Sea Legs

Woman: Lexlucas
Octopus: Creative Commons Brian Gratwicke

Kira loved to swim.  She was happiest in the water.  Every day, she swam at least an hour (sometimes more).  Over the years, she took up any sport that involved the water.  She was part of a women's water polo team, a synchronized swim squad and a dragon boat team.  She'd taken up snorkelling on a Mexican vacation years ago and, after that experience, she took a scuba course and got her certification.

It was on a vacation scuba diving in the Caribbean that she encountered the bends.  She and a group of other divers were diving a wreck that required a decompression stop.  They, of course, had stashed a spare tank at the decompression station on the line leading from the dive site back up to their tender.  All had seemed to go well and everyone had reached the surface seemingly without incident.  It wasn’t until she developed pains in her legs a few hours later that she realized something had gone wrong in her decompression.  She rushed to the hospital and spent several hours being re-pressurized and then slowly returned to sea level pressure.

The treatment had the desired effect but it left her with a bad knee.  No longer quite as flexible as her left knee, the right knee tended to lock up on occasion and became painful whenever the atmospheric pressure changed.  It slowed her down.  No longer as fast in the water, she found the physiotherapy frustrating.  Land exercises were boring and she hated getting all sweaty.  She heard a rumour of a research facility that had a different method to give mobility back to legs.  It took several months to track down the source of the rumours.

Packing a bag with a few belongings and some clothing, she presented herself at the main office of the facility.  No one knew anything at all about the treatment.  It seemed the facility was more concerned with breeding exotics and endangered species than medical treatments.  Feeling the fool, she left the building and wandered back to the attached zoo.  At the bar on the zoo, she had a few too many and began to spout her story to a friendly staff member who was there for lunch.

To her surprise, he seemed to understand her.  He led her to a remote research lab and promised to give her legs that didn’t have the problems she’d developed from the bends.  It seemed it was a private research facility that the owner of the entire zoo used for his own experiments.  She was excited (but very unsteady) to hear that the rumours were at least partially true.  When she got up to go, though, the effect of the drinks had their effect.  She felt the world whirling and passed out.

She awakened in a room that looked somewhat like a hotel.  It had the usual amenities: an entertainment computer, a chair or two, a small table and a bedroom.  The door, though, was locked.

“Don’t worry,” a voice announced over the room’s speaker.  “I’ve already started your protocol.”
“Why is the door locked?”
“For your own protection.  The transformation protocol may cause you some temporary problems and there can’t be any delay getting to you.  Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Oh,” Kira frowned.

She wasn’t sure whether she should believe him or not.  Still, he had promised to give her legs new flexibility and completely heal the lingering effects of the bends.  She decided she wouldn’t make a fuss and turned on the entertainment channel. After an hour or so, though, she became restless.  She was feeling the effects of confinement.  She really wanted to swim.  She hadn’t done her kilometre yet and needed to.

“Is there a pool here?” she asked the air.

For a few moments there was no answer.  Then a quiet click announced her door lock had been released.  A wheeled robot attendant appeared to take her to the pool.  She grabbed a towel and her swimsuit and followed it to the water. After her swim, she returned to her room feeling much better but hungry.  She was pleased when a tray of food appeared in a slot by the table.  It wasn’t the greatest food (probably from the zoo’s cafeteria) but she enjoyed it nonetheless.  After her meal, she returned to the entertainment console and watched a few of her favourite programs.  Never one to stay up late, she turned in well before midnight and slept like a log.
The next morning, as she turned over, she discovered soft bumps all around her waist.  Looking in the bathroom mirror and feeling where she couldn’t see directly, she counted eight of them.  They were definitely part of her but the skin felt different, more leathery and harder than her own skin.  She became worried.  How could bumps like this be normal or even part of the treatment.  When she shouted her concerns, the calm voice on the other end of the intercom assured her that they were part of the treatment and that everything was under control.

The bumps grew slowly the rest of that day.  By evening, they were a pale brown and nearly half a meter long.  She examined them closely before going to bed.  At first, they’d been just bumps.  Now the were tapered, much thinner at their ends than where they attached to her body.  She sat thinking.  She had recently encountered something like this but couldn’t figure quite where.  Her evening swim revealed another facet of the strange appendages.  She could move them slightly in the water.  They didn’t move like legs at all.  More like tentacles with no bones in them.  Then it struck her.  She had seen this kind of thing on octopi in her latest dive.  They were tentacles.

“What are you doing to me?” she demanded.
“What you asked for.  I’m giving you flexible legs that won’t have the problems you have in your knee.”
“But tentacles?!” she protested.
“How much more flexible can you get?” came the somewhat snide response.
“I don’t want tentacles.  You stop this treatment and right now or you’ll hear from my lawyer.”
“Actually,” the voice replied calmly.  “It can’t be stopped.  And you can’t even contact your lawyer.  This is a closed subnet.  No eMails, no texts, no phone, no communication.”
“People will know.  I’m supposed to go on a dive in a week or so.”
“Indeed.  They will look and when they come here, you will be gone.  We even have security camera footage of you leaving the zoo three days ago.  They’ll hunt but you’ll have disappeared.  You aren’t the first person to go missing, you know.”
“But I didn’t leave!” she protested.
“You did leave.  One of our robots even helped you into a cab.  It, of course, drove away and returned to this facility.  There aren’t any security records here, though.”
“Why?  Just tell me why?”
“I have something of a private zoo.”
“I refuse to be an exhibit,” she shouted.

But even as she shouted it, she realized that she would soon have little choice.  Girls with octopus tentacles got noticed and would have real difficulty with normal life.

The tentacles continued their growth over the next day.  Soon they were as thick as her arms and nearly a meter and a half long.  She amused herself for a while trying to see how tightly she could coil them but soon became disgusted with the whole process.  By evening, they touched the ground as she walked.  She could feel things with them and even pick up light objects.  Her legs felt strangely weak in her swim that evening.  She became worried and tried to get a look at them.  Her tentacles had become linked by webbing over the day and she had trouble seeing beyond her hips.  She did the best she could and discovered that her legs were strangely thin.  Something was happening to them, something she decided she didn’t like.

“What are you doing to my legs?” she demanded.

After several minutes, it was apparent that no one was there to answer her hail.  She could guess and hoped she was wrong.  He was replacing her legs with these tentacles.  How would she swim without legs?  How would she live on land once her legs were gone?  The thought of moving about in a wheelchair (if one existed that would hold a half octopus woman) didn’t please her at all.  She slammed her hand down on the table.  He had no right to do this to her.

By bedtime, the tentacles had become longer and stronger and, conversely, her legs weaker and shorter.  It was all she could do to pull herself into bed.  She dreaded what she’d find when she awakened in the morning.  The morning brought a surprise.  She awoke floating in warm salt water instead of the bed.

“You were becoming too weak to continue in the transformation suite,” the intercom announced.  “I had you moved to the sea pool to finish your changes.”
“I don’t want these changes!” she angrily shouted back at the source of the sound.
“It is far too late for that now,” came the smug response.  “You have your flexible legs now.  Just like I promised.”
“I don’t want tentacles,” she stated.
“Indeed,” was all that he said before the intercom clicked off.

She paddled lethargically around the sea pool.  Her legs couldn’t even move her any longer.  She was trying to learn how to swim with the tentacles.  She didn’t want to be stuck somewhere, unable to move about.  Oddly, it felt good to move them.  She discovered that they now had small suction cups along their underside.  These, she learned, could be used to pull herself along the bottom.  As she did so, she found she had developed a small mantle overnight.  It could suck in water and push it out just like a real octopus.  She wondered whether she could jet like an octopus, too.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t find any place the jet would come from.  Octopi and squid had a siphon that directed the water from the mantle but she couldn’t find anything like that in her new body.

After several hours, the suction cups became harder and larger.  She found she could exert quite a large force with them.  There wasn’t any rock in the sea pool that she couldn’t move if she chose though she avoided the ones that were too deep.  She doubted she had the gills of an octopus and stuck to the surface for air.  Her arms soon developed double rows of bumps along their undersides.  Kira had no doubt that these would develop into suction cups as well.

By the next morning, she discovered that they had, indeed, become suction cups and she could use them.  She could think of no reason why she needed suction cups on her own arms, though.  After all, she had her hands -- which had developed webs of skin between the fingers overnight out to the final knuckle.  Great!  She now had webbed hands, too.

She taught herself to swim using the tentacles for her legs were virtually gone.  She could still feel them flapping uselessly against the underside of her mantle but could no longer move them.  She swam out of the shallow sea pool into the deeper water of the main aquarium.  At first afraid to travel too deep, she held her breath and returned to the surface every few minutes.  Having an octopus for a lower body was going to be even more trouble than her gimpy leg had been.  

A thought occurred to her.  She wondered how long she could stay underwater.  After all, the mantle at her back was pulsing, pulling water past gills.  She wondered whether those gills would actually work to let her breathe underwater.  After ten minutes underwater, she had her answer.  She could probably stay underwater indefinitely.  

She began to explore the coral reef of the main aquarium.  It was wonderful to be able to explore underwater without worrying about air tanks and decompression.  After several hours of exploring, she was startled by the sudden appearance of a large shark.  Without thinking, she squeezed down on her mantle and discovered her jet.  It was a muscular tube under her mantle and she quickly put distance between herself and the shark.  Turning her head back as she zipped away, she noticed she’d involuntarily expelled a glob of ink, too.

When she returned to the shallows that evening, she was met by the man she’d talked to in the zoo’s bar.

“It’s time to take you to your final home,” he announced.  “This little tank is far to small for you.”
“What do you mean by ‘final home’?” she demanded.
“I own a little coral atoll some distance away.  You’ll be much happier there than in this little aquarium.  It’s really nothing more than a research and breeding tank for some of our exotics."
“Makes sense,” she agreed for the tank was feeling somewhat cramped even though it was 50 meters long and 30 wide.  She knew she’d never be transformed back and decided to make the best of it.

A pair of transport robots moved into the water with a pair of poles and a sling between them.  Kira swam over to the stretcher and pulled herself into it.  As she was pulled from the water, the man snapped a metal band around the tip of one tentacle and sealed it shut.  As she was bouncing about in the sling, she held the tentacle up to see what the ring had written on it.

Subject: XTD-916
Species: H. Sapiens octopus
TF Date: 2097-07-23