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Transcripts of the International Society of Vertebrate Biology, 2019, Day two, 1:35 PM.
Whalesong, Translated and Itemized, With Extreme Regret. Dr. Hedley-Schmidt.

Hello.
Welcome to this presentation. My name is Louise Patterson, and I’m Dr. Hedley-Schmidt’s head research assistant. What follows are the first fully-accurate transcriptions of nonhuman language. We are not proud of this.
And here’re the clips.

***

Damn I’m Huge (Balaenoptera musculus)
Damn I’m huge!
Look at me! Look at me!
Damn I’m huge! PAY ATTENTION!
Damnit I’m vast! I’m enormous! I’m HUMONGOUS!
Look on my girth ye mortals and despair!

*

I’m Very Sorry There’s Propellers in My Ears (Balaenoptera physalus)
Sorry, sorry, sorry, could you speak up a bit? Just a bit?
I’m trying to pay attention, I promise.
Just a little louder, if you could, if you please.
I need you to raise your voice because there’s propellers in my ears
I’m not trying to complain, just letting you know about the facts
Not to raise a fuss I mean, but it’s really difficult to hear
Can’t even hear myself talk sometimes. Oh no, am I talking now?
I’m really very sorry that there’s propellers in my ears

*

Baby My Dick Misses You (Megaptera novaeangliae)
Oh where are you, where are you, where have you been and gone?
Baby, oh my baby, you know my dick misses you
I harbour only the deepest feelings of romance and love
And you must know that of course
By ‘I’ I mean ‘my genitalia’
Oh baby, my baby

*

Why Is There A Sharp Piece of Metal in My Back? (Balaena mysticetus)
Why is there a sharp piece of metal in my back?
Goddamnit shit ow ow ow that fucking smarts
Was it Iceland? Japan? Why do you people keep doing this shit?
I thought you guys quit, did someone need one more corset?
It can’t be for oil, surely
Jesus, that’s going to leave a mark

*

I’m Deeply Terrified of Dying Alone (Eubalaena spp.)
Oh no oh no oh god no I’m so very lonely aaaaauuuuuugh
Why can’t I rewind time and be very small again, I liked that, some of it, a bit of it, at least
Shit shit shit where did I fuck up aaaargh I’m so stupid my life is awful and it’s all my fault
Oh no no no no no no no no no
Piss

*

Baby Will You Not Consider My Pleas (Megaptera novaeangliae)
Honey won’t you be sympathetic? You’ve left me – and also my penis – hanging
We both yearn for you with the finest and deepest of passions
Was it something I said or failed to say or both? I promise we can make it up to you, together
It might have been all those barnacles on my back, and I apologize but I will not part with them
We are buddies; them, me, and my schlong
All of us entreat you: forgive us, love us, never let us go

*

Stuck In A Net (Eschrichtius robustus)
Ow this thing is jammed on my head
Can’t get it off, ow shit ow
Someone give me a hand here? Sort of having difficulties, and I need to breathe soon
Hello? Anyone?
Assholes

*

I Sure Am Happy! (Orcinus orca)
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Gonna bite ya gonna bite ya WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
GOT ‘IM!

*

Ice (Delphinapterus leucas)
Ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice
Breathing hole
Ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice
Breathing hole
Ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice
Hey where’d all the ice go?
Back in my day we wouldn’t stand for this crap

*

Baby My Crippling Insecurity Needs Reassurance (Megaptera novaeangliae)
Please please please pay attention to me honey, please pay attention to me
Is it me? I hope it isn’t me
Is it my genitals? Oh god oh god oh god I pray it isn’t my genitals
Baby I can change and I promise that if size is a concern I swear I am above average
What are you holding out for a Right whale or something don’t be so choosy
Oh god baby I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean any of it please validate my existence
Please, please put up with my incessant garbage

***

Thank you all for your time. Dr. Hedley-Schmidt extends her sincere apologies and conveys regret that she ever embarked on this study. If you wish to burn your copy of it there is a small metal trash bin in the parking lot. No questions will be accepted as Dr. Hedley-Schmidt has left early to resume drinking.

Alright, meeting’s on, phones off, quiet down, cut the chatter people, yadda yadda. We ready?

Okay!

Things are going pretty good! We’re at the halfway point of the project, we’re doing fine, doing fine. The world’s first virtual hell is well on its way, and you guys have shown you can definitely take us the rest of the mile.
However, there are a few issues I’d like to bring to your attention. Nothing horrible, just, you know. Issues.

1: Evergreen content design
Telling no lies, I appreciate that we’re working under a somewhat strict set of design protocols without a lot of room to expand – our user experience begins and ends with ‘you are in a bad place and are being tortured.’ Still, I think there’s room for expansion. Procedurally generated limited-time murder pits; extremely painful slaughterhouses that award ten-minute pauses in agony upon completion, etc, etc. Just because we’re programming brimstone doesn’t mean we don’t need to try and keep it fresh, and I want you all to put a little more effort into planning with this in mind.

2: Poor flame optimization
I know that perfection is a goal. It’s a good goal, a damned fine goal, and it’s one we’re all working towards in, uh, ideally. But that urge to tinker has to be directed appropriately, and I’m a little concerned with the amount of leeway that’s been given to the graphics department in their creation of basic assets. Specifically, we now have possibly the most realistic fire effects ever imagined by a human being without using a lighter, and although that’s really impressive I’m concerned with the impact that this has on performance. This hell is meant to be for everyone consigned to it for civic rehabilitation, personal psychological reform, poor job performance, and so on. We can’t presume all its inhabitants will have access to top-of-the-line supercomputers – and I can’t help but notice that even those have a lot of trouble in the burnier places, like Gehenna-B or the deep end of Hades.
In short: we admire your passion for your craft, but we’d like it if you could also show some passion for the rest of your job. Or you won’t have it. Please.

3: Significant overbudgeting in the writing department
Okay, I’m going to drop one of my rules and get specific with names here. Craig, what the flipping burning hell are you doing? We put you in charge of the writing team, and you gave them some rough outlines and shut yourself in your office for six months. When we came back to check on you, you’ve got this damned war-and-peace novel of dialogue for one character, whose entire function we described to you as ‘basic information guide.’
Yeah, yeah, Dante’s Inferno, we get it. But (1) I recall that the writing team agreed this was a pop-accessible virtual hell, not a direct lift – Dantesque, not Dante-proper – (2) you haven’t written anything else on your list at all and you’re STILL NOT DONE and (3) I can’t help but notice this ‘tour guide’ is written almost exactly like the last six characters you were assigned, mostly in that he spends most of his time making long speeches about calling women whores.
Please. Something else. And smaller. Else and smaller.

4: Sloppy machine learning implementation in torturers
If there’s one piece of our virtual hell platform that makes me proudest, it’s the individuated torturer experience. Imagine – not an immense, impersonal hatred, but a specifically personalized and tailored experience for the user, compiled from their own search history and identification, guaranteed and finely-tuned to make them lose all hope for all time.
That’s our greatest goal, our greatest pride, and the feature that’s listed in the largest print on the investor’s handbook. So I hope you can understand why I’m speaking to you with just a hint of disappointment.
First of all, machine learning is of course the future, the way, the holy grail, a beautiful form of AI, the pathway to the singularity, etc, etc. But I’m concerned with our current usage of it. The first time that the software covered the torture pits in dog photos? Hilarious. Good meme fuel for the postproduction media teasers. The second time, after you’d fixed it? Annoying. Third time? Troubling. We’re up to six canid inversions now and I’m a little goddamned vexed. Secondly, that’s not even mentioning the clown problem, which I am now mentioning. I know clowns are frequently associated with horror, but that’s often a statement made, you know, IRONICALLY. Few people are just scared of a guy in clown paint, and the way the software keeps mass producing clown paraphernalia and stamping it on everything degrades the torture experience we’re looking for. It makes us seem cheap and shticky, rather than futuristic and flexible.

5: Physics engine
You guys have got some of it working. We want all of it working all the time forever. This is going to be hell, remember? Immersion is key. We don’t want someone uploading smuggled videos of demons clipping through walls; torturers stoning people and getting murdered with comical rebound shots; or corpses falling over and spontaneously shooting into orbit. One little moment of snickering stupidity and the whole pathos of the user experience is gone.

6: Tighten up Satan design elements
Look, I know you guys are artsy. I think I heard one of you describe something using ‘Goya’ and that’s pretty fancy. But again, this is a virtual hell for the people, and the people get what they want, and they don’t want some sorta weird distorted abstract…thingy as their face of ultimate evil. They want a large red guy, preferably with hooves but without too much other goat stuff. I know you may be disappointed by this, I know you may think of it as beneath you, I know you may want to rail and bitch about the incredible tastelessness and illiteracy of the masses who only want the same thing over and over – mostly lacking in goat stuff – but here’s the thing: they want it, they got it. Think of it not as creative constraints, but creative guidelines. Limitations foster innovations, right?
So yeah. Satan. Not too much goat stuff, okay?

7: Leaks
I know you’re all very proud to be on the team making the world’s first virtual hell, but please, please, please those NDAs you signed are there for a REASON. I don’t care how oblique or coy or playful you think those tweets and posts are; I don’t care how secretive your spouse is; hell, I’d rather you didn’t even tell it to your cats. Because – and I really, really shouldn’t have to say this again – nobody cares about the schmucks who make the world’s SECOND virtual hell. And if you get too loose lipped sinking-shipped on us, that won’t be Topchunk. It’ll be us. And it’ll be your fault.
But no pressure!

Okay, that’s about everything on the list. Good talk everyone, good going, and have a good working weekend. Remember: pull this off, and every single person being tortured for a simulated eternity for the foreseeable future will have you to thank for it.
Go get ‘em!

A star, a sun, a planet, a place, a sandbox with three little nuisances in it. How big a problem they’ll be is up to them.
“I will be president someday,” says the oldest, who has made a sandcastle.
“I’m gonna go to space,” says the middle child, who has tried to make an alien and succeeded in making a gingerbread man.
“I want to grow flowers,” says the youngest, who has left the sandbox and is playing with a dandelion.
“Dope,” says the oldest.
“Chump,” agrees the middle child. They throw a little sand at the youngest and uproot her flower for kicks and then go back to their work.
Carefully, slowly, gently, she replants it. Then she pats it once on the head.
“You are dandelions,” she told them. “You’re weeds, but the kind I love.”

School was out. The grass was green. The children were explaining where their grades had been.
“Who cares what my grades are?” the eldest child told their mother. “You donated their gym. Fuck ‘em, they’ll graduate me with a recommendation and like it. Besides, what world leader has ever been grilled on their high school records? Nothing worth knowing ever came from other people anyways.”
“Look,” said the middle child, “what kind of astronaut needs biology anyways? It’s not real science. And chemistry is hard. Physics is awesome but I think there’s too much math – I’m really more of an insight guy. Flashes of pure brilliance. Like, for example, I had this idea… what if instead of becoming an astronaut I just buy NASA and tell them to make me a spaceship?”
The youngest child took her admonishment (and grudging praise for her biology marks) in silence, then wandered outside to her corner of the vast lawn.
“You are buttercups,” she told them. “You are my favourites.”

April dawned. With it came ritual.
“April fools’!” shouted the eldest child. “I moved out yesterday when you weren’t looking! Also I’m dropping out of college so I can spend more time schmoozing with my classmates. Don’t worry, they’ll still give me a passing grade. And while I’m at it, I haven’t paid last month’s rent. See ya!”
“April fools’!” began the email from the middle child. “I actually failed all my classes two years ago! All my tuition money has been going into developing a really small and pretty piece of personal electronic paraphernalia, or at least buying someone else’s version of it. See ya!”
The youngest child, who had been kicked out of the house three years earlier to teach her self-reliance, was watering the little planter she kept in a corner of her apartment.
“You are tulips,” she told them. “You are wonderful.”

On the last day of June, three things happened.
First of all, the eldest child launched her campaign, ‘vote for me and I will hurt people.’
“I will hurt lots of people,” she announced. “I will hurt them very badly. I will not stop even if they ask me. This is my promise to you, and I also promise that if you vote for me I probably won’t hurt you as much. Yeah!”
Second of all, the middle child’s IPO was FUBAR’d by the IRS but TLDR the free publicity made it A-OK and the SEC ended up doing F-all.
“We don’t actually make things,” he told the interviewer, seated atop a heap of stock options. “We make ideas. We make one idea: science is probably cool, but research is boring and dumb and graphs are hard so we’re going to sell you a little plastic computer constructed by slave labour. That’s it. That’s the future.”
And finally, the youngest child worked day and night and got the local park’s central bed up and blooming ten times larger than it ever had before.
“You are lilies,” she told them. “You smell beautiful.”

On the fifth of May, the eldest child was inaugurated.
“Wow,” she said, staring out across the crowds. “All you fuckers really voted for me, huh? Holy shit!”
On the twenty-ninth of May, the middle child launched his golden parachute and became the richest man in the whole world.
“Never stop believing in yourself,” he said. “That’s the secret. And I guess the future or other people or something.”
And on the thirtieth day of May, the youngest child, with love and tenderness and the care of a mother crocodile breaking her children free from their shells, watered a single flower of heartbreaking beauty.
The flower stood up. It was about fourteen hundred feet tall.
“You are Tropaeolumtitanis titanis, and you will destroy absolutely everything,” she told it.

It did.

People objected, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. And if some mourned for the future of humanity, of the greater good, of so on and so forth, they did so in a kind of abstract way that very specifically avoided any names.

Sleep! It does a body wonders!
Sleep! It’s what your soul requests!
Sleep! It’s owned by purple elephants working in their gardens and I’m right in the middle of helping one plant some bacon
when BANG my alarm goes off right in my ear, in my head, and I’m awake and overdrawn on my account.
Goddamnit. I shouldn’t have hit the extend button. It usually gets weird fast, especially when the commercials start replaying inside my head. The last thing I need when I’m asleep is to dream about Sleep. That’s just recursive.

The day goes by, and it goes by slow. It always does after I overdose. I spent the morning weirdly chipper and hyperactive.
“Hi Julie!”
“hiiiii….”
Halfway through I started getting crabby and twitchy.
“Julie can you take your GODDAMNED MUG OFF MY DESK?”
“….’kay.”
By the evening I’m almost back down to something more slumped and normal, but deeply resentful about it.
“Gbye…”
“…Yep. Fuggoff.”
That’s usually when I go out and buy more. After a full night on Sleep, I’ll do anything to get back to it. Anything.
Except that was the day my wallet ran dry.

I’d known this day would come. One too many nights on one too many Sleep doses. One time too many slamming the extended rest button and going through three extra hours of restless hallucinations that felt like ten minutes.
I’d known it would come. But I’d never stopped moving towards it either.
And, as I grabbed the biggest knife in the kitchen, I realized that I’d also more or less been planning for this. Somehow.

The drug store was manned by a wall-eyed sloth of a creature, half-lidded and sluggish.
“Yeaah?”
“Gimme Ssleep!” I blurted out, brandishing my weaponry in their face. “Gimmeme noww!”
“Jeez,” said the Sleeper, blinking with the speed of a striking glacier. “’Kay. Don’t uh. Don’t….make such a big deal. Sure. Whaddyawannagain?”
I focused.
“Sleep!”
“Diet..?”
“No!”
“Liime?”
“Nuh-uh!”
“…Zero?”
“Fugoff! Sleep! Plain! Now!”
“Sure. Righ’. Righ’ here.”
He opened the drawer, counted out three capsules six times each, gave up, and handed some amount of them to me, who put them in my face.
“Donegonowhere,” I said, waving my arms around with intense intimidation. “I’mmmagetcha.”
“Surrreee,” said the Sleeper.
And bonk, I was out.

I don’t remember precisely how much Sleep I got out of that, but it was enough for me to have no dreams at all. I woke up CRACKLING inside, like a bottle of lightning, and realized three things immediately.
First, I was holding a large spoon, not a knife.
Second, that the Sleeper must have forgotten what I’d done and failed to call the police.
Third, that I would probably rather die than go through another day not feeling like this.
I sat up, rubbed my back, went through three completely unlocked and unguarded doors marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY” and “HIGH SECURITY” and filled up one of my socks with Sleep capsules.
“Where’s the truck come in?” I asked the security guard watching me.
“Uhmmmmm,” he said. It was all he’d said since I’d gently shouldered past him.
“Just point,” I said.
“Uhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” he deferred.
But he did point. Sort of. And when the truck came in, so did I, and when the truck rolled out, so did I.
Inside it, staring at the ceiling, I batted aside the driver’s slow-moving inquiries. And I thought. I thought about Sleep.
I thought about enough Sleep to fill the oceans and drown the forests.
I thought about enough Sleep to empty my head and drive away the stuffing inside.
I thought about enough Sleep to have some EVERY. DAMNED. DAY.
Maybe every night, too!
And I got so excited that I took some more Sleep and conked out.

The trip was forty miles and took a mere three days. Would’ve been even shorter if I hadn’t gotten impatient and taken over the wheel, breaking every speed record I’d ever heard of and crossing the last twenty miles in a blistering half-hour.
The Sleep plant was long, dark and cold. It was defined mostly by where it wasn’t. This wouldn’t have disturbed me if I wasn’t so tanked up on Sleep that I could tell what was normal and what wasn’t.
The security was tight here. It took me over three minutes to persuade the front desk I was the CEO, and even then they kept getting suspicious and asking me again every time I got them to open a door for me. They’d been well-trained. Sometimes their eyes even focused.
Still, they got me into the boardroom, no questions asked. I had the keys to the kingdom, and there was only one problem: the boardroom was full of people.
Sixteen chairs. Each occupied by an executive as aged as he was devious, as devious as he was cunning, as cunning as he was clever, and as clever as he was poor.
None of them were very poor.
And none of them were very awake. Sleepyheads, the lot of them. Blissfully napping even at work, in their chairs, in their suits. My god, the decadence of it nearly made me gag.
And then the security chief, who’d been unsettlingly attentive since I opened the door, pointed at the head of the table and said “heeeeeey……..THA’S the. C. The see ee. The oh”
I gently pushed him aside and ran like the dickens.
Lost ‘em all at the first intersection, but god, I kept running just for the novelty of it. I could coordinate BOTH limbs at once while pumping my arms! Pure sorcery!
I understood them, those blackhearted bastards in the boardroom. I understood why they would wallow in their own product like this. I’d do it too.

A bland, watery alarm honked out across the facility grounds some time later. Smelled like dead seals and dim caution.
It woke me up. I hadn’t really needed the nap, but the boardroom had eaten at me, and running wore a body out. Besides, nobody had opened the maintenance closet I found in at least a year.
I took a mop and bucket with me, and every time I saw someone point at me I turned to them and said “janitor” in a very authoritative voice until they went away.
This worked until I got to the production floor, at which point I was stopped by the security chief again.
“You’re no’ janit. or.”
“You caught me. I’m the infiltrator.”
“Ahhh!”
“April fools.”
“Huhhh?”
“I’m actually the CEO. You’re fired.”
“Ahhhh!”
“April fools. Let me in.”
While he was figuring that one out I took his keys and locked him out. He was worryingly competent, and what I was about to do here could do without that sort of thing.

The production floor was six football fields long, five baseball fields wide, taller than six basketball courts stacked up on top of each other, and had a little computer terminal the size of a tennis racket sitting in the middle of it and absolutely nothing else.
Was this really what I wanted to do? Surely I could just leave the room, get rid of the executives (push ‘em out a window or something? Sleeping was a dangerous business), and take the place over. Nap sixteen times a day. Seventeen. Rule the world with a furiously clear head. Take their money, give them paltry handfuls of Sleep. Let everyone else shuffle around half dead and bleary.
My god, imagine the size of the bed I could make on that boardroom table.
I opened the computer, tried ‘password,’ tried ‘123’, tried ‘abc’, tried ‘12345’, then picked it up and put it in the bucket and bashed it with the mop handle until everything was crunchy.
At some part an alarm went off and started making drawn-out ‘yorpp’ noises, but nothing seemed to happen.

I walked outside past snoring people, curled in every corner, drooling at every desk. The highways were parking lots; the offices were nurseries, and by the time I’d gotten back home I was exhausted as hell.
Seven AM. A weird time to end my day. Would there be a normal one again?
Oh well. I’d sleep on it.