Michael Crichton - Sphere

At that moment, there was a buzz as one of the monitors turned itself on. As they watched, the screen rapidly filled with numbers:

0003212525263203262930132104261037183016061

808213229033005182204261013083016213716040

83016211822033013130432000321252526320326

293013210426103718301606180821322903300518

220426101308301623711604083016211822033013

1304320003212525263203262932104261037183016

0618082132290330051822042610130830162137

16040830162118220330131304320003212525263

203262930132104261037183016061808213229033

005182204261013083016213716040830162118220

3301313043200032125252632032629301321042610

3718301606180821322903300518220426101308

301621371604083162118220330131304320003212

525263203262930132104261037183016061808213

229033005182204261013083016213716040830162

“Where’s that coming from?” Ted said. “The surface?”

Barnes shook his head. “We’ve cut direct contact with the surface.”

“Then is it being transmitted underwater in some way?”

“No,” Tina said, “it’s too fast for underwater transmission.”

“Is there another console in the habitat? No? How about DH-7?”

“DH-7’s empty now. The divers have gone.”

“Then where’d it come from?”

Barnes said, “It looks random to me.”

Tina nodded. “It may be a discharge from a temporary buffer memory somewhere in the system. When we switched over to internal diesel power…”

“That’s probably it,” Barnes said. “Buffer discharge on switchover.”

“I think you should keep it,” Ted said, staring at the screen. “Just in case it’s a message.”

“A message from where?”

“From the sphere.”

“Hell,” Barnes said, “it can’t be a message.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s no way a message can be transmitted. We’re not hooked up to anything. Certainly not to the sphere. It’s got to be a memory dump from somewhere inside our own computer system.”

“How much memory have you got?”

“Fair amount. Ten giga, something like that.”

“Maybe the helium’s getting to the chips,” Tina said. “Maybe it’s a saturation effect.”

“I still think you should keep it,” Ted said.

Norman had been looking at the screen. He was no mathematician, but he’d looked at a lot of statistics in his life, searching for patterns in the data. That was something human brains were inherently good at; finding patterns in visual material. Norman couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed a pattern here. He said, “I have the feeling it’s not random.”

“Then let’s keep it,” Barnes said.

Tina went forward to the console. As her hands touched the keys, the screen went blank.

“So much for that,” Barnes said. “It’s gone. Too bad we didn’t have Harry to look at it with us.”

“Yeah,” Ted said gloomily. “Too bad.”

“Take a look at this,” Beth said. “this one is still alive.”

Norman was with her in the little biological laboratory near the top of D Cylinder. Nobody had been in this laboratory since their arrival, because they hadn’t found anything living. Now, with the lights out, he and Beth watched the squid move in the glass tank.

The creature had a delicate appearance. The blue glow was concentrated in stripes along the back and sides of the creature.

“Yes,” Beth said, “the bioluminescent structures seem to be located dorsally. They’re bacteria, of course.”

“What are?”

“The bioluminescent areas. Squid can’t create light themselves. The creatures that do are bacteria. So the bioluminescent animals in the sea have incorporated these bacteria into their bodies. You’re seeing bacteria glowing through the skin.”

“So it’s like an infection?”

“Yes, in a way.”

The large eyes of the squid stared. The tentacles moved. “And you can see all the internal organs,” Beth said. “The brain is hidden behind the eye. That sac is the digestive gland, and behind it, the stomach, and below that-see it beating?-the heart. That big thing at the front is the gonad, and coming down from the stomach, a sort of funnel-that’s where it squirts the ink, and propels itself.”

“Is it really a new species?” Norman said.

She sighed. “I don’t know. Internally it is so typical. But fewer tentacles would qualify it as a new species, all right.”

“You going to get to call it Squidus bethus ? “ Norman said.

She smiled. “ Architeuthis bethis ,” she said. “Sounds like a dental problem. Architeuthis bethis : means you need root canal.”

“How about it, Dr. Halpern?” Levy said, poking her head in. “Got some good tomatoes and peppers, be a shame to waste them. Are the squid really poisonous?”

“I doubt it,” Beth said. “Squid aren’t known to be. Go ahead,” she said to Levy. “I think it’ll be okay to eat them.” When Levy had gone, Norman said, “I thought you gave up eating these things.”

“Just octopi,” Beth said. “An octopus is cute and smart. Squid are rather… unsympathetic.”

“Unsympathetic.”

“Well, they’re cannibalistic, and rather nasty… She raised an eyebrow. “Are you psychoanalyzing me again?”

“No. Just curious.”

“As a zoologist, you’re supposed to be objective,” Beth said, “but I have feelings about animals, like anybody else. I have a warm feeling about octopi. They’re clever, you know. I once had an octopus in a research tank that learned to kill cockroaches and use them as bait to catch crabs. The curious crab would come along, investigate the dead cockroach, and then the octopus would jump out of its hiding place and catch the crab.

“In fact, an octopus is so smart that the biggest limitation to its behavior is its lifespan. An octopus lives only three years, and that’s not long enough to develop anything as complicated as a culture or civilization. Maybe if octopi lived as long as we do, they would long ago have taken over the world.

“But squid are completely different. I have no feelings about squid. Except I don’t really like ‘em.”

He smiled. “Well,” he said, “at least you finally found some life down here.”

“You know, it’s funny,” she said. “Remember how barren it was out there? Nothing on the bottom?”

“Sure. Very striking.”

“Well, I went around the side of the habitat, to get these squid. And there’re all sorts of sea fans on the bottom. Beautiful colors, blues and purples and yellows. Some of them quite large.”

“Think they just grew?”

“No. They must have always been in that spot, but we never went over there. I’ll have to investigate it later. I’d like to know why they are localized in that particular place, next to the habitat.”

Norman went to the porthole. He had switched on the exterior habitat lights, shining onto the bottom. He could indeed see many large sea fans, purple and pink and blue, waving gently in the current. They extended out to the edge of the light, to the darkness.

“In a way,” Beth said, “it’s reassuring. We’re deep for the majority of oceanic life, which is found in the first hundred feet of water. But even so, this habitat is located in the most varied and abundant marine environment in the world.” Scientists had made species counts and had determined that the South Pacific had more species of coral and sponges than anywhere else on Earth.