“Bureaucratic bloody bullshit!” bellowed Gary, to a shocked audience of fishmen. “We can’t start the business, unless I locate this bloody hermit. Bros, what are we gonna do?”

  “You could try asking for help,” said Gorbachev.

  “What do you know about hermits?”

  “Might know a guy,” said Gorbachev.

  “An actual hermit?”

  “A guy who knows a guy.”

  “And the guy he knows is a hermit?” asked Gary.

  “Correct.”

  “A crown-approved hermit?”

  “Hard to say.”

  Gary sighed. “Well, it’s the best lead we’ve got. So, where do we find this mythical hermit?”

  “Want me to draw you a map?”

  “I’d prefer if we used a real one,” said Gary, opening his map app and handing over the phone.

  “If we just look at the contour of the bays…” Gorbachev twirled his finger at random, then plonked it down on their destination.

  “Tāwhitokino? That’s like… wildly inaccessible. You have to hike for an hour just to get there.”

  “Hence the hermit,” said Gorbachev.

  “…That’s a fair point,” Gary admitted, feeling they might be onto something at last.

  With the destination decided, they climbed into Gary’s station wagon and roared off up the road. Forty minutes later, they arrived at Kawakawa Bay, where the hike to Tāwhitikino began.

  And as they set off on what promised to be a long-ass walk, Gary suddenly realised he’d forgotten to check the tide. The beach was accessible only at low tide, and the current tide? Delightfully high.

  “Well, we’re off to a real good start,” Gary muttered. “Bros, what do we do now?”

  “You do know you’re rolling with fishmen, right?” said Gorbachev.

  “Which means?”

  “We can summon a leviathan as transport!” Greg enthused.

  “Do we have to go by leviathan?” Gary grumbled. “From memory, it’s, uh… pretty hard on the arms.”

  “Aren’t you embarrassed to publicly declare your weakness?”

  “This from the guy who has only one transport option,” said Gary. “I mean, can you even control the ocean anymore or are you, shall we say, losing your grip?”

  Greg was a sucker for manipulation and wholeheartedly took the bait. “Name your creature, and I will summon it!”

  “Okay,” said Gary. “What else you got?”

  “For pure speed,” said Gideon, “you can’t beat hitching a ride on a school of kingfish. But if survival’s your game, I’d recommend your run-of-the-mill turtle raft!”

  “Turtle raft it is,” said Gary, who was keen to continue living.

  He no longer questioned the bizarre choices he was making—the hermit quest, the turtle raft.

  That was his life now as a budding tech overlord.

  He watched as Greg spoke to the sea in a strange, clicking tongue. The fishman raised his arm, beckoned, and in came the raft—twenty-five turtles in total, swimming in a tight formation.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” asked Gideon.

  What Gary was waiting for was an idea of how exactly to climb aboard. He went with a kneeling technique, crawling from the shoreline onto the waiting raft of turtles. Sure, it didn’t look pretty or at all coordinated, but after one awkward minute, Gary was turtle rafting.

  One thing you should know about turtle rafts (if you should ever have the fortune to ride one) is that they can disband in an instant. Especially upon spotting food. And halfway to Tāwhitikino, they saw some pretty irresistible seaweed.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  A grumbling, clicking sound emitted from the raft—incomprehensible to Gary, but to the turtles, a rich, musical language.

  “Is that Poseidon’s Beard??” asked a hungry turtle, eyeing up some particularly tasty seaweed. “That’s, like, my favourite brand! Dad used to get it for us as a substitute for quality time.”

  The promise of Poseidon’s Beard? proved too much for the ravenous turtles. The raft rapidly disbanded, and Gary was cast into the sea.

  “Bros, what the hell?” cried Gary, spluttering as he alternated between furious water treading and a panicked doggy paddle.

  “Powerful hints of detritus,” clicked a happy turtle, “and a satisfying barnacle crunch!”

  “I could eat Poseidon’s Beard? for hours,” chuckled another.

  Turtles frequently did eat Poseidon’s Beard? for hours, because, these days, it was loaded with highly addictive MSG. And while the hopelessly addicted turtles satisfied their cravings, Gary was drowning.

  “Help,” he gurgled as Gideon swam alongside. He threw out a flailing arm, gripping hard to the fishman’s shoulder.

  “You need to stay calm,” said Gideon. “This might take a while.”

  “What might?” said Gary, who couldn’t comprehend all the clicking.

  What they were saying—or rather, singing—was a familiar and irritatingly catchy jingle.

  “It’s crispy, it’s crunchy, it’s briny and bold!”

  “Harvested fresh—or at least that’s what we’re told!”

  “With umami so strong, you’ll fall to your knees.”

  “Poseidon’s Beard?—it’s far more addictive than cheese!”

  The song only served to infuriate Greg. It wasn’t just the cheesy, hook-laden melody, it was the message, and worse still, the inherent threat to his power.

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves!” he clicked. “Giving up your sovereignty to that mass-produced junk food.”

  “I could quit anytime I want,” said a tweaking turtle, who honestly thought he could.

  “But why would you?” clicked an enthusiastic creature, who was, to use the modern term, fan-turtling out. “My tastes buds are stimulated, and my reward system is in overdrive!”

  “They design that shit so you’ll always want more,” roared Greg. “BIG SEAWEED? is controlling you, playing you for fools.”

  “Aren’t you controlling us, too?” sneered a particularly suspicious turtle. “And if the choice is between Poseidon’s Beard?, and rafting around a random human, then I, for one, vote for the Beard.”

  “In kelp we trust,” declared a turtle with almost religious zeal.

  “Can somebody please help!” said Gary as Gideon struggled to keep him afloat.

  “How about this?” Gorbachev clicked. “I’ll buy you a crate of Poseidon’s Beard? when, and only when, you finish the job.”

  “Reform the raft,” said the greedy turtles, and in the nick of time, Gary was saved.

  The rest of the voyage was uneventful, and twenty minutes later, the turtle raft docked on the golden sands of Tāwhitikino.

  Gary breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then, a sigh of rage, as he realised, he’d ruined yet another phone.

  His mood wasn’t improved when a twirling stick smacked him across the chops.

  “What the hell?” Gary exclaimed, spinning around.

  A shadowy figure ducked behind the trees in the distance.

  “Can we just acknowledge that I got hit in the face by a random stick?”

  “I’d prefer to acknowledge you silently dealing with it,” said Greg.

  But then—WHAM! A second stick smacked the smirk off his face.

  “Who dares to assault the lords of land and sea?” he blustered.

  “Me!” said a gravelly voice, and moments later, a man appeared.

  He had a beard to rival Poseidon’s, and a face caked in dirt. He was wiry and wild and most definitely a hermit.

  As he approached, Gary spotted his shining golden badge and read the words: Crown-Approved Hermit upon it.

  “YES!” cheered Gary, which may have been premature.

  “Ugh. Fishmen. Again,” said the hermit.

  “You’re familiar with fishmen?” said Gary, caught off guard.

  “They turn up every few decades or so, try to crown a king, then disappear back into the sea when it inevitably implodes.”

  “No, we don’t!” said Greg.

  “Do we?” Gideon asked.

  “Anyway, we’ve already been crowned this time,” Greg insisted.

  “Kings of the two-dollar store,” laughed Gary. “But we’re not here to talk about fishmen. We’re here to talk about you, a Crown-Approved Hermit.”

  “What makes you think I’m a Crown-Approved Hermit?”

  “You’re wearing a badge that says: Hi, my name is, ‘Crown-approved hermit!’”

  “Yeah, I don’t care for the badge myself,” sighed the hermit. “Feels a little reductive. Is that all I am, do you think? A box to be ticked? A spanner in somebody else’s works?”

  “Bro, I don’t even know you,” said Gary. “Now, can you sign this form so we can get the hell out of here.”

  Gary stuffed the form into the unwashed hands of the hermit, who took it and began to read.

  “Should have known you were a bloody tech startup!” he growled.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” spluttered the hermit. “Everything. What do you think I’m escaping from? The valueless parasites who are ruining existence. They’ve got us rotting in bed alone, riddled with anxiety disorders, addicted to our own enslavement—needlessly addicted by the mad kings of tech. They don’t give a shit how disastrous their products are, as long as they harvest every possible second of our attention. Because that’s the game these days.”

  “Total. Fucking. Control.”

  “That’s our game, too,” said Greg, who felt total fucking control was a good thing.

  “Well, in that case, there’s no way I’m signing.”

  “Greg, what the hell?” muttered Gary.

  “I thought he’d understand! He’s not that different from us, you know.”

  The hermit recoiled at the words. “I am nothing like you.”

  “You say you’re against control,” said Greg. “And yet, here you are, out in the wilderness—who’s controlling you?”

  “Nobody,” said the hermit firmly. Then, after a moment’s hesitation. “Right?”

  At that, Greg leaned in for the kill.

  “Exactly. You’re at the top of your own hierarchy. You might even say… in total fucking control.”

  The hermit froze, his brain spiralling under the bombshell of logic. And, unable to cope, he sat and began to cry.

  Gary quickly shoved the form into his tear-stained hands, and he reluctantly signed it.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” said the dejected hermit, his entire belief system crumbling. “We’re all under control of something, even if that something is me.”

  “Alright, catch you later,” said Gary, leaving the man to his predicament.

  By now, the tide was favourable, and so, with the completed form in hand, they were free begin the long hike back.