She glanced up at the sound of a soft knock on the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened just far enough to allow Lee Kenwood’s young and somewhat handsome face to peek in.
“Oh good, you’re still here. I saw your light on and thought I’d check.”
DeeAnn grinned. “Yep. Still here. Unfortunately.”
“You got a sec?”
“Sure.”
With that, Lee pushed the door open and stepped inside. He was holding the latest vest he and Juan had just built. “Good news, the new vest is ready.”
DeeAnn stood up, grabbing one side of it. “Lee! You’re not supposed to be lifting anything heavy.”
“It’s okay,” he shrugged. “They’re feeling a lot better.”
DeeAnn gave him a dubious frown. “Ribs don’t heal that fast.” Together they sat it down onto the other half of her desk. She ran her fingers over the dark nylon and the two large Velcro pockets that wrapped around the waist. “I’m sorry I broke the last one.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Besides, it gave us a chance to tweak a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing major. Just some slight improvements. More padding around the motherboard.” He tapped a portion lightly to show her. “And we also removed some of the material on the back, which should improve the airflow a little.”
“Music to my ears.” DeeAnn stood the contraption on end and turned it around. The vest was amazing technologically, but from a non-geek standpoint it was a burden to wear in hot weather. The humidity in Puerto Rico was already more than she was used to, but it had been almost suffocating in Brazil. “It feels lighter,” she observed.
“The old one had heavier batteries.”
The original vest had been a big step forward. Being allowed to remain in the habitat and still have it transmit back and forth to IMIS was huge. But when Lee and Juan made better versions and included a camera, it was a game changer.
“Thank you, Lee. I really appreciate it.”
DeeAnn laid the vest back down and noticed he hadn’t said anything. She looked back up to find him silently staring down at the vest.
“Something on your mind?”
After a moment, he looked back at her. “Do you have time to talk about something?”
She folded her arms in front of herself. “Of course. Is this about that problem with the logs?”
Lee nodded. “We were talking to Chris about it earlier today and I had a thought. Something I wanted to ask you about.”
“Okay.”
“So, we’ve talked about the whole communication problem with the speaker.”
“The nonverbal problem.”
“Right. The system doesn’t have the ability to translate nonverbal communication back through the speaker. At least it shouldn’t. So instead of trying to troubleshoot that, it occurred to me that maybe there’s a different answer. Something that we’re not considering.”
“Like what?”
“Well, initially I thought the log problem existed because IMIS wasn’t translating correctly. I’m a believer in the fallibility of computers, so I assumed it was a fault somewhere. But it was translating correctly, and it took me a long time to understand it.” He blinked, thinking as he spoke. “What I’m wondering now is whether I’ve made the wrong assumption again.”
“About the speaker?”
“Yes. I’ve been trying to figure out what happens to the nonverbal cues when they reach the speaker. The one thing I’ve learned is that language is really kind of… intangible. And today it suddenly hit me. What if I’m looking for the wrong thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, assuming this is all still measurable somehow, it would mean that we’re missing something. Maybe our idea of nonverbal is not correct. Maybe incomplete.” Lee took a breath. “What if IMIS isn’t missing anything… and we are?”
DeeAnn peered at him curiously. “I get the impression you have a question coming.”
“Yes, I do.” He grinned again. “You said yourself that primates, particularly gorillas, are very nonverbal communicators. But to us that usually means physical movement of some kind. But what if we’re wrong? What if the nonverbal stuff only explains part of the missing exchange? What if there is still more verbal communication taking place that we’re not hearing?”
DeeAnn was fascinated. She remained still, staring at him over the desk. “You’re talking about frequencies.”
Lee nodded.
“So, you want to know if gorillas can hear frequencies that we can’t.”
“Correct.”
“Something tells me you’ve already done some research.”
“A little.”
DeeAnn smiled broadly. She was really going to miss these talks with Lee. “Then you probably know the jury is still out. A lot of the older research suggests that gorillas and humans share the same audio frequencies But after the gorilla genome was successfully mapped, it revealed differences in the genes tied to hearing, and therefore to communication.”
“So the answer is yes?”
She shook her head. “Not necessarily. But it’s widely accepted that humans and gorillas have very different aural environments… so the answer isn’t no, but it also isn’t yes.”
“So nobody knows.”
“Nobody knows.”
“So then… what is your opinion?”
“My opinion?” She frowned, considering the question. “Is it possible they can hear things we can’t? Of course. A lot of animals can do that. Are gorillas doing it? I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It could explain a lot. Like how IMIS is able to communicate so well with Dulce through just a speaker.”
DeeAnn glanced down at the vest, her arms still folded in front of her. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
The programming took almost eleven hours to write and test, leaving Lee precious few hours to rest. It didn’t matter. He was too excited to sleep. IMIS was hiding a secret and he was determined to find out what it was.
The problem was that IMIS wasn’t programmed to process communication beyond the frequencies of human hearing. However, IMIS was programmed to learn artificially; so if it was processing other frequencies, it was doing so by a mandate other than the one laid out in the original computer code.
This also meant that all of the analytical tools were set between twenty hertz to twenty thousand hertz, the range of human hearing. The dolphin language was similar, except at a very high end where their echolocation was used. What Lee had spent the night programming was a new instruction set for IMIS, instructing it to include a wider range of speech frequencies in its analytics. If there was something there, IMIS was now instructed to show it.
DeeAnn was back early in the morning, at a little past six a.m. She returned with two tall cups of coffee and a bag of donuts, which she wouldn’t touch but Lee loved.
He thanked her and bit into one. “I think we should be ready soon.”
“Good. Dulce should be up pretty soon.” She lowered the cardboard carrier down next to Lee and withdrew one of the cups. Behind them, Juan burst into the room, causing DeeAnn to jump and nearly spill her coffee.
“What did I miss?!”
“Geez, Juan!” DeeAnn checked her shirt for any dark spots. “Some of us are a little on edge here!”
“Sorry.”
Lee grinned behind his own cup. He set it down and returned to his keyboard. “Not too much yet. I’m still compiling. Did you bring it?”
“Yep.” Juan reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a long silver tube.
“What is that?”
“A dog whistle.”