The Mournful Eyes of the Octopus

When a 35 year old father of two dropped dead from a stroke in front of the octopus tank, the aquarium closed early for the day. With a pang of schadenfreude Jack was able to get a jump-start on his cleaning duties, though there wasn’t much to look forward to if he finished ahead of schedule, save a few extra hours of solitary darkness and some extra, pointless screen time alone in his apartment.

Each night Jack would start at the jellyfish and push his cart through all of the exhibits, working with a spray bottle and rags to wipe the hand and nose prints off the tanks. Juan would follow later with an industrial vacuum cleaner to clear the day’s detritus from the floor and clean up any egregious stains with a carpet scrubber. Jack would talk to the clownfish and horseshoe crabs as he made his rounds, culminating at the massive shark enclosure by the main entrance. The inhabitants of the aquarium were mostly groggy and unresponsive at night, though certain species would unfailingly come and follow his rag as he wiped away at their window on the world. He understood their hunger for anything that broke up the monotony of their lives.

He had wanted more out of his own life, but an arrest for possession of psychedelic mushrooms followed by a parole violation for the same offense had derailed his academic career. Afterward, the felony incarceration on his record made finding employment difficult. He had no money to continue his education in linguistics, even had he been able to find a school that would accept a student with such a black mark on their record.

He thought that maybe somewhere out west there might be a university that would understand how his education had drawn him toward the mushrooms in the first place. He’d first heard the so-called “Stoned Ape Theory” his freshman year. The theory that all of civilization and culture might have its foundations in cave-dwelling early humans consuming psychoactive substances lead him to attempt to follow their path. His curiosity had not cost him as much as the cat, but the price had been dear, indeed. At least the aquarium was an interesting place full of beautiful things, though he found it tinged with the familiar gray sadness of freedom denied.

The octopus tank was positioned exactly halfway through Jack’s rounds and cleaning it was the high point of his night. Though Octavia the Octopus was a favorite of the public, holding captive such an intelligent creature was increasingly seen as inhumane, and so the aquarium had only the one specimen in its collection. Octavia was a sensitive animal and the museum had placed a “DO NOT FLASH THE OCTOPUS” sign next to her tank to dissuade overzealous photographers from annoying her. An unintended consequence of such simply worded instructions was that people frequently did flash the octopus. Every other shift or so Jack found himself wiping nipple prints off the tank. She was usually awake and would jet over to watch the rag and regard Jack with her magnificent eyes. When this happened things didn’t seem so bad to Jack. At least temporarily he felt a little less alone.

The night security guard, Jerry, had an easier job. Everything valuable in the aquarium presented a significant transportation problem to would-be thieves. Animal Rights activists and Eco-Terrorists were of legitimate concern to the administration, but budget constraints and the ephemeral nature of the threat resulted in “No entry between midnight and 6am” being the entirety of the nighttime security protocol.

Jerry spent his nights poring through the security camera recordings looking for people masturbating and having sex in the darkened recesses of the exhibits. Ostensibly this was to identify perpetrators to ban them from the aquarium, but instead he assembled compilations of people caught in the act. The pride of Jerry’s collection was the hours-long collection of women exposing themselves to Octavia. Jack always felt dirty watching the videos, but Jerry was very generous with his THC vape pen, so Jack would uncomfortably agree with whatever salacious commentary he offered as they clouded out the security booth in the basement each night before his shift.

“Hey, you wanna see the guy drop dead? It’s brutal!” asked Jerry the moment he opened the door to the booth. There were empty cans of energy drinks and scratched off lottery tickets on every flat surface. Before he could refuse, Jack found himself in one of the ergonomic office chairs looking at the scene in front of the octopus tank earlier in the day. The camera system had been upgraded a few years earlier and the footage was crisp, though black and white and soundless.

A man in a white t-shirt stood in front of Octavia with a child on his shoulders and another by the hand. All three were staring intently into the tank, though the octopus was out of sight. Nearby a school group of teenagers was milling about. Most were gazing down at their phones, but a few of the boys were pointing at the sign and then at some girls. The man with the children must have made some noise, because suddenly all of the teens turned to look at him. He stood on his tiptoes for a moment before collapsing to the ground, banging the head of the child astride his shoulders hard on the carpeted floor.

“Crazy, huh?” said Jerry, passing his vape back to Jack. Crazy, huh? was what Jerry always said when he screened his videos. The first time Jack had been invited to the booth was at the beginning of his first shift at the aquarium, six months prior. Jerry had put on a hard-ass attitude and cued up a file called “Jerkers.” For several minutes they watched in silence as a parade of men pleasured themselves in front of the dolphin exhibit. Jerry explained that he really did do his best to identify these “perverts” and issue warnings to the culprits that they would be arrested for trespassing if they ever set foot in the aquarium again, but that took a lot of investigation and was hard to enforce. He said that he had gotten a few repeat offenders busted and he’d show Jack the clip of one guy being frog-marched out in cuffs later.

Jerry went on to explain that there was little he could do about the public engaging in such “sad depravaties” but he had a hard line on employees doing the same. Fast forwarding the compilation to the very end he stopped on a clip of a man wearing a navy-blue jumpsuit exactly like Jack was wearing, standing in front of the octopus tank. “That’s Matthew. Watch this,” said Jerry with a grin.

With his back turned to the camera, it was hard to discern what Matthew was doing, but the way his jumpsuit had come free from one of his shoulders indicated that the front was unbuttoned. His right arm was furiously working away as he stared into the tank. “It’s always the dolphins or the octopus,'' said Jerry, “I blame those damn Japanese cartoons, to be honest. Though, some of those girls in those, I gotta say… Okay, watch!” With that Matthew stiffened for a moment. He was still standing on his tiptoes when Jerry entered the frame, pointing.

“Caught him right in the act!” exclaimed the security guard, proudly. “Anyway, that’s who you’re replacing. You might want to take that uniform home and wash it by the way. Have it dry cleaned, maybe.” Jack looked down at the name tag sewn to his breast to confirm what he already knew. On the screen Matthew was sheepishly buttoning up while Jerry stood nearby with his hands on his hips. “Watch this, I made him clean it up before I fired him. Crazy, huh?” Jerry beamed.

He had then leveled Jack with a somber expression and said, “I went through your file. It’s part of my job. I know what kind of person you are so weed, coke, shrooms, whatever you gotta do to get through your shift, I don’t care. As long as you get those tanks clean, what you do is up to you, if you get what I mean. If I suspect you’re shooting dope you’re out and if I catch you jerking to any of the fish you’re out. Oh, and don’t try to steal anything. Got it?” Jack had nodded his head, trying to ignore the stains underneath Matthew’s name on his chest.

“Good,” Jerry added. “Hey, man, like I said, I had to read your file as part of my job. Anyway, I know you’re cool, so if you wanna hit this vape and see some tits before you start, I’m down.” And so began Jack’s pre-work routine. When Jerry had no new footage he would rant entertainingly about such diverse topics as cryptocurrency and the end of the world, which he believed would come in the form of an attack by extraterrestrials. Jerry had repeatedly claimed that when the invasion inevitably happened he was going to “back the winning team” and side with the invaders. He had scoffed when Jack had told him about the stoned apes and said, “Aliens taught us all this crap, man. We’re not smart enough to build pyramids on our own.”

Jack was unnerved enough after viewing the footage of the man dying that Jerry apologized. “I’m sorry, man. I shoulda warned you that the kid whangs his head. Tell you what, Buddy. My brother Wallace works at a commercial chicken farm and the other night he got to deploy his taser on some activist kids. He’s supposed to email the video to me, so stop by after you do the sharks and we’ll have a laugh. Here, take my vape with you, I’ve got another.”

Two hours later Jack found himself standing in front of Octavia’s tank. After half a year of working at the aquarium he had come to pity the creatures that lived there. From the tiny fish that would incessantly bang their heads against the glass to the dolphins, Jack knew some measure of their pain. Holding dolphins captive was clearly the most egregious, but despite the limitations of their enclosure it was clear they were still capable of joy, at least some of them were. Octavia was different. Though the floor of her tank was littered with toys and puzzles, her boredom was palpable. Jack felt that the fact she could solve a Rubik’s Cube spoke to an intelligence greater than her species was ever given credit.

As he approached the octopus tank Jack’s stomach flopped as he noticed a bloodstain on the carpet. It was just a small spot, likely unnoticeable unless the nighttime work lights were on, but still, he placed a sticky note on the ground next to it, so Juan would see it when he passed through with the later. As he placed the chartreuse square of paper next to the stain he pretended he was a detective investigating a murder case, though that was only to distract from the truth that he was merely a belated witness to some random tragedy. The boy banging his head on the floor played on a loop in Jack’s mind.

Standing, he looked into the tank and saw Octavia flattened out, clinging to the back wall of her enclosure. Octopi are capable of producing complex, multicolored patterns on their skin, both to camouflage themselves and to communicate. As Jack watched, Octavia pulsed with strange patterns. Rag in hand, he was transfixed by what he saw. Geometric shapes and curious characters were forming and dissolving on the broad surface of the octopus's flattened body. The shapes began arranging themselves into increasingly familiar forms.

Jack thought he saw Viking runes, then perhaps some Hebrew letters, followed by a word in Arabic. He closed his eyes. Maybe bringing Jerry’s vape on his rounds had been a bad idea. Or, Jack thought that perhaps he’d been even more affected by seeing the man’s death than he initially thought. He took some deep breaths and prepared to see nothing more than a sad octopus when he opened them, but instead he was met with a message written in English across Octavia’s skin. “Hello, Jack,” it read. Beneath that, in smaller well-formed letters were the words “Want to feel good?”

Jack blinked, but the words remained. As he watched, they swirled into a question mark before resolving, again, into the original question. “Yes,” he croaked, surprised to find himself close enough to the tank that his breath fogged the glass. “Yes,” he said, trying to sound confident, but unable to do more than moan the word softly. He didn’t quite know what was happening.

The words swirled and coalesced into a complex matrix of lines that reminded Jack of Sumerian cuneiform. As he stared at the arrangement he felt a weight lift from his heart. For the first time in a long time he felt at peace. Something was happening within the hardware of his brain, elicited by whatever it was he was being shown. A feeling he recognized as hope swelled within him. “Thank you, Octavia,” he said.

A playful multicolored pattern played across the octopus’s skin, before forming into the words “We are not Octavia.” Jack suddenly felt very cold, the good feeling fleeing from him.

“Who are you?” he asked, starting to wonder if he was experiencing a psychotic break. On the cart behind him he heard Jerry’s voice crackle through his walkie-talkie asking if he was okay. “I can see you, Buddy,” he said, “Hey I got that video. The guy pees himself. Crazy, huh?” Everything but the octopus seemed impossibly far away.

The answer appeared on Octavia’s skin: “We decelerate into your solar system now. We speak to through smart, docile, useful fish to dumb, cunning, necessary ape. Molecules on your planet we require. If aid us will be rewarded. If hinder us will die. Will Jack aid us?”

The chill in Jack’s bones deepened. Was this madness or opportunity? Jerry’s voice crackled over the radio again. “I can see you, man. You better not be doing what I think you’re doing,” he said, “I’m coming up there.”

The words “Will Jack aid us?” and “We will reward you,” hovered on Octavia’s back. Jack looked from them to her eyes. An octopus’s pupils can take a thousand shapes, from a slit to a rectangle to a sine wave, to a toothy grin; they are among the most expressive organs in the animal kingdom, capable of displaying a kaleidoscope of emotions.

Looking into Octavia’s eyes, Jack saw fear. As he caught her gaze, she began to pulse orange and red. The offer on her back dissolved into a single word written in a child’s scrawl: “LIES.” Whomever or whatever was transmitting through Octavia did not have complete control over her. She shook with effort and her tentacles contorted into lightning bolts as she fought against them. Letters formed one at a time in a shaky hand on her back, “Octavia has dreamed their dreams.”

The pigments in her skin formed impressionistic scenes of worlds on fire with massive ships hanging in the multicolored skies above screaming alien creatures. One after another the images flitted by. Plasma fire ripping through a city built in treetops while hairy bipeds ran along broad branches in every direction; great beehive-like structures engulfed in flames as the inhabitants stream into the air clutching their children and a few meager belongings; an ocean being boiled to steam while long-limbed creatures wearing robes cook to death in the froth.

The effort was too much. The octopus shuddered and flashed bright red one more time before sagging limply against the glass, her skin gray and her eyes closed. Tears formed in Jack’s eyes, though he could not say for what he was grieving. Then Octavia’s skin began to flash again. The sequence of patterns reminded Jack of a device booting up, and he soon found himself staring at the words “fish unwise” written across her broad back. Her pupils were shapeless and exhausted, but she was alive.

“Will Jack aid us?” it now read. Jack shook his head. The words dissolved and reformed larger. Jack shook his head again. The letters now formed one at a time, even larger. “WILL JACK AID US?” flashed across Octavia’s back.

“No,” said Jack. There was a long, frustrated pause. He knew now it was time to run, but he was as beholden to what was happening as was Octavia. In the distance he heard the door to the stairwell slam shut. Jerry had arrived on the main floor. Jack hoped he would make it in time. He could not look away from the sallow yellows and sickly greens of the octopus.

The cuneiform returned, but it was twisted and corrupted. Jack gasped. Though illegible to him, the symbols brought forth a torquing red darkness in his mind. Parts of him he didn’t know existed wrenched and warped inside him until something snapped. The last thing he saw as he collapsed to the floor with blood running from his nose were the mournful eyes of the octopus.

“Oh, crap!” cried Jerry, bursting onto the scene. As he dashed towards Jack’s body something caught his attention. The words “Hello, Jerry. Want to feel good?” were visible through the glass.