2/8/2024

Yesterday's entry had a mistake. I repeated the first haiku twice. Now all haiku are there.

the blubber angels

Just a rough draft of something I wrote at Mastodon for fun.

Bailey the humpback flipped her flukes in annoyance. "Cathy hasn't paid me back after I lent her 20 shells so she could subscribe to Netflix and watch The Better Angels adaptation."
Of course Bailey didn't say all that, nor was it as concise, since she sang it for twelve hours as she plied the hydrogen and methane clouds of HD 209458b.
"Whatever is a humpback whale doing floating through an exoplanet's atmosphere? A few centuries ago, after global warming was finally mitigated, the ESA figured whales would be excellent explorers of these vast frontiers. With a little ingenuity and elbow grease and cybernetics they uplifted whales, blasted them into space, seeded known gas giants, and waited to hear back.
Bailey is one of two whales in HD 209458b. Her friend Cathy is a sperm whale. They differ from Earthbound cetaceans by the cybernetic caps over their blowholes, enabling them to breathe in alien atmospheres. Their skin has been modified to handle wide spans of temperature and pressures. Once a year, their reckoning, they sing a long song into space for the sake of science and exporation. Undulating through the brownish-green mists is a vast, black form. Cathy is humming one of the tunes from Netflix's Better Angels adaptation and unaware she's about to crash into Bailey.
With a thump, the two tumble, adjust their attitudes to maintain their horizon but Bailey is far from adjusting her attitude towards such carelessness.

"Ermagerd squidbreath! What is WRONG with you?" The two orbited one another for an hour as they clicked and sang at each other. When translated, one could tell they were just teenage girls bickering at each other.
"I'll have you know I don't eat squid. There aren't any here anyway. What is YOUR problem?"
"You owe me twenty shells. Pony up, sister."
"I'm not your sister. I have teeth. You have baleen."
"Enjoy your cavities, nitwit."

For the next decade, by HD 209458b reckoning, they refused to talk to one another until a comet fell into the giant's atmosphere and splashed up metallic hydrogen, causing nothing but agita for the girls. For a year they keened towards the heavens for whales, humans, or any aliens to come to their aid.
One fateful day the sky parted and a vast starship made planetfall, its wake drawing a scar across the face of HD 209458b perpendicular to its bands and belts.
"YARRR I AM AUTONOMOUS HUNTER ANDROID BASTARD OR AHAB! PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER!" was broadcast across all bands.
Cathy whined, "What would Bebe do?"
"Forget Bebe, how come we don't have a Tau of our own?" cried Bailey.
"Well Tau's a pupper, silly." and slapped her flipper against Bailey's side. "Ow!"
"Tau would just fall deep and get crushed in the depths."
Bailey could only moodily hum in resentful agreement.

The shadow of the USS Pequod 1729-D fell over them, ensnaring them in a tractor beam.

"Oh no, is this the end?"
"Please no no no no!"
All radio bands were full of Bailey and Cathy's funeral cries as they were drawn towards the dark ship.
Minutes later they found themselves afloat in water. Real water. Not vapor or steam, but actual melted ice without any stardust. Instinctually they rose to the top only to bonk their rostrums. Removing their spoutcaps would mean drowning.
A shaft of light cut through the water and they felt the tug as some water drained from the bay.
A high-pitched squeaky voice caught their attention. "Hi girls! I've come to take you home! Why were you running away?"
Bailey squirted a narrowband message, "Who are you?"
"I'm Harriet. I made you two silly gooses."
A.H.A.B.'s voice thundered through the aquarium, "I told you to prepare to meet your maker."