The islands amncient builders had named it
SILURIAN PUDDLE JUMPER
125 million years earlier
It was a metamorph capable Artificial Intelligence guided
Trilobite class Sub Seabed Surface capable Silurian Dreadnaught
built by a highly intelligent species of ichthyosaur 125 million
years earlier for their own use.
The merfolk engineers however generally simplified matters
it was a shapeshifting island sized artificial lifeform that had created the merfolk 25,000 year earlier when the merfolk had been as human,airbreathing and walking on land as the rest of the
humans.However with a global glacier threating to end the Age
of Humans 25,000 years ago the emotionless but highly intelligent
devic or one of its kinfolk had made the first changes to the humans
it had snapped up ,giving them a few aquatic features to survive
in water with.
Not so much the Creator God/Goddess of the merfolk but a
important player in the matter of where the merfolk came from.
Generally when the shape shifting trilobite shaped mobile islands
shut down they buried themselves deep into the seafloor to avoid
undesireables such as pesky greedy or just curious merfolk engineers breaking through the things magnetic morphing shields
and getting into the more sensitively critical parts of itself.
The merfolk,to put it politely,the thing viewed as the enemy
ever since the merfolk had tried to break into it
back in 1860 when they'd botched up their latest break & enter
attempt,which besides sending the thing veering off course
had led to the shipwreck and loss of human life aboard that slaver
ship and the unplanned crash of the immense island sized
artificial life form on a modest sized sea town of merfolk who
simply were crushed out of existence when the thing crashed down on them from above,
So the thing scanned for the human lifeforms ,both landbased
airbreathers and the water breathing merfolk
there was Ashley
there was the team of merfolk enginners down below
there was a merfolk family sunning on a disguised plasma
propulsion shield on the north side
there were thirty human tourists,their tour guide and the
Captain and the First Mate of the tourboat to the south
There were the Aunt Maria ,the Grandfather and Ashley's jilted
potential human mate and his younger brother sneaking
up from a stand of trees,intent on kidnapping unawares Ashley
and there was two other air breathers and three merfolk
engineers making "First Contact" with each another at
what they viwed as the west cove and the thing viewed as its
reserved water shielding for those sub seafloor voyages.
The scanners told the artificial intelligence there were 99 humans
crawling about its body-hull and enough power in its
transformation fuel banks to transform 33 of those humans
into what the artificial intelligence viewed as the superior
species,the 15 foot to 45 foot long intelligent ichthyosaurs that
were its creators,as well as launch itself back into its normal
voyaging form.
So the artificial intelligence selected the 33 humans to reshape
into life forms,seized them,reshaped them into the new bodies
and let the other 66 humans and merfolk deal with the adventure
as best they could.