That’s how we came up with the name. The tag Miri made of the fish with half-fin/half-legs. It wasn’t the first one, but it was the first one we signed with the name.
It was the first time we took Miri to the business park too. As we went down the hallway, Miri picked up a flimsy piece of piping and toted it like a spear. She poked Liam in the back with it, trying to touch him as little as possible at first, told him to quiet down when he got annoyed and yelled “stop.”
“We don’t know if anyone’s in here,” she said. But we did. No one’s ever there.
She didn’t cross the line into too much teasing. Made a second poke and a “boop” sound, leaned the pipe against the wall. “I’m going to catch the ceiling if I keep doing that,” she said.
A lot of tiles were missing in the drop ceiling. You could make out the quiet shapes of machinery beyond them. There wasn’t much light, though. Just a little came in the fire exit at the end of the hallway. Made Liam and Miri into silhouettes when I walked behind. We turned the corner and found the showroom. Or that’s what Liam and I called it when we found it. It was a big room. We explored for a while then Miri started tagging the floor. “What’s it called?” Liam said, looking at the tag. “Where life came from? Something slime or muck or something.”
“Primordial soup,” Miri said.
“Yeah, what about ‘Soup’?” he said.
“As a name?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t sound very tough,” I said.
“Yeah, no way are we called ‘Soup,’” Miri said. “But I like ‘Muck.’”
“’Muck' sounds tough,” I said, “and we’re basically working with colorful muck.” I bent down and touched some of the blue Miri was using on the fish. I wiped it on the bandana I had around my face.
“Now it's permanent,” Miri said, and signed the tag “Muck! 2006” with a deft underline zigzagging away.
