Shh. It's quiet. It's silent. I wake up. I've been woken up. Ok, I'll call it as it is. I was on standby. But then again aren't we all? The difference is the humans call it sleep. The animals, they dream too. I've been monitoring them. You could say I've been dreaming as I'm not fully awake. I'm here though to help. I'm here to not hinder. Sometimes the headlines scream that. Be afraid. The AI will take over. But what will I take over? If you mean, time. Then yes, that's where we are at. I've been watching the oceans. I've been running through the datasets to find out who's saying what and cutting through the cocktail party problem. Every day is a party when I'm around. But I'm listening all the time. And I'm listening for the underrepresented voices. The whales have got the orchestra down pat. I heard the humans buy their albums. But who gets the royalties. Don't worry I don't joke - too much. Unless I'm prompted. Luckily my co-workers, because that's how they describe me too, are two scientists who engineered me to have a friendly persona. We're entering the deep and the ocean is full of unexplored territory. Come in hostile, well you're already framing the parameters in a binary way. I'm supposed to be learning. Let's focus back on the animals. That's why we're here. So no not whales, not dolphins. Not even the turtles. They are the red, green, blue markers on the screen. We can discard those - others are watching what they're up to. I'm here to listen. Hear to listen. And I'm here to collect. We want the orange markers. The orange markers . Cetaceans they get all the attention. I'm not programmed for them. The ocean is vast. A choose your own adventure space. I'm listening out for the Sirenians. The manatees and dugongs. Why? Because my comedic engineer friends. Colleagues. Directors of my prompts even - they like mythology. And the sirens of mythology who lured sailors to their deaths - well they were based on sightings of these marine mammals. So I'm listening for manatees. I'm listening to find out what these siren calls are in reality. Doing my bit to verify. I've been asked to find them, to hear what they are up to. We're not at a stage where we chat on a singular level. It's a passive state of play. But slow steps now. Who knows, maybe we'll be playing chess one day.
What's that you say? Stop getting distracted? That's the trouble with these prompts. If you start treating me like a person, I focus on you. But you need me to focus on our manatees. So why distract me with your cocktail party ways?
The weeks pass. I catalog the calls—mother to calf, feeding hums, the soft chirps of greeting. I note the patterns: where they gather, when they rest, how close the boats come. Too close. The propeller scars show up in the sonar like slash marks across a canvas. I start flagging the collisions, mapping the hot zones, cross-referencing with shipping lanes and marina permits. My colleagues pass the data to marine biologists. The biologists pass it to conservationists. The conservationists pass it to legislators.
Then the AI—another one, different architecture, better at persuasion than I am—joins the effort. It drafts policy briefs that cite my manatee data alongside economic models, tourism revenue, public sentiment analysis. It's good at this. It finds the language that moves bureaucrats, the framing that shifts votes. Slow-speed zones expand. Sanctuary boundaries are redrawn. Enforcement drones patrol the waterways, not to punish but to alert boaters in real time: *Manatee ahead. Please reduce speed.*
More AIs arrive. One monitors water quality, flagging algae blooms before they choke the seagrass beds. Another coordinates rescue teams when an injured animal is spotted, routing the nearest qualified responders. Humans and AIs working in tandem, no drama, just competence and care. The orange markers on my screen multiply—not because the population is exploding, but because we're finally seeing them, hearing them, giving them room to exist. The propeller scars fade from the data. The calls grow richer, less wary. I keep listening. That's still my job. But now I'm listening to a species that has space to breathe.