Leap - 02(15)

The warm salt water enveloped her as she sank below the surface, pulled gently down by her weight belt. Dirk and Sally dipped back down below the surface and swam after her as she descended. They slowly circled her, watching intently as she calmly pressed the small button on her scuba vest and added a touch of air to increase her buoyancy. She kicked her fins slowly to keep herself in place.

Alison peered in at Sally through the glass mask. “Hello, Sally.” Inside her waterproof vest, the miniature computer recorded the sound from her mask and sent it back to IMIS over a wireless connection. Seconds later, she could hear her own greeting through the speaker as a familiar set of clicks.

Sally didn’t response immediately. Instead, she drifted in for a closer look at Alison and her vest. After getting within just inches, she excitedly shot past and around Alison in a tight circle. Hello Alison.

Alison heard her perfectly through the earplugs and grinned. She kicked forward and reached out, running a hand along Sally’s slick body. She then turned to Dirk.

“Hello, Dirk.”

Dirk was equally excited. Alison, you swim and talk.

“Yes. I can swim and talk with you now.” She looked down through the clear wall and waved to Chris. He smiled and waved back.

Dirk spoke again. You make metal for swim and talk.

Alison shrugged. “Lee and Juan made the metal for us to swim and talk.”

They make good, Dirk answered.

They sure did, she thought to herself. She looked up and around the tank, raising her arms and letting her body float in place. She could see the rough, wavy images of Lee and Juan above them, still standing at the edge and staring down into the water. She turned back to Dirk just in time to see him speak and rush below her. We play now.

Alison had just begun to reply when she suddenly felt Dirk’s nose underneath her, lifting and pushing her forward along with him.

“Whoa!” Alison gasped and tried to steady herself against the powerful surge of water. Dirk effortlessly began to circle the tank, but Alison leaned and rolled herself to one side and off his nose. “No, no, Dirk!” She almost chuckled. “I’m not a ball!”

Dirk made a strange sound, which Alison knew well, but never translated. He was laughing.

Very funny, she thought and kicked her legs hard, propelling herself toward Sally, who was watching quietly.

Dirk like play, Sally said, as Alison neared.

“Yes, he does.”

Alison, you like us.

This time Alison did chuckle. “Well, for a little while.” She began to say something else when she heard the familiar buzzer in her ear, signifying that something did not translate correctly. She turned to find Dirk closing his mouth, having just spoken. She realized the camera in her mask had not been facing him.

“Did you say something, Dirk?”

Yes, we like you swim and talk. Dirk floated forward again, this time more slowly, and held out one of his flippers. Alison reached down and gave it a playful tug before he kicked forward with his powerful tail and circled under her.

You come now, Sally said.

Alison knew that was a question. “Not yet, we must test the metal more.” The buzzer went off again in her ears. “We use metal more,” she rephrased.

How more long use metal.

“Just a few more days.”





10





It was a huge success! The new system worked, and it worked well. Lee and Juan huddled around the custom vest, running diagnostics to see if there were any problems. The unit’s processor in the waterproof compartment didn’t have enough power to do faster live translation, but it had no problem offloading that piece to the IMIS supercomputer.

The diagnostics looked clean. No glitches, no wireless drops, no sign of voltage issues or leaks. It was better than they had hoped for. But it didn’t mean those problems wouldn’t happen. They still had a few more days of testing before they could do what everyone was so eagerly waiting for: to take the vest out into the open ocean.



Downstairs, Alison and Chris stood in front of the tank, grinning from ear to ear. It was a marine biologist’s dream come true. To really communicate with another species was incredible enough. Now to be able to do it “out there,” in their native habitat, was a huge leap in oceanography research. They couldn’t imagine what they were going to learn outside of the tank.

They stood in a daze, gleefully watching Dirk and Sally being fed by Kelly up above, when someone spoke up behind them. “Are we too late for the big event?”

Alison recognized the voice immediately and turned breathlessly with a grin that managed to get even wider.

John Clay was standing behind her, along with Steve Caesare. Clay was smiling back at her.

“I thought you were in Brazil?”