Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4)

by Michael C. Grumley

  Neely’s interest became piqued. “Are they still talking?”

  Alison watched Lee nod his head in response. “We think so.”

  “Alison,” Neely said carefully. “You need to find out. And make sure. Because if they are…”

  “I know,” Alison replied with a smile. “This communication-related DNA may still be alive and well in both of them.”

  21

  Alison hung up the phone and looked at the others.

  “Well?”

  “Unbelievable,” Lee breathed.

  “Guys,” Chris added. “If we’re right, this…may be the greatest discovery in human history.”

  She thought about Chris’s words and looked at him with amusement. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “This could be it, Ali. This could be the key to it all.”

  “The key to what?” John questioned.

  Alison answered him without taking her eyes off of Chris. “Instinct. It was part of Chris’s thesis.”

  Chris nodded. “The theory I posited was about where instinct left off and cognition began.”

  “And what was missing,” Alison added.

  “And what was missing,” concurred Chris.

  Clay looked at them both curiously. “Care to give us an introduction?”

  “When it comes to biology,” Chris replied, “what’s referred to as instinct is still a giant unknown. The ability for animals to learn through observation is one thing. But it’s widely accepted that something else is at play, which we don’t understand. The sheer speed at which animals learn, coupled with the limited time some species spend with their parents, suggests something more. What to eat and what not to eat. How to fight, how to prey. There is a myriad of environmental variables that they cannot possibly observe in their upbringing, yet they still know what to do. It’s especially evident when animals are separated from their parents at a very young age. Somehow they still know. As if there is genetic knowledge hardwired into their genes. It’s what humans clumsily classify as instinct.”

  “And you think there is something else?”

  Chris nodded. “I do. The vast majority of animals have very limited cognitive abilities. Their brains are simply too small. And yet the communication between them is surprisingly sophisticated. More than the cognitive capacity of their brains should be capable of. Not to mention how they sense things in each other, or even in another species. Animals, for example, that can read us. That seem to know what we’re feeling. Fear. Grief. Love. How do they know that? It can’t simply be through scent. Most animals don’t have the olfactory receptors of dogs. Nor can it simply be through instinct. The most logical explanation is that there’s something missing. A level of communication that lies between instinct and cognition. Something that we’re not aware of.” Chris ended with his eyes directed at Alison. “At least not yet.”

  Clay smiled when the room fell silent. “That sounds like a hell of a paper.”

  “I thought it was,” Chris grinned. “Especially now. Because if we’re actually seeing what we think we are between Dulce and Sally, it could be one of the greatest biological discoveries ever made. And as much as I hate to say it,” Chris said to Lee, “given how little I understand all the tech stuff, IMIS is at the center of it all.”

  Alison cleared her voice. “I guess we have some checking to do.” She flipped through the sheets of Lee’s transcript. “Beginning with what is missing from these pages.”

  22

  Inside the habitat, DeeAnn Draper raised an arm and, using a sleeve, dabbed a bead of perspiration from her forehead. The morning sun was hotter than usual, blazing through the thin netting above her. Coupled with the absence of any breeze, it left the habitat warmer than even the African continent it was supposed to emulate.

  Dulce and Dexter seemed unperturbed, sitting calmly beneath the broad cover of a rosewood tree. Dulce was attempting to show the smaller capuchin how to match colored blocks on top of a short wooden table. The smaller monkey watched intently but made no effort to participate.

  He was highly intelligent, but his desire to communicate did not match his aptitude. His only communication was through Dulce and in short spurts. Sounds that DeeAnn’s vest could not seem to detect. It had puzzled Lee to no end.

  DeeAnn ignored the heat, instead reading through the sheets of paper and shaking her head. When she finished, she looked back up to Alison and Lee with a look of incredulity.

  “Is this for real?”

  Lee nodded.

  “It’s…incredible. I mean this is a breakthrough beyond anything we were expecting.” She flipped back to the first page and reviewed with amusement one of the first lines that Dulce had asked Sally––how she got in there. From an anthropological standpoint, what IMIS had just done was simply off the charts.

  “How did she get out?” DeeAnn asked.

  “She learned the code to the door.”

  DeeAnn rolled her eyes and looked back at Dulce, sitting on the ground. “Of course she did.”

  “I guess we should have thought of that,” Alison said.

  Lee nodded at the papers in her hand. “Did you notice there're fewer translations on the subsequent pages?”

  “I did,” DeeAnn looked again. “I presume these midnight visits were shorter.”

  “Actually,” Lee mused, “they were longer.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “They were longer,” he repeated.

  “So they spoke less?”

  Alison grinned. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What does that mean? Either they were talking, or they—” DeeAnn’s face froze before she could finish her sentence. The implications had just caught up to her question. The possibility hit her like a freight train.

  “Are you kidding me?!”

  Alison and Lee both shook their heads.

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Is it?” Alison shrugged. “We’ve already seen this between Dulce and Dexter. IMIS can’t hear them speaking.”

  “That’s because it’s more innate. Species-specific. This is different.”

  “It might not be as different as we think, Dee. There’s a possibility that they both have genes that we don’t. Or at least genes that are still working.”

  “That allow them to talk? With Dirk and Sally?!”

  “We don’t know. Not for sure anyway. But it’s a possibility.”

  “And it may not be talking,” added Lee, “as much as another form of communication.”

  DeeAnn raised a hand and covered her mouth. “My God. If that’s true, I can’t even begin to imagine what it could mean.”

  “Yeah. Neither can we.”

  23

  Hello Alison.

  “Hello, Sally.”

  You want talk.

  “Yes, I’d like to talk.”

  I want talk.

  “Good. Sally, where’s Dirk?”

  Dirk gone. Come back soon.

  Alison nodded. Dirk was developing a habit of disappearing for short periods of time. And she had no idea where to, or why.

  You question Alison.

  “I do,” she mused. “I have a lot of questions.” She paused in front of Sally, who was studying her through the glass wall. Before, she had marveled at how Sally was able to read her so well. She now wondered if they were beginning to finally understand.

  “Sally,” Alison said, “I understand that you’ve met Dulce.”

  The speaker on the desk beeped with a bad translation, but Sally’s response showed she had gotten enough of it.

  Yes. Dulce. Little person.

  Alison frowned thoughtfully. Little person is what Sally had called Dulce in the transcripts, which was clearly a generic term, given that dolphins would have no word for gorilla.

  “You’ve been talking to Dulce?” she asked.

  When the translation sounded through the underwater speakers, Sally swished her thick tail with interest.

  Yes. Talk Dulce. New friend.

&
nbsp; Alison grinned. “What did you talk about?”

  She already knew most of the answer based on the transcripts. But what Alison really wanted to know was what had IMIS not picked up?

  The answer surprised her.

  She want swim.

  ***

  Barely a hundred yards away in the habitat, DeeAnn peered curiously down at Dulce.

  “You want what?”

  Dulce clapped her black hands together and rocked from side to side.

  Me want swim fish.

  DeeAnn’s brow lowered. “You want to swim with the fish.”

  Yes. Swim Sally.

  DeeAnn looked up at Lee, standing beside her, for his reaction.

  He smiled. DeeAnn hadn’t caught the relevance of Sally’s name being translated, but he had. He blinked but said nothing.

  “Dulce,” she replied. “It’s not that simple. Swimming with Sally is…complicated.”

  A quick tone sounded on her vest.

  She corrected herself. “Swimming is hard.”

  Dulce’s grin faded and changed to a look of confusion. She thought for a moment before replying.

  Me like swim.

  DeeAnn opened her mouth to speak but stopped, considering what it had taken to make diving gear for little Sofia. That was one thing. But trying to explain it to Dulce suddenly left her at a loss.

  “Um…Lee?”

  He snapped out of his thought and looked at DeeAnn. “Huh?”

  “Is it even possible that we could get her into the water? I mean the gear and everything? Is that even feasible?”

  A new smile slowly spread across Lee’s face, and he glanced down to Dulce. “Hell yes, it is.”

  Another tone sounded on the vest. As soon as the small gorilla had heard enough, she began hopping and clapping.

  It was an exciting concept. Yet even as they both mulled the possibility over, neither noticed what Dexter, the small capuchin, was doing in the background.

  It wasn’t until DeeAnn straightened that she finally noticed. Several yards away, beneath the mixture of green and yellow leaves of a banana tree, Dexter was rearranging Dulce’s blocks. Instead of the matching game, he had carefully stacked them. Into the crude, but very recognizable, shape of a pyramid.

  24

  It was strange.

  To see young Sofia Santiago standing next to the top of the giant tank was surreal. Heartwarming but surreal. The last time they had seen her, Sofia’s bare head was hidden under a colorful scarf, her body so weak she had to be lifted into the water.

  Now, she stood upright on her own two feet. In spite of the crutches, her balance was steady and she remained steadfast, staring down into the shimmering water where Dirk and Sally waited.

  No longer wearing a scarf, the girl’s beautiful head was budding with dark stubble. Her warm brown eyes appeared even more enthralled than they had been the last time.

  “Are you ready, Sofia?”

  Grinning widely, she nodded and handed the crutches to her mother. Sofia placed her tiny hands inside Alison’s and stepped shakily onto the top step.

  Behind Alison, Lee and Clay waited a couple steps below with her dive gear. DeeAnn remained standing behind the girl, on the edge of the tank, ready to catch her with a hand out. But she didn’t need it. After a second step, Sofia lowered herself down onto the step and sat upright.

  As weak as she was, the improvement was simply astonishing. Her energy and strength were like…that of a different child.

  But Sofia barely seemed to notice. Instead, she held up her arms while Clay wrapped a small weight belt around her. Then came her custom-made face mask followed by the waterproof ear buds.

  Alison gently tested the seals with her fingertips before lightly touching the face mask to ensure it stayed in place. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Sofia answered, nodding. “I hear you fine.”

  “Good.”

  Alison raised a hand and motioned for Dirk and Sally to approach. They did so immediately, reaching the side of the tank and making sounds at Sofia.

  “Hold on,” Alison smiled. “We’re not plugged in yet.”

  She inserted her own ear plugs and reached down to power her vest back on.

  “Dirk? Sally?”

  Both dolphins turned their heads to her.

  Alison. We ready. Now swim.

  “Okay, okay. Just a minute.” She continued adjusting her own equipment while Sofia reached out and patted their noses. Both dolphins laughed.

  It wasn’t about the swim. Last time Sofia had spent less than twenty minutes in the water and yet the changes were profound. It was a surprise to everyone, which led to a string of other discoveries including unexpected healing properties within the water. Properties that had seemingly been stored in the dolphin’s thin layer of blubber. Alison and Neely Lawton had found it.

  Of course, whatever it was had yet to be defined. All they knew so far was that whatever was in those plants near Trinidad had made its way into the water, in addition to Dirk and Sally’s fat cells, where they were absorbed. Now those same properties were circulating throughout the water of the research center’s tank, where they were absorbed by anyone else in the tank, including Sofia.

  Still, even if they hadn’t yet identified it precisely, they knew enough to know that a longer exposure of Sofia to the water would undoubtedly improve the potency affecting her own cells. And this time her swim wouldn’t be minutes, it would last for hours.

  And it wouldn’t just be for Sofia.

  When it was over and Sofia had left in the care of her parents, DeeAnn gazed at Alison from a chair in the observation area. Clay and Lee both sat nearby.

  “How long should we wait?”

  Alison exhaled, with both arms leaning back on the edge of a table. “I don’t know. A couple of days. Then we do it again. For her and for Juan’s sister, Angelina.”

  “And by then it will almost be time to leave?”

  Alison lowered her head and nodded.

  John Clay watched her expression silently.

  It was killing her. First the retraction and now the abandonment of their research center. The first place in her career where she had truly felt at home. And a series of accomplishments that were beyond meaningful. They were life changing. For everyone.

  She raised her head but kept her eyes on the floor. “I never thought it would come to this––not even in my worst nightmares––to denounce everything we’ve done and abandon this place. It just feels…so wrong.”

  “Like we’re running,” Lee added.

  “Exactly.”

  “You’ve changed the world, Alison,” Clay said. “Even if the world doesn’t know it yet.”

  She stared at him, softly but still with a look of bewilderment. “Will they ever?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I used to think that all the world needed was truth. And even if it were shocking, we would all still manage to come away better off. We’d be better people. Enlightened. Or something. Instead, we’re having to hide, and run. So that everything we’ve discovered can’t be exploited.”

  Alison shook her head. “My God, what’s wrong with us? Why are humans so self-serving?”

  Clay smiled warmly from his chair. “Not everyone is.”

  “Maybe not,” DeeAnn said. “But decent people are not the ones in power. It’s the power hungry that run the world. And our governments and our militaries.” She turned to Clay. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “It’s the same ones who talk about how great the future can be,” DeeAnn continued. “They’re always promising a better tomorrow, but when there’s a chance to really change the future, they fight over it like children. I mean, look what the Chinese did. They murdered their own people to keep it secret. Then when they couldn’t have it, they destroyed it all. God, what kind of mentality is that?”

  Clay frowned. “It’s not unique, unfortunately. When survival is on the line, especially for an entire nation, values change quickly.�
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  Lee peered at Clay. “We’d do the same thing, wouldn’t we?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “So what are we doing this for then?” asked Alison. “We can’t possibly win. It’s just us and our tiny group. Against everyone else. What difference can we possibly make?”

  Clay thought about the question. “Under the right circumstances, even the most unexpected person can make a difference.”

  “Not always,” quipped DeeAnn.

  “No. Not always,” Clay agreed, looking past them into the empty tank. “But we’re in a unique position. We have nothing to lose.”

  “Nothing to lose?”

  “We can’t force the world to change, Ali. All we can do is give it a chance.”

  Clay knew the odds were against them. But he also knew that one day each of them would be gone. Laid to rest just like everyone else. And it would be forever. On the grand evolutionary timeline, their lives were little more than the blink of an eye. Everyone would be gone eventually, and all that would matter then would be what they had stood for. A truth he had just recently become acutely aware of.

  He paused stoically, thinking. “Have any of you ever read the Declaration of Independence?”

  The other three looked at each other, surprised at his question.

  “Uh…no.”

  “In it, it says that whoever has the ability to do something…has the responsibility to do something.”

  “Really?”

  Clay nodded. “I’m paraphrasing. My father was obsessed with U.S. history, and that was his favorite part of the Declaration. The fifty-six men who signed it risked it all and changed the world.” He looked at them. “And now we have a chance…not just to change the world, but maybe humanity itself. Either we fight and lose, or we fight and win,” he said simply. “If we lose, the world is no different. But if we win…”

  His words hung in the air, causing Lee to grin. “If we win, it will be epic!”

  Clay nodded at Alison. “Epic.”

  Alison gradually smiled at Clay. “Well then, I guess we’d better win.”