A STORY OF STEVEO by a 12-year-old with way too much free ti


Sep 1, 2003

Holy crap!” yelled Dave. Steve O’Shea perked up. He ran to the new guy, who was only nineteen. He was staring riveted to the monitor. Steve looked in, and his heartbeat stopped.
Staring at the camera, which was suspended deep in the ocean off New Zealand, was sixty feet of the most impressive creature Steve had ever hoped do see. Changing color quickly from bloodred to pink to white, it hovered there, ominously moving its eight arms and two long tentacles, undulating its triangular fin. The huge, bullet-shaped mantle opened and closed. And those huge, round, pale eyes showed close-up in the camera.
“Holy crap,” said Dave again. “Is that…”
“It is,” said Steve, breathless with wonder.
After watching the monstrous squid for a few more minutes, Steve raised his voice.
“Lower all the other cameras! We’ve got an Archi!”
The few who weren’t on deck lowering the cables were riveted to the monitor and the huge squid there. It was gazing at the camera, obviously interested.
“Wow…” said Stevo. “That thing is huge!”
Pretty much the entire crew of the boat was thinking the same thing, amazed and overjoyed to see the fabled Architeuthis alive in its natural habitat.
Then it began to rise up. Steve instructed the cameramen to follow the beast upwards, and, as if filled with helium, it slowly floated towards the surface.
The cameras tracked the squid’s progress upwards, up and up and up. The squid was undulating its massive fins, its huge invertebrate eyes staring palely at the camera. Its tentacles writhed. It moved upwards, ever so slowly… Meanwhile, Stevo had realized that this was a female, and was trying to figure out other things. Except… there was one thing.
If the squid breaks the surface, it may well be what those ‘Kraken’ people were saying it was like. Maybe it’ll be just like The Beast or 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Stevo thought. Maybe it’ll pull them with those toothed suckers toward that beak.
Or maybe, just maybe, it won’t. Maybe it’ll be a calm animal, Steve thought.
But it wasn’t.

The Archi broke the surface. A few people, with handheld video cameras, watched as the sixty-foot female squid emerged in a roar of water. Everyone held their breath. Then they let it out in screams.
“Oh, CRAP!” someone yelled. Stevo silently agreed.
A huge tentacle shot out at Steve, missing him by inches. The eight arms and two tentacles flailed madly about. That was when Dave came pooping up, bearing bottles of the tranquilizing fluid used in Benchley’s Beast.
“Where did you get those from?” Stevo said.
“I dunno,” Said Dave, uncapping both and hurling them into the water. The squid’s tentacles stopped waving, and someone secured a rope to its mantle. In an aquarium, this squid could provide some valuable research.
“What do you mean, ‘I dunno?’” said Steve.
“They sort of appeared out of thin air, just when I needed them.”
Steve had seen Beast once. He inspected the bottles. “These are the same used in that old Benchley squid novel. This is just getting weird.”
“I have a theory, Steve…”
“I think that the author if this story must be twelve years old, so he doesn’t care about logical improbabilities at all.”
Steve grinned. “Next you’ll be telling me the squid comes back conscious right now.”
Suddenly, the squid roared alive again, all ten appendages flailing violently, gabbing at anything within reach. Two long feeding tentacles shot for Stevo.
“Heeeeeelp!” he yelled.
And the squid went limp.
“Okaaaaaaay…” said Stevo. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“No kidding.”
“Well, let’s get this sucker back to the aquarium.”

Kiakoura, as the Archi had been named, swam slowly around her tank. Steve grinned at her. She had been in captivity for a month now, and was doing fine. Her aquarium was no less than four hundred feet deep and a mile wide, square, with electrified netting at the top to prevent escape. Kiakoura the Architeuthis was the world’s greatest aquarium attraction in history.

Stevo, however, STILL doesn’t trust me. You see, as I’m the author, I can do whatever I want with his life. I think he is plotting.[/i]


TONMO Supporter
Nov 19, 2002

Dosidicus, how do you post from the future? This is obviously a report transmitted back in time from after Steve's expedition next year. Very clever!

By the way, who is Dave?

Most amusing! :roflmao:

Steve O'Shea

TONMO Supporter
Nov 19, 2002

Steveo will respond - he needs an evening and a glass of wine; jolly good stuff Alex! I'll name my first-born Architeuthis after you.