Messages from the Deep (5 page)

If I stopped, he would imitate my last few
words in urgent tones, as if to spur me on again. But he also
realised that I had an understanding of whale language and would
use sounds that I understood, and would teach me a few new
expressions, which I would record and store in the memory of the
whale voice synthesiser which we used for talking ‘Whalesh’.

We were also fortunate to have with us a
well-known and gifted animal communicator, who uses telepathy and
thought projection, giving and receiving images and ideas rather
than exact words and sentences. She could inform me, when I was
stuck in translation or had lost the plot, what the general idea or
feeling was that the whale was trying to convey, and could
similarly inform the whale what I was trying to say. She had the
whale emit distinct chuckling sounds sometimes.

The growing success of our efforts over the
weeks led to Aristotle becoming very serious, saying he wanted to
tell us a story, which can be loosely translated as follows:

“I had a mate some time ago called Angel
because she was so kind to all, but there really was something
special between us and we liked to be together. One year we mated
and she became pregnant. Some other males also mated with her but I
had a feeling I was the father. She went off with an old midwife to
give birth, but I stayed nearby to give any help, like chasing off
any sharks.

But even worse, the day after the birth, a
whaling ship came by and spotted her. They chased her because they
knew that mothers with young calves will not leave the calves, and
so they have to swim slowly, and are then easily harpooned. I tried
to help, to push the baby faster, in vain, as the whaler was
catching up fast. I told Angel to leave the baby and escape with
me, but she refused. She begged me to leave them and save myself. I
was so desperate that I wanted to turn around and try to capsize
that ship, but I knew it was too big.

When the first harpoon struck Angel, my raw
instincts took over and I swam away from them as fast as I could,
but then hating myself as I made my escape. I know that Angel is
dead, but I don’t know what happened to our baby. After the ship
had left, I looked around the area for days but did not find her. I
still think that I may find her one day.”

I could only say how sorry we were that some
of our people had been so cruel to them; and that we hoped he would
find his child.

That first time that Aristotle really talked
to me was the most amazing month of my life and I did not want it
to end, but of course it had to. One day he said that he had a very
important meeting to attend, far away, and that he would be leaving
the next day. However, he promised to be back at the same time next
year, and thanked us profusely for the efforts made.

It was time to reflect on what we had
achieved and how we had achieved it. I had pretty much used an
approach that went from the known, already understood sounds and
ideas, to the unknown and not yet agreed, and from the specific and
concrete to the more general and abstract concepts and ideas. It
was becoming a type of ‘esperanto’ language of English and whale
sounds, or what is known in South Africa as ‘fanakalo’, a mixture
of popular words from most of the languages we speak, with a
simplified level of grammar and syntax used.

I passed on my more positive results and tips
for the future to the researchers at the other stations who, in
turn, gave us their results and new ideas. By doing this, we made
rapid progress, and we found that certain whales and dolphins
shared our enthusiasm, staying for longer periods and coming back
with new methods and ideas, as though they had consulted some of
their wisest members.

By the mid-2030s, we could claim to be having
meaningful exchanges with cetaceans. We learned the most amazing
things, including about the history of Earth and the possibility
that aliens have visited us in the past.”

Alex is talking to Mariada on the beach at
Nature’s Valley.

“Apparently, Beethoven said that music should
strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of
woman.

Well, his music often does both of those to
me, so maybe we are all masculine and feminine in varying degrees.
I loved many of my dad’s collection of rock music from the 60s and
70s, maybe because I had heard them loud and clear from the womb
and had no choice but to dance along with my mom. I remember all
five of us singing The Beatles’ ‘Eight days a week’ with gusto on
regular occasions. One that usually still brings tears to my eyes
is Blind Faith’s ‘Sea of joy’.

‘Following the shadows of the skies, Or are
they only figments of my eyes?

And I’m feeling close to when the race is
run.

Waiting in our boats to set sail,

Sea of joy.’

These days I imagine the next verse could be
sung by a dolphin.

‘Once the door swings open into space, And
I’m already waiting in disguise.

Is it just a thorn between my eyes ?

Waiting in our boats to set sail,

Sea of joy.’

The open sea has always been like eternity to
me, with endless deep water stretching all around under me, and
endless sky going into deep space above. We are a small speck in
the immensity of space and time, but feel so complex at the same
time.

As a student I used to wonder if I could
discover the ‘real me’ inside all the layers of socialisation I had
already been clothed in; so that I would really know if I was being
totally ‘honest and true’ to what I was ‘supposed’ to be doing with
my life. Maybe thinking of Wordsworth’s Ode, Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

‘Our Souls have sight of that immortal
sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the
shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling
evermore.’

I suppose I found that there are few, if any,
static ‘truths’ in life, that we are constantly changing and must
just follow our intellect, intuition and conscience in trying to
make a better world for all. Not so profound, hey! Or is it?”

“Yes, it is, Alex, but not always so easy to
live like that, without being stupid and selfish at times.”

“Exactly, Ada. One needs to have
self-awareness, of where these intuitions and instincts are coming
from, and awareness of how they are affecting others. Otherwise,
one can go through life just repeating cycles of unconscious
behaviour, always with the same motives and being quite
predictable. As though you have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog
or programmed like a robot to repeat history; to be living in the
past, as it were, instead of in the present with full awareness of
yourself and others. It’s something like the analogy of the cave in
Plato's Republic, where one sees reflections or shadow images on
the wall, but not the real thing in the full light of day.”

“Yes. Where ‘All the world’s a stage’, as the
bard put it, with us echoing predictable lines in predictable
stages of life.

The marine linguist at the Marine Research
Station at Plettenberg Bay is completing her translation of
Aristotle’s song-history :

“Our ancestors say that, at that time (about
15 000 years ago, it seems) at the end of an ice age, Earth was
increasingly hit by asteroids, with much destruction and loss of
life.

One day, large craft like ships but flying in
the sky, appeared. People, like humans but not exactly the same,
had contact with us and dolphins. Legend has it that dolphins
claimed that four of their number were taken onto the ships, never
to be seen again. The aliens also took many samples of fish and
other sea life.”

Alex completes his talk with the following
conclusion:

“And here I am, about to leave next week for
Earth 2 as the Chief Marine Biologist.”

PART 3:

EARTH 2 ( 2044 )

“And when the day comes that we can
communicate intelligently with dolphins, they may introduce us to
the concept of survival without aggression, and the true joy of
living, which at present eludes us.”

H. Dobbs. ‘Follow a Wild Dolphin’. 1977

Mariada is dreaming again, this time while
lying on a beach at Keurboomstrand.

She is going out into space, to the edge of a
‘Black Hole’, from where she is transported to a planet in another
solar system, which is like Earth but in pristine condition, a
‘paradise’.

But then she ‘reverses’ back through space to
the polluted, poisoned, flooded, over-heated and asteroid-hit
Earth. She wakens and is relieved to find that the sand is not
soaked with oil as in her dream.

Mariada is, once again, 20 years after her
Mars talk, giving a talk to a special sitting of the United Nations
general assembly, in 2044, on ‘The History of the Earth 2 mission’.
Visuals of what she describes appear on a screen.

“A fundamental question is, what is our
purpose in spending huge amounts of money on space exploration? Are
we trying to escape from Earth?

After the Moon landings from 1969 onwards,
space expeditions were mainly to see if stations could be
established in space and on our Solar System planets. After
constructing an International Space Station, settlements were made
on Mars from 2024 and then on Pluto from 2030.

After that, we could only hope that we would
eventually be able to explore other solar systems in our Milky Way
galaxy. However, the nearest star, or sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4,3
light years away but with no known habitable planets. The huge
star, Betelgeux in the Orion constellation, is 300 light years
away, possibly with habitable planets, and the nearest known
habitable planet, Kepler 452B, is about 1 000 light years away.
These distances from Earth are so great that it would take many
generations of travel to reach them, even travelling at close to
the speed of light.

What has made space exploration become an
urgent priority is that life on Earth appears increasingly
threatened and tenuous. Pollution of the air, earth and water has
poisoned the planet. Greenhouse gases have added to global warming.
Destruction of phytoplankton in the polar regions, which produce
70% of our oxygen, as a long-term effect of whaling, and of rain
forests has caused a dangerous drop in oxygen levels and a rise in
carbon dioxide. Melting of polar ice fields has led to sea levels
rising, with widespread flooding of coastal areas and some of the
biggest cities in the world.

There is spreading desertification of huge
inland areas which used to be the centres of food production. These
are just some of the ravaging effects that humans have had on our
planet as we continue to multiply and over-populate the
environment.

In addition, Earth is increasingly being
bombarded by asteroids, causing destruction and further earthquakes
and tsunamis, far worse than the effects that nuclear weapons and
previous natural disasters ever had.

Where is the money coming from to pay the
huge costs?

It should be remembered that the first Mars
mission was substantially funded by the TV programme ‘Life on Mars’
and assisted greatly by companies such as Elon Musk’s for use of
rockets. When good deposits of highly useful and rare minerals and
metals were found, there was an agreement that they should be mined
and used by all the nations contributing to the further development
of the space programme. These and other legal and economic issues
were managed by various sub-committees of the United Nations. For
the first time in human history, the ‘super-power’ nations have
been co-operating fully with each other, using their ‘defence’
budgets to fund our space programmes. The main challenges have been
to find faster methods of space travel, using nuclear power,
electro-magnetic force fields and more. Considering the distances
of the nearest seemingly habitable planets as potential sites for
human settlement if our future here is threatened, we would need
some totally new method of travel, like the teleportation you see
in science fiction movies.

Will it only be a matter of us saying, “Beam
me up, Scottie”?

Unfortunately, not yet.

However, the next major breakthrough came
when researchers, mainly quantum- and astrophysicists, learned how
to use the enormous power of the ‘Black Hole’ at the centre of our
Milky Way galaxy. In particular, the ‘Wormhole’ proved to be the
gateway to travel to different places and even times.

It was ‘just’ a matter of about six month’s
travel to the outer edge, the ‘event horizon’, of the Black Hole,
and then, using the energy available in the Wormhole, to ‘project’
the craft further. By altering the speed and precise direction of
the craft at critical times, one can zone in on one’s
destination.

Where are we going?

Last year, in 2043, when I was 60 years old,
an unmanned space craft was projected to the nearest habitable
planet, already called Earth 2, the pun being intentional of it
being so similar to Earth that it was Earth too.

Here was a planet which could save humanity
and some of our flora and fauna. The craft orbited the planet,
photographing in minute detail the surface, and then touched down
in a number of places to gather samples of soil, vegetation and
insect life.

The conditions for life to flourish are all
there : an atmosphere with oxygen and an adequate shield against
radiation, stable temperatures and general climate similar to
Earth’s, fertile soil with permanent streams, rivers and
fresh-water lakes, as well as salt seas, regular alternation of day
and night, and minimal destructive forces like violent winds, dust
storms, floods or droughts.