The monk raised his head. Eiko saw, then, the dark array of hexagonal light receptors where eyes should have been in the automonk’s face.

“All beings shall find refuge here,” the automonk said.

“Our ship was sunk. My friend—in the raft. He was killed.”

“No,” the automonk said. “His vital signs are very weak, but they are stable. He lives still. I have already informed the others. Help for him is on its way. Now—come with me. You must be fed and cared for. Your own vital signs are weak as well, and you are not yet out of danger.”

The automonk carried the empty wicker basket up the beach.

Eiko followed.

Acknowledgments

One of the aims of The Mountain in the Sea is to explore the idea of communication with a truly alien species here on earth, one that has developed its own system of symbolic communication. Above all, I wanted to be as honest as I could about the complexities of the problem of communication between species. Being true to that goal meant doing a massive amount of research on the problems of consciousness and communication—so much research that, in the end, I often joked that the book should come with footnotes and a bibliography, to make sure that the scientists and philosophers whose ideas are incorporated here are properly credited. In a work of fiction, that sort of thing would be a distraction, but these acknowledgments at least allow me to repay some of the debt owed.

Without Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think, which the title of Dr. Ha Nguyen’s How Oceans Think is a tribute to, this book would not have been possible. The same is true of the Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. Both of these books were absolutely formative to my working out essential details. Also key was Sy Montgomery’s inspiring The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.

Sebastian Seung’s book Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are has been a source of considerable inspiration, especially in my thoughts about how someone like Evrim might come to be and might function. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs, by Jesper Hoffmeyer, was indispensable in my research, as was Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not Enough!, by Søren Brier. The biosemiotics work of Donald Favareau was key, especially in his capacity as editor of Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary, which gathered in one place a wealth of perspectives on the most difficult of themes. This list only scratches the surface of my debt. There were many other books and scientific articles, far too numerous to list here, that helped me write this text. All accuracy I owe to them; all errors are my own.