What If You Woke Up as the Kraken Tomorrow

The first thing you feel is some heaviness around your body — as if you’re sleeping under a soft but weighted blanket. It feels nice, and you’re too lazy to do anything. Fortunately, you gather enough strength to move this blanket.

You open your eyes and... it’s weird. You’re surrounded by some blue glow. You want to rub your eyes and discover that you have tentacles instead of hands!

How about skipping the part where you’re terrified and can’t believe you’ve turned into the Kraken?! After a couple of days of existential horror, panic, and total madness, you finally calm down. Now, let’s figure out what it’s like to be the most terrifying ocean monster.

So, that heavy blanket is water pressure. It’s colossal at the depth where you’re hiding. Few living beings can withstand it. Take a passenger car down there, and it will burst apart under the heavy weight of the water.

But you’re the Kraken. You’re more powerful than any car. Your body doesn’t collapse in such conditions. Your thick elastic skin can withstand any pressure, and strong muscles allow you to move freely here.

And here’s the thing with the blue glow. You’re so deep down that sunlight almost doesn’t penetrate here. It’s hard to tell where’s up and down because of the water pressure. But fortunately, you have huge eyes that, like the lenses of a telescope, catch the light coming from the surface.

An ordinary person can’t see anything except darkness at this depth. But you have something like a night vision device built into your eyes — so you see this blue glow. There’s almost nothing at this depth. It’s only endless, heavy emptiness.

You can see a few fish and several wrecks of sunken ships. The sea creatures you meet here are pretty unusual. These are anglers and all sorts of transparent squid. Come to think of it, giant squid are your only friends here. And you’re like a king to them.

In general, hanging out close to the ocean floor is pretty boring. You sleep and eat — that’s all. It would be best if you swam higher to get more snacks. You rise, and the water around you becomes brighter. More and more sunlight reaches this place. And you finally meet other inhabitants of the ocean.

Turtles, sharks, jellyfish, octopuses, and stingrays dart away as soon as they notice you. All of them, except jellyfish. They don’t care. You look for a place to eat and notice a shoal of fish. Great, here’s lunch.

After you’ve eaten, you stay there, scaring fish and dolphins just for fun. You like the way you can control your tentacles. You have 10 of them! It’s impossible to put into words what you feel, but imagine that the fingers on your hands have become huge, like pool cues.

And it’s incredible! You can extend your tentacles to be as long as a passenger Boeing! Also, you have suction cups on them! You can grab anything so tightly that no creature will slip away from you. Thanks to the tentacles, you swim fast.

First, you move them in different directions, then press them together, propelling yourself forward. Strong streams of water that you create push all the fish aside. You notice a blue whale. It’s the largest mammal in the world. But next to you, it looks like a puppy.

So, you swim, eat, scare fish and other marine creatures and... that’s it. Your life is kinda boring. And how long will it last? A hundred years? A thousand? You want to have some fun, so you swim up to the surface — and get almost blinded by bright sunlight. You try to get used to it.

The water is quiet. There’s no wind. You look around and notice a tiny dot ahead. Wow! It’s a large wooden fishing ship with sails. Finally, you will have some fun! You can’t wait to see people and tell them about yourself!

So, you’re happily swimming toward it. But if someone was watching you, you’d probably look pretty scary! You get stuck in a fishing net. It’s thin, so you easily tear it apart and rise to the surface. The people on the deck are terrified. They scream and run in different directions.

“Hey, guys! Where are you going? I just wanna hang out with you!” They seem so small. Fishers throw harpoons and axes at you, but you don’t feel any pain. You put one tentacle on the wooden deck and accidentally break it. The whole ship is fragile, like a matchbox. Okay, it’s better not to touch it.

You turn around and accidentally flip the ship over. All the people that were on board are now in the water. Fortunately, you have enough tentacles to save them all. You catch every fisher and see the horror in their eyes. Someone even faints.

You put the ship back on the water and help the people return to the deck. Then you push the boat away and swim toward land. But you decide not to show yourself to people on the shore. Those sailors you saved will tell everyone how they survived meeting a giant monster. Everyone will talk about how terrible you are, but no one will mention that you also saved them. How unfair!

You return to the ocean depths and fall asleep. Some strange sounds wake you up. It’s like water dripping from a tap into a sink. You open your eyes and see faint flashes around. Oh, that’s interesting. You swim up and realize that a thunderstorm has woken you up.

It seems rather severe. The sky is black, and the waves are huge! You notice a big vessel sailing amongst this chaos. This ship is different from the one you’ve seen before. It’s made of iron. And it has no sails because it’s a modern cargo ship!

It seems that you’ve been asleep for a couple of hundred years. The people on board notice you and fire a signal flare. A bright red light blinds you. You spread your tentacles and accidentally push the ship. It’s heavy and doesn’t flip over.

It seems that technology was developing while you were sleeping. The storm is getting stronger. The ship is rolling from side to side. You try to hold it with your tentacles, but it scares the people on board. They scream, and you understand their reaction.

A colossal monster has come out of the black depths and grabbed their ship. It’s unpleasant to see that they’re afraid of you, so you decide to swim away. Offended, you’re hiding close to the ocean floor.

It turns out it’s not much fun being the Kraken. You can only hang out with fish, but they can’t talk. People are afraid of you, and you don’t want to make them uncomfortable. You feel so alone in this world. You eat your lunch and go back to sleep.

“Hey, Mr. Kraken? Can you hear me?” a voice says. You wake up and shudder, terrified. Who said that? Were all the stories about the Flying Dutchman true? Have you just heard some phantom speaking to you?

“I understand you’re confused, Mr. Kraken. So, swim up to the surface, and you’ll find out everything.” A few minutes later, you come out of the water and see a huge flying ship. It’s floating right above the water! But the most fantastic thing is that people on the deck are not afraid of you! They look at you with interest and even with some sympathy.

You notice a man in a strange helmet among them. “Hi, it’s me talking to you thanks to this telepathy device. You can think about anything too, and I’ll hear you.” It’s the 24th century.

People have invented technologies for communicating with animals and fish. They found out that almost all creatures have no thoughts and live following their instincts. But then, people detected some brain activity coming from the ocean depths.

They discovered YOU. You seem to be one of the most intelligent beings on the planet. And people are very interested in communicating with you. Finally, the centuries of your loneliness are over!