957 fully conscious fish were presented to the crew of the S.S. Beyond. There were only 1,000 of these fish in all the galaxy.

That’s right, the Guild of Eager Enthusiasts had succeeded in giving total self-awareness to animals.

The gher cap fish were a symbol of pride all over the planet, and the Breegans were right to be proud of themselves.

Look what amazing feats they accomplished!

For the Breegans, giving consciousness to the gher cap was like a state turning its national flag into a real, live person.

Unfortunately, the gher cap were not happy.

Then, in 2057, Merlin the Linguist came back from the dead and found a way to talk to the gher cap.

Or was it truly Merlin?

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Here is what happened:

In 2054, The Galactic Opulefascence Company, or GOC, decided to try to find a way to prove that the Gher Cap were conscious, sentient creatures. They decided that the first thing they had to do was to figure out how to communicate with them.

If they could just talk to the Gher Cap, the GOC realized, they could know for sure if the Gher Cap were conscious or not.

That was when they realized they needed a certain master celebrity linguist to come back from the dead.

After all, if the Gher Cap fish couldn’t talk, then how could you ever prove that the gher cap were even self-aware at all?

Thus, in that very same year of 2054, the GOC started a top-secret program to revive Merlin, the famed linguist of old, to find a way to decipher whatever communication the gher cap could muster.

As the GOC predicted, when the S.S. Boundary astronauts got their gher cap fish in 2056, none of them knew how intelligent the fish actually were.

Yes, it was obvious the fish were smart. They seemed to show emotions and reactions to things. But just how smart were they?

There was no way to know for sure.

That is, until in 2057, the GOC launched Merlagram, the executable program which ran Merlin the Linguist’s recollected brain data. And his data astounded the entire Breegan solar system.

Merlin the Linguist was back.