> “The Sea Monster” → *The Choir in the Plume*
**Logline:** Nautilus survives first contact with “sea monsters” that sing in sonar. Are they life, rogue AI, or someone’s patented guardians?
# Beats 1. **Inciting:** During descent through the plume, Nautilus is shadowed by a lattice of moving echoes—an acoustic **choir**. 2. **Scramble:** Ned wants to flash the active pings; Conseil warns that stronger pings could spook or summon. 3. **Rescue/Reveal:** A tumbling probe threatens the sub; the choir shears around it and cushions the fall—*intent?* 4. **Entrance of Nemo:** Calm on comms, Nemo parks the sub with millimetre precision. “We’re guests. Act like guests.” 5. **Ideological spark:** Aronnax argues it could be **organic intelligence**; Nemo counters it could be **AI seed drones** his family’s firm once built for resource staking. 6. **Price of safety:** The choir echoes NAUTILUS’s heartbeat; Nemo cuts active sonar to **listen** instead of **declare**. 7. **Button:** The echoes resolve into a simple three-note motif, repeated back exactly as Aronnax hums it. *Three hypotheses introduced:* (a) **Biological swarms** of ice-filament “polyps”; (b) **Bio-hybrid machines** seeded by an old corporate claim; (c) **Emergent AI** grown from past probes’ debris.