They would have to do more than just make it vanish. They’d have to make the world forget it. And a retraction would be the first and most painful step.
“No, Sally,” she finally replied. “I’m not happy.”
What wrong Alison?
“It’s hard to explain.” She took a deep breath. “We can talk again, but I don’t know if it’s safe anymore for people to know. At least not yet.”
Alison paused, expecting a reply, but Sally remained silent. She continued.
“Sally, how many dolphins are there?”
Sally’s response was short.
Thousand.
A loud beep sounded, signifying a bad translation, and IMIS changed the word.
More thousand.
Another beep sounded and one more adjustment was made.
Thousands.
Alison nodded. The occasional corrections always reminded her that IMIS was still learning.
“Do dolphins fight?”
Yes, she answered. But no like peoples.
“What do they fight for?”
Sally’s response was not immediate. As if she paused to consider the question. Love.
“You fight for love?”
Yes. Another pause. Dirk fight me. A moment later the sentence was revised. Dirk fight for me.
Alison smiled warmly. “I guess humans and dolphins have that in common.” Actually, she thought, all life had it in common.
“How do you learn, Sally?”
From heads.
“You mean your elders.”
Yes. Many heads. Many teaches.
Alison grinned. “So have we.” Again she paused, considering other species. How other animals taught each other. And when they couldn’t, how nature stepped in to fill the void, through environment and instinct. It brought her back to a question she and Chris had pondered many times. What exactly was instinct?
In almost all species, parents taught their young. But in many cases, the rearing window was simply too short. Not enough time to convey everything. How to survive or how to forage for food was one thing. But other things, like what not to eat, were just as important. Yet how could a parent teach and warn for everything — let alone how to mate or how to raise their own young? Because with or without parents, even a newly born animal still managed to figure most of it out. There were just so many tiny but critical lessons to ensure the continuation of their own species. What made it all possible, especially with some brains possessing only the tiniest capacity?
The answer was instinct.
But what exactly was that? Some miracle of innate intelligence buried deep inside our genetic code? If so, where? And what exactly did those base pairs look like? And if we all had it, why could some animals stand and walk just hours after birth while humans took months to do the same thing?
Talking to Sally, a new and fascinating thought emerged. Had humans somehow evolved out of our instincts? Perhaps as a trade-off for higher cognition? And if so, given how similar dolphin brains were to human’s, had the same thing happened to them?
In other words, just how much instinct did dolphins still have compared to humans? Her thoughts then drifted to Dulce, and gorillas.
“Sally,” Alison said. “Do you remember your parents?”
A loud beep sounded. IMIS didn’t have a translation for ‘parents’ yet. She tried again. “Do you remember your mother?”
There was a delay before she finally heard IMIS relay the sentence through the underwater speaker. She was a little surprised when it successfully translated mother.
Sally stared at Alison through the glass, considering the question.
Yes.
“Did she teach you too?”
Yes. Mother teach. Much.
Alison smiled. “Just like humans. Do you remember your father?”
Another loud beep.
Alison frowned. IMIS could translate mother but not father? “Sally, do you still talk to your mother?”
For some reason, it felt like an odd question to Alison. And apparently to Sally too. The dolphin stared at her through the glass with just enough change on her gray face for Alison to notice.
Yes.
It was at that moment that Alison felt something. Something completely indescribable. A connection. A link. Something in Sally’s eyes as they peered through the glass at one another. The translations through IMIS were still relatively limited. Even crude by some measures. But in their communication, it felt as though there were something more between them. A reason why she had such a strong bond with Sally. She always had. Ever since rescuing her those years ago.
Yet the look in Sally’s eyes now triggered a different question in Alison. She already knew how similar the dolphin and human brains were. Even genetically, based on the Trio Brain theory as explained by DeeAnn. And for over a year, a single question had been haunting her. It was a question she’d never been sure how to ask. She was not confident that IMIS would understand, let alone relay it correctly. Or even that Sally would comprehend it.
But now, Sally’s ability to understand Alison’s questions was deepening.
Their brains were so similar, but there was still one glaring difference that she desperately wanted to investigate. And it was based on one of the greatest misnomers in human biology.
It was so commonly stated as fact that Alison had long ago given up trying to correct people. Because everyone either didn’t understand the distinction or they simply didn’t care. It was the mass belief that humans only used ten percent of their brain.
The conclusion was simply not true. What most people didn’t know was that modern brain scanning techniques had proven that the vast majority of the human brain was indeed being used. Neurons and synaptic activity could now be monitored with great precision. However, the distinction that most people misunderstood was that the mystery wasn’t about the percent of utilization; it was about the brain’s collective neural capacity!
The size and activity of a brain were easily established. What was far more difficult, and frankly more exciting, was what could be done with it? Or in simpler terms, what was each brain actually capable of?
That was the question that had plagued Alison.
Human brains had been recorded doing things that were simply amazing. Eidetic memories, capable of memorizing any book ever read, or the ability to recall virtually every detail from any day of the person’s life. Mathematical conceptualizations of the universe and physical world that made some of the greatest technological breakthroughs possible. Even works of art and music that could make generations weep.
The human brain had so much neural capacity that it was hard to imagine limits. In fact, some cognitive scientists had recently suggested that, given each brain’s billions of neurons, there were no limits.
But dolphins had just as complex a synaptic network and their brain sizes were even bigger. Much bigger! In fact, studies had suggested that brain intelligence was also associated with the amount of “folding” in a brain’s cerebral cortex. A theory strongly supported by the study of the unusually increased folding of Albert Einstein’s brain. And it was well-established that the only species on Earth to have a cortex more folded than humans was dolphins.