Leviathan: A Short Story About the End of the World

by Saul Tanpepper

  You don't believe me.

  I could sense the change in his mood by the uneven slope of his shoulders. He took in a long breath and slowly let it out. 'Tis not that I don't believe, he told me. 'Tis that I so badly want to.

  I heard it.

  But I did not.

  I sat and watched him, even as my hands continued to twist the stiff hemp into thread. I asked him why 'twas so important.

  The fish, he replied. If the song you heard is real, then it came from a beast of the deep, a leviathan. He scratched a teardrop shape onto a flat stone and gave it an eye and a mouth.

  Leviathan, I repeated, testing the unfamiliar word on my tongue.

  An ancient name given by the ancient men to a creature gone from this world for many tens of years. In my time it was known as a whale. What you heard was . . . .

  I could see him wanting to correct himself because of his doubt.

  What you may have heard would be its song.

  An animal? A real live animal?

  Not just one, but many, he said. Whales eat fish and . . . and krill, small creatures. And ever smaller creatures which the krill feed upon. And so on. It would mean the seas are not dead, as I had presumed. Or the world.

  I could see him getting excited now, the wariness giving way to cautious hope. But 'twas only a momentary flicker before he caught himself.

  I worked the wet hemp for a long while and thought about all this, what it meant.

  You want to hunt the whale? I asked. Do you want to eat it?

  He turned to me and his eyes were dark as the sea, and 'twas the first time I thought I understood his curse. He wanted to, and yet he didn't.

  That night, we settled ourselves upon the shore of the sea with our backs leaning against the rocks. The water gave off a pungent odor, yet there was also a sweetness in it that I had not gleaned before. The edge of it stopped a hand's length away from my feet. The surface was as still and shiny as a mirror, though so much darker than the sky that the stars reflected in it seemed brighter than those above. I was surprised to feel the tickle of the sea caressing my toes some time later, as if it had stirred in its sleep.

  We waited for the song, each keeping t'other awake with our restless shifting, working the stiffness from our limbs. But it did not come, not that night or the next.

  We resumed our routine after that, him going out onto the sea to hunt and me tending to the chores that needed tending on shore.

  How long will you be gone this time? I asked the next morn. He didn't say. If he was impatient with me or angry at himself or the world, I couldn't tell. All he told me was to just keep on doing as we had always done.

  Each day I prepared the potatoes and waited, and each night I buried what had not been eaten, then I lay alone inside our house and listened. I did not hear the song or his feet on the stones for as many nights as I have fingers on one hand. And as 'twas the longest he had ever stayed away, I began to worry.

  When I had run out of fingers to mark the passing days, I grew terrible scared and slept outside along the shore. And when the number grew to be more than I had toes to count, I finally accepted that he wasn't coming back. I did not know what had become of him, but the questions which scratched most at my mind were whether he had found what he was hunting for, and if he had, what did he do.

  The night his boat reappeared on the distant horizon was the same night I heard the song again. The vessel was but a tiny speck on the very rim of the sea, and the sun was already half drowned in it. I ran to prepare the water to warm his dinner.

  Through the long dark night I waited, but though I heard the whale, the sound of the shifting pebbles announcing his arrival did not reach my ears. Nevertheless, I was gladdened, as his continued absence meant to me that he had also heard the whale and had gone back out to hunt instead of coming home.

  The song faded slowly away rather than stopped all at once, and 'twas completely gone from my ears before the sun peeked over the hills in the morning. But the boat was still there. In fact, 'twas closer to shore than it had been the previous night, although still too far away to see any detail.

  Throughout the day it slowly drifted toward me, and 'twas near evening again that I knew by how high it sat in the water that he was not on it. I swum out to fetch it back, and I saw when I clambered aboard that the net was gone, and his pail was empty, and the sticks were painted dark red with blood.

  That night, the song was the loudest I had ever heard. I stood at the edge of the sea and listened to it, and 'twas as if the whale was beckoning me. I am not a hunter, I called out at it, but my words made no difference to its singing, and when morning came I knew that I must do as my father had done, if only to lay any doubt to rest.

  As I had no idea how long it would take, I filled another pail to the top with boiled potatoes and the cooking pot with clean water to drink. These I settled into the boat. Then I set my feet onto the rough bottom, as I had seen my father do so many times before, and pushed away from the shore. The paddles felt strange in my hands, the wood shrunken and stiff and coarse, and my muscles were not used to the strain.

  I rowed out of the cove, which was my home for all this time, to find the beast my father had hunted. I did not know how I would find my way back, or even if I would return. Till I lost sight of the shore and was surrounded by nothing but the glassy sea, it did not seem important, and even afterward I found the idea of going home secondary to the hunt.

  I followed the whale's song each night, rowing hard till my arms grew tired and sore and my hands bled and hardened like claws upon the paddles. By day I slept curled up in the shade beneath the seat. The song drew me on, further out onto the vast ocean desert and I knew there was no hope of ever finding my own way back. Yet I did not stop.

  On the fourth day, I drank the last of my water. By the morning of the sixth, my potato pail was empty. My body was weak. I grew delirious. I had no more to give.

  'Twas long after sunset and I lay in the bottom of the boat listening to the song of the whale. It seemed both close and far away, and as I set my eyes upon the stars I wondered if what I heard might not be a beast of the deep after all, but the horn of some angel calling down its final reckoning. Had I sent my father chasing after ghosts? Had I done the same?

  The song ended, yet I was too tired and weak to do anything but lie there in the middle of the dead calm sea and stare out into the darkness. Gazing upon the heavens, I finally began to understand the immensity of the word which he had taught me, the word which told the story of all the animals disappearing. As each star gave way to the approaching dawn and left an emptiness in its place, I could finally conceive what 'twas like for the hunters of his clan to lose them all, and the numbers which had once been too big as the ones my father tried to teach me finally settled into my mind as real things.

  Eventually, only two stars remained, one brighter than the next, both refusing to be defeated. They fought to shine against the waxing day, but in the end their dying was inevitable, and the dimmer one flickered out.

  The last one was stubborn. It burned bright for a very long time. 'Twas still visible in the near fullness of morn when I became aware of the boat rocking gently beneath me, which was such a strange and unexpected sensation that I sat up too fast and nearly cast myself over the side. There came a sudden gasp of a breath, though not from my own throat, and I was showered with water.

  Beside the boat was a great dark shadow, as long and wide as my vessel. Only a small part was visible to me, the rest hidden below the glistening surface. To my eyes it appeared like a boat overturned, the keel worn down smooth as the stones on my beach. As I stared in disbelief, a hole opened up in the very middle of it and sent a thin spray of mist into the air. A heartbeat later, the beast was gone, sunk down again into the depths below.

  I had been shocked by its presence and its size and found myself kneeling in the boat, leaning dangerously far to one side. The boat tipped, and water splashed in from the disturbance of the animal's s
udden departure. The fingers of my left hand gripped the edge while t'others wrapped around one of my father's hunting sticks, and I was shocked to see that I had been holding it. I sat back down to catch my breath and calm my shaking limbs, but my eyes could not stop searching for the back of the beast to break the surface again.

  A long time passed, until finally the forgotten stick fell from my hand and clattered to the bottom of the boat. 'Twas the only sound in the still air, for even the waves had fallen to ripples, and the ripples gone away, and the sea returned to its placid self.

  I didn't know what to do, so I waited, convinced that I had caused the last beast of the earth to die simply by gazing upon it, and a deep sadness washed over me. But then a furious commotion of bubbles broke the surface many boat lengths away, forming the shape of a circle. Out of the center of it rose in a sudden rush the head of the leviathan with its mouth held open. And if the last water I had had to drink wasn't already many days before, I would have made my own water in the boat, so astonished was I.

  I saw in the whiteness of the spray the many silvery shapes of the fish twitching with life. The jaws of the great animal closed over them, but many more escaped than were swallowed. Then it sunk away again.

  He was wrong! I shouted, jumping to my feet and nearly upending myself and the boat. My laughter carried across the water. Father was wrong! The world is not dead!

  I watched the great beast hunt all the rest of that day till the sun began to sink away. And 'twas as if the whale's feeding slaked my own needs, for I felt neither hunger nor thirst.

  But then the sea swallowed the sun and the whale went off to sleep. As the darkness and silence wrapped itself around me, there came no stars to keep me warm. A mist formed and brought with it a terrible, damp chill. That night I did not hear the song, though I waited, and by morning I was shivering badly with ague and was sick with hunger and thirst.

  I don't know how long I lay there in the bottom of the boat, but the sun was full up again when there fell upon me a shadow in the figure of a person.

  Father? I asked.

  But 'twas not him that spoke to me, though 'twas a familiar voice. And I was sure that the angel had finally come for me.

  Listening to its song, I shut my eyes and fell to sleep.

  * * *

  The girl lifted the nearly-weightless boy from her boat and carried him to the shore. "Such a small child," she whispered, then laid him gently upon the sand. His arms and legs were horribly skinny, bearing almost no flesh upon the bones. "Half starved to death. What were you doing hunting out there all alone?"

  The wood from his boat she gathered into a pile, and in it she placed an ember from her clay pot. The fire would burn hot and fast from the oil it had soaked up from the sea, and the heat would stave away the chill of the night.

  He had told her that he had no name, for his father had believed that the world was dead and had no use for such contrivances.

  "But the world isn't dead, is it?" she challenged him. "And names do have meaning long after everyone else has forgotten them."

  Then, as she sharpened her hunting knife upon the whetting stone, Annabeth sang again the lullaby her long-lost mother had sung to her each night upon returning from the hunt.

  The world would end soon enough, but first she would have her dinner.

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  A Word about Leviathan

  In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reported that the levels of over 10,000 representative animal species — indicators of environmental health — had declined by more than 50 percent since 1970 [link]. In just that forty year span, we lost half of the world's animal biomass. Based on these trends, we can expect to see a further halving by the middle of the current century. And it's not just overall numbers of individuals that are dropping, but species diversity as well. This is beyond alarming. It is, in fact, a doomsday scenario.

  While the debate about the human impact on climate change wages on, scientists are nearly unanimous in their agreement that human activity is directly responsible for the extinction of hundreds of animal and plant species and have indirectly caused the disappearance of possibly thousands more in what is now being described as a Sixth Global Extinction. The event is so significant in the natural history of our planet that a new geologic age has been proposed to acknowledge humanity's impact on the globe— the Anthropocene. We stand at the beginning of that era looking into an uncertain future. What will it look like?

  Will it be a world entirely devoid of all animal life?

  Leviathan is a work of speculative fiction; it takes the current trajectory of our planet to its absurd extreme. While I personally believe that total global extinction is an exceedingly unlikely scenario, at least as the direct consequence of our recklessness, the threat to our own species is far more real. Why? Because many of the plant and animals species we depend upon for food, medicine, and other uses are at terrible risk.

  The earth will adapt to the changes we are causing it, of that I have no doubt. Given enough time, physical and biological systems will find a new equilibrium. As a biological scientist, I have faith that life, in some form, will find ways to occupy it.

  But will humanity?

  Reflecting the uncertain nature of our own future, the ending to Leviathan was intentionally left open to multiple interpretations, ranging from the horrific to the hopeful. I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to decide which one you prefer to imagine.

  * * *

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  THE LAST ZOOKEEPER

  A cyberpunk story

  EXCERPT

  The boy pressed his forehead against the paint-chipped railing and stared at the old man as he hobbled along the walkway. He moved with extreme care, the old man, avoiding the cracks in the uneven cement. Occasionally, one of them would catch his toe, and he would stumble, let out a pained grunt, then recover and continue on. The dented metal feed bucket in his right fist swung with ponderous intent, banging infuriatingly against the tender side of his knee. Yet he bore these insults without expression.

  The bones in his hand, the gnarled knuckles, ropy tendons and veins, stood out from the effort of carrying the heavy weight. The tissue-thin skin was mottled with liver spots and inhabited by the ghosts of forgotten injuries, wounds whose secret stories the boy would never know.

  He wondered, the boy, what it would feel like to hold that hand in his own, to touch the baggy covering and feel it slide over the brittle bones beneath his fingers. The time-withered muscle. The cables of sinew within their loose translucent sheath.

  His eyes slipped to the side, to his own small hand tucked carelessly inside his father’s larger one. Both were puffy with flesh, the skin devoid of blemishes. Beneath the surfaces, bright red serum circulated, delivering its rich nourishment with exquisite precision and dependability. Unlike the old man’s, their palms were dry and cool despite the heat and humidity of the day.

  The zookeeper paused just outside the doorway to the cage and jangled the ring on his belt, repeating the movement until the shy animal inside showed itself— not fully, but rather the wisp of a shape, a lighter shadow that suggested the presence of some hulking wild beast. There, the boy detected the hint of a nose, could sense the flaring of the dark nostrils as it became of aware his own scent. The gray cataract-filled eyes glistened as they peered almost intelligently through the bars, briefly catching the sunlight.

  The key made a scraping s
ound as it entered the lock and turned. The ancient tumblers slipped and rattled and clanged before they found and settled into their niches. The latch snapped as it sprung free, the sound cracking the brittle moment. Another grunt came from the man’s throat as he leaned back and tugged the bulky door open. Tendons strained to the surface of his neck. Joints, both metallic and osseous, moaned in synchrony. The boy had witnessed the same wordless dialogue each and every day for the past three years; he knew it all by heart.

  The animal stuck its snout further out of the darkness and sniffed silently at the searing afternoon air, but still it did not emerge. It never did at this point, not as far as the boy had ever observed. It would, he knew, eventually, but never just after the door had been pulled open. It would take more prompting to draw the creature out.

  The acrid tang of the lab-grown meat stung the boy’s nose; the flesh beginning to spoil the moment the keeper removed it from its sterile bath. Outside, it attracted swarms of flies. The boy could see and hear them buzzing with senseless voracity, hovering about the bloodied rim of the pail. If he squinted just so, the swirling mass grew fuzzy. The man’s hand became an amorphous claw, a dull grayish-brown clump of animated clay, a tangled bundle of rotten-looking twine.

  Some of the flies had strayed over to the railing, and he waved them away from his eyes. Even with all the technological advances brought forth in the past decades, none had succeeded in eradicating the useless pests. The strongest minds augmented by the best artificial intelligence could not conceive of a solution to the problem.

  Some species follow no mathematical formula, his father commented. They obey no logical constraints.

  Most did, the boy had been taught. Humans, for example, were very mathematical in their behavior. Although, as he had come to learn, there were exceptions. Some individuals simply defy being reduced to concrete principles.