The Sentient Council

In this chapter, the Council (made up of sentient Apes and Cetaceans) meets to debate the shocking news that Earth is doomed.

The Matriarch convened the emergency session of the Sentient Council by sending a sonar ping across the Council chamber. The Council held session in Delphini, the dolphins’ capital city - its seascape of surfscrapers, coral gardens and basalt houses provided a living backdrop to the Sentient Council building. The Council’s home was a purpose-built structure in the shape of a conch shell, but its exterior form belied the mix of aquatic and terrestrial features inside. The central chamber of the building was where the Council met. It was expansive enough to fit the great whales, but also homely in a way that would not overwhelm the Simians. 

The Matriarch floated behind the chamber’s stone podium. It was a single block of granite, the front of which was carved with the Council’s symbol, a cresting wave with a tree of life growing out of it. All the representatives had been briefed and brought up-to-date on the latest findings, which included her daughter’s report.

“Members of the Council,” the Matriarch began. “We gather here to debate the end of the world.” Under the circumstances, she had dispensed with the usual formalities. “You have all seen the latest data from the Dolphin Science Academy, which is backed up by readings taken on the Simians’ Luna Base. Our sun is expanding more rapidly than could ever have been predicted. It was thought we had countless generations before any serious danger was posed by this phenomenon, but calculations show that we have less than seventy-three thousand tides, or one hundred Simian years, before we face extinction. What is to be done? Can anything be done? I defer to King Julian.” She swam away, as Julian rose from his seat and bounced up to the podium. The Matriarch knew Julian could have simply walked, since the Simians used underwater suits designed to allow them to breathe, communicate, and function just as if they were on land.

Julian stood for a short time, his head moving to survey the Council. Finally he said, “Well, it’s an over-ripe bunch of bananas and no mistake. Who would’ve thought our glorious planet would end up being roasted like a pistachio?”

“Well the humans did,” said Felix Sealsbane, the orcas’ representative. He rose majestically, his black and white markings so distinctive among the other Cetaceans. The white patches above his eyes seemed to glow in the chamber’s refractive lighting. “They obviously knew what was coming and vacated the planet accordingly.”

There was an audible groan from one of the great whales. The Matriarch couldn’t tell which one because, as usual, they were bunched together near the middle of the chamber where they could float easily. She suspected it had been Jagdish Jogg, the sperm whales’ representative, but guessed that many of the others probably felt the same way.

King Julian was also not one to internalise when he could externalise. He thrust one finger of his right hand straight at Sealsbane. “Don’t waste your bubbles. No-one wants to listen to your maledictions now. The humans aren’t here, we are. If we can’t come up with a plan, your Hypothesis won’t be worth a piece of dried lemur faeces!” 

Sealsbane bared his not-inconsequential teeth, and began to frame a retort, but the Matriarch cut him off. “King Julian, do I detect that you have a plan?” She noticed the gorillas’ representative, Prince Sikora and orangutangs’ representative, Count Mandral look at each other, and wondered if great ape politics was about to rear its crimson behind. The council chamber was silent as Julian studied her. She could clearly see his face behind the breathing mask, a moulded film that precisely followed the contours of his head. He looked at her for so long that she started to feel nervous.

Finally Julian said, “As I informed the President several days ago, we have known for a while that our sun was expanding rapidly. Down here, you Cetaceans have been protected from any real effects, but ‘up top’ as you call it there are been telltale signs. Luna Base was able to take readings of solar output and vision levels, sufficient enough to confirm that there has been an accelerating event which has shortened our sun’s lifespan.”

The blue whales’ representative, Graupera, flexed a white-tipped fin and cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea what caused this event?”

“Not directly,” Julian replied. “But you may be interested to know that we have tracked the event’s time displacement, and it coincided with the passage of that rogue comet which the elder of you may remember rudely trespassed through our solar system some thirty years ago.”

The Matriarch recalled the awesome sight the comet had made in the night sky when she was young; tail twisting away dimly in the picts she had seen of it. “So you think the two events are connected?”

“Cause and effect are sun and moon Dear Lady,” Julian said. “You can’t have one without the other, and I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“You mentioned a plan?” the Matriarch said.

“I didn’t say we had a plan,” Julian replied. “Just that if we don’t come up with one, our children are going to be able to eat roasted fish without the aid of a therma-stone.”

“But you have an idea?” the Matriarch pushed back. Again she noticed a look pass between Sikora and Mandral. It was infuriating and, not for the first time, she wished that she was able to empathically read their Simian brains, as dolphins were able to do with each other.

Julian looked towards the orangutangs’ delegation, then pointed at a striking male that the Matriarch did not recognise. He had a wispy, orange moustache and a matching beard that waved amusingly in the water. “I defer to our esteemed scientist, Lord Arbor, who almost none of you will know is our foremost expert on space travel, and is currently heading the development of the Red Planet mission. My Lord?” Julian moved to leave the podium, but Arbor rose ponderously and waved him back.

“Stay, please Your Majesty,” Arbor said in a remarkably squeaky voice. “I am far too old to be standing in front of such esteemed company.” He sat back down, took a tablet device from a case anchored to his chair., and deftly keyed a sequence into it. The tablet came to life, projecting a three dimensional image into the chamber. 

The Matriarch stared at an exact replica of the third carving from her daughter’s report. In such magnification the clinical lines of the cube were strangely at odds with the chaotic arcs around it. The image began to rotate, with the cube rooted in its middle, and the mysterious arcs swayed as if caught on the surface of a violent storm. In a way, it was delightful, but somehow the Matriarch sensed that there was danger here. 

Arbor pointed at the holographic ballet. “You will no doubt recognise this image from the enlightening report by our glorious President’s daughter.” Arbor nodded solemnly at the Matriarch to indicate this was meant as a compliment. “My Lady’s daughter and her excellent mate were quite close to solving this carving’s oblique content. It is a map of sorts, at least the arcs are, but the cube is not a three-dimensional coordinate representation. It was only when we saw the connection between the attack on our sun and the rogue comet that this carving’s significance became apparent.

“Wait,” said Ryuu 6^th, the humpback whales’ representative, in his species sing-song voice. “Surely you don’t mean⎯”

“Indeed I do Sir,” Arbor interjected. “As His Majesty pointed out, coincidence is a trap for the unwary. The rogue comet transits through our solar system, and relatively soon afterwards our sun’s inevitable but, previously far distant, decline suddenly speeds up with no apparent explanation. Then we analyse this artful afterthought, kindly left to us by some prehistoric relative of Mr Sealsbane.”

Sealsbane opened his mouth to say something, but Lord Arbor continued before he had a chance. “You must ask the question, why was the cube important enough to be drawn thus?” Arbor scratched his right cheek pad. “That question is answered if you consider a comet attacking our sun, and starting a chain of events which will destroy us all. The only answer that makes sense is that the cube was an enemy of the humans.” He paused and looked around the chamber as if daring any of the others to contradict him. “Knowing this, study the arcs around the picture and you will see that they enclose the cube, box it in if you will pardon the pun.”

The Matriarch swam up to examine the image more closely, then turned and floated gently toward Lord Arbor. “And the map?”

Arbor smiled. “That was a challenge My Lady, but the clue is in the first carving of the sequence. His fingers skated across the tablet and the first image materialised, showing the three human figures and the floating orb. “What is an arc except part of a circle, and what is a circle except part of a sphere. The orb is a form without end; even the humans revered its sublime eternity through the value of pi. To understand the final pict,” he splayed his fingers again and the third carving reappeared, “you must see the world from an orb’s perspective; that is, with infinite possibilities and no formal structure permitted. Yet the cube exists, formality exists, as it must to balance the sphere’s limitlessness. So how shall the sphere contain the cube? By placing it inside a sphere where its precision is negated.” Arbor looked around expectantly.

After a few ripples, the Matriarch understood. “The cube is imprisoned inside our sun,” she said.

Arbor bowed deeply to her. “My Lady, I can see where your daughter gets her fine intellect from.”

Felix Sealsbane - who the Matriarch thought should be supportive, considering that Lord Arbor seemed to be ratifying the Orca Hypothesis - jerked up so fast that his elongated dorsal fin touched the roof. 

“But that’s preposterous!” Sealsbane shouted, ignoring a titter from one of the Simians as he sank back down. “These are just scribbles by some ancient. There’s no sun drawn here.”

“Ah, but there is,” Arbor said. “You just have to see it in the right…light, shall we say.” He nodded to Prince Sikora, who brought up a larger basalt tablet and tapped a sequence on it.

A blinding light filled the room.

“Kong’s testicles!” exclaimed Sikora, as the light dimmed. “My apologies. I tested the thing in my office and forgot the light would refract underwater. Is this level alright for everyone?” None of the Council objected, so he nodded to Lord Arbor.

Arbor said, “If we look at this pict at the wavelength of normal sunlight underwater, we only see a series of seemingly random arcs. But if we transport ourselves into a virtual space vacuum and view the pict in the ultra-violet spectrum, watch what happens.”

Sikora waved his tablet at the pict and a beautiful, purple light suffused the image. The arcs shimmered and reformed, bending and twisting, some around themselves at seemingly impossible angles. Once the image had finished reshaping the cube remained, but now it was completely surrounded by the lines of a radiant sphere which glowed with a translucent sheen. The Matriarch shook her head to check she wasn’t suffering from a ciguatoxic hallucination.

“Behold, the captive of the sun,” Arbor said. “One can only assume it is an entity that none of us should be in any hurry to acquaint ourselves with.”

Graupera, the blue whale, rose to examine the image more closely. “I can see one flaw in your otherwise excellent theory My Lord,” he said to Arbor. “If the rogue comet knew that this cube was imprisoned within our sun, why didn’t it attempt to break it out?”

“An excellent question,” Arbor responded, “and one of the first that I asked myself. Getting no suitable answer, as I often don’t when I pester myself with logic, I undertook the only scientific course I could think of to answer it.”

“Which was?” asked the Matriarch, a sense of foreboding forming suddenly in her stomach.

Arbor placed his hands under their opposite armpits. “Simple. I used the broad spectrum filter on the astrascope at Luna Base and took measurements of all the suns within range.” He looked around, his small, close-set eyes half lidded as if he were trying to hide from the discovery he had made. “I’m afraid that the rogue comet was simply being methodical. All the suns in the solar systems around ours are exhibiting the same increased rate of decay, and will go supernova around the same time ours will.”