Jenifer K. Leigh brings us a sweet short story called Share Your Flavor, about a world where humans and dolphins were able to use technology to communicate properly:
“Now, in a week you’ll be receiving your Knowledge Link Dolphin Communication Partner, or DCP. In your first conversations with them, you’ll probably want to refer to all you’ve learned in the past year’s intensive study of dolphin history, culture, and ritual. Maybe you want to put them at ease, or maybe you kind of want to show off. I’m telling you not to do that, because you know nothing.”
[…]
“And what I mean by that is,”_ she continued, “you know nothing compared to the dolphin you’re communicating with. Human biologists assumed that dolphins lacked a sense of smell because they lived in the water, but now we know that they can process water in ways similar to land animals using air for scents, and that’s just the most obvious example of something key to dolphin culture that humans got wrong until Knowledge Link was formed.” […]
I'd be surprised if dolphins and humans shared enough of a worldview to be able to communicate this well, but I'd love to be proved wrong. Anyway, for a short story it's a premise I can certainly get behind. Good work.
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