The truth was not that we were the only ones. It was that we were the last ones: the only ones left.

The whales knew. 

In their infinite wisdom, and with characteristic empathy, the whales recognized not only that the doom was upon us humans, but that they had the ability not to stop it but to mitigate its effects.  In a world of growing despair and certainty of the end of all, the whales realized that they of all creatures had the ability to be harbingers of joy to those whose world-weary civilization was about to collapse upon itself.

Enthralled, shouting with delight, the passengers on the Queen of Capilano ferry in Howe Sound watched in wonder as two humpbacks breached in tandem; just the week before, other commuters had witnessed a pod of orcas frolicking in the blue-green waves.  No one paused to think of the toxic effluents produced by the vessel they boarded multiple times per week.  Certainly no one considered the possibility that the whales were communicating with them in a farewell salute, with the possible exception of intuitive youngsters who announced to their distracted parents, “They’re saying goodbye.”

Deep under the Sound was Sub-Marine Station X, staffed by dedicated scientists on secondment from SETI.  Why these lifelong seekers of extraterrestrial communication were focused on whales was an easier question to answer than one might think: quite simply, the patterns of sound and vibration employed by whales for communication within and between pods were thought to be analogous to communication patterns that could be typical of extraterrestrial communicants.  Indeed, why not?  It made sense that “language” could be understood and executed in this way.

To this end, the Sub-Mariners (as they called themselves) had begun using Artificial Intelligence tools to communicate with the denizens of the deep.  Sub-Mariner Jones was the first to have what seemed like a real conversation with the entity whose tail flukes (as distinctive as any fingerprint) identified her as Wavey Wabash.  For months, their communication had consisted of Wavey’s mimicking the frequency and duration of a series of iterations.  The breakthrough came unexpectedly, as the speaker monitor on Jones’s desk at Station X began articulating what was unquestionably human speech.

“Helloooo,” said Wavey.

“Uh, what?” a startled Sub-Mariner Jones replied.

“Huuuuuman.  Helloooo,” the voice insisted.

“Yes, I’m here!” Jones responded more enthusiastically.  “Wavey?”

“Noooooo…  [here the whale made a series of squeaks, punctuated by a high-pitched ululation of several seconds’ duration].  Youuuuu Jooooones.”

“Yes indeed!  But I’ll never be able to say your name, so can I call you Wavey?”

“Noooooo.”

“Ahem.  Fine, no problem.  I won’t call you Wavey.”

“Soooooo.”

“So indeed!”  Not for the first time, Sub-Mariner Jones entertained the thought that the process of naming, itself, was one of colonization, of ownership.  I told them so, he thought, recollecting a recent meeting with his team and their administrators. “I feel you have so much to tell us,” said Jones to the whale.

“Ohhhhhhh…” The whale seemed reluctant to proceed, having initiated the conversation.  “Tomorrowwwww.”

“Yes, enough for today.  I can barely take it in as is!” exclaimed Jones.  “Can I share this news of our talk?”

“Tomorrowwwww.”

“Yes, I’ll wait.  Good idea. Not sure the world is ready for this,” mused Jones.  Of course, all communications were monitored by the admin, but they were a tight-lipped bunch at the best of times, with little faith in the great sea of humanity they served.  They would hear and obey the whale’s advice, he had no doubt.  As for Jones, he found himself strangely reluctant to reach out to his fellow marine biologists. He wanted to hug this still-secret knowledge to himself.

Jones slept on a cot in the lab, as was customary during his week-long stints at the Station. His profoundly shocked psyche could barely process what had happened with Wavey.  Not Wavey, he corrected himself, even as he sank into uneasy dreams.

“Hellooooooo,” came the voice promptly at 0600 hours.  Jones’s alarm was set for 0600, and he was momentarily confused by the conflation of the greeting and the beeping of the clock.

To reproduce their entire conversation would be tedious and slow, but Jones’s logbook (written by hand, in the great seafaring tradition, subsequently reproduced to viral acclaim on social media) provides a record of the gist:

1800 hours:  a full day of communication with my cetacean friend.

We shared a moment of amusement (amidst the seriousness of her unequivocal message that humanity has all but destroyed the habitat all creatures share on this planet) in discovering that the word humans use for a group of whales, “pod,” is reminiscent of how these majestic creatures arrived here from outer space.  Long before the amoeba, cetacean seedpods were scattered on many worlds by passing spaceships from the distant Sea of Origin.

For millennia, these creatures have watched and studied our comings and goings; more than that, they have used what we could best describe as extrasensory perception to read our thoughts, our ambitions, our desires.  They have seen the beginnings of our own self-destruction.  Yet they clung to the hope that we would come to our senses, for we were the last surviving world where the pods had been scattered.

Finally, the very temperatures of the oceans began to rise.  The slow effects (again we shared a moment of amusement at the story of the frog in warm-then-boiling water) reached what the whales had determined to be the tipping point. 

Always, they knew the mother ship would return for their kind if the Earth environment became unsustainable for cetacean life. 

Now, the time has come.

They have been granted permission by the Overpod to bring a select group of scientists back to the Sea of Origin. With reluctance and yet with resignation, I abandon this world.  Earthlings have little time left–unless they heed the whales’ warning, and I have little faith that they will do so.  To all who read this, I entreat you:

Prove me wrong.

– Deb Blenkhorn

Author’s Note: “Said the Whales” was inspired by the fact that people I take the  commuter ferry with kept saying how many more whales (and other marine  creatures) there have been out in the Sound lately.  The real-world  resurgence of marine species in our region has been attributed to  reductions in pollutants and greater vigilance to the environmental  needs of marine life, but this story speculates that in fact these life  forms (from a wiser world than ours) are trying to warn us about  something no less momentous than our own planetary destruction.