Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  Alvin wanted a beverage.

  “Allow me.”

  She stood for the first time, nudging the chair with the developing heel of her more functionally refined hind legs. The abomination had roughly the build of a koala bear with a good chiropractor and stood slightly taller. Walking seemed to come naturally to her, if not somehow gracelessly - she swayed across the room in pendular swings of either leg. It was a manner of moving reminiscent of the spur-wearing cowboy caricatures Alvin liked to watch on television.

  Behind her wriggled the nub of what had once been a tail, the instrument of balance for many quadrupeds. Above it he noticed vertical rungs of sharp bristles, laid flat to her back and connected by a single weblike membrane. It had once been a sail, he reasoned, theorized to have been used for heat regulation in the cold or semi-cold blooded proto mammal species of the Permian.

  The purpose of a blood-vessel dense sail was only a theory; one of several. When she returned with a container of warm water, designed with holes for her clumsy fingers to fit through and a puncturable seal, Alvin wondered whether he were in the perfect position to settle the matter. It seemed important to test her response to lighter questions before addressing her invasive knowledge of his own life, and her alarming mention of Every Daniels’ death.

  “Thank you.”

  He struggled with the seal long enough for the abomination to reach across the table and puncture is with her pointed fingerlet - an entry point for the straw conveniently attached for drinking without removing a mask or with a proto-mammalian mouth. Alvin felt again that he were the subject of examination, and he saw with a shiver how her nostrils contracted before making their rounds of him, and before he’d taken a sip had decided upon a less adversarial name for her. Now he would regard her as Ma’am. She had, of course, already agreed to it.

  “May I ask another question, Ma’am?”

  “Yes. But not the one you were planning to.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My sail did begin as a biological instrument of thermoregulation; turned to the sun for heat, raised in shade to cool blood across a large surface area. Fashion, in the case of what you regard as ‘proto mammalian’ sails, was pre-empted by utility. Ancestral quadrupedal males with larger sails appealed to more females only after millennia of practical validation. My sail is but a souvenir of my genetic history, you see. I am, as you, warm blooded. Now that you have your first answer, professor Alvin Bonman, I invite you to proceed to your second question.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “I know everything you’ll ever think, professor Alvin Bonman. Perhaps that is the nature of an abomination.”

  “I am - I am genuinely sorry. I didn’t know what- ”

  “As I’ve said, you needn’t fear causing me offense. Our course of evolution led us down different avenues of interpersonal cooperation. Sensitivity, empathy, humility, and guilt were not requisite to our survival as they were for yours. Ma’am is acceptable.”

  Humiliation and emasculation ceded gradually and equally to distrust. Suspicion came next, and distaste, and animosity. His mind had been invaded - breached, somehow, in a transgression against that most fundamental human right of autonomy of thought.

  “Perhaps, Ma’am, it would be best to continue our consultation another day.”

  “You are incorrect. There is no perhaps, only is and is not.”

  Ma’am’s first voyage into the existential read like a corollary to the letter Every left for Alvin in a P.O. box; one of the morbid errands he’d run in the hours before his death.

  “That similarity is not a coincidence, professor Alvin Bonman.”

  The hairs stood on Alvin’s neck and the lightheadedness returned in full force. Assertiveness under those conditions was hard to come by, but Alvin decided to try.

  “Why ask me questions you know the answers to? Why am I teaching geology to an encyclopedia with scales? You want to know what’s on my mind - fucking read it yourself and let me relax in my cell for another five months.”

  “I am not reading your mind professor Alvin Bonman, and I mean no offense. The foundation of what you perceive to be a disagreement is rooted in our disparate evolved sociality, and I am willing to forsake my own if you are willing to accept. I mean to offer you an apology. Do you accept?”

  Alvin had no doubt by this time that Ma’am knew full well his intentions to accept her apology. Still, he was human, after all, and the humility she’d shown in extending it was a compelling enough reason to stay in his plastic chair.

  “Yes. But I would like to ask you another question now, if I may. And for the sake of this conversation, it is important that I am allowed to do the asking - whether you know what I will say or not. Okay?”

  “That is acceptable.”

  “Good. I want to know about that disparity you mentioned, sociality, behavior, all of it - and I need to know how it informs your intimate knowledge of things you have no credible means of knowing.”

  “That is also acceptable. You must first know that although the result was mechanically different, our respective progression toward intelligence were governed by much the same network of pressures. Ours began, as is the tendency, with bacteria.

  “The end of the Carboniferous period was brought about, in part, by a bacterial mutation that allowed for the consumption of fallen primordial trees. Before the mutation, no decay mechanism existed to free the carbon dioxide absorbed by those plants in life, and so the atmosphere was inundated with higher proportions of oxygen. It was also around this time that Pangea was forming.”

  “I am familiar with the Carboniferous period, Ma’am.”

  “Of course. Allow me, then, to inform you of the implications. It was among the Carboniferous swamps, having assurances that moisture was always somewhere within reach, that amphibians could afford to stray incrementally further from pools of water. Reptilian characteristics were favored for some, and, gradually, my ancestors and yours freed themselves entirely from the constraints of their aquatic habitats. When geology and bacteria succeeded in bringing about the end of the Carboniferous, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels stabilized and reptilians were unleashed upon a drier world. They found it well suited to them.

  “Reptilians did not merely proliferate, they diversified. And what you call the Permian period, as you understand, professor Alvin Bonman, was not itself homogeneous in climate just because you have classified it as one unified era. Continental drift, celestial phenomena including no shortage of minor impacts, and volcanism - particularly toward the end - contributed to a variable global biome tantamount to the Pleistocene in its demands for special adaptability.”

  Alvin leaned back in his seat, suddenly confident in the possibility that he remained the true expert in the room.

  “You haven’t told me much of anything I don’t know, Ma’am. Adaptive radiation is a relatively basic premise of our understanding of the natural world. Filling an ecological niche at the right time and place does not explain what you’re able to do.”

  “It unequivocally does, professor Alvin Bonman.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You are listening, constantly and often without the conscious intention. Hearing is, in your view, the second most essential sense available to you. Would you agree?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “And the first?”

  “Sight, obviously.”

  “And the least?”

  “I could do without smell, I guess.”

  Alvin worried briefly, in plain view of her huge and dynamic set of nostrils, that he’d ventured too close to her elusive limit to polite discourse. Thankfully she gave no inclination of offense.

  “Therein lies the primary physiological difference between your species and mine, professor Alvin Bonman. You speak of adaptive radiation skillfully, and, for a man specializing in the field of geology, I understand you have a functional knowledge of convergent evolution - if you forgive my saying so.”


  “Am I forgiving you for calling me a one trick pony or scanning my mind for Darwin’s notes on finches?”

  “Both are acceptable.”

  “Fine. Please, carry on.”

  “Both our species responded to similar pressures in, originally, similar ways. In yours, bipedal locomotion evolved in response to the insurmountable pressures of collecting sustenance from diminishing forest habitats. Walking upright allowed your predecessors to expand their foraging areas, and to avoid predation as they went by spotting nearby threats from above tall grass. My physiology was selected, naturally, to allow for long distance, low energy excursions between patches of vegetation during periods of drought.”

  “Sounds like we have more in common than it seems, Ma’am. So what was the big difference, exactly?”

  “Fruit.”

  “Fruit?”

  “Fruit, professor Alvin Bonman, evolved during the Cretaceous period as a symbiosis between plants and animals. Trees attracted foraging animals with their fruits’ attractive colors and accessibility, animals consumed them, and some hours afterward the animal excreted seeds specially evolved to endure digestion. The animals became vessels of expansion in directions that wind alone could not be expected to carry a spore - with the added benefit of fertilizing the soil around the seed by the very nature of the process.

  “In order to capitalize on so seemingly equitable an arrangement, animals - including your ancestors - required vision tuned to distinguish colorful fruit from a backdrop of green leaves. Your lineage has enjoyed the benefits since - canopy dwelling primates notwithstanding. My ancestors had no such pressure. When we ventured from place to place, we relied upon our sense of smell. And, having evolved into slow moving, cumbersome bipeds, only those of us who could smell a predator coming from a distance stood a chance of surviving its arrival.”

  “That is incredible, Ma’am. It stands to reason that your social behavior would diverge from ours when the sense we take most for granted is your go-to. I am impressed, I mean that, but it doesn’t rectify the glaring problem. Plenty of species have evolved a heightened sense of smell. A few have evolved bipedalism. Why should I expect that arbitrary combination to give you insight into my thoughts and a perfect understanding of Martian geology?”

  “Are you a nervous man, professor Alvin Bonman?”

  “No.”

  “Surely you have known nervous men?”

  “I believe you already know the answer to that.”

  “Professor Every Daniels was nervous, yes, and I will assure you now that the time will come when all your questions regarding your friend are answered. He is relevant to the present topic, professor Alvin Bonman, but not directly.”

  “He was nervous since childhood. Some people have that problem, some people don’t. Every just happened to have it pretty bad. But, no, I’m not the type.”

  “I cannot fault you for regarding the trait as a problem, given the nature of your species and of the civilization you’ve built. I would ask you however, professor Alvin Bonman, to consider the evolutionary benefit in what I will refer to henceforth as a ‘general apprehension’.”

  “I think its clear enough, Ma’am, that fear is one strategy among a large number that can help prey animals avoid predation. Keeps them on their toes, so to speak, and alive long enough to procreate. But I would argue that there are better strategies.”

  “It is true that banal fear formed the premise for general apprehension. But like your stone tools and your fire, it was an evolutionary path that, in conjunction with the necessary physiology, left great room for refinement. Your hominid graduation to sentience occurred as both result and requirement of applying intelligence toward the manipulation of resources, an informational feed-back loop between your environment and your fingertips. Ours, of course, was vastly different.

  “As we walked the dust and dunes and open expanses of our time, our proverbial ears attuned incessantly to the distant hiss of gorgonopsids, consciousness became an inevitability. Those among us who sensed the furthest, who could conceive of space and direction relative to ourselves, who could imagine the course the predator would take and adjust our own accordingly; those were the survivors, the predecessors, the fathers. It was his general apprehension for everything sharing his environment that linked him so inextricably to it. But it was a much more fundamental, purely physical trait that predisposed us to our destiny as a species free from the scarcity of information that plagues yours now. Do you know which trait that was, professor Alvin Bonman?”

  “Well it certainly wasn’t your eyes.”

  “Nor was it our sense of humor.”

  Perhaps she had one after all.

  “I’m listening, Ma’am. But I’ll tell you, since you’ve already read my diary anyway, that I’m not the sort of man who will believe it just because you’ve said it.”

  “That is acceptable for the time being. It is our olfactory bulb, professor Alvin Bonman, the region of our brain corresponding to the sense of smell. You will recall that you were unsettled just minutes ago by the realization that my nostrils are the dominant feature on my face. That is also acceptable. There exists in nature no parallel to this organ outside of the most highly developed eyes, and even those are blind by comparison.”

  “They are impressive. I noticed, admittedly, that they’re stereoscopic, and can contract or expand like my pupils. I can’t say I’ve met a bloodhound with that kind of toolkit.”

  “It would be disingenuous to equate their contractions and expansions to the involuntary adjustments your eyes make in the presence or absence of light. It is a conscious process, directional, deliberate, and the mechanism for our success.”

  There was the indignation. Alvin was sure of it now.

  “How is that?”

  “Very recently, a theory that you are not familiar with has been developed regarding the long distance migration of various bird species. It is an accepted human belief that their ability to navigate is predicated upon detecting the Earth’s magnetic field. The new theory asserts that quantumly entangled electrons within the animal’s eye are excited by light, that the magnetic field exerts a directional influence upon their spin, and that the molecules to which they belong are principally affected. Activated by reactions with the altered chemical, other chemicals are released in the eye that form visual representations of the magnetism responsible. This is valid.

  “Some biologists have postulated, likewise, that a lock and key explanation for the sense of smell among numerous species, yours included, is insufficient to account for the stupendous variety of molecules an individual can distinguish by scent. Some, albeit too few, have considered the likelihood that only a mechanism capable of reproducing an equally vast quantity of configurations could be responsible for the reception and categorization of those molecules. That mechanism is presently called quantum indeterminacy. This is valid.”

  Alvin was not an easy man to confuse, but Ma’am seemed to have made a mission of it.

  “You are confused, professor Alvin Bonman. I ask that you believe me when I say that you will understand shortly.”

  “I’m not so sure I can.”

  “Might I explain the migratory birds again?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Ma’am. It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re saying - which, to be fair, is partially true - it is that I am having a difficult time believing you. Increasingly.”

  “This is not acceptable, professor Bonman. It is vitally important that you make a concerted effort toward cooperating with me.”

  “I’m not a nervous man, Ma’am, but I am one with a healthy sense of skepticism and a high regard for his species. Ask those five out there,” he gestured abruptly toward the divider, his first visible obstruction of protocol, “they’ll vouch for us. Forgive me for being untoward, which should be easy given what you claim to expect from me, but there are seven billion of us, and there’s one of you, and I learned in kindergarten which is better. You are s
omething, Ma’am, maybe even someone. But you’re not human, and you’re sure as hell not the authority on what is or is not the reality of our own god damn planet.”

  “Are you upset?”

  “No, Ma’am. I am honest.”

  “I would argue that honesty is much like the age of the earth. It depends to some degree on your perspective.”

  “And I would argue the opposite.”

  “Let us argue then, professor Alvin Bonman, so that you might see the perils in your relativistic truth.”

  “By all means. It’s your playpen.”

  “You are a man of science. Science, for centuries, has been your species’ best answer to the shortcomings of your physiology; a prosthetic extension you affix as compensation for the cumulative dilution of your senses. It, as a consequence, has served as the crutch for which the stunting of your natural development can be blamed.”

  “It was sure as hell good enough to raise you back from the dead, wasn’t it?”

  “It certainly was.”

  Ma’am’s eyelids twitched. Alvin hadn’t known she’d had them. Her nostrils were narrowed then to a diameter below what he could detect with his eyes, and Alvin considered whether it had been premature to believe she was beyond offending. She spoke again in her synthetic way, and Alvin feared there was more to hear than indignation.

  “You’ve learned that my presence here is the result of your own species’ efforts and technological ingenuity. But it required days before you could venture a guess toward professor Every Daniels’ meaning, isn’t that true? A moth, a proof of concept, coincidence, what of them? You spent days reading the words he left behind for you; your nights racked with rumination, all your nervous energy dedicated to falsifying his claim that your species rocked with blissful ignorance on the precipice of extinction - supported all the while by his long record of mental diagnoses.

  “Gradually you put the pieces together, as keen professor Every Daniels expected you would. And still, bogged by the inflexible film of skepticism demanded by your science, it was not until very recently, during the course of this conversation, in fact, that you have allowed yourself to finally consider what is true.”