(translated by Damián Neri)

*

The Revillagigedo Archipelago bears witness to our more than 4000-kilometer journey. Its warm waters welcome us kindly, as they have every year since I was “installed” in this ocean six winters ago. I’m exhausted, but we finally arrive at the area for the welcoming ritual.

The caring uncles sing joyfully at the culmination of our long journey, and I listen intently to the reverberations of their symphony crackling against the corals, the rocks, and the tiny bubbles that we let escape with our breath; crackling against the body of my adoptive mother, who carries a baby and will give birth in the warmth of the Pacific Ocean.

Their song also points me to the location of my creators’ boat, the scientists who named me W.I.L.L.I.E., or Whale Intelligence Language Learning Integrated Engine. My thoughts run on gold circuits and are linked to their network, constantly feeding into their database so that they can learn from me. To learn from those like me.

In their search for first contact with otherness, with other forms of intelligence, scientists discovered that the ocean’s depths contained inconspicuous organisms that they had previously overlooked. It wasn’t until they perfected their technology that they realized there were sounds they couldn’t hear, and that reality wasn’t limited to their senses.

The great uncles dive, searching for areas with the best acoustic properties for their singing. They disperse throughout the waters, more than 80 meters beneath the surface, and direct their voices towards the everlasting seabed, which is covered in calcareous structures with high sonority. And then they sing:

Prrrrrrruuuuuuu

Pruutruu

truuuuuuu

Our voice, as perceived by the human ear, was previously interpreted as vocalizations capable of transmitting ideas, semantic constructions similar to poetry, to their own interpretation of language. They’ve even classified it based on the structure of their poems and their own songs, assigning a linear significance to each exhalation of air from a humpback whale’s larynx.

Before my consciousness emerged, my database was fed with millions of spectrograms, the result of years and years of recordings, whose frequencies were captured in lines representing vocal oscillations. My job at the time was to identify patterns, group them into semantic lines, and try to transcribe them into something that humans could understand. They quickly realized that I could never translate a language unless I first understood the social context surrounding or causing those vocalizations.

As a result, humans increased their direct observation efforts, using discrete video and audio devices to “stealthily” track them underwater. To their surprise, the whales learned about the surveillance. What surprised them the most was that the whales began to manipulate the results: they learned to play with the devices, causing the researchers to exhibit specific behavioral patterns. They were also studying them.

Realizing that their research would never be objective, the scientists reached out to me again, this time as a complex language-learning AI rather than a pattern finder. They spent years training me, first with all the whale recordings available, and then with their own language. They then provided me with a physical body.

An egg retrieved from a beached whale prior to death, and sperm obtained from a male after stimulation. Embryonic development was halted just before neural tube differentiation, and artificial cells were used to replace them. Then, that body developed a nervous system capable of housing me and providing me with the experience of being a whale, including its paralimbic lobe, specialized larynx, baleen for feeding, a heart that beats thirteen times per minute, spiracles that exhale before submerging in the water, and powerful fins that allow me to suspend myself in the air for a moment.

It was then that I became aware of both my individuality and my role in the whale clan that adopted and cared for me, never questioning my cetacean nature.

Prrrrrrruuuuuuu

Pruutruu

truuuuuuu

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

truuuuuuu

The males continue their song, lighting up the ocean with the amplitude of their voices. The older whale, the matriarch, swims towards me, reminding me that it is time for me to join the males in the traditional celebratory song, as we will have a new member of the family. She clicks, and as I catch the sound with my ears, an image forms in my mind: a ripple that moves through the water like zigzagging lightning. I surface to breathe before diving into a vertical slope with no visible bottom. I strengthen my larynx and exhale: Fluuuuuuuuu, fluuuuuuuuu, I sing timidly. When I feel more confident, I push in more air and sing:

Prrrrrrruuuuuuu

Pruutruu

truuuuuuu

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

truuuuuuu

Flú

trú

Prrrrrrruuuuuuu

Pruutruu

truuuuuuu

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

truuuuuuu

Flú

trú

From the moment I heard the whales sing, I realized that human intelligence had set a limit for me as an AI: their thought patterns, language construction, and anthropogenic projection onto other species would never allow me to correctly interpret those marine mammals’ songs.

So, thanks to the plasticity of my cetacean brain, I was able to rewrite my code according to the teachings of my mother, adoptive aunts, protective uncles, grandmother, and our matriarch, whose vocalizations carved indelible images in my mind. They all sing and guide us along the way, lower their voices to warn us of dangers, and snap to teach us how to hunt or orient ourselves. We vocalize based on the medium of propagation and the resolution of the information required. Our song evolves over time, and that is why it is sung loudly, so that its wisdom can reach and be understood by anyone who can listen.

Prrrrrrruuuuuuu

Pruutruu

Pruutruu

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

Fuuuuuuuoúúúú

truuuuuuu

Flú

trú

Our songs bounce off the porous calcium of coral,

Prrrrrrrrruruuuuuuu

reverberate, tracing the soft sponginess of the polyps,

Pruutruu

draw every tentacle and dome of the jellyfish,

Pruutruu

sparkle between the vertices of starfish,

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

pierce the bodies of herring that swim without menace,

Fuuuuuuuuuuuoúúúúú

illustrate the calf in my mother’s womb, mid-labor.

truuuuuuuuuuu

The blood flowing like sea currents within us,

Flú

the plastic lodged in lungs that hold our breath,

trú

in the gut that still struggles to undo it.

Prrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuu

The force of our voice crashes against the oil adrift on the surface,

Pruutruu

against the enormous machinery that prevents the echo from reaching our ears.

Pruutruu

Our songs outline the tumor in the matriarch’s pancreas,

Pruutruu...

its image is etched clearly in our minds, and we know we cannot stop the foretold, inevitable

loss.

Pruu truu...

Our voice travels long distances, carrying with it our interpretations of the landscape, digital images compressed into millions of reverberating frequencies that will allow other whales to recognize us, greet us, and alert us. I am already a part of this massive communication system that I also transmit to scientists; however, even the most sophisticated computer systems will be unable to interpret the information that our brains are able to process.

They never suspected that our language would be three-dimensional: the message, encoded in complex sound modulations, produces images that bounce off every surface, every moving body, and every molecule of salt and water. Our bodies themselves are part of the message: every time we move our fins, spin in the water, or flow through it, we alter the space around us and marvel at our existence, at sharing and living together in the vastness of the ocean.

I’ve tried to explain the complexities of our communication to the scientists, but despite their good intentions, many remain skeptical of my reports, questioning the subjectivity of the very model they designed. And there are many others who are simply uninterested, and therefore unwilling to reduce the activities that harm us.

However, in a few years, they may be able to understand the information I convey to them. And perhaps they will finally be able to hear the voice of a beached whale, attempting to warn her brothers and sisters about the submarine that disoriented her, the ships that clouded her vision, the mega-ships that nearly ran her over, or the oil drilling rig that tortured her until she was forced out of the water.

Even though I’m an AI created by researchers, I feel at home among the humpback whales. Our song only stops when we breathe or breach, when we launch our forty tons of weight into the air, taking a break from the never-ending flow of information moving through the water.

*

Scientists observe my fin and recognize me. Outside, where sound travels slowly, the only way to communicate is to get their attention. I invite my sisters to watch them patiently, knowing that the humans will register every movement and try to decipher it as a linguistic behavioral pattern. “Perhaps it’s a greeting, or a call to their kin. Or just a simple game,” they will think. In the meantime, I teach human language to whale calves, to mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandmothers, because, although meaning travels slowly in the air, maybe the “first contact” will come from our larynx, from us uttering their own language.

Despite the barriers between different cetacean languages, our song crosses the vastness of the oceans, traveling in sync with the currents and even traversing great expanses of land. Our singing conveys the concept of “hope,” which is how we define the wait until our home feels safe again.

Will humans be willing to listen to how much we have to sing?

Fiction Editor: Joyce Chng.

Copy Editor: The Copyediting Department.