Aquamarina

By B.E. Aker

“Marina, Aquamarina/ Why don't you say/ You'll always stay / Close to my heart…” These are the words to the theme song from a 1960s television show called Stingray, an offshoot of the well-known Thunderbirds series. Realistic-looking puppets played all of the characters. The original Thunderbirds worked in the sky with fast planes and rockets, and were essentially a family operation. In Stingray, Captain Troy Tempest patrolled the undersea world with his crew of independent single men and the memorable Marina.

How Marina, a beautiful, mute, young mermaid, became part of the ultra-rational world of science aboard the super-duper-submarine is a good question. Was Marina in love with the handsome puppet man Troy? Did Troy love Marina? After all, the whole theme song was about her.

Here's the backstory.

Seventeen-year-old Troy Tempest and his father, mother, and brother (all scientists) were cruising around a coral reef somewhere in the south Pacific in their submarine.

“Look, Troy, the sonar has detected a school of blue-headed wrasse.” (Wrasse are a type of small fish with an interesting social structure).

“Yes, Dad, by gosh, you're right. I'll zoom in with the super-magnifying telescope video camera and see if we can get a better look at them. There they are now, on the screen, have a good look.”

Dr. Tempest was impressed. “Fiona, come have a look. Your favorite hermaphroditic fish is up on the scope.”

Troy's mother walked with just a bit more of a bounce than the rest of them. Being puppets, they all moved in a bit of a jerky way, but Fiona had a little flair that set her apart from the men, despite wearing the same uniform.

“You're right, George, dear. The blue-headed wrasse is hermaphroditic, but only sequentially. The individual fish is either male or female, never both at once.”

This was a little puzzling to Troy, who loved biology, but had specialized in corals and other invertebrates, not fish, and so had been sheltered from the concept of gender transition.

“But Mother, there must be a point where the fish is neither male nor female, when it's in a state of transition from one to the other.”

Fiona looked fondly at her clever son. “Yes, Troy. The transition isn't instantaneous. It happens when the dominant male dies or is somehow removed from the group. The largest female in his harem changes from female to male. We're not sure how long that process takes, but she has to grow by about thirty-three percent of her original size while she's changing.”

“And what if the dominant male comes back in the middle of the process?”

This sort of question provoked ominous music and could only be answered in the deeper tones of Troy's father.

“We just don't know. Stand by for action! Anything can happen in the next…half hour.”

Equipped with new knowledge of sex change and hermaphrodites, Troy had one of his weirdest dreams that night. There was this boy, this very pretty boy — not a made-up boy, but a real one, Terry Smith. Terry Smith had been Troy's best friend for years at boarding school, before Troy went to live with his parents at Marineville. In the dream, Terry was turning into a girl. His hair grew longer, framing his delicate face and deep green eyes. Flowing hair covered Terry's whole front, barely revealing his naked, round breasts. The miraculous change was working.

But as dreams will do, this one didn't last. That's the problem with dreams.

What Troy remembered later was that the change had been incomplete. Below the waist, Terry the girl had the body of the blue-headed wrasse.

Years later, when Marina swam into his life, Troy realized his dream had come true.