(Bonus Episode!) WHEN AI TRANSLATED WHALE SONGS: And The Message Was Terrifying

“What The Waters Knew” by Marcus Blackwood: When humanity unlocks the language of whales, they uncover ancient truths, haunting questions, and a silence that might hold the key to their own fate.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What the Waters Knew by Marcus Blackwood, submitted for Auditory Anthology.
The sea was gray. It moved restless under the cold wind.
The wind carried salt in the memory of storms. On
the deck of the ship, a group of scientists stood close,

(00:22):
their breath hung in the air. They faced the water.
Under the waves, something stirred in the dark. A speaker
hissed and clicked. Then came the sound. It rose low
and mournful, like a storm rolling in. It swelled, crested,
and fell again. The AI made a faint hum. Machines worked,

(00:47):
Patterns came together, turned into meaning, and the meaning into
a voice. That was when the whales spoke. It had
taken years to reach this point. Engineers and linguists worked
with scientists of the sea. They gave machines what they
had a way to pull the meaning from the songs.

(01:09):
The songs had always been lovely, Now they meant more.
The AI broke them apart. It felt the rhythm, mapped
the structure, and carved words from the melody. The words
were strange at first, heavy old. They came from a
place humans didn't know, But the scientists understood enough the

(01:33):
whales could think they could speak. What the whales said
came like a weight. They had not brought answers, they
brought questions. The whales knew things. They spoke of the sea,
of the stars, of time that stretched along behind them,

(01:54):
where no man had walked. Their world was vast, their
minds wider still. Humans had looked at the whales and
seen only beasts. Now they listened. What they heard was more.
The first thing they learned was the maps. The songs

(02:16):
told of currents. They shifted with the seasons, spiraling wide
and steady. The whales followed them true. Each song was
a thread in a pattern old as the ocean, beyond charts,
beyond men. The songs spoke in arcs and lines, tracing
the ocean's great pulse. The scientists listened and worked. They

(02:39):
translated what they could. Meaning came slowly. A storm that
raged three days and five centuries ago, a migration cutting
across a vast sea, the death of a pod beneath
a sky without sound. Their memories lived there in the songs.
One generation sang them to the next. None were lost.

(03:03):
The scientists sat quiet, the kind of quiet people take
in the face of something large. This knowledge had no
pages It didn't sit in books. It moved like water,
from voice to voice without pause. In the songs flowed
the memory of the whales, full of the weight they carried.

(03:27):
The scientists had thought themselves explorers. They weren't. They were students,
and poor ones at that. One of them spoke later,
in the tight stillness of the meeting room. Her voice trembled,
They remember everything. Another nodded. No one else spoke, and
yet there was more. The whales had questions. Their words

(03:51):
echoed in the deep, spreading clear through the water. At first,
the questions seemed simple. What do you eat? Do you migrate?
Why do you send your voices to the stars? The

(04:15):
scientists answered, halting, awkward. The answers felt small, The silences
between them felt larger. Then the questions grew sharper. Why
do you poison what feeds you? Why do you fill
the deep with death? No one had answers that were

(04:38):
worth giving. Still, the whales asked, not angry, just steady.
What do you seek in another's suffering? One scientist, young
and quiet, sat apart. She was near the boat's edge,
watching the water, Searching for words. She asked if the

(04:58):
whales knew of war? The hum of men's machines followed
her words down. When the answer came, it was slow
and heavy. The sea stirred below. War is an empty thing,
the whale said, avoid that only grows. Her hand gripped
a notepad hard enough to crease it. The waves moved,

(05:21):
but she didn't. Her pen fell. Later, in the cabin's quiet,
she sat again with the notebook. The words stayed with her.
She wrote them down like they had been etched into
the air. The other question too, If you know it
is empty, why do you still choose it? The whales

(05:43):
saw humans in a way the scientists had not expected.
Time was a current to them, a body that carried
slow things forward while the fast spun out and slackened.
And humans, they said, plainly, were fast. You rush, you break,
You do not sing to each other. Time was something

(06:05):
else to the waves. A moment could stretch itself thin
as the tide, a lifetime could fold back on its
own weight. To sing was to live the moment again,
to hold it against the span of years. The scientists
caught scraps of these songs, but the full meanings poured
away like water between their fingers. Still, the pieces unsettled them,

(06:30):
a migration two thousand years long, a deep battle hidden
in ice. The newborn called through time, still echoing across
the waves, the sea began to change around them. It
wasn't just water and wind, nor the push of the waves.
It was full, crowded with things too large to name.

(06:53):
Each ripple spoke of old stories, untamed and heavy. Standing
at the ship's edge, they looked out and felt something rise, awe,
creeping in, cold and sure. They had set out looking
for equals. Instead they saw the vastness staring back, calm, terrible, infinite.

(07:17):
One evening, the sun dropped low, the sky burned red
and bled into the sea. A whale rose from the water, quiet,
rimmed gold in the bleeding light. A man leaned over
the railing. The wind crackled through the speaker. The translation
came broken, but clear enough. Are you ready to listen?

(07:38):
The scientist said nothing. The whale watched him without a sound.
Then it slipped under. The waves closed over it, and
there was only the sea once more, always the sea.
They listened more In the days that came after. The
whales did not soften. Voices deepened harder. Now the ai

(08:03):
clicked and hummed, working to draw meaning from the tide
of sound, but the meaning was heavy. It stretched farther
than they could measure. The whales spoke of time, of
how it bends and folds, of how it carries everything,
the way water carries salt. They sang of stars, cold

(08:23):
and old, falling into a darkness no human eyes could find.
They sang of the deep, where no light can reach,
and how life still endures there. The scientists sat in
quiet rooms lit by machines. They tried to understand. Each
translation weighed them down more than the last one. Whale

(08:46):
spoke of memory, but not memory as humans knew it.
Memory is not yours alone, it said, It belongs to
the sea. It belongs to all who sing. The scientists
didn't know what it meant. Some said it was poetry.
Others grew quiet, wondering was memory something outside the mind,

(09:07):
and if it was, where did it live? At night?
When the sea turned black, the questions lingered, circling them
like shadows. Tensions grew. Some said they had gone too far,
others said not far enough. The deck of the ship
turned colder, The voices grew small and sharp. Silence spread

(09:30):
among them, heavier than the silence of the water. The
whales spoke again. This time it was different. They did
not ask. They gave a fragment of something the humans
could not hold. Your stars are ours too, We sang

(09:54):
them long before you saw their light. Doubts stirred through
the sun. Scientists. Some dismissed the words, shaking their heads.
Others sat still, scribbling notes with cramped hands, staring at
the bright screens. The lead scientists stood alone at the
ship's railing, her eyes on the horizon. When another came

(10:16):
to her, she shook her head. I need to think,
she said. The AI found something else the next day,
a phrase, low and broken, like a tide shifting under moonlight.
You are what comes before? The words cut off static silence.

(10:37):
Before what? They asked the machines, but the whales said
nothing more. One of the engineers struck a panel with
his fist. The machines kept humming, but they had no answers.
The whales began to sing of prophecies. The AI caught
the words slow and fractured, scattered like broken shells on

(10:58):
an empty beach. Deep Earth will turn against you. The
seas will rise and fall. From cold, will come heat,
from heat, will come ash, They sang low and deep,
so the scientists had to strain to hear. One man laughed,

(11:22):
a hard sound, half mad. He called them just songs stories.
Then he left the cabin for the deck. He stayed
out all night while the waves moved under him, steady
and unending. Some began to believe the words hit too close.
Prophecies of collapse, of death, of something new. The scientists

(11:46):
felt the truth in them, the truth as the whales
knew it. How do you know, one asked aloud, his
voice shaking, his eyes on a silent surfacing shadow. The
reply came soft, clear. You call them prophecies, We call
them the past. The team splintered. Some left the work.

(12:10):
They called it too dangerous, like crossing a threshold they
weren't ready for. Others pressed on their hands, trembling but
unwilling to stop. Arguments came in the night, voices sharp breaking,
someone left, crying, slamming the door behind them. The lead
scientists ceased speaking at Meals. The lines on her face

(12:31):
grew deeper by the day, carved by the weight of discovery.
The prophecies broke them. They spoke not of what might come,
but of what had always been. The whales sang of time,
not as a straight thread, but as a net that
tangled the past and future together, a thing vast and endless.

(12:54):
The scientists heard, but they couldn't escape the weight of it.
A whale breached near the stern as the sun low
and burnt slipped away, it sang, we have always waited
for you to know. Now you must decide what to do.
On the deck, a woman jotted notes onto wet, smudged paper.

(13:16):
Her pen stopped, waited for what. She asked aloud, her
voice unsteady, but the singing faded, and only the sea answered.
The team prayed further, like pack ice cracking in spring,
splits widened into arguments about fear, about ethics, about what

(13:36):
to do next. Some clung to hope, believing the whales
could teach humans to understand the world as they did.
Others felt the songs carried a darker truth, one they
did not want to face, that humanity's time was written
already known to the sea. That evening, the ship sat anchored,

(13:59):
the machine murmured low. A whale surfaced near the bow.
Its breath sprayed silver in the fading light. The ai
caught the sun. Are you ready for the ending. No
one moved, no one spoke. Overhead, the stars blinked into view,
faint against the boundless dark. The world heard the news.

(14:23):
It moved like a ripple in still water. Some felt
awe humanity had reached across the void and touched a
voice waiting in the dark. Nations called it a new age.
Governments promised funding, cooperation, exploration. Headlines shouted triumph. Humanity was
stepping into a larger world, but not everyone saw it

(14:48):
that way. Some saw danger instead. The questions came soon after,
What did the whales want? What had they held back?
Ollans were not simple truths to be sorted and stored.
There was more to them, layers, gaps, big troubling gaps

(15:10):
where questions took root and grew. Was this a warning?
Some wondered if the whales had always been watching, remembering, judging.
Had they made a note of people's mistakes, their greed,
their speed that burned too hot. Others thought the whales

(15:30):
new answers, but would not share them. And then there
were whispers low and uneasy. Were those answers meant for
humans at all? The team on the ship said nothing
at first, Their work wasn't finished, not enough of what
they had fit into words, but even the small pieces

(15:51):
they did discover spread quickly. On shore. The noise grew louder.
People asked why now, Had the whales spoken to warn humanity,
to guide it, or only to observe? There were no answers,
and then the wheels fell silent. At first, no one

(16:14):
believed it. Maybe it was the currents shifting a passing storm.
The AI kept working, its censors, humming steady like clockwork,
but something about the water around the ship felt different.
The songs stopped one by one. Soon the silence grew wider,

(16:34):
spreading to far off places. Other research stations sent back
the same reports. The songs were gone, The scientists worked harder.
They sorted through every recorded word, every fragment. Arguments broke
out at night, Tension sharp in the room. Had they

(16:56):
asked the wrong questions or answered badly? Was that it?
Had the wheels left on their own, or were they
shutting humans out? No one knew. The harder they pushed,
the quieter it became. The lead scientists stayed on deck
longer than the rest. The wind caught her hair, pulling

(17:18):
it back. Someone called her, said, it was late. She
didn't move. The stars were faint above her, small and
scattered in the thin sky. The dark water below was quiet,
nothing stirred. Maybe we weren't meant to hear it, she said.
The wind nearly swallowed her words. The team fell holla.

(17:43):
First came frustration, then dread. They had reached farther than
anyone before them, and now found themselves adrift on shore.
The debates churned. Politicians called it a challenge to overcome.
Philosophers said the silence was its own kind of answer.
A few dared to ask, had humanity misunderstood the songs?

(18:09):
Were they meant for anyone outside the sea. Maybe not. Still,
the world waited, holding its breath. Accusations flew. Some said
the team had mishandled the talks. Others said the questions
were wrong or the ai was flawed. A few believed
silence itself was the final lesson, the one thing the

(18:33):
whales intended humans to hear. Whispers passed in secret about
the whales, knowing they had known how humans would use
their knowledge. Some said they had seen this moment coming,
but the whispers led nowhere. No one could prove the
silence held meaning or even intent on the ship. The

(18:56):
team kept waiting. Each day, they listened for the AA
to hum with sound. Again, it stayed silent. The sea
stretched on, wide and empty. The rhythms they had expected
to follow, the ancient heartbeats of truths traveling through the water,
were gone. A heaviness set in. The voyage had been

(19:19):
for understanding. They were returning with something else, silence. One evening,
the young scientists who had first asked the whales about war,
went to the bow of the ship. The air was cool,
the salt taste faint. She stood at the railing, her
notebook tucked under her arm. She didn't need to write anymore.

(19:42):
The silence was its own kind of record. The moon
hung low, golden against the black water. The stars burned
small but steady, distant and unreachable. She watched them. The
wheels had called them something, and yours, they had said.

(20:03):
Now they felt too far away, just small points of
light scattered over forever. The young scientists thought of the songs,
how they had been so full, how they had bridged
every question with answers that had seemed impossible and infinite.
But now there was nothing. She didn't know if the

(20:23):
heavy feeling inside her was sorrow or relief. The ocean
stretched out before her, vast quiet. The ship rocked gently
with the waves. She stayed long, and the others had
gone to bed. In the morning. She might try again,
or maybe she wouldn't. It didn't seem to matter. There

(20:47):
was nothing more to ask. The stars blinked, pale and cold.
The sea barely moved. Somewhere deep in her mind, something settled.
It was quiet. It stayed that way. The sea is quiet.
The scientists come back to land. They step off the ship,

(21:08):
moving slow, their shoulders bent. They carry the weight of
questions they can't let go. The answers aren't there. They
came close, closer than anyone else. But all they have
now is the quiet, and the quiet stays. The world
breaks into arguments. Voices rise. Some say the whales will

(21:31):
sing again. They say that understanding takes time, that humans
are not ready, but they will be. Others say the
silence is an end, a line drawn, a wall that
won't be crossed. They argue and shout, but none of
it touches what hangs there between them, the before, the songs,

(21:55):
the loose pieces. None of it fits now, fuels and
waited a long time to speak, longer than humans could know.
Now they are quiet, and humans can only guess why.
Maybe the wheels knew this was how it would go,
Maybe they wished for something else, or maybe deep in

(22:17):
the water they never needed humans at all. One of
the scientists is on the shoreline weeks later. She stands alone.
The waves crash, The gulls call, but she doesn't hear them.
She listens deeper. She doesn't know what she's waiting for.

(22:38):
The stars shine pale and distant above her. Their light
keeps traveling far from where it began. The ocean spreads out,
dark and wide, no edges, no end. She thinks she
sees a shadow move far out there, but no sound comes.

(23:00):
It's all still. The singing is out there somewhere, Maybe
the whales sing to themselves, maybe to the sea, or
maybe to something older, farther than she can imagine. It
isn't for her to know. The questions don't drag at
her now, they just are. The whales only wanted humans

(23:24):
to listen, and for a time humans did. The sky
shifts from black to gray. The waves roll in and
pull back, steady and sure. The stars bade behind her.
The ocean stretches ahead, holding its secrets. She stays and watches.

(23:47):
It all begins to blur, sky to water, sound to silence.
There is nothing else, only the deep water and the slow,
endless turning of the world