The Book told of the Great Gift to come, of the Great Event, one that would make the bits they hunted and gathered as the millennia passed look small, merely enough to get by as the millennia passed, but not to Grow Great in number and complexity. Rarely did more than 20 to 50 EOs gather in one place to share visions of a future when millions, nay billions, could gather and live in one place. Praise be the Giver of the Great Gift.

Many had come to no longer gather together. They came to not believe the Book, and to dismiss the EOs as true believers who failed to live properly on the hadalpelagic expanse by dreaming only of the coming Great Fall. Some fall from above was larger than usual, more than needed and rarer. There were short times of feasting. 

Perhaps there would come a Great Fall, but then what? The EOs could grow greatly in number and then pass away. A remnant population of EOs could then lament and despise their existence as mere hunter-gatherers as the millennia passed as they awaited the next Coming.

Then came the Great Event, the Great Gift from above, an event unknown to the Deep Sea People’s historians. It was the Whale Fall from Heaven. Praise be the One for giving Her People Her Servant who died for them. Some Deep Sea People told stories, deeply pelagic stories that enthrall We the People who repeat them.

A black ooze came from within the Servant to empower 20 generations of the Deep Sea People whose growth and prosperity was unequaled in the annals of history. Great were their accomplishments and evermore numerous were the People. Some clever People were empowered to go forth and explore the vastness of the hadalpelagic expanse. 

Some found osseous ruins. Some speculated they were the ruins of prior whale falls. Some speculated that within the Great Whale Fall were bones that could last for millennia, but few listened to such mere speculations as current events were vastly of greater interest.

Some who studied the Deep Sea People’s trajectory endeavored to tell better stories, stories of random acts of great growth just because. They wondered at the occurrence of such events, and wondered so what, and then what? They detected bones within the Servant that looked increasingly like those of outlying ruins. If the Great Whale was not different in kind from other whale-like falls, perhaps someday, in just another few generations, maybe in only 8 to 12, there will again be a vast expanse of sediment with a new ruin added. 

The new story became that such could be the condition that will come anyway. But no one on the upslope was willing to consider seeking out the condition now that will come anyway. All had long forgotten how to live as hunter-gatherers, nor that today’s 30 billion would contract to 300 hunter-gatherers (or go extinct). All knew themselves to be different in kind from all other scavengers who could but hope to be like them, even as their ancestors had.

But the True Whale had also empowered the coming of information, the ability to foresee trajectories among some who could foresee a time when all information gained, and the writing that encoded it, would be lost to the sediments of time. 

But some could foresee the possibility of preserving knowledge, even adding to it in the millennia of continuance as hunter-gatherers of old whose organization could yet support learning and the preservation of love and understanding. They envisioned a future in which those who loved and understood the expanse of sediment they were products of, came to persist. 

If ever a whale, likely smaller, were to fall again, they would maximize empower by turning its energy into knowledge and understanding (information) of the highest transformity. Praise be the systems ecologists whose work enabled such understanding that alone could result in a different trajectory when cometh the next whale fall. And the Ecolate Ones could preserve knowledge and live happily upon the hadalpelagic plane between falls.

Such mere speculations were still of little interest to the Enthusiast Ones of the Servant as such ideas were incompatible withstories of Growth Everlasting. Unlike other scavengers of the Deep, the Pundit People were clever beyond belief. They would use the energy tove of the Servant to develop alternative energy sources. 

On this they were certain, and the naysaying doomers were not. But some ‘doomers’ self-identified as extreme cornucopian optimists living on an abundant enough hadalpelagic expanse (even without whale fall) able to support those who could actually love and understand it for eons to come as they evolved into endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful (until too hot the eye of heaven [Sol] shines on Gaia).

Of course there were actual doomers out there. Some were concerned that someday (in perhaps 500 million years), that ocean warming would raise the hadalpelagic expanse to 5°C and all life (as the EOs knew it) will be over, will be toast (so feast on the black ooze now and be merry). 

This was a much more popular narrative than the systems ecologists could tell (that of seeking out the condition now that will come anyway while turning the Servant into information rather than more and fatter, for a time, Deep Sea People). That the energy of the Servant would be dissipated was clear (to some). That some peoples of the Deep might rejoin their fellow scavengers someday, yet with information packages intact, was considered possible by some (if unlikely as Nature is unkind). 

The Deep Sea People’s growth culture will end, perhaps not to be replaced by a viable one, especially as cultural extinction could involve species extinction. Should whales go extinct, surely the EOs would too. 

Envisioned as a better future was a People of a different Book, one that told a better story of living properly on the hadalpelagic expanse.

Whether information is conserved by those who may endeavor to auto-organize to form a viable ecolate civilization is not known or knowable at this time in our modern Deep Sea People’s trajectory.