inside of the plexiglass floated a large fish.
“A drawing of you? But why?” I asked. My mental gears, clogged with emotion, were not turning well.
“It’s your patent,” Logan said. “I had it drawn up and registered years ago, to keep anyone from stealing your idea. You can do whatever you want with it—sell it, keep it, anything.”
My eyes welled. One tear dripped onto the paper, smudging the pen. I wiped it away. The ink smeared, blue as the Caribbean waters.
“I know what we should do,” I told Logan, looking up and smiling.
It did not take us long to sell the patent. Tech companies had been working on animal-human translators for years, and their competitive bidding got me an astonishing payout. It was all thanks to Logan, who paraded willingly across every stage and through every boardroom, demonstrating the perfect design of my invention.
With enough money to retire, I purchased two tickets for Antigua. A return for Logan, a one-way for me. None of the airline employees batted an eyelash when Logan and I checked our bags. Nor did they make a fuss when he and I took our seats in first class, except to offer us more champagne. Thankfully caviar was not offered as a part of Logan’s in-flight menu.
When we landed in Antigua, Logan and I did exactly what I had always loved doing. We went snorkeling, took showers, and purchased matching shirts with coconuts and palm trees on them. We ate marinated turf meats and vegetables at beach-side restaurants. My eyes were on a constant swivel, always looking for one familiar face.
One night, Logan and I were seated at the bar of the restaurant. I was having a cocktail called a “Porn Star Martini.” Logan was on his third shot of rum.
At the other end of the bar was a man seated alone. My eyes were drawn to him and his beautiful, spotless skin. His beautiful, familiar, spotless skin.
“Vernon!” I shouted, spilling my drink before I could sip it. Vernon Harris lifted his head.
“The inventor!” He called back, raising his “Sex on the Beach.” Logan and I joined him at his end of the bar. Introductions were made and explanations were given.
“You made something incredible,” Vernon said, shaking his head, “but it isn’t what you promised.” He feigned disappointment. “I knew I would never get my restaurant!”
I laughed and grabbed his hand. A smile of surprise streaked across his face.
“Vernon,” I said, “prepare to live your dream.”
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