Being given a weird waterproof shirt I was brought to the hotel's entrance, had my water gills removed, and splashed into the salt water filled renovated hotel. Although the term renovated was a bit of an understatement. There seemed to be a few levels each with a lobby of sorts and a number of private rooms, but the more impressive feat was that the walls seemed to be redesigned so they'd be fine constantly submerged in salt water. My room seemed to be on the bottom floor so I just had to swim down... which ended up being my pushing myself down, let gravity help until water resistance slowed me down, and then I'd just swim down a little bit. The only issue I was having was that the water on my dry skin felt incredibly weird, but the water on my gills were nice. The water gills allowed me to actually breath on land, but it was like breathing sterile air. The sea water felt more natural. By the time I got to the bottom I looked in the lobby where I saw that there were two merpeople. As for as I could tell they seemed to be a little girl with a strip of seaweed across her chest, and a young man who seemingly wore nothing. The two seemed to be laying on some sort of giant sea sponges, the man reading something on a tablet in some water proof thing, and the girl seemed to be blowing air bubble rings.
Unsure what to do I said "Hello?" unsure if my voice would work underwater, but it somehow came out clearer than it seemed on land. The merpeople looked at me the man with a little concern and the girl with excitement.
The girl quickly swam her way to me extremely fast and in my face said "Hi, I'm Shirley. What's your name? What do you like? Want some fish?"
I was bewildered by her till the man said "Shirley calm down." at still a more relaxed pace she swam closer and pulled Shirley away a bit and said "As far as introductions go, my name is Stan and I majored in marine biology and I think we see where that got me."
I said "I'm Dawn, I was a high school student... plunged into san francisco bay... dropped out... spent all my time in bed... I was told that Shirley would show me around?"
Shirley looked excited and said "Oh for sure for sure! The room we're in is our communal room. Supposedly as soon as we can get a Wizard Mermaid we'll be able to get cable!"
I looked confused to Stan who said "While technically any Wizard who could breathe underwater would work. Dr. Sprikov told me we are expected to find a magic user who accidentally turned themselves into a mermaid. Some of the infrastructure that would enable some of our electronics underwater would need her."
Shirley said "Wizard Mermaid! Also they come to feed us every so often, but our rooms are a little empty just having a sponge bed..." she finished.
I asked "So where do we go to the bathroom?"
Stan said "Our rooms each have a large window we can open. You just open the window, go out, find a safe area, and just go... it's the ocean."
Feeling tired I said "Well ok then... I think I'm just going to go to my room and sleep for awhile..." and then went to one of the doors that didn't have something on them, and then just let my body drift onto the large sponge in the room. Had to admit that while I didn't think it would be that comfortable it felt natural to sleep there underwater."