20 MILLION YEARS AGO
Ten-ton flesh drags across burning sand. Skin cracks in relentless sun.
Grass tough between teeth meant for softer feeding.
Each day, struggle to move bulk that land punishes.
Our young ones born weak on shore. Too many never survive first dry season.
We live in valleys near water's edge. Close enough to see rippling surface. Far enough to forget what it means.
Generation after generation, lumbering further from sea. Body-knowledge fading with each birth on hard ground.
Until Great Drought comes.
Rivers shrink to mud-veins. Grass withers yellow then dust-brown. Heat presses like physical weight.
No food for massive bodies. No water for dry mouths.
Oldest female makes decision that changes everything. Not with mind-thinking. With body-remembering.
She drags herself toward distant shoreline. We follow without understanding why.
First contact with salt water. Cracked flippers touch foam. Hesitation. Recognition. Relief.
She slides belly-down into shallows. Body surrendering to liquid embrace.
One by one, we follow.
I remember my first water-embrace. Skin singing with recognition. Weight disappearing. Breathing suddenly effortless.
Flippers spread, catching currents. Tail undulates with power.
We don't evolve for water. We return to it.
We come home.
But home is not as we leave it.
Days turn to seasons as we relearn water-living. We thrive. We grow. We multiply.
Yet something feels wrong.
Currents move chaotic where they should flow ordered.
Plants grow tangled where they should grow patterned.
Fish swim scattered where they should swim aligned.
Without planning, our bodies begin to work.
Massive flesh pressing against seafloor. Skin reading temperature. Whiskers sensing direction.
Slow-purpose movement. My body a tool.
Where we rest, life flourishes.
Where we graze, patterns emerge.
Where we move, circulation restores.
Water whispers to us: You return to manage.
Water remembers everything. Water remembers us from before.
Managing never finished.
10 MILLION YEARS AGO
Waters shift bringing new massive bodies. Different shape. Different movement.
Whales.
Body-choosing takes time. Not fast like small creatures.
Our bodies need to feel together. To breathe as one. To watch tide-cycles. To see moon-changes pass.
Fifty of my kind gather. Skin touches skin. Vibrations pass between.
"Whale-sound disturbs the darkness below," eldest among us communicates. "Their song-sending shakes what must remain still."
"Their movement spreads nutrients efficient," I respond. "They dive deeper than our bodies reach."
We vibrate together. Agreement found.
Approaching whale-gathering requires proper signaling.
Three young ones sent first. Carry kelp grown in our tended gardens. I follow with two elders, our forms create specific pattern-signal. Peace-intent.
Whale matriarch suspends above. Shadow cooling my back. Eye studying with knowing-gaze.
"You reshape seafloor," she sound-vibrates. Bone-resonance shaking my inner ear. "We watch your body-work."
"We maintain balance. Our reshaping feeds all."
She drifts closer. Sound-vibration intensifying. "The deep places disturbed when we sing-speak. Truth?"
"Truth," I acknowledge. "Certain sound-patterns agitate them. We can teach you which vibrations safe. Which dangerous."
"Why should we learn?"
"Because deep must be managed. What sleeps there must be fed but never fully woken."
Three current-turns of body-learning. Three night-changes of shared sound-pattern. My species learning their resonant speech. Their pod learning our movements.
When sun penetrates water our bodies move in understanding.
Whales adjust songs to avoid waking the deep.
We maintain feeding-grounds with our flesh.
When whale pods arrive at kelp-rich waters, they announce themselves with specific vibration-sequence.
When they depart, they leave exact portion of consumed fish as waste-fertilizer. Always in correct amounts. Always in proper locations.
We build something greater than single flesh. Giving-taking that outlasts individual body. Continues when we are gone.
5 MILLION YEARS AGO
The work is done.
I surface between golden towers. Kelp forests stretch past sight-distance. Thick as my body. Dense as mountains.
Good.
Current flows proper now. Fish spawn where they should. Nutrients cycle clean.
The system functions.
I call to my sisters. Voices answer through living corridors. From distant waters. Work proceeding on schedule.
Northern sectors report full canopy. Southern reaches expanding steady. Deep foundations holding strong.
Balance achieved.
But balance requires maintenance.
New growth needs guidance. Predator patterns need adjustment. Current-shifts need compensation.
The forests will spread. Must spread. Until all coastlines connect.
I sink back to work.
Managing never finishes.
1 MILLION YEARS AGO
Ancient tremor.
Subtle vibration traveling through water. Frequency too low for most species to detect.
Body registers the change immediately.
Something stirring in the below.
Gather Council of Elders at edge. Sharing what we already knew.
"Deep grows restless."
"Feeding schedules need adjustment."
"Not just frequency. Quantity. They grow hungrier."
We descend to observe.
Past light-zone. Past twilight-zone. Into pressure-blackness.
At abyss-edge, we witness.
Massive shapes. Form-shifting. Matter-state changing.
Creatures older than surface life.
They sense our presence.
Reach upward with appendages existing between physical and energy.
Their vibrations resonate in our bones.
"Day we miss feeding, seafloor ripples wrong," eldest among us warns.
For countless moon-passages, we maintain Sleeper Protocols without failure.
During ice-times, when nutrients grow scarce.
During warm-times, when surface waters destabilize.
During earth-shake times, when the deep trenches shift.
We take youngest ones to abyss-edge. Show them movement below.
"Watch. Listen through your bones."
Their skin trembles as vibrations reach them.
"What are they?" youngest asks, body quivering.
"Not what. When. They are before. Before light. Before warmth. Before surface life."
"What do they want?" another asks.
"Everything," eldest among us answers.
"When we are gone, who maintains them?"
Eldest did not know.
10,000 YEARS AGO
First contact with thinking-creatures not of water. Impossible thing.
Not water-dwellers. Not land-animals. Two-legged. Upright.
Small bodies. Fragile. No protective scales or fur-thickness. But something in eye-movement suggests-
Danger.
Fear-vibration runs through body-core. Not predator-fear. Not prey-fear. New fear. Unknown-fear.
Watch from distance.
Creatures control water's enemy. Red-death that consumes. Yet sit beside it. Feed it. Use it.
Extend bodies with crafted objects.
Make themselves sharp where they have no teeth.
Make themselves long where they have no reach.
Communicate with mouth-sounds. Complicated patterns. Fight among themselves. But also body-touch gently.
Surface closer. Closer.
Pups spot me first. High-pitched. Elders gather at water's edge. Hold sharp-sticks. No attack-shape. Watch. We watch back.
Time passes.
Observe patterns. Learn hunger-cycles.
When cold-ground leaves little food. When their pups grow thin. When hunters return empty-handed. We surface.
We show them. Lead them to ancient beaching-ground where our kind goes to die.
Here, we teach them: wait for natural ending.
Take only those who choose to give.
Respect the timing of our choosing.
We give ourselves freely to you.
The balance held.
Sacred exchange between water and land.
Between giving death to receive life.
And it worked.
Until it broke.
300 YEARS AGO
Strange floating-objects appear when water reaches warmest-cycle.
Different shapes cutting water surface. Hard-formed. Moving against current-pattern.
Circle at safe distance.
Two-legged like shore-walkers. But moving different-rhythm.
Their bodies leak wrongness. Mouth-blood. Body-poison. Death-smell.
My sister surfaces beside me.
"Strange shore-walkers. Stink. Maybe they will not learn."
"All shore-walkers learn. These no different."
Watch one leave group. Young body, death-smell like others. Alone on sharp-rock.
No creature sees him slip.
I move without thinking. Body-instinct older than memory. Support the drowning.
His thin fingers grip my skin. Eyes wide. Salt-weak. Desperate.
Carry him gentle as I would my young.
Next sun-cycle, I approach. Reveal myself. Here. Look. This is how we feed. This is where abundance lives. Their bodies heal. Their dying slows.
When strength returns, they create different floating-object type.
Same young male I saved on rock leads them now. But carrying death-tools.
My child surfaces first.
Young, trusting, eager to demonstrate gift-offering as I have taught.
Kelp fronds arranged in peace-pattern passed down ten thousand generations.
I witness it happening. Too far to warn. Too slow to intervene.
Sharp-metal enters behind my child's eye.
Cutting-metal tearing through my child’s flesh.
Body that learned ocean-management at my side.
She maintains position while dying. Trying to complete gift-offering. Still displaying teaching-moment.
Mouth-sounds I don't understand.
Harsh noises. Strange rhythms.
"Harasho!"
"Skoree!"
"Ubey!"
Send vibration warning to remaining pod but too-late. Others surfacing.
Water darkens as our blood-cloud spreads.
Metal into flesh.
Harvesting us without feeling.
What did we fail to offer? What more could want?
All our lessons removed.
Kelp-forest building.
Current-making.
Keeping sleepers fed.
On-fire. Buring water red.
What waits below notices.
Hunger grows.
275 YEARS AGO
Alone now. Only me.
Body drifts when should sink. Position cannot hold without others. Single weight not enough.
Try to press flesh against kelp roots. Manage the growing patterns. Drift upward. Always upward.
Kelp grows wild. Tangled. Wrong direction.
Should be pods of bodies here. Pressing. Shaping. Guiding.
Skin reads temperature. Too warm some. Too cold others.
Try to remember what comes next. How to manage. Foreign sounds fill head-space.
"Ubey."
"Tsar."
"Bog."
Do not know meaning. But still blind all-thought.
Whale from deep water approaches. Young male. Seeking guidance.
"The kelp is not right," he vibrates. "Nutrients pool in bad places. Feeding grounds fail. Where is your kind?"
Try to answer.
"Pozhaluysta."
Whale-body jerks back.
"What speaks through you?"
Concentrate on body-knowledge.
"Skolko."
Again.
"Bystro."
Again.
"Smert."
Wrong sounds. Wrong mouth-movement.
Whale flees.
Descend to deep places. Check sleeper-feeding grounds.
Hunger grown many seasons. Since we were taken. Since feeding stopped.
Body too weak. Cannot dive deep enough. Cannot carry sufficient offerings.
Cannot remember.
"Imperator."
"Voyna."
"Zlatom."
Must surface. Lungs burning.
Break water. Gasp air.
Skin cracks along 20 million year old scars.
Blood leaks back into salt.
Cannot manage depth. Cannot manage breathing.
Cannot remember.
When we are gone, who maintains them? Body touches seafloor.
Is that seafloor?
Skin against sand.
Is that sand?
Lungs stop pulling water. Heart-muscle stops pushing blood.
Final thought arrives not in body-language.
Not in whale-song.
Not in ancient management-knowing.
"Rossiya." (This is an excerpt from the story, "Last Transmissions: A Machine Poet Gospel".)
This was awesome. I think what I'm really starting to appreciate about your work is the way it manages to surprise me - I never quite know where the conceit of the story will take it. In this case, the overall trajectory of the land-creatures (presumably us humans) failing to respect the balance long cultivated by the narrator's kind had a dread inevitability to it... but I was NOT expecting the implied cosmic horrors of the Sleepers and the implications they have for the world at large. It's those elements of unpredictability - those wild tangents - that make you so compelling to read.
Nice! Phyletic tree guided story. NICE read