Roger's Blog

Now we know what Queen Remora had in mind; she wants Samantha to represent the government of New Atlantis at the United Nations.

It makes sense. Since the Mars mission Samantha is still one of the most famous people on the planet, and the assumption will be that she’s helping out the merfolk as a favor. Everyone knows that Remora was a crewmate on her trip to Mars, and that a merman plays basketball for her husband Dave.

During the UN sessions Samantha will retain her familiar human form. Similarly, the rest of the embassy staff will be merfolk doing the twelve-hour transformation thing. (The summers that Samantha spends as mermaid will be kept under wraps.)

Now it’s a matter of Samantha finding the time. She says that Rupert and Rosalind have taken a lot of pressure off her in running the lab. They’re no longer constantly transforming themselves, and since they’ve settled down as plants they’ve become adept administrators.

It’s become a tradition for Samantha and a select group of friends to spend the summer as merfolk. At one time this included visitors such as Pam and even Samantha’s grandson Leonardo, but now it’s come down to a core of herself, little Maria, Vince, Feryl and Morgana.

Making the aquatic journey will also be Gill, returning home after his first year at Havens University. His mother Nora was waiting for him, and she was also eager to see Maria who has become her protege. Once at sea, Vince and Feryl became blue whales instead of merfolk, which is a form they both enjoy.

Alex enjoyed his day at the dog park; so much that when he found out that it was closing due to budget cuts, he sent the non-profit owners a check for $5000 once he became human again. He must be well-off to have that kind of money, but then, his hobby is mountain climbing which is an expensive avocation.

At any rate, the dog park will keep going for a while. The question is, how long will Alex continue becoming a St. Bernard for a few days a month? Once again his transformation took place on a completely random time frame so the data point was useless.

May is always a time of change at the genetics lab. Okay, with all the transformations that continuously take place on the premises that requires some elaboration. Basically, the lab’s experimentation shuts down for the summer so Samantha can spend that time as a mermaid. Rupert and Rosalind will oversee things in her absence.

That necessitates saying goodbye to this year’s group of lab mice. As I’ve previously reported, Samantha could never bear to euthanize her test subjects, so as an alternative she turns them into flowers. Being perennials, they have a longer lifespan than they would have otherwise. She gives them agency in the process, choosing the type of flower they want to be.

Pam’s life continues its complicated journey with a visit from her son Deke and his companion Ella. The pair are about to make Pam a grandmother in a matter of months, and questions swirl about the nature of the offspring.

Ella’s genetic history was cause for concern, but fortunately Samantha has allayed some of those fears. The ultrasound indicates that the baby is indeed human, and not the pachyderm that Ella began life as. Still, the fetus’s kicks are awfully strong; almost with the strength of…well, an elephant.

Either way, Pam and her fiancé Alex have indicated a willingness to be involved in the baby’s upbringing. Of course, that would have to work around Pam’s twelve-hour cat/human cycle, and Alex’s current “were-St. Bernard” condition.

Pam and Alex patiently waited in the genetics lab, and by mid-afternoon Samantha had the answer. During their camping trip the pair had been speared by the same fishhook, and Pam’s merfolk DNA had gotten into Alex’s system. If he had never previously been transformed, nothing would have occurred. However, since he’d once turned into a St. Bernard for a few hours in January, that remained saved in his genetic memory as his alternate form.

It was a very small dose, so instead of a 12-hour cycle like Pam’s it’s more like 28 days as a human and 3 days as a canine. That’s just a rough estimate, though. It’s important, however, since Samantha has to know exactly how long the cycle is in order to restore Alex to being human 100% of the time.

With the city’s strict leash laws, Pam had to procure one for Alex. Fortunately there was a superstore a half mile away, and Pam accurately guessed his collar size. She also bought dog food for his breakfast.

It was Friday morning when Pam woke to find that Alex had reverted to the St. Bernard he’d become in order to survive the mountain avalanche in January. Despite the bewildering development, they kept their heads and knew they had to get him to the genetics lab.

Havens finished ever so close to winning it all, getting all the way to the championship game. Their thrilling march through the tournament put everyone in mind of the title they won fifteen years ago when Dave was their point guard setting a record for assists. Alas, it was not a repeat performance.

Their downfall was their defense, which had been a concern throughout the season. It was ignored by the media, but Dave knew it was a problem. They were winning games by outscoring opponents. Eventually, the teams Havens faced studied their weaknesses and at the very end it all caught up with them. The championship game wasn’t remotely competitive. Still, they have a lot to be proud of.

You have to give Gill credit. An eighty-foot shot by a merman that hit nothing but net would have instantly aroused suspicions about the extent of his abilities. Instead of aiming at the basket, however, he put the ball in the hands of his teammate who made the winning shot. Quick thinking on his part, especially in knowing that the media would focus on the player who made the actual basket.

Thanks to that turn of events, Havens found itself on its way to the Final Four for the first time since Dave was a player. For such an important moment, Gill’s mother Nora Narwhal assumed human form to come on land. Samantha has done her best to lessen her culture shock, as she’s stayed at Samantha and Dave’s house and traveled only to the games. Humanity can be quite overwhelming.

Last year Havens University made the NCAA tournament but was eliminated in the first round. That was disappointing, but Dave still felt the team was on the right track. He knew that one special player could put them over the top.

Of course, that player was Gill, who has turned the team into a powerhouse not seen since Dave was playing. They entered the tournament as a #3 seed, and overwhelmed their first round opponent. During this weekend Samantha and Maria watched from home, along with Gill’s cohort Puff.

Trouble arrived in the second game that would determine whether Havens would advance to the Sweet Sixteen. In the first half, cold shooting seemed to doom their season as they fell behind by double digits. In the second half, however, Gill brought them back. They still trailed by a point with five seconds left, with the ball in Gill’s hands, eighty feet from the basket.

There was a slight hiccup with Pam and Alex’s camping trip on its final day, which involved a trip to an Urgent Care clinic to remove a fishing hook that speared both of their hands. Pam had never had freshly caught fish before, and once she took a bite she changed her mind about learning how to do it. Alex was demonstrating the process of putting a worm on a hook when the accident occurred.

Alex drove to the clinic with his free hand on the steering wheel, and the physician on duty was able to free them without undo damage to the skin. Once they were patched up they returned to the campsite and packed up for the trip back to Havens.

Pam is still discovering what it’s like when one’s life partner is an outdoorsman. All her life she’s been an indoor cat (no matter what form she’s in) and now she’s going on trips beyond her comfort zone. Alex arranged for them to spend a weekend at a National Park in one of their campgrounds. As Feryl said, she really, really does love him.

They left on Friday at noon, as Doreen gave them permission to depart early. Arriving at the Park after a three-hour drive they hiked to their reserved campsite on a lake. They did some bird watching, and then Pam had her usual 7:00 p.m. transformation into a cat. They slept in a tent with Alex in a sleeping bag and Pam in a cat basket.

There’s not a whole lot that an ultrasound can determine at this stage of a pregnancy, but Samantha was able to nail down some important conclusions for Ella. First, there’s just one fetus gestating inside her. Second, she could rule out the concern that it’s an elephant, which was Ella’s original species. It could be a human, but there are other possible outcomes.

For anyone curious, Ella was created on November 27, 2006. While she was initially a pachyderm, her unstable DNA immediately began to cycle through the animal kingdom. Two years later Samantha was able to make her permanently human, and she’s held that form ever since. However, those early times are the cause for the current worry.

Twenty years ago, Palmtop the cat gave birth to seven puppies with striped fur which were distributed among Samantha’s friends. Samantha adopted Deke, who fell in love with one of the animals in the genetics lab, Ella the elephant who had a particularly unstable genome. The pair asked Samantha to make them human, and ever since they’ve travelled the world as two of Bambi’s roadies.

This week we got the news that Ella is pregnant, and everyone in the lab is excited for them. Pam is, too, although she has her own way of expressing it. Of course, Samantha wants to do an immediate ultrasound to see what’s gestating. Both parents have been continuously human for two decades so she’s reasonably confident that the offspring will be the same.

The other factor is Pam’s finance Alex. I doubt that he’ll have a problem. He’s already met Deke and Ella and they’ve gotten along fine.