Ulysses on the Pacific Ocean

At noon on a late fall day, a Japanese whaling ship sailed from Shimonoseki, a port halfway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, towards Antarctic seas, near that frozen, inhospitable continent. Well-equipped like none other before, it carried refined technological equipment; sonars, radars, drones, infrared guided harpoons, and more.

Orbiting satellites were ready to locate any whale pods and make such massive slaughters even easier. That ship was expected to begin a new era of huge profit increases for the whaling industry, whose capital controllers for decades have been insisting their hunting expeditions were no more than scientific research data gathering missions.

Soon after crossing the Equator, the commander, Ulysses Akira Nakama, had a dream of very vivid images, in which a most sensual woman named Circe, after offering all his crewmembers a lavish feast, gave them a warning about a serious risk, soon to menace that vessel, which would come in the form of a melting, inebriating and irresistible, but quite fatal song from which no man has yet survived.

The commander awoke in fright, with no reason he felt, as he quickly recalled the dream had come from Homer’s Odyssey, the poem about the sea wanderings of that Trojan War hero, whose ship sailed aimlessly for ten years across the Mediterranean, while his faithful wife Penelope tried to distract her countless suitors with endless pretexts.

This Japanese Ulysses hadn’t any special interest in ancient Greece’s literature, his little acquaintance with the Homeric epic coming from having a very rare name in his country, which often led people to question him about it.

His mother had chosen him that name after watching a movie on the Odyssey, which moved her so much specially for Penelope’s lot, perhaps because her own mother had waited her husband’s return from a World War II Imperial Navy mission, right up until her own death in 1989.

“So, due to mummy’s having chosen me this Western name, I end up having these agitated dreams, in this beautiful, so Japanese ocean, the Pacific, here and now in the beginning of another austral summer!”

Dream and thoughts on his name had to be soon forgotten, when dozens of whales were detected by the radar, all heading for a tiny rock island, whose name was not even on their so accurate maps. Hunter-sailors get very excited when finding so much easy prey, and maybe that explains why, after circling the rocks, those countless cetaceans disappeared from sight, from the radar, sonar, and from the many drones flying over them. Had they had a collective mirage?

Still skeptical about the sudden disappearance, the commander-hunter ordered a maximum speed approach to those rocky cliffs, from where a song seemed to be coming, a delicious melody.

“Oh no, have those crazy Greenpeace people chased us again?” He grumbled, just to add soon “By no means, only female voices may be heard, and what gorgeous girls!”

“Dear commander Ulysses Nakama, I must say at a more attentive look, it seems these are not exactly women!”--Captain Hsiao pointed out to him.

Indeed, those were not women but rather sirens. Nakama finally understood his morning dream, because it all seemed to be repeating what happened after Circe’s warning to the Greek hero in Homer’s epic. He ordered all men to cover their ears, which they did promptly while he firmly tied himself to the frame of a radar tower.

Ulysses was invited to change the arrow of time by the Sirens’ melody, by means of a wonderful plunge towards the past, with no return. Thus, those siren whales were able to offer their killer-hunter ship’s crew the supreme gift of endless lives, because only the future can bring any real kind of death.

Always hating to be taken for selfish, Nakama chose to share his ecstasy with his crew, messaging them to free ears, so that every man could also become wholly enraptured by the song.

Under the jinx of dozens of gigantic whales, turned beautiful sirens, the ship of this Ulysses sails through the Pacific Ocean toward the millennia of an eternal past.                 

                      XXX

This story belongs in 'The Last Owl', a novel by this blogger available at amazon.com as e-book.

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