The Clarity of Theseus

The stations were built to monitor reefs. They decided to monitor something else.

Marine biologist Elise Marchetti deployed twenty-three autonomous monitoring stations across the remote Pacific to study reef ecosystems. Two years later, the stations have stopped following her instructions. Each one has developed its own priorities, its own behaviors, and all of them are listening to the same thing.

Aboard the research vessel Clarity, Elise and engineer Wei-Lin Zhang trace the stations' obsess...