She lay in the cold depth, surrounded on three sides by rock, on all sides
by darkness. From above she would have been invisible, even had there been
light, just an anomaly against the rocky ocean floor. What little movement
it made was a rhythmical and subtle dance, little more than debris shifting
in the deep currents.
The near stillness she held not only conserved energy and improved sensory
input, but served a greater instinct as well. Nestled down like she was she
felt protected and calm, with her focus on feeding rather than fright or
flight. Unlike others of her kind she had learned the value of stealth to
protect as well as attack. Ironically, she had learned her most valuable
tactic after being severely wounded while feeding.
Though she lacked ears in the traditional sense she had learned to hear.
She may not have had the traditional auditory equipment such as a membrane,
a collector, and a rigid transfer agent for the vibrations, but she had
learned to work with what tools she had been given. This, too, she had
learned by accident.
Unlike others of her kind she had sought company. For the first decades of
her life she and one of her sisters had stayed together. They soon found
that two could eat more often than one and that the hunts cost them each
less energy. They couldn't speak in words that we would understand, but
they spoke in ways that they understood. Through shifting patterns by
contracting the specialized cells in their skin they could express emotion
and intent to each other. Since they were neither yet of breeding age and
their effective hunting made food plentiful, they had no need to compete for
territory. There was no conscious decision or discussion. They simply
stayed together because it was the path of least resistance.
In their youth they had hunted together in the upper 200ft or so of water.
They lived in the open ocean and there was little or no cover. Quite by
accident, or new instinct for their species, the sisters learned to swim
together side-by-side or in single file. Had their small brains been larger
and more cognitive, they would have realized that they presented not only a
larger profile but more effectively covered the avenues of escape for their
prey. Their banding together not only allowed them to compete with the
larger specimens of their species for the best food, but they were able to
effectively fend off attacks by their own kind during feeding frenzies.
Their original design required constant movement to flow water across their
gills. It was a very simple concept. The more they moved the more oxygen
they took in and the more energized they felt. Through the ages their kind
had developed the most effective senses and systems for hunting while in
constant motion. While their eyes didn't discern definition well, they
gathered light and detected motion better than most. Their entire skin was
a vibration receiver and localizer, akin to being blanketed in a lateral
line, enabling them to determine size, shape, direction and speed.
The arsenal at their disposal was trigger activated hydraulics, extensible
in a flash of electrical impulse. Once extended, it immediately retracted,
and the arms curled inward to meet together. Coated with curved spikes
tipped with barbs and a mild neurotoxin, these arms insured that pretty much
anything they came into contact with would be moved to the shredder that was
its mouth. When the arms would contract, the siphon would shoot it forward
and the prey was enshrouded by the lesser arms, spiked and barbed
themselves. Sometimes, when the sisters came at large prey from different
directions, a brief tug-of-war would ensue, soon called off by the flashing
of intense patterns on their skin. Contentedly, each would then work from
their respective ends until they met in the middle, where a brief struggle
would commence once again for the last tidbit.
It was during one such encounter that her life had changed forever, but
without a cognitive memory, forever is a relative term for others. They had
been swimming together, side by side, in hunting grounds that were becoming
increasingly deeper due to their growing bulk. The water close to the
surface was just getting too warm to be tolerated. Enough oxygen just
couldn't stay in their thickening tissues for long at the upper depths, but
brief forays were still possible. Both sisters had learned that the
undulating vibrations they now felt on their skin would, if followed, lead
them to the large food that spent most of its time on or near the surface,
but periodically dove to the depths in which they preferred to live and
hunt. They had learned to follow the vibrations and circle patiently below
until one of the creatures dove. Ironically, or accidentally, whichever
term you prefer for evolution, the sisters swimming side by side appeared
from above as a reasonable profile for one of their own, so the whales gave
them little or no notice. Had they seen either sister individually, their
response would have been as a predator and a different chase would have been
on.
When one whale finally broke, the sisters sensed it throughout their bodies.
By the splash and the bow pressure of his dive, he was a large one, maybe 70
or 80 feet, though their small, reactive brains didn't register that type of
information. They knew from their growing experience that this prey was at
the limits of what they could tackle buy instinctive pressure made up for
what in an animal capable of contemplation would have been indecision. As
the bulk passed them in the darkness, they dove into the deeper darkness,
their siphons pumping both harder and with less effort as the water
temperature dropped and they became oxygenated. Their smooth passage did
not catch the attention of the passing whale nor the pod above.
The sisters knew that if they circled lower, pausing to wait, their prey
would not be as strong on its return trip to the surface. Thrumming against
their skin, the whale song allowed them to pinpoint his bulk exactly. After
circling a while, they sensed the pressure of his ascent. As he came into
range, they split, not with any purpose more conscious than instinct, and
almost simultaneously, hit his bulk. One sister hit him square on the
snout, absorbing the brunt of both his forward motion and the inertia of his
bulk. Her sister hit him forward of his tail, at an angle from above. Not
many things could easily tear the skin of Architeuthis, but two were present
in this fight. The teeth of the sperm whale were tearing at her sister who
was not able to hold the whale's jaws shut as her arms didn't have the
controllable tendons of an octopus. The whale was making short work of her
sister whose almost perfect hunting arms had her latched tight to the
whale's head. The other thing that could tear the skin was the barbs of
another great squid. Unfortunately, in this attack, the sisters had timed
it too closely together and she had taken a hard slash in her siphon mantle
from her sister.
Her flight response took over and she relinquished her hold on the whale.
Now unfettered by the squid on his side, the large male made short work of
her sister. Her brain was not capable of registering the loss of a sibling,
to squids it didn't matter anyway, but it was capable of registering injury
that demanded retreat. She didn't feel pain like one might think, she just
wasn't wired that way. She did, however, register the injury, lack of
mobility, and the need to flee to cover.
She sped to the lower depths, seeking a favorite trench where she and her
sister would sometimes find large meals simply wedged in the rocks. As she
settled in the trench, she still felt hunger and her arms shot out, wrapping
around a boulder. Instead of pulling in to her, they actually pulled her
bulk to them. Her siphon pumped slowly, not enough to tear her away from
the rock, but enough to breathe. Survival mode kicked in and something at
the very base of her workings kept her tentacles around the rock. In this
manner, she could work her injured siphon enough to breathe, but had she
been expending energy in motion, she would not have had enough oxygen to
sustain her life.
How long she lay like this, she didn't know, her feeble brain had no concept
of time. She did know when prey became near enough to reach and began to go
on short hunting forays, always returning to the same rock. Her mantle
healed though it was now distorted, and though she could now move relatively
well, this new experience taught her a more efficient means of existence.
Lying in wait, her ability to differentiate between sounds and movements of
prey became more acute. Soon, she could tell where and when the whales were
upon the surface, zero in on their dives, able to meet them at the bottom of
their dives. She picked up the smaller ones at first, but the deep, cold
water coupled with this more efficient style of hunting accelerated her
growth. It wasn't long before her formidable size became equal to theirs.
Once, after hearing their songs against her skin, her hunger making her
tense with anticipation, she twitched, which across a body more than 100ft
long, is a formidable thing. That twitch produced a ripple across the seam
of the scar she had received so long ago when slashed by her sister's
tentacle. What issued forth was something that sounded to anyone or
anything in hearing range to be, "Bloop!" To her, it sounded as if she had
a whale singing both inside and outside of her body. All at once she was
confused and spurred to motion. The violent twitch produced the same
ripple, the same sound, and this time, it was followed by something that cut
through her confusion. She registered the call of her prey, and it was
swimming directly for her!
Acting on instinct only, she twitched again, once again producing, "Bloop!"
and getting the answering call in return. Needless to say, that hunt went
quickly. Soon, she learned to control the twitch to produce the sound and
it became nothing more than the hundred other subtle responses that
comprised a successful hunt. Well fed, she continued to grow until one day
she felt a new urge and flashed her signals at a passing male. She mated,
ate him, and sent her brood to the currents.
The decades passed and melted together. Some of her offspring had returned,
but not possessing maternal instincts, she ate them like popcorn at a movie
as they swam near. So efficient had she become at her call and so efficient
had become her stance in the trench, she stayed put and grew. Over the
years, her ability to control the pitch and sound of her "Bloop!" call
became more refined, until the whales swam right up to her rock. After a
time, she didn't know if she had hunted out this area, or if there were
simply fewer whales, or if her bulk had just become so massive that what
used to be a full meal was now nothing more than a snack. Her brain could
not tell her these things, it could only tell her to call out for more prey.
She was doing this when one day she was rewarded with the silent bow wave of
the largest whale she had ever felt. Her feeble brain did not register that
she had not heard a call, her skin simply picked up the vibrations nearby
and set her in motion.
She moved through the cool darkness towards the target. She sensed its
closeness and sped forward. As she surged forward, she produced one
"Bloop!" entirely by accident. She felt a confusing return echo of the
"Bloop!" on her skin a fraction of a second before she registered the
contact of tentacles just like hers...only twice as large. |
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