The Kraken Dilemmas
by Roger Helms
I’ve assumed the company’s “kraken problem” is some political euphemism, but a picture lying on the boardroom table shows two reptilian eyes breaking a pond’s dark-green surface.
Like many small American companies, the board is just family: an old man, two sons, and one daughter. They own a terminal point waste-management facility, formerly known as a dump. The unsettling smells of a smoldering garbage incinerator laced with hints of manure accompanied me into the board room.
Wearing a white cowboy hat, unruly tufts of smoky hair escaping all around it, the old man sits at the head of the table, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his neck, elbows pointed at the ceiling. His adult sons — one mid-thirties, the other a decade younger — poke each other beneath the table, like little kids in church. The poking stops when their designer-dressed sister, the middle child, glares at them from across the table.
“Thank you for coming,” says the daughter, “We have a situation requiring well-connected legal help to achieve a proper outcome. Your firm is well respected.”
“The only proper outcome, Sis,” says the older son, “is what brings the most loot.”
“Full kraken appeasement!” yells the younger son, pounding the table and grinning wildly at me.
“Slow down,” I say, setting my briefcase on the table. “You were vague over the phone. If you want my firm to represent you, I must know the facts.”
“Of course,” says the father. “See, we knew the dump was slowly sinking. But being near the ocean, and having fat contracts with nearby cities, we thought, well: great, we got us a saltwater sinkhole. Turns out we had a kraken down there eating its way up.”
“A kraken?”
The old man points at the daughter. “You explain it best, Zelda.”
“Well, it has tentacles like a kraken,” says Zelda. “More of a dragon-like body and head, but no wings, thank God.”
“Fire-breathing?” I ask, like I’ve had kraken experience.
“No,” says the father. “That’s fortunate, because it passes enormous amounts of foul gas. You can even smell it right in here, and it’s not Eddie.”
The father gestures toward the grinning younger son, who promptly farts and waves a hand, fingers down, like pushing it toward his dad.
“The kraken gas,” says the older son, “is a big concern with all those damn people railing against cow farts.”
“So, it’s been eating garbage?”
“With special side dishes!” shouts Eddie, grinning.
“It’s, like, really fat,” says the older son. “Can hardly even move.”
“Sludge bound!” yells Eddie, who appears to need more — or perhaps less — Ritalin.
“Its tentacles, however,” says Zelda, “can reach out a hundred feet. A big section of the landfill is now just a stinking dark green sludge pond, the same color as the kraken.” She points at the photo. “It mostly waits for us to push in more garbage. But if it sees anything particularly tasty near the shore, it rears up and shoots out a tentacle. We had to start pushing the garbage in with a bulldozer outfitted with a special cage to protect the operator.”
“Cage matches!” shouts Eddie, pumping his fists. “Made for TV!”
“So why am I here?” I ask.
The father takes his cowboy hat off, placing it on the table like a poker chip. “We need us a high-powered, politically-connected law firm. You see, we had a marine biologist in the family. And even though he blew a little weed—”
“Dad!” yells Zelda.
“Anyway,” the father continues, “the marine biologist managed to get a sludge sample, which seemed to be poop. Then he gave the sample to a scatologist. We thought it might be some special fertilizer we could sell. The scatologist claimed it was just sludge.”
“But,” says Zelda, “my husband — the marine biologist — got suspicious, because he caught the scatologist snooping around. So we took a sample to a private lab and found the truth. Which we didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
“The truth being?”
The older son leans toward me and whispers. “It poops gold.”
I can feel my eyes getting as big as disposable pie tins. “Gold?”
“Yep,” says the father. “Then we got deeper samples to see how far down it goes. It’s kraken poop all the way down.”
“All the way down!” yells Eddie.
“Calm down,” says the older brother.
“Up yours, James!” snaps Eddie.
“Please ignore my brothers,” says Zelda.
“Those deeper layers,” says the father, “revealed our biggest problem. Only the most recent layer contained any gold.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” says James, “we have an explanation for all the recent disappearances in this area.”
Zelda extends her exquisitely manicured hands toward me, palms up, an apologetic gesture. “The fact is, we’ve always had garbage pickers here. Poor people from the nearest city. Being humanitarians, we let them pick. But they started disappearing recently. The sheriff hasn’t investigated much. He figures they drowned in the ocean. They didn’t.”
I make an alarming connection. “So... it eats poor people and poops gold?”
“Whoa! Whoa!” says the daughter. “It eats people. The bulldozer operator, for example, was lower middle-class. Sadly, the special cage wasn’t tentacle-proof.”
“Cage matches!” Eddie shouts, grinning, arms flailing. “Made for TV!”
“So I suppose,” I say, “you’ve been sued by the operator’s family.”
“No,” Zelda says, “everyone working here is a cousin or in-law. We explained the risks and they signed waivers. But we’re concerned it may have eaten individuals of higher socioeconomic status this past week.”
“We had us a leak,” says the father. “There’s already black-market kraken poop in town. Somebody let the truth out.”
The men all look at Zelda. She huffs. “It wasn’t my husband, okay?”
“Trying to be politically correct,” says the father, spitting the words out with great distaste, “we bought some cattle for it to munch on. They did produce some gold, but eating humans seems to give it IKBS.”
“Irritable Kraken Bowel Syndrome!” shouts Eddie.
“My husband gave it that name,” says the daughter, wistfully. “Right before he got too close.”
Her father puts a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “There there. You’ll get the poop.”
“Clearly,” says James, “it has a particular fondness for humanity. Garbage, in fact, no longer seems to satisfy it. It does like cows, but cow sludge takes refining, which has a drawback.”
“Which is?”
“Refining,” says the old man, “creates a toxic sludge. Just mildly toxic, but maybe out as fertilizer.”
“My suggestion,” says James, “is to see if toxic kraken poop sludge can be sold as a Japanese delicacy. Or maybe a Goth thing.”
“Or a whoop-ass aphrodisiac!” yells Eddie.
“Forget sludge sales,” says the father. “That’s small-time. What we need to do is promote this as a lucrative alternative to cremation.”
I look around the room. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” says James. “We’ll give the loved ones the toxic sludge in an urn — and half the gold. It’s a big win-win.”
“Look,” says Zelda, rolling her eyes, “we need to be realistic and focus on a kraken poop mining operation using only cows. In the long run, there should be more money in that, especially if we can get some long runs. It’s all about KPO.”
“Kraken Poop Output!” yells Eddie.
I find myself being drawn in — if hopefully not too close. “But it sounds dangerous. How could you extract large quantities?”
“Right now,” says the father, “we’re trying big drones with pooper scoopers.”
“That’s working?”
“Not really,” says Zelda, “it’s eaten every drone. But the boys have come up with a better plan.”
“First,” says James, “we need faster drones. Then we can take advantage of how a human always distracts it when one gets within range.”
“Using my idea!” says Eddie, pointing a thumb at his chest.
“Which is,” says James, “to get a team of really fast guys to distract it. The Tempt-and-Scoop Team.”
“The T and S Team!” yells Eddie.
“All resulting widows,” says the old man, “will get the poop. Just like they were family.”
“Of course,” says James, “we’ll deduct for extraction and handling. That’s only fair.”
Zelda turns to me. “Please know that I favor only cows at every step. We’ve heard about some really fast ones down in Argentina.”
“What we need you for,” says the old man, “is to present this — properly and confidentially — to key politicians. Let them know we’d offer limited liability partnerships. We have certified assays that will blow them away.”
“Frankly, I’m not sure this is something my partners would support. Most politicians have limits... I think.”
“But we would also authorize you,” says James, leaning closer, “to mention there’s an IPO in this, one with really sweet insider-trading potential. We’re not dealing in something volatile, like crypto. We’re talking gold.”
“And one thing to emphasize,” says Zelda, “is that on balance this actually helps the environment, even with the toxic sludge.”
“Yep,” says the old man, “and let them know even the toxic sludge goes away with the cremation alternative. A big win-win for the environment. Something to get the progressives on board.”
I grab my briefcase. “Sorry. I just can’t see—”
“Wait,” says James, “we haven’t even told you the best part.”
“Shhh!” says the father. “Not unless he promises to say nothing.”
I shrug. “I’m bound to confidentiality whether we get on board or not.”
The father eyes me with suspicion but nods at James, who again leans toward me and whispers, “It just had babies. Lots of babies. The right diet — if you know what we mean — apparently makes it fertile in some asexual manner.”
“Cage matches!” yells Eddie. “Made for TV!”
“The little critters,” says James, “are frisky but happy in the sludge, at least for the moment.”
“Can you imagine,” asks the father, “how much each one is worth? In ten years every garbage dump can have one — for a price. It’s a win-win-win-win-win.”
“But do the babies require the... uh... same diet?”
“Yep,” says the father. “The poop don’t fall far from the tree. And do stress to the politicians that we’re very civic-minded. We’ll offer the cremation alternative to the poor for free.”
“But,” says James, “if it turns out krakens only, like, fresh, we’ll pay the poor to join the Tempt-and-Scoop Team.”
“T and S cage matches!” yells Eddie.
I stand, grabbing my briefcase. “I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t touch this with a hundred-foot pole.”
The father puts his cowboy hat back on. “Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Plenty of lawyers in the world better connected than you.”
“And if politicians balk,” says James, “we’ll go straight to the voters. People are fed up with being told all the things they can’t do or have to do. Damn government! I’ve read the Constitution. There’s nothing about krakens in there.”
“Or cage matches!” yells Eddie.
Fearing for the poor, I start to leave the boardroom. I freeze upon opening the door. The company secretary is handing out numbers to other Armani-suited lawyers.
I can’t help but reflect that the world has gone crazy, to use the proper term. My law partners have, in fact, been hoping to hook the big one. I’d hate to face their wrath. And, really, what’s wrong with a win-win-win on cremation, the environment, and some gold for the poor?
I turn back, giving the old man my professional, onboard smile before pumping my fist in the air and shouting, “Cage matches!”
Copyright © 2024 by Roger Helms
