Alpha's Epsilon of Pod1

Mare flexed her flippers and wondered for the thousandth time why she had gotten this job. Human Studies was a joke in some parts of the Dolphin Science Academy. Perhaps that was what had attracted her to Tube, especially considering his…well…she dissolved this thought before it could depart for a destination she did not want it to arrive at. He was her mate, and that was enough.

Tube was smart and he was handsome. He made her laugh, and intellectually he stimulated her in ways that amazed her. Often, when she had reached an impasse, he would come up with an idea which opened a new portal - usually at complete right angles to her original line of thought. She joked with him that he must have been a human in a former life. In response, he usually showed her his male parts and asked what human male could ever have had such magnificent tackle.

As a member of the Academy’s Space Research Group, Tube had little contact with Human Studies. But now they were working together on the same project for the first time. It was exhilarating, also frustrating for both of them Mare realised. One of the cornerstones of their relationship was going their separate ways in the daytime, then reuniting for the evening feed to discussing findings and academic gossip. Now they had been in close proximity for six tides, and were beginning to feel the inevitable shortening of tempers.

Floating at his desk on the opposite side of the room, Tube uttered an expletive that would have made a blue whale blush. He swam over to Mare and beat the corner of her desk with his fluke. “This is pointless. I’ve gotten nowhere, and am going nowhere.”

Mare stroked the light stripe that ran from his rostrum down to his left dorsal fin. “Please, my love. I told you it’s important and mother did order it.”

He laughed sarcastically. The steam of bubbles from his blowhole wandered up towards the ceiling and pooled together to form a gaseous mirror. “Your mother ⎯”

“Stop it!” Mare was instantly angry at herself for loosing her temper with him. He knew her mother had privately not supported their mating, but had spoken out publicly against those who had seen the union as an affront to bottlenose superiority. “She was on the wave to King Julian when I saw her, so maybe it’s connected to that. If the Simians are involved, and she’s calling the Sentient Council together then you know it’s important.”

“I suppose,” Tube mumbled, and nuzzled his beak against hers. “Shall we collate?”

She nodded and flicked his fluke with her own to indicate that she accepted his apology. “Let’s move to the coral cave.”

The coral cave was the best room in their residence, and Mare was ashamed to admit inwardly that she had used her mother’s position to make sure they had gotten this prime location. The room was ordinary enough - rock seating with a table carved out of basalt in the centre - but the highlight was the seascape portal. This gave an unobstructed view of the coral reef stretching out below them. The different hues and shapes of the coral, matched with the ever-shifting colours of the reef’s residents made her feel at one with the sea and its life.

Relaxing into one of the stone chairs, Mare flicked her right flipper and her condensed notes appeared, glowing brightly. Looking up she saw that Tube had done the same, so she began to summarise her findings. “I’ve reviewed all data concerning the humans’ embarkation and cross-referenced it with the Simians’ databases, since their terrestrial archaeological data is much more comprehensive than ours. All sources agree that the humans departed our planet, which they disdainfully called ‘Earth’, in one massive diaspora. It’s not clear what prompted them to leave; maybe it was a threat from the planet itself, which isn’t surprising considering what they’d put the poor thing through.”

Tube gave her a quizzical look. “Is this a scientific report or a diatribe?”

She flicked her fluke at him. The resulting pressure wave ran though his display and distorted it momentarily. “I’m being me, so please stop interrupting. According to archaeological findings at the submerged space port excavated on the Great Flipper, the humans’ technological level at the time of this planetary egress was sufficient only to get them to the edge of the solar system at best. They had a base on Luna, and we know they had stood on Mars from the Simians’ robot discoveries there. But are we to believe that since then humans have been living in the frozen extremities of our solar system without ever returning home?” She paused rhetorically. “I think not. They are gone; long gone, and they are not coming back. So the questions are: why did they leave? How did they leave? And where did they go?”

Tube swam over to the seascape portal to look at at the indigo world beyond. He said nothing for a short while, then turned back to look at her. “The ‘how’ can be answered by the Orca Hypothesis, if it can be believed.”

Mare sighed. “Well, I guess we had to arrive at this point sooner or later. Let’s throw away all our scientific training and assume the Orca Hypothesis is right; explain it and convince me.”

Tube went back to his desk and finned a sequence on the basalt pad lying there. The seawater in front of him glowed and formed into the image of a series of carvings. He gently wafted the image over to where Mare was sitting. “The orcas discovered these carvings in a deep-sea ice cavern under the Lower White Shelf. They were made by sentient orcas sometime during the First Awakening.”

Mare looked doubtful. “Has that ageing been confirmed?”

“Not recently, but there is a basic chemical analysis of the pollution level of the cave ice from the initial survey, and it holds up with the recorded reversal of the planet’s sea pollution. The figures date the carvings to about ten thousand rotations after the pollution level was estimated to have been at its maximum, which is when the orcas assume the humans left the planet.”

Mare jerked up. “Does that also give us a ‘why’?”

“Not necessarily. Even at the maximum pollution level the planet was still habitable by higher mammals, since obviously the Simians’ ancestors co-existed with humans at that time. Still, it could be considered a candidate. Anyway, let’s concentrate on the ‘how’, since we’re on that current of thought.”

Mare nodded, but filed the pollution information in her supplementary lower memory cortex for later consideration.

“Now,” Tube pointed at three images near the middle of the set. “These are interesting. Can you see them?”

“Not so well,” Mare admitted.

Tube flippered at the pict twice, and the images magnified. 

“Better, thanks,” said Mare, blowing him a bubble-kiss. The pict now showed a series of three carvings in an ice wall. The black sediment filling the carvings was remarkably well-preserved - probably due to the cold water. Many of the marine organisms who liked to destroy many of the human artefacts which she herself had surveyed in warmer waters, couldn’t live in the colder oceans.

The first carving showed three humans in the classic stick-figure motif that both ancient Cetaceans and Simians had used. Two of the figures exhibited the triangular construct above their legs which identified them as female. The interesting thing about the first carving was what was next to the humans. It was a spherical object about twice the humans’ height, and unless the carver had misunderstood the perspective (which was quite possible) the sphere was floating. No-where in any of the studies of humans was there any other record of an object like this. 

“Tube, did the humans have neg-grav devices?”

He swam around the image and came to float next to her. “It’s very unlikely. The physics required to negate gravity are complicated. We only discovered them by accident when researching ways to allow Simians to descend to the deep-water trenches without getting crushed.”

“So, the mysterious object in this carving appears to be a paradox. How can that be explained?”

Tube groaned, and a small bubble wobbled erratically from his blowhole. “You know what the orcas say, it’s ⎯”

“They say it’s not-of-this-world.”

“Indeed, although I believe the term they prefer to use is ‘idious’.”

“So it’s an idious,” Mare said. “Which basically means we have no idea what it is, except it’s not human.” She looked at the next carving, which showed a group of humans standing around a larger male. “I think we can assume that there were no giant humans roaming the land,” she noted in an amused tone.

Tube nodded, but didn’t seem to get the joke. “That makes sense, but don’t forget we’re looking at an ancient orca’s view of the humans. Anything he or she drew would be framed by their perspective of reality. So ask yourself, what would a pre-historic orca be thinking?”

Mare floated freely and thought for a few ripples. “If I were drawing a representation of our Pod, and wanted to highlight its structure, I would draw my mother bigger than all the other dolphins.”

“Exactly!” Tube hugged her. “You’re so smart it makes me want to cry.”

Mare tickled him. The expression ‘makes me want to cry’ was an old joke in the cetacean world, since obviously crying underwater was a completely ineffective method of showing emotion. “So,we have what appears to be a human male who is considered more important than all the others in this grouping.” She examined the final carving, which was the most mysterious of the three. “And what,” she pointed her fin at the image, “do you make of that?”

Tube clapped his flippers together once, indicating frustration. “Well it’s very ambiguous, and even in orca circles has caused a lot of disagreement.” He swam so close to the pict that the tip of his beak passed through the image. Spluttering slightly, he pulled back then waited while the image re-clarified. 

The carving showed a series of arcs intersecting at seemingly random points. Enough of the arcs crossed each other to form a warped internal area inside which, clearly drawn with great accuracy, was a cube. They had already checked that the arcs were not any of the myriad of language patterns that must have driven the humans mad.

Tube said, “The presence of the cube is as much of a mystery as the sphere. Many orcas have taken the arcs to represent some form of ideous writing but, to be honest, they could just as easily prove to be striation marks on the ice, leopard seal marks or…who knows? The only thing the orcas agree on is that the cube is part of the drawing sequence, but its significance - other than as a geometric symbol - is unknown.”

Mare checked the tidal monitor next to the viewing portal, and blew a flatulent sound with her tongue. 

“Your grandmother would have finned you for that,” Tube observed.

Mare gave him her most disgusted look. “Time and tide, and we’re running out of both. Can we at least form a hypothesis which can be only gradually discredited, so it seems we haven’t completely wasted this time?”

“Well, we can hypothesise about the ‘why’ and ‘how’. The humans left because the planet became too polluted and they evacuated with the help of an idious race, presumably one sufficiently advanced to take the entire planet’s population through space to an unknown destination. So the ‘where’ is the real problem, unless…”

She knew that look in Tube’s eyes. He was making one of his great leaps. “Yes,” she prompted. “Unless…?”

“Unless the arcs are not random, but form a grid which indicates a location in space-time.”

“Oh that’s good!” Mare exclaimed. “But what about the cube?”

“Well it could be a representation of three dimensional co-ordinates, even though it’s featureless, whilst the arcs may imply extra-dimensional addresses, perhaps in hyper-space. Alternatively, there could be some constellational significance. Without a reference point or key it’s pure conjecture, but it’s the best I can come up with.”

 “Alright, we’ll go with that and state that, scientifically, there’s no basis in fact for any of this. It’s all subjective and bound to be harpooned by any decent thinker.” 

Tube nodded. “The Simians are going to split a banana if your mother presents this as our best findings at the Sentient Council.”

“That’s their problem. We did what Mother asked - come up with a theory based on the data available.” Mare flippered a sequence on the basalt console, and the pict disappeared. Ripples later an audible chime announced that the entire report had been submitted to her mother. That was the end of their involvement with this ‘project’. Once again, she wondered what the point of it had been, but decided to be the dutiful citizen and not question too deeply the instruction of her Alpha.

“Come on,” Mare said. “It’s not too late, and I’m not that tired. Shall we go for a swim?”

Tube gave her an enquiring look. “When you say ‘swim’, do you mean…?”

Mare turned and accelerated out of the portal overlooking the reef. “Catch me if you can!” she shouted back to him, as her flukes disappeared up and out of sight.