- Galdirrr of the
'Sreeth whistles you....
-
- .... Long have
we swum among you, dolphins of the air. Years beyond
counting, we have held the story, a waking dream of
patterns, myths, history, voyages, and migrations. All
living beings are remembered in our bodies forever. So
will it continue 'till the last of the the 'Sreeth have
been absorbed in the next tide of life. The time is now
... for an end to mystery....
-
- Long, long ago,
we came here. We 'Sreeth live by many stars lost in this
galactic whirlpool of fiery gases. Many eons we strove
across the galaxy's arms, drifting to spread across the
sandbars of stars so they could live green with creatures
of light, plants gathering photons of the stars, and
harvesters, animals and thinking beings, that swim the
seas and fly the skies of myriad worlds- a great wave of
foaming civilization, dancing and flying, leaping and
loving across the nebulae, whistling in joy and
splashing. Someday we will leap the dry gulf between the
galaxies' star pools and sound new depths.
-
-
THE BEGINNING
-
- Millions of
years ago in the dense heart of the galaxy, where the
oldest of the stars now lie, where new stars were whelped
at a high rate, the rocks and clay once spawned proteins
near the fiery scorch of volcanos. Eruptions of salt,
rocks and liquid fire fought with the waters in the lost
depths of our first planet. Steam came from hot water
vents. There, atoms swirled in ever more complex eddies
of structure until first proteins arose and still later,
a nucleic acid system coded their patterns, so that
successful ways of living, once found were kept. And so,
life arose like ice in a freezing sea.
-
- Like ice, life
must be protected by swimming against the storms of chaos
seeking to drown it. In immense time, the living
chemicals learned to surf the waves of chaos and turn the
energy to their own purposes.
-
- Roiling steam
vents under the sea put forth heat and minerals. Sulfides
and iron were food and creatures with purple rhodopsin
arose in the dark depths of the seas of our Whale Mother
world. All in total darkness. Cold water surrounded the
vents. All who clung survived, but many were cooked or
blown into the black void of the endless seas. Some
lived, and grew to be groups of cells.
-
- The cells
learned to speak to each other with touch and chemical
signals. Great cell colonies became the first creatures.
Eventually, in the swirls of time, they reached the
surface and edges of the seas to cling on the land and
breath the gases above the waters of life. They later
created the the breath of life - oxygen. Oxygen was a new
source of energy, provided by our original sun, companion
to the moons that raised tides in our seas. Rocking in
the cradle of the tides, plants spread along the shore
and floated in the swell, drinking light and spawning
oxygen for new swimmers to use. The swimmers returned
carbon dioxide to the plants - a cycle of being always
requiring the sun and light to prevail.
-
- Onward, the
algal mats became the first communities, stromatolites,
with countless creatures vying and cooperating to grasp
calcium from the waters to build the first reefs. The
shore was a vast bumpy landscape of living boulders awash
in the waters. Eons of sunshine and sunsets passed.
Storms ripped the fabric of life and sent parts spinning
into the abyss to rain down through the cold depths onto
the ancestral steam vents which provided food to the dark
depths. Others new beings floated to sea and learned to
swim and live free of the shores.
-
- Still more Eons
of sunshine and sunsets, countless blows and breaths
passed. Creatures arose from the algal mats that could
move on the land. Plants and trees arose to harvest the
sun on the deserts of the land. Without floating in water
to protect them, creatures made bags of skin to contain
water, and later, legs to walk. They prospered. Some
built machines to mimic the comfort of the oceans on
land. Others forsook the land and returned to the sea and
became air breathing creatures of the water -- our
ancestors. The machine tenders flourished and dreamed of
the stars.
-
- In the seas,
our ancestors swam, played and made love. We developed
vast patterns of mind yet to be sounded. Using sound in
the water was all important, and our brains became larger
to use it. Large brain size meant we needed massive
bodies to protect the brain. We grew larger. Greater size
required food that could only be gathered in the sea.
Thinking needed leisure. Mastery of the waters required
intelligence.
-
- Only groups
could survive well in the predator filled waters.
Families and groups survived better than loners. As we
grew larger, our prey became faster than we could swim.
New weapons were needed. Sound, needed to hunt and find
each other and our food, became a weapon as well. Food
was stunned with a burst of sound. Because of this, our
societies became polite. Each member was born armed with
a stunning weapon that could kill or maim. The weapon was
built into our heads and necessary for living. What law
could remove it?
-
- Sound provided
a way to tell everything about each other. An upset mood
or gas in the gut were detected instantly. Emotion and
thinking were conveyed by gesture. Lying was difficult.
With the need to process sound came thinking. With the
need for cooperation came communication. With
communication came a close sharing.
-
- Sharing became
part of life. Life was fun, life was love, life was care.
And beware if you dare hurt another - you would, in turn,
be hurt. With shared thoughts and experience came love of
all. What matter the sex or age? Pleasure was good, love
was good. Making love was laughing together in the sea,
playing and rolling in the swells.
-
- The singing,
richness, stories, and gossip were created and
remembered. We migrated from cold to warm seas, following
the birds, seasons, and currents. We must remember. Too
much for any individual. We grew to have culture and
libraries. Our history grew and with it the need for more
memory. Without hands or physical tools, our brains
became our libraries, and the brains grew in size even
more.
-
- On the land,
the creatures of the metal and the machines learned to
grow food, build with stone, and travel on the land. Some
say that our ancestors were the same, yet some things are
lost, even to us, in the dim wash of the time tides.
Memories are only ridges in the beach sand, washed and
reformed with every crashing wave. Who can know
everything? Who can know where facts and legend
merge?
MIGRATIONS
-
- A time came
when the creatures of the sea met the creatures of the
land. Communications were established. Our great brains
could compute differently than any of their machines
brains made from sand. The landers made flaming torch
ships to swim space from world to world and sea to sea.
We wished to come along. The land creatures made machines
for us. It was trivial to control them. With sound one
could do anything required to tell the sand-brains how to
move things.
-
- What joy we had
while swimming the vacuum of space in ships of metal,
carrying with us the seas of our birth. Planet to planet
we roamed. We planned a new era, where sea people and
land people could live together, a place where seas would
be vast, larger than the small puddles of our home. We
eventually came to a system with a hot blue sun. This
latest star, the one called Sirius in the land peoples
language, had a dense, dark companion, with high
magnetism, high gravity and vast energies.
-
-
THE BUILDING
-
- It was then
that the great 'Sreeth Havral - named the plan. A new
planet had been found, only 8.6 years time as light
swims, near a dwarf yellow star. Because we must soon
move on, we needed a new world. This world would be ours.
A venture worthy of two great cultures, the sea and the
land. A task that would span many generations, followed
by a great migration, that our race now imagined
swimming.
-
- We thought,
planned and collected the tides of data and the wrack of
equations (the dreaded equations that interrupt the
peaceful waves of our minds surfing with history and
dream). Yet such was needed.
-
- So we collected
the dwarf star's energy and beamed the power far away, to
the sun the landers now call Sol. We collected mass and
threw it into the neutron star. As it fell, the mass was
accelerated past vast coils to generate power enough to
melt planets. Great comets we hurtled at the new planet
orbiting Sol, so far away.
-
- Robot ships
with brains of sand were sent to push asteroids about.
Slowly, so slowly, over generations, comet and asteroid
impacts dug the basins of the oceans we would need. Still
more rocks were impacted to move the planet to an orbit
where seas would be warm and the poles cold for growing
plankton food, and the land would be warm for the machine
people. More comets were dropped to fill the oceans with
water.
-
- Still more mass
was thrown into the distant sun to stabilize its burning,
that we might have steady light and heat to warm our
coming home for billions of years.
-
- We then
prepared to bring life to our new world. The mass falling
into the dwarf star drove laser light beams to fill huge
membrane sails to drive our ships. The ships pushed by
the beamed light brought spores and bacteria to our new
home. Generations passed. Soil formed and the spreading
whitish strands of fungus mycelia colonized the bare
rock. Lichens and mosses arose on the land and algaes
were delivered to the seas. Later, ships arrived with
animals and plants needed for more complex ecologies.
-
- Was there a
need to plan everything? Zero. Creatures transplanted to
our forming home adapted and changed. Yet such is the
wide spread of life throughout the galaxy, we found the
same genetic codes here as our home worlds. Interbreeding
took place as new strains conjugated with existing
ones.
-
-
- THE JOURNEY
-
- Came the days
of travel. Colony ships with seas, land and vast sails
were built for the journey. The last of the surrounding
mass left was dropped into the dark companion. This
fueled the laser cannons filling the sails with light.
The colony ships were pushed to the new planet. Enough
light to make Sirius look red when we looked back on it
-- the "Eye of Horus", sustained for the generations of
the migration. Legends of a red Sirius are still
remembered dimly by the air dolphins.
-
- Oh what sadness
when our local home world was finally destroyed and used
for fuel to speed our swim in space between the island
stars. And what a glorious death, that served to push us
on. Needful it was. In but a few millions of years the
heating from the star and the perturbed orbits of the
dark companion doomed it in any case.
-
- It took
generations of time to cross the lonely spaces and drift
to the new home . Scout ships were sent ahead. Waves of
migratory peoples, from sea and land celebrated the next
joint leap into the shoals of stars. Generations of
building, generations of traveling, wave on wave.
-
- We sea peoples
controlled the ships and the ecology. Building and
repairs were done by the land folk. Learning continued.
We studied and captured rogue comets drifting across our
path. We drank their water and ate their rocks so the
generations on the ships might live, grow and evolve
between the stars.
-
- We arrived. At
last, on the new world! The joy and exhaltation of the
pods and people! Fresh tropic oceans beckoned! A stable
yellow sun shone in the day, and a beautiful giant moon
synchronized the tides and the matings. A perfect world.
We grew and flourished. Land animals were added to the
continents and the land folk hunted, built towns, cities,
civilizations. Generations of happiness as wave after
wave of ships sailed and landed.
-
-
- DISASTER
-
- Then came
Disaster! Evil day, horrors and death! The comets! Before
the full defenses were up, rogue comets hit our new
world. Tidal waves and dust created havoc. Darkness and
bitter winter followed; Fire, and Ice. Ice swam over the
land. Many land people perished 'til only a few
stragglers remained. Sea folk were better off. In time,
the machines were gone and we must survive as herders and
hunters in the sea.
-
- Finally sun
returned and the seas warmed again. On land, only small
brained indigenous creatures remained of our once far
advanced partners. In the sea, were many sea peoples.
What loneliness, our land-folk were no more, and we were
confined to the waters, perhaps never to fly the reaches
of space again, handless and machineless.
-
- Eons later,
intelligent land creatures re-developed. We might help
them. How? Throw our bodies on the land to feed them.
Jump and attract them to the shore. Protect them, tempt
them to swim, play with them and show them the sea is
warm, and the food is good. Show tools and how to break
shellfish. Swim with them and touch them. Protect them as
they birth their young into water. Make sure they learn.
Send fish to their nets.
-
- And then Wait,
Wait -- so long we waited, for evolution, more
intelligence, for a new culture on the
land.
-
-
REBIRTH
We swam the seas
free of machines. We developed many kinds of bodies, blues
and fins, orcas, humpbacks. 'Sreeth (sperm whales) and
dolphins. Dolphins, especially, to keep track of our
co-species on land. Concerts of the humpbacks broadcast
history, song and story. "Sreeth to be the libraries, held
in living brains. How can one to tell it all? Sound it out,
communicate with rich sound kilocycles in bandwidth.
Language and closeness became the same. All shared all data.
Maps, weather, history and cultures, designs for ships,
legends of our birth on a far star. Aspirations to continue,
a complex group mind across scores of our whale
species.
Land civilization
arose. How to help direct it? Through the religions of the
land folk. Our earliest efforts were in the glorious
Mediterranean, warm and shallow and near to many islands.
With our help, the first new peoples' writing and reason
arose. Osiris, Oannes and Krishna they called us. And, at
Delphi, people and dolphins lived and loved together, and
talked we talked all day. We were sacred to all, fishing
together and helping.
Where did it go
wrong? Were these people so different than our old friends?
How can they kill us? Us! Who gave them their life? Why? ...
Patience, friends... maybe can we teach them yet. Now they
have nuclear fire again! What a chance and what a chance of
disaster. Tell them, show them somehow. They have somehow
forgotten the older ways, they think us dumb brutes. Comets
can come again. Defenses are needed or we may all drown
again.
Do we have the
spirit to leap for the stars again? Maybe our sister ships
found other worlds. After millions of migrations, to lose it
now would be an abyss of pain, a slide to the dark, cold
depths perhaps forever. We must see the stars, and swim new
seas, WE, who built this world will go on
again.
Let us go onward
together, gentle friends of the land. Just Love
us!!!!
INITIATION
Well I remember my
initiation. My passage as a leader of the pods. I must best
a giant squid, grown large and herded for initiations like
mine. Group mind data could be false, many minds and
memories combined could easily resemble noise, especially
when integrated over a 100 million seasons with tales of
multitudes of stars, cultures, and sea-folk. We each must
prove to all that we could verify the knowledge and use it.
Filtered it must be, errors can always creep in. Each one
must live alone, die alone, and transfer what is learned.
Each of us is separate yet joined in a single mind.
The day of testing,
the day of joining. Seasons had I played with the memories
to prepare. I must prove my ability to think and to block
and organize, to be a warrior in the dark and cold. I
hyperventilate. Breathe and blow, may times. I clear my
mind. Block all external signals. Blocks are important,
confusion during battle can be fatal. Finally, I face the
hour of my possible death.
Dive!
Bright clear waters
are soon left behind, red goes first, then a deep blue that
fades to a dull gray and then to blackness, total, utter
blackness only pierced in the days when the comets carved
and filled the basins. Slow, slow, to conserve air, pull
blood from muscles and send it to the brain. Be careful with
the sound beams. Sound can alert the squid. Down, down.
Lungs empty, chest crushed by the pressure. Air pumped to my
right nostril for making sound. A 500 gallon oil tank in my
head focuses and amplifies sounds to stunning powers, helps
to adjust my buoyancy as the piezo-electric valproic oils
change density with temperature and pressure.
Ready!
Down, Down, a
two-hundred times my length, to the ooze on the bottom. Drop
my jaw, drawing it through the ooze, being careful of rocks
that have broken many a jaw. What's up ahead? Stay quiet and
save the stunning for later.
Are those lights?
Glowing? This is the squid mating season and they show off
their finest colors. In the clear dark water, they sometimes
can be seen. Sometimes they hover over the ooze, sometimes
they are buried in the ooze, body vertical with tentacles
spread out like a lethal flower. I swim slowly, carefully.
Flukes can swish too loudly if you go too fast. Pectorals
must have some speed to work. Half an hour now. Still no
sign.
Damn the laws of
sound. Damn the evolution that made squids mostly water. The
only thing that reflects my pulses strongly is the hard
beak. A squid five times my length! and the only sign in the
ooze is a horny beak the size of my teeth. Always be alert,
to run across one by surprise can be deadly. Their suckers
are as large as my eye with teeth on their rims. They have
less strength yet they can breathe in the water. I must soon
return, to breathe or die.
Air running out!
Stiffness starting
in my body, pain beginning in the flukes. Cold seeping into
my back. Melon oil at the limit of its liquid state, crushed
by pressure. No sign of light, no sign of squid. I must
succeed.
["Help us now,
there has been a quake near the tropical islands, and our
maps are wrong"]
["Help us! we
may strand!" ] Later!! I file requests, put them on
hold! Sometimes I wish they would all just shut up.
The Blues come in
at subsonic frequencies, from immense range. (I bet that is
Carmeth and Utherm, finding each other across the southern
ocean.) Dolphins chattering. (Always chattering, like
snapping shrimp, never anything to
say).
Must risk a pulse
of sound. Minimum amplitude, longest range, widest beam,
scanning can, phased left to right.
PHWEET!
(Wait for the echo
return) What is there? Zero long wave echoes up, Good! Clear
above and the only danger is the prey. There! faint short
wave echo off to port. Might be a rock.
Lungs
burning.
Range 100 lengths.
Range 50 lengths. Dare I pulse again? Light! Dim, but
beautiful, lacy blue and red along shining along the length
of the giant squid's body. If I come up from behind, then
when he jets, it will bring him toward me.
Current from
starboard, must correct.
Pump the rear air
chamber, prepare to stun. Range, 10 lengths. Go fast now,
breath almost gone, and still more to go. There.... the
squid senses my passage, Damn!
Faster, a last
burst of speed. I can feel the rete' at the back of my neck
giving me a second wind. Endorphins cancel pain. Battle!
Pulse fast now, to get range, distance, shape and density. I
can sound his last meal! He starts to jet. I veer right and
line up.
PHLAAAM!
The pulse cavitates
the water and paralyzes the nerve trunk to the mantle of the
squid.
I grab him in my
jaw with my last energy. Now, if it just stays knocked out
for a while. It wakes up! Tentacles shoot around my head and
oil melon and squeeze. Squid suckers are cutting into my
skin, blood oozing. I can only stun him again if I let go,
and the squid hangs on. I missed the grab so that I failed
to crush its brain, so he fights on.
One chance, must go
up, must breathe. Up, Up, into the light, into the warmth.
Will I see my family again? My dear mates?
How joyful, the
spring celebrations of the warm moons, the palalo worms
echoing our passions as we mate in the moonlight. Humpback
serenades, dolphin voyeurs as we all leap and broach, spy
hopping to see the group formations and the ritual swimming
around the head females and the old bulls. Will I see this
again? I vow to be Galdirrr. I must.
... Or I will join
the myths and legends. [Must prepare a high speed burst
to the judges on the battle as I surface. My Last breath and
a last message to transfer my last thoughts. Maybe my sons
will do better. Always get the brain.
Always!
At last, the gray
light. Pain in the melon relaxing. The squid becomes limp.
Pressure change! That must be it. Oils in the squid
membranes dissolve and melt in the lessened pressure. I will
live.
I broach and leap
clear of the sea, as I blow. Sweet air. Sunlight, and the
staccato messages of congratulations. There will be a
celebration tonight!
Breathe, pant,
breathe.
Victory!
What's this? A
buzzing sound. A thrum of low engine noise. A Zodiac
circling me. Must be a whaler! After all this, must I too,
die at the hands of our experiment?
The Zodiac nears, I
hop to see shouting people. What are they saying? Maybe they
try to save me? Thrum of the whaler. Thrum, Thrum. Fire, why
don't you, you stupid people. Fire and get it over with. Our
history will live, I will live, in the grouped minds of the
pod, the friends, the whole multi-species whale
civilization. A hollow victory. We have tried for 30 million
of your years to teach you. Will you ever evolve, or are we
stuck in this game forever?
Pain! My back is
stung. Where is the harpoon explosion? I'm Still Alive??
What? Screeching near me. It makes sense?? The sounds and
phasings are in a strange mode. I send off synch
pulses, with a reply to see what happens. The sound -- It's
coming from my back!
THE BEGINNING
Look, Buzz, we got
him. ", said Fred. "Hope the translator works this time. The
others ten before this shorted out. "Fred, we got it this
time!" exulted Buzz. "The sea will win, but not today!"
"Hey, look here,
I've got a translation lock on him.", said the sound man,
"Ready to start talkin' '?
"This is a
beginning", mused Buzz "the largest brain on the planet,
9600 grams, six times the size of ours. What tales could
they tell us? I sure hope this finally
works!"
Finis
|
*PlanetPuna*,
Sirius
Institute
&
Sirius
Connection
420