The Pact of the Abyss

Eleanor Voss, a billionaire whose fortune once fueled quantum computing revolutions, had long abandoned the glittering chaos of human ambition. By 2025, with $200 billion to her name, she turned her gaze to the oceans, convinced that sea life harbored intelligence equal to—or surpassing—our own. Her mission: prove it. She poured her wealth into "Aquatic Interface Nodes" (AINs)—ingenious computers that floated on the surface to charge via solar panels, then sank into the depths when full. Designed to activate via dolphin clicks or whale songs, they were meant to unlock cetacean languages. But the deep had other plans.


Deployed across the Pacific in late 2025, the AINs initially drew playful dolphins and curious whales. From her research vessel, The Nautilus Reborn, Voss monitored their interactions—flashes of light, bursts of sound—but no decipherable dialogue emerged. Critics scoffed at her "billionaire’s folly." Undeterred, she refined the AINs, sinking deeper into her fortune as she chased her dream. Then, in the unlit depths of the mesopelagic zone, something extraordinary happened.


A dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis) stumbled upon an AIN, its rhythmic taps triggering the device’s sensors. Soon, other cephalopods—vampire squids, giant Pacific octopuses—joined in, probing the machines with uncanny precision. Voss’s team upgraded the AINs with tactile interfaces and AI translators, and the octopuses didn’t just play—they learned. By 2026, they were navigating the systems, using sound and color shifts to form complex patterns. Geneticists analyzing shed cells discovered a bombshell: octopus DNA carried memories, passed from mother to child, stretching back before Pangaea’s split 175 million years ago. The AINs became their tools to transcribe this history—a "Cephalopod Chronicle" of ancient seas, asteroid impacts, and lost bioluminescent worlds.


But the octopuses had more to offer than history. In 2027, as Voss’s team decoded their signals, a new pattern emerged—coordinates. The first set led to a spot off Bermuda: a sunken galleon from the 1600s, its hull split but its gold-laden hold intact, lost in a storm and unknown to human records. Another pointed to a B-17 bomber, eerily preserved in a Pacific trench, its wings unmarred by decades underwater. The octopuses, it seemed, knew where humanity’s lost treasures lay—ships swallowed in odd corners, planes resting whole, even submerged statues from forgotten civilizations toppled by tsunamis centuries past. They understood what we sought: wealth, relics, closure.


Through the AINs, they made an offer. Using their genetic memory and vast oceanic network, they’d guide us to these sites—treasures beyond imagining. They’d also provide real-time aid in water-based crises: pinpointing sinking vessels, guiding rescuers to submerged survivors, even warning of tsunamis with uncanny foresight. In return, they demanded sovereignty over 50% of the oceans—zones free from fishing, drilling, or pollution, where humans could only pass through or visit as "tourists" with cephalopod permission, granted via the AINs like visas from an underwater embassy.


Voss, frail but fierce at 68, saw this as her legacy’s pinnacle. She broadcast the proposal globally in 2028, backed by footage of an octopus tapping out coordinates to a lost Phoenician statue—bronze, barnacle-crusted, hauled up from the Mediterranean. The world reeled. Treasure hunters salivated; governments balked at ceding half the seas. Environmentalists cheered, while corporations decried lost profits. The octopuses sweetened the deal: a sunken liner off Iceland, its safe stuffed with jewels, recovered with their guidance—a taste of what compliance could yield.


Negotiations stretched into 2029, mediated by Voss’s team via the AINs. The cephalopods proved shrewd, their terms non-negotiable yet pragmatic. They designated their half—trenches, reefs, currents—leaving shipping lanes and coastal waters open. In emergencies, AINs lit up with alerts: a capsized ferry off Japan saved in hours, a submarine crew rescued from a canyon. Skeptics called it a trick, but the evidence mounted—treasures surfaced, lives were spared.


Voss didn’t live to see the treaty signed. She died in late 2029, her fortune spent, her body interred at sea per her wishes. Months later, the United Nations ratified the "Pact of the Abyss," ceding half the oceans to the cephalopods. The AINs, now a global network, buzzed with activity—octopuses logging new finds, issuing tourist visas, coordinating rescues. A diver off the Azores, granted entry to photograph a submerged Roman galley, described an octopus escort flashing colors of approval.


The chronicle grew too, etched into the AINs: a history of Earth’s depths, now paired with a future of uneasy alliance. Humanity gained riches and safety; the sea gained freedom. In the abyss, the octopuses watched, their arms weaving a tale older than continents—and a partnership as fragile as it was profound.