《Alaska 66 MYA (A Grant Foreman Adventure)》Prologue: Out of Place
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Jason Tanning scratched an itch on his hairy left thigh. It felt good.
It was his second day aboard the cruise ship Kiska, named after one of the largest islands that was part of the Aleutian Islands Wilderness. The cold air was a refreshing change from the vast interior of the cruise ship. It was his first cruise and his first time travelling in many years. He had few friends that he only knew online from his long hours of gaming and the few he had weren't terribly interested in going outside unless necessary. Going on a cruise by himself was lonely but in his mind, a necessary venture. He was still in his mid-twenties and would not die wishing he had seen more of the world. The heavy Nikon camera around his neck was a burden on his neck. He hoped to get a few memorable pictures on the trip.
Some girlish giggles caught his ears and he turned to see three pretty looking girls taking selfies of themselves by the edge of the deck.
Jason's heart started pounding and he wished he had worn his nice polo instead of his loose and mostly worn Reebok shirt. He hoped his wrinkled cargo shorts didn't make him look too dorky. He considered approaching the girls and offering to take a group picture of them but a quick self-reminder of his pale skin and skinny frame from lack of exercise in combination with his less than fashionable attire prompted him to call it off. Instead he decided to position himself by the edge of the deck as well, a few feet to their right.
As Jason took in the view of the wondrous ocean, he observed the girls through his peripheral vision. Feeling shame as his eyes passed over the denim short shorts of the brunette closest to him, he brought all his attention back to the ocean before him.
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"Pathetic," he whispered to himself, almost tearfully.
"Hey, can you take a picture for us?" came a cheerful voice.
Jason twitched as if he had just been given a jump scare. He shakily turned towards the beaming brunette that was now looking at him. Her white V-neck t-shirt looked cute on her.
"Yeah I can take a picture of you---I mean, all of you."
Jason took the girl's phone in his hand. The girls giggled and got into a pose while Jason backed up to take a wide horizontal shot of them.
"Alright say chee--"
"Oh my god look at that!" screamed the blonde girl with the purple sunglasses in the center. "I think it's a shark."
Out of curiosity, Jason walked over to see what the girls were now staring at out above the waves. The pudgy form of a bowhead whale broke through the surface about two hundred meters from where they were standing on deck.
"That is a bowhead whale," Jason corrected them.
He lifted his camera, using it as a pair of binoculars. "Yeah you can tell by its funny looking mouth too."
"Oh my god I don't think I've ever seen a whale in real life before," exclaimed the blonde, putting her hand over her mouth.
Jason continued training his camera on the whale, hoping to get a full body or near full body shot of it as it leapt out of the water.
"Ohhhh my gooodd its sooo cute!" screeched the other brunette to the far left of Jason.
"Cute?" said the cute girl in the white t-shirt. "I can barely see him from here."
"Oh come on now Rachel," said the second blonde. "He stands out like a pizza stain on a white blouse."
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Jason snapped a photo the moment the whale rose out of the water, all the way down to the tail. It was only a second after the whale landed and disappeared beneath the waves that Jason realized the small bowhead whale had not leapt out of the water, but had been pushed into the air in the jaws of another creature.
"Holy Bejeezus!" Jason exclaimed, lowering the camera. His heart was racing.
"Aw, it doesn't look like he's coming back," said Rachel glumly.
With a shaky hand, Jason raised the camera and searched the waves for any sign of the bowhead whale. He cursed himself for not keeping the lens trained on the exact spot where it had been attacked. All the waves and water looked the same. After a minute of searching he finally snapped onto a diluted spot of pink in the water.
"Something dragged it under," said Jason loudly. "Something bit it and dragged it down."
"What?!" said the blonde in the middle, turning her head back to face him. "A shark killed it?"
Jason couldn't answer her. Even though the bowhead whale wasn't one of the larger species of baleen whales, he doubted there was a shark big enough to drag a whale down with it. Perhaps it was daring and hungry enough to try its luck with a stocky bowhead whale.
"Oh my gosh I think I see blood in the water!" said the blonde with pink sunglasses.
Jason reviewed the photo he took. He was lucky to have captured a good portion of the creature's form. It looked to be a sperm whale, judging by its size, teeth, and shape. He didn't know that sperm whales hunted other whales.
Jason lowered the camera again and stared out across the ocean with the three girls, hoping to catch another glimpse of the killer sperm whale. But after a long while it was clear the sea would not yield another spectacle.
Later that night in his room, Jason's search through the web brought him less than satisfactory results. The other marine creature in the photo snatching up the bowhead whale was clearly a sperm whale. No other toothed whale was as large or matched the physical characteristics of the creature in the photo. What gave it away was the teeth. A sperm whale had a long row of smooth ivory flesh puncturing teeth located only on its bottom jaw. This whale however had teeth growing along both its upper and lower jaw.
Jason shrugged and entered "sperm whales with two sets of teeth" into the search engine. The results were simply more photos and informative websites on sperm whales. He scrolled down the page full of photos aimlessly until something caught his eye. It was a colored drawing of a vicious looking sperm whale with two sets of teeth. Reading furiously through the article linked to the drawing which was titled "Livyatan Whale: Apex Predator".
The drawings found throughout the article matched what he had captured in his photo, yet he knew it couldn't be right either. According to the article The Livyatan Whale died out nearly ten million years ago.
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