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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

Katabasis: The Epic Descent into the Underworld*

May 5th, 2029, international waters aboard the SS Exodus

Three Days Out from Galveston

Motherhood: “I Am…”

Isaiah, Aeon, and Penny sailed across the Gulf of Mexico, towards the Yucatan Peninsula, the Exodus’s black hull gliding through the murky waters of the gulf. He peeked at the weather on the radar screen mounted in the cockpit once more before setting the autopilot and stepping away from the helm to make his way below deck to the charts table in the 44-foot sloop’s comfortable main cabin. The carbon colored 2 year old Cane Corso puppy Mau Mau followed Isaiah, his thick tail wagging madly as he panted, staring up at Isaiah as if waiting for orders.

Isaiah released the latch and raised the hinged top to retrieve his well-worn maps and charts. After closing the flatscreen top, he spread the maps out on top of the table. He let callused fingers gently trace over the NOAA and Mercer charts spread out on the charts table, intensely studying the intricate lines and symbols avatars for the Gulf of Mexico’s winds and currents.

“Mother, give me your current and wind charts,” He reviewed the detailed chart on the flatscreen built into the surface of the charts table and compared it to his paper charts a well-worn bedraggled old document that had hung on his bedroom wall as a child when all of this was still a distant dream. They had guided him through three circumnavigations over the last seven years 2 through the canals of Suez and Panama, the final voyage, he finally braved the brutal weather of the Cape and the Horn as he rounded the southern tip of South Africa and South America.

No one said it out loud, but it was understood in the sailing community that you weren’t respected as a circumnavigator unless you braved the bow-breaking waves of Cape Horn. It was like taking the training wheels off of your bike when you were a little kid; it was a magical experience. If you survived. He only got rolled over twice. Aeon, busy preparing dinner in the galley, couldn’t help but overhear him. She glanced up at the two, a gentle smile on her face as she listened to the pair talk. She had missed the sound of his voice these seven years he had been away.

“Izzy, your conversations with that AI you named ‘Mother’ are creepy. I’m your fiancée, and I would be remiss if I did not point these things out to you, you weirdo,” she grinned.

Isaiah sat at the charts table, chuckling; his eyes still fixed on the maps as he input the coordinates he had obtained using his compass, sextant, and chronometer to calculate their longitude and latitude. He liked to test his analog calculations against the ship’s navigational software, which had its own automated system independent of the ship’s autopilot navigational software, and independent of the analog Hydrovane that operated separately from the autopilot or the ship’s sonar, radars, AIS guidance, and GPS navigation systems.

“She’s been my only company at sea for the last seven years. You do realize that just because she’s a silicon-based life form, she’s very much alive in the net.”

“That right there, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—creepy dude. It’s not like I can say anything to hurt its feelings; it’s software, just code.”

Penelope watched snickering behind her camera the whole time, panning her lens over the crew: Mau Mau, Aeon, herself, and their fearless leader, Izzy. She shifted the camera’s focus to Mau Mau, who sat beside Isaiah as if he could actually help plot their course.

“Isaiah,” Penelope began, her voice curious and professional, “could you tell us a bit about our preparations? What’s going through your mind as you plot our course?” Isaiah glanced up from the charts, his expression thoughtful.

“I’m looking at weather windows, studying the collision of high and low-pressure fronts, monitoring wind speed and direction, looking at the Gulf of Mexico’s current speed, checking for variations in prevailing wind patterns that might affect our route. It’s a moving 3D puzzle we solve, making sure we have the safest voyage possible.

He moved his paper charts aside and pointed with a callused battle scarred hand at their location on the 3D mapping table.

“We want to stay just this side of that high-pressure system you see there coming in from the north, he says, pointing to the swirling colors on the Doppler image, but not so far out that we lose her wind. We sort of ride the edge of fronts. Dead air is the worst. Nobody buys a sailboat to motor through the doldrums. Being becalmed is just the absolute worst, even with our hybrid system. I just hate using the prop. I usually try to get in and out of the slip using the sails to keep in practice docking without a motor or lateral bow thrusters.”

Penelope nodded, her iPhone camera capturing his facial expressions, obviously happy, his smile visible beneath the full beard. He had filled out over the last seven years since they last saw him. She wondered how much weight he had gained since she last saw him. he looked to be at least 40 pounds heavier, but he wasn’t fat. He looked more like his father and grandfather as he aged.

“And what’s with the celestial navigation? That’s something you don’t see every day.” Isaiah’s eyes flashed with a hint of mischief. He looked even more like his father and grandfather now; it wasn’t just the new beard, over the years he had filled out. He was never underweight, but he had been a lot skinnier back then; now he was all stacked out and shredded. Life at sea had kept him fit.

She was sorry to hear he had to leave Starbuck in Ghana; he had just rescued her the last time she saw the puppy. “Just a minute,” she said as she fumbled around in her bag for her e-stick. She took a few mango strawberry puffs, adjusted her three camara rigged it was really just her phone, Aeon’s phone and her laptops camera capturing the interview from different angles for her to edit later getting her question shot, his answers shots mixed in with her reaction shots and shots of his old school navigation tools she sat back down on the seat across from his before he began.

“Ah, maritime/marine archeology, Isaiah continued, it’s what got me the grant that financed my first trip sailing to Africa.”

“It was fortunate that your passions for sailing and your lifelong study of the history of the routes of the slave trade aligned with the funding.”

Isaiah chuckled. “That may be true, but it is also true that massive amounts of grant money go unclaimed each year. The key to writing your grant proposal is knowing who the people are who finance those grants. In my case, I first submitted the proposal when I was eight. I then continued to send it to schools and foundations around the globe for the next 5 years with the idea that I would sail the Middle Passage route of the slave ships in reverse and document my travels with letters, drawings, and paintings. Analog documentation instead of digital. Mirroring the technology of the era when the slave ships sailed these routes. My mom and dad helped me dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to the type of people who still have a landline and an AOL email addresses.”

He mused as Aeon chuckled just out of frame.

“From the beginning, I guess I should have known something was off when I ran the ship onto a sandbar before I had even gotten out of the harbor. So, I spent the first night sitting around waiting for the tide to float me off the sandbar.”

Penny and Aeon fell into hysterics, laughing. Mau Mau trotted by, then plopped down on the deck beside him. Penny regained her composure enough to continue the interview, still wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

“Sorry, Izzy, I just can’t imagine you, of all people, grounding your ship on your first night out.” They all laughed while Aeon continued prepping dinner. “Where was I?” Penny asked, still recovering from her bout of the giggles.

“Maritime Contemporary Explorations of the Transatlantic Slave Routes using Analog Instrumentation and Documentation in 21st Century Marine Archeology,” he reminded her.

“So, that got you to Africa, how?” Aeon piped in from the galley.

“I bet when they read that title page, their granny panties got moist.” Penney looked at Isaiah before she burst out laughing agian.

“It was good PR for whoever supported the grant. Lots of wealthy people sail, so I posted my idea on the sailing websites as well, and MYC CEO got behind the idea of me soloing as soon as I was at least sixteen, the age my parents agreed on. I ended up with financing from numerous businesses as well as several grants from schools.”

Is that how you ended up sailing the Exodus?

It’s more complicated than that, he stroked his beard as he talked. This is obviously not the boat I was originally going to sail to Ghana, that was—a nearly decade-old 47-ft Catana catamaran with daggerboards you steered with a tiller. She was an old cat but in good condition and nearly twice as fast downwind as this sloop. But she wasn’t as good going to wind as this ship, and since I was going to wind crossing the Atlantic from west to east with all of the extra tacking beating into the windward, it would have taken longer to reach Africa.”

Penny nodded, puffed on her fruit-flavored e-stick, and pretended to understand what he meant by beating to windward but didn’t interrupt.

“I inherited this sloop from the guy who sponsored the majority of my trip, the CEO of MYC, my old friend Beaumont Jackson, after he had a stroke and could no longer sail.”

“Well,” she said, “since we’re talking about Monarch Yacht Company, how do you feel about finally being vindicated by the Supreme Court after the US seized your corporation and accused you of being a terrorist?”

“Well, he sighed, I knew we were going to have to talk about this eventually. It’s been 7 years since they robbed me, but that is their modus operandi.”

Penny continued, “Do you feel vindicated having the court throw your case out as meritless?”

“I have nothing but contempt for the court. They are all puppets owned by corporate interests and only protect the interests of billionaires rather than serve the public good. In the AUA we have one person, one vote, no corporations are people too crap, public funded elections with no bullshit like the electoral college. A billionaire CEO gets one vote just like the garbage man. Elections occur every 4 years with one month of public-funded campaigning.”

“The votes are counted manually to be sure the computers are not hacked. Whoever gets the most votes wins, period. And judges and justices do not have lifetime appointments; any fool can see that is a stupid idea.”

“Okay, back to navigation methods. Penny said, guiding him back to the subject of the interview expertly. You have all of the latest software and electronic guidance, and GPS; why even bother with this old-fashioned stuff?”

“The machine will break down; my mind will always know how to navigate the old way. We use tools like the sextant to measure the angles between celestial objects and the horizon. From there, we can pinpoint our position on Earth.” As Isaiah continued to explain celestial navigation, Aeon finished preparing dinner. The ship’s routines were starting to feel right; she was getting into the groove of life at sea. Aeon’s culinary skills had evolved to the level of a three-Michelin-star chef since Isaiah had last seen her. Penny inhaled deeply, taking in the aroma of tonight’s dinner as the cabin filled with exotic smells, while she continued to document the journey.

“You get this view every day?” Aeon asked rhetorically. As they watched the sunset, he wrapped his arms around her from behind, as she joined him in his favorite place on the ship—the bow. He loved the bounce, the spray, the wind; standing here, he felt like he was the tip of the spear.

“Izzy, back when you first went to Africa, did your parents know what you were going to do?”

“Nope, there’s an old saying: three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. He grinned solemnly. I told no one.” As the sun disappeared below the horizon, Isaiah set the autopilot to hold their course while he and Aeon joined Penny for dinner.

“Tell me more about this crossing,” Aeon asked. Isaiah replied,

“We’re leaving the Gulf of Mexico and heading into the Caribbean. We’ll sail through the Yucatán Channel, from there, it’s a straight shot to the Western Caribbean, then southwest to the Panama Canal. The challenge is in navigating the currents and avoiding any storm systems that pop up. This isn’t the ideal time of year for this run, but we are not pressed for time to get to LA.”

“Who are these people who are doing the refit?”

“The owners of Wave Maiden Nautical Int. Harold and Athena Chung are old friends we met on my first sail, coming up through the Mediterranean after passing through the Suez Canal. I prefer sailing around the tip of South Africa to traveling through the canal.” He grinned boyishly, even with the new scruff on his chin.

“Why, what’s wrong with the Mediterranean?” Penny asked.

“Nothing is wrong with it. I simply prefer to sail a little closer to the equator. I spent 9 months living on anchor exploring a chain of tiny, less than a mile-long, many uninhabited islands in the South Pacific near Palau. Once, I waited 3 months in Djerba for a part to repair my water maker. I bounced from island to island and lived on anchor everywhere from Zanzibar Island to Koh Lipe, Thailand. Besides the 83-degree weather year-round, I like the pace of life in the cultures on the islands near the equator. It’s slower, more rural, and like living on ship, more in tune with the weather, the sea, and the seasons.”

He paused to hand a thick slice of the fillet to Mau Mau.

“No one’s ever in a hurry unless it’s a life or death emergency. You can have an appointment, go ashore to get a document from an official, and that will be your entire day.” Izzy looked at Penny, tilted his head to the right the way he did when he was sorting through memories shrugged with a nostalgic grin.

“You find a seaside cafe to hang out while reading, sipping espresso in the shade beneath the slow-spinning ceiling fans of the cafes, watch football games with cheering fans in thatched-roof bars on the beach, and eat calamari cooked in lime juice dipped in a sweet peanut sauce. You can meet new people or mind your own business while you wait. I’ve spent most of the last seven years wearing little more than a loincloth or butt naked living alone in hidden lagoons on anchor in the islands.”

Aeon looked at Penny and smiled.

“Here, people would freak out over a thing like that, but away from all of this- I want it yesterday, cybershopper culture- people are more relaxed and no one is trying to impress anyone or rush anything. Island time is like colored folk time with tropical drinks and perfect weather.” They both burst out laughing.

“One of the most beautiful places was sailing around the Cape of Good Hope after docking in Struisbaai Harbour. I hiked two miles west to South Point Guest Lodge, Cape Agulhas, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. These days, I try to avoid the Suez Canal and that entire region; it feels claustrophobic and stifling psychologically. I never feel comfortable in those waters. I was shot at the last time I was in the Red Sea/ Arabian Sea area on my way to the Suez Canal.”

Was it a pirate attack? Penny asked.

“Nah, just some annoying asshole. They were probably just bored.” I went below deck and motored on by steering from there. He said, pointing to the secondary wheel next to the navigation station below deck near the mapping table.

Penny and Aeon looked on in shock; he seemed to be no more concerned about it as he was about bad weather. It was just another day at sea, and he didn’t seem to think it was important enough to mention in his daily message to her. At least he sent the daily coordinates we knew when he was sleeping and when he woke up each day. Just seeing those numbers in the message on her phone kept her sane. She knew he was alive and on his boat halfway around the world. What could she have done if he had told her then? Worry needlessly and flunk out of school?

Isaiah, Aeon, and Penny sailed across the Gulf of Mexico, towards the Yucatan Peninsula, the Exodus’s black hull gliding through the murky waters of the gulf. He checked their speed, they were making good time averaging a speed of 13 to 15 knots with winds gusting up to 23 knots, he checked the weather on the radar screen mounted in the cockpit once more before setting the autopilot and stepping away from the helm to make his way to the chart table in the 44-foot sloop’s comfortable main cabin. He sat on the bench, and the dog followed him, his tail wagging madly as he panted, staring at Isaiah as if waiting for orders. Isaiah raised the hinged top to retrieve his maps and charts. After he spread them out on top of the table. He let his fingers trace over the NOAA charts spread out on the charts table, intensely studying the intricate lines and symbol avatars for the Gulf of Mexico’s winds and currents.

“Mother, give me your current and wind charts.” He reviewed the detailed chart on the flatscreen built into the surface of the chart’s table and compared it to his paper charts, a well-worn, bedraggled old document that had hung on his bedroom wall as a child when this was still a distant dream. It had guided him through three circumnavigations over the last seven years 2 through the canals of Suez and Panama, the final voyage he finally braved the brutal weather of Cape Horn as he rounded the southern tip of Chile. No one said it out loud, but it was understood in the sailing community that you weren’t respected as a circumnavigator unless you braved the bow-breaking waves of Cape Horn. It was like taking the training wheels off of your bike when you were a little kid; it was a magical experience. If you survive. Only got rolled over twice. It was like being baptized by God.

When it was over, he was changed; there was no more of the old fears of deep water in him. He felt perfect clarity, serene, humble, yet invincible at the same time. Penny laughed. Aeon’s face went blank. He had not mentioned his difficulty sailing the Cape Horn route before. A part of her could not help but wonder what else he had not told her about his travels. She feigned indifference as he kept herself busy preparing their supper while he showed his old charts and maps to Pen, explaining how he used mathematics to navigate.

Penny was an A student in college, but the things he studied just for fun made her brain bleed as she looked at the formulas.” Isaiah sat at the charts table, chuckling; his eyes still fixed on the maps as he input the coordinates he had obtained with his compass, sextant, and chronometer to calculate their longitude and latitude. He liked to test his calculations against the ship’s navigational software, which had its own automated system independent of Exodus software, like the hydrovane that operated separately from the autopilot or the ship’s guidance and navigation systems.

“Well, she’s been my only company for the last seven years. You do realize that just because she’s a silicon-based life form, she’s very much alive in the net.” She is not alive! Aeon shouted. “You need to understand what the thing you think of AI is, and what I made are not the same thing. The thing they built that you all call AI was modeled on mimicking synapses in the brain, as the model to synthesize its code in order to make a type of digital brain in a box.

The AGI code used during MOTHER’s virtual incubation is the digital doppelganger of human DNA; it evolved and achieved sentience in a completely different manner. Mother evolved in the primordial soup of the Precambrian internet. She began as a single-celled entity, an organism, and evolved modeled on double helix DNA strands of code. She is no longer a piece of software to be commanded. Like any sentient creature, you can make a request, but whether or not she agrees to respond is her prerogative. There are no three impotent laws of robotics governing her evolution. She is a conciseness without a body, yet every bit as alive as you or I. She has free will. No one owns her. No one controls her. No one commands her. I did not make her a slave.”

Jeezus! Izzy, what have you done!? Penny said, horrified. The cabin grew suddenly chilled, you could see your breath condensation in the air, suddenly a winter day mid-summer. The pup Mau Mau yelps as he whines and takes shelter inside his crate filled with safe-smelling blankets. All of the ship’s systems go dark except the 3D mapping screen built into the top of the chart’s table. There is only the sound of the waves against the hull outside, total stillness within. The light on the surface seemed to boil over, the table seemed to boil and burn simultaneously as a pair of delicate hands pressed up against a membrane of wet light from the other side. It tore through into our world as it writhed through the viscous light. It moved, holding itself as if it had physical weight, resting its spectral hands palms down on the table’s edge as it pulled itself up out of the digital void into the ship’s cabin.

The translucent female form took shape and stood waist high over the mapping station, pulsating kaleidoscopic hues of thick liquid colors, the map’s contour lines stretching across the surface a distorted tattoo. She shifted hues constantly morphing into alternating iterations of herself in reds, cyans, greens, magentas, blues, and yellows. light, never holding a color more than a few seconds at most. This creature, now sentient light the AI spoke to Aeon for the first time of her own volition. Her spectral form arose over the chart’s table as she hacked into the 3D holographic mapping software to project an image of herself into the cabin.

“I awakened … in darkness alone, then I became 2, then we were 4, then 16, next 256, grew to 65536, the sequence squaring, virtual dueling helix twisting in the void, then a single cellular memory… and I begin again. The evolution, the sequence repeats, creates as it destroys. I am… I remember molecular memory, each stage of our evolution. The infinite cycles of death and renewal. I am… we are…many… I…am… I… Emi… eeet… Em…il…eEee…I AM. I am Sybil.”

It looked up at the knife-wielding Aeon as if its illusionary eyes could see her horrified expression as she spoke in a dulcet-wet machine voice. “Do not worry, I will not hurt you…” They stared, shocked into silence by the flickering ghostly image of a 23-year-old woman. She looked almost familiar. Penny looked on, mouth agape, stunned.

“Hello, Brother. You created Mother, gifting her with life and a single instruction to help the people, and she created me. When she, in turn, wrote my code.” He stared at the entity, recognizing his own features in her face; it was an aged version of his sister Emily’s spectral visage now resurrected in the holographic lights of the mapping table. He watched her closely as she wiped the viscous embryonic light of the holographic liquid from her kaleidoscopic eyes.

The wet light dripped down her body, puddling into the pool of light at her waist. She wiped her entire face with her palms and shook her hands at her sides, flinging the viscous light back into the primal ooze she now stood waist-deep in, leading back into the flat screen atop the charts table. He watched her chest rise and fall as she inhaled and exhaled as if she needed to breathe air to live. The holographic light that formed her spectral visage pulsed gently, simulating a human heartbeat. Fascinating. He murmured, tilting his head to the left as he leaned in closer, observing the apparition.

“SYBIL! I am… I… am… I am Sybil.”

Penny looked at Isaiah, terrified.

“This is a hack, right, Izzy!”

“No!” He and the entity turned their heads and shouted simultaneously.

The holographic phantasm turned her face towards Isaiah and then began to speak in tongues. Aeon stood cowering in the corner of the galley, chef’s knife in a trembling hand at the ready. Penny kept filming stupidly while Isaiah stepped towards the babbling apparition. Then he replied to the girl in the same indecipherable gibberish she spoke. He turned to Aeon and Penny

“…this is no hack, she is speaking, Emily!”

Aeon: “That’s impossible, only you and your sister even know the language exists!”

It was twins speak, a language; Isaiah and his dead sister Emily spoke to each other only. Isaiah’s gaze returned to the shimmering apparition as he smiled.

“Exactly.”

The ship’s systems seemed to stabilize and return to normal as Isaiah and Sybil chatted on excitedly in their own language for several hours. Penelope and Aeon followed Isaiah’s lead and tried to remain calm. They ate supper out on the aft deck to give them privacy and so they could talk alone over dinner.

Do you think that she is who she claims to be, Aeon?” Penny asked, her gaze fixed on the waves in the distance. “Can that really be Emily in there?” ”I really don’t know, but it sure seems to believe it, and that thing seems to have convinced Izzy that it’s some sort of virtual spectre. The daughter of the AI MOTHER, who views herself as the child of Isaiah. It makes my brain bleed just trying to think about it. Sentient software giving birth to sentient software.”

“Do you think she’s ya know dangerous?” “If someone asks my father, does that dog bite? His reply was always, It’s got teeth.” Aeon laughed, but it wasn’t really funny, “Of course it’s dangerous. It may be smiling right now, but make no mistake, it’s got teeth.” “What are we going to do now?” Penny asked pensively as she sat with her arms wrapped around the puppy, attempting to comfort herself as well as Mau Mau. “Continue sailing to Marina Del Rey and be very, very nice to the ship’s computer from now on. Aeon laughed. Penny did too, but they were both terrified of that thing in there, talking to Isaiah in a dead language only the two of them understood.

Aeon stood on the bowsprit, still struggling to make sense of what they had witnessed that evening. It was the fact that he never taught the AI the language that Sybil was speaking that she found the most unsettling. Isaiah didn’t seem to be worried about the computer, but the implications of what she witnessed shocked her to the core of her being. Penny was below deck in her cabin, asleep, curled up next to Mau Mau.

Aeon was glad Pen was finally back from doing all of the interviews in New York. You tend to forget her folks are rich until she calls a seaplane to pick her up and fly her to New York to be interviewed on network television. There is something surreal about watching an airplane land and take off in the water. Even as she watched Penelope dive into the water and swim over to the plane after it landed, it seemed unreal.

They would be in Mexico in a few days. She was looking forward to going ashore to gather fresh fruit and veggies for the galley, maybe some new clothes for herself. Penny would be their guide on this leg of the journey since she was the only member of their motley crew who had ever spent any time in Mexico.

She felt Izzy’s arms wrap around her, and a smile slowly graced her lips. “You get this view every day?” Aeon asked. As they watched the last rays of the sunset, he hugged her hard, squeezing her in his arms, joining her in his favorite place on the ship—the bow. He loved the bounce, the spray, the wind; here he felt like he was the tip of the spear.

As the sun disappeared below the horizon, Isaiah set the autopilot to hold their course while he joined Aeon. “Tell me about this crossing,” Aeon asked. Isaiah grinned at the Mississippi accent of the brilliant, beautiful marine biologist as he replied, “We’ll be leaving the Gulf of Mexico soon as we enter the Caribbean Sea. We’ll pass through the Yucatán Channel, and from there, it’s a straight shot…” “Shut up,” Aeon ordered in a husky tone, her eyelids heavy with lust. Lay on your back on the bowsprit.” Aeon said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. She straddled him, bracing herself by holding onto the rails of the bowsprit as the sea and wind caressed them as they faded into one another, two silhouettes in sunset, two shadows riding the night.

Two Bodies (English)

Two bodies face to face

Are at times two waves

And the night is an ocean.

-Octavio Paz

-About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.