Today did not live up to expectations, I am afraid. We went shopping for technorat gadgets in the market in Lib City, but there was nothing we wanted particularly; then we joined the small flotilla of boats and dirigibles out to the edge of the continental shelf to catch a rare glimpse of Deep Blue, the Pacifica whale godling. Everybody on board had just sat down for lunch (an interesting lobed fish called Latima or something, somewhat oily, but an incredible taste) when the captain cut the engines and we all rushed to the side.
There was a school of Hwissi dolphin circling around one spot in the ocean; green balloons and gliders swarming overhead, the brilliant sunshine making me polarize my contacts; there was a channel called Big Surf Watch on the 'net, and we used it to find out how far away and how deep the Whale God was.

Two kilometres, one; a hundred metres deep, fifty; now we could see the Whale through the eyes of a tracking submersible as E came into the sunlit topmost layers of the ocean.
By Space, E was big! The Godling has been growing for thousands of years, and is bigger every time E is seen- the `net channel said E was at least a kilometre wide now, and perhaps three long- everybody on the boat peered into the bright ocean, expecting to see the gleaming back of the creature as E surfaced. A vast area of the ocean turned pale, silhouetting the tiny leaping Hwissi then the Surf Watch channels all showed the gigantic creature turn back into the deeps of the ocean without breaking the surface, before losing all visual and sonar contact with the creature, as always.

Later we heard the dolphins talking loudly in Galanglic about the wonderful sighting of the Great Whale, just to annoy us; they have a strange sense of humour, which can be cruel at times.

By Steve Bowers (2008)

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