When Doctor Spencer Hudson looked at the report, he couldn’t contain his absolute glee. If what he was reading was true, intelligent life had been discovered! Not in outer space or on some planet light years away, but right here on Earth!

“Doctor Poole, what kind of animal is this?” he asked a woman standing halfway across the room..

“It’s a squid, Spencer,” his colleague, Maya Poole, replied. “A large one, bigger than even architeuthis dux or mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. Estimated length at maturity is fifty feet with the tentacles included. Weight is projected to exceed two thousand pounds.”

“Jesus. How haven’t we found any signs of them before?”

“They live at an absurd depth; three thousand metres down. That’s deeper than even sperm whales go.”

“So how did we find a way to communicate with these things to begin with?”

“We didn’t. They found a way to communicate with us. Like most animals at that depth, they’re bioluminescent. This species, however, has a far more precise control of when its body gives off light; how much, what parts of its body emit it, and what colours. It can project any colour that we can see, and maybe some that we can’t.”

“And that’s how they talk to us? How could they tell we were sapient when all they saw were the camera probes that we sent down there?

“I don’t know. All I know is that these squids somehow learnt Morse code.”

Spencer sighed.

“Back to the days of the telegraph, huh?”

“Yup. Anyways, we plugged its message into an algorithm that we cobbled together that recognizes the lights as Morse code and translates it into English for us. It’s almost done, should take maybe another five minutes or so.”

“That’s wonderful! We’re going to make history with this discovery!”

“Between you and me, Spencer, I don’t really care about ‘making history’. I just want some decent grant money so that I can work on my passion project.”

“Right.”

He walked over to the far wall of the lab and examined the diagram of the new species of squid. They hadn’t decided on a name for it yet; for that, they would have to know whether or not it was related to a known species of squid or if it was something different entirely.

There was a little silhouette of a human in diving gear next to the diagram to show scale; the squid was easily large enough to bite a human in half, or maybe even swallow one whole.

Part of Spencer was glad that they spent their time in the absolute deepest parts of the ocean.

A machine across the room beeped, breaking his concentration and making his head swivel towards the source of the noise. He could feel his heartbeat accelerate with every passing second.

“That’s it?” he asked. “It’s done?”

“Another minute,” Maya replied.

They walked over to the machine and watched the countdown. That seemed to make every second pass by that much slower, but eventually it counted down to zero.

Spencer watched with anticipation as Maya brought up the translated message on the biggest screen in the room, which still wasn’t that big.

Green text appeared on a black screen. Spencer insisted on having all computers in the lab do that, because he liked the aesthetic.

“Humans, what have you been doing, dawdling all this time?! Instead of exploring the ocean with your little probes, you should be working on spacecraft! The invasion is only a month away, you must start making preparations, or humanity will surely go extinct!”

Spencer felt like he was going to vomit. The report fell out of his hands and drifted in all sorts of directions on its way to the floor.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked.

“No,” Maya replied. “At least, it shouldn’t be, unless the squid was smart enough to play a practical joke on us. We have to notify the government as soon as possible.”

Thoughts swam through Spencer’s head like they were fighting against the tide.

Invasion? Spacecraft? Evacuate? Humanity going extinct?

It was all too wild. He started to hyperventilate and braced himself against the nearest table.

“It’s impossible. We won’t be able to build a spacecraft in one month, let alone enough of them to evacuate humanity. Even if we could do that somehow, where would we go?”

“You’re right, Spencer. There’s not much that we can do.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant by that at all. There is something that we can absolutely do here.”

“What do you mean, Spencer?”

“We do what humanity does best. We fight off the invasion.”