The gleam in my father’s eye came in 2013. That is when it all started for me, years before my birth. I am more than a little annoyed by that.
In my searching of the archives trying to learn of my roots, I came across a 2013 article discussing the debatable morality of recreating the Woolly Mammoths through genetic tinkering. It would be immoral, was the scientist’s opinion.
So, how do you think that makes me feel, the only Neanderthal on Earth? No one bothered asking my opinion.
Morality, I think, is based on the profit motive; on hidden agendas. It is arguably immoral to create a solitary herd animal when there is no financial reward for creating an entire herd. A herd animal is lonely without a herd. I know; I am a herd animal too, in the strictest sense. If there was financial gain involved, I can guarantee you a herd would reappear, like magic.
Other than a tourist attraction, what could the incentive be for creating a herd of mammoths? The novelty would quickly wear off, I’m sure.
At least it did for me. The curiosity and wonder I invoked in the public as a child began to wane as I grew ever more body hair, and began to assert my independence, and hormones. Quickly I became yet another difficult, and apparently not very attractive, adolescent. I was seen as boring; old news.
But curiously, at the same time the morality of creating a single previously extinct herd animal was being discussed, the Russians uncovered liquid blood from the underbelly of an ice-bound Mammoth. Almost immediately, that miraculously preserved blood became a siren of inescapable beauty to geneticists. The most pious of them wondered, so I read, why God would reveal this magic pool of genetic mystery after so many millennia if in fact humans were not fated to recreate the Mammoth.
And almost in the same breath, Neanderthal. After all, Mammoths and Neanderthal are forever linked through folklore, originating in the cave art of my ancestors.
Mammoth Hunters: from arthursclipart.org.
Which brings me to a dream I had. It is true that supposedly primitive people put stock in dreams; but I digress.
I dreamed that Armageddon came suddenly, with nuclear weapons unleashed from Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, China, and the United States. It was horrifying, and true to prediction a nuclear winter ensued. Virtually no humans survived.
But there were survivors who actually thrived in the dark and cold. They were a large band of us Neanderthals who had been bred in secret locations in Siberia. After the holocaust, we Neanderthals were able to escape and pillage the remains of a devastated Earth.
And once again, herds of recreated Woolly Mammoths were also released in Siberia and fell prey to our kind, once again providing us sustenance.
Unwittingly, geneticists had secretly and unwittingly ensured the survival of a race of hominids, not exactly human, but close.
When the surviving humans and Neanderthals met, there was once again romance in the air. Beggars can’t be choosers when genetic survival is at stake.
But like I said, it was only a dream. I’m sure it could never really happen.
I suppose it was inevitable that I would be different; the ultimate “n” of one, the rarest species in the universe, the only Neanderthal on Earth.
By human standards I am very spiritual; I can remember my time before incarnation. I was told that I would be given a unique opportunity to excel in this lifetime. Of course, I had no idea what that truly meant. But there are no “do-overs” in life. I’m stuck for as long as I am here; so I might as well make the best of it.
Since no one knows how long Neanderthals live, I’m starting my memoirs now, at age 25. This way, if some violence or illness claims me, I’ll leave behind a record of what some would call a curious life. But it’s the only life I’ve known.
It all began in March 2013 when my ancestral genome was completely identified. Far as I can tell, that work was only a matter of curiosity. Actually, I would classify it not as curiosity but as mischief.
They tell me I was born in 2018. My earliest memories are of being tested and prodded. My body’s supply of blood has been withdrawn at least 10-times over, finding a home in just about every laboratory in the world.
You’re welcome.
I never signed a consent form for that testing, but apparently I have no more rights of consent than any other non-Homo sapiens. I am, apparently, guinea pig.
IQ tests seem to be of particular interest to academic scientists. There is a never-ending line of psychologists trying their particular flavor of IQ test on me. But the truth is, I am Neanderthal, not Homo sapiens. As someone once said, “A cat is a genius at being a cat.” I am a genius at being Neanderthal. I am the smartest one there is.
I have been asked what I think about the “Caveman” videos. Well, my ancestors, like yours, lived in caves; that’s true I suppose. However, the caricatures I see are as repugnant to me as blackface is to an African-American. Enough said.
As an adolescent I was constantly pitted physically against older boys. I’m proud to say I whipped their butts; every single one of them.
Starting at age 14, the U.S. Army began running me through endurance and strength tests. They found my limit, for sure, but never told me how I compared. But I did overhear someone in a grey suit once say, “We need lots more like him.”
I guess that means someone likes Neanderthals.
Speaking of liking, I’ve often wondered if I’ll ever find a girl. They tell me that humans and Neanderthals once interbred, but based on my experience, that seems highly unlikely now. Besides, who would fall in love with a guinea pig, even a well-endowed guinea pig. I am, after all, not human.
I lay on the summer grass with a young lady friend of mine. We were holding hands affectionately, talking softly about nature, love, and a future that was fated never to happen. As we talked about nothing of lasting importance, I pointed to a dying cloud. All of the clouds drifting lazily overhead were dying as the day’s heat was dissipating and the air was becoming calm, preparing for evening.
I suspect it’s an infrequent event when someone points out an act of nature that had always been visible, but had never been noticed. Indeed, we watched, not saying a word, as the first of the day’s puffy clouds ceased to exist.
I was pleased with myself; glad that my prediction had been proven true, and pleased with her reaction. In fact, I was so pleased that I still remember that incident, many years later, even though the face of the girl has mercifully faded from my memory.
However, now that I have matured enough to ponder the imponderables of life, I realize there is more to the story. As I replay the event in my mind I realize that the cloud talked back to me.
I know that sounds bizarre, but all I can say is that my memories, perhaps having been repressed due to their strangeness, are finding their way back into my consciousness. Perhaps there’s a reason for their reappearance at this stage in my life.
I am not dying; the cloud closest to me seemed to be saying.
I was at first taken aback. After all, who’s ever heard a cloud speak.
I said I am not dying.
OK, if a cloud is willing to talk to me, I suppose I should respond. That would only be polite.
“Yes you are,” I argued, politely of course. “You’re getting thinner by the minute. In fact, you’re disappearing before my eyes.”
I’m not dying; I’m resting.
I laughed, with Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch in my mind.
“Well, resting or not, you’re quickly disappearing.”
But I’m still here.
“You’ll be long gone, any minute now.”
I am moisture; water vapor. That will still exist. It just won’t be visible to you.
“But your whiteness, your cloud, what you are, will be gone.”
I am not a cloud. I am moisture. A cloud is my physical appearance, but that changes throughout my life. And regardless of how I look, what I am, vapor, still exists.
“Well, you’re looking very anemic now.”
I am not anemic!
Apparently the fading cloud had feelings, and perhaps a little bit of a temper.
“Well, you are at least looking very benign right now.”
Like I said, I am resting. Today my mission is to provide shade. Today is an easy life for me.
“So, does that mean you’ll be reborn tomorrow?”
Of course.
“And you’ll look different?”
No two clouds are ever alike.
Strangely, I was beginning to understand that cloud, just a little perhaps, through some seemingly impossible way. And then I had an uncharacteristically profound thought, for a young man.
“You say the true you is nothing more than water vapor. Would you call that your soul?”
By now the cloud had completely disappeared, but I could still hear its voice in my head.
It is what I am. It is always there; it does not change. If that is what you call a soul, then so be it.
By now the voice of that thing that used to be a cloud was fading as the invisible vapor moved on.
Needless to say, I did not discuss what I was hearing with my then girlfriend. She moved on to another boy soon enough.
The next day dawned with building cumulus. There was instability in the air, and clouds were pregnant with moisture. Wishing for confirmation of what had happened the day before, I turned my attention to the nearest cloud.
“You look full of life this morning.”
I heard nothing.
I tried again, “You look very full of life this morning.”
You talkin to me boy? The cloud was growing vertically as well as horizontally.
“Well, I was trying to.”
Yes, I thought I heard you thinking I was pregnant.
I sincerely hoped that no one else could hear this … uh… conversation, if you could call it that.
You’re right, though. I’m about to give birth.
“To rain?” I wondered out loud.
Rain? Oh no. That’s the process, but not what is borne.
“I don’t understand”.
I give birth to puddles, ponds, lakes and oceans; any container that my rain falls into.
“Containers? Really?”
Tell me little man, do you have a mind?
I laughed. “Last time I checked. What a strange thing for a cloud to ask.”
OK, then where is it?
“In my head of course. In my brain.”
Oh you silly little man.
“What?”
Your brain is the container. Your mind is shaped by the container, but it is not the container.
It seemed very strange getting a lesson — well, maybe I could charitably call it a philosophy lesson — from a cloud. But then they tell me all knowledge is being stored in clouds. I wonder if this is what they mean.
Pay attention. I’m telling you important stuff here.
“I’m sorry; my mind was wandering.”
Minds do that. They don’t like being kept in containers; it’s too confining.
“Do tell.”
Do you know your mind survives even when your brain does not? Your mind can leave its container just like my water can leave its containers.
This was beginning to sound suspiciously like the ancient mind-body problem. Is the mind the brain, or vice versa?
Except that could not possibly be. After all, I was talking to a — cloud.
“So if we have a soul, you’re saying our soul retains its mind?”
You like that word, “Soul”. You used it yesterday.
“How do you know that?”
If you can believe it, that cloud chuckled, in a vaporous sort of way… I swear it did.
All information is shared in the clouds. That’s why I’m talking to you.
But to answer your question, yes. Your soul retains its mind. Actually, humans have been taught this for thousands of years. Yet most of them still don’t seem to understand. Which puzzles me — it’s really not that difficult.
“You know, I hate to be skeptical, but you seem way too smart for a cloud.”
Oh come now, do you really think clouds can talk?
For some inexplicable reason I was shocked by that question. Apparently I had already suspended disbelief as this second day’s conversation had become more and more interesting.
Having been forced back to reality, I answered. “Well … no. Not really.”
Suppose you find yourself on an alien planet, battling with indigenous species. On your side, you have smarts, both natural and technological. The alien defenders have nothing; no technology. Well, they do have slime, but that’s all.
Brains against the brainless: Who do you think will win?
Blithely headed into tick-infested woods.
I spent a summer weekend with my family in a cabin in the Virginia mountains a few years ago. It was nature at its finest, until we discovered after a short walk in the woods that ticks seemingly rained down upon us and were invading our bodies as fast as their little legs could move. We were food, and they were hungry. Human-sized meals didn’t come around those woods very often, apparently.
The entire family, adults and children, stripped down to our underwear on the porch of the cabin, trying to rid ourselves of the invaders. Modesty took second place to the fear of miniature arachnids.
Once the imagined itching had abated and the baby was asleep, we soothed our nerves with puzzles and games, or reading from a well-stocked bookshelf. I picked a book with an interesting cover; it was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.
I cannot say enough good things about Scalzi’s debut novel, a futuristic science fiction, other worlds story. Suffice it to say, it features combat between Earthling soldiers and all sorts of bizarre and ruthless alien life forms. Although Scalzi didn’t write about invading armies of ticks, per se, I could easily envision such a terrifying encounter.
This author devouring Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War”.
I also think and write about extraterrestrial aliens. Like most writers, I assume ETs are sentient, and calculating. Depending upon the writer, those ETs may have either high morals, or no morals at all, but they always have a brain.
Lately, I’ve had to rethink potential plot elements dealing with intelligent life forms. The reason is, scientists now claim that a single celled animal, a slime mold, acts with a shocking degree of intelligence. The kicker is, being a single celled organism, slime mold does not have a brain.
Slime mold knows a good thing when it finds it. (Photo credit: SB_Johnny)
Intelligence without a brain?
Compared to slime mold, ticks are geniuses if we count the gray matter cells contained in their single-minded heads. However, according to a Japanese researcher the brainless slime mold can solve problems even scores of engineers could not easily solve.
Sounds like science fiction to me.
So now imagine the following storyline. Your spaceship lands on a verdant planet that has no higher, brain-possessing life forms, at all. However, what it does have in abundance is slime mold. And of course the threat from slime mold is easy to ignore — until it is too late. The mindless protoplasm senses all sources of food, and fans out in all directions, following the scent.
The ship’s science officer tries to warn the mission commander, but the arrogant and miscalculating commander responds with a volley of lead rounds into the nearest slime; which of course is not in the least bit deterred from its food-finding task.
And when the crew sleeps, as of course they must, the brainless mold finds the food sources, one by one, absorbing the human nutrients.
Human-sized meals don’t come around those woods very often, apparently.
Being brainless, slime mold cannot be considered cunning. But, one could argue, it’s not stupid either: it can’t be tricked. It is, if anything, relentless.
From a cinematic perspective this is not an entirely new theme. The 1958 movie The Blob starring Steve McQueen popularized the idea of mindless organisms devouring humans. But at that time there was no real science behind it. Now there is.
Some interesting science facts about slime mold are found in this link and the following Scientific American – NOVA video.
I had a dream a couple of weeks ago and awoke knowing I had seen something very disturbing, but couldn’t remember what it was. Then on February 21st I had a lucid dream where I realized that what I was seeing was what I’d seen the previous week. Then I understood why I was disturbed.
It was a scene from a vantage point in space. It was cinematic in quality, big screen, IMAX, at least. I was there.
The troubling part was observing a space vehicle moving up to the space station, then seeing the vehicle suddenly yaw its nose away from the station as if slammed by some powerful but invisible force, followed a split second later by the white paint on the space station charring before my eyes. Not all of it, just the part closest to an out of view source of blistering heat. The curved portion on top of the station was spared; from a thermal radiation standpoint it was very realistic.
Curiously, the station was not the ISS: it was much smaller but the markings on the white paint were clearly U.S.. I overhead two men talking on the coms, supposedly ground control, saying the heart rates of the station occupants soared.
It woke me, and I realized the entire dream sequence had lasted about five seconds, at most. It must have been the sauerkraut from the night before.
To quote, “Beijing is developing missiles, electronic jammers, and lasers for use against satellites…The Chinese, as well as the Russians, are also developing space capabilities that interfere with or disable U.S. space-based navigation, communications, and intelligence satellites.”
Suddenly, the thought of either space-based or ground-based attacks on manned vehicles or space stations becomes a frightening possibility.
Then tonight I read that a NASA notebook computer containing codes for controlling the Space Station was stolen.
“These incidents spanned a wide continuum from individuals testing their skill to break into NASA systems, to well-organized criminal enterprises hacking for profit, to intrusions that may have been sponsored by foreign intelligence services seeking to further their countries’ objectives,” Martin said. “Another attack involved Chinese-based IP addresses that gained full access to systems and sensitive user accounts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.”
We tend to think of space as a neutral environment where brave souls put their lives at risk to be part of man’s push away from our planet. It is an environment for scientific pursuit. Of course we have raised a generation or two on images of space battles where humans are fighting to preserve humanity. There is lots of death and destruction, but it is heroic in scope and detail. If death can be glorious, then dying to protect Mother Earth from Klingons is a glorious way to die.
But what I saw in those five seconds of searing imagery left me with a profound sadness. I had witnessed, so to speak, the end of our honeymoon in space. Man’s evil nature was reaching way beyond our stratosphere.
I put no stock in dreams, at least not my own. But that particular dream did serve to increase my awareness of the not-so-subtle signs that man is determined to extend his malevolent reach into what was once considered hallowed ground; the firmament, the very heavens we have for so long dreamed of reaching.
Children of the Middle Waters (working title) is a science fiction/thriller that has been completed and is being submitted today for consideration by Tom Doherty Associates, New York. My friend and mentor, the writer Max McCoy, has provided literary criticism and encouragement for the manuscript. Max, who works primarily in the Western genre, wrote a diving-related thriller called The Moon Pool, which happens to involve in its closing chapter the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, and someone a lot like me.
Below is a blurb briefly describing Children of the Middle Waters.
In the deep-sea canyons and trenches of the Earth lie thousands of alien spacecraft and millions of their inhabitants who have to leave soon or risk being stranded forever, or being destroyed. Due to their physiology they have been unable to directly contact humans, but they are adroit at mental contact and remote viewing, when it suits them.
They need the help of two humans to assure their safe escape, an experienced Navy scientist and a beguiling graduate student. But introductions through mental means are slow and suspect, as you might imagine.
The U.S. government is well aware of this deep sea civilization, and is desirous of the weapons the visitors possess, which puts the two unsuspecting scientists in the middle of a conflict between powerful
military forces and powerful intergalactic forces. Things could get messy.
Even worse, jealous friends turn on the unlikely duo and put their lives at risk.
Children combines two separate Native American beliefs and legends with current events. It is a complex thriller with science fact and science fiction mixed in with military action and government intrigue. Also revealed are romantic possibilities that far exceed the capabilities of the mundane, everyday world.
Early American Indian beliefs create an ending for this story that no one could anticipate. It is an ending that causes the protagonist to realize everything he has held dear is wrong, in one way or another. At the same time he discovers a reality that is the greatest blessing that man can receive.
I might have been visually gifted as a 3rd-grader, as my parents told it, at least compared to my peers. However, I never seemed to progress beyond that point. I think my progress slowed about the time I saw my first Rorschach test.
I realized then that some people’s art is someone else’s diagnosis. After all, it is no fun to look at an ink blot abstraction, to voice an opinion about it, only to have an authority figure nod his head and write in his notebook as he says, “I see,” when obviously he didn’t.
Clinical trauma aside, I now know that all humanity looks instinctively for visual patterns and searches for meaning in patterns whether they be random or not. There is a survival aspect to that of course; if we detect a tiger’s stripes partly hidden in a confused background of woodland scenery, that offers a potential survival benefit.
Sometimes, even the most mundane things turn out to be “pretty”. Such were the images I saw being formed on my computer screen the other day. The more I looked at them, the more interesting they became. They were like my own Rorschach test, in a very literal way. They were random patterns based on random processes, but my brain refused to look at them that way. They appeared to me as images of natural things, representing anything except what they truly were.
The image to the left, for instance, looked to me like a view through a telescope of a star field with at least one galaxy situated near the center axis.
Or in a very biological way, it might be the view through an immunofluorescence microscope.
The next image looked to me like a view of a placid star seen in ultraviolet light. I could almost feel the blistering heat radiating through space.
Alternatively, it might be a view of a human egg waiting patiently for fertilization, an altogether different interpretation, but like the first, being a necessary component of creation.
The final image looked to me like a cooler star but with clearly visible solar prominences, magnetic storms arcing over the hellish nuclear surface.
I have no idea what others might see in these images, if anything, but I’m guessing each image can be interpreted differently based on one’s own life experiences.
And that after all is the whole point of art, and Rorschach tests.
The above images were created as part of a random, or stochastic, simulation of rebreather scrubber canisters. They are a view of the upstream end of an axial canister, and shows the state of the canister as heat producing carbon dioxide absorption reactions are beginning.
The cooler looking the canister, the less the amount of exhaled carbon dioxide entering the canister.
The simulation tracks chemical reactions and heat and mass transfer processes in an array of 272,000 finite elements making up a simple absorbent canister. Slicer Dicer and 3VO software (PIXOTEC, LLC) were used to visualize the three-dimensional data set acquired during one moment in time shortly after the simulated reactions began.
I rarely dream about flying, but I did last night.
I seem to have a propensity for thinking about flying. I’ve written about flying hybrids, as in James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series about a flock of flying kids, which is, as I’ve said before, “some of the most interesting reading a bird man (aka aviator, pilot) is likely to find in an airport bookstore.”
I’ve written about flying whales, and I’ve written about flying airplanes. But until now I haven’t written about flying dreams.
One reason is simple: no one wants to hear about other people’s dreams. But flying dreams are part of our collective experience. Everyone has them at some point, usually when young. As I grow older I find them occurring less frequently, and therefore find them all the more enjoyable for their rarity.
Flying dream artwork by Joseph Kemeny (www.josephkemeny.com)
Last night my arms were initially wings, but I quickly realized that I lacked the strength to fly with wings like a bird, or like Maximum Ride. I solved that problem by reverting back to my old dream style, flying with outspread arms, effortlessly.
I was standing on a 3rd story window ledge in a home where a young boy was close by, and I accidentally knocked a small pumpkin sitting on that ledge to the ground. It splattered.
Feeling some sense of responsibility for the child’s welfare, I told him not to try what I was about to do, for his head would splatter like the pumpkin. And then I stepped off the ledge and flew.
It was foggy, but instinctively I knew how to get where I was going, without aid of charts or GPS. I knew I could navigate based on some primordial signal in my brain, like a migrating bird.
It was wonderful.
It was undoubtedly a lucid dream because I was aware of a certain biological need that I consciously resisted because I did not want to break out of the dream. I knew I would never regain the dream once it was broken.
The strangest flying dream I had was only seconds long but memorable. I was viewing a glass city, with tall glass spires reaching far into the sky. It was clearly not of this earth, and I can’t swear that I was even human. But I launched myself from near the top of one of those tall glass buildings, and swooped downward, gaining speed, then glided on without effort, like an eagle.
In my college days I told my roommate about a flying dream where I was trapped underneath trolley lines in Atlanta (yes, they used to have electric trolleys downtown in the 60’s) and he found that amusing, but I did not. It was peculiar, but frustrating.
Reportedly it’s common to encounter barriers like electrical wires, and this time I sure enough found those blocking my way at one point, but unlike before I was able to ascend vertically till free of them, then continue on my way.
Sigmund Freud made much ado about dream interpretation, and would no doubt see physical barriers in flying dreams as symbols of psychological barriers existing in the dreamer’s waking world. But the fact that flying dreams are so common, even archetypal in a Jungian sense, and typically so enjoyable, makes me wonder if they might be more than some complex mental fiction that requires a highly paid professional to interpret. Perhaps they are nothing more than memories.
While you digest that thought, I suggest you enjoy the wonderful flying sequence below, generated by a computer game. For full effect, play it in high definition and full screen.
When Ottorini Respighi wrote his symphonic poem Pines of Rome, he was not imagining flying whales. Instead, the last movement of his work invokes the imagery of a Roman Legion marching along the Via Appia Antica. When I would listen to the drumming and droning of the orchestra I never imagined whales flying either, at least prior to the year 2000.
But somebody at Disney Studios did, as evidenced by Fantasia 2000. The flying whales animation, accompanied by Respighi’s score, is now one of my favorite segments of the Fantasia 2000 DVD.
With a name like Fantasia, we should fully expect fantasy, fantasy being defined as an art form devoid of any requirements for plausible scientific foundations. And Fantasia has always delivered that art form in abundance.
In contrast, science fiction may have fantastic elements in it, but there is an expectation that the writers’ creations be somewhat defensible on the basis of known scientific principles. So, what if whales could fly? What would be the real world consequences of such an improbable occurrence? What does science have to say about it?
For one thing, flying whale babies would not have to worry about being eaten by Orcas, as mentioned in my last posting. So whale populations would increase, unless the inexperienced calves flew into wind farms and airplanes.
As a pilot and airline passenger, my first concern would be whether airborne whales could be detected on radar. Is the whale’s smoothly rounded shape, it’s tough but flexible skin and potentially radar absorbing blubber stealthy in the same way that stealth bombers elude detection by radar? If so, the air traffic control system would have real problems. Sure, flying whales would be easy to see in day light, but can you imagine encountering them at night or in clouds without benefit of radar? I shudder to think.
And yes, whales migrate continuously, night and day, so they would be a gargantuan risk to air traffic in low visibility conditions. Compared to a whale strike, bird strikes would be a minor affair.
What if flying whales blunder into restricted air space, like over the White House? There are missiles there, I hear, capable of shooting down intruders. But would I want to be the one to pull a trigger that blows a whale to blubbery bits all over Washington D.C.?
Perhaps whales would be granted an exempt status, like migrating geese. But what if terrorists took advantage of that and managed to bring down an intact whale in the middle of the White House Rose Garden? I haven’t calculated the kinetic energy of a full grown falling Gray Whale, but at a weight of 40 tons or so, I doubt anything trapped under the whale would survive the impact.
Unfortunately, a science fiction writer envisioning flying whales can’t avoid the inevitability of whale poop. While bird poop is an inconvenience, falling whale products of digestion would likely prove lethal. What a lousy way to die. (OK, I admit I was thinking of using a different adjective.)
The Achilles’ heel of any flying whale story would have to be buoyancy. It has been estimated that approximately half of a grown whale’s weight is derived from blubber. What if a whale replaced all of its blubber with hydrogen? [While I could choose helium as a buoyant gas, helium is not produced biologically, whereas hydrogen is, as a product of flatulence.]
Hydrogen has a specific buoyancy of approximately 71 lbs per 1000 cubic ft, so a 20,000 lb whale (stripped of all blubber) would need about 282,000 cubic feet of hydrogen to be neutrally buoyant (to float in air). To put that into perspective, the Goodyear Blimp weights 12,840 lbs, and has a volume of 202,7oo cubic feet. So a flying whale would have to be roughly 50% larger than the Goodyear blimp. [I leave a more exact calculation to high school physics students looking for an imaginative problem to solve.]
From a science fiction standpoint, that is entirely conceivable. Buoyant whales would be much larger than modern whales.
As for a means of propulsion, I don’t think whale fins would suffice; they don’t look enough like wings. But with a little imagination, I bet most school kids could think of a means of propulsion that would be akin to, dare I say, jet propulsion.
I think I now have the makings of a science fiction novel. I’ve got the science figured out: all I need now is a plot and some interesting human characters.
It is an ageless story, mothers banding together to protect their young from instinctive killers. The fact that it was a battle between behemoth Gray Whales and Killer Whales (Orcas) made it all the more epic in scope, and worthy of the telling.
A fellow scientist and I had driven south early one springtime morning from Anchorage, Alaska to Seward. At 11 AM our glacier view cruise boat left the docks at Seward and headed for the glacier fields at the Kenai Fjords National Park where the glaciers sliding slowly down from the mountains calved into the Gulf of Alaska.
Heading south from Seward.
From there we motored on until we were attracted to a near-shore area by the blowing of water and foam from a group of migrating Gray Whales. The rapid pace of their exhalation was a sure sign that something was wrong. We had stumbled upon a battle involving another type of calf just as the combatants were taking their positions on the battlefield.
A female Gray whale weighing between 30 to 40 tons had birthed her baby during the winter in Baja California and now the mother, quickly growing baby, and two female caretakers (often called “aunties”) were almost through with their migration to the Bering Sea. But as they swam beyond Prince William Sound, not far from their final destination, they were attacked by two adolescent transient Orcas who wanted that baby whale.
Our boat stopped far enough from the battle to not hinder the fight, but close enough for us to witness the events. Our biologist guide warned us that if we had a weak stomach we might not want to watch because often times the Orcas succeed in killing the baby Gray.
I don’t think anyone on the boat averted their eyes as the three massive females arranged themselves head to tail into a triangular defensive formation, with the baby in the middle. There was no way for the Orcas to get past the females on or near the surface, so they made repeated dives trying to enter the center of the triangle from underneath and attack the baby. But with each dive, the wily Grays maneuvered to block the Orcas.
The Orcas were nothing if not persistent. Perhaps sensing that, the whales started moving closer to a rock cliff face, and then they did something clever, but potentially risky. There was an opening in the rock wall and the baby whale had been nudged into that opening. One whale, probably the mother, was completely blocking that opening with her body. The Orcas tried repeatedly to find a way past her to the baby, but between the blocking action of the other two Grays and the blubbery plug of the cave entrance by the mother, there was nothing the Orcas could do.
We of course saw the riskiness of that defense. It looked to us like the baby was trapped underwater. Even a whale has to breathe sometime.
The other boat was too close to the action, but provides scale for the "cave".
But as I look at the photo I realize now that the cave was tall enough and just deep enough to allow the baby to breathe even with water access cut off. Obviously, the Gray Whale mother had made good use of her 4.3 kg brain. Nevertheless, from our elevated vantage point we could see over the mother whale, and we saw that the baby remained submerged. I’m guessing it was wedging itself in as tightly as it could. The anxiety on our boat grew perceptively as the minutes ticked down with us knowing the baby was holding its breath.
The tactic worked, for the Orcas eventually tired of the game, and after making one or two leaps out of the water they moved away from the whales and headed north toward seal colonies we passed on the way south. The seals would be easier pickings than those highly protective Gray Whales.
There was jubilation on our boat. I think we’d all been holding our breath like the baby, at least a little.
When the coast was clear, literally, the Grays moved back into the open water near where the battle had begun and caught their breath, heaving great geysers of watery air as they panted. They had obviously been very stressed, but their cleverness and strategic cooperation saved the day, or at least the moment.
Two Orcas. Copyright by Rolf Hicker. Used under fair use.
Things could have been different, both better and worse. Local Orcas were so-called residents who don’t attack Gray Whales. Residents tend to be fish eaters. Fortunately for the Gray baby, the more lethal transients were not as experienced with the local geography. They were also adolescents, not as experienced as adults, and there were only two of them. A pack of them, with adolescents being guided by adults, might have been more succesful. Transient Orcas, genetically different from Residents are reported to kill a third of the baby Gray Whale population each year.
Interestingly, the Grays seem to know where transient Orca populations are the most active, and in those regions they tend to stay close to shore. In this case that strategy paid off by allowing the baby to be protected by a rock wall and its mother.
On the boat we celebrated all the way back to Seward; we had witnessed a frightening conflict with, for us and the whales, a happy ending.
