Denizanasi
By Luke Frostick
The summer this year was the hottest on record, as the year before had been. My city, K, suffered, breathing in the heat and concrete dust. The citizens were trying to go about their daily lives when the jellyfish came, millions upon millions.
K is an idyllic city in many ways. A place where the people nap through the call to prayer, confident that they are pious enough to do without. A place where the dry hills, covered with quiet fig groves and allotments, slope down to the sea in no great hurry to get there. K itself is built on a large bay (it takes one a good couple of hours to go from one end to the other by car) called locally the Silver Shield for its perfect circular shape and the way the winter light dances on the surface.
This year, however, the bay, usually the source of so much beauty, was filled with jellyfish. Some vagary of the current and wind meant that they were swept into the bay in multitude hordes, filling up its harbours, nooks and crannies.
The first to cause a fuss were the fishermen. Standing on our city's piers, they complained that they weren’t catching any fish, only slimy, translucent things that, although not poisonous, were as unpleasant to look at as smell. The fishermen even started holding small protests carrying signs and chanting slogans: “Jellies are not fish! Defend the Shield! Protect our fish so we can catch them!” and so on.
The municipality responded quickly, banning fishing and placing police buses near the piers and wharfs to discourage the practice.
The summer wore on and the jellyfish kept coming. People speculated about their source in the tea-houses, around office photocopiers and in the bars of the city. Some blamed the CIA, others the municipality itself, some global warming, pollution, overfishing, and a small but persistently vocal minority blamed it on refugees.
Still the squishy little horrors came. Ferry drivers complained that it was like sailing through rice pudding, and seaside restaurants bemoaned that the smell of rotting jellyfish was putting customers off. Slightly less reputable shops didn’t mind so much, and actually found their complaint numbers fell.
Action was finally taken when they started filling up the sea near the Ocean View ★★★★★ Hotel, Spa and Exclusive Beach-side Complex. At deadly risk of losing a third of their hotel’s name to these prehistoric sludge creatures, Osman Bey, head of the Osman Group, that in turn owned the Ocean View ★★★★★ Hotel, Spa and Prehistoric Sludge Monster Aquarium, sprang into action. All four of his newspapers ran headlines declaring that, with good cooperation between the wise leadership of the municipality and innovative business leaders, the problem could be solved.
Osman group’s TV network was there to capture the moment Osman Bey went in person to meet the Mayor. He came down the steps declaring that he had been offered a contract to solve this problem, and as soon as he got back to his office he would call up the most eminent scientist in the town, Professor Zara.
The snag, however, was that once back in his mighty, leather office chair, his secretary informed him that Professor Zara was now working at a Beijing university. The second best scientist, Professor Ibrahim, was in Oxford, and the third and fourth both in Berlin.
The newspapers the next day bemoaned that Professor Zara was away, but that Professor Mazhar was more than qualified. Think pieces ran celebrating the city's education policies, which had produced such learned thinkers.
Professor Mazhar set to work; deep in his lab he thought and experimented, approaching the problem in as many different ways as he could.
One week later, he was ready. He presented his plans for a new industrial facility, which closely resembled a gigantic vacuum cleaner with the notable addition of several rotating knife chambers.
Osman group bid for and won the lucrative contract to build the super-sized vacuum cleaner and knife chambers. Municipal land by the sea was given over to the project, and large amounts of money sloshed around to insure that the facility would be long-lasting enough to solve any future jelly incursions.
“The great thing about sloshing government money is that it ends up everywhere,” Osman Group's boardroom happily noted.
Work went forward, and UNESCO reports, saying that the new plan would do irreparable damage to the historic layout of the district and block the sea views of a number of small Medieval Greek churches, were dismissed. Think piece columnists weighed in on the debate, suggesting that this was unwanted interference from a foreign organisation that, in all likelihood, had an agenda that K wouldn't solve its jellyfish problem. Local complaints to the planning office, along the same lines, were not reported on. Moreover, the columnist gushed, the construction and maintenance of the facility would create jobs for the local area, which would far exceed any loss of tourism.
Osman Group’s workers sprang into action and the plant, although rough to the eye, was in operation by the end of the month. The Mayor, with a flock of tame news reporters, was there to observe the first jellyfish being cut up. It was impressive, jellyfish being pulled out of the ocean to be sliced into goo. The reporters reported the efficiency of the dismemberment. Though they didn't mention the outflow pipe where jellyfish chunks were pumped back into the sea for disposal.
Critics, in a few self-published papers, would later point out that not much had been changed by the factory's operation, and that the biomass of live jellyfish had just been replaced with an equal amount of dead jellyfish.
But Professor Mazhar had anticipated this possible side effect of the factory. Deep in Osman Group's chemical laboratories, he had bred sharks with a unique ability to eat jellyfish. With much pomp these bullet-shaped creatures were released into the Silver Shield.
The problem with the sharks, it turned out, was that, not unlike the fishermen, they preferred to eat other things rather than chopped up jellyfish.
At that point, certain members of The Osman Group were ready to wash their hands of the project (although not in the sea). Some board members suggested that, because their contract didn't explicitly prohibit the annihilation of all sea life except for chemically altered sharks, they had completed their contract (Osman Bey himself is reported worrying that by doing something about the sharks, they might be admitting fault in some way). However, the Professor got to work once more. For all his flaws, he was not one to quit.
In the deepest labs of Osman Group’s chemical engineering laboratories, an anti-shark serum was developed and, under cover of darkness, released into the sea.
Not being an expert in science myself, I can’t say why the serum reacted with the jellyfish bits in the way it did. They expanded, fusing together into huge, snotty blobs which floated on the surface of the sea, capturing any and all sea-life within them, including the disorientated and quite grumpy sharks.
The wind blew in off the ocean, pushing the jelly blobs towards the shore and onto the land.
This occurred during the early evening, so the citizens of K were out and about having drinks, preparing for parties or eating with their families. People were sucked into the blobs when they touched them, and others mauled by the sharks stuck within.
The city seemed to be overrun. The anti-fisherman police vans, where all summer long riot police had drunk tea and eaten cheese poğaça were, that day, mysteriously unmanned. Hope was now in short supply.
The Mayor, from his situation room in the city hall, spoke on TV and called on his supporters around the city to take to the streets, to fight the jellyfish wherever they were found. He told them that their resolve could save the day.
The people responded, surging out to confront the city’s greatest enemy since the Mongols. Even those who had criticised the Mayor and his litany of failures fought with the bravery of Seljuk horse archers, or Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s Janissaries. For even though they disapproved of the Mayor and his policies, he was the Mayor, and no unelected blob monsters were going to override their democracy. Even Mustafa Kemal himself couldn't have asked for more from the people of K as they did battle with their inhuman enemy.
They fought with improvised weapons, to little avail. But they pushed on. They attempted to ram the blobs back with their cars, well-practiced university students hurled rocks, the proprietors of local restaurants hacked at the blobs with their döner knives, and local mobsters and pimps fired their pistols into the blobs to no noticeable effect. Eventually they stumbled on the key to success: fire! Raki bottles were pressed into service as Molotovs and improvised flame-throwers made from cooking-gas canisters and aerosol cans. Little by little the jelly-blobs were burned back as gouts of cooking-gas and hurled Yenitovs melted the jellies into spunk.
By morning, the blobs of quivering jelly flesh were defeated, the town was a ruin, buildings were damaged, cars written off, not to mention the dead sharks and large amounts of gelatinous gunk spread on almost every surface of the city.
The Mayor was back on television as soon as the city offices’ stairs were hosed off, to declare victory. His supporters applauded when he announced that he had been able to save the city from this most foul invasion.
K is an idyllic city in many ways. A place where the people nap through the call to prayer, confident that they are pious enough to do without. A place where the dry hills, covered with quiet fig groves and allotments, slope down to the sea in no great hurry to get there. K itself is built on a large bay (it takes one a good couple of hours to go from one end to the other by car) called locally the Silver Shield for its perfect circular shape and the way the winter light dances on the surface.
This year, however, the bay, usually the source of so much beauty, was filled with jellyfish. Some vagary of the current and wind meant that they were swept into the bay in multitude hordes, filling up its harbours, nooks and crannies.
The first to cause a fuss were the fishermen. Standing on our city's piers, they complained that they weren’t catching any fish, only slimy, translucent things that, although not poisonous, were as unpleasant to look at as smell. The fishermen even started holding small protests carrying signs and chanting slogans: “Jellies are not fish! Defend the Shield! Protect our fish so we can catch them!” and so on.
The municipality responded quickly, banning fishing and placing police buses near the piers and wharfs to discourage the practice.
The summer wore on and the jellyfish kept coming. People speculated about their source in the tea-houses, around office photocopiers and in the bars of the city. Some blamed the CIA, others the municipality itself, some global warming, pollution, overfishing, and a small but persistently vocal minority blamed it on refugees.
Still the squishy little horrors came. Ferry drivers complained that it was like sailing through rice pudding, and seaside restaurants bemoaned that the smell of rotting jellyfish was putting customers off. Slightly less reputable shops didn’t mind so much, and actually found their complaint numbers fell.
Action was finally taken when they started filling up the sea near the Ocean View ★★★★★ Hotel, Spa and Exclusive Beach-side Complex. At deadly risk of losing a third of their hotel’s name to these prehistoric sludge creatures, Osman Bey, head of the Osman Group, that in turn owned the Ocean View ★★★★★ Hotel, Spa and Prehistoric Sludge Monster Aquarium, sprang into action. All four of his newspapers ran headlines declaring that, with good cooperation between the wise leadership of the municipality and innovative business leaders, the problem could be solved.
Osman group’s TV network was there to capture the moment Osman Bey went in person to meet the Mayor. He came down the steps declaring that he had been offered a contract to solve this problem, and as soon as he got back to his office he would call up the most eminent scientist in the town, Professor Zara.
The snag, however, was that once back in his mighty, leather office chair, his secretary informed him that Professor Zara was now working at a Beijing university. The second best scientist, Professor Ibrahim, was in Oxford, and the third and fourth both in Berlin.
The newspapers the next day bemoaned that Professor Zara was away, but that Professor Mazhar was more than qualified. Think pieces ran celebrating the city's education policies, which had produced such learned thinkers.
Professor Mazhar set to work; deep in his lab he thought and experimented, approaching the problem in as many different ways as he could.
One week later, he was ready. He presented his plans for a new industrial facility, which closely resembled a gigantic vacuum cleaner with the notable addition of several rotating knife chambers.
Osman group bid for and won the lucrative contract to build the super-sized vacuum cleaner and knife chambers. Municipal land by the sea was given over to the project, and large amounts of money sloshed around to insure that the facility would be long-lasting enough to solve any future jelly incursions.
“The great thing about sloshing government money is that it ends up everywhere,” Osman Group's boardroom happily noted.
Work went forward, and UNESCO reports, saying that the new plan would do irreparable damage to the historic layout of the district and block the sea views of a number of small Medieval Greek churches, were dismissed. Think piece columnists weighed in on the debate, suggesting that this was unwanted interference from a foreign organisation that, in all likelihood, had an agenda that K wouldn't solve its jellyfish problem. Local complaints to the planning office, along the same lines, were not reported on. Moreover, the columnist gushed, the construction and maintenance of the facility would create jobs for the local area, which would far exceed any loss of tourism.
Osman Group’s workers sprang into action and the plant, although rough to the eye, was in operation by the end of the month. The Mayor, with a flock of tame news reporters, was there to observe the first jellyfish being cut up. It was impressive, jellyfish being pulled out of the ocean to be sliced into goo. The reporters reported the efficiency of the dismemberment. Though they didn't mention the outflow pipe where jellyfish chunks were pumped back into the sea for disposal.
Critics, in a few self-published papers, would later point out that not much had been changed by the factory's operation, and that the biomass of live jellyfish had just been replaced with an equal amount of dead jellyfish.
But Professor Mazhar had anticipated this possible side effect of the factory. Deep in Osman Group's chemical laboratories, he had bred sharks with a unique ability to eat jellyfish. With much pomp these bullet-shaped creatures were released into the Silver Shield.
The problem with the sharks, it turned out, was that, not unlike the fishermen, they preferred to eat other things rather than chopped up jellyfish.
At that point, certain members of The Osman Group were ready to wash their hands of the project (although not in the sea). Some board members suggested that, because their contract didn't explicitly prohibit the annihilation of all sea life except for chemically altered sharks, they had completed their contract (Osman Bey himself is reported worrying that by doing something about the sharks, they might be admitting fault in some way). However, the Professor got to work once more. For all his flaws, he was not one to quit.
In the deepest labs of Osman Group’s chemical engineering laboratories, an anti-shark serum was developed and, under cover of darkness, released into the sea.
Not being an expert in science myself, I can’t say why the serum reacted with the jellyfish bits in the way it did. They expanded, fusing together into huge, snotty blobs which floated on the surface of the sea, capturing any and all sea-life within them, including the disorientated and quite grumpy sharks.
The wind blew in off the ocean, pushing the jelly blobs towards the shore and onto the land.
This occurred during the early evening, so the citizens of K were out and about having drinks, preparing for parties or eating with their families. People were sucked into the blobs when they touched them, and others mauled by the sharks stuck within.
The city seemed to be overrun. The anti-fisherman police vans, where all summer long riot police had drunk tea and eaten cheese poğaça were, that day, mysteriously unmanned. Hope was now in short supply.
The Mayor, from his situation room in the city hall, spoke on TV and called on his supporters around the city to take to the streets, to fight the jellyfish wherever they were found. He told them that their resolve could save the day.
The people responded, surging out to confront the city’s greatest enemy since the Mongols. Even those who had criticised the Mayor and his litany of failures fought with the bravery of Seljuk horse archers, or Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s Janissaries. For even though they disapproved of the Mayor and his policies, he was the Mayor, and no unelected blob monsters were going to override their democracy. Even Mustafa Kemal himself couldn't have asked for more from the people of K as they did battle with their inhuman enemy.
They fought with improvised weapons, to little avail. But they pushed on. They attempted to ram the blobs back with their cars, well-practiced university students hurled rocks, the proprietors of local restaurants hacked at the blobs with their döner knives, and local mobsters and pimps fired their pistols into the blobs to no noticeable effect. Eventually they stumbled on the key to success: fire! Raki bottles were pressed into service as Molotovs and improvised flame-throwers made from cooking-gas canisters and aerosol cans. Little by little the jelly-blobs were burned back as gouts of cooking-gas and hurled Yenitovs melted the jellies into spunk.
By morning, the blobs of quivering jelly flesh were defeated, the town was a ruin, buildings were damaged, cars written off, not to mention the dead sharks and large amounts of gelatinous gunk spread on almost every surface of the city.
The Mayor was back on television as soon as the city offices’ stairs were hosed off, to declare victory. His supporters applauded when he announced that he had been able to save the city from this most foul invasion.