Work Text:
Excerpt from Henry Roberts, famed Marine Biologist:
“I've never been a fan of H. P. Lovecraft or his stories. I just can't see something with so much power choosing destruction over love.
“When I was a boy, there was a local fisherman. He was crazy, I'm pretty sure. Said all kinds of weird stuff. Stuff like ‘“the government is controlling the rain"’ or ‘“they're diluting tin foil so it's less effective at blocking their mind control waves”’, stuff like that. He was kind though. Very nice, everyone loved him and he loved everyone.
“Anyways, he -let's call him George- he claimed he met Cthulhu once. He didn't talk about it much. It was the one thing he would get quiet about. It was also the story that always stuck with me.
“George went fishing alone in his little rowboat. He used a barometer to check if it was gonna rain, and it said no. Cloudy and grey day. He described it as ‘“the moment before you pull the trigger of a rifle aimed at a deer"’. He denied any ‘calms before the storms’, always was adamant that it wasn't calm.
“So George goes fishing, as he usually does. He doesn't catch a thing all day. Not even a nibble. So he decides he's gonna go out further, he needs to eat after all. Sun starts setting and he's rowing out further and further. Eventually he loses sight of land. No problem, his compass will lead him back to land.
“No matter how far George went he didn't get a single bite. Nothing. There's no wind, either. No wind, no waves, no stars, only clouds. He decides to head back now. Checks his compass and notices that the needle is pointing straight ahead. He swears he was heading south this whole time. Out of nowhere the water gets wild. Torrential downpour. Knocks him out of the rowboat.
“So, he eventually finds the boat again, it's overturned and he clambers up the side. The rain stops around him, but not fifty feet away. So George looks over his shoulder and swears he sees a word for word description of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu.
“It had a head like an octopus, he was very specific about the glowing yellow eyes with a black horizontal pupil. Body of a man, or at least the hands of one.
“Cthulhu cupped its hands around the water around George. He doesn't know how long he's staring at it as it walks with its head and hands above water. One time he said it was hours as it moved aimlessly, another time he said it was probably only twenty minutes at most that he was carried. The duration he was carried was the only part of the story that changed.
“Anyways, George is carried by Cthulhu for who knows how long. Eventually, it stops, uncups its hands and lets George and his boat fall gently to shore. George slides down to the sand and looks up at Cthulhu. He always said it smiled. A gentle smile. When we asked him how he could tell it was smiling if its mouth was tentacles, he would say ‘“there are many ways to smile, boy”’.
“So anyways, Cthulhu leaves. Yeah, it just leaves. Nothing evil, no madness aura, just something bringing a guy to shore. George said that it taught him true kindness. And despite him not liking to tell that story, he would tell kids if they asked. No adults, but he'd tell kids.
“So yeah, long story short that's what made me want to become a marine biologist. It wasn't a want to discover a new species or anything, I just wanted to be kind to something that needed help. If we have power we need to use it to elevate those below and around, not use them as stepping stones. I hope George doesn't mind that I told his story, but I hope it inspires others to use their power to be kind.”
These are excerpts from an interview with Henry Roberts after his discovery of a new deep sea creature and are all the relevant quotes to the interviewer’s question, “What got you into this career path?”