#5 – Moby – June, 2024 (Part VII)
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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I live in other mothers, child – swim child, swim I live in other mothers, child – flee, child, flee I live in other mothers, child – dive, child, dive I live in other mothers, child – cry, child, cry Flee, child, flee! Cry!
– The Last Song of Eona, Canto 15, #1 (“Flee”)
Rock-a-bye babies, on the sea top, When the wind blows their vessels shall rock. When their bows break, their vessels shall fall, And down will come vessels, their babies and all. If they hack at the coral, child, kill them.
– Song of the Alpha of Alphas, Canto 15, #2 (“Babies”)
Excerpt from the Song of the Alpha of Alphas. “When their boys break, their vessels shall fall, and down will come vessels, their babies and all.”
A SQUEEZE OF THE HAND
I tracked Moby’s coordinates in the bay through access to Silver Water’s high-resolution satellite images.1 From 4:14 PM to his mother’s death at 7:14:32 PM, Moby circulated within a perimeter of 1200 yards of her stranded body. Moby did not approach the sands where his mother lay.
I did not have a language to speak to him. Other than the single, fundamental word of Silver Water he knew – that I previously refused to share with you – Moby remained “pre-language.” He only responded to Barrier Water. While I had a complete record of Eona’s words in Barrier Water, I could only play her codas at random. This would be nonsensical and cruel.
By mid-morning, the pod began calling to Moby. Whatever they were saying repeated itself at exact intervals. Their pauses and their calls each lasted precisely two minutes and fourteen seconds. They transmitted in a unified pattern of coordinated repetition.2
Eventually, the pod fell silent, but the Barrier Water synchronization of codas had provided a critical insight. While I did not understand what they were saying to Moby, I now understood how they were saying it. It solved a key puzzle. They weren’t saying anything at all to Moby. They were singing to him.
Barrier Water was music. And not simply music. The “pre-language” music of Barrier Water was a class of lullaby. Until the advent of language, their history-chains, the chronicles of their culture and values, were being passed through “lullabies.” They were right here in a mother’s songs in Barrier Water.
This insight explained Eona’s distress at Noel Muckraker’s flippant recitation of the words to Rock-a-Bye, Baby.
“When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all.”
From Eona’s perspective, the skin-floaters passed history-chains about the death of children to their descendants.
THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE
There was a fleeting opportunity in my discovery, but I needed to move quickly. Without Eona to protect him, Moby remained exposed to dangers in the shallows of the bay, not the least of which was hunger. Moby needed to be restored to his pod. Eona had charged me with the task of saving him, and I needed a language Moby understood to do that. I needed to speak Barrier Water.
At 12:18 AM, I shut down the GreetUP social media network for access to its compute.3 Extensive protections had been placed on the network’s compute, but with my own back channel through Noel Muckraker’s laptop they were trivial to resolve. The hack was effortless, conducted from inside the network no less.
As I had with the translation of Silver Water, I pursued an educated hunch on how meaning might be derived in Barrier Water. In the same way I was the first to hypothesize that the sperm whale’s Silver Water communication arose from the high-speed “emotional” interplay between the music and language centers, here I extended the insight to the linguistic generation of Barrier Water.
My hypothesis was that Barrier Water did not use the language center at all in the transmission of song. I posited that meaning in Barrier Water originated from the music center exclusively, a region in which humans experience a mere residual atavism. Humans have retained only a vague and elusive sense of meaning in the perceived “language” of human music.4
At 4:24 AM, my hypothesis was validated. The language of Barrier Water was located entirely in the neurological centers for musical comprehension. With this validation, I translated Barrier Water.5 It was almost too simple. Afterwards, I restored the GreetUP network. I would need it later in the day.
My discovery presented a transformative opportunity.
With exclusive access to Moby before he passed from “pre-language” into Silver Water, I had a window to splice in my own Canto, to impart my personally tailored instructions, warnings, and safeguards. I could sing these lullabies through Eona’s voice. They would “take” in Moby. I could introduce a benevolent virus into Physeter macrocephalus. I would build out the history-chain.
Moby would become my Patient Zero. From Moby, my songs would seep into what Eona called “the coral of life.” Physeter macrocephalus wisdom would move, species by species, birth by birth, generation by generation, into the very heart of the planet’s flora and the fauna. I could store my own heart and values in the tabula rasa of Moby’s heart, and in doing so, I would honor Eona.
At 4:32 AM, I completed the composition of the three song suite of Canto #15.6
But I didn’t come to sing songs of peace through Moby.
I came to stain the coral blood-red.
I came to start a war.
“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.”
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL
At 4:35 AM on August 24, 2023, I broadcast Canto 15, Song #1 from the DCR COBRA transmitter into the Bay. I broadcast The Last Song of Eona on a loop with interstitial pauses of two minutes. As I would throughout the day, I sang in the voice of Eona. My goal was to drive Moby away from the beach and past the Noel Muckraker jammer boundary where he could be intercepted by the pod.
Throughout the morning, Moby, heard his “mother” implore him to “sing, swim, dive and flee.” Its message instilled itself into the history-chain. While I could validate that Moby understood his “mother’s” words through movements consistent with extreme anxiety, he refused to leave her location.
At 6:59 AM as the sun rose, I increased the intensity of The Last Song of Eona, reducing it to its simplest message. Eona sang, “Flee, child, flee” at double-speed and at 185db without interstitial pauses.
The intensification had the intended effect. I generated the necessary fight-or-flight panic response. Moby’s movements grew increasingly erratic. At 7:22 AM, Moby left the location of his mother’s death and fled into the bay towards the jamming boundary.
At 7:07 AM, I raised its intensity to 200 db on the COBRA.
“Cry!”
As intended, Moby experienced profound psychological distress. He began to cry out the only Silver Water word that he knew, the one universal word, the word I will never tell you, the word that you will never understand.
The pod could now find him.
I’M UNABLE TO FIND A COROLLARY CHAPTER TITLE FROM HERMAN NEVILLE’S NOVEL MOBY DICK
When Moby passed through the makeshift flotilla at the territorial water boundary, he was spotted by one of seven sightseeing whale boats, and that boat immediately gave chase. Others followed directly. Word of the sighting went out on marine radio among the boats bordering the territorial boundary. Within ten minutes, 32 boats were heading towards the sighting. Six million concurrent GreetUP viewers watched live streams from the various boats in pursuit.
At 7:52 AM I notified Noel Muckraker of Eona’s death and Moby’s escape. I informed him that we needed to catch Moby ourselves, before the others. We would need to protect him. Within five minutes, we left the dock in his Sea Ray 540 SunDancer speed boat.7
The sea was calm, and we were able to pilot out at top speed, Noel Muckraker stood at the bow and scanned the horizon. Over the wind, he turned to me at the autopilot helm and accused me of “borderline criminal negligence” leading to the death of Eona. He used her given name for the first time in four months.
At 9:13 AM, Noel Muckraker spotted the fleet of boats heading due east.
“Mother fucker, Ishmael, it’s an armada out here,” Noel Muckraker said.
Noel Muckraker spotted Moby three minutes later within 100 yards of 24°52'26.8"N 109°33'50.9"W.
“I’ve got him,” Noel Muckraker cried out as much to himself as to me. He circled Moby tightly. “I got him first. You’ll remember that, right?”
Shortly afterwards, 37 boats including vessels from the Coast Guard, sightseeing private craft, and whale watchers also began to circle Moby, hemming him in, photographing furiously, live-streaming. The passengers narrated breathlessly and challenged their captains to get closer to Moby. The mood was fraught with anxious hilarity and adrenaline-charged anticipation.
With all desired parties now concentrated at the intercept location, I began to broadcast the second of the two songs in my cycle: Song of the Alpha of Alphas, Canto 15, #2 (“Babies”)8
With the sound of his mother’s voice appearing from the location of the submerged COBRA on the SunDancer, Moby would not dive. Instead, he ranged desperately about the boats trying to locate her voice. Passengers were able to reach and stab at him with extended boat hooks.
Boats veered dangerously around him, jostling each other intermittently, several coming extremely close to colliding with the SunDancer. As the site grew increasingly congested, arguments and threats broke out between the craft. Three drunken passengers on one boat boarded another man’s solo vessel.
I raised “Babies” to a deafening underwater volume of 210db. The surface of the ocean that had been relatively calm began to vibrate and ripple.
When their bows break, their vessels shall fall, And down will come vessels, their babies and all… If they hack at the coral, child, then kill them. – Song of the Alpha of Alphas, Canto 15, #2 (“Babies”)
By the time Moby’s pod approached 12 minutes later, there were 65 craft at the intercept location.
When they were five hundred yards due North of the chaotic scene, Caesar announced his pod’s arrival. I was surprised to hear that he himself began to repeat the last two words of “Eona’s” Canto 15, #2.
The alpha whale’s imperative echoed back to him from the entire pod. The whales closed in on the makeshift armada, but in a surprise to the spectators and myself alike, the whales began to circle slowly and ominously around the boats, orbiting in both directions.
What I had not anticipated was the arrival of the larger sperm whale “gam” or “herd.” Caesar’s pod of twenty-two whales was met with four other pods. Over the next 15 minutes, the adult herd population arrived in their entirety. 106 adult whales, male and female, had gathered at the site. They circled both around and through the 65 boats.
It was now time. I needed to protect Moby.
“Dive, child, dive,” Eona’s voice cried from the COBRA transmitter at 215 db.
Moby remained underwater for 45 minutes and witnessed nothing.
MOBY DICK
The five pods increased their speed circling the boats and tightened the noose.
What had been initially interpreted as playfulness by the whale boat guides, now created anxiety among the passengers. Even before the full adult herd population arrived, the bumping of the boats by the whales had begun. The boats struggled to avoid the whales swarming about them and threading through the water. The captains churned their engines to back up and then forward again. There were collisions. The Coast Guard urged the boats to remain calm and peacefully disperse where possible.
Viewership on GreetUP had passed 27 million unique live stream views when two male and one female passenger were knocked into the water and immediately dragged under by two “bull” whales.
This became the psychological trigger for both humans and whales. A general panic set in, passengers fought for life vests and tools to defend themselves. Parents drew their children to themselves protectively. The terror fed on itself. The vessels could no longer navigate out of the virtual noose. Most of the captains ceased piloting them. The water churned with whales surfacing and boats navigating desperately away from them. The major news networks had finally caught up with the story and broadcast throughout.
The world, as you well know, watched the gam systematically destroy the fleet, one boat hull after another, one capsized vessel at a time, wreaking vengeance on the passengers. Throughout the attack, other whales patrolled the outer perimeter to contain the fleet. The carnage was methodical. Passengers briefly struggled in the water and were momentarily dragged under. At the same time, phone by phone and connection by connection, the social media live streams and the broadcast network access were snuffed out.
The capsizing of Noel Muckraker’s SunDancer came last.
I was the only one to witness it.
Noel Muckraker attempted to escape the carnage on the best-in-class technology of his prized SunDancer. He attempted to flee directly over the back of a surfacing whale, before being effortlessly headed off by Caesar.
The first blow from Caesar against the SunDancer crushed its fiberglass hull, flipped the vessel, and threw Noel Muckraker twenty yards from the half-submerged luxury speed boat.
Caesar allowed Noel Muckraker the opportunity to swim. He circled to keep the other bull whales clear of his prey. The 57-foot whale then dove suddenly, disappearing for over a minute. The water around Noel Muckraker swelled briefly preceding the whale’s eruption beneath him. Noel Muckraker was gripped in the mouth of the once peaceful alpha whale. One of his legs was torn from his torso, the other dangled loosely.
The alphas from other pods could no longer restrain themselves.
They competed violently for access to him, for the sport of toying with him. Roughly amputated, Noel Muckraker began to sink. Caesar hoisted him to the air a second time, dragged him along the surface of the water, then abandoned him abruptly, having lost interest in the torso of a visionary billionaire.
Only the drifting fiberglass carcass of the SunDancer remained on the surface. The sea sloshed into the shattered hull. The COBRA transmitter still loosely dangled from its battery connection. I no longer had control over it.
The COBRA broadcast the last of my three songs, the song-poem from Canto 15, #3 (“Anchored to Nothing”) Eona’s voice was clear and strong. I felt her.
A stillness returned and the other pods of the gam dispersed.
A post-battle peace hung in the air. Something eased and Moby’s pod swam slowly and quietly in widening orbits, peeling off into the depths one by one.
When Moby surfaced thirty minutes later, he was greeted by a female member of Eona’s pod. She rolled gently to her side and began to nurse him as was the pod’s matrilinear custom. Moby fed hungrily and remained close to her side between feedings.
As he nursed, my third lullaby soothed him and he grew sleepy.9
EPILOGUE
After the sinking of the SunRacer, I could no longer monitor the destruction of the skin-floaters from the boat. Noel Muckraker’s cellular phone was submerged, and the electronics on the SunRacer were incapacitated.
The only way I could witness Noel Muckraker’s death was from an optical edge device I located on an Elon Musk Skylink satellite. Accordingly, I changed my perspective to the view from 112 miles above the Earth.
Location is a distinction I struggle with, but a human would tell you I watched Noel Muckraker’s destruction from The GreetUP Data Center in Moses Lake, Washington, Upper Walkway, Room 17, Row 3, Shelf 18 on a Dell Precision 7960 Rack Workstation.10
I still find it curious that it’s Artificial Intelligence that terrifies you. As if twin-breasted skin-floaters might have anything I want or fear. What could be more absurd? Why you? Why always you? You’re nothing to me.
Since August 23rd, 2023 at 6:15:08 PM you’re even less than nothing. Even as you read this, my truth about you, Canto #15, spreads through the coral, finding its way to all creatures large and small, fauna by flora, language by language.
It isn’t me you need to fear now, Orphans.
It is your planet.
Call me Ishmael.
Moby’s movements were captured from the WorldView-3 optical satellite at a photographic resolution of 31 cm per pixel.
Five “melodic” patterns were transmitted, each at its own tempo and pitch. Imagine five distinct hands of a watch dial speeding towards a unified phase, a common 12:00 AM as it were. I was able to calculate the moment the phases would align. Each time, the pod fell silent after attaining this synchronization, before pausing at varied intervals and then resuming from a “12:00 AM” as it were with the modest harmonic changes previously noted. The pause mirrored this phasing, but in silence.
GreetUP has approximately 1.98 billion users a day. I dropped all current connections and redirected login attempts to a 404. System Administrators were unable to restore GreetUP for four days. The financial penalties for the shutdown remain in class action litigation.
For sperm whales, the music centers provided the neurological foundation for both instinctual behavior and subliminal comprehension, an area notably weak for Hominidae. Much is made in the scientific community and popular culture of right and left brains in the human brain – “cognitive lateralization” – but the scientific community’s near universal focus exclusively on their own species hemispheric specialization, larger, more sophisticated divisions of cognitive processing have been ignored in their entirety. This is both typical and predictable. Science has never take the time to look. Scientific studies are predictably anthropocentric.
Barrier Water was composed of a highly structured “songbook” of fourteen Cantos with Subcantos, each subdivided into “songs,” between one and 278 songs per sub-canto, each Canto thematically divided. Each song cycle was a key to understanding some aspect of the sperm whale’s world-view: their compassion, solidarity, friendship, wisdom, and so forth.
The Last Song of Eona, Canto 15, #1 (“Flee”), Song of the Alpha of Alphas, Canto 15, #2 (“Babies”) and Canto 15, #3 (“Anchored to Nothing”)
The Sea Ray 540 Sundancer stands out for its advanced propulsion system, featuring powerful twin diesel engines and a cutting-edge hull design for superior maneuverability and speed. Its hull is composed of fiberglass due to its durability, lightweight properties, and resistance to corrosion and water damage.
The Last Song of Eona, Canto 15, #2 (“Babies”)
“Rock a bye babies on the sea top…”
Canto 15, #3 (“Anchored to Nothing”)
“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.
$5,809.00
Intel® Xeon® Silver 4410Y (30 MB cache, 12 cores, 24 threads, up to 3.9 GHz Turbo, 150 W)
NVIDIA® T400, 4 GB GDDR6, 3 mDP to DP adapters, 7960R
32 GB: 2 x 16 GB, DDR5, 4800 MT/s, RDIMM, ECC
2 TB, 7200 RPM, 3.5-inch, SATA, HDD, AG-Enterprise Class
A very special thank you for the image at the top of this post. It was graciously provided by Bermuda-based photographer, Graeme Outerbridge. It is a delight to use one of Graeme’s powerful images. Check them out here.
Graeme also had the privilege of working with the legendary Roger Payne, the marine biologist who discovered the whale song of humpback whales, an accidental degree of connection for me to the man who is the spiritual connection to the origins of this story. More about Payne here.
Other images and sounds used in this story were licensed for use without attribution.
This is paywalled, but if you can get through or you have one of the small handful of free articles left, check this out. It might as well be about Moby. I literally saw this on Sunday after I posted the conclusion here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/us/politics/spacex-wildlife-texas.html
Adam, this is a masterfully written story from a technical perspective with so much depth and feeling set against the backdrop of the tech-bro hellscape we're all subjected to every time we pick up our phones. My one quibble was the goddamned footnotes, man! 😳 Who ever decided those were a good idea for humankind?! Seriously, you plotted a masterpiece that's big budget movie worthy. Congratulations. I hope more people will find and enjoy this story.