The Day the Dolphins Vanished (short story)

This is one of 13 short stories in my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection (C) 2021

Beatrice Benson, BB to her colleagues and friends, would have seemed at home in any exclusive beach resort anywhere in the world tanning her perfect body while her long, lustrous, light-brown hair absorbed and weaved the sun’s rays into auburn and blonde highlights as legions of men tripped over one another for the chance to fetch her a cold drink, a towel, sun block or anything else her heart desired in hopes of gaining the simple reward of the flash of her brilliant smile. If she were not preoccupied by more important things, BB would have been amused by these attentions of which she was largely unaware, in part because she was not the type to frequent beach side resorts or spend much time lounging on beach chairs, and in part because her preternatural beauty and credentials, Ph.Ds. in marine biology, electrical engineering and linguistics earned by her 30th birthday quickly burned off the wings of desire of mere mortal men who were attracted to her like insignificant moths hovering about the alluring blue flame of a Bunsen burner, leaving them in a similar position in trying to hold a conversation with her as the average chimpanzee trying to grasp the finer points of the Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Republic.

Fortunately for both moths and men, not too many moths fly about the average lab, and not too many men hang around the out of the way craggy beaches and immense stretches of ocean that BB made her home while working largely on solitary projects, conducting research, writing papers, and otherwise contributing to the advancement of her fields with an I.Q. that Einstein would have envied and a work ethic that would have made John Calvin proud.

Her current project had taken her to Florida’s Gulf Coast, near Navarre Beach in Santa Rosa County, but far from the crowded condo-dotted beachfront. A generous grant from the National Science Foundation allowed her to take her floating laboratory, a modest converted cabin cruiser, wherever she went, carrying its precious cargo of high-end computer and electronics equipment with which she hoped to bridge the communications gap between dolphins and humans.

Her study of the available data had long before led her to the conclusion that dolphins have a highly evolved language. Computer analysis of sounds emitted in the audible spectrum alone showed repetitions that closely mirrored speech patterns that span across all human languages. Lesser intelligent mammals emit sounds that convey meaning to their own species, but these are typically limited to communicating very basic information essential to the survival of their species, such as calls warning about danger, the availability of food, or efforts to attract a mate. Even insects evidence the ability to communicate vital information to their own kind. But Dolphins and most whales are in a different category altogether, possessing brains that are larger than the great apes, including Homo sapiens, and evidencing the ability for complex communication.

It is one thing to recognize the fact that speech is taking place, but quite another to be able to decipher that speech, let alone translate it in a meaningful way so that it can be understood in its proper context across species. Even when dealing with human speech, it can be quite challenging to interpret from one language for another, even for native speakers of the languages being interpreted. But our shared humanity allows us to at least understand certain emotions, such as anger, fear, pain, sadness and love without the need for a universal translator. Drop human beings with money in their pocket anywhere on the planet and they will have little trouble finding food to purchase, the shelter of a hotel room, and an endless number of consumer goods to purchase at a local market. Moreover, none of us needs language at all to determine the intentions of people with whom we interact as there are an endless number of non-verbal clues that all of us emit that can allow others to, for the most part, accurately gauge our intentions and label us as either as probable friends or foes.

The best machine translation available today still yields results that can range from comical to tragic depending on their context and use. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher instructions accompanying low-cost, assemble-it-yourself furniture or other similar consumer goods imported from countries with languages different from our own can attest to that fact. Even when dealing with a common language, the very real possibility for misunderstanding exists due to the regional usage, slang and pronunciation variances in different regions of even the same country, and especially when dealing with a common language adapted by different countries for their own use. An American from Mississippi and an Englishman from Liverpool both speak English, but will likely have some difficulty understanding one another, especially if they possess only a rudimentary education and wish to converse about a somewhat complex topic. The same is true for a Haitian and a Parisian, a Puerto Rican and a Spaniard (or, for that matter, a Spaniard from Galicia and one from Seville, Valencia, Madrid, or Barcelona, even if they are all speaking Castilian rather than their local regional languages). Indeed, the simple verb coger in Spanish which means and has always meant to get, or to grab to a Spaniard means to copulate to an Argentine. Thus, coge las llaves (take the keys) means f**k the keys in the vernacular in Argentina, and cógeme de la mano (take my hand) means something equally obscene.

Fortunately, when it comes to human languages, we have native speakers, interpreters, dictionaries and, when all else fails, comedians and diplomats, to help bridge the potholes along the road of cross-cultural communication. No such tools are available for inter-species communications, making the process of communication infinitely harder for both species, even when our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, or other only slightly more distant, intelligent cousins, such as gorillas, are involved.

But what may seem like insurmountable challenges for the rest of us are only interesting, irresistible puzzles for the likes of BB who was uniquely qualified to tackle the problem because of her complementary competencies and inexhaustible patience. Using the resources of her university as an Associate Professor of Marine Biology and her National Science Foundation grant, she had spent a one-year sabbatical working with a half dozen dolphins in an attempt to develop a dolphin/human speech interface.

Aside from the dedicated software she had developed to achieve a real-time translation program, her equipment was relatively simple: a supercomputer, an all-weather outdoor, portable large-screen projection system and an extensive array of ultrasensitive microphones and speakers capable of recording and reproducing sound well below and above the normal range of frequencies audible to the human ear. With the equipment in place, the experiment methodology was simplicity itself: projecting video and still images on the screen with microphones placed above and below the water line to record the dolphin chatter while the English word or phrase accompanying the visual material broadcast in above and below water speakers. The overarching concept that BB banked on was that dolphins would be intelligent enough to make the connection of the attempt to communicate and be able to learn at least some rudimentary verbal concepts with the assistance of the usual reinforcements, treats, physical contact, and genuine care and attention being paid by a patient trainer. It was her hope that by recording and cataloguing the dolphin sounds that accompanied the flashing pictures her computer software would be able to distinguish the dolphin equivalents for at least some of these visual representations over time.

Her methods were simple, and they worked. Over the course of a few months, her software was able to decipher hundreds of words, and her linguistics database began to expand exponentially. By the end of the spring semester, the data gathering portion of her experiment was completed and she was ready to take the experiment out of the lab and into the field. She intended to move her portable lab to a remote location and attempt direct communication with dolphins in the wild. The translation software allowed her to engage in simple communication with her dolphins in captivity. That was a breakthrough far beyond anything that had been previously accomplished in her field. But it was not enough. She needed to be able to gather additional data from a larger sample to make her linguistics database and translation program usable beyond the simple, albeit ground-breaking, communication accomplished in the lab.

With the ability to communicate with perhaps dozens of dolphins in the wild, she hoped to complete both the translation and linguistics databases and be ready to publish her findings before the beginning of the fall semester. But she also hoped that by taking her experiment into the field, she would be able to improve the simple inter-species communication she had achieved thus far and transform her experiment into a true, comprehensive two-way translation program, allowing for the first inter-species conversation in history. The potential for establishing an inter-species dialogue, of expanding and sharing knowledge beyond the limits of our own species, was within her grasp and she would not rest on the laurels of her accomplishments until she saw her efforts come to full fruition.

Armed with the basic translation program and a vocabulary of several dozen common words, she set up her portable laboratory in a remote cove that offered a natural harbor deep enough for marine mammals to approach the shoreline at will and participate in her experiment. She set up the large projector and screen within twenty feet of the natural harbor, making it easily visible from the water level to any dolphin that cared to approach. She submerged her microphones and speakers and also placed versions of both above the water line. Working from her cabin-cruiser-turned-floating-lab she began a simple series of calls using her limited vocabulary to try to entice wild dolphins to attend. She spoke words into her wireless microphone that the below-decks mainframe translated into their appropriate clicks and chirps at the subsonic and audible levels and broadcast their dolphin equivalents through the speaker arrays. “Come, food, see;” “Come, talk me;” “Treat here, come;” “friend, see, here;” “food, good human, pod, friend,” and many similar variations using her limited available vocabulary. Within a half hour, she spotted her first dolphin, curiously bobbing its head above the water. Then she saw another two swimming in. They swam close to the speakers, doubtless confused but curious about this loud non-dolphin with a severe speech impediment. But they came, and continued to come, gladly taking the mackerel and squid treats offered by BB who soon lowered herself into the water to swim amongst them, waterproof wireless mike around her throat, repeating words and phrases she hoped conveyed the appropriate meaning in their native speech “Me BB, pod friend.” She gently touched and swam with the dolphins for a brief time as they chattered in audible and inaudible language, all of it recorded, catalogued and translated where possible by the computer aboard her small research vessel.

After her good-will swim which seems to have been as enjoyable to her new friends as it was to her, she reluctantly climbed aboard her boat and set the projector to its normal teaching program. By that time there were at least a dozen dolphins in her tiny natural harbor, all of which stayed to watch the show while chattering amongst themselves.

Over the next several weeks, her audience grew to many dozens of dolphins which came and went from her natural harbor long after the treats had run out, glad to swim with her and watch the projected and narrated show with apparent interest. She would take breaks to play with them for hours every day, and also to gently test their knowledge using the increasing vocabulary database identified by her computer. She could not understand their language beyond words here and there from their simultaneous translation sessions, in part because her translation software had difficulty with the wide-range of chatter from the unexpectedly large number of dolphins gathered at any one time. She would eventually refine the raw data into more meaningful speech, developing subroutines that could better identify the discrete voices and string together their words. For now, it was a glorious cacophony that made any attempt at simultaneous communication impossible.

Dolphins, on the other hand, seemed to have little difficulty understanding her. She could show them any object, ask them to “get it,” throw it in any direction into the water along with several other, different objects surrounding her boat and see a number of dolphins immediately race off to find and retrieve only the correct object from the ocean floor. Indeed, they seemed to take turns doing so, perhaps ruled by social norms or game rules that were beyond BBs current comprehension. She seemed to be the best entertainment in town as their numbers continued to grow over time, despite the fact that she had stopped resupplying her stock of treats and used only the personal reinforcements of attempting to communicate, swimming amongst them and showing them genuine interest and affection to which they seemed to respond very much in kind. “Friend,” “good,” and “happy” were words often translated in the otherwise largely unintelligible cacophony of their chatter and multiplicity of words strung together by a program not yet able to filter out meaningful communication from the always-on din of constant verbal communication coming from everywhere at once.

Within four weeks of the start of her experiment, she felt comfortable enough to move well beyond the programmed “language learning” mode of her system to a genuine attempt to convey meaningful information to her new friends. She found and provided an unending series of visual and verbal information, as much as her exceptional amphibian students would tolerate without loss of interest. She started with short narrated videos that seemed of interest to her attentive charges, and slowly advanced to more challenging material such as narrated documentaries about all aspects of the human condition, from fluffy travelogues to stunning vistas documenting the wonders of the world. No matter what she showed them, they remained attentive, leaving to forage for the plentiful food in the area from time to time, but always returning promptly to their classroom.

Their interest seemed undiminished no matter what she shared with them, so she expanded her round-the-clock projected videos into other areas that might convey useful information, including science and the arts. These too they observed with interest, their numbers increasing daily to a point that she had to move the projection screen closer to the shoreline and raise it so that it could be better viewed by the bobbing, attentive learners that now numbered at least one hundred at any one time from further away.

Eventually, after many weeks of gently introducing her charges into the various aspects of human knowledge, the arts, and history that could be conveyed via narrated film, she slowly, very hesitantly, introduced materials into her Internet-streamed video content that she had at first purposely held back that dealt with the less appealing side of human nature and introduced her attentive charges to the ample evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, to other creatures and to our planet from the inexhaustible video archives. Eventually she showed war documentaries, famine, concentration camps, mass graves, destruction raining in from above and the aftermath in cities such as Berlin and London, horrendous navy battles, nuclear bomb tests and the aftermath of the only use of nuclear weapons to date in anger, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with images of the untenable human suffering of survivors, civilian men, women and children, with horrific radiation burns.

Apparently, the dolphins had finally had enough. Without chattering, without warning, without a second look, they began to swim away as one into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. BB shut off the video and picked up her microphone, calling for them to return. Neither “food,” nor “friendship,” nor “love,” nor any other words of entreaty faithfully translated by her computer from English to Dolphin could stop or deter their hasty retreat. They swam out to see, uncharacteristically below the water line, no dorsal fins visible to mark their retreat, and no happy bobbing or breaching of the calm waters of the gulf was visible. Gone, every last one.

Over the waning days of the summer, BB finished her research and eventually published her findings to critical acclaim and an eventual Nobel Prize. She had accomplished what no other human being had ever done: establishing true, sustained communication with another intelligent species. And the recipient of the information had reacted in a way one might expect of any intelligent species save for our own.

There is now absolutely no doubt as to the ability of humans to speak to dolphins or of dolphins to quickly communicate new information amongst themselves as evidenced by the fact that within a month since the end of one of the most successful field experiments not merely in Marine Biology but in human history, no dolphin has been seen near land or a vessel of any size anywhere on planet earth. And BB knows only too well that none will ever be seen again. Good students these. Fast learners. If only we could see ourselves through their bright eyes.