Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

  “I told you it would be a bit much,” Vikka said. “We need to start you with something easy. Why don’t I get you that yogurt?”

  “No, I think I’ll wait a bit,” Toby said. “Thank you so much, though.”

  “I’ll take it,” Rider said. “You’re obviously not making me one.”

  Vikka muttered something under her breath, but brought Toby’s leftovers to Rider before returning to sit by Toby.

  “Mele’s hungry,” Toby said. She sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms about her legs. She felt like she was holding herself together, trying to occupy as little space as possible. Mele, in her tank, was trying to do something similar. The young whale had positioned herself so as not to touch any surface of her tank—so she could pretend it was bigger, roomier, freer than it really was. “And scared,” Toby added.

  “She’s an animal and she doesn’t understand what’s happening to her,” Vikka said.

  “I know. I tried to explain that she was moving someplace where there will be plenty of room, a whole ocean. But Mele’s never even seen an ocean. And she doesn’t like being away from her mom and brother. Although she managed to communicate with them while the trucks were stopped.”

  “She communicated with them? How?”

  “She called to them. It was loud enough to be heard in the adjacent trucks. And they called back to her.”

  “That’s very interesting. I’m glad they managed it,” Vikka said.

  “Yeah, it was reassuring. Mele isn’t used to being alone.”

  “It won’t be much longer.”

  “I know. But how do I explain time to Mele?”

  “I don’t know if animals—”

  “It’s not about being an animal,” Toby said, cutting her off. “It’s that she’s young. She’s just a baby. Well, a toddler. Did you know she still likes to suckle milk from her mom?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. How does that work underwater?”

  “Whales have nipples just like humans,” Toby said.

  “But orcas…Mele has no lips.”

  “Her mother shoots a stream of milk directly into Mele’s mouth when she comes around and rubs her mother’s chest,” Toby said. Mele had shown her a memory of how it worked. She would swim over and nudge and prod, and the nipple would pop out. Then Mele would position herself to get a jet of thick, viscous milk. It wasn’t exactly like suckling, but it worked well and Mele liked it a lot.

  “You’ve been plugged into Mele for many hours now. Do you want a little break?” Vikka asked. “I’m sure Cory would like to visit with you.”

  “Cory’s a big girl,” Toby said. “She’ll be fine. But Mele needs me. She’s scared in that dark space all alone. And it tastes bad.”

  “What? The food?”

  “No.” Toby scrunched her face in disgust. “There’s no place to go to the bathroom.”

  “What?” Vikka looked at her in surprise.

  “It’s a small tank,” Toby explained. “And it stinks.”

  Vikka looked at her with horror and sympathy. Apparently the idea of being deprived of a bathroom was even more shocking to her than riding in a truck, in the dark, all alone. “Don’t they change the water?”

  “Not yet,” Toby said. “Mele is holding everything in now, but—well, she didn’t before.”

  “Rider?” Vikka called. “Aren’t there filters and such in the transport trucks?”

  “What?”

  “Filters. You know, to purify the water.”

  “I don’t know,” Rider said. “It’s not like they’re going far. It’s just another sixteen or so hours to go. They’ll be at the SeaWorld by late afternoon tomorrow.”

  “Oh my god,” Vikka exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Toby. Do you think she can hold it for that long?”

  “I don’t know,” Toby whimpered.

  “Well, try to distract her, maybe? And I’ll talk to those people to drive faster. They shouldn’t be taking any more breaks.”

  Toby was getting used to the constant vibration on her skin and she was able to ignore it for the most part, bumps on the road notwithstanding. She decided to share a memory with Mele to keep her mind occupied.

  Toby had gone to the Monterey Aquarium as a little girl and now she brought to mind the experience of walking around the huge glass tank that held the kelp forest exhibit. An ocean was a foreign idea to Mele, but aquariums she understood. Toby imagined little fish darting in and out of the tall dark strands of kelp. She didn’t really remember what kinds of fish lived there, so she just put goldfish in her mental image.

  And Mele seemed interested. Her stomach gurgled as she watched the little orange fish dart in and out of view. Toby could feel the orca following their movements with her inner eye.

  But it was tough for Toby to keep all the details in her mind at once, so she replaced all the little goldfish with one big goldfish. She made it swim between the fronds that undulated in the mostly still waters of the giant tank. Toby could feel Mele’s desire to go after her imaginary fish.

  You’d like to catch her, wouldn’t you? Toby thought-talked to Mele.

  In return, Toby got a sensation of moving fast and grabbing the fish in Mele’s impressively large toothy mouth. Mele had gotten her upper teeth just a few months ago, so biting things was very new and exciting, and the goldfish was big, almost the size of Toby, and looked fun to bite.

  It’s not really that big, thought Toby. It’s more the size of my hand. And she imagined placing the goldfish onto the palm of her hand, covering it almost completely. This size.

  But Mele changed the picture to make the goldfish big again. She showed herself chasing it and eating it. Toby laughed. Good girl, Mele. You got it! Who was she to argue with a whale about size?

  They played like that for a while, getting better and better at visualizing the giant goldfish hiding among the dark green kelp leaves. Toby hid the fish among the different places in their imaginary aquarium and Mele raced around looking for it. Toby learned that, like a raven, orcas had a much better spatial memory than humans. Mele kept pointing out mistakes in Toby’s layout of the mental kelp forest.

  Mele was having fun and felt less lonely and, even when Toby grew tired, the baby orca managed to create a visual image of the place all by herself and imagined herself playing in there. Toby just watched. Mele was very impressive.

  At some point, Toby realized that Mele was thinking of Toby almost as another whale—a sort of a peculiar cross between Spila and some human in a black wetsuit. It was a bizarre effect but, Toby supposed, Mele was just working with what she knew. If Toby ever got in the water with Mele, she would probably be wearing a wetsuit, after all.

  If…

  Toby took a deep drag of oxygen and forced herself not to think that way. She didn’t want to scare Mele with stray thoughts of death.

  “Toby? Toby?” Vikka was gently shaking her shoulder. “Time to get some rest.”

  Toby was very tired, but she didn’t want to leave Mele alone. “How about if I sleep but stay connected?”

  “Would Mele know how to interpret your dreams?” Vikka asked.

  “Oh,” said Toby. “You’re right. That would be bad.” Even good dreams might be confusing to a young whale who’d lived her whole life in a small tank at a marine park. And the bad dreams…. “I’ll disconnect. Let me just say goodbye to her first.”

  Toby zoomed back into Mele. I have to go and sleep, she thought-spoke to her. And then she tried to show Mele how she would curl up in bed and close her eyes. Rest. I just need some rest.

  Mele seemed confused. She was still chasing the giant fish Toby had imagined for her, but the kelp forest now melted away and was replaced by a large swimming pool enclosure: the pool where Mele had spent all of her life.

  Sleep. I need to sleep, Toby thought. And then I will return and we will play again. Okay? She tried to visualize a whale resting, sleeping. Since she didn’t really know what that was like, it came out awkwardly. But after sever
al attempts, Mele seemed to understand. The whale felt a brief spike of panic at the idea of being left alone again in this moving tank, but Toby released melatonin and anti-anxiety chemicals into Mele’s brain and the orca felt sleepy. So that’s how it feels to be a sleepy baby whale. Sleep well, little girl.

  “Okay, you can disconnect me now. Mele is sleeping too,” Toby said to Vikka.

  Vikka didn’t ask how Toby had accomplished that; she just went and cut the BBI connection to Mele. It was almost painful and Toby needed a few minutes to get used to Mele’s absence.

  “Get some sleep, honey. You need it,” Vikka said. She covered Toby up with a thick fluffy blanket.

  Toby was asleep almost instantly.

  Her dreams were a mixture of running away from something and trying to catch a goldfish in the clouds. Toby’s unconscious mind mixed swimming with flying and running down long narrow corridors. At one point, she was worried about suffocating or drowning, she wasn’t sure which. Some army men used BBIs to chase her down to the ocean floor where there were scary sharks until Toby remembered that orcas ate sharks. Then the dream turned to shark hunting.

  Cory was flying above the waves, telling her the location of the next shark and the next. And then Toby wanted to go sit on beach in the sun, but Mele wouldn’t let her. In fact, Mele was keeping Toby prisoner. There was no way out, no air. She was sinking into a dark pit, the surface was way above her. There was no place to get away…

  Toby woke with a start. It was still dark out and Vikka was sleeping. But Kyle sat next to Toby’s bed, monitoring her breathing and well-being.

  “Rough dream?” he asked quietly.

  Toby only nodded. She sucked in the cool oxygen flowing through the plastic tubes. She wished the tubes were twice—no, three times as big.

  “Do you need more air?” Kyle asked. He turned up the pressure a bit. “Better?”

  “Yes,” Toby replied in the same quiet voice, almost a whisper. She knew that the oxygen pressure couldn’t be maintained at this level for long—her nasal cavity and sinuses would dry up and she would get a nosebleed. But, for now, it felt like cool bliss.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Kyle asked.

  Toby had never really had a deep conversation with Kyle. At first he had been too standoffish, too unapproachable—he was a seasoned soldier, after all, and she was just a little girl. But the ravens had bonded them and now Toby found she felt surprisingly comfortable with Kyle. But her strange dream wasn’t what she wanted to talk about.

  “How do you communicate with Grock?” she asked.

  Kyle raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “In your head. How do you speak to Grock? How do you tell him what you want?”

  “We have an understanding, I guess,” Kyle said.

  “But when you want something, how do you explain it to him?” Toby pushed. “Like when you need him to remember a location for you.”

  Kyle leaned back in his chair. “I used to take over Grock completely.”

  “Yeah. But not anymore.”

  “It’s better to have his input. Ravens think about the world differently and that can be a mission asset if managed right. It’s fluid, though. Sometimes I’m fully in control and other times I almost let Grock ride me, if that makes sense.”

  Toby nodded in agreement.

  “I think it happens with trust and intimacy. As Grock and I got to know each other, we could cooperate better. It’s like learning to ride a bike. At first you grip the handlebars as if your life depends on it, but then you’re able to ride without even touching them.”

  “I never learned to ride a bike,” Toby said.

  “Oh, sorry, I just meant—”

  “It’s okay, I get it anyway. And it’s similar for Cory and me. We’re partners now, although I’m the dominant partner in most respects. I’m the dominant problem solver, for instance, but Cory is much better at spatial memory and terrain, so I let her take over in those areas.”

  “I know what you mean,” Kyle said. “Grock can do some pretty amazing things.”

  Grock made a soft “caw” sound in the background, almost like Cory’s call. Kyle turned and smiled at him and his raven basked in the silent praise.

  “But Mele…” Toby said. “With Mele, it’s different. She’s so smart and self-aware, much more than Cory. She’s a person, really. But we don’t have a way to talk to each other. I try to show her things by sharing mental images. Like, I imagined standing on the beach—waves, water, and sky, together with the sensation of ripples on my body. But Mele has never seen open water, so it confused her. So then I imagined a kelp exhibit and some fish.” Toby went on describing the games she and Mele had played.

  “That’s amazing,” Kyle said when she finished. “I couldn’t imagine communicating like that with Grock.”

  “It is amazing, but it’s also exhausting,” Toby said. “I don’t think I can sustain that for more than an hour or two. How am I going to partner with someone who requires so much mental effort?”

  “Ah, now I understand,” Kyle said, nodding. “You’ve got a unique problem.”

  “Yes and I need to solve it ASAP.”

  Kyle thought for a moment, then said: “Have you ever seen any silent movies? What you’re describing sounds a bit like telling a story with just the visuals.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m doing,” Toby said. “How did those work? How did people know what was going on?”

  “Well, there were a few text cards, but just enough to give the barest outline of the story. Mostly, the film communicated through the situations and the emotions of the actors in relation to those situations. It was like a language, a visual language.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” Toby agreed. “But Mele’s experience is so different from mine. If I imagine someone slipping on a banana peel—well, Mele’s never even seen a banana, she doesn’t have feet, and she lives in water. It would mean nothing to her.”

  Kyle thought about this. “I’ve heard dolphins have a good sense of humor. Maybe the emotions—the humor—can bypass all of the unfamiliar details. And if you’re trying to gain Mele’s trust, she’s going to care more about how you feel about her than whether you can communicate your ideas.”

  Toby nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I’m not going to try and dominate her like I did with my other rides. That would be wrong. And even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could ‘break’ her—I can feel that she could just kick me out. Or worse. If I completely suppressed her, I’d die from an inability to control her body under the water.”

  “It’s a problem,” Kyle agreed. “You need Mele to feel good about sharing her existence with you. I don’t mean to sound sappy, but it sounds to me like you need to love each other first.”

  “I do love that little girl,” Toby said.

  “Then Mele’s going to feel that from you. That’s how you’re going to communicate the important stuff with her,” Kyle said. “But I’m afraid I’m out of my depth here. Maybe…can you talk with your dad about it? Or perhaps with Ben and Lilly. They’re the scientists. They might know something that could help.”

  Toby smiled. “They may be the scientists, but I think you might be the only person on earth who really understands.”

  Kyle smiled back. “Still—you should discuss it with your dad.”

  “Will they let me talk to him?” Toby didn’t know exactly who they were, but she knew that they controlled her life. George was part of they and he took orders from them too.

  “We can ask,” Kyle said, “after we get to the new lab. In the meantime, just take it slow. Play the games with Mele. See how she responds and learns. And I’m here to help with suggestions and ideas.”

  “Can you show me some silent movies?” Toby asked.

  “That’s what the internet is for!” Kyle pulled out his phone and did a search. “How about some Charlie Chaplin? Have you seen him?”

  “No.”
/>   “Shame. He was a genius.” He handed her the phone. “Here—these are a few comedy shorts you can watch right now. Later, we can watch a full movie. I think you’ll get the idea fast.”

  Mele? Toby thought-called to the young whale. Ready to play?

  In addition to speaking the words in her head, Toby created clear images to accompany them. First, she visualized Mele as she had seen her through the underwater window back in the marine park. She repeated Mele’s name several times while focusing on that image. The sound combination “Mele,” even spoken entirely in her head, was familiar to the calf; she’d heard it many times by the trainers back in Texas. Toby just needed to cement the link between the name and Mele’s identity of herself. She decided to start with the name and that image every time she connected with Mele.

  There wasn’t any scientific evidence that orcas could pass the mirror test, so Toby wasn’t sure if Mele recognized herself in Toby’s mental image—but it was the best Toby could come up with. She had read that dolphins could pass the test and orcas were really dolphins—the biggest member of the dolphin family. And regardless of whether it worked or didn’t, it would give Toby some insight into Mele’s cognitive abilities.

  Visualizing a goldfish proved to be a good trigger to mean “Would you like to play?” Mele clearly loved the “find the fish” game. Within seconds of Toby visualizing the goldfish, Mele was creating the kelp garden in which to hide it. It was cute and Toby sent approving, positive feelings toward Mele. But Toby couldn’t hide a goldfish in another’s imagination. Not yet and perhaps not ever.

  Why don’t we do something different today? Toby thought. She conjured up a starfish in her mind’s eye. Starfish. She thought the label several times. Then she placed the starfish in the holdfast, a root-like structure that anchored the giant kelp to the ocean floor.