octopus – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #122B: “The Octopus Dreams of Personhood” by Hannah Yang

edited by David Steffen

Content note (click for details)

Addiction, suicidal ideation, body horror

The octopus comes into Shun’s bedroom on a brisk winter morning. It squeezes through the open window and onto her desk, where Shun is filling out an application for a job she doesn’t want just so her day doesn’t feel entirely wasted.

Shun stares at the octopus, and the octopus stares back. It has tentacles as thick as her wrists, which coil and uncoil in constant motion. Plum-dark skin, wet and molten and pulsing. A glinting yellow eye, rectangular-pupiled, watches her in the soft light.

She’s not sure how the octopus got here. Her apartment complex is miles away from the ocean, and even further from the aquarium. But it feels rude to ask where it came from.

What are you doing here? she says instead.

I want to borrow your body, says the octopus.

Why?

To find out what it’s like to be a person.

But it’s my body, says Shun. I’m using it.

So? says the octopus. What are you using it for that’s so important, anyway?

It’s true that Shun has no plans for the rest of the afternoon. It’s been four months since she was laid off from her corporate job, and her last Hinge date ended alone in her bedroom with her vibrator. She doesn’t even have close friends in the area, just acquaintances she occasionally meets for dinner or drinks. No one will miss her if she lends her body to an octopus for a few hours.

And the octopus seems so hopeful, so expectant. Like she could make all its dreams come true, just by acquiescing to this one thing.

Why me? says Shun.

Because look at you. You’re perfect.

Shun hasn’t heard anyone say that to her in a long time. Blushing, she says, how does this work, exactly?

It’s easy, says the octopus. Just say ahh and let me in.

Shun opens her mouth. Headfirst, membrane-slick, the octopus injects itself between her teeth and burrows down her throat.

***

Shun wakes up in a fetal position under her desk, her cheek pressed against the cold floorboards. The octopus is nowhere to be seen.

The window is still open, the world outside wet-whisked and gray. Her skin goosebumps in protest. There’s no central heating in her two-bedroom apartment, and she and her roommate Olivia have to take turns using their space heaters so they don’t burn out the power. She must have missed her turn to have the space heater on.

She checks her phone. It’s 4 p.m. The octopus must have occupied her body for almost five hours. She doesn’t remember those five hours, but they left her with a pleasant aftertaste: like she had no control, and by extension no responsibilities.

There’s a spate of notifications on her lockscreen. She has a form rejection letter from a job she applied to last week: Thank you for considering us, but we’ve selected other candidates to move forward with. Four new matches on Hinge, a girl and three guys, people reduced to profiles; she doesn’t even remember swiping right on them. Two missed calls from her mother, who still lives in the sunny California suburb where Shun grew up.

She calls her mother back.

Did you see the pictures I sent you on WeChat? says her mother.

What pictures?

Your cousin Matthew just got a promotion. He’s a manager now, so exciting. To celebrate, he took us all out to that new Beijing restaurant I told you about last week.

That’s great, Mom.

The restaurant was disappointing, her mother goes on. I don’t know where the owners were from, but I bet they weren’t even real Beijingers. The youtiao didn’t taste didao at all. But that’s not Matthew’s fault.

Shun makes the appropriate noises of sympathy and appreciation. She’s only half paying attention. Mostly she’s thinking about the octopus, about how easily she was able to satisfy its request.

Anyway, says her mother, have you gotten any job interviews yet?

I’m trying.

Trying, trying, says her mother. You’ve been trying for so long. Why did we spend so much on your college tuition, if you can’t even get a job with it? Maybe you can ask Matthew for a referral.

Matthew’s a software engineer, Mom. I’m a graphic designer.

So what? You can learn how to do his job. You’re smart.

Shun zones out and thinks about the octopus again.

Her purpose in life used to feel so clear. She was her parents’ only child, and she always knew they were proud of her. Success was measurable. Report cards and gold stars and gymnastics trophies. How devastating it had been, to grow up and find herself lost; to realize that all those things she’d devoted so much effort to had nothing to do with real life at all.

With the octopus inside her, things felt simple again. When she closes her eyes, she can still taste it, that milk-drunk reverie of knowing she had only one purpose to serve and that she could do it well.

***

Shun leaves her bedroom window cracked open a few inches, despite the chilly weather, in case the octopus wants to come back. To compensate, she wears extra sweaters during the day and long underwear at night.

A few days later, she finds the octopus perched on her desk again.

I didn’t know if you were coming back, she says.

Are you happy I did? says the octopus.

Very much so.

Of course I came back, says the octopus. It was wonderful to be you.

Nobody has said that to Shun before. She feels strangely proud, like she’s accomplished something, even though all she really did was agree to let the octopus in.

What did you do while you were me? says Shun.

A little bit of everything, says the octopus. Can I borrow your body again this evening?

Sure, says Shun.

This time, can you cook something for me? Something delicious? I didn’t get to try any people food last time.

Shun’s surprised that the octopus is bold enough to ask her for more, when she’s already giving it so much. But then again, why wouldn’t she? It’s not like she has other plans, really. Just job applications and video games and maybe a walk to the nearest restaurant, plans so pathetic they hardly constitute plans at all.

She looks up what octopuses eat. Snails, sea slugs, shrimp. Mussels, crabs, clams. A vast array of fish.

She decides to make hong shao yu for the octopus, a recipe her mother only prepares for special occasions, like Chinese New Year or large family reunions. Surely the octopus’s first human meal counts as a special occasion.

She makes the half-hour trek to the closest Asian grocery store and buys two pounds of tilapia, ginger, scallions, soy sauce, cooking wine, a whole jar of chili oil. In the hot steam of the kitchen, she spoons sizzling liquid over the fish, one ladleful at a time, until it’s so tender that the flesh unclasps off the bone.

***

This time, she wakes up at the gym, draped over one of the benches in the back, in an undignified kneeling position. A man next to her lets out alarmingly loud grunts every time he finishes a deadlift. People scroll on their phones at the cable machines, waiting between sets. A couple in matching gray hoodies run on the treadmills together, their feet slapping the moving tape in syncopated rhythm. Nobody pays any attention to her.

Shun sits up and looks at herself. The octopus dressed her in an ordinary gym outfit: sweatpants and a t-shirt. But she’s not wearing sneakers, just her winter boots, which she never usually wears to the gym.

She stretches and feels the ache in her shoulders, her calves, her back. Whatever workout the octopus did, it was a surprisingly punishing one.

When she gets home, Olivia is sitting on the couch, eating a salad and watching a rerun of an old sitcom on the TV. She looks annoyed when Shun joins her. I did your dishes, she says curtly.

Oh, says Shun. You didn’t have to do that.

I literally did have to, actually. The kitchen was unusable. When you cooked yesterday, you used so many dishes and left such a mess.

Shun had meant to clean up, but she hadn’t gotten a chance before the octopus came back. Sorry, she says. Were there any leftovers?

Don’t you remember?

Shun shrugs.

Olivia furrows her brow. I didn’t see any leftovers. You ate it all.

Shun nods. She hopes that means the octopus liked the hong shao yu. If it ate the whole two pounds, she must have done a good job.

You’re so weird, says Olivia. Also, don’t forget rent’s due tomorrow.

Shun thinks sometimes that she and Olivia could be friends, if they didn’t live together. All of her friends live far away, in cities like New York and San Francisco. Maybe it’s easier this way, when she can lend her body to the octopus without having to make up excuses for anybody.

***

When the octopus returns, it doesn’t even mention eating the hong shao yu, except by asking Shun to cook more food next time.

Shun figures it’s a good sign that the octopus is asking for more. As long as it enjoys Shun’s cooking, it’ll keep coming back. It won’t get bored of her.

But the octopus still doesn’t seem fully satisfied. It sits on her windowsill and looks her up and down.

You have all these weird hairs, the octopus says, pressing a tentacle against her arm. Will you make them go away for me?

Everyone has hair on their arms, says Shun.

I don’t like them. My tentacles have no hairs.

Okay, says Shun. I’ll get rid of mine for you.

In the shower, she shaves her arms smooth. Her cheap razor trudges slowly over her forearms, unable to catch everything. Blood beads in the places she nicks herself by accident. Afterward, she takes a tweezer under the bright light of her desk lamp and plucks the hairs the razor missed, one tiny strand at a time, wincing as each one leaves her skin.

***

Shun starts anticipating the octopus’s needs before it arrives. It’s gotten more demanding over time, but she’s gotten better at figuring out what it wants from her, better at keeping it happy.

She dips into her dwindling savings to buy new brand-name sneakers, so the octopus can go back to the gym again.

She goes back to the Asian grocery store and fills up her cart with fresh ingredients so the octopus can sample all her favorite dishes: beef noodle soup, scallion pancakes, pig ear.

She buys exfoliating cleanser and scrubs her entire body, especially her arms, to make sure her skin stays soft and smooth.

The octopus uses her for ten hours next time. And then sixteen. And then a full day. Blank stretches populate Shun’s calendar, selfhood discontinued and resumed. Each time she wakes up, Shun’s rewarded with the sugar-sheened feeling of having done the one thing she’s meant to do.

***

You forgot to take out the trash again, Olivia says. You were home all day, it wouldn’t have been hard.

I just forgot, says Shun. It’s not a big deal.

I’m too tired to do your chores for you, says Olivia. You remember what corporate life is like. My boss put three unnecessary last-minute meetings on my calendar today. It’s like, hello, couldn’t we have accomplished all of this over email?

Shun doesn’t feel particularly sympathetic to Olivia’s corporate struggles right now. She doesn’t like being reminded that even if she succeeds at her endless job search, the light at the end of the tunnel is just Olivia’s brand of misery instead of her own.

Olivia scoops leftover pad thai out of the takeout tub in her lap. She says, are you seeing someone?

Kind of, Shun says.

You must really like them. You’re barely ever around anymore.

I guess I do, says Shun.

But when she really thinks about it, it’s not that she likes the octopus, exactly, or its presence in her life. It’s just that she knows how to make the octopus happy.

She can’t explain that to Olivia, or even to her mother. Her mother left her several missed calls yesterday, while Shun’s body was being occupied by the octopus, but the thought of talking to her mother again feels exhausting, especially since Shun hasn’t submitted any new job applications in weeks. It won’t help to mention that the last company she interviewed with decided not to hire a designer at all, opting instead to generate their graphics with a free AI program.

Instead of calling her mother back, Shun sits on the couch and scrolls through TikTok, which she always does when she needs to relax. A video about child refugees makes her cry, and when it’s over she scrolls on, and a minute later while watching a funny video about a hamster eating a burrito she notices there are tears on her cheeks but she’s already forgotten why.

***

Shun wakes up on the beach, lying faceup on a pile of driftwood. In her mouth, the taste of salt.

She has no idea how she got here. Maybe the octopus found itself homesick while it was wearing her body.

Waves slurp at the shore just a few feet away from her, spraying white mist into the air. It’s an unusually warm day, so the beach is full of families. Children wade in the surf, making suction holes in the sand with their bare feet. Gulls wing overhead.

It’s the type of seascape that makes her fingers itch for a paintbrush. She used to love painting seascapes. She majored in graphic design because it seemed like the most financially sustainable way to pursue her love of art, but after she got her first job she never had time to create for herself anymore, and over the years that impulse atrophied away.

Shun sits up and inspects herself. She’s barefoot, wearing a sweater and jeans. It feels like someone is pounding a battering ram into her skull, just above the right temple. Sunburns cover her neck and shoulders, painful to touch; bruises mottle her left shin.

She has no phone, no wallet. Just a ten-dollar bill she finds crumpled inside her back pocket.

Her stomach mutinies with hunger. The octopus must not have eaten anything in a while. On the closest street, she uses her ten-dollar bill to purchase a family-sized basket of fish and chips and starts shoveling it into her mouth as soon as it’s served.

What day is it today? she asks the vendor.

The vendor looks alarmed, maybe by the fact that she needed to ask that question, or maybe by how fast she’s gorging herself. It’s Saturday.

Shun thinks back. It was a Wednesday, wasn’t it, the last time she let the octopus borrow her body? Or was it a Tuesday? She doesn’t remember. Has she really been possessed by the octopus for three or four days?

She could have drowned. She could have starved. She could have never even woken up at all. Part of her would have been willing to pay that price, but it’s not the part she wants to let win.

She takes the bus back to her apartment and walks inside, ignoring Olivia’s angry queries about where she’s been. She goes to her bedroom, where she steps over the piles of dirty clothes the octopus has left strewn all over the floor. On the top shelf of her overcrowded closet, she finds a box of her old painting supplies. She lays them out on her desk: soft-bristled brushes, a pad of paper, a few thin-squeezed tubes of raw sienna and prussian blue. For the first time in weeks, she closes her window and latches it shut.

***

Shun wakes to the sound of tapping. A soft tentacle against hard glass.

She feels nauseous. Her stomach roils as she sits up. Maybe it’s all the fish and chips she gorged herself on.

The octopus is waiting outside the window, sprawled out to its full length, clinging to the glass.

Shun unlatches the window and pulls it up a crack, just enough to be able to look the octopus in the eye.

What do you want? she says.

You know what I want, says the octopus. I’ve only ever wanted one thing.

It’s my body, says Shun. You don’t get to keep it.

Why not? You don’t like being a person anyway, and I do.

Shun doesn’t protest. She’s afraid that if she does, she’ll be able to hear the lie in her own voice.

The octopus stretches forward. It squeezes itself beak-slim, the way it does each time it enters Shun’s mouth, and in a swift glistening motion, begins prodding at the opening.

Shun slams the window shut. The octopus recoils.

You can’t shut me out, the octopus tells her through the glass. We’re the same, you and me.

Shun opens her mouth to respond, but before she can, her stomach gurgles again. Something churns inside her, a liquid sloshing.

She stumbles to the bathroom. She doesn’t know what it is, she just knows she needs to get it out, out.

She bends over the toilet, gripping its porcelain hips. The ends of her hair pool in the toilet water; she doesn’t have time to tie it back. She heaves, shoulders rising, back arched.

Wound-dark liquid gushes out of her mouth and splatters into the toilet bowl. It looks like blood. But the smell is wrong: less like iron, more like seaweed and sulfur and salt.

The realization cuts into her.

Not blood. Ink.

She looks into the mirror. Octopus ink stains her chin. There are purple bags under her eyes, thin hollows under her cheekbones. Her dark hair frames her face in unwashed clumps.

She leans back over the toilet bowl again, throat gouging, saliva glistening. As the ink leaves her body, she feels a new sort of clenching, an emptying.

Shun wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and flushes the toilet clean. She watches the blackened water swirl down, down, back toward the sea.

3035 words

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction author who writes about monsters, metamorphosis, and feminine rage. Her stories have been published in Apex, Analog, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies. She has a BA in Economics from Yale and works in philanthropy research. Follow her work at hannahyang.com or on Instagram at @hannahyangwrites.

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DP FICTION #103A: “Every Me Is Someone Else” by Andy Dibble

edited by David Steffen

I’m seeing me in hospice. My mother. That me.

No. She. I have to remember. She’s in hospice, and I’m her son. I’m a son going to see his dying mother. I can do this. It’s not so hard to pretend. There are others. They aren’t me. Every me is someone else.

Although pronouns always seem like figures of speech. Except I. I always fits, and me.

I can fake it. I can pretend. But my mother—she’s a telepath too. I can shut her out, but what son does that? I can do this. What kind of son doesn’t go see his dying mother?

Room 301. It must be in the other wing. Past the kitchen where there’s a stainless-steel vat of some awful toffee pudding. It’s disgusting, and I’m not even sure which of my mouths is eating it. The yellowing wallpaper in the hallway has a nautical theme—reefs and waves and kids building sandcastles. They aren’t me. There’s no mind in paper, no me. If only every me were paper.

What kind of son wishes his mother were paper?

I’m a medical assistant coming down the hall in polka dot scrubs. I’m walking on the other side, glancing at me.

No, she. But a different she than my mother. It’s hard to keep track. Each is like an organ, involuntary functions only. My therapist says thinking like that is egotistical, but how am I supposed to care about others, when others is just something I tell myself?

It just seems so irresponsible, to assume other minds inside other bodies, to extrapolate from my own case. How weak is that? It’s a sample size of one. I had to take statistics, even though I’m a grad student in humanities. Other minds seem so made up.

I remember my name is Laeticia, and I have to pass meds to six residents in the next five minutes. My other name? Her name, even though she doesn’t have a nametag on, and she’s been working a double shift because a co-worker called in sick, that I have been, and I try to smile for me but don’t mean it, and I don’t mean it. I am Laeticia.

Laeticia is someone else. I’m Josh. I’m Joshua.

It’s helpful to frame people as bodies, even though my therapist says that deprives them of dignity. Bodies are distinct. They don’t overlap. Perspectives get confused. Bodies don’t get confused, even when I’m not sure if I’m remembering or mind reading.

My mom is a body in room 103. The wallpaper above the door is an octopus, all orange arms and suckers. Must be a coincidence, or a bad joke. Octopuses are bad news for telepaths, and not just because I’m allergic to seafood. They’re crowded, like me.

Before I turn into the room, I see my mom from her own eyes: wasted, blue veins, yellowish skin, a bed sore beneath my left thigh. The fan directly above me circulating air. I haven’t bathed and smell like it. Time has set in.

I smell like death.

I recoil, violently away. My mind, our mind, me. Her mind is there, me touching me, trying to hold on, saying, Why aren’t you open to me? I’m your mother. Privacy is for deadheads. No, don’t speak. Why do I have to ask? Why aren’t you open to me? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?

I open myself to her, a sea parting. I turn into her room, and see her, her seeing her, seeing me. Me seeing me.

It’s me dying. There’s no her, not her dying. How could another die?

There’s disengagement. My mother in bed isn’t responsive. She hasn’t been since my stroke. Her stroke. A mind is deep, withdrawn and scuttling on the bottom of a shivering sea, crying for me to see, to see and acknowledge her in her separateness. Not separate as bodies are separate. There aren’t thoughts for it. There’s me.

There’d been such expectation. I cannot speak, but we can speak, mind-to-mind. That should be enough. It should be.

But I am just me to me, crowded on every side. I’m not afraid for her, her dying. I’m afraid for me. Hiding would’ve been kinder.

What kind of son doesn’t believe his mom is someone else?

***

Bao

Before my first session with Joshua, I replace the Georgia O’Keefe prints of desert flowers on the wall behind my desk with people living life: a potluck in early autumn, an older couple embracing, a toddler elbows-deep in birthday cake. I want to get off on the right foot. Joshua’s prior therapist hadn’t worked out for him.

I offer my hand as Joshua comes in. He taps my mind with his mind, and waits for me to return the telepathic greeting. I shake my head.

“I thought we—err, you—were a telepath.” He says you like the word is a conspiracy he isn’t sure he can share. “There was a form at the desk.”

“I’m a weak telepath who was a much stronger telepath.” I can still sense strong emotion, the kind that’s normally plain. But it’s enough for the state. I’m on the Telepath Therapist Registry and have to get “consent for telepathy” forms signed by my patients before I can meet with them.

Joshua doesn’t pry. That’s good. Strong telepaths often become dependent upon their talent and never develop social intelligence. Most likely, he’s Type 2—his talent broke out in adulthood. Although it’s uncommon for Type 2’s to struggle with boxing, distinguishing mind from mind.

“It’s nice to meet you, Joshua. I’m Dr. Luo, although feel free to call me Bao.” He shakes my hand. “Before we begin, I need you to promise me you won’t try to read my mind.” I think I can keep him out, but there shouldn’t be confrontation between us.

“But telepaths are open with us, with one another. Privacy is for deadheads, non-telepaths, I mean.”

“No, it’s not like that,” I say. “You could learn sensitive information about my other patients, and it’s important we trust each other, that we operate on a level playing field.”

Joshua frowns again. I think he expected to communicate mind to mind, that we could work his issues out purely in thought.

“I’m not sure I can do that,” he says.

Is he really so strong that his mind can just wander into mine? “Saddie, come here, girl.” My golden retriever pads over from her plush doggie bed and sits next to me. “If your thoughts wander, just focus on Saddie. She’d love for you to get to know her.”

“Alright, how do we begin?” Joshua asks as he holds his hand out for Saddie to sniff.

“I understand you’re a graduate student in Buddhist studies. The referral I have says that you TA’ed a course and gave all your students the same grade. Do you want to talk about that?” The referral also says that he only responds when addressed in the first person, but he’s past that.

“I was embarrassed, I guess.”

“Why embarrassed?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Joshua says. He’s frustrated enough for me to get a whiff. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure, what do you want to talk about?”

Frustration again. I gather he wants to be led more than I’ve been leading him. “Can we just start again,” he says.

“That’s fine. Next week. We don’t need to discuss everything at once.”

On his way out, he bends to pet Saddie on the neck, where she most likes to be pet. “I’m a good dog?”

***

Joshua

Bao offers me the gliding chair when I come in. Saddie perks up on her mat in the corner with the eucalyptus plant. “Come here, girl,” Bao says. I like dogs. My mom likes dogs too, which makes sense. But occasionally there are cat people. Occasionally, I’m a cat person too.

“About grading my students,” I say. “You asked about that?” You is the hardest pronoun. It’s archaic, like thou, but everyone thinks it’s fine. “The thing is, we shouldn’t pretend, especially when it comes to morality. If a choice only impacts me, this-me, sure I can just go through the motions, but when I’m grading I’m supposed to be honest. I shouldn’t just make up distinctions I don’t believe in.”

“But don’t you think morality requires an understanding that there are other people?”

“Maybe, I just know it shouldn’t be based on lies.”

Bao says, “When I was a telepath—a stronger telepath—other minds were as plain as day to me, like colors in a rainbow. But telepaths don’t all see the mind the same way. Telepathy didn’t solve philosophy of mind, it just made it more of a social science, more based on interpretation and case studies than on neurology. So I think it’s fine to act from uncertainty, to act even supposing you’re wrong.”

“That just seems, disingenuous, I guess.”

“I can respect that. While we’re being genuine, I’d like to know your reason for coming to see me because I don’t think it has to do with your graduate student funding.”

I figure it’s time to trust Bao. He’s only me after all. “My mother is dying, and I went to go see her. But I knew that I was only afraid for myself. She knew, I mean. I knew that she knew. I—I mean she—was there so thin in that bed, like a bird, and I could only think about me dying.”

“So you want to see her again?”

“I should. I’m her son. But if I go, I’ll just disappoint her again.”

“Your mother’s also a telepath?”

I nod. “She’s non-responsive in other ways, but she can still communicate.”

“Have you considered only opening a part of yourself? I think she would appreciate you trying, an honest effort goes a long way.”

“Not for my mom. She’s very principled, doesn’t appreciate half-measures. She was really vocal in the telepath civil rights movement. We didn’t have much of a relationship when I was young. She was busy, and I hadn’t broken out, and she wasn’t sure how to connect with a deadhead.”

“I see. Are you willing to tell me how much time the doctors have estimated she has?”

I shrug. “Months, maybe less.”

“Hmm, what animal minds have you read?”

This again. “My last therapist had me try crows, chimps, even dolphins. Each was different, but still just me, like backstage on National Geographic.”

“Have you read an octopus?” says Bao.

“No, octopuses are dangerous for telepaths, aren’t they?”

“Oh yes, an octopus is why I’m not the telepath I was. But I think it’s our best shot, if you’re willing to take the risk. Are you?”

“I guess,” I say. “Telepathy hasn’t done me much good.”

“Getting burnt out, like I did, isn’t common. I wouldn’t suggest this if it was, but I want you to think seriously about what not being a telepath would mean to you. If connecting with your mother is what’s important to you, not being a telepath could be a setback.”

“I don’t think I’m going to just outgrow how confused I am. There was so much frustration, disgust even, with me. I couldn’t even acknowledge her without getting tangled up in myself. I couldn’t move beyond the immediacy of my own death, if that makes sense. Is there another option, something that might work fast?”

I already know there isn’t.

“No,” says Bao. “Everything else will be a process.”

“What makes you think an octopus won’t be just like all the animals?”

“The otherness of an octopus’s mind isn’t something you can interpret away. You’re confronted by it.”

***

Bao

I call Samuel, a friend from my roaring twenties, when telepathic skill wasn’t a protected category in anti-discrimination law, and work for telepaths was often underground. Samuel owns an aquarium. Or rather a glass-concrete home he converted from an aquarium, his way of getting around laws against owning exotic pets.

“How’re you, Mindfuck?” he says. I hate that name, but once upon a very high time, I picked it.

“Can I borrow Harriet?”

“Whatever for? I thought you were done with the Games.” He means Mind Games, high-stakes competitions where telepaths try to tease out what the other guy is up to.

“It’s for a patient.”

“Didn’t think shrinks did lobotomies.”

“You know it’s not like that.” Samuel had bet on me in the Games, on Mindfuck. I’d made him a lot of money, until the end when the target was an octopus. Its mosh pit mind was the last mind I read in detail, but it’s not like it fried my brain.

“Don’t think anyone knows the real downside. That’s why I keep Harriet around. Telepaths keep their distance.”

“Listen, he’s on a timeline, and there’s nothing else fast that hasn’t been tried.”

“Fine, although I need proof that your malpractice insurance will cover this if it goes sideways.”

“Thank you,” I say, relieved. I had no Plan B. Aquariums don’t keep octopuses anymore because of the danger. A surprising number of people have telepathic ability they aren’t even aware of and chalk it up to intuition.

***

Joshua

Bao said that I wouldn’t be able to keep the octopus out, that telepathy is like breathing for them. It’s how they organize themselves.

He hadn’t been exaggerating. Never been good at keeping thoughts in one body. No resistance, no greeting. Privacy is for deadheads. Drowning. I’m drowning. I’m?

There isn’t glass between us. There isn’t water. I’m breathing water. I have two thousand fingers. How many brains? Each sucker moves separately. Like a finger.

Arms in my brains. My arms have brains? Our arms have flourishing brains. They’re changing color, for camouflage. And we’ve never liked crab so much, have we? But we thought we were allergic to seafood. Ha, I’m an octopus allergic to seafood.

That isn’t right. Reading is supposed to be all surfaces and reflections. That’s what made me continue in Buddhist studies in the first place. The raw perception that mind is not a substratum. There’s nothing of a soul, none that we’ve seen. It’s just momentary thoughts, arising and collapsing into nothingness. Memory isn’t a vault, even an empty vault. It’s just what’s being remembered.

Reaching out, pulling down. Embracing myself again, wanting to know more. Arm in arm in arm. There’s no surface tension, we’re deep, like angler fish deep. Deep memory, intentions, the wavering behind, all the roiling behind consciousness. We’re probing: A threat? Have crab? Fish? Help us escape?

The inner voice is not one voice. We know that now. I had selected one voice and superimposed it on others: I’m a self. We should be too. But telepathy is how we coordinate, arms and head and beak and mouth. We are a swarm, passing messages, whispering.

I am an I—this helped us along, helped us pretend. I am an I made all the fissures in self incongruous. Remembering lives that don’t quite square with us, reading them, contrasted with the persistent sense that I am a unity, an I. We could hypothesize an I that is you.

But the struggle is gone now. What is you to us? We are not alien. The otherness is already inside. These words are not just a mystery, gawked at from the outside. They’re madness driven upon us, like a screw. That madness holds us together, keeps us sane. We are Laeticia. We are Bao. We remember. We are everyone—all voices synchronized.

What is another to us?

What is our mother to us?

We wish to know the answer. Ignorance is threatening. Sharks and eels eat the ignorant. But I—that abstraction, that monolith, that tight unity we no longer have use for—does not want to give an answer. It calls itself Joshua. It wants to hide that part of itself. It is selfish, covetous.

But we are not shark. We are not eel. We believe this. There is no reason, just as there is no reason for our arms being us—but still we go about believing it. Once when we were young, a shark tore our arm off and swam far away. The arm was still us, for a while—and then it grew back—but the shark never was. This we believe.

We believe we are not Joshua.

She turns, swims away. Sprays ink in the water.

I am Joshua. Not Laeticia. Not Bao. I am not my mother. They’re away, far away, separate.

I recall that, in some Buddhist traditions—some Mahayana traditions with all the bhumi levels and bodhisattvas with swords, the kind that always seemed like sophistry to me—the idea is that ultimately there are no distinctions. Distinctions only arise in the mind, and ultimately, even the distinction between minds and not-mind is a convention. Even mind breaks down under analysis. Even analysis breaks down.

Someone who realizes this, truly realizes this and is enlightened, doesn’t just dissolve into the ether, they don’t shed their connections with other minds. They return to everyday life and adopt its conventions. They put on everyday experience, like a freshly laundered suit. Not because everyday experience is real and other experience is not. Because they feel overwhelming compassion to help others realize the truth they experienced. So to teach, they reassume the same conventions that everyone believes.

Strangely enough, I think that’s what the octopus does when it approaches a mind and disengages to go about other business. There’s no reason for me to be different from her any more than there’s reason for her arms to all be the same mind. Each has its own brain. Each has autonomy. But because of evolution or some knack, she just assumes these are her, others are not. She has no principled reason. It’s not the way of things. It’s her way.

I think it can be my way too.

***

Bao

Joshua and I convince his mother’s hospice that we need to check her out, even though she’s actively dying and non-responsive, at least to anyone that isn’t a telepath. It doesn’t help that the only van Joshua could rent on his grad student stipend is a real rust bucket.

They recommend against it, strenuously. But they don’t have any telepaths on staff, so eventually they just go along with the idea that Joshua knows what is best for his mother. Though he has to wave his power of attorney in front of their director of nursing before she backs off. She insists that none of her staff will drive the van, which is precisely the point. The point is for Joshua and his mother to be alone. Undisturbed. Just two people.

I drive the van. I’m very good at not disturbing telepaths, at keeping them out. Playing Mind Games as long as I had will do that to you. I drive out of town, to green space between soybean fields after the suburbs taper off. There must be wildlife about, deer and field mice and gophers and worms, but this is the best we can do. Joshua never suggests it is less than enough.

Joshua and his mother are two people together, saying goodbye, mind to mind as telepaths do.

3189 words

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by my interest in the problem of other minds: How can we know minds other than our own exist? (Answers range from “We can’t” to “We can, and other minds can know our mind better than we do!”). The problem is especially interesting when considering minds of the radically other, like octopuses. The Buddhist studies angle came out of discussions I had with a professor in graduate school about whether certain Buddhist philosophies, like the Middle Way of Nagarjuna, are coherent or are meant to be.

Andy Dibble writes from Madison, Wisconsin, and works as a healthcare IT consultant. He has supported the electronic medical record of large healthcare systems in six countries. He holds a master’s of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School as well as degrees in computer science, philosophy, religious studies, and Asian studies. His fiction also appears in Writers of the Future, Mysterion, Sci Phi Journal, and others. He is Articles Editor for Speculative North and edited Strange Religion: Speculative Fiction of Spirituality, Belief, & Practice. You can find him at andydibble.com.

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DP FICTION #37A: “What Monsters Prowl Above the Waves” by Jo Miles

We emerged, inching forth from the sea’s safe haven into the bright void above.

We had done it.

Sharp-edged light flooded the vehicle, casting disturbing shadows through the water within. Three of our arms, drifting lazily in a moment’s rest, merged shadows like a new menace from without. One arm whipped about in alarm, and we spun, searching, assuring our whole self that no danger was near. But that arm refused to calm. The interior of the vessel was safe – our other arms, questing, found nothing but smooth walls and each other, confirming we were alone – but the cloudy surface of our vehicle revealed only dim and distant shapes.

For proof of safety, we needed more. We rolled the vehicle forward until the hatch sat at the top, where it would not spill our life-water into the emptiness. First we popped off the hatch, then quested out with cautious arms, and finally stuck out our head to see what none of our cousins ever had seen and returned to tell of: the void-above.

In all our hunting, we’d never found such stark, forbidding emptiness. The sea’s edge lapped against a surface that looked to be rock, but was not. Too hot, and too flat. Unnatural. The flatness stretched away ahead, beyond the edge of our sight. Unnatural structures reared up on either side, adorned with indecipherable markings; sunlight flared off their pale, too-flat walls. The vanished builders had a peculiar taste for flat surfaces.

These structures were familiar: we knew them from such ruins as the sea had claimed for its own, but those ruins were well-settled now, teeming with all manner of creatures. Here, we detected no movement, no sign of builders, no life at all.

The void was vast and open, no shelter within reach of our arms. We did not trust it.

Yet we saw no dangers, no sign of such vile poisons as our cousins claimed would await us here, no traps to leave us helpless and desiccating beyond reach of aid. Their warnings never broke our curiosity’s grip, and nothing we saw from the water’s end changed our determination.

We would go on.

Retreating into our vehicle, we gripped the hatch with our suckers and pulled it tight behind us. The flatness, easy to traverse, would determine our route. Pulling ourselves up the forward side of the sphere, our weight set it rolling, and we advanced into the desolation.

Our arms climbed ever-upward, tireless, as we left the broad flatness for smaller channels. We rolled through spaces wild with sprawling plant-fronds, past structures that reached for the blue heights or hugged the ground. Such strangeness, yet its variations gradually grew familiar.

All this time, we’d seen no sign of animal life. So when the hiss sounded, close beside us, we flailed in alarm.

We nearly inked ourself, a startled and lethal instinct. Our body reddened, as much in distress at our near mistake as at the shock of the encounter. To spew ink within the sphere’s enclosure would blind us at once, poison us within minutes.

But what startled us?

Poking out a few brave arms, then our head, we saw it. Back arched, tail erect: utterly alien, horrible in its rage.

The beast had four limbs. Unlike the gangly builders, it stood on all fours, its long, facile tail thrashing behind it. Pointed protuberances atop its head curled forward, trained on us, and spiky matter stood upright atop its back. It hissed again, showing off small, sharp teeth, and bunched its muscles for a leap.

Alarmed, we jetted it with water, and the creature leapt aside with a yowl. Taking advantage of its distraction, our arms took swift action, not waiting for our head’s agreement. They tugged the hatch shut and leapt up the sphere, reversing our direction, rolling us away at speed.

We made it halfway back to the sea before our head talked sense into the rest of ourself. Our roll slowed, stopped.

What was that creature? Grotesque as its form appeared, it seemed no threat to us, certainly not within our vehicle. But looks could mislead. Could it spew poison? Extend that eel-like tail to lash at us? How dangerous would a second encounter be?

Could we return home, tell a tale of a ferocious land-monster, and admit that we darted off at first sight of the thing? That we nearly inked ourself in fear?

That was not why we labored so long to construct our vessel, nor why we traveled so far. Our color faded to a cautious pink, and we reversed our course.

The creature sat where we left it, watching. This time, it thrashed its tail but did not stand or hiss. For a time, we watched each other in mutual fascination and disgust. We sensed in it a fellow hunter, patiently waiting and learning, wary but not hostile yet.

Then, to our astonishment, it rolled onto its back in the dust and showed its underside in submission. It nosed a stack of round metal objects, mewing pitifully. Imploringly? Treacherously? Hungrily? We debated its possible intentions. Though we lacked a point of reference, it did look thin and ragged…

Before we reached a decision, our most curious arm decided for us, snaking toward the nearest metal cylinder. Stacked tidily against the door of a dilapidated structure, the cylinders seemed prepared for some purpose. Did they belong to the creature? Did it live here?

A few suckers sufficed to lift one cylinder for a closer look. As it passed overhead, the creature flew into motion, yelping and leaping into the air after it. We turned our jet toward it, ready to fend off an attack, but the creature sat and stared at our arm, head tilted in such obvious expectation that we fluttered in amusement. Turning our examinations to the cylinder, it proved similar to those cylinders we sometimes found in the submerged ruins. Those usually contained… yes, of course.

We applied pressure to the lid with a few additional suckers and pried it free. The creature yapped wildly, and as we lowered the container to the ground, eagerness outweighed its caution. It dove forward, devouring.

Fascinated, we crept closer, inching down the surface of the sphere. Our bravest arm reached cautiously toward the creature’s head. It froze, wary, and sniffed at us. Then it returned to eating. Taking this as permission, we touched its head with a careful arm-tip, stroking it lightly, feeling its odd soft coat of cilia and the skull beneath it. The beast was intelligent, a fellow hunter — not so smart as a dolphin, or even the dimmest breed of our eight-legged cousins, but cleverer than a grouper or an eel. When it finished eating, it rubbed its head against our arm and curled up, its torso rumbling softly.

What strange wilds do you inhabit, little hunter? What alien prey swims through your dreams?

It did not answer. Maybe it did not understand. We returned to our sphere and began to roll away.

It hopped up with an excited chirp, batting at our vehicle as if in play. Its antics threw off our momentum, and we paused, considering. The creature rubbed its head against the sphere, peered up with hopeful green eyes. We sighed, expelling a soft puff of mist into the air. Very well.

Picking up three more of the metal cylinders, we stashed them in our vehicle for later. This time, when we rolled away, we let our strange new companion pad along beside us.

Author’s note: Once I started learning about octopuses, I became a bit obsessed. Octopuses are truly, remarkably cool creatures. They can change to any color or pattern at will, and can squeeze through the smallest gap. They can solve complex puzzles with their many clever arms — not only dexterous, but literally clever, because they have more neurons in their arms than in their heads. Though solitary by nature, they’re insatiably curious and playful. In her book The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery describes them as virtual aliens right here on Earth. We’ve explored their homes many times; it seemed only right that they’d want to explore ours in turn.

Jo Miles is a science fiction and fantasy writer and a 2016 graduate of the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop. She has short fiction in the Agents and Spies anthology and the Mad Scientists Journal. She also runs FutureShift, a project working to broaden the intersection between speculative fiction and social change work. When she’s not writing, you’ll likely find her hiking up a mountain or riding her bike. She lives in Maryland, where she is owned by two cats.

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