The Whale Song Translation: A Voyage of Discovery To Neptune and Beyond (33 page)

Mark was a handsome boy, inheriting both his mom’s Asian beauty and his long-gone father’s Caucasian features. Mark’s face had a shape-shifting quality. One moment he looked Asian, the next like an intriguing mix of nationalities. Dmitri was mystified, however, by the sides that formed this unlikely triangle of Gorman, Melanie, and her son.

“Okay, Mark, you’re right. We’ll be back in Kihei in a few hours. Chris and I will have a talk later on.” Melanie saw Dmitri’s confused look and said, “I was going to explain things after today’s experiment.”

Before Dmitri could react, Lila stepped forward. “Chris, I want you to know it was all my idea. I practically shamed Dr. Dmitri into agreeing to go along with my scheme. I’ll take all the heat. Fire me if you must, but please don’t press charges.”

Gorman’s tense expression did not appear encouraging. The veins in his neck bulged. “You all had me scared sick, but I’m here to save your butts.” Dmitri felt Gorman’s anger as a sharp pain beneath his sternum. “I had to call the boat’s owner and give him my personal assurance it would be returned safely. And as far as the Maui police are concerned, I didn’t report the incident as a theft.”

“Thank you, Chris.” Dmitri sounded both relieved and contrite. “Don’t blame Lila. This happened under my leadership. Let’s leave now and return the vessel.”

“Not a bad idea.” Gorman’s sullen visage gradually cleared.

“How did you find us?”

“Oh, didn’t you realize? Since this is a licensed commercial passenger vessel, it’s required to have an AIS transponder. I asked the Coast Guard to perform a radio sweep, and there you were. So tell me, any luck so far?”

“I’m sorry to tell you we’ve struck out with the whales.” Dmitri tried not to sound glum.

“Maybe not,” replied Gorman. He pointed to starboard. “Those spouts are only a few hundred yards—”

Two shrieking voices interrupted him—Seema’s and Andrew’s cries from inside. Everyone hastened through the door into the control room and stared, wide-eyed, at the forty-six-inch LCD display. The much anticipated cetacean circular game symbols hovered like halos upon the Speakeasy-formatted display.

“They’re just like the squiggly circular shapes from the recording!” Andrew exulted. “We’ve received two so far. Seema is broadcasting our version of the symbols at random locations on the plot. I’ve erased all of the previous symbols we transmitted except for the one preceding our opponent’s first symbol, so you’re observing a clean board.”

“Did you initiate the data recording system?”

“No sweat, boss,” he replied. “The hydrophone inputs are being logged to a file on the hard drive. We can replay all of the acoustic signals back into our Speakeasy program and reproduce everything. I’m also recording a high-def video of the word grams on the screen. We can replay those too.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Seema. “I’m really nervous! Until now my automatic program has been broadcasting random symbols. Now that I have to respond according to the rules of the game, I’m getting a brain cramp. Can you please help me, Dr. Dmitri?”

Dmitri hastened over to Seema’s workstation. “How about if I point at the location on the screen where I’d like you to image the next symbol as I announce the x,y coordinates for that location?”

“That’ll work.”

“I’ve counted three separate spouts a couple hundred feet away and getting closer.” Tony addressed them from above through the ship’s PA system.

“I can’t believe it,” said Lila. “It’s like a dream come true.”

“We owe you big time, Lila,” said Dmitri. “I’ll bet your feeding vocalization CD was responsible for this.”

Everyone gasped when the next cetacean game symbol appeared on the screen. “If this is what we think it is, then we’re the first to see these as they were intended to be understood,” said Gorman. “This could be an historic moment. I have to admit I’m both elated and terrified.”

“Okay, okay.” Dmitri tried to steady himself. “Andrew, be certain you’ve disabled the auto-refresh mode. We don’t want anything erased.” He touched the display. “Seema, the next symbol to broadcast is here at coordinates 171 dash 322.”

Seema keyed-in the coordinates, and an X appeared on the screen at the precise location where Dmitri had tapped his finger.

“Way to go, Seema.” Greg’s chortle seemed to relax her. “You’ve just successfully demonstrated the world’s first cetacean game symbol synthesizer.”

Mark walked up to Seema’s workstation. “Mom, what’s happening?”

“Dr. Dmitri and his team are playing a game with the humpback whales,” replied Melanie. “We think they’re playing Dots and Boxes.”

“How is that possible?” Mark asked.

Dmitri traced a straight line across the display with his index finger. “When humans play, the game board starts with an empty grid of dots. Then we draw lines to connect the dots and to form the boxes, right? But in the whale’s version of the game, they don’t draw any lines.” He pointed to the circular shapes. “Do you remember our chat at your mom’s house, when I told you how both humans and whales use their voices to draw shapes?” The boy nodded. “So the whales use their voices to draw these circular shapes onto this game board of sound. The shapes represent the corners of the boxes. A rectangular pattern of four circular squiggles forms one box.”

“That’s awesome!” the boy yelled. “Can I play?”

Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. “Sure, Mark,” he replied. “Come over here and stand next to me.” As Mark joined him, it didn’t escape Dmitri’s attention that Melanie sent an appreciative glance in his direction. “Andrew, increase the volume on the public address system.”

Dmitri was in control, guiding the flow of the experiment like a director on a high-tech movie set. Now, in addition to visualizing the symbols, they could all clearly hear the familiar sound of the whale vocalizations associated with each symbol. They didn’t have to wait long to hear the next brief cetacean utterance, like a seal’s bark, as the next O symbol was painted on the screen by the mind of the humpback—human versus whale—X versus O.

“Okay,” uttered Dmitri, like a command. “Let’s transmit the randomized data for a few more rounds and then decide who’s going to be first to commit to a strategy.”

“This is unbelievable,” said Seema. “We’re the first humans to interact with another species in a high-level, abstract communication.”

“Let me remind you,” said Greg, “that nothing is proved until Joel Spelvin’s correlation coefficients begin to converge to determinacy. These random opening moves aren’t definitive.”

The graphical update of Spelvin’s numbers appeared on the Speakeasy screen just below the plot of the symbols. Both of the correlation plots were still flat lines.

“Lila, come over here,” said Melanie, waving from the glass-bottom viewing area at the front of the cabin. “One of the whales just cruised by.”

Dmitri turned and saw Melanie ensconced on an upholstered bench. Leaning over a raised, thirty-inch-high, wooden safety barrier, she stared down into the recessed, rectangular well area for underwater viewing.

“Wait a sec, Mel.” Lila turned to Chris. “As scintillating as this is,” Lila pointed up at the display, “I’m crazy curious to observe the body language of our opponents. By the way, Chris, a penny for your thoughts?”

“Truthfully, I didn’t come out here just to chew you out. I came to pay my respects and to thank all of you for acting so courageously. When I’d realized you’d all taken such a huge risk for the sake of the humpbacks, I decided to join you.”

“God,” uttered Lila. “What a relief. In my heart, I believed you’d react like this, but I couldn’t know for certain.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this for the whole world,” replied Gorman. “Thanks again, Lila, for making the decision for me. PICES is indebted to you.”

“Only PICES?” interrupted Melanie. Dmitri detected a hint of annoyance in her voice. “How about the entire cetacean research community?”

“Thanks, Mel.” Lila joined her friend, up front, on the bench.

As the game unfolded, the fist of tension that gripped the room squeezed even tighter. After four additional rounds of symbols, the results were still indeterminate. Now is the time to strike, thought Dmitri. This was the moment to test all of their hypotheses and hopes. Mathematics and the scientific method would determine if humanity was a lonely star in a galaxy of organisms or one of many suns in the constellation of sapient beings.

“It’s your move, Dmitri,” said Greg.

Dmitri paused as his thoughts shifted. He was overcome by a surge of emotion, a sudden longing for his parents. They had infused him with their life force and the life-long gift of their love and support. They’d scrimped and sacrificed so he and his brother could fulfill their academic potential. He thought of the many years of study and training, the lathe that had shaped and prepared him for this pivotal moment. His mentor had kindled the fuse of his inspiration. Greg’s steady voice now reminded him he was surrounded by colleagues and friends. They were more than just a team. They were a family of scientists, bonded together by a sense of wonder and the passion to penetrate nature’s mysteries, which waited behind doors of discovery.

“Time’s a-wastin’,” said Greg. “If our opponents are as smart as I think they are, they’re probably growing impatient.”

“Okay, Seema, let’s take the plunge,” Dmitri mumbled, tongue-tied by cotton mouth. He lubricated his vocal tract with a swig of bottled water. “This is it. Let’s try to complete the third corner of a box and see if he blocks.” He grabbed Mark’s hand and placed it on the display. “Put the next symbol here, where Mark is pointing, at coordinates 102 dash 182 and hold your breath.”

Seema entered the keystrokes and the X symbol appeared at the precise location beneath the boy’s index finger.

“Cool,” exclaimed Mark.

Dmitri heard the fleeting synthesized tones corresponding to the tone-pair frequencies. As he imagined them racing through the water like a magic communications bullet, the wait was agonizing, the silence overwhelming. When the whale’s next symbol appeared on the screen at the same time as the creature’s grunt spilled out of the speakers, Dmitri heard groans instead of climactic cheers from the audience. Instead of blocking, the latest game symbol had materialized adjacent to the whale’s previously transmitted symbol.

From across the room, Melanie’s and Lila’s ardent cries startled Dmitri. “Two of your opponents just swam beneath us!” exclaimed Melanie.

Dmitri stared at her and then turned to Greg. “Why hasn’t our challenger taken the bait?”

Greg didn’t answer. He looked perplexed, his eyes shifting frenetically as he studied the Speakeasy screen. “No, wait. Look here!” he exclaimed, his face brightening. He pointed at the latest numbers corresponding to Spelvin’s correlation coefficients. One of the two flat lines had sprung to life.

“What is it?” asked Seema.

“Look at the second correlation coefficient. It’s now trending upward since it’s correlated to the location of the previous cetacean symbol.” Greg’s finger traced the telltale curve on the Speakeasy display. “If he’d attempted to block us, we’d instead see the first correlation coefficient trending upwards, corresponding to the location of our
previous symbol. There’s evidence of an independently developing strategy.”

“Ok.” With an anxious hand, Dmitri wiped the sweat from his brow. “For now, let’s just complete our first box and see what the response is. We were assuming a somewhat predictive level of gamesmanship. Maybe the whales are more sophisticated than we thought.”

When Seema transmitted the next symbol, the scoreboard tally of human-completed boxes incremented from “zero” to “one” on the big display.

“Last year I went to Vegas to play that MIT professor’s system for counting cards at blackjack,” said Andrew. “During breaks, I hung out at the high-roller table for the rush of watching thousands wagered per hand. This match, though, is more awesome than any high-stakes card game.”

“Yes!” cried Greg, pumping both fists. The next cetacean symbol extended the chain of dots on the whales’ side of the board. “This is what you’d expect for a non-beginner strategy. They’re building their own chain of boxes instead of blocking ours.”

“You’re right,” said Dmitri, peering at the display. “Look at Spelvin’s numbers. The value of the second correlation coefficient keeps going higher.”

Greg leapt from his chair. “I think we might have achieved first contact.” With cheers and backslaps, the SoCalSci teammates celebrated.

Lila and Melanie rushed over. “What happened?” asked Melanie.

“A two-player game seems to be happening, that’s what.” Dmitri hugged her.

They watched with fascination as two sentient minds dueled across the interspecies divide. From opposite ends of the virtual game board, the two chains of symbols filled the plot, each gradually converging toward the center. The endgame strategy, to complete the many potential boxes, would soon commence. Although the score was still “one to nothing” in favor of Homo sapiens, the Megapteran strategy had given them an opportunity to complete a short chain of boxes.

“I can’t believe it, Greg,” said Dmitri. “This interaction satisfies the Turing test in a way that Turing never imagined.”

“What’s the Turing test?” asked Melanie.

“Alan Turing,” replied Greg, “was the British mathematical genius who decrypted the German ciphers for the Enigma code machine during World War II. After the war, he published a famous paper that considered whether or not machines like computers could think. Since the concept of thinking was difficult to define, he proposed a test of a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligence. The setup is a human judge who engages in a conversation with both a human and a machine where all three participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge can’t tell the difference between the machine and the human, then the machine passes the test. In order to rule out the variability of spoken language, Turing’s conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and display.”