Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  The men stood virtually chest to chest, and so when they spoke it was a conflict waged in whispers.

  “A grave. A mass grave of bipedal, humanoid, proto mammals.

  “Not the product of some calamity, not a Stalinist pile of undesirables, a deliberate, meticulous, burial infrastructure dating back before the first dinosaur evolved a pelvis fit for diapers!”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “I will. I promise you I will.”

  His back to the class and the barrel of Every’s gun pressed discreetly to his sternum, the marine lifted his hands in submission and began the retreat to his seat.

  “Wait.”

  Every stuffed the weapon back into his pants before any of the countless eyes trained on their exchange could catch a glimpse of its deciding factor.

  “You may sit.”

  No other student had cause for alarm when the marine returned to his seat, but most had cause for discomfort when the professor bolted the double doors shut.

  “Don’t worry about that folks, just a friendly chat. What I am about to tell you all is - is very sensitive. Listen closely, if you will, and I may be inclined to let you out a few minutes early.”

  Every’s extension of good will succeeded in abating much of the tension. His deteriorating sobriety even injected some humor back into the room when he retook its center stage.

  “Two of your classmates have already impressed me very much today. Upon foundations of sense and knowledge, they have helped paint a portrait of the fantastic development to which I bore personal witness. I cannot blame them, thus, for missing two final details - two critical questions you should all be asking yourselves, right now. So please, someone, will you speak out and join the storied ranks of these bright young minds so deserving of our praise?”

  Airi did not give her classmates the chance.

  “Why would they invite an anthropologist to a paleontological dig?”

  Every smiled softly, sadly.

  “That is the first question, and I have no doubt that some of you have already worked out the second.”

  Every stared without subtlety at the marine, both men sweating profusely in a room artificially chilled.

  “You choose, Airi. Would you like me to answer the first question before or after you pose the second?”

  “I would like to know the first answer now, Every.”

  “Very well.

  “The day my invitation was sent, the joint U.S. - Ruski team hoped I could cast doubt on their suspicions that the construction and design of the craters were intelligent by necessity. By the time I opened my mailbox, they’d already decided my time would be better spent analyzing the apparent writing that lined what was once the upper lip of the nesting hole.”

  Gasps sounded from those students that Every may once have considered gullible, chides and giggles from those he might have called closed minded.

  “And I did analyze it, briefly. Not long enough to solve a crossword puzzle, really, because - because, I didn’t know it, but before I set foot on a plane - ”

  Filtered through a prism of vodka, Every’s words remained ever slurred, but along the way had shed all tone and humor. Left behind was a husk of his former enthusiasm, only the droll, lifeless cadence of a man burdened by reality at its most solemn.

  “- before I set foot on a plane, they’d already decoded the nest etchings. Not in their entirety, of course, but enough to get the gist. By then they understood that it was more math than language. A sequence, to be specific. I had a more important job now, ‘the most important job’, the American said. Because they’d found a second series of etchings, this one in the grave hole, inscribed into a ring of granite that had no business where it was. So I looked like I’d been asked to, repelling myself along the sheer cliff face, squinting and petrified. I looked long and hard, and at the end I had no doubt to cast and no alternative to offer.”

  Every left his flannel as a damp pile on the carpet before retaking his seat on the desk, the uncomfortable lump he sat upon a harrowing reminder of what awaited him.

  “So now you know. Before we get to that pesky second question you’ve all been dancing around, I would like to extend you, soldier, the opportunity to ask me anything you like. Free reign - unabated access. You’ve earned my respect today, and you’ve certainly earned the right to some clarity.”

  The marine considered exploiting his moment at the dais to make his classmates aware of the impending danger presently wedged beneath their professor, but resolved in the course of moments that it would be better spent distracting the man with the gun.

  “What were the etchings above the nest - the sequence? What did it describe?”

  Every coughed into his hand, preparation for a statement he intended to fulfill on a single breath.

  “Deoxyribonucleic acid. The index, table of contents, and bibliography of a forgotten organism. The - the entire genome of an extinct species of proto mammal, its constituent nucleotides denoted, respectively, by points, line segments, triangles, and squares - and in such a way that time could not produce an eraser fit for the task of cleaning the slate.”

  Airi’s jaw rested upon her desk when the man who’d lost his mind focused its attentions upon her.

  “You, Aimee, are my favorite student. And so you will be extended the same courtesy.”

  “I - I don’t…”

  “Would you like to ask about the second inscription ring?”

  A nod.

  “I’m glad you did. The mass grave crater, in all its morbid glory, was not inscribed with a sequence in the conventional way of thinking - not like the nest. It was a ring of pictures, rather, like baby’s carousel far above an audience of the lost members of that species. I don’t think it was for them, though. Not really.

  “The pictures were carved into panels of homogeneous size and in increments of approximately one-point-five-eight-three centimeters. And when I say ‘approximately’, people, I mean to say that our measurements were approximate - not the panels. Those were implemented with what appears to be mechanical precision. Each image was a moment in time, a flash-frozen glimpse at the constellations that would be visible across the Siberian night. These were not glimpses of this species' collective moment in time, mind you - but of all time. Nine-and-a-half million half-inch scenes, spanning eighty-five miles and nearly ten billion years, from the presumed beginning of our solar system to the predicted end, each scene summarizing our galactic scenario at a cosmic instant of one thousand years. And it was… perfect.”

  Every began to shake.

  “It was so perfect that it was beautiful, so beautiful that it was horrible. And never did it seem more horrible than the moment I followed their pattern, on a hunch, to the approximate date of the Great Dying.”

  Many students had become upset. Several stood to leave. Every did not bother attempting to persuade them to stay and listen, it seemed a much easier thing to slam his pistol on the desk.

  “Sit down. You will be free to go in five minutes. If I see or hear a phone, rest assured that time will be added.”

  Both Every’s demands were respected.

  “Blank. One panel situated in the series we estimated should encompass their Great Dying was scrubbed clean, or scraped, rather, from the face of the timeline. I had analyzed hundreds of scenes by now, each as pristine as the last - devoid of so much as a scratch to tarnish their message. My hunch supported, my hypothesis taking shape, I was chauffeured back in time - many millions of years, many many thousands of images, to the approximate extinction between the Devonian period and the Carboniferous. Sure as - well, sure as shit, just where we predicted we’d find it - a panel had been tampered with.”

  Every pointed one finger at the ceiling while another rested on the trigger.

  “It was not a total validation of my suspicions, however, only another piece of the puzzle. Because where the panel seemed to have been scrubbed by the same process as the scene corresponding to the Permian extinction, t
hey were distinct in the degree to which they had been defaced. Further investigation of the Permian etching revealed 97% destruction, the Devonian a meager 76%. Can anyone tell why those numbers sound familiar?”

  Not so much as a cough. All to insulate the auditorium from complete silence was the ticking of a clock that Every kept at all times in the corner of his eye.

  “I apologize, people, I think we may miss our mark for early dismissal. In any case, I will try my best to get you out of here in time for a late lunch.

  “Where was I? Oh, right. The Devonian. An extinction event characterized by the devastation wrought upon oceanic biodiversity. Modern estimates place total global special loss between seventy and eighty percent.”

  Every’s eyelids independently drooped as he swept his gaze across a captive audience.

  “As for the Permian, ninety-seven percent is right on the money. This unsettling coincidence was not lost on me or my slavic colleagues, and so we, upon our all-terrain chariots, journeyed across the ages, taking pit stops at every mass or minor extinction event we could Google. Imagine our surprise when, time after time, our suspicions were confirmed, our excursions validated, our temporal approximations snugly placed in the margin of error and our species-loss calculations proven more or less reputable by the percentile vandalism of primordial granite.

  “Imagine - imagine, if you will, when the - when the skinny anthropologist, the Anthro 101 professor fulfilling his commitment as emissary between the scientific field and our brightest young minds - imagine when Every Daniels had another hunch. Imagine what he thought, that nervous wreck, that therapy addict, that speaker in the third person - imagine how he felt when he repelled from the lip of that crater to pinpoint his own date in the sun and found it wiped clean, lost without a trace, one-hundred-percent gone.”

  Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep. Every heard the muffled voices of half a dozen 9-1-1 operators as the clock struck one o’clock. The class had called his bluff. It did not matter now.

  “Imagine, Aimee, how he must have felt.”

  Airi saw her life flash before her eyes as if from the barrel of the gun now level with her face.

  “Tell me, Aimee, tell me.”

  “He felt - ”

  “Tell me!”

  “I’m sorry! My God - he felt scared, frightened! He was frightened!”

  Every cocked the pistol.

  “Yes he was. First he was frightened by what he presumed to be the abrupt certain end of his species foretold an inch from his face. What frightened him more, Aimee, was a second realization. There were no coincidences in Siberia, that much was clear to me.”

  Someone pressed on the doors from outside. Some students began to call for help, others began to cry. The doors shook more insistently, and so too did the voices of the students.

  “Listen to me!”

  Every fired. Dust and insulation rained upon the head of the girl who believed she had just overheard the commission of her own murder.

  “Listen. To. Me.

  “There could be no coincidences. Not when you are face to face with the ruins of a species that could exactly predict dozens of extinctions, with the phenomena responsible being equally varied, millions of years after their own demise. If they had learned the date of their own destruction, who is to say they did not predict the nature of the world they’d leave behind? The nature of their descendants, directly or not? What, if not pure, cruel coincidence, would compel them to supply the ingredients for their existence - the recipe for their revival - in a hole that necessitates intelligence to reach, in a way that demands intelligence to transcribe, within yards of a timeline that an intelligent species could only deduce predicts their own annihilation?”

  An intermission in the shaking after Every’s warning shot had been brief, and now the doors rocked with the impact of a shoulder or booted foot. Every heard sirens now. Due time.

  “These questions will be yours to ponder. As I said, this will be my final lecture. You will have many more, I hope, so whatever you think of me - however you remember our time together, I would only ask that you keep an open mind regarding today’s material. There will be skeptics. There always are. For now, I would ask that you listen politely while Aimee, our best and brightest student, poses that second question we’ve all been waiting for.”

  “Every…”

  “Please, Aimee. We don’t have long. Ask away.”

  Airi looked to her left. The marine had chosen a seat in the front row after his skirmish with the professor, perfectly placed to offer his classmate what solidarity he could and a nod of encouragement.

  “Why would the government let you tell us all of this, Every?”

  “You never cease to amaze me. They would not, Aimee. They would not.”

  Every pressed the muzzle of the first gun he’d ever owned to a mind he’d worked so long to control, and then his slate was clean.

  Installment Two

  Alvin Bonman grew up on an island. It was not an island in the conventional sense - not a deposit of sand anchored by mangroves, not a reef with ambitions above and beyond its fluid atmosphere. Alvin was raised on an island in the way that a man can grow in his isolation, in his stubbornness, or in his resolve to become one.

  Alvin’s island was a hill. West Virginian hardwood forests were his beaches, gorilla glue reinforced Sketchers and a neck-high walking stick his raft, a retired stone quarry his escape on the horizon.

  Much like a commercial jet crawling across the Pacific sky - gradual enough to tease the marooned with reminders that civilization pressed onward; brisk enough to miss the declaration of survival he told in smoke behind the curve of the Earth - Alvin’s mother was around, occasionally, but what benefit was it to him?

  Alvin’s mother often claimed to have more part-time jobs on her schedule than wardrobes in her closet. Mrs. Bonman was not known to her son as a liar, and by the urgency that cheapened those elusive moments they did spend together he came to doubt that she had any to waste on hyperbole.

  As all his mother’s waking hours were committed to that scramble between jobs and uniforms and banks and buses, and his father’s final waking hour having come to pass in some dreary Vietnamese jungle, precious few of Alvin’s summer days had been spent on a parent’s hip. Those days were dedicated instead to his island, and his raft, and to his escape.

  Young Alvin’s daily routine began at the foot of his ill-designed gravel slope of a driveway. It ended, weather permitting, a mile-and-a-half away at the equally precarious rim of the quarry. From there he preferred to make his descent barefoot, any grip his shoes may have afforded their first or second owners functionally lost. With the grace of a billy-goat, with calloused feet for hooves, he’d slip, slide, gallop, and survive his way down sixty feet of loose rock to the shore of a stagnant runoff pool.

  Not unlike a smudged face on a volleyball, Alvin, in his solitude, learned to manufacture intimacy from the inanimate. Parents and friends may have been inaccessible from his island, but there was one resource present in abundance. Alvin took a liking to rocks, and, so far as he could tell, rocks took a liking to him.

  Company became curiosity, affection became infatuation, and so Alvin’s geology career began, unbeknownst to him, barefoot in the quarry at the age of fourteen.

  His experiments were crude at the start. Many rocks were smashed, several metric tons of rubble examined and categorized, dozens of beetles sacrificed to further his knowledge of physical properties no less fundamental than weight or density. Gradually Alvin matured, and, to the great relief of the insect population, so too did his methods.

  From fourteen onward, Alvin dedicated every autumn, winter, and spring to financing his research in the quarry. By his fifteenth summer, Alvin’s walking stick had been sidelined in favor of a yard sale pick-axe. His sixteenth and seventeenth excursions were benefited by several outdated geology textbooks he’d negotiated into affordability from the local college. It was only some months later that Alvin discove
red that the school had intentions to shred those books that very afternoon, and still he regarded the exchange a steal, and himself the beneficiary.

  By eighteen, Alvin possessed a refurbished microscope and a desk to set it on, a pile of samples eager to share their secrets, a proud mother, and a full scholarship to his choice of the country’s elite universities.

  At fifty-two, Alvin’s microscope looked much the same as it had the day he salvaged it from a pile of Salvation Army riffraff. The desk supporting it was varnished and expensive, the walls surrounding it chaotic with degrees and accolades.

  In truth, Alvin’s microscope represented the sum of his childhood keepsakes; a lonely memento from a lonelier time. Even his proud mother was remembered only as a pixelated smile behind the desktop clutter of a busy professor.

  That invasive thought struck for the thousandth time. Alvin shuddered.

  It wasn’t until he’d rearranged every file and folder on the screen that his despair had sufficiently dulled for cohesive thought. He could see his mother now; his best surviving glimpse of her. She was suspended in time as his desktop background, a younger woman but not a young one, a woman beaming with pride beside the son, then a new college graduate, who’d given her a reason.

  Desperate to avoid the cyclical trap of grief and rumination he’d fallen victim to for the three months since her death, Alvin Bonman locked his screen. Her face was displaced by his own muted reflection - a middle-aged black man, electively bald since Michael Jordan’s first triple-double found fashion in what had been misfortune.

  Alvin’s wristwatch read 09:43 and his calendar Tuesday. It was the perfect time for a late breakfast, and it was a peculiar time for a knock on his door.

  “Office hours start at 11:00!”

  The knocker was undeterred.

  “Did you miss the memo on daylight savings time?”

  Knocking became pounding. Professor Bonman’s prized calaverite-specimen-turned-paperweight began to vibrate at the perfect frequency to move across his desk.