I was supposed to claim our spots for the eeling, but week after week, I kept putting it off. I had read the papers. I understood the forecast on land was bleak—overheating, overcrowding, overwhelm of every sort. Holes in our governments, holes in the ozone layer, holes in the fabric of society itself. Across the world, a thousand crises raged large and small, such that any day might be humanity’s last. What we needed, everyone seemed to agree, was a singular answer to our myriad problems. An unprecedented pivot, before it was too late. A lot of time and money and effort had gone into finding a swift way to deal with it all. I just hadn’t expected it would require turning into an eel.
Only in its absurdity did the remedy make sense. As an eel, one need not fear windstorms in Finland or wildfires in Australia, flooding in Kenya or cyclones in Bangladesh. Aquatic living did not require credit scores or corporate surveillance. No risk of man-made famine, no hospitals being bombed. In the ocean, there would be no housing crises. Eels don’t need welfare or drug rehabilitation. An eel cannot wield an AK-47.
Global leaders agreed for the first time in decades: the eeling would bring the world together. A fresh slate. A new beginning. A righting of all wrongs. After all, we evolved from fish, they said. We’d simply erred on our way up the evolutionary ladder. An idyllic future was on the horizon. Or rather, in the tranquil waters beneath it.
We were told to act fast. We needed to hurry before things got worse on land. Plus, ocean temperatures were rising at staggering rates. The eels, they said—the people as eels—could survive in the ocean as the water got hotter, but only if we started in cooler degrees. Something about oceanic assimilation. If we came too late, all bets were off. Governments even agreed to defray the cost—the first thing we’d ever truly gotten for free.
In San Francisco, where my wife Cynthia and I lived, shoreline buildings were already underwater, and brownouts plunged us daily into the dark. Earthquakes shivered beneath our feet, the “Big One” a rumbling threat at all times. Not to mention the dangers from discrimination and gun violence and criminalized poverty. The eeling, theoretically, was the answer to it all, but from the get-go, it didn’t feel right in my heart. Cynthia and I discussed the concept over dinner.
“I can’t think of any good reason not to,” Cynthia said. “I wouldn’t want to stay with everyone else gone.”
Our dinner table was pushed up against the window overlooking the street six stories below. When we’d first moved in, I’d looked out at the view and felt we’d arrived; we’d created a home for our family of two. Since then, the windowsill had gone grimy with wildfire ash, and several buildings in our sightline had been newly condemned. Still, the evening light was creamy and golden, sunrays shimmering off mirrored windows.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit reactive?” I asked.
Cynthia tilted her head.
“It’s better than nothing. You’ve been saying for months that someone ought to do something.”
I couldn’t disagree that chaos was mounting. Every morning, I woke with my nerves wound tight.
“I’d just prefer something else,” I said.
“Okay, then. What’s your big solution?”
I didn’t have a big solution and Cynthia knew it. I couldn’t even fully explain why we’d be eels, specifically. I’d read the research, but in truth, the jargon overwhelmed me. Something about the eel’s transformational capacity. Something about compression, maybe, plus variable sea levels, and the fact that an eel is a simpler shape than, say, an anglerfish. We could retain our human memories in our eel brains, they said. The transformation would be painless, our new lifestyle second nature.
I mumbled something about being uncertain. All my life, I had gotten so lucky. I didn’t trust I would have the same fortune as an eel. The researchers insisted we’d be released in places with no natural predators, but what about unnatural predators? I had taken biology in high school—an organism with no predators is an invasive species. Populations balloon. Resources dry up.
Someone skateboarded down the far sidewalk below with a giant poster reading, “Eel Me, Baby!” This elicited cheers from a cluster of people loitering outside a closed-down café.
“We need to get signed up,” Cynthia said.
“I heard the website crashed.”
“It’ll be up again soon.”
“Not exactly confidence-inspiring though, right?”
Cynthia set down her fork with food still on her plate.
“Tell me what you’re worried about. Be honest,” she said.
I reminded myself that Cynthia loved me. Cynthia listened. If she’d grown tired of me, she could’ve left at any time.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I really wanted to mean it.
Cynthia watched me closely for a moment then lifted her fork.
“If you’re sure you’re okay with it, I’ll sign us up when the website’s fixed,” she said.
“I’ll feel better if I do it myself.”
“You’re sure?” she asked. “You won’t get cold fins?”
I forced away a grimace and shook my head. Cynthia raised an eyebrow and tried to hold back a smile.
“You’re scared I’ll fall in love with some sexy crustacean?”
I opened my mouth, shut it again, blubbered wordlessly across the table.“See?” she laughed. “You’ll make a great eel.”
I loved Cynthia as much then as I ever had. I grinned and rubbed my eye with a fist.
“You’re wearing your contacts,” Cynthia noted.
“Do you like me better in glasses?” I asked.
“I like you in whatever makes you feel good.”
Would she like me in slippery skin and beady eyes? Would she like me open-jawed and blank-faced in the water?
Cynthia took my hand and squeezed it tight. She was perfectly in focus. It was our future that had abruptly gone fuzzy at the edges.
I kept telling Cynthia I’d book our spots, but inevitably, I’d get distracted, hurry out of the apartment before she asked too many questions.
Most people had stopped working. No point in making money now. Those who continued either genuinely loved what they did, or had ended up at the bottom of the waitlist and had to find ways to get by until their eeling date arrived. I needed the sense of rhythm to my days, so I still went to the office each morning, to my corporate high-rise in the heart of San Francisco. I turned on the lights when I arrived at nine, turned them off when I left at night. I took out my own trash, kept my lunch breaks short, sent emails that would never get returned.
To fill excess time, I took walks around the office perimeter, checking to make sure nothing was amiss. I was finishing up an afternoon rotation when I reached the HR office and, on a whim, pushed open the door. File cabinets lined the back wall. I imagined a folder with my name across the front containing my performance reviews, my company headshot, my attendance record, which was nearly perfect.
My friend Barrett often took spontaneous days off work. He insisted no one ever regretted a day off. But I needed work to remind myself I was good. When everything else was breaking down, I could prove my mettle by writing emails. By showing up to meetings with a smile on my face. I sometimes wished Cynthia could come watch me at the office, witness me in my natural habitat. She could note the reliability with which I checked my notifications, the diligence with which I attended presentations. I was always an active participant in meetings. It was my way of saying to everyone involved: I see you. You are valued. We’re in this together.
Yet the day the eeling was announced, my co-workers immediately headed for the stairs, left their laptops behind, open and blinking. The eeling meant they no longer needed to work ninety-hour weeks so they could still pay their rent. They no longer had to fear replacement by a robot. They were released from the agony of kissing their partners goodbye each morning wondering if today was the day they wouldn’t make it home due to natural disaster or immigration raids or some random stranger’s misplaced aggression. I didn’t consider myself a contrarian, but the speed of it made me want to dig in my heels. How, as an eel, would I know I was good? How would I convince myself I was happy?
I wanted to believe a record of my worth lived on somewhere, even if it was only on paper. In the HR office, I tried every drawer, but the files were locked. I returned to my desk and launched into drafting a quarterly report. My typing clicked across the empty floor.
At night I lost myself in scrolling, slouched in bed while the hours slipped past and Cynthia snored fitfully beside me. On every platform, influencers documented their prep, spun stories of how wonderful the eeling would be. Tech bros, cult leaders, svelte white wellness women, all hoping their clout would follow them to the sea.
“Get in early to maximize gains,” they said.
“This is the final step before ascension,” they said.
“We’re entering our aquatic minimalist era,” they said. Like becoming an eel was some kind of phase. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to be part of something bigger. Meanwhile, news headlines applied pressure from all directions: “Global Enthusiasm for Eeling Rises.” “Last Ditch Effort.” “Final Chance for Humankind.”
Now and then, I read rumors about hidden bunkers for the wealthy. Enclaves and safe houses and stockpiles of goods. The individuals in question always denied it. I couldn’t decide what to believe.
There were dissidents, too. They’d pop up on my feed for a day or so, then vanish into algorithmic mist, like the fog not-so-slowly evaporating from San Francisco’s skyline. I heard reports of anti-eeling leaders being silenced or disappeared or arrested. All the more reason for the eeling, people said: who wanted to be human in a world like that?
When it all became too overwhelming, I shut off my phone and closed my eyes and waited for sleep that rarely came.
#
Thursday evenings, I met up with Barrett and our friend Hunter in the back booth of a nearby bar. We talked about everything, from how Hunter had finally come out to his parents as bi to my fears that Cynthia no longer found me attractive. Nothing between us was too serious or too small. On the bar’s last night, we only talked about the eeling.
“What if it’s a trick and on the other end we’re just eels?” I asked. “What if it’s a giant scam and they dump us down there with no memories or personality? We might as well get fished right out for sushi.” I couldn’t bear the thought of swimming listlessly along, stripped of any features that once made me matter. If our current state as humans was the most evolved we’d ever been, I wasn’t optimistic about my prospects going backward. I doubted I’d suddenly gain charisma as an eel.
Barrett looked at me with weary eyes. He and Hunter were both leaving in two days.
“They release us in protected waters. No one’s fishing us out.” He said this in a soothing voice that made me want to scream.
“But how will we find each other?” I asked. “I won’t know what either of you look like as eels.”
“Maybe we should get massive back tattoos with our names,” Barrett said. I had the distinct sense he was trying to lighten the mood. “We just have to hope they’ll still be visible on eelskin.”
“They’d probably get infected. Who’d put ointment on our backs?”
“Should we each cut off a pinky? Or get a weird brand?” I couldn’t tell if Barrett was serious.
“Maybe we come up with a special way of swimming. Something to set us apart,” Hunter said.
“If we lose our memory, we might forget the plan.” Quiet panic rose in my chest.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Barrett said. “We’ll put a message in a bottle explaining absolutely everything. Put our names on the bottle and chuck it in the ocean. Eventually, we’re bound to find it.”
“What if eels can’t read? Or what if it sinks? If you forgot your name, how would you know it was for you? Or what if someone else has the same idea and we intercept their bottle and get ourselves confused?”
Hunter sighed and Barrett laid his head in his hands. They were committed to going through with it. They didn’t want to debate all the ways it could go wrong, all the things they stood to lose. Who would?
“People wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t work,” Hunter said. “That lady was proof.”
Early on, there’d been a woman who was eeled and then changed back in the lab, or so they claimed. She’d done it specifically so she could attest to her positive experiences as an eel. Her name was Judith. They broadcast her interview on every channel.
“I remembered everything. Everything!” Judith said. “My memory was practically better than it is now. And it’s beautiful underwater. It felt so natural. I have no doubt that eeling is the future.”
“What if she only remembered because she became human again?” I asked. “Maybe you forget everything when you turn into an eel, but if you revert to being human, it all comes back. Along with memories of being an eel, I guess.”
“So?” Barrett asked.
“So, no one’s coming back. Am I expected to turn into an eel and forget my whole life? Give up my body? Act like it’s nothing?” I wasn’t even sure if I believed such sentiments, but it felt good to assert the position.
“Have you considered that everything might go perfectly?” Hunter asked.
I didn’t respond. Surely there were other people who shared my fears. But I didn’t know of anyone, famous or otherwise, who said they were staying on land. And if I wasn’t able to find them now, I doubted I’d manage to find them later. Even if I did, it didn’t mean we would be friends. Everyone just wanted to get away from the turmoil. Find a life that felt safer. Colonize the sea.
“We’ll see you there,” Barrett said before he and Hunter left that last night, before they cashed in their one-way tickets to fishdom. They hugged me tight and slapped my back, slang for Hang in there, buddy, and Don’t mess this up. I watched them leave and tried not to dwell on whether or not I’d see them again.
“I’m booking it myself,” Cynthia said, the next night over dinner.
“No, please,” I begged. “Let me do this for us.” I set down my fork loaded with lentils and overcooked rice. We had quietly cut all fish from our diet.
“It’s going to be too late,” Cynthia said. Her eyes were wide with worry.
I loved Cynthia in part because she was so independent. When she left tasks to me, it was a sign of trust. I didn’t want to take that for granted. I just wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Please. I promise.”
I really did mean to do it, eventually. But I liked our life together on land. I didn’t want to be an eel, even if it meant I could live a better life with fewer problems. I didn’t want to have to rebuild it all from scratch, hope I’d fluke my way to happiness again.
“I promise,” I repeated, this time mostly for myself.
“Alright,” Cynthia sighed. “I trust you.”
And then, the chance vanished. An emergency report released late one Saturday predicted large-scale, catastrophic grid failure within the week. The news came overnight while Cynthia was sleeping. After a two-hour grace period to allow for any stragglers, the waitlist was shut, effective immediately. In a matter of days, the remainder of people who’d registered were turned into eels and dumped in the sea. Rich, poor, young, old. Millions of eels. Billions of eels. Numbers I can’t fathom. With them went all the researchers and support staff who made the eeling possible. Anyone left behind was stuck.
Cynthia cried for days. All our loved ones were gone. Our bustling apartment complex had turned into a ghost town. The whole city was still and silent and bare, every sidewalk empty, every window dark. Minor earthquakes trembled for no one. Nothing I could say or do would make it better. Nothing could fix the fact that I’d failed.
I got into the habit of biking to the beach every morning. I sat on the sand and stared at the waves and imagined all of eel-kind out there. Most American eels, we’d been told, were dropped in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida. But it brought me comfort to think that if I dipped my toe in the water over here, then somewhere out where the oceans mingled, I was still connected to Hunter and Barrett. To my bosses and co-workers, my elementary school teachers. To the politicians, the farmers, the midwives, everyone. I hoped they felt safer, wherever they were. Water lapped at my toes and I was strangely certain it was because the eels were calling me from oceans away, flapping their eel-fins in unison, creating distant ripples to tell me they missed me. I hadn’t felt connected to them before, but now, staring out at the endless blue, I did.
Cynthia spent her days roaming the city, trying to determine if the grid had truly collapsed or was merely neglected. After weeks of searching, she came home one night with a frantic light in her eyes. She said she’d discovered a backdoor channel for eeling. Dubious, risky, but the only way.
“Come with me,” she pleaded. She sounded so tired. I stared at my plate of shelf-stable food, the same meal we’d now been eating for weeks. A backdoor channel meant other people were out there.
“Did you hear me?” Cynthia asked. “Come with,” she repeated.
Out our window, there’d been a string of vibrant skies, the most beautiful purple sunsets I’d ever seen. Cynthia thought it was from a distant volcanic eruption. We were still in danger every moment, she said. It was only by chance disaster hadn’t struck. But already, the heavens were returning to blue, and the city, even now, still felt like my home.
“I need some time to think about it,” I said, half-heartedly spearing a freeze-dried pea, which crumbled to dust between the tines of my fork.
I took Cynthia’s silence for understanding, and we finished our dinner in the gathering dark.
Hunter once told me that noiseless places can play tricks on the mind. Something about the absorption of sound waves, the lack of an echo. You start to hear your own blood as it flows through your veins, your churning organs, your every breath. That morning, I woke disoriented and dizzy, like my body already knew something was wrong.
In the silence, I could feel that Cynthia was gone.
I slipped from our bed and drew open the curtains. Quietly, I explored the apartment. She’d packed nothing. Not her nightguard, her notebooks, her long-dead phone. I stood at the window and looked down at the street. I wanted to see Cynthia rounding the corner or emerging from the old café, latte in hand. My pulse rushed in my ears like a far-off scream.
I couldn’t find it within me to be angry. Cynthia had done what she felt she had to do. I hoped she was safe. I hoped she’d remember me.
I still do not wish to become an eel. I don’t even know if it’s possible now. I no longer work. I rarely speak. I occasionally make time to forage for food. I go to the beach. I sit on the sand. I wait for high tide to carry me away.
But I sit too far from the water for any real danger. At most, the swell will reach my bellybutton. The sun climbs. The waves rise. I speculate about where Cynthia is, where Hunter and Barrett are, if they’re happy swimming around out there, if their eel-selves have found each other yet. I never sent that message in a bottle. I got as far as writing the letter, but have yet to find a vessel and send it on its way.
I’m sitting in a good three inches of surf when an eel wriggles up and nestles by my leg. I stare at it in surprise and wonder. I didn’t know there were eels on this stretch of coast.
“Cynthia?” I ask. “Barrett? Hunter?”
The eel looks at me with beady eyes. I don’t sense any recognition in its gaze. Could this eel be a stranger I once passed on the street? Did it swim a thousand miles to be here with me? Or is this a normal eel, one that’s lived here all its life?
I decide it looks content, whatever that means, and for several minutes, we sit there together, the eel resting in the shadow cast by my thigh. Then I shift to relieve a cramp in my calf, and the eel flashes off, a sickle of light.
#
Soon, the tide will start to recede. My skin is all pruned from too long underwater. I stand and drip my way to my bike, head back to my empty apartment building. I trudge up the six flights of stairs to my floor, to the apartment I still keep locked out of habit. I let myself in and go sit at the table. I stare out the window at the widening sky.
