“Yes. We had a plane fly down from McMurdo. They ran the length and measured 43 miles, most of it on land. The ground team verified the slide depth nearest the camp. It looks pretty consistent from the air. It was strong enough to set off all the seismic instruments on the continent.”
Lokke knew what that meant. Even though the Antarctic was a rather small land mass, all of the earthquake sensors being triggered meant the shift was powerful, very powerful. “Let’s get a large team and some equipment out there right away. We need to get all the measurements and verify with a ground penetrating scan before we communicate this out.”
Haines nodded.
“In the meantime, I’ll start getting people together.”
13
Chris replaced the camcorder’s tape with a new one and handed the old tape to Alison who applied a small label on its back displaying a tiny barcode. She then passed it under an optical scanner which recorded the number and brought up a small field on the computer’s monitor to add notes. She typed a short summary of the exercise they had just completed and hit enter, adding the entry to the database.
“Ready for the next one?” Chris asked.
“Let’s give them a break,” she said looking at Dirk and Sally. She glanced down at her watch. “It’s almost feeding time and I’m sure we’ve got a-”
Food now. Sally’s words came over the speakers.
Alison smiled. She leaned over and typed Yes, food now and clicked the translate button. She turned around and picked up the phone to call the aquarium’s feeding team.
Thank Alison, came the mechanical reply.
Alison suddenly froze. She dropped the phone and turned around to look at the tank. Both Chris and Lee had done the same. After a long silence, they all turned toward each other.
“What did she say?” asked Alison.
Chris leaned past Lee and looked at the monitor screen. “Did Sally just say ALISON?”
Lee scooted forward and studied the screen. “Uh…she sure did.” He raised one of his eyebrows. “How the hell did she do that?” Lee typed several words on his computer and hit the enter key. Another window opened, displaying the transaction log files and hundreds of lines of cryptic text. He identified the last line translated and looked at the attribute signature of the word Alison. He then scrolled down examining the log details for all translations over the last two days. “Aha!” he said triumphantly, but suddenly leaned back in his seat with another thought. “Oh wow!”
“What is it?” Alison pressed.
He did not answer immediately. “Wow that is really something else.”
“What already?!”
“Context. IMIS translated for context.” He almost seemed to be talking to himself. He quickly snapped out of it and looked at Alison and Chris. “You see, the design of IMIS’ artificial intelligence, part of what allows it to learn, is trying to identify context. This is basically the relationship between multiple variables to achieve what it believes to be the best accuracy.”
Chris frowned. “This is starting to sound Greek.”
“Look,” Lee said, starting to get excited. “Let’s say IMIS is trying to figure out the word hello. If it thought it identified the right dolphin sound for hello but that sound was emitted when the dolphins were moving away, the context of that interaction would show that translation to be wrong.”
Alison nodded. “Of course.”
“Obviously that’s an over simplified example. What IMIS just did was apply that context on BOTH sides of the translation. Look at this!” He pointed to the translation logs on the screen. “What Sally said was not Thank Alison, she actually said Thank girl. But IMIS not only identified and translated girl successfully but it also used its context algorithm to recognize that Alison is the only female among us; probably based on her computer account since she has been typing some of the words to Dirk and Sally. Therefore IMIS recognized that the message was meant for the only girl and substituted Alison’s name. Hell it even capitalized her name.”
“Holy cow.”
“Holy cow is right,” Lee replied, “IMIS is even smarter than I thought.” He looked at all the servers on the far wall with their hundreds of blinking lights continually churning through the data. “No wonder it’s making such fast progress.”
The phone rang interrupting them. Alison quickly picked up the receiver. “Ali here.”
“Hi Ali, its Frank. Can you come up to my office please?”
“Uh sure,” she said nodding. “Can it wait twenty minutes? We’re right in the middle-”
“Actually it can’t,” he broke in. “I need you up here right away.”
“Okaaay, I guess I’ll be right up.”
Chris gave a disappointed frown. “What, he can’t wait twenty minutes?”
“Evidently not.”
“What’s up?”
“No idea. He just said he wants to see me.” She let the phone drop back into its cradle. “Check on their lunch, will you?”
“Will do.”
With one last glance at the dolphins, she turned and headed for the stairs. She was in a good mood. They were making excellent progress with the project in the last couple weeks, and as much as she knew Frank liked to grandstand, she was thankful that he agreed not to issue another press release after that initial translation. The attention they got from the morning show alone overwhelmed them with everyone wanting to come see Dirk and Sally. It was great for ticket sales but with a host of people, including the mayor, all coming down for public appearances and photo ops, it slowed their work considerably. Frank enjoyed the attention but the rest of the team was frustrated with the delays and hobnobbing. Okay, that wasn’t totally true, she thought. She was the one frustrated. The other guys enjoyed it too. She had often considered why she avoided attention but never came up with a concrete answer. Maybe it was all the looks in school, the luck of getting her mother’s features and constantly being hit on. Maybe it was her determination in academics and always being singled out by the teachers. She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never really know what started it, but even if she did would it change anything? Probably not. She would always be a bookworm at heart.
Alison reached the top of the stairs a little winded and realized that she really needed to get back to the gym. She walked down the short hallway and gave a polite knock as she opened the door.
“You won’t believe what we just-” she began as she stepped inside but her smile abruptly disappeared. Inside was Frank and two men dressed in shirt and tie. They all stood as she entered.
“Ah here she is,” said Frank coming around his desk. “Alison, I’d like you to meet John Clay and Steve Caesare, they’re with the-”
“Let me guess,” she feigned politeness. “From the government. You’re dressed too nice for the Army. CIA?”
Clay and Caesare were moving toward her with hands extended but stopped abruptly. “Uh, the Navy actually.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “What a surprise.”
The men looked at Frank with a trace of confusion. “Ali,” Frank started. “These men came to talk to us about the project.”
Alison raised her eyebrows sarcastically. “Wow, really?!”
“Uh yes,” Clay said apprehensively. “We were just explaining to Dr. Dubois that we heard about your project and thought we might be able to help in the research with your dolphins.”
“The government is here to help. And what kind of help would that be? Teaching them to attach mines to enemy ships?”