Feeding the Merman

"Begin."

The word comes through six inches of cast acrylic, flattened, slightly out of phase. It still raises the hair on the back of my neck.

I take a breath, and I tap play on the laptop balanced on the rolling cart.

A Mel Brooks movie starts up on the wall. *Young Frankenstein*. It's the gentlest, broadest comedy I could find on short notice. This is day three of my career as a merman feeder.

My name is Sloane Hayes. Two years out of my PhD, postdoc on the cryptid project at Mira Vita Marine Sciences, twenty-mile boat ride off the Olympic Peninsula, full sky no signal. Three days ago I dragged him up out of nine hundred meters of black water. Subject ID A-001. The team logbook calls him "the asset." I haven't given him a name.

Now I am his hired meal.