It’s another hot day, and the tide is rising. The son shoulders his father’s rifle and walks back toward the beach house thinking the reason he’s shot the hole in the tank is because his dad refused to buy him a half million follows.
“Please like, comment, and subscribe.” He says, holding his phone at eye level and trying to steady his hand because he is still shaking with generational anger he will probably never understand.
Water spills out onto the ground as the cat patiently watches the flapjack octopus scurry to the opposite side of its tank. Time is running out. The big cat hopes to eat soon. There is a large hole in the glass that the son put there, and soon this flapjack octopus will be sucked out with the last of the water onto the beach where the cat is waiting.
“I can’t wait until the tank drains,” the really big cat says. “Because I’m going to eat you.”
“I don’t know why you want to eat me so bad,’ says the flapjack, who is a gentle creature. “You know, I’ve never ever given you a reason to dislike me. I don’t really have anything against cats. It’s the rich man that bothers me, and I think he should bother you too.”
“I imagine you are tasty,” the cat says. “The notion preoccupies me. Anyway, don’t blame me. This isn’t my fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Blame Capitalism.”
Neither of these animals actually say these things. Not strictly speaking. Animals cannot talk. At least not in any way we can understand. What the cat actually says is this:
Meow.
What it means, and what the flapjack octopus knows it to mean, is this:
Blame Capitalism.
Because they’re in Miami and because Miami is in Florida and because Florida is in the United States of America, Capitalism is the system on which the cat places most blame. What the cat thinks, and would say if it could, is that their owner, a multi-billionaire, is the reason for a great many conditions directly relevant to their present moment. The flapjack octopus would not deny this, though it does find it a tad ironic. It is a fact that the very big cat, the hole in the tank, and the boy with the rifle have all come to their present circumstances because of this very rich man. This man, a man who heads a notably successful private equity firm, likes guns and cats and rare octopi and has a son. If it were not for him, all of their material circumstances would be very, very different. Incidentally, he is very busy, this rich man, and ignores them all unless it’s convenient for him, which is most of the time.
At any rate, there are octopi in large tanks all over the premise of this beachside property. Cats as well. Big. Well fed. Cats. And oh boy, do they want to eat the octopi. Every single one of them, especially this one.
Meow.
Luckly for this cat, the others haven’t yet come to investigate. That the cats had, up to this point, never been given the opportunity to eat any of the owner’s exotic octopi is a great source of consternation. One that leads them to understand they are living tragic lives, surrounded by what must both be delicious and lovely rubbery meat they can never chew because, among other things, they don’t have the resources.
Meow.
Capitalism. It was the only reason for all the octopi to be in and around this rich man’s house where the cats could see but not eat them instead of in the ocean where they belonged. This is doubly true for the flapjack octopus, which is exceedingly rare and unattainable to anyone who is not super rich. It’s also the reason for the hole in its pressurized tank, which was put there by the son of the rich man.
“How about that, Dad?! How impressive is your big tank now?!” He had shouted while uploading the video of him shooting the tank to his socials.
The flap jack octopus, who we might assume is trying to calculate its chances of survival, is running out of time, and the cat has a point as to why this is the case.
“Damn this rich man and his son and his cat! God, I don’t want to die.” the flapjack octopus laments. “This is all very frightening. Beyond all that, this cat refuses to take responsibility for any of its actions, the state of its life, or recognize its own culpability in a much larger, very flawed system!” This last part being a common criticism of those who level systemic critique toward their specific and individually lousy lots in life. The flapjack didn’t say this last part. If you wanted to get overly technical, it didn’t say any of the parts, not precisely.
What the flapjack octopus actually says is this:
Bubble. Bubble.
But it says it emphatically so, and as you might imagine, the cat is unmoved.
To be fair, the octopus is conflicted as, as much as it’d like to, it can’t really see a clear path beyond our current systems of capital. Not that there couldn’t be one, it’s just that it can’t imagine what that would look like. “I am but a simple creature,” admitted the flapjack octopus on many an occasion, “so, it could be that in this case my pessimism is the result of my limited imagination.”
Despite the self-deprecation, it is important we do not underestimate the complexity of the octopus, who it could be said, much like America’s Bard, contains multitudes. The flapjack does not want to die. To be eaten. But even more than this, it doesn’t want to be alone anymore. To be possessed by some rich man.
It does have hope for freedom. For too long it’s been like a fish out of water, only instead of a fish, it is an octopus, and instead of being out of water, it is in a tank, separated from any kind of good company, or anything familiar to its species.
It has not just been lonely, but existentially lonely. What’s worse than this is that the tank is in clear view of the ocean, so that the octopus, for as long as it’s been here, can see its true home. It can see the surf rolling up, over and over again, inviting him back to the place it knows it belongs, with what we as human beings might think of as equivalents of friends and family.
What the cat doesn’t understand is the octopus has actually been waiting for this opportunity because it could be a chance to escape. The boy doesn’t understand this either, though this shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us because there are so many things the boy does not understand.
Another thing he doesn’t understand is how, due to increased levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere, the sea level has been raising. For the octopus, this is a very important because if the pressure of the water leaving the tank is strong enough, and the tide is high enough, and the sea level has risen enough, then it has a chance at that thing it’s been waiting for. Freedom. But not just freedom. A return to the world it belongs. This would make the flapjack octopus very happy. Happier than it’s been in a long time, and the flapjack octopus deserves to be happy because it is a gentle creature.
Bubble. Bubble.
Is this octopus capable of the complicated calculations it needs to solve concerning its chances of survival or not? Probably it’s capable of some math. Most creatures are, even the son of the rich man.
Speaking of, he is still walking toward the beach house, checking the engagement on his video. People are watching. They are liking, commenting, and subscribing, which is good because that is what he’s asked them to do.
If asked, the son would’ve been able unable to say why he got so mad he shot the hole in the tank other that it felt like the right thing to do after his father refused to buy him a half a million bots to increase his subscriber numbers. And that he thought the video would make good content and generate no small number of followers, which in his mind was only fair since his father had denied him so many.
The real reason?
He is acting out because he idolizes his father more than anything in the world and never gets to see him because his dad is always too busy figuring out ways to increase his wealth, which communicates to his son, either subtly or unsubtly, that his father loves money more than he loves him. The fact that this was true for all major movers of commerce and industry does nothing to make the son feel more loved. The fact the father is just repeating the behaviors of his father before him doesn’t make the son feel more loved either. Ultimately, what the son wants is for his father to smile at him the way he smiles at his exotic flapjack octopus. To care about him the same way he cares about his money. In the absence of this, the son has learned to seek validation through the praise of people he’s never met by making social media content in hopes of becoming a major influencer.
In short, the cat is right. Capitalism is to blame.
Meow.
And what of the flapjack’s chances of survival? Let’s look at the variables.
The number of gallons in the tank.
The tide.
The position of the sun and moon and their gravitational pull on the ocean.
The current.
The speed at which this octopus must swim to get to a livable depth.
And most of all, the release of CO₂, the warming of the earth, the melting of ice, and the rising sea levels.
The conclusion? We cannot know. This story encapsulates only a brief moment in time.
But one might imagine the flapjack’s conclusion is this: if the ocean level has come up just enough that when it gets sucked out of the tank, it rockets directly into the choppy surf and out to sea. Then, there is some likelihood that the flapjack octopus can safely get to the bottom of the Atlantic where it can spend its time hanging out with its friends and family waiting and watching the ocean levels rise and rise until everything on the surface, including the rich man, the son, and the cat, eventually drown.
It’s a very satisfying thought for the octopi.
Mostly because the only rich thing left on the surface then would be the irony.
Bubble. Bubble.