Variegated, I

By Jason P. Burnham

The first time Jupiter sent me a message, I called it a “fluctuation in the anticyclonic nature of the Great Red Spot.” My dissertation committee doesn’t care for my explanation and Dr. Jamison threatened to hold me back for a seventh year.

“Karina, if you invoke sentience to explain the Jupiter anomalies one more time, you’ll be retaking Intro to Astronomy with the Yale freshmen,” Dr. Jamison had said.

I decided to take discovery into my own hands. Unfortunately, the online course “Aliens Exist: What You Need to Know About Government Cover-ups” had a questionable website.

I’m trying Intro to Evolution, which had evolution of sentience on the syllabus. I listen peripherally to pre-recorded lectures while working on my dissertation.

“The lizard hindbrain functioned as little more than a reactionary system. Much like bacteria before them that were only moving down a gradient toward nutrients, the great lizards, the dinosaurs, were no different. Some enormous, but nonetheless, creatures moving down a gradient toward nutrients. There was no higher thought.”

I’ve long finished the velocity calculations, but writing up what I did and making conclusions about it is something my lizard hindbrain can’t handle through the looming fog of dissertation despair.

“Cognition and awareness of the self have evolved independently on multiple branches of the tree of life. These branches include cetaceans, apes, and perhaps most peculiarly, the cephalopods, including octopus, cuttlefish, and squid. Being invertebrate, there are few fossils to tell us why these traits may have developed, what pressures cephalopods may have faced, or the intermediary steps that got them to where they are today.”

A tangent unrelated to sentience follows. I stare at my blank results section. What are my results? The border velocities of the Great Red Spot are fluctuating and the Spot is shrinking, but we already knew that.

My phone chimes.

Hey honey, how’s it going? Did you go out on another date with that boy?

My dad, bless his heart. No, he was a jerk. Just working on my dissertation.

Oh great! Show that awful Jamison you’re right. And forget about the boy. What about that one girl, what was her name?

My pathetic love and social life. Nobody really understands the life of a grad student except other grad students, and we’re all too busy to see each other, or as in the case of Jeremy, are jerks, and in the case of Christine, just aren’t that into me. Hoping Jamison doesn’t try to block my dissertation approval at committee. As for Christine, we just weren’t compatible.

Okay, love you sweetie.

The lecture recording continues.

“Studies have had limited success in defining the extent of cephalopod intelligence, but we know they’re smart. They’re the only non-vertebrates legally required to have anesthesia for surgical procedures. This begs the question of whether we should be doing surgery on them or other species in the first place.”

I start typing. The interface velocities of the Great Red Spot demonstrate...

“...unable to fully decipher the meanings behind the complex color patterns of cephalopods. While certain signals are discernible, we’ve barely scratched the surface of their language, if one can call it that. With the wide variety of colors...”

Our measurements exemplify the instability timescales of Kelvin-Helmholtz...

I turn off the recording to focus on my visible light images— my Jupiter pictures. The Spot is beautiful, especially the occasional variegated flashes. I only remember capturing one during my observing periods. Where is that image...

Half an hour later, I’m deep in a rabbit hole, scouring old photographs of Jupiter. The image quality didn’t used to be as good and they didn’t take as many pictures as I can now, but I find one from Voyager 1 during its 1979 trip. As a necessary side hobby for dissertation writing, I’ve picked up some photo editing skills. I colorize and resize the Voyager 1 picture most similar to mine and compare the two.

The flash pattern looks remarkably similar. Has anyone ever noticed this? But who, Jamison? He barely tolerates me enough to read my drafts, much less pay attention to my “extraneous” Jupiter photos. “It’s about the data, not the pictures,” he says. It might be about the photos.

I measure and find the Spot has significantly decreased in size since Voyager 1, but it's decreasing too rapidly. And what is this color flare pattern? I don’t remember anyone talking about it.

My phone chimes, Dad again. Hey sweetie, can I come up for a visit this weekend? I’ll stay at a hotel, but I want to come clean your apartment for you and cook you some tacos.

Thanks. I could go for some tacos. I’m figuring out something cool about Jupiter. Details this weekend.

Can’t wait! He’s so sweet. Bored, but sweet.

I pull up photos from Voyager 1, some from Juno’s flyover in 2017, and my early shots. I don’t find any color-flash photos on my superficial look through the Juno pictures. But there is a significant size discrepancy in the pre- and post-color-flash photos from my data and from Voyager 1...

My phone chimes. Not now Dad, I’m Doing Science.

Wanna meet up?

Ugh, Jeremy. No, please stop texting me.

I silence my phone, ignoring a text message buzz, and check interface velocities, the speed of matter where the Great Red Spot meets the rest of Jupiter— the velocities rapidly change after the color-flash.

What did the lecturer say earlier? With trembling fingers, I scroll the progress bar on the recording to the slide with the cute, numbered octopus graphic. Each octopus graphic has a number, zero through nine rendered in various pointillated colors.

“...certain cephalopod patterns indicate aggression, others playfulness, but one of the most surprising discoveries was that some sequences helped octopuses count.”

“It’s a countdown,” I whisper to my empty apartment. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is counting down to...To what?

Dr. Jamison is going to hate this. Dad’s going to love it.

I was right on both counts. Dad told me he was bringing a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Jamison, on the other hand, hates it.

“I’m tired of your sentience misattribution,” he says. I’m surprised he’s still willing to discuss it. Maybe he can tell how excited I am, for once— this is the strongest evidence I’ve had, way stronger than a feeling.

“Visual spectrum data isn’t your thesis,” he continues. “Why waste your time?”

He hasn’t actually looked at the figures, hasn’t seen the uncanny similarities. It would be hard for even him to ignore. I try to telepathically influence him into looking down, but he’s staring at his anger spot above my head, the one he stares at when I’ve disappointed him.

“Size data is part of the thesis. Kelvin-Helmholtz instability has direct implications for the size of the Spot and now,” I say, gesturing desperately at the pictures, “we have proof of it.”

He picks up the paper and gives it a perfunctory glance before putting it down again. With a big sigh, he gazes at me with dark eyes over dark glasses, balding, pink, shiny head atop a wrinkled old man body, the portrait of an academic curmudgeon. “Yes, I suppose I see the correlation.”

My heart leaps and blushes out across my face. Before I can say anything, Dr. Jamison continues. “But you have perfectly good data to refute sentience.”

Did he just say perfect data? There must be a but coming.

“And,” close enough, “think of Enrico Fermi.”

I roll my eyes— Enrico Fermi pontificated on the discrepancy between the statistical likelihood that extraterrestrials exist, yet that none have contacted us. “He didn’t really say there was no extraterrestrial life, he just wondered why if it exists that it has not contacted us.”

Dr. Jamison’s gray moustache curls into his mouth at one corner, where he chews it. This is his, I’m pissed, but holding my tongue tell. He has frequently made his feelings known about the absence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe. He probably thinks he’s one of the smartest people on the planet and can’t stand that there might be something in the space-time continuum smarter.

“If there were extant intelligent life, they would have contacted us,” he says with a sneer.

I’m tired of it. “Maybe we don’t know how to listen.” Kind of like you don’t know how to listen to me.

He glares at me over his glasses. “Your failure to take science seriously is precisely why you haven’t completed your dissertation. I expect your results section on Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability Timescales by next Friday. You should get to work,” he says, turning to his computer.

I stand to leave and zip my backpack as loudly as I can. Two angry strides out of his office, he calls again. “I’m out until the Wednesday after, but your write-up should be under my door by 5 P.M. Friday.”

Vacation for him, work for me. Typical. “Central or coordinated universal time?”

“Coordinated universal time. As always.”

I hurry away before he can move the time up. UTC is five hours ahead of eastern. Maybe I can convince Dad to come down early so I can be elbow deep in tacos after I turn it in.

“If there were extant intelligent life, they would have contacted us,” he says with a sneer.

I’m tired of it. “Maybe we don’t know how to listen.” Kind of like you don’t know how to listen to me.

He glares at me over his glasses. “Your failure to take science seriously is precisely why you haven’t completed your dissertation.

I tried to calm myself by imagining corn tortillas with rice, beans, and cilantro smothered in hot sauce vivifying and popping cartoony anxiety clouds above my head, but the thought of orange hot sauce reminded me too much of Jupiter.

I went to the telescope. Tiyanna is two years behind me, also a mentee of Dr. Jamison’s and she had scheduled observing time tonight. When I told her about my deadline, she gave up her slot.

I anxiously readjust parameters and point the telescope at Jupiter. The Great Red Spot makes a complete revolution every six days and although there isn’t a “spot” on it, for lack of a better word, to show where one cycle ends and the next begins, the incidents in question occur at intervals that are multiples of six. Tonight is the end of another six-day cycle.

I watch the skies through the ozone layer, through the gaseous outer layers of Jupiter where my velocity calculations live, my extraplanetary barrier to completing my doctorate. The piece of paper I can hang on my wall, the extra letters I can add to my name. Letters Jamison still won’t respect.

I perceive a flash of light, but see nothing in the telescope. Maybe it was a cosmic ray, activating synapses of light perception where there was none. Or perhaps I missed something on Jupiter because I was so distracted by what others want from me on Earth.

I’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the computer to process all the images.

“What are you looking at?”

I nearly fall out of my swiveling desk chair when Tiyanna says this. “Sweet merciful crap, Tiyanna!”

She ignores my surprise. “What are those patterns in the Great Red Spot?”

I grab a chair and her shoulder in one motion, pulling her into it. “Can you keep a secret?” I whisper.

Taken aback, she scoots away and sizes me up. “What are you talking about?”

It’s not just Dr. Jamison that isn’t ready to hear this. “Never mind. Sorry,” I mumble.

The chair scrapes as she leaves, her footsteps retreating. Nobody is ready to hear this— Jupiter is sending us messages. And I alone know.

I pull out my phone. Dad, I think Jupiter is talking to us.

He doesn’t respond— probably already asleep for the night.

I look back at the images. I have a limited sample size, but there’s more here than a countdown. Are they talking to us? How long have they been waiting for a response?

I’ll scan my compiled Jupiter observations in six-day increments to decipher this message. If a computer algorithm can generate internet memes, it can make sense of these patterns.

After downloading the images, I’ll have to find a neural network program to translate the images into something I can understand. That could take a day or more. Even then, the results may be gibberish.

What to do while I wait?

My phone chimes. That’s so friggin’ cool! You should celebrate by taking that trip out on the Sound you always talk about!

Thanks Dad!!!! So cool. And yeah, I might do that. Wanna come up early Friday? All this science makes me taco hungry.

The wind is nippy for spring and the water’s chop is modest, but I’m pleasantly distracted by the Long Island Sound tour guide pointing out buildings, telling stories.

I’ve lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a view of the Sound for seven years, each spring telling myself I’ll go on a ferry tour and I never have before today. I’m alone, but I’m used to it— it’s taken me so long to finish my dissertation that the people I knew have all left.

The guide’s talk of sea creatures lurking below intrigues me, and I jump out of my seat when there’s a shout from the right side of the boat about something in the water.

Over the loudspeaker, the guide speaks. “Real treat today, folks. If you look starboard, that’s right for those facing me, you’ll see six Atlantic octopus.”

Not twenty meters from where I stand at the railing, are six reddish-orange octopuses.

Someone a few heads down yells. “Those aren’t Atlantic octopuses.”

The loudspeaker crackles. “Say again?”

“Those aren’t Atlantic octopuses,” says the woman.

“Looks like we’ve got another tour guide aboard,” he says, trying to get a chuckle. He gets an eye roll from me.

“I’m a marine biologist,” she says.

“Oh, excellent. What are these, professor?”

The woman hesitates. “The only octopus reliably in this area is Bathypolypus arcticus, but they don’t often surface, are not this big, and don’t travel in groups. Nor do Atlantic octopuses travel in packs, however.”

“Any guesses what they are?” asks the guide.

She pulls up her binoculars. “Can we get closer?”

There’s feedback on the loudspeaker as the tour guide decides what to say. “I-I’m sorry, ma’am, I really don’t think...”

Suddenly, the captain kills the engine.

“Hey, we’re floating right to ‘em!” someone shouts.

Those gathered at the railing applaud as we drift toward the octopuses, unbothered by our presence. The marine biologist gasps and I catch a glimpse of the octopuses interlocking tentacles as they retreat beneath the water.

“What were they?” someone shouts.

The captain brings a portable microphone to the marine biologist, grinning. He must like sea creatures too.

The boat is quiet except for the lap of waves. “I’ve never seen anything like them. Holding tentacles like that is...unheard of.”

The captain takes the microphone, seeing her flummoxed face. “We just discovered the Long Island Sound octopus! And they’re as weird as New Yorkers!”

That gets a few chuckles and the captain goes to the helm and starts the engine. I don’t hear much else of what the tour guide says. I’m too busy thinking about how familiar the octopuses look.

In the lab, the neural network’s output is ready. The first few lines just say “Cycle Report.” I’m not sure if this is neural network jargon or what it translated.

Confirm propellant purpose.

Here we go. January 1979. When Voyager 1 photographed Jupiter.

My hand trembles as I scroll through the output. More “Cycle Report” lines. Maybe they’re translation after all.

Define propellant destination.

Oh my.

My heart races. Some parts are gibberish; others are transcribed as [Unintelligible]. I’m looking for a specific date.

Confirm propellant purpose. June 2016—when Juno arrived in Jupiter’s orbit.

Holy hell. Something on Jupiter is watching us.

A few cycles later. Countdown acceleration will begin to avoid detection.

Whoever it is thought we were watching them. That they would be discovered.

I wish I had someone to share this with. I’ve discovered intelligent life in our solar backyard, but nobody will believe it. Dad! I pull out my phone. He’s probably on a plane somewhere for work, but he’ll get the message when he lands. I have proof of sentient life on Jupiter! Oh my GOD I’m going to eat so many tacos.

Dr. Jamison will cite sentience misattribution again, so I have to know everything in exquisite detail. To face his scrutiny, one must have flawless and absolute knowledge of a doctrinal contradiction. Even then...

I scroll forward to last week’s observations.

Cycle Report, penultimate.

The “cycle” must be the period of the Great Red Spot, based on these timestamps. Wait...penultimate? Do I only have four days before the ultimate “Cycle Report”? Then what?

My face flushes with all the extra blood rushing to it.

I stare at the last image, the one translated as “Cycle Report, penultimate.” The Great Red Spot in all its shrinking glory. Red with variegated streaks, light orange interwoven, almost lacy. Like a good astronomer trying to see a hard-to-visualize star, I look at it out of the corner of my eye.

The shape practically leaps off the screen and smacks me in the face.

An orange and red hexagon, swirling, misty curlicues, interlocking its lacy sides.

I run to Jamison’s office, computer in hand.

Dr. Jamison is the portrait of skepticism.

I’ve breathlessly word-vomited everything I know, everything I’ve discovered, everything. The shrinking Spot, the variegations, the neural network, the patterns, and I’m just arriving to the conclusion.

“Octopuses are extraterrestrials and they are monitoring us from the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which is about to collapse because they think we know they’re here.”

Dr. Jamison’s face changes from skepticism to pity.

“Karina.” He spreads his arms wide. “Your results are due in forty-eight hours.” Did I lose two days? “Purge your mind of this nonsense tonight and start in earnest tomorrow or you’ll be starting your doctorate from scratch.” He clasps his hands together. “Or perhaps not at all.”

Dr. Jamison stands and motions toward his office door to indicate I should leave.

“But I...”

He tsk-tsk’s and lightly escorts me out before I can say anything else.

I stumble through familiar hallways as if in dream, in nightmare, tenuously teetering bricks of my academic career threatening to crash upon my head. I’m suddenly in my car, laptop in the passenger seat, open to an image of Jupiter. Then I’m on my balcony, moon shining above, me staring at the Great Red Spot on my computer.

Something tells me a timer is going to go off. It’s like one of those mornings where I set an alarm, but am too anxious about whatever I’m awakening for, and I wake up long before the alarm is scheduled. Whatever this timer is, it’s coming due and I need to...I don’t know. But my legs are restless.

I’m up, walking. Somewhere.

I’m on a boat. Something presses against my ears and my brain tells me it’s loud music. A familiar face speaks to me, Christine I think, but I ignore her even though I’d love her company any other time because I thought we connected even if she didn’t.

The imminent alarm festers, expands, consumes me, inhabits me. I’m staring over the railing into dark water. The moon is full.

Across rippling waves, a familiar shape— a hexagon, lacy, orange and red in the moonlight.

Six days— the Great Red Spot’s cycle. Something electric surges through me.

The hexagon illuminates, but nobody else notices. The lambent creatures flash, variegations passing through them. A corporeal rumbling from the water shakes me. I open my eyes and the creatures jet, up, out, away.

Tomorrow, when I direct the telescope at Jupiter, the Great Red Spot will be gone.

I didn’t defend my thesis at Yale— my dissertation review was conducted over e-mail and immediately approved. My results were almost too easy to write after that night on the water.

I’m presenting my dissertation for the first time to a live audience here in Washington, D.C. and it will be broadcast around the world in over two-hundred languages. To an audience (that isn’t just my dad, lovely, wonderful, and supportive though he is) that will accept my conclusions as valid.

I hear my introduction from center stage.

“Please welcome the soon-to-be Dr. Karina Andersen.”

I smile, hearing, but not hearing the thunderous applause. “Hello everyone, and thank you for having me today.” I’m looking for two important people, one for their absence and one for their presence. Dr. Jamison— I did invite him, mostly out of spite, but he’s not here. The important person is— Dad. I smile at him, tears in his eyes. “I’m overjoyed to share my dissertation, Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability Timescales in Jupiter’s Atmosphere. Or as I like to call it: How I Discovered that Jupiter was a Base of Operations for Extraterrestrial Octopuses.”

I watch Dad, who laughs, wipes his eyes. I smile at him and continue. He’s heard this story before. “The first time Jupiter sent me a message...”