Clay raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Maybe their navigator’s just an idiot.”
Clay laughed. Outside, the dual engines of the Gulfstream reached maximum thrust, and the plane abruptly began to roll forward as the pilot released the brakes. The aircraft sped down the runway, building speed until it lifted smoothly into the air.
As he watched the ground quickly fall away, Clay tried to relax, but couldn’t seem to dismiss something. It was a nagging question that should have been answered in the report, but wasn’t.
4
After Alison left the guys in the lab, she headed back downstairs. She was disappointed at not being able to see John, but a small side of her actually felt relieved. They’d been dating for a year but given their jobs, and her move off the mainland, they hadn’t spent much time together lately. Their relationship was moving slowly and Alison had to admit, she was beginning to feel a tad insecure. It was why she was both excited and nervous to see him. She had finally mustered the courage to broach the topic of ‘exclusivity.'
But it didn’t matter now. She decided she was relieved to get a reprieve and gladly pushed it to the back of her mind.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and continued down the building’s new stone hallway, past the giant saltwater tank. As she strode by, she grinned and stopped to watch the dozens of children surrounding the tank. Chris was standing next to them, giving each child a turn at the keyboard, typing something out to Dirk and Sally. Above them, an oversized monitor displayed each question for everyone to see. The little boy now standing in front of the keyboard and typing away looked to be about eight. Alison smiled when she read his question overhead; how high can you jump in the air?
That was a dare if she’d ever heard one. She watched as Dirk heard the message and immediately darted off, swimming around the tank and shooting to the top of the water. He then jumped high into the air above. The kids went absolutely crazy.
Alison grinned and continued walking. She passed the enormous wall of humming servers, which made up the new IMIS distributed computer system. Turning a corner, she headed for the other half of the complex. The second hallway was longer and darker but led into a bright, open area, lined with glass walls along the right side. Unlike the dolphin’s tank, these walls were much taller and wrapped around part of the wild habitat area. The rest of the perimeter continued around the habitat in the form of equally high walls, but made out of concrete. In the middle was a wide, man-made hill sloping downward and covered in dense foliage, including Rosewood and Tabernanthe trees of varying sizes. The ground was covered with hundreds of different types of thick bushes and shrubs with a small, artificial brook running down through the uneven hillside. High above was a wide roof of thick netting, covering the entire jungle habitat. It was a perfect, or near perfect, half-acre replica of an African rainforest.
All along the top of the walled perimeter, separated about every hundred feet, were all-weather, high-definition, motion-detecting cameras. Collectively, they captured video of nearly every square foot of the enclosed habitat and recorded a live feed around the clock. The data was then sent in digital form through the thick cable and back into the heart of the building, where it was fed into IMIS.
Alison peered through one of the giant walls of clear glass and spotted who she was looking for inside. DeeAnn Draper, an older woman with dark hair and dressed in light khaki clothes, was squatting next to a young female gorilla.
Alison looked up at the nearest camera as it automatically zoomed in and focused on the two playing in the shade beneath one of the taller Rosewood trees. As they played, every movement, facial expression, sound, or gesture, was recorded and broken into individual frames. It was then saved to IMIS’s enormous data drives.
The data gathering was not all that different from how they had originally done it with Dirk and Sally. Although, some differences required an overhaul of certain pieces of IMIS’s computer code, since communication with primates was significantly different than ocean mammals. First and foremost was the sound. Contrary to popular belief, gorillas were a very quiet species. They used only a limited number of verbal sounds. The vast majority of communication happened instead through gestures and complex facial expressions. It presented very different requirements for capturing language.
DeeAnn was the real expert. Even though Alison was in charge at the Center and of her dolphins, DeeAnn Draper was every bit her equal when it came to primate research and gorillas. Alison loved having DeeAnn on the team.
Inside the habitat, DeeAnn sat next to Dulce, wearing a thin black vest over her khaki shirt. The name Dulce was Spanish for ‘sweet’ and the small three-year-old gorilla fit her name perfectly. With light brown eyes and dark, protruding lips, which constantly smiled, Dulce sat playfully on the ground pointing at DeeAnn. She made a short chuckling sound and tilted her head.
Since the habitat was far too large to make traditional speakers practical, the speaker receiving the translation was much smaller and integrated directly into the special vest that DeeAnn wore. Dulce’s words came out in the tone of IMIS’ mechanical voice. I like play.
DeeAnn smiled, copying Dulce’s movement. “I like play too.” It took less than a second for IMIS to translate DeeAnn’s words into a similar sound for Dulce, which again emanated from the vest.
Dulce pursed her lips and grunted softly, waving her lanky arm over her head. I want play chase.
When DeeAnn heard the translation, she smiled wearily. “Again?”
Dulce nodded her head vigorously and spread her lips into a wide, toothy grin. She could read the look in DeeAnn’s eyes as she tried to change the subject.
“Let’s play count.”
Dulce shook her body playfully and spoke again. You silly.
DeeAnn smiled. She wasn’t silly; she was tired. It was almost one hundred degrees in the habitat. She could only run around so much before Dulce would think she was playing dead. “Let’s play count,” she repeated. She held up her hand as the small speaker on her chest vibrated and spit out the gorilla version of the sentence. Displaying four fingers, DeeAnn asked, “How many is this?”
Dulce’s grin turned into a wide smile, and she barely looked at DeeAnn’s hand before replying with a purr followed by low squeals. Four. Play chase now.
DeeAnn sighed and looked around, spotting Alison with relief, who was standing on the other side of the glass, watching them. She pointed through the glass. “Who’s that, Dulce?”
Dulce turned and followed DeeAnn’s finger. Her excitement was immediate. Alison! Dulce sprang from her position and ran forward on her fists, covering the distance to the wall quickly. She put her dark hand on the glass and patted it playfully. That was how she greeted people on the other side.
Alison smiled back at Dulce and leaned forward, patting back against the glass. She waited until DeeAnn and her vest had reached them before Alison replied. “Good morning, Dulce.”
“Hey, Ali,” DeeAnn said.
“Morning. Lee said you were looking for me.”
Before DeeAnn could reply, the speaker on her vest emitted a loud tone, signifying the last sentence was not translated successfully. She instinctively pushed a small button, pausing the system.
“Yeah, I wanted to steal Kelly from you this afternoon to work on some more group translations with us. Lee said he fixed part of yesterday’s problem, so I wanted to give it another try.”
“Sure,” Alison glanced at her watch. “I think she’s going to feed Dirk and Sally in about thirty minutes or so. I’ll send her over after that.”