Chapter Three: Why are you here?

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Goethe

Incredulously I shook my head, “There is NO way someone is going to pay the amount of money it would take to mount a serious expedition.”

Ms. Cypher intoned carefully, “Excuse me, what about the TV shows?”

I smiled, “a couple days in the field with hand held cameras does not an expedition make, and they are tantamount to a shot in the dark.”

Her eyes hardened, “Why not?”

“Can you know the entirety of a place from a week long vacation? Depending on the locale climatic or environmental conditions at any particular time may not be favorable for a capture. The critters might be migratory, nomadic or just plain elusive. The guy who shot the only video of a snow leopard for National Geographic waited several weeks to shoot the video at location and several months scouting for a couple shots. We’ve know about the existence of Giant Squid for as long as we plied the seas, but it wasn’t until this century that we actually go video of a live one. Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera, shot video of a live one close to 3000 ft deep! Some of these things may live in places either too remote or difficult to get to. “I said as a matter of fact.

“But Dr. Kubodera DID get the pictures and video did he not?” she metered evenly.

“After looking in the same general area for THREE years!” I volleyed back.

“Who supported Dr. Kubodera?” Cypher asked dryly.

“The National Science Museum of Japan. He’s the lead cephalopod researcher there.” I said.

I continued, “Remember he was looking for an animal that we’ve KNOWN to exist, it’s a small but profound point.”

Ms. Cypher nodded.

She shifted her seated position, long legs crossing at the ankles.

“So,” she started, “What would YOU look for?” a perfect eyebrow arched perfectly.

My eyes squinted, and mouth pursed as I considered her question. A tug at the nose, and my right leg started bouncing up and down with nervous energy as I pondered.

“Money no object?” I asked once again.

“No.” said in a dry voice, pale blue eyes poker flat.

My leg bounced quicker.

“Hmmm, I have three that really, really fascinate me for different reasons” I smirked wryly.

Cypher clasped her long elegant fingers together, put them in her lap, leaned forward, (btw I just noticed that among the rest of her superlatives, she had quite the figure too) and smiled, “What would those be?”

“Lake Iliamna, Lake Champlain, and the GBO” I responded quickly.

“I know Champlain, but what are the other two?” Ms. Cypher quizzed.

“Lake Iliamna is the largest lake in Alaska. It’s located in the South West portion of the state fairly close to the Aleutian Island chain. It’s really huge 75+ miles long and 22 miles wide, over a thousand square miles, bigger than three of the States in the United States. Remote too, you can’t drive there. You can only fly in or boat in. Its Alaska’s deepest lake too over 1000 ft is spots. To make it even more exotic there’s an active volcano there too. There have been many sightings plenty of the credible of the existence of giant fish (20+ft) in there. The name of the lake is a Abthabascan or Tanaina Indian word which translates to “Big Black fish which bites holes in your canoe”.

Gauging the attentive look of Ms. Cypher, I continued.

“The “GBO” is short for the Giant Bermudan Octopus. The locals call it the Lusca. There are many apocryphal stories about this giant octopus take swimmers, and boats. All thought to be poppycock and sea stories inspired by too much Ron, but the local commercial fisherman lose nets and traps and they blame the GBO. The St. Augustine Globster is thought to be the remains of a GBO, although some say it was just a decaying whale.”

It was Ms. Cypher’s time to pause…you could see the cool eyes calculating.

“And you believe in these things?” the last “s” got stretched out a bit, she quizzed.

“Let’s say I’ve been doing the math and the calculations tell me that something adds up.”
I stated.

“Like in your blog. You mention something about “following the food” she recalled.

“Precisely. All three locales have more than enough surplus food to support breeding populations of their purported beasts.” I popped warming up.

“Other Lake Monster’s don’t?” her eyes calculating again but with sparks of interest burning, “Like???” the “ke” got extended too.

“Most notably Loch Ness and Loch Morag, but Lake Tel also.” I stated.

“No Nessie, then?” Ms. Cypher asked.

“Not like depicted by popular lore, it’s probably not a plesiosaur like beast, and certainly not a air breather” I said.

“Why not, Loch Ness is big and deep, and there are fish in it?,” her eyes sparking bright cornflower blue now.

“Not enough fish. It’s simple math really. Fisheries scientists put the fish biomass stocks in Loch Ness at about 30 tons. If we guesstimate Nessie to be the size of a big seal a breeding population of them would eat Loch Ness out of house and home within a couple weeks if Nessie were warm-blooded, and a couple months if Nessie were cold blooded. Additionally if it were an air breather, it would have been spotted by one of the many cameras that watch the Loch 24x7 x365. There have been interesting frames but nothing conclusive.

“Same, same for Morag. Lake Tel is a complete fabrication but the food math thing works out there too.” I stated.

“Following the food is literally how Kubodera-san found the Giant Squid, by the way.” I raised an eye at the fair Ms. Cypher.

“How so? What do you mean?” she asked.

“Architeutis dux, the Giant Squid, is predated on by big odontecete and some large squalus. Kubodera-san followed pods of Physeter macrocephalus to their feeding areas and started his search there. Using both active and passive sonar he got a pretty good idea of how deep the squid were.” I said.

“He picked up the squid on sonar? Macro what?” Ms. Cypher asked with minor disbelief.

“The Sperm Whale, the largest of the odontecete, the toothed whales. No, you can’t pick up squid on human made sonar there’s nothing for the sound waves to bounce off of, besides that their bodies have nearly the same specific gravity of water so our sonar goes right through them. He picked up the Whales on the sonar, and using sonar phones he could tell when they were in hunting mode by the trailing clicks. A couple calculations later and “voila” you know how deep the squid are at that particular moment.”

“Trailing clicks? Particular moment?” She had the look of someone totally out of their element.

“A. dux like many creatures in the deep sea regions are thought to move vertically in the water column with the diurnal cycle. Down during the day, migrating up doing the night. Some creatures rise many hundreds of feet during their daily migrations. Many species of squid perform some form of light cycle migration. So at that particular moment, the Sperm whales were hunting at about 3000 ft deep.

We know for certain that echolocators use sound to navigate and to find food. Cetacean researchers believe that a rapid staccato of sonar clicks is indicative to a hunting pattern. It’s called a trailing click. At the depths that they hunt, light cannot penetrate. So a faster pattern of clicks will provide more feedback as you close with your prey, or so it is believed.”

“Which brings me to why Lake Champlain and “Champ” fascinate me.” I stated.

“Go on.” Ms. Cypher extended her index and middle fingers of her left and rolled it as she spoke.

“Champ is a echolocator. A scientist, Dr. Muggenthaler, in 2003 recorded a unknown echolocator working it’s stuff in Champlain. The scientific community has begrudgingly admitted that “something” is singing in Lake Champlain, but they haven’t proclaimed existence of the creature to date.” My eyes focused on nothing as I relayed the facts from memory.

“Do you think you can prove the existence of the Lake Illiamna creature or of the Lake Champlain creature?” she asked tensely.

“Well there is a very easy solution, but not one that would be particularly popular” I quipped.

“That is?” her “zzzz” sound resonated slightly nasal.

“Drain them both and see what flops around on the bottom would be the easiest way, in the South we’d call it a pond draining. You throw a big fish fry with hushpuppies and beer. We’d probably have to invite all of Eastern NY state and Vermont, but it would be a blast” I was serious, but I doubt she took it that way.

A thin smile from the lovely lips, “drain Lake Champlain…unlikely but certainly effective”

“It would remove all doubts one way or another” I stated plainly.

“Any less lethal and less potentially environmentally irresponsible ways of ascertaining these creatures existence?” Cypher crooned in a slight mocking tone.

“Sure, but it’s expensive.” I grinned at Ms. Cypher

“Patronize me…please” Cypher purred.

“You mike the lake. We put several lines of sonophones along the entire bottom of Lake Champlain. Record the sounds. Sooner or later the echolocator shows up and we start recording patterns of behavior, travel routes, hunting grounds etc. Eventually we go in for a video capture, or DNA sampling. I’d rather not kill it if I can all avoid it.” I put my palms up and tilted my head with the “it’s just the way I am” gesture.

“Would that work?” Cypher snapped back into Nordic Ice Princess…brow scrunched with concentration and visualizations.

“It works in the North Atlantic Ocean” I replied.

“Excuse me? What are you talking about?” Cypher asked incredulous.

“For many years, the US government has had lines of sonophones run across and lining the North Atlantic Ocean listening for Soviet Submarines. The system of lines is called Sosus. Although declassified it’s still in USN control. They pick up all kinds of biologics on it.” I said.

Eyes focused nowhere in particular again as I kept doing the data dump on Ms. Cypher

“In fact it recorded a heretofore unknown, still unidentified biologic that was dubbed “Bloop”.

“Oh I remember that!” she started. Her self-discovery moment was a bit startling; kind of out of the blue she went from Freyja the Ice goddess to Shirley Temple in span of a heart beat. Her eyes shot electric blue with discovery and realization, a slight distant smile appeared brittle and briefly. Ms. Cypher then caught herself looked at me watching her “moment” and refocused. Enter the Ice Goddess again, cue the speed metal.

She collected herself and spoke in the cool measure alto again, “Go on.”

My id’s interest was piqued by my glimpse into the internal workings of Ms. Cypher, I smirked my cheesy, wiseass, Jersey, “I saw you naked” smirk. You can take the boy out of the wild, but you certainly can’t take millions of years of evolution and instinct out of the mook.

“Once you establish contact, catalog patterns of behavior, map travel routes frequency of area use then you can consider a capture or a DNA sampling.” I looked her in the eyes, smirk still attached.

I went on, “as you know from your legal background the phrase, the literal translation of “Habeus corpus” is “You need a body”. The scientific community will not proclaim existence without at least DNA evidence. Humans are a cynical lot.”

“So all the photographs and video mean nothing?” Ms. Cypher’s cool alto measured once more.

“Yes, when compared with value given to DNA evidence, and in today’s world when truly impressive photo and video editing SW can be purchased at Wal-mart or Staples.” I intoned.

“How do you intend on collecting DNA from something that you don’t want to kill, and why don’t you want to kill it are you Vegan?” Cypher shot back in full Freyja mode.

“Vegan?” I laughed, “No I try only to eat things that had a face and knew their mother’s love”

“I don’t want to kill “it” because I don’t necessarily know it’s population density, reproductive rates, its role in the local food pyramid to name a few. I’d like to think it’s an ecologically responsible stance.”

“There are all kinds of ways we can harvest DNA from a subject, many of them non-invasive” I explained.

“Like hair?” Cypher asked.

“Not quite, but not all DNA is created equally. For evidence work there are two types of DNA. Mitochondrial, the not-so-good type, and Nuclear, as in collected from the nucleus. So DNA from Eukaryotic organisms is best when collected from cells that have nuclei. Lots of tissue has mitochondrial DNA; skin, hair, nails etc. but because it lacks nuclei.

With that said if you got the hair follicle then you’d have Nuclear DNA and that would be good. We could do a tissue sampling core, if we “net” one we can draw blood, take oral, throat, vaginal, or anal swiping not to mention the typical metrics like weight, length, you know physical metrics.” My eyes squinted as I tried to squeeze more ideas out of my head.

“Oral swiping?” a blond eyebrow rose.

“Sure, when collecting DNA evidence investigators will often wipe a cotton swab in all or all the orifices to collect various mucus which has cast off tissue cells that will have Nuclear DNA” I said, “I take it you’ve never had criminal cases?”

“No I don’t do criminal Law”, Ms. Cypher replied.

“Biologists around the world collect tissue and mucus samples daily, not to mention all the crime scene investigators. To truly knock this one out of the park, we’d need a body.” I finished.

We both sat in silent contemplation for a moment.

The bearded and bespectacled head of Willie poked his head in the door, “Sir, class is about to end”, with a curt nod he did a about face and left.

“Ms. Cypher, we can continue this after class, or arrange another time”, I rose to go dismiss the class.

She rose gracefully unfurling her full ice goddess height, “When are you available for a longer discussion?”

“I don’t have class tonight? Do you eat sushi?” I asked, “We can go next door to “Ichi-ban Fish and Grill” The Lee’s have outstanding quality fish, besides it’ll give me more time to formulate my thoughts.”

“What time?” she asked.

“Six? Will that work for you?” I responded.

“Six is fine, I’ll meet you here.” Ms. Cypher finished.

“Excellent.” I opened my left hand and gestured to the door, with sinuous grace she strode out, I followed her, watching her walk (Hey, I’m a heterosexual male wired to factory specs OF COURSE I’m going to watch her walk). The scent of sandalwood and magnolia drifted with feminine allure.

So watch I did, and then again so did the class. They all froze in position as they watched us process through the hall. Bodies locked like gate guardsmen, eyes following like video cameras.

I returned to the instructor’s position and nodded to the class. Their eyes all spoke a hundred different conversations with mine. Quiet smirks, concerned stares, and a couple of knowing nods faced me.

Willie to my right barked out a couple commands which the class followed, a deep formal bow and they rose to leave or to change.

A small pool of my closer students wandered up as Willie broached with the obvious questions. “Boss, what was that about?”

“Someone wants to pay me to have their fantasies fulfilled.” I spun on a ball of foot and walked to my office. I smirked; as I heard their jaws hit the floor.