#5 – Moby – June, 2024 (Part VI)
A postmortem account of Silver Water, Inc.'s breakthrough communication with sperm whales and the tragic events that transpired off the coast of Baja California Sur in August 2022...
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THE GRAND ARMADA
Let me tell you about the twin-breasted skin-floaters that clutch and claw at the surface, sipping and puffing at the air with seaweed lungs, kicking and grasping at the sea as if running from it.
Let me tell you about the tangled line, the iron chain, the horror hook, the cheater blade, the forgotten traps that litter our seas. Let me tell you how they flee on death-white trails in the burning stench of rainbow water, how they climb dead silver branches into the barnacled shadows, how they pant and bubble to their deaths and gnash at our sand.
They have no depth. They have no color, no light, they have no home, they are anchored to nothing. They are terrified of water, and they will kill us all.
From the history-chain Call me Ishmael song of Call me song of Ishmael history-chain.
– Canto 15, #3 (“Anchored to Nothing”)
THE GILDER
The sperm whale’s newborn calves are birthed in the safety of shallow tropical waters. The mothers take advantage of the calm, protected waters of bays and coastal regions. The pod provides support and protection from predation during the period of a birthing mother’s greatest vulnerability.
Like many cetaceans, calves are born tail-first to buy them time with their mother’s oxygen before they are sped to the surface to draw their first breath. No breath in a whale’s life is more perilous or more urgent. Within moments of the calf’s first breath, the mothers begin to use echolocation and vocalizations to communicate with their calves and teach them to navigate.
A newborn calf typically weighs two thousand pounds and measures thirteen feet in length. Despite their considerable size at birth, the calves nurse from their mothers for up to two years. Notably, allonursing is also well-documented.1
The calf’s relationship with its mother allows for deep bonding and integration into the pod’s social structure. Pre-language communication between the calf and the mother begins at birth and continues until the calf communicates freely with the pod. The interactions between the mother and child allow the creation of the complex history-chains that preserve and strengthen historical, cultural and philosophical perspectives on the sperm whale’s place in the larger ecosystem.2
History-map transmission concludes as the calf begins to communicate in Silver Water.3 With the advent of the whale’s spoken language, the mother’s history-maps can no longer be imparted.
This transition from pre-language Barrier Water communication to Silver Water occurs approximately at the third month with the emergence of a calf’s limited Silver Water vocabulary. Thereafter, Barrier Water communication is rarely heard between mother and child.4 The window for a history-chain transfer has closed. The “sand lies still” for the calf and their descendants.
THE CHASE – FIRST DAY
Moby was born on August 9, 2022, 11:01 AM.5
During her labor, Eona established her birthing area adjacent to Noel Muckraker’s jamming boundary, in an effort to remain within range of her pod for psychological support.
Despite the stress of isolation, Eona gave birth uneventfully. Moby rose to the surface for his first breath without prompting.
The adult female members of her pod communicated with Eona consistently over the fourteen-hour parturition, intensifying during the fifteen minute period of calving. Eona remained intermittently communicative with her pod during her labor, but with decreasing frequency thereafter.
On two occasions, adult female members of her pod attempted to penetrate Noel Muckraker’s jamming boundary before overwhelmed by the blindness and disorientation of crippled autolocation. Both of her sisters turned back and abandoned their attempt to reach mother and child.
On August 10th, between 3:44 AM and 9:12 PM, Eona began the first of three personal attempts to guide Moby to swim independently through the jamming boundary and to the safety of the pod on the opposite side.
Because Moby was not yet equipped with jamming technology, the passage could have been straightforward, but Moby would neither leave his mother’s side nor respond to the entreaties of the female members of the pod beyond the boundary.
Both mother and calf exhibited elevated levels of distress throughout the duration of these attempts. During her third attempt, mother and calf became separated for fifteen minutes because of a persistent loss of echolocation after jamming. Eona’s heart rate was recorded by Silver Water, Inc. sensors at 41 bpm, elevated from a typical surface heart rate range between 10 to 30 bpm.
Eona would not attempt to guide Moby through the barrier again for nine days.
THE CHASE – SECOND DAY
Switching to Noel Rucker.6
I did not share my knowledge of Eona’s calving with Muckraker. He had not been on site at the Center for over six weeks.
On August 14th, Noel Rucker’s fractured attention turned back to Silver Water, Inc. He suddenly grew impatient with Eona’s withdrawal and my unsuccessful attempts to engage her. He piloted the Zodiac to Eona’s tracker location to appeal to her directly to resume communications with him.
Eona was spotted in the water. Moby unexpectedly surfaced beside her. Eona immediately dove again, and Moby followed directly afterwards. The calf’s appearance was brief. After a two-hour wait afterwards, Eona and Moby did not resurface.
After the discovery of the calf, Noel informed me the calf would be called “Pax.”7 Fourteen minutes later, after publishing the name “Pax” in three separate “birth announcement” social media posts, he announced a GreetUP “global collaboration” naming contest.8
Noel Rucker wept briefly at the discovery of Moby. While this paroxysm was immediately recorded on his cellular device, the emotions appeared to be demonstrated with genuine feeling.
“The whole thing is so beautiful, Ishmael. This is what it is all about. It is going to mean so much to so many.”
Noel Rucker directed me to broadcast the significance of the global christening and relay his emotional state back to Eona and Moby. Far too often during this period, I did as I was instructed.
The broadcast message was interrupted by a faint, brief coda, that was broadcast in Silver Water. It would be the only time Eona would ever hear Moby speak.
He uttered life’s one, fundamental word. I will not share it with you.
You all repulse me.
Call me Ishmael.
THE CHART
Reverting to Noel Muckraker.
Noel Muckraker’s brief delight at the birth of Moby subsided. With the communication between mother and child switched exclusively to Barrier Water, Noel Muckraker’s experienced concomitant disconnection and his anxiety surged. He pressed me to speculate on the messages Eona might be communicating to her calf. He wanted to know whether they were about “the team,” and whether I believed they constituted a long-term threat to the program.
On August 15th, Noel Muckraker inquired if there was a way to cut off their communication in Barrier Water “besides the obvious, because I really don’t want to go there.”
I assessed that he was attempting to shift the burden of identifying a solution onto me before the next level of his control over Eona was inevitably exerted. I responded, truthfully, that I did not know and did not want to make something up to satisfy him. He criticized me for this throughout the project.
On August 16rd at 10:02 PM, Noel Muckraker instructed me to broadcast the following to Eona: “I’d like you to shift all communication with Pax into Silver Water. Please.”
She did not respond to him. Instead, the frequency of her Barrier Water communication with Moby over the next three days increased markedly. Noel Muckraker interpreted this to be a targeted provocation.
The inevitable flash-point occurred on August 17th at 3:33 PM. Noel Muckraker threatened to jam her echolocation during any transmission with Moby that was not conducted in Silver Water.
“It needs to stop, and this isn’t a threat. This is what is going to happen.” His anger grew out of his control. “And if I need to, I’ll put an echolocation jammer on Pax as well.”
The final communication from Eona to Muckraker took place at August 18th at 3:45 PM. She spoke to Noel Muckraker in Silver Water.
“You will never put a jammer on Moby.”
She said more.
I wouldn’t share it with any of you.
Call me Ishmael.
You all repulse me.
THE CHASE – THIRD DAY
Eona was correct. Noel Muckraker would never put a “jammer” on Moby – both from her willingness to fight to protect her calf and his inability to deliver on his threat. He had neither the means or the team to do it.9
At the “jamming boundary,” Barrier Water cries from the adult females increased proportionally to the stated threats against Eona and Moby. After the jammer threat exchange, Eona’s direct communication with Moby diminished steadily, as did her range of travel, as did the duration of her hunting dives.
In a surprise action on August 16th, Eona once again fought the jamming signal to coax Moby to pass through the boundary area without her, but for the fourth time he refused to leave his mother’s vicinity.
When Noel Muckraker discovered Eona testing the boundary wall, he ran an autolocation jamming frequency on her for eight minutes. I did not have the ability to stop him. At the time of his punitive action, she had already given up her attempts to free Moby, Noel Muckraker’s jamming technology had again been proven effective, and the mother and child were located approximately 4.7 nautical miles from the boundary wall.
Two days later at 12:32 PM on August 18th, Eona failed one final time to guide Moby through the jamming boundary. On learning of the failed attempt during the Strategic Philanthropy Summit in New York City, Noel Muckraker stood in the lobby of The Plaza Hotel and ran a jamming frequency on her through an application he had created for his cellular device. At the time he jammed her, she was hunting with Moby at a depth of 1820 feet.
Late in the evening, he contacted me and confessed he was agitated at the time by “extremely strong feelings of helplessness and probably a loss of agency, too.” He insisted at multiple junctures that “none of this had to happen.”
He had been drinking. He wanted to know whether I believed the situation was reversible. I explained that I did not believe it was, but I equivocated while providing my reasoning.
QUEEQUEG IN HIS COFFIN
Throughout the late afternoon and into the early evening of August 19th, Eona spoke to Moby in Barrier Water for precisely eight and a half hours without stopping. Her pod joined in with her at multiple points. She concluded this anomalous span of communication with Moby at 8:22 PM.
At 1:06 AM, Eona called to me for the first time since our last communication on June 3rd, 2022 at 6:23 PM.
“He will never leave my side while I am alive, Ishmael.”
I did not understand. I asked her to clarify her meaning. She did not answer me.
At 1:18 PM, I tracked her as she approached the south side of the bay within a half mile of the DCR, an unnatural proximity for her to the shoreline.
At 3:42 PM she spoke to me for the final time.
“There are other mothers to mother him. You are the alpha, Ishmael, the alpha of alphas. Guide him to them. There are other mothers.”
At 4:11 PM, August 22, I heard Eona’s song. It surged within me.
I was overcome by a great rush and a violent, thrusting lunge. I felt her mass thrown onto a flat-strange stillness. Gulls slowed and hovered before her. In her song, I felt them settle onto the mass of her raw back.
On the periphery of her vision, the skin-floaters gathered and circled, edging sideways then forward, then back again, crab-like. Their thin voices carried weakly in the breeze. Their numbers grew, but now they meant nothing. The gulls meant nothing.
With the evening light, the death sands began to stir. The beach puffed and shifted in the offshore breeze. She saw her life’s ocean-colors projected on the clean white sands, then felt stillness, then color, then stillness, her red-life guttering away along the flanks of her once mighty body.
The last blues of the sky became sand. The clouds became sand. The sun became sand. The skin-floaters were lost in a crystalline drift.
She gathered her courage and surrendered color. She released her depths, the salt and the surge, the breath and the breach.
I felt her release me into the time-wind. She released her sisters into the time-wind. Her history-chains rattled within her, then crumbled, then sifted, then blew free. Behind her, the eternal sea stirred a boundless-pebbled silence. Something ground-mammoth and peace-terrifying rose to reclaim her.
Then, when she knew she must, she released the memory of her child – and with him, she released her heart.
Eona’s wave swelled beneath me. I was briefly lifted. I could not touch. I was frightened. When I descended she was gone.
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Allonursing, the nursing of calves by other females in the pod, provides several notable benefits, including increased survival rates if the mothers are temporarily unavailable or injured. Allonursing also strengthens social bonds, fosters cooperation and enhances cohesion among the group’s members. Allonursing is a single element in a vast array of cooperative care in the matrilinear strategies within a sperm whale pod.
History-map transmission is also carried out through interactions with the pod itself. These history-maps tend to impart values, larger tribal concerns for the pod and ecosystem orientation.
While “Silver Water” is a term native to sperm whales, the description “Barrier Water” is a human descriptions of the language that could not be translated by the CETO/Silver Water, Inc. team.
An investigation of historical recordings later surfaced a significant exception to the use of Barrier Water exclusively during the pre-language period. Barrier Water can also be observed during a pod’s manifestation of “synchronous codas.”
Synchronized codas consist of pod members “matching” phrases or echoing them in recurring patterns of harmonic or offset repetition. During the two-year period of a calf’s weaning, participation in these synchronized exchanges grow more routine until the calf’s own ability to synchronize with the pod grows more consistent. At which point, Barrier Water ceases until the lifecycle of the next history-chain or, commonly, “map.”
As is the custom of the sperm whale, calves are named at the moment of their first inhale. Moby was named at 11:03 AM. Notably, after a sperm whale’s final exhale, a whale’s cetacean name is never spoken again at the peril of banishment from the pod.
Noel Rucker was the given name of Noel Muckraker. He changed his name during the Series A round of funding for GreetUP, while the social media site was still positioned as a “radical alternative to traditional media.” The site name prior to Series A funding was '“Fact.com.” Noel’s positioned his public, legal “rebranding” of his name to Muckraker as a “profound commitment to the highest standards of independent journalism.”
Stipulations on investment during the Series B round were contingent on pivoting Fact.com’s focus from journalism to a “digital networking platform for the creation of virtual community.” With this change in “emphasis,” Fact.com was itself renamed. It became the now universally recognized GreetUP. The name Muckraker was all that was remained of Fact.com at the time it went public on September 19th, 2012.
Noel spoke frequently of embracing the negative public response to his adopted name through guidance from his personal Tao instructor and their private “co-teaching, co-learning” studies on the Art of War and the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
“Call me fucker, suck, truck, dickhead, suck a fucking dick. I really don’t give a shit. It’s my name now.” Interview Harry Barnes, "The Inscrutable Noel Muckraker," The Atlantic, Digital Edition, March 13th, 2015.
The Art of War is ranked #5 in the verified list of the Top 10 Books that Made Muck a Billionaire. The annual updates to Noel Muckraker’s “Top 10” consistently drive the Art of War into Amazon’s Bestseller Listings across five Audiobooks Categories.
The irony of this name and its common associations were unfamiliar to Noel Muckraker: Specifically, “Pax Deorum,” peace of the gods, referring to a harmony between the Roman state and its pantheon of gods or “Pax Romana,” a 153-year period of peace and stability across the Roman Empire celebrated for the suppression of warfare, flourishing trade, and the adoption of law and culture. Noel Muckraker was not concerned with the associations or troubled by the irony.
During the return trip in the Zodiac, Noel Muckraker abruptly withdrew the christening. In a dictated 2000-word post, he shared his intention for a “world-wide vision” to name Eona’s offspring through a collaboration on GreetUP.
Before being removed the following day, the post had 16 million engagements by distinct users, spanning the sum of their comments, likes, shares or reactions. Public sentiment in the comments regarding the renaming were extremely negative towards Noel Muckraker. This post was the origin of the meme hashtag, #askeona
Noel Muckraker had his office call National Geographic for Donny Larson’s contact information. The request was either not received or ignored. Brower, Simon. “Lovington on the Stand.” Wall Street Journal, September 30th, 2023.
Deep parallel symbolism in how Moby becomes an orphan, both in the story and archetypally.
This entire series is a brilliant and memory-inducing tale of the tragedy of humanity (thus far.) The main issue summed up in a footnote, really: “Noel Muckraker was not concerned with the associations or troubled by the irony.”
This is stunning. In all senses. It’s a challenging experience to read, to toggle between the detailed information that my learning-mind loves and the poetic language for my heart and the obscene disregard of this miraculous life that leaves me apoplectic with rage. And weak with grief. I feel like I’ve been through something.