Chapter Text
“So, Mr. Lambert, what exactly are you searching for out here?” Jackson asked, turning the steering wheel of the boat towards open ocean.
Adam put down his binoculars and bit his lip. He wasn’t sure how much he should reveal about what he was up to. On one hand, Jackson was his shipman. He was going to be with him during this whole expedition, he needed to know what was going on if he was going to be any help. On the other hand…He would most likely think Adam was insane. He would have to word it very carefully.
“Jackson, have you ever heard of the Aquatic Ape Theory?” Adam asked hesitantly.
“No…” Jackson raised an eyebrow and then laughed, “Are you telling me, we’re looking for monkeys out here?” He gestured around towards the empty sea and laughed again at the idea,
Adam let out a half-hearted chuckle, “Not exactly…It has to do with parallel evolution…” He then grew serious, “Jackson…If I tell you the whole story, can I ask you to promise me that you’ll take me seriously and that you won’t share this with anyone?” Adam asked, his eyes piercing.
Jackson lost his laughing demeanor and stopped the boat. He seemed to understand the gravity of what Adam was going to say.
“Yeah, I-I promise,” he nodded his head.
“No matter what I say?”
“I cross my heart,”
Adam took a deep breath, “Let me start from the beginning. It all began last year…
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My team and I had been researching mass whale beachings, that’s how it started... There had been steady stream of these abnormal beachings. So, so many whales washed ashore and in so many different parts of the globe. The whole situation was strange, as was the involvement from the authorities. There had been reports of things, different creatures, washing up on the shores beside the whales, but nothing had been confirmed.
While we were taking samples from the whales, there was a team of Navy officers in hazmat suits investigating one area of the beach. We assumed they were testing the whales, same as we were. But none of the whales near them were cut open. We were never able to see what exactly they were working on.
The way that the whales all died seemed…odd. They were all found bleeding from the ears with clear damage caused by some sort of auditory attack. We believed it to be a result of Navy sonar weapons testing. That’s why we were investigating; we wanted the sonar testing to stop.
That wasn’t the only evidence we had, we also had been taking auditory recordings, listening for whale song and proof of the sonar testing.
When we played them back, we definitely heard the sonar blast as well the response from the animals. The reaction was incredible and drastic. There was an uproar of vocalizations. The strangest part was…not all of them were whale sounds. There was another kind of vocalization there.
We had an acoustics expert come in and he was able to tell us more. These vocalizations…they were incredibly complex. More complex than any whale or even a dolphin. It was like a language…
Whatever it was, it was clear that all these creatures were being affected by the sonar testing.
Later, we received word that there had been another mass whale beaching in Africa and that scientists had recorded the same kind of sound recording…”
“Wait,” Jackson interrupted him, “What does all this have to do with the monkeys?”
Adam smirked, “The Aquatic Ape Theory. And I’m getting to that. This is a long story with lots of parts. This is the first time I’ve told it to someone besides my team.
There was more to what we found in Africa than just the sound recordings. This time, scientists were able to investigate the beach before the authorities got there. When they’d cut open the belly of a shark, they found something a little strange.
It was the body of some sort of creature; we weren’t able to figure out what it was from the first look and even weirder, there was a spear inside the belly as well.
These spears weren’t unheard of. Many deep-sea fishermen had found fish and sharks with these same kind of spears imbedded in them. They had carvings and some had the barbs from stingrays attached to the top. I’d never really looked much into them before, legends weren’t my forte.
But back to the body…It was in poor shape. But from what we could see, it looked like a strange mishmash of different animals.
The part of the skull plate we found had a large ridge on the top, similar to primates, and we sent it off to a different lab to have a full reconstruction made.
The tail resembled that of a manatee but there were bones inside it, manatees don’t have bones in the tail. The ribcage and pelvis region were oddly shaped for a sea creature, they looked like they were designed to carry weight on land.
And the phalanges, finger bones, they didn’t look like fin or flipper bones. The only thing they looked like were…hands. They were hands.
The pelvis looked human, the hands looked human, the bones inside the tail looked like extended human feet… the evidence was overwhelming.
None of us wanted to say the word. We were scientists. But we knew what it was-what it had to be. It was… a mermaid-“
“Mermaids? Are you freaking kidding me man?” Jackson asked in disbelief, “Seriously?”
“I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. But it’s not so crazy! This is where that theory comes in.
You see, humans are the most well-adapted for water of all the great apes. We can hold our breath longer than any other land mammal, in so. We’re mostly hairless. Our spines are the most flexible of any primate. Our fingers and toes are partially webbed. These don’t make sense for a solely land animal.
The idea is that early in our evolution, humans lived more on the beaches and the shallow ocean than in the trees. We developed the ability to walk upright so as to wade into the water and fetch food.
This idea goes even further by saying that during this time of evolution, the human species split. One group stayed on land and traveled further inland, keeping the aquatic adaptations developed during this time but the other group…They moved towards the seas.
Over a long, long period of time they evolved to become aquatic mammals, like dolphins kind of. Still breathing air but living life in the sea. Feet grew into a tail, eyes grew large so as to see underwater and they advanced as a society same as we did.
“How advanced are they?” Jackson asked. The thought that this civilization of actual mermaids had been living beneath the sea the whole time was insane.
“We don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find out,” Adam said with determination as he looked out to the sea.
“Wait, wait, wait… How come no one knows about this!? If you and your team discovered the body of a goddamned mermaid, how come this hasn’t been all over the news!?” Jackson asked, folding his arms. Adam’s eyes shot downward and his face fell. He breathed out a deep sigh.
“Remember what I said about the Navy? How they were investigating the beach? Turns out they were investigating us too.
The government had been keeping tabs on us ever since we discovered the first sound recordings. They had followed us to our facility in Africa. You see, we’d been trying to get a permit to take the body samples out of the country and every time we’d been turned down.
And then one day, we went to the facility and it had been roped off. There were government officials everywhere. And they took everything and we couldn’t stop it. All the samples, the research…everything was gone.
Our only hope of physical evidence was a small sample that we’d sent off for genetic testing. Unfortunately, that too was destroyed. The lab said that because the genetic material was so similar to a human’s, it must’ve been contaminated with human DNA. We lost that evidence too.
“How did the government even know about all this?” Jackson asked.
“The reason that they knew what we’d found was… because they’d found it too and they had probably done so way before us.
My team learned that that first beach hadn’t been secured by the government earlier that morning. Two boys were playing on the beach and they found something, a strange body. That’s what the Navy had roped off that day. The government later made the boys change their statement about what they’d saw, but when we went to see them, they stood by their original statement.
They even had more than a statement though. A lot more.
The first was a drawing one of the boys had done of what he’d saw. It matched our skull reconstructions perfectly. The large eyes, the high skull, it was exact.
The second was even more important. It turns out the Navy had neglected to check the boys phone. He had a video on it of they’d seen.
It was incredible. The creature…it was alive in the video. When the boy poked it with a stick, it reacted, leaping up and screaming.
It’s the best evidence we have besides the sound recordings. Of course, there are other videos around the world, other eyewitnesses. But of course, those always get dismissed as hoaxes,”
“I still don’t get it,” Jackson said, his brow furrowed, “Why exactly is the government covering this up? What do they gain from it? You think they’re trying to protect them? The, uh, mermaids?”
Adam scoffed, “Hardly. Our theory goes back to that sonar weapon. If the general public found out about the mermaids, well, first there would be insanity of course, but once things cooled down people would want to protect them. These sonar weapons do massive damage and the majority of people would not allow this kind of harm to come to a humanlike creature. The Navy’s covering their asses,” Adam grimaced.
“So…”
“So?” Adam raised an eyebrow.
“That’s what you’re out here doing then? Looking for them?” Jackson asked.
Adam nodded slowly and closed his eyes. His hands gripped the guardrail tightly, “Yes. That’s why I’m here. The rest of them gave up. But I refuse. I have to find them,”
“How do you expect to do that? If they’re so hidden and so deep?”
Adam looked out towards the ocean and took a deep breath.
“By going back to the beginning. The whales. I know they’ll be with the whales. We find the whales…we find the mermaids,”