“If we’re gonna rule the world,” Gary mused, casually reclining on a deck chair outside the family beach house, “the least you could do is tell me your names. I mean, what does everyone call you? What do I call you?”
“We have many titles,” the green fishman gloated, puffing out his chest. “Many grand and magnificent titles!”
“Such as?”
“We are the Supreme Chieftains of the Deep, the Exalted Emperors of Land and Sea, the Majestic Masters of Existence, the Splendid and Sensationally Brave…”
“I’m gonna call you Greg!” said Gary to the green one. “Purple, you’ll be Gideon, and blue will be… um… let me see… all good names begin with a G, so let’s go with… Ga-Ga-Ga-Ga… Gorbachev!”
“I will not settle for such a monotonous moniker!” said the Creature Not Wanting to Be Known as Greg.
“That is textbook, Greg!” cackled Gary. “Always whinging about something.”
“Honestly, do I look like a Greg?” said Greg, terrified that the name might stick.
“Let me just check my Greg detector,” said Gary, raising his waterlogged phone like a scanner. “Just as I suspected. 100% Greg!”
“It says that?” said Gideon, squinting at the screen.
Gary held out the phone as if it would solve the mystery. Unsurprisingly, it was blank.
“Riddle me this,” said Gary. “Before I gave you these completely unchangeable names, what did you call each other?”
“To be honest, we didn’t talk much,” Gideon admitted.
“Course we didn’t! We’ve been asleep for untold eons under the sea, patiently waiting for the Third of September 2027. The day that was foretold!”
“A day of failure by all accounts,” muttered Gorbachev, as the sun set in the west.
“Failure, my brothers,” said Gary, “would be giving up too soon. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow, we introduce you to the world!”
Greg stroked his scaly chin. “Introduce us? You mean with a grand proclamation? A ruthless display of strength? A triumphant attack on the corridors of power?”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Pretty close,” Gary smirked. “We’re making content.”
“Content?” said Gideon, tilting his head with an appropriate degree of suspicion.
“Videos. Reels. TikToks. YouTube Shorts,” said Gary gleefully. “We unleash this shit like the plague—an unstoppable avalanche of content, plastering your fishman faces all over the internet until we’ve infected every feed, hijacked every algorithm, and dominated the entire digital landscape!”
“Can I have a look at that Greg detector?” said Gorbachev. “I think it’s detecting an extra Greg.”
That night, Gary was ravaged by dreams—legions of dreams that whizzed and whirred through his mind. What’s more, in all 2,003 of them, there was a unique viral video idea. Unseen, untapped genius that would put them on the map. If only Gary could remember… remember… remember.
“Top of the morning to you,” said Greg with a yawn. “You know, last night, I had this bizarre dream that we fixed the prophecy. The bill of rights had been torn in two and we were fixing it with knitting needles and weed from the sea.”
“Oooh, I wonder what it means,” said Gideon, who loved nothing more than recounting dreams in harrowing amounts of detail.
“That reminds me—” began Gary, before Gideon steamrolled over the top.
“IN MY DREAM… there was a red door, but the more I looked at this red door, the more I thought, is that door actually orange? But the more I gazed at what I felt confident was an orange door, the more I began to realise… it was a horse all along.”
“That reminds me—" began Gary, and then Gorbachev stepped in.
“IN MY DREAM… we rode a whale to Great Barrier Island.
“That’s not a dream—that’s a memory!”
“Is it?” said Gorbachev with a scratch of his head.
“What about you, Gary?” asked Gideon as the fishmen turned expectantly to face him. “Did you have any dreams?”
“Fuck knows, mate. I never remember mine!”
***
Two hours later, they were still brainstorming, the mythical storm of ideas yet to arrive. They had nothing, and Gary was beginning to panic. He couldn’t even ask the internet. His phone had been well and truly drowned, and the beach house was an internet-free zone.
“Work brain!” he muttered. It didn’t.
“First he fails to deliver the Seal of Kings™,” complained Greg, “and now he can’t even deliver a simple idea!”
“Be patient,” said Gary. “I’ve got this. I have!”
Gary instinctively reached for his dead phone, gave it a cursory scroll—nothing. No internet. No phone. No ChatGPT. No database of easily stealable ideas. Nothing… nothing—NOTHING! Nothing but his worthless brain.
Then, from beyond a grassy knoll on the horizon, movement—slow, deliberate movement, a lone fisherman trudging towards the rocks.
Gary leapt to his feet, eyes widening. He had it—HAD IT! An ACTUAL idea.
“That’s it, bros!” he said, raising his camera in triumph. “We repeat what we did yesterday.”
“You want us to fail again?” said Gideon.
“No! You see that fisherman struggling over the hill! We’re gonna prank that sucker, and we’re gonna prank him good, and this time we’ll prank him in crisp 4K resolution. This is it, my bros! This… is gonna be gold!”
Sure, people had seen every prank video under the sun, but they hadn’t seen them orchestrated by fishmen. That’s all people want, really, Gary reasoned. The familiar done differently—just enough to keep them hooked!