Night Ops

Night Ops at the Boston Aquarium

Their mission began at midnight as the last of the night guardsman made his final sweep of the aquarium before locking up. Little did he know that three teenagers had hid themselves under the stacks of plastic tubs that they usually used to hold fish. The doors clanked shut and knowing that the coast was finally clear, they lifted the tubs and crawled out. The three – Eric, Alexandra and Cameron, belonged to a super-secret society that they had created at their middle school. They had been inspired to start it after their recent visit to the aquarium for a school trip that left them feeling anguish for the trapped wild animals.

They had planned it out for weeks now, buying bus & aquarium tickets, getting permission from their parents to hang out, and most importantly, lying about where they would be staying. They had been moments away from leaving that evening when it appeared their mission might not happen at all. Alex’s mom had pulled in the driveway just as they meant to go.

“You said she wouldn’t be home”, said Cameron while peaking through the window blinds.

“She wasn’t supposed to be back for another 40 minutes it’s not my fault” replied Alex with a tone of annoyance and unsurity.

“Back door, back door” said Alex, gesturing for the two to follow her.

But just as they got to the back mud room, the door swung open. Meeting Alex’s mom at the door, they now had to explain why they were dressed all in black with eye black line marks underneath their eyes.

“We’re about to go rob a bank can’t you tell” said Alex sarcastically, “what are you even doing here?”

“No no, she’s kidding Mrs. Boyd, we’re about to meet up with some friends and make some TikTok’s” said Cam in a convincing tone.

“Thanks Cameron, Alex never tells me where she’s going or what she’s doing.

“And for your information”, she began as she turned her attention to Alex, “I was taking a picture of the sunset for a competition online, is that okay with you?” she finished, giving Alex a “fuck off” sort of look.

“Okay enough chitchat, let’s get out of here” said Alex, rallying the troops.

They biked their way over to the bus stop and caught the 6:30 bus all the way to the Central Wharf area of the city. Getting there well before closing time they walked around for a while, getting a scope of where all the exits were and taking note of who seemed to be working not just attending for kicks. Close to a half an hour before closing time, they staged a series of diversions in the form of smoking stink bombs that they had learned to make from an old vine video. With attention focused elsewhere, they had slipped themselves under the fish tubs and there they had laid for a few hours, exchanging texts to pass the time.

The first thing they did was open the bay garage door that led to the water’s edge. Not knowing if an alarm would go off, they hurried back to the site of their targets — the penguin exhibit. Using a torch that Eric had stolen from his dads work bench, they burned away the latch to the door standing in their way and made their way inside. With headlamps on their heads, they began making the strange penguin noises they had learned from YouTube and when they immediately got the penguins attention, they knew they must be doing something right.

Finding a bucket of fish sitting in ice water, Cameron started to throw them out to the penguins while slowly beginning to walk backwards and out of the exhibit, all the while continuing his makeshift penguin noises.

“They’re following you Cam” called out Alex, “almost all of them!”

He kept moving in a rhythm of throwing a few of the fish out to the group, letting them have a second to eat them, then continuing with his steps backwards. It was only a couple minutes later that they reached the garage door, and with the group of waddlers closely behind, Cameron made his way outside and spilt the rest of the bucket’s contents out on the beach for them to mow down. Not having been much to eat, the penguins finished quickly and after hearing Cam’s sounds pick up again, they followed him into the water and were off within a few seconds.

“Go be free!” he called out to them as they tore off into the bay.

Wading back through the water to the shore, he was greeted by Eric at the garage and the two exchanged aggressive high fives to celebrate.

“We did it dude!” said Cam

“Almost” replied Eric, “there’s still one left in the exhibit, the small rascal you and Alex were doting on last time” he finished.

“Ah, yes, Arkadiusz” said Cam, knowing this penguin would be more of a challenge.

Arkadiusz was a devious little penguin, with a certain proclivity for mayhem, an unquenchable need to “troll” his fellow penguins, and a knack for getting into food stashes. He had built up a bit of notoriety in just a few months here at the aquarium, something that the tour guides divulged while they were on their first visit. The best way to put it is – he was a major wild card.

Eric and Cam ran back to the exhibit and in his overall waders, Cam walked into the shallow end of the large pool to see the little penguin seemingly loving having the place to himself. For five minutes, the three struggled to even get the attention of him and quickly figured out that they needed to make some changes.

Looking up on her phone what types of fish penguins liked most, Alex was able to narrow down a couple options and decided her best bet was to go searching for the aquarium’s main freezer.

“I’m going to need that torch thingy Eric” she said as she pulled it out of the backpack, knowing she’d likely run into more locked doors.

“Go for it, we’ll keep trying to coax him out while you look” replied Eric.

Tearing off down several hallways, she followed a few arrows until she finally was able to find the freezer and was surprised to see that it wasn’t even locked.

“Nice, that makes things a bit easier” she thought to herself as she entered, making note of the lack of a door handle on the inside of the door. Thinking quickly, she took off one of her shoes and jammed it into the door and using just the light from her headlamp she collected a few different types of fish and was out the door.

She had just started to put her shoe back on when she was startled by a noise coming from around a corner and nearly jumped out of her skin when a custodian with a mop came walking around it.

“You aint supposed to be here” he said, looking her over in her all-black attire and eye black.

“Neither are you!” she replied, both annoyed and now worried they’d get caught.

Taking out his phone, the man began to dial 911 when Alex called out to him “hey buddy!” she said, getting his attention away from his phone. And using a technique she had learned in high stakes dodgeball, she tossed her shoe high up in the air knowing that his eyes would follow. Just as she had anticipated, he did exactly that, gazing at the falling shoe and preparing himself to catch it. She had him right where she wanted. Having the torch in her other hand, she chucked it on a line as hard as she could and completely unaware of its trajectory the man was struck in the head and fell to the ground with a thump.

Grabbing her shoe and checking the man for a pulse, Alex was now bursting with adrenaline and immediately began running back to the exhibit with the fish. When she got back a couple minutes later, she found the penguin doing laps around Cameron, moving closer to him and then farther away each time he made a lunge to grab him.

“He’s loving this negative attention Cam, just come out” she said realizing the penguin could keep this cat and mouse game up for hours. She began throwing bits of fish into the shallow end and after a few minutes of them ignoring him, Arkadiusz started to seek out the fish. Walking up to the edge of the pool, she put one down and started walking backwards, dropping 1 every 25 steps or so in a line for him to follow.

It was his incessant appetite that finally seemed to win him over, that and seeing he had an easy meal and free range to roam out of the exhibit. He followed them down to the garage and seeming to sense the presence of the ocean he made his way into the cold water all on his own.

“BOOM BABY!” yelled out Eric

“Pshh” came a noise out of Alex’s mouth, mimicking the sound of a walky-talky.

“Mission… success” she said in the same sort of tone.

“Pshh. Roger that” said Cam, “time to get out of here. Over”.

Exchanging a few handshakes and pats on the back, they went back inside, shut the garage and covered up their tracks before slipping out the front door just before 2 am. Catching the late-night bus back to their borough, they felt both wicked and proud of themselves for what they had done that night and made a vow to never speak of it again.

It wasn’t until several days later that while watching the news with her mother, they had aired a story about the break in and release of 30 penguins from the Boston aquarium.

“What heroes” said Alex in a knowing tone.

To finish out the report, they showed a blurry security camera picture of what looked to be three young adults in all black clothes and eye black. They asked anyone who may have knowledge of these persons identities to come forward and it was then that Alex’s mom gave her a look of wonder and disbelief knowing it had to be them. Alex gave her a wink and the “shh” sign with her finger over her lips and without another word she left the room with a giant grin on her face.