Bait ball

The cerulean sea sparkled as the late afternoon sun sank lazily back into its chair. A voice from the loudspeaker drifted in and out as the wind blew it across deck. Trey had given up trying to tune his attention to it anyway. Right in front of them, a dolphin curled an arch above the water, then slipped back into its depths. The rest of the boat passengers cooed with amazement. Trey lowered the camcorder from his face.
‘So what’s the plan for tomorrow?’ he asked.
Sally looked blankly at him: ‘No plan. There was a group of Swiss girls back at the dorm that are moving down to Christchurch tomorrow. We could tag along with them.’
‘Yeh. We could. I dunno. I’m keen to get to the mountains. Get away from it all, y’know? I just feel the need to be away from people for a while.’
The speaker crackled and flanged behind them: ‘…out to the Pacific Ocean, where the pod will…’
‘Well, we don’t have to go to Christchurch. It was just a suggestion.’
‘I just think that this was supposed to be an escape, y’know? Limitless possibilities: go wherever we want to go, do whatever we want to do. But instead I feel like we’re being herded from one tourist trap to another; kept in orderly lines. It’s like I’m experiencing the world, but it’s a sanitized version. A hypo-allergenic, PG rated edit.’
‘…can exceed one thousand. This super-pod will remain…’
‘OK well let’s get off the tourist trail. Here…’
Sally took a map from her backpack and began to unfold it on the bench behind them. Trey rolled his eyes.
‘…we’re here, right?’ Sally looked up to check that she had his attention: ‘Where do you want to go? You choose. Any direction, any distance. We can hop on the bus, or we could look into hiring a car. If you want to get completely off the matrix, we should just put our bags on our back and just walk. Just keep walking until we find somewhere we like. We’ve got sleeping bags, the weather is fine: we could just wild camp somewhere.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on! You’re the one moaning that we don’t have adventures. I’m offering it to you now. Let’s go! Forget the Lonely Planet guides, just choose somewhere that looks cool on the map and let’s just go.’
Trey looked out towards the green hills that rose from the sea with impossible geometry. The footpaths and lanes beyond them beckoned him, tempted him with a siren’s song. He turned back to Sally, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Sally looked at him expectantly.
‘Maybe,’ he answered, ‘we should just move on to Christchurch with the rest of the gang.’
‘…a pod will control a school of fish while individual members take turns ploughing through the school, feeding. The tightly packed school of fish is commonly known as a bait ball.’