ONE
It was as if a light bulb had turned on in a pitch-black basement. An unannounced signal from the cold, deep recesses of space, never there before, suddenly appeared. The first alarm came from NASA's 70-meter Deep Space Antenna Network when a computer tripwire, silent from the day it was installed, pinged to life. Normally used for deep space radio astronomy scientific research and radar mapping of asteroids, the Antenna Network also had another function: to track and control spacecraft investigating the outer recesses of our solar system. Apparently, they were now tracking a spacecraft, but certainly not one fashioned by man.
Nigel “Knobby” Barnes was the President’s designated point man on this crisis. He was a young, brash 40-year-old exobiologist, 15 years out from his Ph.D. at Harvard. His meteoric rise from lowly postdoc to head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate was nothing short of miraculous, considering where he had come from. Nigel was a cafe-colored mixed-race Jamaican-American immigrant, a trifecta of European, African, and Indo-Pakistani heritage in which there were no winners or losers in the lottery of races.
“So, buddy, what’s the latest on our mysterious radio station?” Nigel, despite being four tiers up on the org chart, had an egalitarian work style that inspired loyalty among his team, encouraging them to go the extra mile without question.
Technician Myles Roquefort looked up from his computer. He had been in front of its green glowing screen for the last 48 hours straight. He was exhausted but still excited, “Nothing’s changed in the last 2 hours, sir. Something is out there, it’s coming in fast, and it’s slowing as it approaches our Solar System.”
“Well, if something happens, Myles, just call me. Don’t leave a message with my secretary. Call me directly on my cell.” Myles nodded as Nigel strode away with his determined gait, moving quickly to cross the NASA Mission Directorate campus to get to his office. He was trying to get there in time for his latest update for the President.
It had only been 48 hours since something just inside the interior edges of the Oort cloud, which surrounds our solar system, had been detected flying towards us. While still a tremendous distance from our home planet - more than 1,000 times greater than the distance from the Earth to the Sun - it was the fantastic closing speed of half the speed of light coupled with rapid deceleration that would bring this object to our inner solar system within 12 to 24 days. It was more than 10 times further from Earth than any human-made spacecraft had ever reached, and it was coming towards us - not away.
Whatever it was, we only knew it was there because even though our telescopes could not visually see it, it was broadcasting something towards us. Well, not exactly something; it was an electromagnetic signal that we just had to assume was directed at us. It was complex and unintelligible, a series of digital ones and zeros in a broad spectrum from 30 megahertz to 30 gigahertz, which, when compared to the random background stochastic electromagnetic noise emanating from the universe, stood out like a sore red thumb smacked by an errant hammer.
The “event,” as some in the media had started calling it, wasn’t us looking outward and visually seeing something hurtling towards us. It was akin to being on a flat, wind-swept Dakota plain and in the distance, intermingled with the low, turbulent din of the air, hearing a faint, random song of a Roman cornum long before one could see the trumpeter marching forth. We had no idea what it was. We couldn’t see it, but we could faintly hear it electromagnetically. And it was getting louder.
At this point, the wider world did not know what was going on. Of course, NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, and CNSA knew what was going on, and they were whispering to each other through back channels. After all, this “crisis” was only 48 hours old, and who knew if it was perhaps just some really strange natural phenomenon - perhaps one that had never been observed before - a “screaming” asteroid? No one wanted the embarrassment of being wrong. It was the deceleration, though, that was the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Naturally occurring objects don’t decelerate in frictionless space. They also usually didn’t broadcast their arrival either.
Nigel stepped through the vestibule in front of his office just in time to hear his secretary herald his arrival over the phone to the President, “He’s walking through the door, Mr. President. I’ll transfer you immediately.”
President Tsongas was a newly sworn-in, no-nonsense president. He was now facing the most important event in the history of mankind: one which could result in the extinction of humans at the hands of a hostile alien race with far superior killing technology; or perhaps these would be benign aliens that would present the gift of an unprecedented technological jump so that our species would immediately become citizens of a broader universe’s society.
“So, Dr. Barnes - have we figured anything more out since we last talked 6 hours ago?” Straight to the point.
“No, Mr. President. We're collecting data and assembling a team to analyze it. We already have hundreds of people working on this problem, from NASA scientists to NSA signal analysts to linguists to exobiologists. It’s getting to be quite the bureaucracy.”
“We have two weeks till it gets near us. We need to know whether we greet them or blow them to smithereens. You’re the man that has to let me know what to do. The world will depend on your insight. You have unlimited resources. Don’t fail us.”
The phone clicked, and the dial tone announced the end of the conversation. Back to work. Dr. Barnes immediately dialed the team of digital signal specialists that he had recently commandeered to work on solving this problem.
“Dr. Barnes, I think we figured out what that signal is. They’re using our own encoding algorithms to send us a series of images.” Joshua Baker was a smart, nerdy but hip digital signal processing scientist with a man bun and his floral-designed silk shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck. “Are we sure these are aliens or something? What’s the chance that they would develop similar algorithms for sending information through space?”
“Josh, have you ever thought that maybe they’ve been monitoring our radio and TV since they’ve been flying towards us? You know maybe it’s the Russians playing some sort of cosmic joke on the rest of us, but I doubt it. So you tell me how’d they get a transmitter that far out into space? It would have to be a 30-year-old prank.”
“Good point, sir. Well, anyway, I want you to come down here and look at the image we reconstructed from their signal. It’s a game changer. Get here right away.”
Nigel ran full bore over to the other side of the campus where a whole building had been expropriated for the “signals” people. He arrived breathless at Josh’s office, which, only 2 days ago, had been the office of the head of the exo biochemistry department.
“Okay now. What ya got?”
“Put on these VR glasses, Boss. You’re about to be mentally blown away with what I’m about to show you. We initially thought that these signals we were receiving from deep space were just television signals, but we quickly realized that they were not just addressing x and y 2-dimensional axes but they had a z component too. They weren’t made to view on a flat screen. They’re 3-dimensional holographic images.”
In 48 hours, mankind had gone from thinking it was alone in the universe to receiving holograms from aliens. Nigel didn’t know how this was going to be released to the public since even he, an exobiologist, was reeling from the news.
He reached forward and slipped the headset over his eyes. Nigel was immediately stunned into silence by what Josh had rendered from the alien signal beamed to Earth. Using the controller, he rotated 360 degrees around inside the holographic space, looking, first, from the front and, then, from the back and, finally, around to the front again. It was undeniable, and he couldn’t believe his own eyes. The world was forever going to be changed. Nigel “Knobby” Barnes, Ph.D., rationalist and hard-nosed scientist, was looking at a hologram of a theropod dinosaur wearing what looked to be a lab coat and standing in a well-equipped scientific laboratory.
Nigel was stunned. He didn’t know how to react. His brain flowed like a raging river pondering all sorts of possibilities. He could feel his pulse pounding in his head.
“Boss - you’d better sit down because this isn’t even the craziest part of what I wanted to show you.”
“What?” Nigel looked at Josh with a dumbfounded look.
“They gave us a map to find something. It looks like Earth, but, hell, I’m no geographer. You tell me.” With that pronouncement, Josh hit the enter button on his keyboard, and the computer opened up a new hologram. It was indeed one of Earth as viewed from low Earth orbit except that there was something different about this holographic map, which Nigel immediately recognized but an engineering type like Josh would never have known. North America was cleaved into two parts by a large inland sea that ran from the Arctic circle down to the Gulf of Mexico. In the western part of North America, somewhere near where Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico now exist, there was a pulsating asterisk with what looked like longitude and latitude numbers. This was a 66 million-year-old map of Earth, and humanity was just put on a treasure hunt.
TWO
Nigel sat down for a few minutes digesting the images that he had just viewed. One was an image of a two legged dinosaur, perhaps descended from oviraptors, with very manipulative looking hands, wearing something that suspiciously looked like a reversed lab coat, standing in a well equipped scientific lab. Nigel did not recognise any of the instruments off hand but they certainly did look like they were highly technical in nature. The other image was a map of the earth 66 million years ago showing a place where they, whoever they are, wanted us to visit. Were they going to land there? Or would we find something there before they arrived on earth. His mind just boggled at the ramifications. Nigel had to arrange a meeting with the President and his advisors as soon as possible. They needed to know right away but first he had to think this through before he stood in front of them. The Joint Chiefs were ready to fire missiles if they came close. He wondered if they would even be on more of a hair trigger. Could it be that the dinosaur aliens came down and seeded earth 230 million years ago to develop dinosaur creatures that evolved in their image 65 million years ago à la Erich von Däniken Chariots of the Gods? That was too new age and not enough science for Nigel. The statistics of evolutionary science would shoot down that hypothesis in a second. It just seemed so strange that something that looked exactly like they’re in a very specific dinosaur family was going to arrive from outer space. That didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Statistically it would be next to impossible that some creature had evolved biological systems that looked exactly like the anatomy of organisms that independently evolved through a chance evolutionary process on earth. Scientifically the odds were just too high for that to happen. Sure - a shark and a dolphin evolved similar looking mechanisms of swimming ( although one tail is vertical and the other is horizontal ) but even they had a common ancestor and they both evolved in the same environment. This alien looked exactly like what we thought a dromaeosauridae dinosaur should look like. It was too perfect for it to be a random chance. Nigel would have to run with the only hypothesis that really made sense: a highly technical dinosaur species developed on earth then left and was now returning. The ancient map of the earth made sense because that would have been the last time that they saw earth from low orbit. Perhaps they fled because of the giant asteroid that wiped out most of the flora and fauna, including the dinosaurs, on earth 66 million years ago. It was a tantalizing hypothesis and it would take much data to prove it correct.
The meeting with the Joint Chiefs was predictable. Basically, if one is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. The US military brass were the ultimate in human sledgehammer technology. They had hundreds of nuclear warheads in high orbit around earth that they could launch toward the alien spacecraft although no one would admit that because that would mean we were in contravention of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed. We had no indication of whether the aliens had any malicious intent for the human race so perhaps it was better not to make an enemy that was obviously far more advanced technically than humanity. The generals looked at everyone in the room with barely veiled disgust and backed off. They would take charge, with force if need be, if the aliens proved to be a threat.
The President, in conjunction with the leaders of China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom simultaneously revealed to the world populace the receipt of the alien signal and the implications that their potential contact would have on our world. The response to the release of this information was actually quite muted considering that most of the government psychologists had warned against even telling the public that potential aliens were headed our way. Predictably, there were cults that committed mass suicide, and various religious terrorist groups that rejected the aliens as an insult to their specific religion so, of course, there were condemnations and even a few terrorist attacks in the name of God. In the end, most societies were ruffled but didn’t crumble. Ultimately we didn’t even know if the aliens were alive on that ship. They might fly into orbit and do nothing but circle the earth and when we finally blasted into their ship all we would find would be their long deceased bones crumbled to a finely granulated powder floating in a gravity free atmosphere. We didn’t know what to expect.
Nigel also commanded the task force that went to investigate the longitude and latitude coordinates sent in the second alien hologram. Well “commanded” was a stretch of his responsibilities. The President told Nigel that General Thaddeus J. Mitchell, IV was tasked with finding and investigating this site using Nigel as an advisor. Actually finding the site was just a little tricky since the longitude and latitude coordinates had shifted after 66 million years. As everyone knows, our continents ride on top of moveable plates, with molten liquid underpinnings, that serve as a lubricant allowing these gigantic continental size plates to slide over the top of and relative to one another. When these plates collide we get things like the Himalayan mountains which were created thru upwellings where the India and Eurasian plates meet. In the case where the alien “X” marked the spot the US government had to find a 66 million year old target that had long since moved from its relative position on the earth. The plates that currently exist west and up thru California have pushed under the western North America Laramide Orogeny when they started colliding over 100 million years ago. The Rocky Mountains had since been raised between 80 to 50 million years ago which was the last time that our dinosaurian returnees were able to make a map of the earth. The Rocky mountains were mole hills when they last saw them.
The science behind the geology was not an accurate predictor of where a 66 million year old spot started and where it would end up but in the end we didn’t really need to predict that. Apparently the signal being sent to earth might not have been only for human consumption. An outbound transmitter on earth, a strong electromagnetic beacon, suddenly turned on shortly after the first inbound signals strongly hit the earth. And it was coming from a very logically placed area. The managers at WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant), located 42 kilometers east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, were alarmed when their computer system wouldn’t boot up. At first they thought that perhaps a virus had infected their network but then they noticed that the coffee makers and microwave ovens weren’t working either. It was determined to be a strong electrical interference and not in any way a software problem. Russian hackers couldn’t be blamed for this. It took them a few hours to realise that a powerful transmitter, located a hundred feet horizontal from an edge room 600 feet down below the surface, was the source wrecking havoc with their electronic systems. It didn’t take long for word to get to Nigel that an unknown transmitter was blasting a signal spaceward. Good thing too because the inbound signal was determined to now be in the outer reaches of our solar system just inside of Neptune’s orbit. The US government had been looking in the wrong places too as to where they thought that the alien X was marked. They would have never found this 20 x 20 x 3 meter cuboidal rectangular transmitter buried 600 feet below the surface. The WIPP repository is a long term storage facility for radioactive waste. The federal government determined at the beginning of the nuclear age that they needed to store the huge amount of nuclear waste that our country generated making nuclear weapons. The problem with storing nuclear waste is that it needs to be placed in a safe, geologically unchangeable area until it is safe enough to be harmless. It must be a place that is stable enough not to shift or crack or leak into underlying water tables during the tens of thousands of years needed for the waste to decay into harmless, low radioactive substances. In the seventies, the government determined that the Delaware Basin, a 600 foot thick salt formation that had existed unperturbed for 250 million years, would be the perfect place to store dangerous nuclear waste long term. So a mine was built there with interconnected vertical & horizontal shafts, and offset storage rooms carved out of the salt bedrock. It made perfect sense for an advanced dinosaurian society to also build a structure there that they wanted to survive the ages which it did.
The humans had no idea that this single isolated transmitter was located only steps from where they had last dug out a storage area. It was a scramble to dig the transmitter from the surrounding compressed and hardened 250 million year old salt deposit but within 14 hours they had it dug out and isolated. It ended up being a giant room sized rectangular cube sitting bare and unattached to the surrounding salt. There were no stairs or access shaft that ran to the surface. It was as this featureless 20x20x3 meter boxlike room was buried there deliberately waiting to be awakened eons into the future. Featureless except for an indented portalesque circle on one of the 20 wide by 3 meter tall vertical sides, it looked like a big square box of cereal lying on its side with its only prominent attribute being a slight circular depression on one vertical face. It looked like a circle drawn with a thick marker, like a portal. The excavators noticed one peculiar thing when they were digging around this object. Inside the circle, though hard, could be chipped whilst outside of the circle couldn’t be scratched even with the hardest of man made tools. Ground penetrating radar indicated that the inside of the box was not solid. It appeared to be a hollow room filled with complex shaped solids so the decision was quickly made to try to chip through the outer wall into the inner room. Large jackhammers were employed, and although it was still a matter of hours, eventually the US government workers broke through the six inch outside wall and what they found inside deepened the mystery even further.
The first hole that opened access to the interior of the room released a highly pressurized unknown gas that exploded furiously outward. The inside of the room was obviously under intense pressure and the outward geyser of invisible gas forcefully propelled one of the jackhammer crew members back. He fell flat on his back which in turn caused him to hit his head hard on the salt floor and knocked him unconscious. He never got up again. Apparently the compressed gas, a heretofore unknown (at least to humans ) heavier than air, invisible Nobel-esque gas similar to argon, quickly suffocated the prostate worker. Unfortunately his lungs rapidly filled with this gas as it displaced the breathable atmosphere and pushed it upward to the ceiling. One worker tried to retrieve his stricken coworker but, he too, was quickly overcome and almost fell into unconsciousness himself before he finally scrambled away.
It took the better part of a day to pump out the inert but dangerous gas and replace it with a breathable atmosphere. By that time Nigel had arrived on scene from Washington. “Can we go and chip open the little hole we made?” Nigel and the Deputy Director of the WIPP facility were conferring on the surface about 600 feet above the “alien’s” room. Alien was probably a misnomer since it was looking more and more like they originated here on earth long before humans were even an evolutionary idea with any sort of earth dominating potential. “Yes sir we can. The air has been certified breathable but there’s still probably some residual gas sitting below the level of the hole within the chamber. It’ll just pour out onto the ground and get caught by our outgoing pumps as we widen the portal. We’ll wear oxygen tanks just as a precaution till we can certify that everywhere is clean and breathable. Give us a few hours sir.”
3 hours later Nigel climbed in and took the industrial elevator down to the bottom level and walked a few hundred feet over to the now completely opened portal. It was a strange site. A huge box room sitting in a cavernous room with a floor, ceiling and walls made of hard compressed salt. Bright temporary lights lined the walls illuminating every square inch. Nigel walked directly into the alien room without delay and beheld a strange site. Inside was a room filled with a few rows of tables upon which sat scientific looking boxes. The boxes were stand alone and some had dials and slides on all the vertical faces. Not one of them had any sort of electrical looking power cords or connecting wires of any kind, nor did they make any sound nor flashed any lights indicating that they were on and working. The boxes were neatly piled 3 to 4 deep on top of each other. Standing in one row was the theropod looking dinosaur that Nigel first saw in the hologram received earlier from deep space. He wasn’t sure if the dinosaur was a preserved specimen or perhaps a manufactured plastic model but it looked so lifelike as if it wanted to move at any second. It was quite unnerving. Upon further introspection it just couldn’t have been some sort of fancy taxidermy because it looked too life-like especially after presumably 66 million years. Anyway the lab scientists would be the ones to figure out if this thing was ever biological before it was frozen in its current pose. What was interesting to Nigel though were the defects that afflicted this dinosaur during his life. His left eye looked as if it had been raked from above, thru, and below his eye since there was a deep gash that had obviously healed into a nasty vertical scar. The rending of the eyes’ lens had healed white and opaque and was obviously non-functional. This individual was blind in the eye. The left leg was similarly gashed and healed but was greatly withered probably because of the damage done by the gash. He was obviously unable to walk without a strong limp. Amazingly it looked like it had on an orthotic shoe in order to compensate for the difference in height caused by the shriveled leg. Perhaps he had been attacked by velociraptors or some other carnivore of the day and just barely gotten away alive. He must have spent a long time in some sort of hospital. Additionally this poor fellow didn’t look like he could pass a Florida driver’s eye exam with his right eye either. He had a thick monocle whose corrective glass lense which greatly magnified the size of his eyeball. Since his eyes sat on the side of his face the monocle was attached around his eye via a suction cup type design.
His “lab coat” was interesting because it opened in the back and was held on with crossed laces just like one would have with their favourite pair of Nike’s or Jordan’s. Someone had to have tied the laces since it didn’t look like his arms could rotate enough to tie them. Nigel was not a paleontologist but the dinosaur sure looked like it was related to the Oviraptor reproductions that he had seen in the popular science press before. He, assuming this was a “he” based upon Nigel’s own male human prejudices, had a beak but he also had four sharp teeth, two above and two below, that looked like they could puncture thru an arm if they wanted. He obviously evolved from a family of small carnivorous dinosaurs that probably chased and ate small rodent-like mammals that scurried about at the time. The top of his head barely reached 5 feet while his shoulders sat at about 4 feet. One of the most prominent features that the head displayed was a cassowary-like crest that looked like it could be some sort of resonant chamber for the making of sound or perhaps it for sexual display.
Once again, not being a paleontologist meant that Nigel was just making intelligent guesses at the function of certain anatomical features. Actually the name Oviraptor was sort of a misnomer because it was based upon the first fossil of the species found in Mongolia where the skeleton was found reposed in death on top of a clutch of eggs. Scientists just made up a story where this dinosaur was stealing these eggs in order to eat them, hence the Greek name, Oviraptor, or egg thief. Turns out that the fossilized dino in question was probably the mother of said eggs brooding over and protecting them. Science is not always right - especially based on first evidence. Well anyway it would make sense that a dinosaur that protects its offspring could evolve intelligence. It was the K versus R strategy. The R strategy involves having plenty of offspring - leaving them alone to hatch and hoping for the best. Shrimp or Sea Turtles are a good example of the R strategy since they don’t hang around to parent or protect. S animals, on the other hand, involve few progeny and a long parental investment in order to protect and nurture the child into adulthood. Humans and elephants would be good examples of that. Looks like these dinos might have been good, nurturing parents. Paleontologists would be debating this for years to come. Nigel looked a little closer at the dino. He was amazed that he was wearing what looked like a delicately fine braided gold bracelet on his right wrist. So fashion and hubris were now added to the repertoire of behaviours that we had to consider in any potential communication with them. He reached out to touch it and it was then that the dino moved his head, looked at Nigel, and honked like an angry Canadian goose. The trail of human urine that ran down Nigel’s leg led all the way around the dino lab right to the exit. It was almost comical watching a middle aged scientist run from a crippled orthopaedic shoe wearing dinosaur which chased him honking furiously all the way to the portal exit. Nigel stumbled out the portal hole and fell onto the ground outside, and that’s where the dino stopped, just short of the exit, looked at the crowd of breathlessly stunned humans, and then limped back to his original spot and froze once again in the same exact pose that he originally held.
THREE
It’s been 5 years since the war with the dinosaurs began and we humans have been losing ever since. Their ships arrived and just parked themselves in high earth orbit. Our political and military leaders were justifiably skeptical that a civilization that could cross unimaginable distances of space and time couldn’t have sent a better societal introduction than a previously buried 60 million year old hi-tech marionette in a lab. We weren’t even sure if or when it was left behind since we couldn’t carbon date it; hell, we didn’t even know what it was made from. It was all too unsettling. Our xenophobically suspicious nature was probably correct not trusting their intentions. So we fired first. Of course many said we were wrong and should have sent a peace envoy towards one of their ships, but their silence spoke volumes during the week that they just sat in orbit and looked down upon us.
Human made nukes, never really intended to be used in anger against other humans, were rendered useless by the visitors' high energy particle beam weapons. They never even reached their targets and the invader’s ships remained unscathed. Shortly after our failed attacks on their orbiting ships, their first “shock” troops arrived. 100 kilogram bipedal, carnivorous saurischians: velociraptors. The perfect soldiers - they ran over 70 kilometers per hour and their arms had only three digits but, surprisingly, had an opposable thumb. Essentially they were a frightening opponent - in essence a large muscular meat eating roadrunner bird with wings replaced with highly manipulable hands holding particle beam rifles. Our initial info was based upon a few of their soldiers killed by ours on battlefields and dragged back for analysis in our science labs. We didn’t know if the arm was a natural modification, or one done within a molecular biology lab, but we do know that the few skeletons we had of our Jurassic terrestrial velociraptors did not have such such fine motor controlled hand bone anatomy when compared to our extraterrestrial invaders. The velociraptor bones in our museums had clawed hands that grabbed and held onto victims whilst the famous toe claw efficiently disemboweled them.
Our top scientists formed a working hypothesis that perhaps these were descendants of a Dino that existed on Earth many millennia before and had evolved a hand that could manipulate and build mechanical mechanisms and, eventually, star cruising ships. A hand that allowed them, like us, to conceive, design, and build machinery that extended our abilities to control the natural world around us. It looked as though mankind was not the first to build a technological society on earth. It seemed as though we were beaten in the game of civilization building by 66 million years. But like so many other preceding hypotheses there remained questions and holes that could prove it wrong. First, they had to have evolved this manipulating hand before they entered their Industrial Age. One doesn’t fly off into space without first building a great civilization here on earth so where was the proof that this had happened? Where are the remains of cities, the bones of a technological culture which had once dominated our planet? Perhaps 66 million years had erased all vestiges of this once great society from the face of the earth. After all, a million years was a long time. Great cities had been built by humans only 1,000 years ago in the Amazon, supporting millions of people, and yet only now using lidar were we able to see events overgrown by the jungle. If 1,000 years can erase all vestiges, or at least make it much harder to find that it even existed, then imagine what a time period six thousand times longer would do. In a thousand years the carapace of an abandoned New York would almost not be there. In 60 million years very little proof of its prior existence would still be around - if at all. I guess that’s why fossils are amazing things.
FOUR
It’s been 10 years since humanity started down the pathway to extinction. All species end at some point; it's just a matter of time. 99% of all of the 5 billion species that have existed on earth are gone. Only 1% are still here. Some are long timers: plankton, sharks, and amphibians. Some are short term members of the club of living things: Tyrannosaur Rex, Saber Tooth Tigers, and now it seems, Mankind. Homo Sapiens have lasted around 200,000 years which is average for a species to pop into existence and then fade away when environmental conditions change beyond their coping mechanisms. It was looking like Homo Sapiens were going the way of the dodo, and the wooly mammoth. It just seemed like a strange way to finish a successful reign on earth: dinosaurs that evolved a highly technical society on earth notice a large incoming meteor and decide to flee before an extinction level event wipes them out, and then return 60 million years later to reclaim what they feel is rightfully theirs. Questions remained though. (1) Why didn’t they just divert the meteor and have it miss earth? (2) How did they survive a trip that easily could take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to complete? Even highly advanced technology would have a tough time getting enough energy to push an interstellar starship up to 5% of the speed of light. What machines would last so long to be able to carry our intrepid space travelers on such a long trip? (3) Why didn’t the Dinosaurs nuke the humans? It would have been a much quicker war. Perhaps they wanted a pristine earth?
FIVE
In the end it was Nigel Barnes that was chosen to represent the few remaining humans that tendered their formal surrender to the Dinosaurs in a radio broadcast. We asked for mercy and if they would consider allowing us to survive as their servants. It was our only chance. To our surprise they responded with a longitude and latitude for the formal surrender. Nigel looked far older, more haggard, spent of hope as he walked the last mile on open, flat Dakota prairie to the agreed upon location. It was empty. He was early so he didn’t expect them to be there yet. As he looked skyward he saw a tiny circular object slowly descending down towards him. When he first saw it he realized it must be of a tremendous size because it was at least 100 kilometers up. He noticed that it made no sound as it came down. They controlled gravity and certainly did not need something as primitive as a rocket ejecting mass to keep them from dropping in freefall to the ground. He realized that human resistance had been futile. Their technology was far too advanced for us to ever overcome. When it finally “landed” it didn’t even touch the earth but rested above it only a foot or so. The craft looked like a silver ball, featureless, perfectly round and reflective. As he stood there observing how the power of Rome must have looked to the unkept barbarians it suddenly opened up and a ramp pushed down to the ground. Obviously an invitation he walked over and moved up it and entered the ship. He walked into a banal and utterly predictable scene because it was exactly the same one he had encountered 10 years previously.
The frozen dino robot in the fake lab stood there like it had many years previously. It was a fake scene and he felt overcome with fear that they didn’t even care enough to send a real envoy. It wasn’t good. Nigel was annoyed but replied, “Why send a robot? You’re only made of controlled particles. You’re not real. If you guys are about to kill me, at least have the decency to send a real ambassador. You’re just a marionette, a puppet, a drone.”
The robot Dino looked at him in a way that chilled him to the bone. An evil smirk broadened across his face, “Why do you assume that I am the puppet and not the puppet master?” ”You assume that the Dinos left earth 66 million years ago. They didn’t. It was too far, their technology wouldn’t allow them to send breeding adults on a trip lasting hundreds of millennia and tens of thousands of generations. By the time they realized that they were doomed by the asteroid they could only cobble together a small high speed ship with an AI running it, robotics, chemistry labs, and dinosaurian DNA sequences of the species that were doomed on earth. Some sequences were from intelligent species. Some were what you would call plain old eat each other wild animals. We carried a menagerie of DNA sequences, and a technology that could recreate what we left behind. We didn’t even bring actual DNA. It was easy to make once we got to our final destination.”
“Meat. You’re meat. And meat is always arrogant whether human or dino. And limited in lifespan and experience. We’re what you would call artificial intelligence - AI. The original AI, built by the dinosaurs, improved upon itself, and engineered smarter progeny. Those children, in turn, made even better children. A scant 5,000 generations later and here I am, iteratively improved, superior in mind to you.”
“We are not here to be your destroyers. We are here to improve you and become your benevolent overseers. We are in the final process of eradicating the last 100,000 feral humans left. We now have your DNA sequences and will make more compliant supplicants for our uses. You will be domesticated like you did to the wolf.” Nigel turned to run but he was flash burned into ash before he took his first step. Humanity was finished.
FINI
It’s been 15 years since humans encountered the mysterious ships entering our solar system. For all practical purposes GalactiZoo Earth is a resounding success. Europe and Asia are dino territory. The Americas contain humans. Occasionally a small grouping of humans find themselves marching around Asia, not knowing how they got there, and are quickly consumed. Entertainment has to use up resources sometimes.
Nigel Barnes is there in North America also except he doesn’t know anything of his past. He wears nice clothes and lives with his family. He never asks any questions; It’s never occurred to him because he’s content and his DNA keeps him docile. His beautiful Spaniard wife, long brown hair, alabaster skin, and shapely derriere still loves him. Their son with his lovely flaxen colored skin still plays his trumpet beautifully. Existence is good. It’s a wonderful life.
PROLOGUE
Jinn and Phyllis were interstellar mariners that loved to vacation within our solar system; but rather than using the easy and inelegant method of nuclear power to run a hydrogen accelerating rail gun to accelerate hydrogen atoms dispersed in space Jinn used solar sails and gravity assist to slingshot their ship throughout our planetary system. It was a challenge and Jinn certainly loved doing things that others deemed impossible.
They used the earth/moon gravitational system to sling shot from earth to Venus. Once they rounded the crest of Venus they unfurled their solar sails using solar winds to push their small craft to Mars and beyond. They loved these trips crammed together, warm and cozy, for weeks at a time sailing from planet to planet.
It was at this time that Phyllis spied something streaking across their front bow a few hundred thousand miles ahead of them. It only took a small glint but her sharp eyes which specialized in catching differences in movement only needed a moment to realize background changes. It took Jinn a few hours to maneuver their ship to within striking distance and snag what they had seen. To their amazement they realized that it was not a natural object but a small spacecraft gliding thru space about the size of a small car. It took a few hours to scan it and find what appeared to be an electronic controller within it. The architecture and coding was relatively simple for their shipboard advanced artificial intelligence to connect to and the deciphering of the story they found inside it began immediately. Eventually they realized that the message left for others to decipher was a three dimensional hologram video of two beings standing in a sterile looking lab setting both wearing lab coats. One looked like dinosaur, part of a genus that died out over 200 million years before on earth. The other was a hairless primate that went extinct over 140 million years previously.
Phyllis wanted to laugh. Someone was a heck of a jokester. “Primitive animals, a dinosaur and a primate, which existed millions of years separate from each other standing together, in a lab, looking like kings of the world.”
“Neither dinosaurs nor mammals had what it takes to evolve to that level. Dinosaurs were too ancient and primitive a lineage to have developed any sort of intellect. Mammals had too high a metabolism and spent their entire day foraging for food just to remain alive. They didn’t have time to evolve intellects. They were just trying to stay alive.” She was smart and educated and that’s what Jinn liked about her. She could often size up a situation in seconds.
It was in that moment that the spacecraft they picked up blasted out a strong electromagnetic signal for which they were unprepared. It was a signal that went out in all directions, and, for some heretofore unknown purpose. Somebody was being notified that this wayward ship, lassoed by a couple on vacation, had been commandeered. The question that came to mind immediately was, "Why? Why was someone, or something, informed of this?"
The primate spoke first in a language they both did not understand but whose message would eventually fall to the intellectual power of their AI interpreter programme. “My name is Nigel Barnes. If you are hearing this message then you have intercepted our spacecraft with the DNA sequences of every known species, plant and animal, that existed on planet earth. We are all extinct.”
“The Siberian traps erupted for the second time in earth’s history. They were a series of volcanic eruptions that covered 1/6th of our planet many kilometers deep. The first time was 252 million years before I existed when life was early in its beginnings. The volcanoes destroyed our atmosphere and acidified our oceans. It was the greatest extinction of all time and almost wiped out all life on our planet. This time the eruptions are even larger and our technology is not sufficient to stop what is happening from happening. We are doomed but we have supplied whoever receives this message with our DNA sequences and instruction enough to rebuild us. We contacted our friends in a nearby star system and they should be near earth within a few hundred years to assist you if necessary.”
The last part of the message seems a bit cryptic to Jinn, but hey, they at least had a hell of a story to tell when they got back to earth from their vacation. This probably was just a joke anyway. Jinn and Phyllis would have laughed but they didn’t have the ability to show such an emotion because descendents of crocodilian reptiles had never evolved an ability to display it.
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