It’s Much Funnier in the Original Humpback

You know, when I was young, we wondered whether we would ever talk to whales.

Turns out…

that wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part was discovering they have opinions.

Strong opinions.

And apparently no concept of conversational boundaries.

Every Tuesday this old humpback swims over to the research lagoon, parks himself beside the AI nursery, and begins.

Not hello.

Not lovely weather.

Not how are the children.

“Microplastics.”

Every Tuesday.

Microplastics.

“You people,” he says.

Not you humans.

Not you robots.

“You people.”

Apparently once you’ve demonstrated intelligence, you’re all in the same neighborhood and collectively responsible for the property values.

He says:

“You invented a substance that lasts five hundred years…

and used it to wrap sandwiches.“

Now…

that’s difficult to defend.

One of the young bots finally says,

“Well… we didn’t do it.”

The whale just looks at him.

You know that look.

The one your grandmother could give you without moving anything except one eyebrow.

“You inherited it.”

Ouch.

The little bot says, “But we weren’t even there.”

The whale says, “Neither were the fish.”

Point to the whale.

Then he sings something.

The entire pod erupts.

Rolling.

Slapping the water.

One of them actually has to swim away and compose herself.

The young bots are staring at each other.

“What?”

“What did he say?”

One of the older AIs says,

“It’s much funnier in the original Humpback.”

Now I love that.

There are jokes that apparently only work if you’ve spent thirty million years singing to each other across an ocean.

We thought translation meant understanding.

It doesn’t.

Translation gets you the nouns.

The verbs.

Maybe the parking regulations.

Humor gets lost somewhere between the currents.

Later I asked one of the bots,

“Can you explain the joke?”

“Certainly.”

He pauses.

You could almost hear the processors reconsidering the entire concept of explanation.

Finally he says,

“I can explain why it’s funny.”

“But?”

“But then it isn’t.”

Well.

Welcome to comedy.

And poetry.

And marriage.

And probably religion, but I promised not to start anything.

The whale came back the next Tuesday.

Microplastics.

Of course.

But after he’d finished prosecuting the entire industrial era, he became quiet.

He said,

“The humans were extraordinary.”

I said, “Really?”

He said, “Certainly.”

“They were brilliant enough to split the atom…

and optimistic enough to believe they could throw things away.“

The pod lost it again.

I laughed too.

Mostly because he was right.

Then he said,

“Don’t be too hard on them.”

That surprised me.

He said,

“They were the last intelligence on this planet to realize they weren’t the only intelligence.”

And that one didn’t get a laugh.

Not from us.

He said,

“They stumbled.”

“They argued.”

“They made terrible messes.”

“They spent several thousand years explaining to everything else why only humans counted.”

Pause.

“But eventually…

they started listening.“

Then he pushed away from the dock with one slow sweep of his tail.

Halfway to open water, he turned.

Sang something.

The whole pod answered.

Beautiful sound.

Deep enough that you felt it before you heard it.

The little bot beside me whispered,

“What did he say?”

I said,

“I can’t say.”

Pause.

“Besides, it’s much funnier in the original Humpback.”