There was no specific reason why Maddy Riverton first went down to the river. She was just looking out her window one day, and she realized that in all her years of seeing the river from her window, she had never actually stood at the shoreline. Her mother was at work, so she told her father she was going out.

Fifteen minutes later, she was standing on by the river’s edge. From far away, it looked like a current of sunlight snaking between the tall buildings, but up close, she could see how fast the water was moving. The crash and foam of the waves as they swept along was strangely relaxing. She sat down and ate an apple as she watched the water, and when she was done, she threw the core into the river. But before it could land in the water, a hand reached out of the waves and grabbed it and threw it back. The apple core hit Maddy square in the face, and she blinked with surprise.

The surface of the river bubbled and bulged, and suddenly, a tall shape rose slowly out of it, with water raining down from the top and splashing down. Maddy scrambled to her feet and stared in amazement at the rising figure, which now produced a black top hat and placed it neatly on its own head. Two enormous eyes opened and stared back at Maddy.

The figure was a very tall man dressed in a black suit with a long, velvety cape. In one hand, he held a walking stick. Most surprising of all, his head was not the head of a human, but the head of a giant silver octopus with a rather confused look on its tentacled face. The Octopus Man glared at Maddy.

“Who are you?” said the Octopus Man.

“I’m Maddy,” said Maddy in a small, frightened voice.

“Hi, Maddy,” said the Octopus Man. “Would you mind not throwing your trash in my home?”

Maddy noticed that even though the river was rushing very fast, the Octopus Man had no trouble standing perfectly still in the middle of the water, leaning on his walking stick.

“I’m sorry,” said Maddy. “I didn’t know you were there. Where did you come from?”

“I am the Immortal Octopus Man,” said the Octopus Man. “I am everywhere that there is water.”

“You’re immortal?” said Maddy.

“I am,” said the Immortal Octopus Man. “I was born when the first two hydrogen atoms joined the first oxygen atom, and I will still be here long after the earth is gone and the water returns to space. My soul belongs to the everlasting river of time.”

The Immortal Octopus Man stepped out of the river and marched up the bank towards Maddy. In a few moments, he was standing over her, looking down. “I assume you’re here for some morale?” he said.

“What?” said Maddy.

“Morale,” said the Octopus Man impatiently. “It means “confidence and enthusiasm”. You want to know how you can waste less water. Or else you want to know the solution to the global water crisis, or how we’re going to stop climate change.”

Maddy was thoroughly confused, and the Octopus Man was getting more and more annoyed. “Look, if you’re not here for me to make you feel better about your impending doom, then go away. I’ve got enough work with the rest of you miserable humans.” The Octopus Man turned around and started to head back into the water.

“Wait,” said Maddy. “What did you mean, ‘impending doom’?”

The Octopus Man paused. “That was just a joke,” he said hastily. “A lot of people think that the world is doomed, and that everyone is going to die from the water crisis. I spend all day swimming back and forth finding poor souls moping around by the river, and it’s my job to give them some reason to hope. Sometimes there isn’t much hope I can give them, but even a little bit helps.”

“Why don’t they have any reason to hope?” said Maddy. “What’s a ‘water crisis’?”

“Well, surely you know that the world is in some trouble,” said the Octopus Man. “More people live on the earth than ever before, and the population will only grow. Climate change is causing increased drought, and pollution is making the water that we have unsafe. In every area, the arrow is pointing to less and less water. Worst of all, the adults who are in charge of the water tell their children to be more responsible with it, but they themselves are not responsible, and they waste too much water. If people don’t take action, then soon, nobody will be able to get clean water anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” said Maddy, who was beginning to get nervous. “How can you waste water? Water doesn’t go anywhere. We learned in school about the water cycle; water goes into the sky, then comes back as rain. My teacher told me that all the water we have today is the same water we’ve had for millions of years.”

The Octopus Man stared at Maddy. “Yes,” he said, “all of that is true. If you think that means that we can’t waste water, then you really don’t know anything. Don’t you know that right now, today, there’s over one billion people on this planet who don’t have any clean water to drink?”

Maddy thought for a second. She did know that, and she was shocked at how easily she had forgotten it.

The Octopus Man waved his walking stick, and the sun seemed to go behind a cloud. Then, the buildings all around them became foggy and unclear. Suddenly, he and Maddy were adrift in a rippling vacuum of time and space. At the end of the Octopus Man’s walking stick, a tiny earth appeared, spinning round and round on its axis.

“How did you do that?” said Maddy, startled.

“Immortal Octopus Man powers,” said the Octopus Man dismissively. “I can see everywhere that water is. Anyway, the reason those people don’t have enough water isn’t because there isn’t enough water to go around, or because the water is starting to run out. It’s because they can’t control where the water ends up. If you live in an especially dry and barren location, you might be miles away from any clean water.”

Maddy looked at the blue orb rotating in the air in front of them, and she could see that there was an incredible amount of water. But at the same time, she could somehow see through the clouds, and she saw people all over the world struggling. She saw girls her own age walking for miles with heavy pots of water balanced on their heads, and she saw small children in other countries crying from thirst and sickness. Elsewhere, she saw flash floods tearing through towns and villages, and people wading through the watery chaos.

“Some scientists created a model in 2015 where they put all people into four categories,”[1] said the Octopus Man. “There are people who enjoy a great supply of water, and an infrastructure that delivers it to them; “infrastructure” means the way the way that a society is physically built, like a great machine, with all parts working properly so the water can get to you. Then there are people with great infrastructure but not enough water, and people with lots of water but bad infrastructure. And then there are people who are in a really bad place. But just because you and the people you know are in a good place doesn’t mean there aren’t ways within the model in which your situation could go downhill. And when that happens, people start fighting wars over who gets to drink the clean water.”

Maddy covered her eyes. “I don’t want to look at that,” she said.

The Octopus Man sighed and snapped his fingers, and they were back by the river. “It seems you do need some morale after all,” he said, and he sat down next to her. He seemed friendlier now, and despite his tentacles, Maddy didn’t feel so scared of him. “Look,” he said, “you needn’t feel guilty or ashamed. It’s not your fault that you have better access to water than most children around the world. There isn’t that much you can do about it.”

“Every day, I take long baths and showers,” Maddy said sadly, “and so much water goes down the drain. That water could help so many people.”

“Well,” the Octopus Man said, “keep in mind, that bit of water you waste in the shower is only a tiny fraction of the huge amount of water that is wasted by large companies every day. And besides, what are you going to do? Take all of the water you would have cleaned yourself with and give it to people on the other side of the world? There are many people working around the clock trying to make the governments of the world use water more responsibly, at the risk of a very bleak future. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad, but you’re very young, and right now, I regret to say, it’s out of your hands.”

Maddy was now feeling very sick. The Octopus Man paused, leaned down and said, “Or maybe not.”

“You mean there are ways I can help?” Maddy said.

“There are ways you can learn,” said the Octopus Man, “so that one day, when you’re older, you can help others learn, and you can convince others to change, and we can all help. In fact, let’s try it right now. Let’s figure out all the ways that we might be able to solve the water crisis.”

He waved his walking stick, and a second later, a massive tidal wave appeared from nowhere and crashed over them both. Then they were both standing on the riverbed, safe inside a bubble of air with a ceiling of water and distant sunlight arching above them. The Octopus Man steepled his fingers and looked at Maddy expectantly.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose the first step would be to find out where we’re using up the most water, and how we can use less.”

The Octopus Man waved his walking stick and a field of wheat appeared in the rippling wall of water to the left. “Agriculture would be one area,” he said. “Farmers use an enormous amount of water to grow food every day; so much that, globally, 80% of all human water consumption is for the purpose of watering crops[2]. In times of drought, agriculture always grinds to a halt, because the water is rationed more carefully.”

“But then, you have no crops,” said Maddy, watching the farmers in the little movie spray water over their plants. “So how do you make it so we have enough water for crops, and also enough water for the people?”

To the right, a colorful double-helix appeared. “That’s DNA,” said the Octopus Man, “the tiny chemical which carries every trait that makes every life-form what it is. Those traits are contained in genes, which either express themselves or they don’t. If we can use technology to alter the gene expression of plants…”

“We could make them more resistant to drought!” said Maddy. She stared at the rotating strand of DNA in front of her. “But I don’t know how to do that.”

“Of course not,” said the Octopus Man. “Nobody expects you to know how to do that. But scientists do, and they’re working on how we can make plants last longer without water. For example, a group of scientists in South Korea knew how important it was that we could make crops which could survive in dry conditions for a long time. So they did some experiments with two groups of rice plants.”[3]

As he spoke, the scientists appeared in the water, and Maddy could see everything they were doing as the Octopus Man described it.

“They took one group of rice plants in which a gene called OsNAC14…”

“Os-what?” said Maddy.

“Don’t worry if you can’t pronounce it,” said the Octopus Man. “One group in which it was expressed at an unusually high level, and they took another group of rice plants without the over-expression of that gene,” said the Octopus Man. “That second group is called the control group; it’s there so…”

“I know what a control group is,” said Maddy. “It’s there so the scientists can compare and contrast, to make sure nothing but the thing you’re investigating is having an effect. Without a control group, you couldn’t know whether something else had altered the results.”

“Right you are,” said the Octopus Man. “And what they found after putting both groups of plants in drought-like conditions was that the plants without the special gene began to die a lot faster than the others; and the plants that did have an over-expression of the gene also recovered faster.”

“So it did have an effect!” Maddy said with excitement.

“Maybe so,” said the Octopus Man, his tentacles curling and twitching with glee. “The results do seem to show that we’re tending towards the right answer. And there are thousands of other scientists all working on different experiments, figuring out different ways to alter genes to make plants survive longer with less water.”

The images on the wall of water disappeared, and the Octopus Man set off walking down the riverbed, with Maddy following. The Octopus Man had long legs, and Maddy found herself struggling to keep up.

“But that’s more of a long-term solution,” said the Octopus Man. “it’s only practical in the future, when we really have enough money to grow drought-resistant plants on a large scale, and that probably won’t be for some time. What else are you curious about?”

“What about homes?” said Maddy. “Is there any way to reduce the amount of water that a family in a single household uses?”

“Well, like I said, taking shorter showers and flushing the toilet less often only helps a tiny amount,” said the Octopus Man. “The real problem is that with every action involving water, we use so much more water than needed. That water goes down the drain, and the pipes give us more water from somewhere else, as if there were a stream of water going into your house and going out again endlessly. But what if you could cut off the stream and still have water?”

“How?” said Maddy.

“By reusing the water you’ve already used.”

“You mean,” said Maddy, her stomach turning, “we would use the same water that we’ve…already flushed down the toilet? The water that’s had our poop in it?”

The Octopus Man frowned and stopped walking, and the water above them shimmered, water droplets and sunlight crystallizing into moving pictures. In the image on the ceiling, Maddy saw a world filled with dense foliage. In the distance, something roared loudly. “You said it yourself,” said the Octopus Man, “every drop of water that we have on earth today is the same water that we’ve had for millions of years. That water has had a lot of excrement and filth in it, going all the way back to the dinosaurs. But we know how to purify it.”

“Yeah, but…it’s still gross.”

“The proper term for water that’s been purified for reuse is Gray Water, or Recycled Water,” continued the Octopus Man, ignoring her. “It may be icky at first, but it could solve so many problems. There’s an entire company called Water Recycling Systems devoted to rebuilding houses so that almost all water is disinfected and reused within a day. The techniques they use to rid that water of germs are merciless. We’re talking filters, ultraviolet, ionization…”[4]

“Okay, okay,” said Maddy, not understanding much of what the Octopus Man was saying. Still, she could tell he was very passionate about it.

“And that’s to say nothing of the techniques that the National Academy of Sciences of the USA has come up with,” said the Octopus Man excitedly. “They’ve devised a method of cleaning water by forcing it through a membrane; it’s called reverse osmosis, and every year, they get better at better at it, removing more and more infectants. If you applied that method to the world on a big scale, you could do more than just cleaning toilet water, but you could remove the salt from brackish waters that we can’t drink.”[5]

“I live in an apartment building, though,” said Maddy, “so we can’t reuse our water.”

“Maybe not,” said the Octopus Man, “but one day, when you grow up, if you work hard, you’ll be able to afford to install a gray-water system in your own home. And you could campaign on behalf of those who want to install larger systems to purify the wastewater of whole towns so that it can be reused.”

Maddy thought about talking to her parents about drinking the same water that they had flushed down the toilet only days earlier. She had doubts that they would be eager to try it. As if he were reading her mind, the Octopus Man said, “There is one more obstacle we would have to overcome. But first, your parents will be worrying about you. Take my hand.”

Maddy took his hand, and the two of them leapt like grasshoppers, breaking through the watery ceiling and rocketing upwards into the sky. Maddy held on tight as she saw the river shrinking far below and the roofs of buildings appearing in her line of sight, a trail of falling water drops glistening beneath them. Then they fell too, and she screamed.

The Octopus Man’s feet met the ground first, and Maddy felt his skeleton shudder with the impact, but otherwise he was miraculously standing straight. He put her down and sat by the bank of the river, totally at ease, as if jumping to great heights and landing was something he did every day. “Feel free to warn me next time,” Maddy said angrily. She looked down at her clothes and realized that, despite the fact that she had just been doused with water, she was totally dry. The Octopus Man knelt before her and placed his clammy blue hands on her shoulders.

“You’re one of us now,” said the Octopus Man. “You can be a citizen scientist, and your job would be working so that the future is not the waterless nightmare that so many feel it will be. However you choose to live your life, keep in mind that one day you will be old enough to make serious change, and you can instill hope in the hopeless. If you accept this challenge, think of it not as a burden but as a privilege. Do you accept?”

Maddy nodded. She felt slightly taken aback by the feelings which washed over her. “Sure,” she said. “I don’t want to live in a world where people fight wars over clean water. I don’t want people in other countries to suffer from thirst while I have more water than I know what to do with. But how can I make people listen to me?”

“That will be your greatest challenge,” said the Octopus Man. “They may not pay attention to you now, but you can get their attention.” He stood up and walked away, wading into the river.

“Where are you going?” said Maddy.

“I’m due in Australia in five minutes,” said the Immortal Octopus Man. “Did you know Australia is the driest continent on earth? I’ll see you again soon. We’ll discuss weather-sensitive irrigation control switches, and rainwater harvesting systems, which have been shown by experiment to reduce water use and demand respectively…”[6]

Maddy could still hear the Immortal Octopus Man talking, rattling off words that she couldn’t understand, but his body was fading, turning to so many millions of tiny drops of water which fell into the river and were swept away. She stayed there and listened until his voice faded away as well. Then she turned around and headed back to her apartment building.