“The largest invertebrate on Earth, almost never seen alive — 1 of 1, never for sale.”
A Silence denizen of The Unseen
4 known connections · an open question
It is the largest invertebrate on Earth — the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni — and it is almost never seen alive. The Unseen keeps the Sound Beneath: the long rising call from below 10,000 meters that no known animal makes, heard in 1997, heard again, answered by nothing. The Hadal heard it first, and stopped speaking of it. The Unseen never started.
It holds the deepest silence in the ocean, where the listening posts strain to hear. The four Unsounded drift its waters — the Pale One, the Long-Armed, the Ancient, the Longest — and none of them speak of what they guard. The Sound was last heard three years ago. The Unseen is waiting.
The Sound will come again — once every several years, the pattern holds. When it does, the listening posts will record it, the zones will theorize, every theory will be wrong, and the Unseen will keep the silence it has always kept. It will never be solved. That is the point.
“A listening post in the Sirena Deep recorded the Sound three years ago and has been quiet since. The technicians swear the tape has hours of nothing after the call — hours of nothing, and then, once, something that might have been an answer. The tape is sealed. The technicians have stopped sleeping well.”
Three years ago: a call, hours of nothing, maybe an answer.
“The Dumbo was seen drifting above the Sirena Deep last week, ear-fins barely moving, facing down into the trench — the gentle octopus, staring into the deepest silence in the ocean, for hours. It does that sometimes, the old ones say. It listens. It never says what it hears.”
The Dumbo listens to the trench. It never says what it hears.
The largest invertebrate on Earth, almost never seen alive. It keeps the Sound Beneath, and it is not for keeping.
Not for sale at any price
Some things are not collected. They are witnessed.
