A moment later, the translation sounded through the water inside the tank. Sally responded and the computer screen promptly sounded a loud beep, signifying a failed translation. It was there that Lee reached down and paused the video.
Alison and Chris were both staring at him with open mouths. When Alison began to finally shake her head, her words sounded in disbelief.
“That… happened?!”
“Yes!” Lee cried. He looked between them excitedly.
Chris was just as stunned. The only word he could get out was, “How?”
“I have absolutely no idea!”
“Is there more?”
“Yes! A lot more.”
Clay’s blue eyes were still fixated on the screen. “Lee, when was this recorded?”
“That’s the most amazing thing,” he replied, growing even more thrilled. “This happened eight days ago. And it’s happened every night since!”
Clay peered curiously at Alison, who was still trying to process it all. “How on Earth did Dulce even get out?”
“She learned the code for the door.”
“She learned the code?”
“Yes. Evidently, she’s been watching us.”
“Holy—” Chris began, searching for the right words but failing. “That is just… so unbelievable.”
Alison returned her gaze to the screen. “What did they say to each other?”
Lee reached into his backpack and pulled out several sheets of paper. “I brought the whole transcript.”
19
Lee handed out copies and watched them all read through several pages without speaking. By the time they finished, Alison and Chris stared at each other with mouths open.
“Oh… my… God!”
Chris dropped the papers on his lap and raised both hands to rub his face. “Is this really happening, or am I hallucinating from my medication?”
“Oh, it’s real!”
Chris blinked at Lee. “How do I know?”
Lee barely paused. “Do you want me to slap you?”
“Okay. It’s real.”
Alison immediately turned to Clay, who was grinning at her. “That’s really something.”
“Something,” she said blankly. “It’s… amazing!”
“I told you,” Lee said with a wide smile.
Alison glanced down at the first page. “It’s hard to even comprehend what this means. I mean—” She looked at Lee. “IMIS is short for Inter Mammal Interpretive System, but we never imagined the “Inter Mammal” would actually mean inter mammal! I mean we’re talking about communication between two non-human sentient beings. I can’t even begin to conceive of how profound that is.”
“Neither can I,” murmured Chris. “Never in our wildest dreams would we have considered this.”
Alison shook her head before noticing Lee, still grinning. She eyed him suspiciously. “What?”
“There’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The communication between Sally and Dulce is incredible. But how it’s happening is just as amazing.”
“You mean through IMIS.”
“Not just through IMIS. But how the system is actually doing it. The logic IMIS is using is something I’ve never seen before.” Lee retrieved his own folded-up copy of the transcript from his pocket. “Look at the first page. Dulce says, You Fish. A simple enough translation. But then a few translations later, she says, Me Dulce.”
Lee looked up at them. “There is no dolphin equivalent of Dulce. But there’s no error message signifying a bad translation.”
“Then… what did it translate?”
“I don’t know,” Lee answered excitedly. “But it said something. In a sound pattern we haven’t seen before. My best guess is that IMIS translated the meaning of Dulce, not the word itself.”
“Dulce means sweet in Spanish,” Clay said.
“Exactly! But IMIS doesn’t have a dolphin word for sweet either!” Lee said. “Which means it either made something up, or it actually figured out the word sweet!”
“Would it actually make something up?”
Lee shook his head. “IMIS has never made a whole new word up before. It’s gotten words wrong. A lot of words. But it’s never just made one up.”
Clay considered Lee’s explanation. “So IMIS is getting smarter.”
“I think so. I think it’s getting a lot smarter. So much so that it’s not just deciphering their languages, it’s beginning to understand them.” Without warning, he pulled off the top piece of paper and showed them his second page, filled with marks he’d made. Then the next sheet and the next. “Look at this. Every page is littered with examples of this.”
Alison looked back at her own set of papers and noticed something else. “Lee, how long was Dulce in the lab?”
“That’s another thing. The first time it was about ten minutes. I’m not sure why she left, but the second time it was longer, and the next night longer still.”
“But…” Alison flipped back and forth between pages. “The translations for each night get shorter and shorter.”
“That’s right,” Lee affirmed. “And to be honest, that’s where this really gets a little strange. “Dulce is in front of the tank longer and longer, but IMIS is translating less and less!”
Alison’s eyes grew wider, and she urgently looked at Chris.
Neither one of them needed to speak. Their eyes said it all.
20
Onboard the Pathfinder, the look on Neely Lawton’s face could not have been more different.
Four small wire cages rested before her on the cold metal table, each with a small mouse inside. Neely studied them closely while each mouse sniffed at the metal wires and ran around inside excitedly.
But in all four mice, something was notably wrong. They were all twitching uncontrollably, in spite of each one being in perfect biological health.
Neely’s fears were quickly becoming a reality. She was now sure of it. The Chinese-extracted DNA was flawed. Not because it didn’t work but because it worked too well.
Each mouse had been subjected to a small contusive jolt, resulting in a bruise to the rodent’s spinal column. A common, nonpermanent injury, resulting in a temporary but significant loss of motor skills.
After then injecting the mice, Neely observed in fascination as the DNA deposited by the infused bacteria began to take hold. Within hours, it began infiltrating the mouse’s existing genetic code. The changes were extraordinary as the DNA began a systematic repair of the damaged spinal area.
In less than a day, the hind legs on each mouse recovered their full range of motion. The experiment worked perfectly. All of it.
That was until the mice stopped sleeping.
Neely had been afraid that the sample the team had gone to such great lengths to recover might be too good to be true. And early signs indicated that it was.
The modifications had supercharged the body’s own ability to regenerate, preventing cells from dying while also replicating at an accelerated rate. The problem was that it wasn’t just the damaged cells that were infused, it was all the cells. The rodents’ entire genetic structures were being fixed, which meant every cell was being enhanced. Including brain cells.
And that was a problem.
For millions of years, nearly all living things on the planet had evolved with a circadian clock — a deep biological coordination with the Earth’s natural cycles. At the center of this metabolic hourglass was something so deeply ingrained in all Earth’s organisms that without it every mammal, bird, and reptile would die within weeks. It was called sleep.