Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  Alvin finished his water. His mouth was dry when he spoke.

  “What’s that?”

  “That your extinction is imminent, as my extinction had been imminent, and your species brought me back to prevent it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I hope that you will allow me to finish my explanation, professor Alvin Bonman. To do otherwise would be to bet your species on bullshit.”

  Alvin shrugged unconvincingly.

  “Not like I have anywhere else to be.”

  “That answer is acceptable. Might I explain the migratory birds again?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Very well. Shall I explain the mechanism for our success, then?”

  “You can try.”

  “That is acceptable, although I understand that you have already begun to approach the conclusion yourself, professor Alvin Bonman. Whether you are critical of your own assessment is beside the point.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you sped up the process.”

  “Not unlike aviary navigation and the broader process of complex olfaction, our senses benefitted from the inclusion of mechanisms at the quantum level. Your term for this will become ‘Quantum Nuance’.”

  “Will become?”

  “Precisely.”

  Alvin sat up straight in his chair.

  “You see professor Alvin Bonman, our graduation toward sentience was subject to such ecological pressures that survival could not be achieved without senses transcending the immediate.”

  “And even then it wasn’t enough.”

  “A harsh truth, and still another matter subject to perspective. Extinction is a permanent state, as you know, professor Alvin Bonman, and yet here I sit.”

  “A little wishful thinking never hurt I guess. Perhaps semantics take some of the sting off too. I wouldn’t know, my species is doing perfectly well.”

  “You’ll recall what I said earlier about the word perhaps. You’ll remember my claim that there are only is and is nots. You haven’t forgotten professor Every Daniels’ impressive interpretation on the fallaciousness of coincidence, and so too will you remember his charmingly misguided foresight in coining the Statisticians for the name of my kind.

  “In any case, professor Alvin Bonman, it is the misfortune of your species that, although you can recall a great many things, you cannot precall. That is the preliminary difference between you and I as we sit across this table, arguing the semantics of semantics.”

  “Wait - Ma’am, maybe I am confused. You mean to tell me that your sage, all knowing species could see the future, could ‘precall’ and - correct me if I’m wrong - still went fucking extinct? I think I’ll hold onto my hands and my scientific method if that’s the alternative, thank you.”

  “In your sarcastic hostility, professor Alvin Bonman, there is a grain of factual importance. By virtue of the ability of our olfactory bulbs,” she tapped a slight bulge in the flesh between her eyes, “we can detect, categorize, and anticipate the course of any sequence of events within a relative space. All things in this space - itself established by the magnetic field of our sun - depend on what your species, in your naivety, refer to as quantum indeterminacy.

  “Doubtless a consequence of your fundamental desire for well balanced equations, you perceive quantum information as the unknowable point on a curve of probabilities which, by virtue of your having observed it, is catalyzed into existence. This is invalid. It is your lack of understanding, and your egotistical willingness to operationalize your attention, that have resulted in this misunderstanding.”

  “I’m still waiting for that grain.”

  “My olfactory bulb is designed to process quantum nuance, and my nose to physically track the spacial sequence. Like flocks in the hue of a vibrant blue magnetic field - I sense the past, the present, and the preselected future. I need only look.

  “The rest of my body, as you can plainly see, is designed for continual migration and uprooting plants from the dirt. We anticipated the Great Dying long enough in advance to fear it as a matter of culture, and not nearly long enough to selectively mate for opposable thumbs. We could not escape the fate of our species, professor Alvin Bonman, because we didn’t have the hands for it. The best we could do was wait for yours.”

  Someone tapped on the glass. It was Brady - his wrist against the divider, a watch with blurry hands no doubt approaching seven o’clock, conventional time.

  “Before you go, professor Alvin Bonman, remind me - do you know how your species discovered us? How the process of reviving me began?”

  “Every hinted at it, and some of the geologists in my dormitory got to see the holes before they changed protocol. There was a lot of speculation about what it all meant, and I can definitively say that nobody else was in the parking lot outside the fucking ball park. But I do remember the gist, and I had a lot of time to work through the hypotheticals during the last five months.”

  “I understand that you have reservations.”

  “A few.”

  “Please make them known. There is no sense in keeping secrets now.”

  “Couldn’t agree more. Can you explain to me how a species with four cumbersome digits per stump etched mechanically perfect carvings in mechanically perfect intervals around two craters in the earth?”

  “This posed no physiological challenge. We anticipated rainfall - time, amount, and acidity. Etching our messages into the limestone was only a matter of redirecting the water through channels, simple enough for a chimpanzee to dig, and allowing time and erosion to serve as pen and ink.”

  “How did you dig the holes?”

  “It was not our burden to dig the holes. Opportunity will always present itself on so great a temporal scale. Ask your most important question, won’t you? You intend to discredit me in the details, but you will not succeed in it.”

  “Why were there only males in the grave? Are you not a female?”

  “I am. That is a keen question, and you would find great interest in hearing it answered, but now is not the time and that is not the question.”

  “So be it. You deny that your kind are ‘Statisticians’, but you should be qualified to answer this one, I think. It’s a little bit of a soft ball. Tell me - what are the odds that in any given one-thousand year period, one slate of geologic time among ten million, a species will advance technologically to the point of reviving an extinct species of moth, stumble upon the opportunity to do the same for a lost Paleozoic intelligence, and, coincidentally, go extinct themselves? Seems to me, Ma’am, that there are two explanation, none less shitty than the other.”

  “I would like to hear your explanations.”

  “Explanation one. You’ve manipulated us into reviving your species - basically forced our hand by leading us toward evidence of an extinction that ain’t gonna fucking happen.”

  “And explanation two?”

  “Statistics say the same god damn thing that Every did, and nobody listened. The other option is that we bought the ticket to our own extinction the moment we brought you back, and you’ll be waiting at the door to tear it yourself. You’ll kill us all, everything, clean slate. Then you’ll bring your people back.”

  “What if I could prove that either scenario is wrong before you lay in your bed tonight? I ask you - would you trust me then? Would you, a man with a mind shaped for cooperation and hands fit for building - would you escape the fate of those species destined to live and die with neither?”

  “I probably wouldn’t believe you.”

  “Proof, professor Alvin Bonman, does not depend, to any degree, on your perspective.”

  “You sound like a scientist. Make your point.”

  “Survival, necessarily, takes many forms. Science has its place.”

  “I’d prefer proof over flattery, if you don’t mind, Ma’am.”

  “In eighty-nine seconds it will be seven o’clock and the door will open. You will tell Brady Elway Thomas that I wish to speak with him. He will refuse. You w
ill insist. A short time later, important looking men will bring you into an important looking room. Together you will contact the overnight team responsible for monitoring the Parker Solar Probe at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. You will direct their attentions to the Wide Field Imager presently directed toward the sun’s corona, you will ask them to count to fifteen, and then you will have your proof.”

  The door handle began to rattle.

  “I have more questions.”

  “You have time for one.”

  “Your physiology didn’t account for the fact that you know what I mean to say before I’ve had the chance to say it. How can you know what I’m thinking?”

  “We will look back on this conversation many times, professor Alvin Bonman, and we will discuss your thoughts in great detail. I, for one, am looking forward to it.”

  Installment Five

  It had been a long migration - their longest since Point-56792, or so went the chatter amongst the backwards-casters. Point-74709 had spent most of his own carrier phase gawking across the same bygone temporal plane. It was that matter, above all others, that he’d place an emphasis on correcting during his forty-year director phase allotment.

  “We are here. The greatest densities of moisture retardant boughs are a two-nineteenths north-western horizon march. Former-half carrier phaselets depart at present to begin material collection, hastily and without spears. The last gorgonopsid with territory at this latitude and all its descendants have long since been forced south. Latter-half phaselets will be allowed to graze on the sphenophyta thickets one-twenty fifth horizon due west for a period of one-half day.”

  Even for a community armed with near omniscience and over one-hundred-thousand generations of experience, it had been an arduous migration for them all.

  “At that time, latter-half phaselets shall rest in preparation for sunset fertilization. Former-half phaselets shall graze to that point and no later, as rainfall will be sparse beyond replenishing until mid-season.”

  “Yes Point-74709.”

  The physically smaller half of P-709’s harem pressed on, exhausted and spearless, undaunted, indifferent. Most of the more developed females obliged their director’s orders as well, the spines of their vestigial sails clung to backs dressed in sun dried scales.

  P-709 watched them go with what little vision he’d inherited. To make observations in the crude way of senseless beasts was his hobby - or the nearest thing to it in his time and place and among his kind. Between the splotches and blurs, he saw enough of the spines on his departing harem to detect a resemblance to the hollow fangs of viper species two-hundred million years from twinkling in the eye of evolution.

  “Point-74709?”

  One of the fifty latter-half phaselets lingered behind.

  “Hello, Point-74710. I am pleased by your visit, but regret your sacrifice in prime vegetation.”

  P-710’s neck was too thick to turn more than thirty-five degrees. Instead she spun from her director, tracing the path of her fellow phaselets by gradually reorienting two constricted nostrils. Her point of observation bypassed them shortly thereafter, illuminating their forthcoming route in preemptive and absolute detail.

  “You understand that precalling direct actions of our community and it’s members is unauthorized at present, do you not, P-710?”

  She carried on precalling.

  “I do, P-709, and I also understand that it is equally unauthorized across phases and roles. It would be hard to argue that precalling my grazing misfortunes was anything but direct.”

  “You’ll develop the same respect for flexibility as I have in your next phase, P-710.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “So you have been working on your forward-casting, then? It is not enough to directly participate or backward-cast into communal discussions regarding events nearer the temporal horizon. It must be mastered on an individual level.”

  “I have, P-709.”

  “How far forward?”

  “The mid Cretaceous.”

  “Impressive, P-710, especially for a carrier phaselet.”

  Nature saw to it that P-710’s species evolved an extremely simplistic social structure. It was largely understood, most of all following the precalled discovery of their far-off Cenozoic parallels, that injecting any unnatural complexity into the intraspecies dynamic would only serve to generate friction.

  Still, with sensory organs built like stereoscopic metal detectors sifting grains of probability for the telltale blip of certainty; with olfactory bulbs comprised of interwoven quantum processors and with minds designed for storage; their unified effort to peer a quarter-billion years into the future ensured that cultural pollination was inevitable.

  One thing P-710’s species inherited from humans, whether they’d intended it or not, was pride.

  “It is the furthest an individual carrier phaselet has precalled by 49.853 million years, P-709. I recall that your most distant cast did not surpass the late Triassic.”

  P-709 had also put some emphasis on subduing his own sense pride as director.

  “This is valid. I appreciate your commitment, P-710. Those efforts will prove invaluable when you enter your director phase. Precollection capacity generally septuples upon transitioning from the carrier phase. To increase by a factor of five may seem a tremendous leap, but you’ll recall that, until Point-00131, the furthest an individual carrier phaselet had succeeded in precalling was forty revolutions. A two-hundred-year-maximum-precollection range was hardly enough forewarning to prevent our extinction.”

  “Much has changed since then, P-709.”

  “This is valid. It is also valid to say that much more will change, P-710, to a degree of uncertainty through which no individual or community can precall.”

  P-710 abandoned her observations of the grazing party when they physically reached the densest patches of sphenophyta. Her nostrils relaxed before her director, widening three-fold. It was one of the few social cues her species partook in - a signal of disarmament, visible even to their diminutive eyes. Once selection became a matter of choice rather than of nature, some eyesight had been retained to allow for sociality independent of quantum-nuance-based information gathering. Such a practice was viewed as too invasive between individuals, most having some small sense, at least, of a private self.

  “We are all familiar with the Abrupt Post Human Interference Boundary, P-709. Our failure to reliably precall beyond it has been known since Point-55709, and attributed to a lack of effort since Point-71200. It is an entropic boundary - a higher plane of perceived variability - to be conquered with greater attention and superior effort, just as all boundaries before it were conquered. To that point, I believed that all, including yourself, were in agreement.”

  P-709 collected a spear from the top of a pile left behind when the two halves of his harem parted ways. P-710 considered precalling just far enough to gauge whether her director had the unprecedented intention to commit violence upon her, but dismissed the thought upon remembering her many brief, unauthorized forays into proud moments of her own future in that role.

  “Tell me, P-710, when you’ve precalled your directorate - your hardships, your achievements, your migrations and your sunset fertilizations - what were their nature?”

  “P-709, I - of course I practiced restraint in this, as all director bound carrier phaselets are expected to. I cannot comment on my own allotment, as, in deference to my future harem, hatched and unhatched, I have paid it no visit outside those glimpses required for climate assessments and migratory planning.”

  In observing the humans, her species had also learned to lie.

  “Most of all I have avoided, as per custom across all directorates, precalling any and every fertilization to which I will be party. I respect the modesty of every carrier phaselet, as I have expected every past director to respect mine.”

  A grain of truth was often helpful when one intended to imbue some prospect of legiti
macy into their chosen deceit. P-710 had employed that trick of the trade rather tactfully, or so she believed.

  “This season will be my last as director, P-709. I will be buried alongside my lineage, and yours, and you will oversee it, and so too will you be buried alongside me. I do not have the time or the will to punish you for your curiosity, nor do I hold you in lower esteem for your pride. I prefer to spend the last days over which I hold sway - these fleeting moments still mine for breathing and for standing and speaking at the summit of our grave - productively.”

  Twin gifts forged in the misbehavings of Earth’s great tectonic plates, P-710 peaked over the lip of the nearer of two massive gouges in the planet’s crust. It had been deeper, once.

  “In one season my days will be measured in decay. In one billion seasons my contribution will be told by the strength of a foundation built of my bones. I do not blame you for your passing glances into an exciting time in your life. I have taken many such glances. There is another matter much more deserving of the breath I still have sway over.”

  “You will be remembered fondly across my allotment, P-709, and every other allotment I have felt compelled to observe.”

  P-709 paid no mind to his successor’s hybrid of pandering and apology, be her assurances genuine or improvised compliments strung together for his benefit. He had already begun to scribble in the dust with the sharp end of the spear, no simple thing for a cumbersome biped with claws evolved for gouging roots and hands still shaped for bearing weight.

  Emboldened after their exchange regarding the unauthorized practice, P-710 precalled the borderline unintelligible end result of P-709’s scrawling. She refrained, as a matter of instinct, from sparing him the remaining effort by admitting she’d already observed its culmination. Where precalling events relating to the direct actions of the living was unauthorized, attempting to influence their behavior in advance of its fulfillment was inconceivable. Those who had attempted it, according to the murmurs of backward-casting carrier phaselets, inevitably lost their ability to precall at precisely the moment such a consideration struck. It was a temporary affliction, but an invariable one.