Dinosaur Thunder

by James F. David

  “Listen, people,” Reverend said.

  The crowd quieted quickly, even the children who knew not to interrupt the reverend.

  “Dr. Paulson believes that the light in the sky that I have called God’s fire, is actually an asteroid—a big rock. He believes it will hit the planet and kill every one of us and almost everything else on the planet. He says our only hope is to follow him and he will take us back to where he came from.”

  A hundred silent people listened attentively.

  “Was that a fair representation of your message?” Reverend asked.

  “Two things,” Nick said. “I know the asteroid will hit the Earth because it already has hit the Earth. You are living in Earth’s past and we have documented evidence that when that asteroid hits, it will kill every one of you. Second, I will try to get you back home, but there is no guarantee. The only thing I know for sure is that if you are here when that asteroid hits, you will die.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” Reverend said. “What Dr. Paulson is not telling you is that while we were speaking I had a revelation. I came to understand the purpose of the coming of the asteroid. Dr. Paulson’s killer rock is not for us, but for the demons that command the great beasts. Let me assure you that we have been faithful and obedient ministers of the Word. God is not going to kill us; God is going to protect us. I believe Dr. Paulson when he says that the space rock will kill many creatures including the demons, but God is not going to kill us too. That would make no sense. Why kill what you have saved? God’s plan isn’t to kill us; it is to free us from the Inhumans. When the demons are gone, God will usher in a new age, and this will be a New Earth and we will be his New People.

  “You are free to make your choice. You may go with Dr. Paulson and find your way back to the sinful world that God rescued us from, or stay here and build that New Earth and populate it with our children, not demons. Like Joshua, I say as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

  Silent men and women bowed heads, avoiding eye contact with Reverend. He had saved them, and kept them alive through the tribulation, as many saw it. Abandoning Reverend would be hard, and given the conversations Nick had overheard, most of them wanted to get home for the creature comforts they missed, not remain for some spiritual purpose.

  “Look!” a teenager shouted, pointing down the hill at the broken highway that curved out of sight.

  Hurrying with the others, Nick kept close to the reverend, the flock parting like the Red Sea to make room for their leader. Men, women, and children pressed against a chain-link fence marking the back of the property line. Nick followed the reverend into a gap, then grabbed a piece of fence for himself. The hill dropped off sharply just beyond the fence, giving a view down the valley. Coming down the road were a dozen figures.

  “Inhumans,” someone whispered, others picking up the fear, embellishing. “Must be fifty of them.”

  “You wanted to talk to them,” Reverend said to Nick. “Here’s your chance.”

  30

  President

  Time warps, time bubbles, variable speed of light, wormholes, time quilts, black ripples, black holes, quasi-time—when it comes to understanding the physics of time, we have just managed to put our toe in the ocean.

  —Emmett Puglisi, Ph.D., e-mail to President Brown

  Present Time

  Washington, D.C.

  Wilamina Brown never set out to become President of the United States, and even now she was ambivalent about the job, and it was a job to Willa, not a joy. When President Pearl finished his second term, the party turned to her to be the standard bearer. With the reconstruction and economic recovery from the Time Quilt, and the nuclear attacks in Alaska and near Los Angeles well under way, Willa knew it would be nearly impossible for her party to keep the presidency for a third term. Complacency was the curse of the public, and the opposition was promising a shiny new candidate with a gilded tongue and movie star wife. Two years out, polls showed Willa running only competitively with the California governor. Loath to see the progress of the Pearl administration undone, Willa entered the primaries, ate hundreds of chicken dinners, shook hands with thousands of people she did not know, and put up with yellow journalists administering pop quizzes masquerading as interviews. As a black female, Willa pulled from disparate groups, including some traditionally voting for her opponent, and eked out a victory.

  While Willa held the presidency for her party, the Senate flipped, and once again government was divided. With liberal use of her veto power, and occasional filibusters, Willa managed to keep the country on an even economic keel, but the constant fight with the loyal opposition drained Willa. And now Dr. Paulson had disappeared, and dinosaurs were popping up in places where they should not be. Willa’s science adviser was not as much help as Willa wished, but then Willa was asking her adviser to explain the unexplainable. Willa missed her director of the Office of Security Science, and wasn’t sure where to turn. The economic progress would be all for naught if the planet came apart in another time-twisting catastrophe.

  Sipping tea, President Brown sat in her private study, just off the Oval Office. Papers cluttered her desk, spread out and layered across the surface, an idiosyncratic horizontal filing system. Less system, and more memory cures, Willa forbade her executive assistant from touching the desktop, although she could scour the Oval Office to her heart’s content. Strictly ceremonial, Willa greeted important visitors in the Oval Office, or posed there for pictures, but worked in her study, the same space used for sexual trysts by an earlier administration.

  Taking her cup, she walked through the Oval Office and looked out onto the Rose Garden. An overcast summer day, it was unusually cool for summer in Washington, and that worried her. Every unusual event worried her, since it was seemingly random events that presaged the Time Quilt catastrophe. For a century, odd events had been recorded, and ignored, since they did not fit into orthodox physics. Continuing into the modern age, the odd and unexplainable were relegated to the pages of supermarket tabloids and ignored by the mainstream press. Unexplainable events like fish falling from the sky, people bursting into flame, people drowning in the desert, people suddenly disappearing and appearing, and other oddities were finally recognized for what they were—harbingers of doom. Recognized too late to stop it, the disaster happened, civilization was shredded, and humanity met dinosaurs face-to-face. Unknown to the public was the extent of the damage to the time stream, and the mission of the OSS to monitor and, if possible, manage time itself.

  Cool summers might not be a symptom of more trouble, but what of the odd pattern of earthquakes? What of the Visitor dinosaurs? And most troubling of all, Dr. Paulson’s disappearance. Something was going on, but what? Her chief of staff’s familiar tap interrupted her.

  “A Dr. Puglisi from the OSS is calling. I think you should speak with him.”

  Major Lund grew up in a military family, but was the only son not to serve. Instead, Lund drove himself through school, graduating from college a year early, then earning a Harvard MBA. A learned man, Lund loved books and all knowledge, but when Willa asked him why he never became a university professor, he said, “If you teach, you have to go where the jobs are. With an MBA, you can live anywhere you want.” A friend of Willa’s since working on Pearl’s Senate campaign, Lund rose in power, becoming a key player in the Pearl administration but remaining in the background. When Willa asked him to run her campaign, he surprised her by agreeing. They were even closer friends now.

  “Put him on,” Willa said, afraid of what she would hear.

  Lund punched a remote control, a hidden television rising out of a credenza. Willa took her usual chair, Lund on the couch to her left. Coming to life, the screen showed Dr. Puglisi looking around the Oval Office.

  “What can I do for you?” Willa asked.

  “John Roberts was here, and he said something that got me thinking,” Puglisi said, pausing to collect his thoughts. “He’s trying to follow Dr. Paulson now.”
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  “I know,” Willa said. “Mr. Roberts succeeded in going through the same passage as Dr. Paulson. At least as far as we know. What did Mr. Roberts say to you?”

  “He believed the material recovered from the moon was the key to passing through the time passage like Dr. Paulson. I now believe he was right. The material, or at least contact with it, seems to be the key.”

  “Because of its unusual properties?” Lund asked.

  “Exactly,” Puglisi said. “The differential time flow between the entrance and terminus may be the barrier. Somehow the material recovered on the moon exists in a state that is time neutral and that empowers the traveler to make the transition between time flows.”

  “You know I am understanding only part of this,” Willa said honestly.

  “Yes, Madam President,” Puglisi said. “I don’t understand much of it myself, but I do understand this: We know that the region, and especially Florida, is experiencing an unusual series of tremors. After meeting with John, I mapped the quakes using longitude, latitude, and then added Richter strength and duration of the quakes and found a pattern. The quakes spiral out from this lab. That material we recovered is the epicenter for whatever is happening.”

  “Exactly what is happening?” Willa asked.

  “Honestly,” Puglisi said, staring intently from the screen, “I don’t know, but the quakes are increasing in strength and decreasing in spacing. We need to do something and do it quick, before it is too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Lund asked, frustrated by the vagueness.

  “I don’t know, but earthquakes are part of it,” Puglisi said.

  “I assure you that I am as concerned as you are, but what can we do?” Willa asked.

  “That black material is acting like a giant magnet, attracting something. I suggest we get rid of it before it pulls whatever is at the other end to us.”

  “Get rid of it? You mean burn it? Blow it up?”

  “I don’t think that would work,” Puglisi said. “The force it is projecting could be released, intensified, or transformed. Better to stick with the devil we know.”

  “Then what?” Willa asked.

  “Pack it all up and send it into space,” Puglisi said.

  “We’ll lose the strategic value of the material,” Willa said, thinking through the consequences. “That is a lot to give up.”

  “It’s not just about Nick and Elizabeth,” Emmett said. “Whatever has ripped open these time passages isn’t just affecting time and space, it is also altering time flow. The time ripples that created the Time Quilt came from nuclear explosions in the thirty- to one-hundred-megaton range. Those bombs did not have the megatonnage to alter time, and it took a convergence of ripples through time to cause the Time Quilt. What’s causing this new phenomenon is exponentially more powerful than anything any nation has detonated.”

  “That’s not possible,” Willa said, anxiety growing. “Unless these tunnels connect to the future?”

  “Not with velociraptors and tyrannosaurs popping out,” Emmett said.

  “Then what?” Willa asked.

  “I did some calculations, and I think I might know what’s anchoring this,” Emmett said. “It’s the K–T event. An asteroid strike that kills eighty-five percent of the animal life on the planet.”

  “It killed the dinosaurs,” Willa said.

  “And more,” Emmett said. “Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, ammonites, many plants, even forms of plankton were eliminated or devastated.”

  “You think that destruction could bleed through to the present?” Willa asked.

  “I think the connections we’ve found are the larger time fractures, but that there are many more that could rupture as the K–T event approaches.”

  “Approaches in the past,” Willa said.

  “I know it’s confusing. The time effects ripple out on both sides of any event. We’re experiencing the before ripples, and after the strike, we’ll suffer the after ripples unless we can minimize the effect.”

  “But it has already happened,” Willa said.

  “Yes, but we’ve only experienced the time ripples, the full waves have not hit yet. Normally, they would ripple out through all of time, but I believe that the orgonic material that we have been collecting is altering time–space, creating a path of least resistance leading right to our present. Specifically to Florida.”

  Willa understood, grasping the potential disaster. Florida was heavily populated and loaded with tourists year-round. There had already been an incident in Orlando, and if the energy from an asteroid strike bled through into present-day Orlando, the death toll could be staggering.

  “Your plan is to get rid of this orgonic material?” Willa asked.

  “Since the orgonic material is acting like a magnet, yes.”

  “To space?”

  “Off the planet, yes. Let the energy released dissipate in space.”

  “I suppose we must,” Willa said, accepting the idea.

  “There’s a problem, though. If we move the material, we may shift the time tunnels that have been created. I don’t know if once created they are fixed, or transient based on proximity to the orgonic material.”

  “I see,” Willa said. “You’re saying that the passage that our people passed through may dissipate if we send the orgonic matter into space.”

  “Yes.”

  Willa did not hesitate. “Wait as long as you safely can, then move the material. I can’t risk losing a city or even a state to save one or two people.”

  “There is a way that will make it possible to wait to the last minute,” Emmett said.

  “How?”

  “With a little help from Area Fifty-one.”

  31

  New World

  For about 250 years, our species has been known as Homo sapiens, a scientific name in Latin that means “wise man.” Given the havoc humans are wreaking on natural systems, putting ourselves and so many other living things in peril, we don’t deserve this name contends Julian Cribb, an Australian science writer …

  —Wynne Perry, Live Science

  Sixty-five Million Years Ago

  Inhuman Village

  “No, wait!” Elizabeth shouted, pulling Jeanette back.

  Jeanette was about to follow Do through the opening into the weird world on the other side.

  “You don’t know where that goes,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t even know if you can breathe there.”

  “Do can,” Jeanette said.

  Elizabeth looked to see Do trotting in the distance, his head showing above tall waving grasses with green stalks and golden tassels. Tracking something, Do was moving away at an angle.

  “Maybe that’s where the boys went,” Jeanette said. “That’s why they brought us here.”

  Doubtful, Elizabeth turned to the lead creature, still uneasy with their weird catlike eyes. “Our friends, they went through there?” Elizabeth asked slowly, walking her fingers across her hand toward the opening, the best gesture she could think of. “People like us went there?” Elizabeth pointed to herself and Jeanette, and then at the opening, repeating the walking gesture.

  Still agitated by Do’s run into the opening, the creatures sang to one another, two or three mimicking Elizabeth’s finger gesture.

  “I’m going,” Jeanette said. “I can’t see Do anymore, and Carson might be in there.”

  “Wait,” Elizabeth said.

  Velociraptor chicks inched forward, searching for Do, heads high, tails low, emitting soft awks.

  “No, Fa,” Jeanette said. “Stay, So. Stay, La.”

  “Woof,” Sally said, reinforcing Jeanette’s command, her nose almost inside the cave opening.

  “Our friends, did they go in there?” Elizabeth repeated, gesturing with her fingers.

  After a few singsong exchanges, the lead creature looked directly at Elizabeth, bowed his head, and then used two of his three long fingers and made the walking motion right toward the cave entrance.

&n
bsp; “Look, he’s telling you that’s where Carson and your guy are,” Jeanette said.

  “Maybe,” Elizabeth said, unsure of what the creature was communicating.

  “Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Ti, we’re going,” Jeanette sang out, rifle ready.

  “We’ll be back,” Elizabeth said to the creature just as Jeanette stepped into the opening, surrounded by velociraptors.

  “This is a bad idea,” Elizabeth said to Sally, and then followed Jeanette.

  “Woof,” Sally said, and limped through the cave opening.

  32

  Communication

  Whorf coined what was once called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which is more properly referred to as the Whorf hypothesis. This states that language is not simply a way of voicing ideas, but is the very thing that shapes those ideas. One cannot think outside the confines of their language. The result of this process is many different world views by speakers of different languages.

  —Amy Stafford

  Sixty-five Million Years Ago

  Community Church Refuge

  “I’ll talk to them,” Nick volunteered, looking down at the approaching band of Inhumans.

  “Please don’t,” Reverend said. “I feel like I pressured you into this, and I did not mean to. I spoke rashly. Don’t do it because of what I said.”

  “Reverend, I want to do this,” Nick said. “Look at them! They’re a sentient species evolving on a parallel course with us.”

  “Actually, they predate us by sixty-three million years,” Gah said, joining the conversation.

  “At least sixty-three million years,” Wynooski said.

  Sighing loudly, the reverend said, “You’re speaking nonsense. The theory of evolution is a distraction, created by Satan. It is a false trail to lead you into the wilderness of sin, and it has worked beautifully since the very first day Mr. Darwin was led astray. Now Satan has his hooks deep into your souls. Listen to your heart, not your clouded mind. Those are demons down there, and to speak to them is to speak to the devil.”