My week as a mermaid continues: My young human friend and I surfaced and sat on a rock, where we could talk without having to use her underwater message pad. I was hoping she might start making sense now, but Valerie's strange stories were growing progressively stranger: Reagan and Kennedy on Mount Rushmore... A transsexual woman giving birth... Peace in Iraq but a war in Antarctica...

I might have decided that she just had a wild imagination, except she also had all this impossible hardware---like the artificial gill she'd been breathing underwater with---which had me wondering if I'd somehow wandered into an alternate universe. Given the kind of week I'd been having this didn't seem like such a crazy notion, but these mysteries had a different explanation that I would eventually discover. It was just a matter of time...

OFF THE DEEP END ~ CHAPTER 8
THE LITTLE HUMAN Part 2:
Girl Out Of Time
Laika Pupkino ~ 2016

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THURSDAY AUGUST 28, 2014- 15 Minutes Later...
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It was a judgment call, one that flew in the face of everything you're supposed to do when there were land people around, but I was convinced I had done the right thing making friends with the little human Valerie.

I sat on a large sponge, who was quite happy about being used for a chair. He was yacking away, telling me stories about his spongy life, which consists of sitting there waiting for food to drift into his big uncloseable mouth-hole thing. Prior to getting sat on by a real-live mermaid princess the highlight of his life had been when a delicious triangular object had fallen into him, which from his description sounded like a very soggy Cool Ranch Dorito. He couldn't tell me how long ago this happened, having no concept of time, but the sponge seem perfectly content with his immobile and monotonous existence. Maybe you need a nervous system to worry about stuff or wish there was more to life.

I half-listened as I waited for my friend to return from her parents' boat, thinking about the bizarre conversation I'd been having with her; Valerie typing on her little texter machine and telling me about the craziest, most impossible things as if they were normal everyday stuff. And the weirdest part of it was that she didn't seem crazy, but like just a normal ten year old girl. Something seriously did not compute here...
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)))========> THE HARLEQUIN MERMAID
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When Valerie came back she was a mermaid. She still had the compact 'air extractor' machine on her back with its tube leading to her mouth, and her little stick-on goggles, but she was out of her wetsuit and was wearing a mermaid tail that seemed a bit large for a kid her size, a little longer and slightly fatter than my own tail. And it would seem that whoever designed her prosthesis wasn't going for any kind of realism...

Most humans have never actually met a mermaid, and I've seen pictures of us that gave us everything from webbed fingers to neck gills to cute little pectoral fins for ears. So a 100% realistic artificial mermaid tail might be a bit much to expect. But the myths about us generally agree that our top half looks pretty much like a human and our bottom half looks more or less like a fish. Valerie's tail had the right shape, but beyond that it didn't even try to look fish-like. It was a rubber thing, as pink as wet bubble gum, with crisscrossing lines of shiny gold giving it a pattern that sort of gave you the idea of scales all over it, but not really. And in the center of each of these business card-sized diamond shapes were fake gemstones as big as pennies---red for rubies, clear for diamonds, blue for sapphires---which weren't trying very hard to look like the real thing either. The wide fin at the tail's bottom was some plastic-y soft turquoise substance; pretty with how the light shone through it and caught the flecks of gold glitter embedded in it, but this too looked more like part of some toy than a living organism.

She had on a pink bikini top, which on her scrawny kid's body wasn't really something functional. She was carrying Anemone's lime green plastic backpack. After our scary dive off that island we'd both forgotten all about it, and must have left it up at the top of that cliff. Valerie gestured with it- Is this is yours?!?

“Thank you! My sister is probably looking all over for this right now,” I said as I took it from her. The only things in it were Anemone's toy telescope and the can of anchovies she'd been saving for just before we started our long wriggle back down the jungle trail to the island's cove, to replenish our much-needed salt. The spyglass was good to get back, and the anchovies, because any kind of human-made food is ridiculously expensive down in our world; but I'd been hoping to find my red shirt so I could put it on and send these starfish that had volunteered to be my temporary brassier on their way. I asked, “I don't suppose there was a couple of shirts and bras in here?”

Valerie mimed slapping herself on the forehead, and typed on the yellow plastic message device: Sorry!!! Their in our washrdryer

“You washed them?”

MOM did. 'In case we meet thos GIRLS' . . .

“She thinks we were human girls?”

said u MUST be, she wrote, But Daddy still thinx U R CREATURS

“Creatures who wear bras?”

Creaturs who collct human stuff/dont know wht it is. B-cuz of yr TRACKS, she wrote, meaning the wavy dents my sister and I had left on the island's beach, which had been what first got them interested in us. Then she typed: +++B-cuz of how u HID from us ///// Hay cn we put ths textr in UR pack til I hav2goback? This tail dosnt hav a hipclip 4 it

“Sure. Anything you want to keep in here.”

She asked me: U feel like swimming?

“I sure do. That's kind of why I came out here this morning.”

BONE! How bout a race?

I didn't see how she would be any match for me but I nodded, “All right Chica, let's see what you got!”

She handed me the texter and I slipped it into the backpack. I pointed at some vague shapes towering up to the surface way off in the water, which I could just barely see and hopefully her human eyes could too, “So let's say we race around that stand of red kelp way out there and then back to here, to this backpack here?”

She gave me a thumbs-up.

I found a good spot in the sand and set the pack down there. Nothing was going to swim off with it, and the electric green bag would make a highly visible marker. When I looked up Valerie was streaking toward the kelp-trees.

“You little brat!” I laughed, and took off after her.

I caught up with her before she was a fraction of the way there, but I was surprised that I actually had to exert myself to do it. She was faster than it seemed any human swimmer could be, especially one who swam by wagging a rubber tail up and down.

And she kept up this pace all the way around the kelp and back as I swam alongside her, grinning at me through the cloud of bubbles her heavy breathing generated. She was incredible!

But as fast as she was this race had never actually been a contest. I didn't insult her by letting her win but shot ahead in the last little stretch to show her what my own top speed was like. She came in 45 seconds later, shaking her head.

She slapped one palm down on the other and shot the top hand forward to say: 'Wow you took off like a shot!'

“I know,” I said, “But I'm half fish. The speeds you kept up were a lot more amazing. I'll bet you just smashed a world record or two! You'll definitely be able to make the Olympics team when you're old enough.”

She shook her head no, and seemed to be laughing.

“No, I mean it. That was incredible!”

Valerie dropped down and fished her pad out of Anemone's backpack. Wrote: Fraid not! I HOLY cheated . . . LOLOLOL!!!

“But I didn't see you take any shortcuts or- OH!”

She had pushed one of the jewels on her tail and pulled a big section of its rubbery skin open on hinges, like some android in a movie opening his chest to show the circuitry and clockwork inside. Only inside of my merm-oid friend there were gears, cams, rocker arms, rods and motors around a padded harness thing that held a tanned pair of kid-size legs. She snapped it shut, laughing with her eyes.

“That's quite a contraption! Where do you buy something like that?”

@SEASPORTS.ult she wrote, and was starting to write something else when she glanced up and saw something behind me that made her grin with delight around her mouthpiece.

As I turned to look I heard a scornful voice: “Well isn't this the convivial little tete-a-tete?”
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)))========> DOLPHIN'S RULE!!!
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I turned, “Oh. Hi Jasper.”

“I suppose you realize that's not a real mermaid you're talking to,” said the dolphin.

I considered arguing 'Who's to say who's a real mermaid?!', but knew I wouldn't get very far in a philosophical debate with Jasper. I held up my palms. “I know, I know... And I really was trying to hide from her. I got down behind something and waited but- Well this just sort of happened.”

“Mmmmm,” he hummed flatly, “Things do have a way of 'just happening' to you.”

“But they do,” I protested. “Or at least recently. So what's up?”

“What's 'up' is I came to warn you there were human divers in the area. But I see you've discovered that. I won't lecture you about whatever this is you think you're doing here; I wouldn't even know where to start. This.... this is unprecedented,” he said with that robot calmness that meant he was totally upset.

“She was right there in front of me! What was I supposed to do?”

“Not this.”

“But running away just would've made it worse! Her dad would be searching the whole Hatteras Rise to find 'that mermaid she saw'. But now that Valerie's met me she promised me that she won't tell her parents about mermaids. She pinkie swore!”

“Now why don't I find that very reassuring?”

“Because you haven't met her, Jasper. She understood the need for secrecy even before I told her. She has some very strong opinions about the dangers humans can pose to beings like us.”

“She does?” he asked, turning his head away from her to get a good look at her with his right eye.

Valerie looked like a bobblehead the way she was nodding her head yes. She made the sign of the closing zipper in front of her mouthpiece and then crossed her heart.

“You see?” I asked.

“Mmmmmm,” Jasper went again, but it sounded like he was considering it.

“You're not gonna tell Mom about this, are you?”

“If you mean am I going to rush off to her Majesty this instant, shouting 'Mama! Mama! Guess what? Enee's talkin' to a huuuuu-man!!!'?; the answer is no,” Jasper stated. His imitation of some snotty kid brother would have been funny at any other time. “I'm not a member of your family, and I'm not an employee of the Queen. I'm a diplomat. But if you mean would I lie about this if she asks me directly, and possibly damage the relationship between the Nine Queendoms and the Sodality of Cetaceans... then I'm afraid not. I would have to abandon you to your mother's mercies, and say a prayer to Saint Jude for you, that she's not in a banishing mood.”

“I wouldn't expect you to lie for me,” I said, “You've covered for me and Anee plenty already.”

“Yes, well I do what I can to-”

He paused, angling his head away and peering at me for several seconds before saying, “Question: Why do you have star fish on your breasts?”

I looked down. My little bra cup guys were snoring faintly. “I did this for Valerie. It's a human modesty thing.”

“Oh yes, that. They don't seem very comfortable in their bodies, do they?”

Valerie held out her pad toward him. In big block letters were the words: HI JASPERE! DOLPHIN'S RULE!!!!!!

“What does that mean?" he asked me, “What dolphin's rule? Except for the few I've given myself dolphins don't have rules.”

“She's saying dolphins 'rule'. It means she admires you.”

“Oh!” he said, and I think he grew a little bigger. “Well maybe you got lucky with this one. But you never know what a 'harmless' encounter with some human will turn into, so don't go making a habit of this!”

“Believe me, I won't! Thanks Jasper.”

“Hi yourself,” he said to the human girl with nod of his head before swimming off.

Wht did he say 2 me??, Valerie wanted to know.

“What could you hear?” I asked. I still didn't understand all this telepathy or whatever it was.

I heared U talkng. Jasper just made noises . . . RU in troubl?

“No. I think you won him over. And he said: 'Hi yourself'.”

This sent her over the moon:
SQUEEEEEEE!!!! I TALKD 2 A DOLPHIN! BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!

EVER!!!!!!
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)))========> MERMAID'S ROCK!!!
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Since my little pal had got such a kick out of meeting Jasper I took her all around the coral beds, introducing her to all the different animals that lived here. I invoked my royal authority, telling them she was my “official guest”, and that it would mean a lot to her if they would greet her, using whatever claws or tentacles or starfish arms they possessed to shake hands with her. A crab told me to go screw myself but all the others were happy to do this even if they didn't understand the custom. She was even able to talk to them, asking questions on her texter with me translating both ways, which absolutely delighted Valerie!

But most of these animals weren't terribly interesting to talk to---with their tiny brains they tend to state the obvious like it's something profound---and after meeting about ten of them I could tell that the novelty of this was wearing thin for her.

“So what do you want to do now?” I asked.

I got my tail on . . . Lts SWIM!!
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And so we did. Not racing, and with no destination in mind, just swimming for the sheer joy of zipping and zooming through the water in tandem, spiraling around each other and doing different sorts of aquabatics that either I made up on the spot or that Valerie had learned in her mermaid class. I couldn't take her over the rooftops of our town to show her the 'Supergirl effect' but we did buzz the seabed, swimming as low as we could as fast as we could---which makes you feel like you're an F-16 or something---making the crabs scatter and the slow-witted sea hares look up and drawl, “What th' heck wuzzat?!!?”

Up near the surface I attempted to teach her how to leap out of the water like a porpoise. She tried and tried, but never managed it.

As we treaded water side by side under the warm August sun she pulled out her mouthpiece and said, “I didn't think I would be able to jump like you.”

“And I don't get that. You seemed to be doing everything right...”

Valerie's voice kind of surprised me. It wasn't the really high one I'd been imagining whenever she texted me---the sort of voice I'd just associated with little girls who love pink---but was actually kind of low, hoarse and froggy. She would never be a famous singer---unless screaming 1960's blues-rock makes a comeback someday---but her voice was adorable in its own way.

She shook her head, “It's this little motor in this tail. It's good enough for swimming but you need a professional model to catch air like those mermaids at Neptune's Kingdom. Yow, can they jump!”

“Neptune's Kingdom?”

“In Las Vegas.”

“I've never been to Vegas,” I said, “And I guess I never will now. Not that it was ever super high on my list.”

“That's too bad, 'cause Neptune's Kingdom is sooooo bone! We stayed there last Christmas. They got six big water slides, and Captain Nemo's Lagoon, and when you're in the casino there's all these fish and mermaids and big old orcas swimming around, but those are just holograms. Daddy hated the DEEPTOWN FISHEROO REVUE! He said 'I'll never get that dumb song out of my head now!'; but it was just gi-larious, because-” she stopped. “Hey, what's that seagull sitting on?”

I looked where she was pointing, the gull perched there about the length of a high school swimming pool away.

Had we really swam this far? Obviously, because there it was. But I was surprised we hadn't noticed the base of it when we were underwater. It's a pretty unmistakable formation.

“That's our ship-watching rock. My sister and I sit up there sometimes. Do you want to see it?”

“I have to see it!” she insisted.

“It's just a rock.”

“But it's a mermaid rock!” she said, and after engaging her mechanical tail started dogpaddling toward it.

“Slow down! It's not going anywhere,” I said, and then realized this wasn't true. The tide was coming in. But we still we had enough time to hang out and talk for a while without having to do it through a keypad and screen. I swam on ahead of her and dolphin-leaped up onto the rock's flat surface, sending the seagull flapping off indignantly muttering something that sounded like "Tinsel-head bimbo mermaid thinks she owns th' whole damn ocean!"

As Valerie paddled up I told her this would be easier if she took her tail off and handed it to me. I thought she might object to having to go back to being a mere human, but she seemed glad to get out of that confining tail. She pushed in a couple of the jewels on it, slid out of it and tried to lift it up to me. I lay flat on the edge of the rock and reached down, “Just push it over here.”

She did. "I'm surprised your rock isn't all covered in barnacles."

"That is kind of weird," I said, noticing the total absence of the nasty sharp little creatures for the first time.

I pulled the tail and then her little air machine up onto the rock. Then she grabbed my hand and I helped her climb up. The girl weighed about as much as her tail did. She said, “You're strong!”

“Your arms get stronger when you have to use them to do everything,” I said, “Anyway, welcome to our little perch. My sister and I love coming here.”

“I wish I could meet her,” Valerie said. She sat hugging her knees, just a barefoot kid in a 2-piece swimsuit now.

“You'd like Anemone,” I said, and wished she were here too. Anee had a great rapport with kids; and if she was this would be sort of like one of our baby sitting jobs, although those village kids were a lot younger and needed constant supervision.

“So where is your sister?” she asked.

“Probably back at the castle. She said she was just going to hang around and take it easy today.”

“You live in a castle?”

“A great big one.”

“Do all mermaids live in castles?”

“No just us. Our mom's the Queen.”

“So you're a princess?!”

“Yep.”

“You're princesses and you live in a castle.... Bone!” she rasped. She seemed as impressed with this as with me being a mermaid. "We just live in a condo. Although it's a pretty huge condo, one of the biggest ones in the Arcosphere."

"Arcosphere?"

"The Boston Arcosphere. Biggest one in America, or since we lost the Dallas one when Texit happened."

"Oh right," I said---like I knew what all that meant---as I watched her put her finger against the lens of one of her little stick-on goggles. It fell off into her hand. Then she did the other one.

“How the heck do those stay on your face?”

“It's that thing my dad invented. A way of getting things that don't normally stick to stick to each other. Something about fooling the atoms so they think they're part of the other thing. So what's it like being a princess?”

I would rather have been talking about how her goggle things worked---her 'fooling the atoms' explanation hadn't really made sense---but I said,“It's a lot more laid back than I would have thought. If we were human we'd probably need bodyguards and have paparazzi following us around everywhere trying to take our picture. But for us it's more like if you were the richest kid in town and your Mom was also the mayor. Except I'm getting all this respect and humbleness from people for nothing I actually did, so it's weird. I kind of wish Mom really was just the mayor.”

“I wouldn't wish that,” she said, “'Cause then I wouldn't be a princess!”

At ten years old I probably would have said the same thing. And at six I was was fairly convinced I was a princess; But that was just jumbled fantasies about wearing pretty clothes, having magical powers and being allowed to eat pizza and ice cream for breakfast if I wanted. Or pizza-flavored ice cream, which I was convinced was a fine idea...
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)))=========> THE MERMAID PLEDGE
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The two of us and her equipment took up maybe a third of the rock's flat surface. “So where do you guys usually sit on here?” she asked, like she would sit right there if there was such a spot.

“Nowhere in particular. It's all pretty much the same. I guess wherever there isn't bird poop. But luckily it gets washed off twice a day. Which reminds me, we only have about an hour or so before the tide rises and covers this rock.”

She shrugged resignedly, “My peepers will probably call me back to the Eureka by then anyway.”

The white yacht was a tiny thing way off toward the horizon. A good safe distance from us. “That sure is a nice boat you have. So you and your folks are vacationing on it?”

“Just until March; Then it's back to Boston and school and everything.”

I counted forward from late August. “That's a pretty long time.”

“Not long enough. We're just wintering down here.”

“Wintering? You do realize it's summer here, don't you?”

“I know,” she smiled, “It's always like summer down here!”

All these clues and I still wasn't getting it...

Neither of us said anything for a while. With her fingernail she was scraping a last fleck of pink nail polish---from last week or whenever---off the nail of her big toe, and singing something under her breath: “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue... I'm a fish, you're a fish, they're a fish too... So let's all go to Deeptown for the Fisheroo Review... With a hey nonny nonny and a boop boop be do... Oh yes we're fish fish fish fish fish fish fish! Don't you wish wish wish wish wish wish wish-”

If this was the song that her father had got stuck in his head I really felt sorry for the man. I was getting kind of hungry, and thought about catching a couple of fish for us, biting their heads off and gutting them with my thumbnail; but I didn't suppose this would be Valerie's idea of lunch.

She had stopped singing and was looking around at the sea and sky, just grinning at everything. She inhaled the fresh sea air through her nostrils, breathing deep, then let out a wild joyous scream.

“Happy?”

“Monsterly! Today is like the perfect day! Wait 'til Wendy hears about this!”

“You're not supposed to tell anyone about me. Remember?”

“Oh that's right! And I won't,” she assured me, “Sorry!!”

But I wondered. If she'd forgotten about her promise already, what were the odds that she could keep a secret this huge for long? Kids her age didn't have the greatest impulse control, and she didn't really know me. Didn't have any personal stake in not bragging about meeting a real mermaid. And Jasper sure hadn't been optimistic about the matter...

Then I thought of something that might help her stick to her promise. I told her, “Raise your right hand.”

“Why? What are you doing?” she asked, but put her hand up.

“I'm making you an honorary mermaid princess and a citizen of the Queendom of Hatteria.”

“Really?”

“This is something we've only done for a dozen or so humans in the last thousand years, and it's serious business,” I said in my most serious voice, “So don't take this pledge unless you're serious about it.”

“I'll be serious,” she promised.

“Because once you take it you'll be bound by a sacred oath to never tell anyone about us. As far as keeping us mermaids safe goes this isn't a sure thing, like the alternative would be; but doing that never sits well with me...”

“And what's that?”

“To erase your memories.”

I'd been afraid that this bit of malarky might be way over-the-top, and I was surprised by how completely she fell for it-

“No! Don't do that!!” she cried, in a panicked tone that I wasn't expecting at all. She hadn't asked how I'd go about doing such a thing, didn't doubt for a second that it was something I could do.

“Not all your memories, just everything about meeting me. It's how we've stayed secret all these centuries. And I really hate it when I have to do it, but it is what's required when some human poses a threat to us,” I said. I felt like a real turd seeing the fear in her eyes, but it seemed to impress her with what a serious matter this was.

“But I'm not a threat! And I swear; I SWEAR I'll never tell anyone!!””

“I know you're not, Sweetie. You're a good kid and I'm sure that taking the Mermaid Pledge will be enough in your case. You already pinkie swore, this just makes it official. ”

“Thank you!” she moaned in relief. “'Cause those memory flashers cause brain damage and stuff!”

I nodded noncommittally at this latest baffling statement from her, then raised my own right hand. “Now, repeat after me: 'I, Valerie Rosado...'”

“I, Valerie Rosado...”

“Swear by Mighty Neptune and all the gods past, present and yet to be born...”

She solemnly repeated each little part I came up with:

“To uphold the laws of the Queendom of Hatteras, and to defend its shores- er, shoals always; as I accept the office of Hatterian Mermaid Princess, and all duties, rights and good-for-one-free-small-frozen-yogurt coupons that come with this rank. And I promise to stand fast to the eternal mermaid principles of kindness, honesty, fairness to all; truth, justice and the American way; henceforth and forthwith into perpetuity and futurity and perspicacity! And I promise that---unless someone threatens kill me or something if I don't, in which case it's okay to tell---I shall protect my Mermaid Queendom by never divulging the existence of real actual mermaids to any who live on land. And furthermore I swear...”
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)))======>“Greetings from The Weird Highway...”
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It went on like this, and when we finished I gave her a hug, welcoming her to mermaidness, “Congratulations! You are now a Deputy Mermaid Princess First Class, and a citizen of Hatteria.”

“BONE!" she exclaimed, “And about that 'not telling any humans' part... I kinda learned my lesson about trying to say anything about strange things I see, or that happen, after those jackalopes...”

“You mean those animals like rabbits with deer antlers?”

“Yeah! On our trip to Arches National Park in Utah summer before last. There was whole herd of 'em!”

As far as I knew these creatures only existed in photo-shopped postcards from small towns out west, or as the work of deranged taxidermists. “Oh really...”

I had tried to keep the skepticism out of my voice, but she'd picked up on it. “You see? Even you don't believe me!”

“I don't know if I do or not. Tell me.”

“Okay... Well first I met the one, he couldn't hop away very good 'cause he had that thorn in his paw, but after I talked to him a while he started trusting me, and after I pulled it out he squeaked something and the whole family came running- about thirty of them! And him and them were jumping all over me, all happy. They were sooooo cute! But Mom, Dad, my friends... they holy didn't believe me about that! So I'm sure they wouldn't about you either.”

“No, probably not. But I guess if I can be real, then maybe-”

“O-or like the time we went to Mount Rushmore, and Reagan winked at me.”

“Regan who?”

“President Reagan! You know, under Jefferson and right next to Kennedy. Or when we saw Stonehenge, that's this rock thing in England. We were standing in line with all the other tourists, and I remember I was eating a Druid Dog---those are good!---and I look over and I see this tall goofy-looking guy in a long stripy scarf and his little toy robot dog go into this little dinky blue house with a light on top, and then the house goes like 'Whoooosh! Whoooooooosh!'” she made an asthmatic wheezing sound, “-and it fades out and just disappears, right there in front of me! I went: 'Wow! Didja see that?!!', and Mom and Dad go: ”Huh? See what?!' And I told them, and they were all like 'Oh, it did NOT Why you all the time makin' stuff up, Valli?'!; But Jimmy said he thought he saw something... Or like yesterday on our boat when the clocks all went backwards, and now today, meeting a mermaid. But I can't help it if all this floopy stuff keeps happening to me when I travel! Uh, I mean, not that I think you're floopy or anything.”

None of Valerie's stories were any more unbelievable than me getting turned into a mermaid by some genie in a deep-sea diver's outfit. So maybe everything she'd been talking about was real---in whatever version of reality she inhabited---and we were just a couple of fellow travelers on the Weird Highway...

She sighed, “So you holy don't need to worry about me talkin'. Because even if I did no one would believe me anyway... well except Wendy. And I won't, 'cause I swore that oath, but I really do wish I could tell her.”

“Wendy's a friend of yours?”

“My best friend ever! She's in my mermaid class with me, and the only person who ever believes me about stuff like this.”

There was something heartrendingly sad and sweet about this, her stories being met with disbelief and mockery except for by one loyal friend. And if her credibility was as bad as she claimed I figured aawww what the hell, and told her, “I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell Wendy. But only her!”

“Really?! Thank you!”

“Hey, us mermaid girls have to stick together. So how many kids are in your mermaid class?”

“Twenty-five. Well twenty-four now 'cause of Luanne leaving.”

“Are there boys in your class? Little Mermen?”

“Just Wendy; But she's a mermaid like us, and you're not s'pose to call her a boy, 'cause that's mean!”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, that would be very mean. I think Wendy's pretty lucky to have a best friend like you. So do the other girls like her okay?”

“They sure do. All except for Luanne---who was just nasty---but then her mom came in and pulled her out of there, screaming about how normal people don't got rights no more, and we were all helping the world go to hell in on a hoverdisk for lettin' Wendy be there. Mom says her and her elk are still mad from getting knocked off their high horse when they rappelled the Normalness Amendment. I almost feel sorry for Luanne, havin' a weirdo mom like that, but she doesn't have to act like her!”

Now this was a story I could believe. I liked the one about the jackalopes better. Still, Luanne's mom was only one parent out of twenty-four. Slowly the world gets better for people like me and Wendy...

She said, “And anyway, Wendy's not a boy! She's totally a girl, and real fun, and nice, but she got born with a penis-mistake that she needs to get cut off when she grows up so she can be a lady for real and have babies and everything.”

“I don't think Wendy will ever be able to have babies. Not every woman can. That's just how it is sometimes.”

“She will too!” said Valerie heatedly, “Just like that 'Miracle Mom' DAISY did a story about on DAISY'S AMAZING PEOPLE, who was born a boy but they fixed her hip bones and gave her transplants for a eucharist and bovaries and everything and she had a baby!”

“Really? That's-”

BZZZZZTTT!!!! BZZZZZTTT!!!! BZZZZZTTT!!!!

“Hang on a second,” I said.
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)))========> OFF THE GRID
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I still had my sister's pack on my back, and I could feel Valli's message device rattling like mad inside of it. I pulled it out and looked at the screen. WHERE ARE YOU??? it asked in an alarmed-looking font.

I passed it to Valerie, “You'd better answer this before they call Search & Rescue!”

Am on surface. Sitting on a rock. she wrote, and showed it to me.

Well TELL US next time you go off the locator grid!

KK, sorry!

Who's yr friend? We saw you 2 swimming. Very graceful!

Her name is Enomena

Unusual name. Where's she from? they asked.

Valerie made a tongue-hang-out 'I'm gagging here!' face at me. Her hand hesitated over the keypad, unsure of what to tell them.

“Say Greece,” I said, thinking it was a country where Enomena might seem like a normal name.

She wrote: GREASE

And how old is she?

Fifteen, I said, and she wrote that. She grinned at me as she typed, Enomena is mermaid 2! She has BEST MM TAIL U EVR SAW!!

Well then you 2 have something in common J But where did she come from? We can't see any boat.

Valerie thought a second and wrote: Her peepers's RS . . . Sittng just off grid

“RS?” I asked.

“Recreational Sub,” she whispered, like she was on a phone with them.

Well ask her to ask them if they want to surface and meet us. We could all have a barbecue on the back deck. Theyre probably tired of being cooped up in there

kk Ill ask, she responded, and chatted with them a bit more before hanging up.

“That was a nice offer,” I said, “But obviously I'll need some excuse to get out of that.”

“I know. I'll tell them something... Jeez, all those questions! They can just be so.... RRRRRRRRRRR!!!” she growled.

“Well you did disappear on them.”

“Yeah, but all that stuff about you: How old is she? Where's her boat? What kind of name is that?”

“I think it's good that they want to know things like that. To them I was just a little dot swimming along with you on their map screen. I could be anybody.”

“I guess... but I swear, they treat me like I'm a little kid! They think the clearheads are gonna grab me and wash my brain or something!”

“I don't know what a 'clearhead' is but let me tell you, kids do get grabbed. Sometimes right off the beach,” I said, thinking for the millionth time about my own anguish stricken parents. “So it's not unreasonable for them to worry. And I hate to break it to you, but you are a little kid!”

“Okay! Okay!” she whinged, like I'd suddenly gone from being a fun older kid to some paranoid old fogey.

“And they can't be that overprotective if they let you take off by yourself and go exploring in the middle of the ocean. They just want you to check in every once in a while. Is that so bad?”

“I guess not,” she admitted. “I coulda had a mom like Luanne's, and be getting dragged to those nasty Victory For Values rallies and things all the time. You heard of Victory For Values?”

“No, but I have a pretty good idea what they are,” I said. Just what the world needs, another group like that...
.

.
)))======> COLD WAR
.

We were quiet for a while, just listening to the ocean's sloshing. A big freighter or something tooted its horn, too far away to see. I wondered if my starfish were going to be okay being out of the water this long but they seemed as contented as kittens who had found a soft place on somebody. (Luckily they didn't have those sharp little claws that kittens can't seem to help digging into you. Echinoderm means 'spiny skin', but only their top surfaces are spiny. Their undersides are covered in soft little tickly feelers...)

Valerie was looking up at a distant bank of big puffy white clouds and smiling, and then suddenly she wasn't. She said, “I wish my brother could be here with us.”

“He couldn't come?”

“No, Jimmy's off in the war... Stupid war!”

“He's in Afghanistan?”

She shook her head.

“Iraq?”

“I heard of those places but they're like for tourists. I'm talking about the War- You know, Antarctica!”

“Who are they fighting, the penguins?”

Valerie looked at me like my joke was in really bad taste, “No! The Technotologists!”

“WHAT?!!”

The Church of Technotology was that cult-like pay-your-way-to-enlightenment church---based on the teachings of E. Gadd Hubbriss in his book PSYCHO-DIURETICS: The One True Science Of MIND---that a lot of flaky movie stars seemed to belong to, and which I think I may have mentioned a chapter or two back...

“You're kidding right?! No I guess not,” I said, seeing the grimness on her face, “So he's not fighting the Al-Qaeda or the Taliban but... the Technotologists... and... Antarctica?!!”

She nodded and said gloomily, “And I'm worried about him... I don't want him to get turned into goo!”

I fought down the urge to say 'you're kidding' again, and asked, “How many Technotologists are there in Antarctica?”

“Prolly a couple million by now. There's another four or five boatloads of Clearheads going down there every day. They get through the blockade somehow...”

“And what are they doing in Antarctica?”

“Fighting us. And they're holy not even fighting fair! Using battle drones and nanoweapons, like they never heard of GENEVA SIX! But then they're not even supposed to be down there. Not like that!”

“Like what?”

“When the first ones moved down there they said it was to build a retreat camp, where they could escape from all the negative ions or whatever it is that all us non-Technological people give off, and pollute their brains and keep 'em from getting... whatever they're trying to get. But my dad says they really did it because they lost their tax thing.”

“Tax thing?”

“Yeah, when the government said Technotolology isn't a real church but it's a business and has to pay taxes. That's when they all started going down there. And it was okay at first, but they just took over. The other settlement cities weren't ready to get ambushed like that. They totally wrecked Antarctica. It used to be nice when it was just the New Eden people with their dome farms and those Thirty-Niners down there looking for gold. We spent a week there when I was little. I liked the dog sledding the best.”

“Thirty-Niners? You mean the Forty-Niners, don't you? Like the California gold rush...”

“No, I meant Thirty-Niners. Forty-nine was last year... DUH!”

Forty-Nine...

Something clicked, and suddenly a whole lot of things made sense.
.

.
)))======> GIRL OUT OF TIME
.

There had been dozens of clues, but I just kept attributing them to something else. Like her unfamiliar slang, which I just figured was a regional thing. All her gadgets and gizmos? These were just brand-new technology that was out of the price range of ordinary people, and that I would be hearing about within a few months...

Or when she mentioned “that atom bomb thing” that the U.S. Government did “a hundred years ago”. This wasn't because she was a nine-and-a-half year old with a poor grasp on the time frame of history. From her perspective the Manhattan Project happening a century ago was more or less accurate.

And as with a lot of her seemingly nonsensical statements, I'd kind of skipped over that comment about “memory flashers”. But if the ability to tamper with people's memories has become an actual thing in her time, then no wonder she believed me when I layed this story on her. And if using these things “causes brain damage and stuff” then no wonder she'd been terrified!

A sentient computer named DAISY? A transwoman having a baby? A second row of heads on Mt. Rushmore? People being turned into goo by nano-weapons?! These were all things that us people here in the “past” still had to look forward to...

.
“Um, Valerie...” I said, “This might sound like a weird question, but... what year is this?”

“It's 2050! Don't you mermaids have calendars? So anyway, when the Psycho-Diuretics Liberation Armada tried to invade Christchurch, that's when New Zealand, Australia, Japan and a bunch of other countries all signed the Honda Accord and-”

“Okay- Stop! Wait! Back up! Let's talk about you and your boat for a minute...”

“What do you wanna know?” she asked, wondering what the hell I was getting all weird about.

“Well first of all where do you live?"

"Top floor of the Boston Arcosphere. A condomansion right next to the sixth green."

"Your building has its own golf course?"

"And its own schools, its own galleria, its own zip code. Pretty much its own everything..."

"Sounds like a big place. And where do you keep your boat?”

“At the Harbor. The Eureka's a little too large to keep in the Sphere's indoor slips.”

“Okay. So you left Boston Harbor, and-”

“And it was snowing. Dad had the heaters blasting.”

“Wintertime, right?”

“Well duhhh, it's January!”

“Okay, January 2050. And you went to where?”

“To Bermuda. We went to Disney Island there. It was so much fun! They had these-”

“You can tell me about that later. But after going there, you sailed out of Bermuda when?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Okay, good. And did anything weird happen when you were leaving there?”

“Yeah, how did you know? There was that fog.”

“A shimmering, gold kind of fog?” I asked, thinking about what Captain Mutton and that scientist-pirate Jick had told me.

“Yeah, and it was strange! Because when we started out early that morning it looked like it was gonna be a bright sunny day, but all of the sudden we were in it. And my mom was joking: 'Oh no! We fell into in the Bermuda Triangle and nobody's ever gonna hear from us again!'”

“Actually you did fall into it. Or through it.”

She nodded slowly, “Okay... I can believe that. With how floopy that fog was, and how the clocks went all wonky-zonky, and the compass was spinning around like it was gonna bust! But then we came out of it okay.”

“Not exactly. Did you notice any more weird stuff after you came out of the fog?”

“Well the ultranet on our computers went down. We haven't been able to get hold of anybody!”

“You mean the internet.”

She giggled. “Internet? My grandma uses that, and it drives my dad nuts. Grandma calls us up all worried and goes: 'Didn't you get my e-mails? I sent a bunch of them!' and Dad says, 'Mama! I keep tellin; you! Nobody e-mails anymore. You gotta use u-mail if you want to reach us.' And she goes: 'I don't like the ultranet. It's a bunch of crap!' And he gets so frustrated, he's almost yelling: 'Then you might as well be sending me smoke signals if you keep trying to e-mail us. I bought you ultranet service, why the hell can't you use it? It's not like it's hard- it's EASIER! It's got the little picture things and will talk you through whatever you want to know...' But she's all: 'If the internet was good enough for George Washington it's good enough for me!' Or she doesn't really say that but that's what he says she says!”

I had to laugh, it sounded like how my own grandparents are about certain things. I asked, “But your computer on your ship? It's working okay? And it is possible to go on the internet?”

“Yeah, but why? If the ultranet is down than the internet is too, 'cause the ultranet carries it.”

“Not if there is no ultranet,” I told her.

“That's what I've been saying!”

“I meant what if there never was one. Did anything else weird happen since you came out of that fog?”

“Not really, except those funny animal tracks on that island yesterday; but that was you," she said and then went, "Oh, there was one thing that was a little bit unusual but not weird like can't-happen weird... We saw this real old helicopter like from when my dad was a kid. He called it a Bill Hooey.”

“A Bell Huey?”

“Yeah! He said he was surprised there were any of them still flying.”

“I think your father's in for a few more surprises. There's something you need to tell him when you're all back on the ship. Tell him this might sound crazy, but it's important.”

She nodded, looking apprehensive.

“Tell your dad to go on the internet. Not the ultranet, the internet; like in the old days. Have him find out what day it is. Make him look at all the news, see what the latest movies are, stuff like that. And I think he'll know what to do then, but if he doesn't, you tell him. That you need to head back for Bermuda on the exact same course you took coming here, and try to find that golden fog again. Can you tell him all that?”

“Sure. But why?”

“Because you're not in January, 2050 anymore. This is the last week of August, 2014.”

“Are you sure?” she asked skeptically.

“There's been a lot of things I'm not sure about in these past couple of days, but I do know what year and month this is.”

A big wave hit the rock and rolled over it. It wouldn't be long now.

Valerie stood up and sat on her mechanical tail, using it for a bench, “So I'm like.... a time traveler?”

“Yep.”

She broke into a big smile, “That's pretty bone!”
.

.
)))========> LAST WORDS
.

Another wave rolled over the rock, a little higher. I said, “We're going to start getting wet here.”

“I should probably be getting home anyway. I need to tell my peepers about all this. I don't think I would do it very good trying to say it on my texter.”

“No, just tell them yourself. Do you remember everything I said? To go on the internet and all that?”

“I'll make sure they do. I don't want to be stuck in the Oldie Days, and I want to see my friends again.”

“You should be okay. Those pirates seemed like they were able to slip in and out of 1714 all the time.”

“Pirates?!”

“Never mind.”

“So then... Goodbye?” she asked wistfully.

I felt the same way. I liked her, and we were just getting to know each other, and now it was over. But I supposed it didn't have to be right this minute...

“I'll swim back with you. But when we get close I'm going to have to take off. Tell your parents I had to get back to my-” \\\\ (RV Submarine? Mermaid castle? Spaceship?) //// “Oh hell... Tell them anything you want about me, but keep telling them it's the year 2014- which is why there's no ultranet here, only internet.”

I helped her get back into her tail and lower herself down into the water. Held her there by her wrist. “This is one thing about being a mermaid that should probably be part of your class. We don't get around too well on land.”

“You did pretty good climbing that mountain,” she said, and put her mouthpiece in.

“A hill. And I wouldn't call a little over a mile in four hours doing good,” I said. I let go of her hand and she dropped the rest of the way in. I got a visual fix on where her parents' yacht was and dove in after her.
.

.
)))========> DEEP BLUE ANGELS
.

We made our last swim together count. Doing backflips and barrel rolls, zipping around each other like a pair of Blue Angels fighter jets- just having a blast!

My twin sister would usually indulge me when I wanted to do stuff like this, but she had been born in this weightless world, and for Anemone swimming was like walking is to us. Fun to do sometimes, especially if you're doing it in a nice place; but only silly people start walking in circles just because they can. Or decide to spice up their daily jog with the kind of cartwheels and cavorting Valerie and I were doing here.

But I was a newbie mermaid less than a week old, and the kid here was a part-timer. Swimming with tails was special to us because we weren't born doing it; but it was something girls like us might have been born dreaming about...
.

.
)))========> JUMPING THE SHARK
.

Looking over to my left I saw a hammerhead shark. It was swimming alongside of us like a third member of our squadron, and was probably that “big as a brood bus” one that her parents had warned her about. The thing was HUGE! It couldn't have fit inside my bedroom back in Dover, not even catty-corner. And at its thickest part it really was almost bus-sized.

I said, more nonchalantly than I felt, “Don't worry, he's just checking us out. He'll swim off in a minute.”

Valerie gave me a thumbs up, trying to be brave. What a little trooper!

“Move along,” I told it, “Do you know who I am?”

The shark didn't answer me. Instead it started chanting something, muttering at first, then loud enough that I could hear it: “NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY!”

Whatever that meant. What a time for my Universal Fish Translator to start malfunctioning!

I gave the creature my best imitation of Queen Atlantea: “Did you hear your Princess?! Be gone! Depart from our Regal Presence!”

“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY-” went the hammerhead, with a strange ratcheting rhythm. It seemed completely mesmerized by the sight of Valerie.

“Go on- SCRAM! GET OUTTA HERE!!” I shouted, but the shark was ignoring me.

And when its big ugly head moved in and started sniffing at her tail instinct took over; and made her do the worst thing she possibly could- she cranked her tail up to full power and bolted!

I could have told her she wouldn't be able to outrun it. I might not be able to myself. I hoped against hope that it wouldn't pursue her, but after a few more Neeshaiys it shook its head and took off after her.

I took off after it.

“NO! You can't do that! Find some other fish to eat!” I was yelling as I swam alongside of it, beating on it with my club.

“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY-”

Anyone who knows the first thing about sharks knows that the movie JAWS is a crock. It might work as some kind of allegory or something, but as a nature film it's about as accurate as The DEEPTOWN FISHEROO REVIEW. Sharks are the deadliest thing out here for creatures as big as us, but they're not “ferocious” in their emotions. They're not driven, and they would never get into a contest of wills with some guy in a boat.

The smell of blood, frantic motion or something fleeing from them will set off their attack instincts (coming up on your prey from behind is always easier, I've used that one myself...), but when someone starts fighting back they don't get angry and go: “Oh yeah? We'll see who's the big fish around here!” They say “The heck with this!” and swim off to find an easier lunch; one that isn't beating them on the nose with a stick.

This casual approach to being a predator has worked well for sharks for four hundred million years. If one fish proves problematic there's always another one...

But this crazy shark seemed to be auditioning for JAWS 5! It was so focused on trying to take a bite out of Valerie that it barely registered my clubbing it and was totally deaf to my commands.

If the shark didn't believe I was a princess---or believed it but just wasn't impressed with my family's authority---it should at least have told me to piss off or something. But all that came out of this one was that weird gutteral “NEESHAIY!” chant. There was something wrong with its brain.

The head start Valerie had on it was gone now. It chomped off a chunk from the rubber end of her tail fin, then shot forward and sunk its big teeth into her tail right about where her knees were-

OH GOD, NO!!

But instead of the horrible bloody dismemberment I expected to see its teeth hit metal, tearing off fabric but only crimping the framework of her tail. I couldn't tell how much damage this had done to her legs inside there, but the tail's motor began to scream like a mosquito having a seizure- faster and faster and louder and higher until it just went KLUNK! and gave out.

Valerie was at a dead stop. She twisted around helplessly, flapping her arms in panic, and began descending. But luckily after I struck him as hard as I could on his tender gill flaps---the only vulnerable spot besides the eyeballs---the hammerhead turned toward me.

He lunged at me, knocking me backwards hard with the top of his head as that mouth under there bit the whole front end of my cricket bat off, about an inch from my fingers.

I dropped the wooden stub and clapped my hands at him, “Hey Neeshaiy-Neeshaiy! Over here! That's right, look at me you wall-eyed mook!”

I taunted him---“Your mama was a coat rack!”---trying to keep his attention on me as I slowly reached for my knife, but I didn't interest him at all.

“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY!” he chanted as he swung his big head back in Valerie's direction. My friend was spiraling down toward the seabed, trying to wriggle out of her useless tail. He sped down after her.

I went into a power-dive, not sure what I was gonna do until I landed on the back of his head and locked my arms around his eye stalks in what I think they call a “Full Nelson” wrestling hold, and squeezed them inside my elbows as I pressed down on the back of his head with my hands. I couldn't hurt him doing this, but he didn't like me riding on him one bit! He tried to shake me off---bucking and twisting with so much force I was afraid it would break my back---keeping up his crazy obsessed NEESHAIY-chant while he did.

Doing this had kept Valerie from being eaten already, but I knew I was just postponing the inevitable. I couldn't let go, I couldn't access my knife and I wouldn't be able to hold on like this much longer. This shark was bigger than any bull that any rodeo cowboy ever tried to hang on to, and it was quickly becoming clear to me why those bull riding competitions are measured in seconds and not in minutes. I felt like a cat being shaken to death by a bull mastiff!
.

.
)))========> CAVALRY CHARGE
.

Suddenly a man in a bright blue wetsuit came zooming in, moving faster than any mermaid or marine animal had ever swam. It was Valerie's dad! He wasn't kicking his feet, but seemed to have impellers built into his swim fins. In his hand was a goofy looking plastic ray gun, which I hoped wasn't just a toy.

I expected to see a beam lancing out of it, blasting a hole in this beast, but when he pulled the trigger there was just a faint spitting sound, and a dart---no bigger than the kind you toss at a dartboard---came streaking toward the shark.

I thought: 'Well that little thing isn't gonna do much damage...'

Then I saw the thin wire the dart was trailing, which led back to the gun in Mr. Rosado's hand.

I thought: 'So it's a taser..... That's better than just a dart, but those are something we have in 2014. I was hoping to see an Honest-to-God RAY GUN being fired.'

You can have all kinds of dumb random thoughts in just a second or two when your adrenal gland is gushing. My next thought was a more useful one: 'Gee.... Maybe I shouldn't be hugging this fish when it gets electrocuted...'

I let go just in time.

The shark was still chanting his chant, but suddenly I was hearing it correctly. It wasn't the nonsense word “NEESHAIY” he had been repeating over and over. The pronunciation was odd---which must have been what had thrown me---but what he had been saying all this time was: “SHINY! SHINY! SHINY! SHINY! SHINY-”

The hammerhead had been hypnotized by the glittering stripes and gleaming jewels all over Valerie's glossy pink tail; And by the rhythmic way the device had been wriggling. That stupid tail had turned her into one big giant fishing lure! (Now that should sure call for a scathing customer review on Amazon!)

The dart hit home and the hammerhead went into convulsions. The last thing I saw was its massive tail as it came swinging toward my face like a giant's fist.
.

.

NEXT: MEET THE ROSADOS
.

NOTE: This chapter contained elements of SATIRE. The bit about Technotology was not intended to suggest that the Technotologists are any crazier or any more likely to start a war than the Girl Scouts of America or the Birthday Clowns Union Local 108. The point of that was that tomorrows enemies are often some group that nobody could have seen coming 36 years in the past (the flip side, which I only touched on obliquely, being that today's feared enemy can change be tomorrow's good neighbor...). I simply picked the Technotologists because with all the other future history I was throwing at the reader I didn't want to have to make up and have to explain some whole new fictional religion, and “Appliantology” was already taken. Also, I admit it, they're fun to make fun of. They wear those silly hats.... or is it bow ties?
.

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ThaNKS FoR ReaDiNG, PLeaSe CoMMeNT!!!
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