She would scroll, sometimes, through the contacts on her terminal and realize she had forgotten who the majority of them even were. All that remained attached to some of the names was a gesture, a joke at a bar, a haircut. The rest of it was smeared away by … what? By indifference. These people had all seemed present in the now, but she had always lived in the future, a step past them, making plans that were six months, a year, five years ahead, while they laughed over the lipstick-smeared edges of their pint glasses and actually lived their lives.

Here, in this moment, she felt as if she were actually beginning to live her life. As if she had finally caught up with those future ambitions. As if they were folding into the present moment. All those plans were here, and now. She no longer knew what she would be doing in six months, a year, five years. There was only the archipelago, the octopus, the problem. The urgency of now.

Behind her, on the beach, the automonks chanted quietly, facing the sea. Ha stood still, watching the brightness shudder on the water. Evrim stood nearby, silent as well.

After a few minutes, Ha said, “He’s telling the truth.”

“Who?”

“The ranger. The one who saw his friend killed.”

“I don’t think so. It’s not consistent with the other deaths the islanders and the dive shop owner attributed to the ‘monster’: All of those were drownings, or stabbings in which an incidental instrument was used. They were nothing like this. What makes you think the other ranger didn’t kill him? Or poachers, in a quarrel over egg prices?”

“Because he said he saw an octopus come down the beach, walking like a man. It’s ridiculous. Crazy. It undermines his credibility. It’s the kind of detail only someone telling the truth would include in a story.”

“But why would it be coming down the beach?”

Like Ha, Evrim was still watching the water, as if they could see the little sea turtles even at this distance. Or as if their gaze, as full of positive wishes for the creatures’ survival as the chanting of the automonks, could somehow protect these tiny, vulnerable creatures from what lay before them.

Or was Ha projecting those thoughts on Evrim? Perhaps what they were really thinking was: And all of these useless, doomed things rushing off into the sea.