On June 22, 2207, at 11:14 local time, approximately three thousand live silver perch fell from a clear sky onto a 1.2-kilometer stretch of Lake Erie's northern shore, near the ruins of what was once Ashtabula, Ohio. The fish were alive upon impact. They were healthy — normal body weight, no parasites, no signs of distress or oxygen deprivation. Water temperature in their gill chambers was consistent with a freshwater environment of approximately 15 degrees Celsius, which did not match Lake Erie's surface temperature of 22 degrees that day.

There was no storm. Regional weather monitoring systems, which cover the Lake Erie basin with overlapping radar, satellite, and atmospheric sensor arrays, confirmed clear skies across the entire region for a radius of four hundred kilometers. There was no waterspout — no rotation, no convective activity, no pressure differential sufficient to lift water, let alone three thousand fish. The fish did not fall from a great height; impact analysis of the specimens that did not survive the landing suggested a terminal velocity consistent with a fall of approximately 200 meters, well below the altitude at which they would need to have been carried by any known atmospheric phenomenon.

The species — silver perch, Bairdiella chrysoura — had been regionally extinct in Lake Erie for eleven years, victims of the cascading ecological collapse that followed the 2196 algal hypoxia event. The last confirmed population in the Lake Erie watershed had been documented in 2196. Genetic analysis of the fallen specimens showed them to be consistent with the original Lake Erie population, not transplants from another region. They were, genetically speaking, the same fish that had gone extinct — or fish that had never received the information that they were supposed to be extinct.

The surviving fish were collected and placed in temporary aquaculture facilities. They thrived for approximately six weeks, then died simultaneously overnight. Necropsy revealed no cause of death. Their tanks were functioning normally. Their water quality was within optimal parameters. They simply stopped being alive, all at the same time, as though whatever had sustained them had been withdrawn.