💙🤍💙🤍💙💙🤍💙ENGLISH💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍

II - "Prime Time Beneath the Waves"

It had been months since the Neptune-X had slipped away from the steel silhouettes guarding the Mariana Trench. The ocean had closed over their wake like it was erasing a secret.

Helena hadn’t planned on becoming a spokesperson for extraterrestrial life. She preferred the hum of sonar to the murmur of an audience. But Scorti had been relentless. And now, sitting in a Paris TV studio under heat-lamp lights, Helena felt like a jellyfish stranded in a tidepool, shimmering, exposed, and out of place.

Across from them, the show’s host, Alain Duval, grinned like a cat who’d just been handed two particularly exotic canaries. His hair was too perfect to be natural, his suit shimmered like wet asphalt, and his enthusiasm had a kind of manic gravity.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced to the camera, “tonight, live, we bring you a story that may change the way we see our planet… and our place in the cosmos. From the depths of the Mariana Trench, two explorers who claim to have met, ” he leaned forward dramatically, “, our new neighbors.”

Scorti leaned into her mic, eyes smoldering in that way that made entire rooms focus. “Not neighbors exactly. More… ancient tenants. Been here longer than we have.”

Helena tugged at the cuff of her traditional Nordic blouse, wishing she could hide inside it. “About a thousand years longer,” she murmured.

Alain’s eyebrows shot up. “A thousand years? And you’re telling me… these beings have been right under our fins, sorry, feet, the whole time?”

“Yes,” Scorti said smoothly. “Buried deep. Observing. Learning.”

Helena glanced at her, grateful she’d taken the conversational helm.

“They copy us,” Scorti continued. “They mimic behaviors. The problem is… they’ve been watching for centuries, including the last two hundred years, industrial revolution, ocean exploitation, ”

Alain’s smile faltered. “You mean…?”

“They saw us dredge, drill, strip-mine,” Helena said quietly. “So they thought that’s what intelligent life does. They started… building. But their ‘construction’ destroys coral. They didn’t understand the damage.”

“Like children imitating their parents,” Scorti added, “assuming the parents always know best.”

Alain tilted his head. “Irony’s a cruel thing.”

“They’re not malicious,” Helena said quickly. “We’ve seen how they work. They use something we call the Eye, a living archive. It doesn’t think about politics or profit. It learns for survival, for balance. Once we showed them coral restoration, they… adapted.”

Alain perked up again. “You… taught them?”

Scorti nodded. “Taught, showed, demonstrated. The Eye absorbed the process. And now they plant coral. Whole gardens. You’ll see it in the film.”

“That’s, pardon me, adorable,” Alain said, smiling for the camera. “Alien gardeners at the bottom of the world.”

“They’re better at it than we are,” Helena muttered.

A ripple of laughter went through the audience. Alain leaned in. “So they’re not a threat?”

“No,” Scorti said firmly. “They could even help us. If we stop teaching them the wrong lessons.”

Alain tapped his cards against the desk. “And this documentary… it shows them? These… Builders?”

Helena hesitated. “Yes. Briefly. Enough to understand their intent, their communication style.”

Scorti smirked. “And enough to make you want a submersible for Christmas.”

Alain grinned. “You’ve been talking to my producer. Well, no more teasing. Let’s roll it.”

The lights dimmed. On the giant screen behind them, the ocean bloomed in impossible blues. A slow descent. Ruins like cathedrals carved from bone-white coral. Glimpses of smooth, alien silhouettes tending to glowing structures. The Eye itself, a great sphere of pulsing threads, like neurons lit by bioluminescent fire. Then: hands, human and alien, planting coral together in a swirl of silt and light.

In the darkened studio, there was no cough, no shuffle. Only the low hum of the ocean’s voice through the speakers.

When the lights came back, Alain sat very still, his usual theatrics softened. “I don’t know what’s more shocking,” he said slowly. “That they’re down there… or that they’re trying to be like us.”

“Then we’d better be worth imitating,” Helena said, almost to herself.

Scorti glanced sideways at her and smiled.

Somewhere, far below the Pacific, the Eye waited, still learning.

💙🤍💙🤍💙💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍

In the dark cathedral of the deep,

A thousand eyes remember light.

They echo the works of mortal hands,

And dream in currents older than time.

Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the depths no man dared to dream… give a roaring welcome to… Helena and Scorti!

They rose from the reef with silver eyes,

Mimicking our hands, our restless skies.

Two centuries of steel and smoke,

They built as we broke,

Believing we always cared.

They planted coral in the cracks,

Gentle hands where the ocean lacks.

They learned the tide, they learned restraint,

And painted the reef in bloom.

And now, the surface must hear…

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

We hear the deep reply,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

It carves our names in tides,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

The current learns our song,

And carries hope through storms,

Until the dark is gone.

So… not a threat, you say? Just… learning from us? My, my… what could possibly go wrong?

We’ll guard their dreams from steel and greed,

Teach the tide what the shore must heed.

The Eye will wait through shadowed years,

It learns our hopes,

And forgets our fears.

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

It turns the night to flame,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

No shadow stays the same,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

The reefs will bloom again,

And steel will turn to sand,

In hands that understand.

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

The tide will guard the flame,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

We’ll never speak the same,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

The stars will learn our song,

And carry it through time,

Where sea and sky belong.

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

We will answer in kind,

When the Abyss Speaks Back,

It will always remember the light.

And the ocean listened still…

Until we learned to listen back.