Not yet. “I’m afraid for what will happen to the octopuses. Once there is more attention to this place. Even DIANIMA, I think, will not be able to keep the world away from a discovery like this. And then what? We—and I mean humans, all of us—won’t leave them alone. We’ll keep poking at them, prodding. Trying to make contact is one thing, but we won’t leave it there. We’ll have to know more. What happens to them when the world comes flooding in? Film crews, scientists, journalists, governments with renewed territorial claims? Where do they end up? I keep searching for a solution…”

“But you can’t find a happy ending.”

“I can’t. I can’t find anything but misery.”

“Sometimes, in archaeology, they discover something they can’t protect. They mark the site and rebury it in the earth, to wait for a day when they will have the proper funding, equipment, and techniques to excavate and protect the site properly. It’s called backfilling. Of course, they usually have to fight to do it. The local authorities want the site for tourism, other universities and archaeologists want it for study. Everybody wants to move too soon. And everybody overestimates their abilities to protect the site, to respect the science.”

“Of course they do. It’s so easy to justify our own actions. We’re masters at it.”

“We’re built to do it. It’s in our genetics. We can justify any action we take.”

“Backfilling … It would be a solution, if only such a thing were possible here. But it isn’t.”

“The question is, what does DIANIMA want? Why are they there in the first place?”

“And the only answer I have is, ‘I don’t know.’ I got into this not knowing what they wanted to do. Why they are here. I didn’t care, Kamran. I wanted to make a discovery. To make contact. To communicate with them. But I was selfish. I didn’t think of the consequences. For them. I didn’t think of what happens to them when we come rushing in, with justifications that are purpose-built for anything we want to do.”

“Your intentions have always been good.”

“No. My intentions have always been narrowed down to what I wanted. I wanted to be the first. And now I’m getting what I wanted. We have a kind of contact—but what will be the cost?”

“There must be a way to find out.”

“I’m not so sure. I have no access to Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan. I’ve never even spoken to her. I don’t know anything about what she wants. And none of that mattered to me, in the beginning. So now I am trapped.”

“No,” Kamran said. “You aren’t trapped. There are always options.”