"Frog´s Kiss - Chapter I - Theseus´ String" by Bianca ´Bia´ Tangermann

Twenty-one pairs of feet walking at average speed through an underground hallway can make a lot of noise.
In a military fashion, it could even sound intimidating. The power of disciplined people in large groups was destructive; not only in the metaphorical sense. Craig Furlong seemed to recall reading of a German army crossing a large bridge during World War II - just think, the impact of the boot stomps had been such that the bridge cracked through! Unless, of course it was one of those popular historic legends which never died out. All the same, the very idea...he'd have to look that up.
Then again, Craig Furlong was professor for Zoologic Biology, not Physics, and the class he was leading through the dim corridors now moved in anything but a military fashion; some had decided to use the polished floor as training ground for a cross between running and skipping. The general shoving through the rows gave the impression of a centipede moving over a ballroom floor. Girlfriends hung arm in arm and would sooner have their left eye scratched out than separated, whispered conversations and ringing cell phones (mostly strictly guarded property of young rich scholarshippers for whom the words "cell phone" and "off" didn't, by law, belong in the same sentence) and occasional exclamations in the way of "Get the Hell moving!" merged with the monotous drone of the electricity streaming overhead.
All the same: The lower the procession descended into the bowels of the building, the more oppressing the atmosphere became. Furlong himself found his forehead glistening with a layer of sweat not due to overheating.
Still, he could not help thinking, First they discovered ADD, then they stopped teaching discipline at schools - or other way around? - and then everything went down.
Down, down, down...

While his least favourite professor was driving thought trains he could barely guess, Daniel kept his stare fixedly on the back before him - Stephanie Zoddler, from the long, blonde looks of it - and his thoughts strictly one-way. He was one of those unfortunately stuck in the further middle of the throng, forced to move along with it - not ahead enough to dominate, but not far back enough not to give a damn, either. That in itself wasn't so bad, but the atmosphere of the corridor was getting to him. The very air seemed saturated with a sort of physical dullness which made it difficult to inhale. The tapestry of the corridor was kept in a slimy grey-yellow, as if the architects had read and understood about the basic principle of "color" but had been so terrified by it that they hadn't given it a chance. It seemed not only to come from the tapestry, but fabricated from the very air itself. No windows - where to, anyway? - no pictures, no diagrams. The only means of possible decoration was a single, straight line of glazed black tiles, running along the middle of the wall like the world's most boring mosaic. Daniel found his eyes following this line, wishing for a variation, or even a single tile missing, to give at least a sign time passed, even here. Maybe counting the tiles was meant as a kind of entertainment for people who get accidentally locked in here. he caught himself thinking. To avoid going crazy. Or...who was this Greek guy who got out of a labyrinth with help of a ball of string? Only it wouldn't help him here, because these tiles just keep going round...and round...
"Yo, Sullivan, get moving!"
Daniel snapped back to attention like a rubber band pulled too tight, readjusted his glasses (nervous habit) and nearly stumbled over his own feet as he caught up with Stephanie Zoddler's blonde mane.
For crying out loud, who had designed this building, anyway? Daniel wouldn't be surprised if they did find a piece of string. How old was all this, this "Museum of Natural Peculiarities and Rarities"? Older than a leviathan, probably.
But leviathans weren't only legends, were they.
He had seen it just a few minutes ago.
The leviathan had been cool.
One of the few really cool things to see in this place. Most of it had just been normal animals, exemplars of now extinct races, found and secured after the flood had abated. Ladybugs with their colours swapped. Crossopterygians. Anglerfish (cue: All the girls screeching) Ho-hum. Nothing really special or legendary. But the leviathan had taken it. He'd write about the leviathan.
But between here and his laptop at home stood this last, mysterious something Furlong insisted on showing them. Furlong and his oh-so-exciting secrets. He had initiated the trip to this place...
As if the professor had heard Daniel's thoughts, there came his voice from a little further ahead. "We're here."
For some reason the crowd got hushed almost instantly. Down here, the air was almost visible with humidity and near-impossible to inhale; perhaps that made the students more readily obedient. They assembled in front of Furlong and looked up at him like a flock of sheep to their shepherd. Whatever was behind this mysterious door - if only they would be able to breathe again, open it the hell up.
Daniel, on his part, looked at the door.
It was a special door, he sensed instantly, namely in the curious sense that it was not particularly special at all. Sure, it was broad as three men, square-shaped and, from the looks of it, massive steel, but otherwise it was strangely unimpressive to the eyes of one used to the 21st century. No code-pad, no palm or iris scanner, no lasers. The metal was visibly kept in shape, yet a few rust-eaten spots had snuck in at the edges, irreversible. The door didn't slide in the middle, either - Daniel could hear the Star Wars freaks in the crowd booing inwardly - but had a large, massive handle like at one of those supersized freezers in malls or laboratories. In the center of the metal, embossed on a black sign, stood, barely visible, a curious series of letters and numbers:


Someone should write "Yeah, up yours too!" underneath thought Daniel and grinned.
"Now, children," - there was an unofficial bet going around about when Furlong would stop calling the students 'children' - "this particular "exhibit", if you will, is usually kept strictly out of bounds to ordinary visitors."
And they guard it with a freezer door? thought Daniel, again.
"There is no indication towards this room in any of the brochures, and visitors are strictly forbidden to go any lower than the first basement, which we, as you might have noticed, have passed a while ago."
The heated glistening in everyone's eyes seemed answer enough.
"I myself-"
There he goes again.
"- had to spend weeks fighting for a special permit to access this room, as in my opinion this experience must not, by any means, be kept from a future generation of scientists."
If their biology professor had hoped to impress or flatter the students with this second-hand encomium, he was a long way off. These knew Craig Furlong far too well. They'd bet any amount as one it was part-and-parcel with a particularly crispy set of homework - to add to their obligatory assignment, of course.
"In this view of things," Furlong continued and interrupted each one's collective thought, "I advise you to enter, observe and ultimately leave this room as quietly as possible. Most unfortunately, you are past the age of penalty points and detention, but I can assure you: Any unnecessary commotion will be met by severe consequences from my side. Sullivan, stop looking as if I were the eleventh plague."
There was no laughter this time, strangely enough. The tone had been too serious. And also, it was too damn hot.
Probably considering this enough of an introduction, Furlong pressed his thin hands against the metal and heaved the door open, with more strength than any of the students would've expected. Like in slow motion, the door swung inwards, letting a stream of fresh air through.
Which had a better effect than any order.
The moment Daniel stepped into this room, he couldn't suppress the feeling they had entered the slightly gothic version of a swimming hall. You could not make out the colours of the walls - indeed, you couldn't even discern the walls from the floor - because the whole room was literally bathed in a luminescent turquoise shimmer, the same way light did on the bottom of a pool. Daniel tried to focus on one point in order not to get dizzy - he had never been on a ship, but he imagined this was what it must feel like to be seasick - and realized it was futile; the light seemed to wander among the turquoise in concentric circles like something keen on escaping your eyes. All you could ultimately do was stand exactly in one place, get your bearings and take deep breaths. Luckily, that wasn't difficult, because the air in here was pleasantly cool. The circulation in this place seemed cut off from the one in the corridor - indeed, the entire building - like a cocoon from the rest of the world.
Daniel finished cleaning his glasses on his sweater (with his eyes closed, because seeing all this with his nearsighted eyes open was like sending an invitation down his stomach) put them back on and looked cautiously around at his classmates; apparently, the room's strange coloring had affected the others as well. Some remained standing there with their eyes closed and their brows furrowed as if they wished themselves and their headaches far, far away from here. Most, however, had already recovered and were staring straight into one direction.
He followed suit.
Jesus Christ on a bike.
He had found the source of the light. Indeed.
How could he not have noticed that before?
Positioned in the center of the room, like a modern art monument, stood a single glass tank. Considering the size, "fish tank" was an understatement; it was higher than wide and almost reached the ceiling. The container was sharply angular, with thick black columns separating one glasspane from the next. The tank itself, Daniel noticed now, was slightly elevated, the sheer size was an illusion: Like on a tribune, several flights of stairs led up to a solid, metal platform.
Like walking up to your gallows.
Christ, I could start writing poems on goth.com.
So it was a tank. A pretty large tank at that. And whoever designed it had sure as Hell been more than conventionally deranged...
Still, he could not repress it. Daniel had never believed in the concept of buildings deserving respect, or submission, but had anyone brought the subject up now, he`d agree within a blink. This fiberglass monstrosity loomed over them like something from a different universe, a terrifying, alien otherworld where things with no face could make you want to wish for one, because they seemed to regard you with a contempt that was faceless, incomprehensible, but nevertheless there.
On a more pragmatic layer, there was also the undeniable fact that if this glass would ever break (hopefully not within the next few minutes) the water in there would be enough to flood the entire room floor to ceiling.
Voicing everyone's primary thought, he muttered: "Damn it."
Several pairs of feet started moving towards the stairs, but not all. Like on a silent agreement, there were the reckless ones who dared to approach the tank - nevertheless slowly, timidly, like entering the aura of a temple - and those who stayed behind in case whatever was in there planned an ambush. And there was that possibility, no doubt about it, mister.
Kaysa Greystock, resident girl with too much testosterone in her veins and usually the first investigator in these types of situations, was the first one to reach the top of the stairs and look inside. The steps of her sneakers echoed weirdly across the silent room, like water dripping out of a leaking faucet, then stopped.
"There's a brave Sigourney Weaver." Alexis Messaniak remarked, but for once, nobody minded.
Several long moments passed, and Daniel imagined he could almost see Kaysa's eyes move to and fro through the back of her short-cropped curly head. Left, right.
Time seemed to stretch like a fresh strip of bubble gum.
"So what are we supposed to be look-"
The students, as one, literally saw her gaze wander down, and Kaysa's question ended in a sound Daniel would've transcribed thus:
"Yikes!"
The unwritten vow of silence was broken, and hysterical, shrill laughter broke through the room like an ice pick. "Ripley! Don't fall off the stairs!" Alexis called in his loud, strangely accented voice, laughed and ran up to join Kaysa. Daniel took a deep breath and followed at a slower pace, the rest of the class more or less in tow.
The turquoise gleam was strongest here, illuminating everyone's faces as though they stood in front of a hairdresser's mirror. However deranged the designer of the tank was - and that he had been deranged was as certain as death and the next biology exam - Daniel had to admit his design was clever. The floor of the platform was not straight on one level with the base of the tank inside. The actual bottom was dug a few feet deeper - possibly into the platform they were standing at the edge of - to give the impression of a bubble with a flat top.
But the creature lying at the bottom was still recognizably, undoubtedly what it was and real enough to make Daniel's mouth drop open.
Well, so much for the leviathan.
"Someone pinch me, please." someone beside him was saying, but he couldn't make out who it was since the thought felt like his own. In the next few minutes he'd probably have to readjust his glasses enough times for him to develop a serious tennis arm. On the first sight - or rather the second, because your brain just didn't comprehend the first, correct impulse - it looked like a large, ambhibic something, the entire body covered in glistening, greygreen scales of varying intensity. A long, supple-looking fishtail of the same colour with a single broad horizontal fin at the end was curiously angled under the rest of the body.
But it was this rest that sent off Daniel's logic circuits in a firework. His gaze flitted up and down like a ball in a pinball machine. Up, down, up, down. Human, fish. Human, fish. Human, human, human. And inbetween, on the way, like audio played at high-speed: Mermaid, mermaid, mermaid.
The tank designer had been stupid. The glass was too smooth. There was nothing to hold on. Daniel gripped the straps of his rucksack instead.
It was human, undeniably, impossibly. Sure enough, the skin was the same greyish green as the tail and covered with glistening scales, and the torso was so frighteningly thin you could count the ribs underneath even from this distance, but a human chest it was all the same - a female chest, however haggard. The mermaid had long, slender, glassy-looking arms - everything about her was just that - long, thin and translucent as Chinese noodles - which she held angled under her head. Daniel knew it was a female - woman? Girl? - by one look at the face. Not a beautiful face by his standards - Hell, here's something to brag with: "I checked out this mermaid the other day, not my taste..." - long and angular, the lips colorless lines. Her hair was splayed out underneath her like a bride's veil and of an indeterminable color. First it was a dull dirty blonde, like wet straw, but as Daniel kept looking it seemed to change before his eyes, hypnotizingly, into all possible shades of dark brown and even ginger. Daniel closed his eyes in a momentary headache and opened them again.
Fourty-two eyes stared down at an ancient legend like this, and the ancient legend slept through it.
Daniel noticed something else now, too. Thick, dark grey lines extended from the mermaid's arms as well as from her waist and the start of the fin, leading - he bent forward, but they extended further than the edge of his vision through the glass - into the wall, apparently.
Chains. Thick, archaic, metal link after metal link, like anchorchains.
She didn't seem to mind them, either.
She...
"Does she have a name?" came the question from the back of his throat, sounding like a strangled animal, but nevertheless loud enough for everyone to hear. He realized only seconds afterwards this was the first thing he'd said on the platform.
"It was given a project name the day it was brought here, Mr. Sullivan." came Furlong's voice from the other side of the room; he stood behind the door, waiting, and had apparently done so for the whole length of them being here. Let them experience it for themselves. "I'll be very glad to send you outside and refresh your memory."
"Yes, but she must also have a name, somehow. Not a...licence plate. A human name."
"Why?" Furlong asked casually.
"Because she's--"
He stopped.
Damn it. Furlong was right...as much as he hated to admit it. What was this...thing? So it had a torso looking vaguely human...sleeping in a strikingly human pose...but weren't there also flies looking remarkably like wasps? For all he knew, the mermaid could be a freak of nature, the most bizarre case of animal mimicry ever. An animal, nothing more, maybe even just a dumb beast...Daniel frowned in thought. You could have the most beautiful face imaginable...but if you suddenly grew scales and fins and were forced inside a tank, you could no longer be called human. Could you?
"She's beautiful." one of the girls said.
Was she? Was it? Daniel by now kept his stare fixed on the mermaid's hips; the angle at which she was laying on the ground gave view of a bit of her belly, but there was no navel where there should've been. In fact, the change from human to piscine was fluid, invisible save for a change in the scale pattern, seemed not to be there at all...
Chest heaving, up and down, so peaceful in sleep.
What was she?
She...it...
The next thing he knew, he was stumbling down the stairs, fell over his shoelaces and landed half-securely on hands and feet on the polished floor.
"Sullivan?" Alexis' voice was unmistakable, as always. "Fallen in love, have you?"
"Shut up." Daniel's response was hardly audible as he leaned his forehead on the heavenly cool floor. He really had begun to sweat up there...
Hand on his shoulder.
"Dan? You okay?"
He looked sideways.
Kaysa
"Yeah," he confirmed, letting her help him up. "It was just, I mean...Jesus Christ."
"I know."
"That's enough, everyone come down." Furlong called in his trademark semi-military drone. "Preferably not in the same manner. Everyone gather around me over here, and Mr. Messaniak, kindly cease your ridiculous sketching."
This was met by laughter. When the crowd passed him on the way to Furlong, Daniel could see Alexis - resident drawing talent - had indeed started a vague sketch of the mermaid on his notepad, right underneath his biology assignment.
"There I go, the misjudged artist." Alexis proclaimed theatrically, driving the laughter on.
"The Romans expressed this with 'Qualis artifex pereo', Mr Messaniak." Furlong said, undisturbed. "Your very personal assignment will be to surf the internet and inform me by tomorrow about the originator of that phrase."
Alexis looked nonplussed, then he shrugged. The tension cooled gradually.
"Now, as we've seen very graphically indeed by the reaction of Mr. Sullivan," Furlong went on, "the first sight upon the 'Project Nuyaqpalik' can be quite distressing."
Stephanie Zoddler raised her hand and asked: "Why is it called that? Nuy...something."
"The word 'Nuyaqpalik' is an inuit word."
"Eskimos?"
"If you want to call them that. And it means 'mermaid', if you want to call it that. It was named thus because it was discovered, more or less frozen to stasis in an ice block, near the Arctic during a drill for oil. To keep it alive, the water is kept under Arctic conditions, only slightly above zero point."
"When was that?" Stephanie pressed on - she had taken on the unofficial diplomat role for everyone's silent questions.
"In 2006. As you can certainly imagine, the discovery of 'Nuyaqpalik' caused quite an uproar among many scientific branches. Nevertheless, it was kept secret from the public..."
"For six years?!"
"To avoid unnecessary commotion, Miss Zoddler." Furlong affirmed, not missing a beat. "From all possible groups - fundamentalists of every religion, politicians, marketing experts." He smirked - everyone noted this as "special event" in their mental calendar. "You might say they protected themselves - and the creature. Many in any other case antagonizing branches of science teamed up for this occasion to study the issue - zoologists, anthropologists, geneticists, even historians..."
Yada yada yada. Daniel found his mind growing fuzzy by this time, the walls were getting to him again. Dreamily, he thought he could see Furlong's words coming out of his mouth, long, complicated and dull as teabags, but they floated across the room and were absorbed by the sleeping mermaid...
While everyone was concentrating on that lecturing bastard Furlong, Daniel's feet carried him back towards the tank like on a secret mechanism. Nobody minded, or even noticed.
Up the steps, one feet before the other.
The radiant luminescence of the water before him, making the rest of the world seem like a ridiculous dream.
Daniel looked down at the mermaid.
And suddenly the mermaid opened her eyes.
He felt as if he would freeze into a solid block, tumble down the stairs and dismember on the ground, but he remained standing and staring as he was. As if the mermaid's eyelids covered vortexes, sucking everything down - even the sense of time.
The mermaid appeared to look around, instantly up and alert, not bothering with yawning, stretching her arms or any other affected human movement of such category. Then she saw him.
He felt his mouth go dry.
Swifter and with more improbable grace than he could find a comparison to, she swam up to meet him at eye-level, and thus they looked at one another through two thick panes of glass - the one of scientific fiberglass, and the one prescribed by Daniel's optrician.
Her eyes were the strangest thing he had ever seen...besides the manifold other candidates for "strangest thing to ever have seen" he'd found today. They were of a pale, ice-blue color, with a milky veil over them, though that wasn't the odd thing; her pupils were the same hue, only a tad darker - it was hard to say if she had pupils to begin with, making her expression near-impossible to read. Daniel found his own eyes straining to discern that pupil, this ever-familar spot in any human face which usually helped you read expressions. And while he stood stock-still, transfixed by the unreal reality, she was constantly in movement even in her stoic pose: Her tail kept twitching back and forth in completely inhumane angles, half-furtively and half-playfully, in spite of the chains, the large tailfin waving like a piece of gauze. The fins grazing her arms, which he noticed now, moved with an invisible current even as they hung heavy and gesture-less at her sides, and her hair billowed behind her in its mindboggling combination of colours.
And he could sense she was looking this strange human with the varnished eyes the same way he did with her.
Without really knowing what he was doing, Daniel raised his index finger, put it on the cool glass pane and started to move it around, all over the space from one black frame to another. The mermaid followed his traces with her near-invisible gaze, but only thus - she didn't seem at all inclined to move from her position, and one of her eyes always wandered - suspiciously? - back to Daniel himself. But she followed it.
He withdrew his finger from the pane.
Whatever you are he thought, or perhaps whispered, quite, quite under his breath, you are not an "it"
The mermaid looked at him.
She also had the saddest eyes he had ever seen.
If you think about it he pondered, half-dreamily, and saw the whole thing lop-sided, it could be us in a tank...a large tank going all around, and she's standing there in this octangular room, looking at us for entertainment.
The thought, bizarre as it was, almost made him smile.
Furlong was such an idiot...
"DANIEL GREGORY SULLIVAN!"
The bearer of said name jumped, both mentally and physically. If his mind had been underwater till now, it was pulled back to surface. And on the surface there raged a storm.
Far at the other side of the room, the class stood staring at him, and the mermaid behind him, open-mouthed. Amidst them stood Furlong, and even from this distance Daniel could see he was fuming. As much as a coldhearted bastard could fume.
"Hey, look guys, he woke her up!"
"It, you mean."
"Who cares, he woke her up!"
"I told you he's fallen in love. Nice job, Dan! Way to go!"
"Now if he could only manage that with girls outside a tank..."
Furlong's voice drowned out the ensuing giggling the way a tuba drowns out an orchestra. "Daniel Gregory Sullivan," he repeated with frightening calm. "Get down from the platform. Now."
He hurriedly obeyed, though he could not help groaning inwardly. Why couldn't he have gone on lecturing for a bit more? And why oh why did you have to spell out your full name when you enrolled at university?! He briefly wondered if he could steal a glance back at the mermaid, but decided not to take the risk. As he half-stumbled, half-walked down the stairs with as much dignity as possible, the squeak of his shoes was once more the only sound in the chamber.
Then he stood in front of Furlong - the others had preferred a respectable distance - and tried not to blink as he looked him straight in the eye. "I'm sorry, Mr. Furlong, I just wanted---"
"I should have you suspended from campus for the rest of term."
Daniel bit his lip. Thought of the mermaid. It had been worth that.
"What exactly did I do, Mr Furlong?" That, too.
"You deliberately disobeyed a strict order, for one thing, and you answer back to authorities at inappropriate times, that's what you did, Sullivan!" Your typical evil wizard from a fantasy epic couldn't sound more impressive. "However, since a suspension this long involves a tedious meeting with the principal for permission, which would require to explain things, which I am keen to avoid, for obvious reasons," Furlong's voice was less frightening now, faster, meaning business, "I will leave it at an additional homework. Aside from your essay about one of the exhibits in this building - I'll be kind enough to allow you this one - you will write a summary of the things I lectured about while you were, of course, listening attentively."
There it was, heavy as an avalanche, his punishment, and instinctively, the crowd moved away from him as if they could see it. As for Daniel himself, it was very strange indeed; He felt he should feel mistreated, furious, even - but there was only emptiness and a sense of resolution, as if his mind was a large tank, but without a mermaid inside.
"It's time to go." Furlong said, turning his stare away from Daniel and onto the class. "You know your assignment."
There was a general murmur of disagreement. Obviously, the others had hoped for another glance at the now very awake mermaid.
"Silence." Furlong bellowed as everyone shuffled outside, though already his calm self again. "Sullivan can tell you what it was like, can't you, Sullivan?"
"Still, way to go." Alexis whispered and slapped his shoulder.
The only thing Daniel heard was the sound of the massive metal door falling shut like the gate of a prison.