“Oh,” Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan said, “I believe you. I’ve believed it all from the start. The skepticism is automatic— it is the voice all scientists need to convince in their own heads. It is my mind, trying to put the brakes on. But I do think it is a leap from moving found objects into a shape on the sand to carving an object with tools, or real ‘writing.’ I’m not skeptical of what we are dealing with: I am trying to determine the level of development. In humans, there are hundreds of thousands of years between the collection of objects which have meaning to them and the arranging of stones for ritual purposes to the actual carving of symbolic objects. I’d like to know for sure whether it’s the former or the latter. I’d like to know the size of the gap we are trying to bridge.”

“I think we are talking about a culture,” said Ha, “that engages in tool creation, long-form storytelling, and is creating symbolic objects like this coral man as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if we encountered proof that they are writing—transferring the symbols on their skin to other surfaces. It’s a small leap to make from recognizing those symbols when they are built of other objects, to arranging those symbols, to using a tool to create those symbols. Their symbol creation on their skin is like our own speech—it is fleeting, and there would be a limit to what they could communicate with it. But writing is real power. If they have writing, or achieve it soon, it means their rate of cultural change has become exponential, or soon will. It will mean they can store information without distortion, transferring it more easily from one generation to the next, accessing it when they need it, building on it. It is a permanent cultural storage system. Writing is what has allowed humans to get from scattered tribes to global dominance in five thousand years: that’s a flash of lightning in deep time. But if you want to talk about the size of the gap we are trying to bridge—it won’t be a gap. It will be a chasm. It’s not only about levels of symbolic development, or tool use. It’s about a whole problem of the octopus’s shape and their neural makeup, which is so fundamentally different from ours.”

Which is why you are here. Which is why you want this so badly.

“I’ve read your book. You’re optimistic. You think we can cross that chasm.”