CLICKS - The Dolphin Prophecy

CHAPTER 17

Thoughts flooded my brain as I hugged Mica, tight. Finally, after what felt like months, but was really only seconds, he hugged me back. Tears flowed down my face and into the ocean, like an offering to the gods. It was a drop in the bucket as far as ways to show appreciation went, but it wasn’t something I could help.

“Cami, what the hell is going on here?” he asked, looking around. His sputtering had stopped, and I saw the scene through his eyes: frothing seawater, black of night, a pod of over fifty dolphins making clapping sounds with their mouths.

Before I even got a chance to explain, Mica’s dolphin took over. Though they had never met before, his dolphin beamed a bunch of images into Mica’s brain, explaining everything. Because our twin link was back, I could see everything, too. He showed Mica sleeping, explaining in a way my dolphin hadn’t, how the pod needed to wake him up, and why.

Like all people, Mica’s brain had two hemispheres that worked together. Except, in our case, one side was human and the other one was dolphin.

When the sonar had shattered the cochlea in Mica’s ear, it short-circuited his brain, causing the body to think it was drowning. All internal workings slowed down almost to a stop to help the body stay alive, as long as possible, underwater. This happened all the time to other humans, but the outcome for Mica was different. The magnetic burst of the sonar had shifted the polarity in his brain, making the dolphin side more dominant.

It’s what had kept him alive long enough to get saved, and also what kept all of his organs working while he was in the coma. But, it was disconnected from the rest of his brain. The clear separation of hemispheres was something that others on Pinhold had heard before. It was not just about physical traits, like similar ears or silver eyes;it went deeper than that.

While the Elders hadn’t had the technological imaging available to make the brain visible, they knew how to tune in to their dolphin twins. Dolphin Twins weren’t legends, but truths known to all, even those who weren’t lucky enough to have one believed. It allowed our ancestors to be open to what was happening with them, in a way that our parents hadn’t been able to do.

It was a point of expectation, of hope, of honor; especially these days because, there were fewer dolphins in the water and people often married Mainers, which watered down the DNA. Our ancestors prepared for this. Their dolphin brains connected with their dolphin twins and the two brain hemispheres grew together, naturally, over time.

It’s possible that this would have happened for Mica and me, too. But, the increased magnetic properties in the ocean around our Island had messed with our bodies and our brains. Years of drilling, of sonar, and of fracking, had led to a million tiny tectonic plate-shifts underground.

It was like the difference between bio-sonar and sonar, or natural oil and an oil spill. The magnets underground were natural, useful, and good. But, when the ground cracked and too much of the magnetic forces were exposed, it led the whole world to shift.

Our dolphin brains became dominant, responding to the trauma by slowing down, mimicking dolphin sleep. When dolphins sleep with only one half of their brains at a time, the two sides are linked together and communicate about everything—including waking the resting side from sleep.

Since Mica didn’t have another half of a dolphin brain to do that job, the human side of his brain had no idea that was something it was supposed to do—which is why he and Shay never woke up.

“Dolphin brains? I’ve missed a lot, clearly,” Mica said, assimilating the information and adapting to communicating mentally with the dolphin at an alarming speed.