Primordia 3: The Lost World—Re-Evolution

by Greig Beck

  Drake looked up as he ran; the clouds were still purple-black, but tearing open in the center to permit a halo of sky to be seen. He saw out to their right hemisphere he could just make out the eyebrow streak of the comet departing through the whipping tree canopy. Oddly, there was another streak that was almost touching it.

  Were there always two comets? he wondered. He put his head down and sprinted on.

  In another hour, they began to recognize some of the outcrops on a rocky hill, and then minutes later located the marked crevice that they had slid from only 22 hours before.

  Thunder boomed, coming from all around them, and the purple clouds turned like a witch’s cauldron above them now. The tiny circle of clear sky had vanished, and with it the last vision of Primordia.

  Ben checked his watch. “Eleven minutes!” he shouted over the maelstrom, and then pointed. “Drake, in first.”

  Without a second thought, Drake leapt in and scrambled further inside. He switched on his flashlight and attached it to his gun barrel—he knew he wasn’t ordered in at front to be the first to escape, but to ensure that nothing inside was waiting to make a meal out of them. He quickly scanned the interior.

  “Clear!” he shouted back.

  Immediately, Ben and Helen followed him in. The trio belly-crawled to where the chute was that would lead them to the lower cave and then out onto the plateau’s cliff wall.

  Around them, the air was becoming thick and oily like they had submerged into some sort of liquid. Drake knew what it was—the distortion layer. They needed to be below it before the comet’s effects were fully undone, or when they emerged, they’d be stuck in the Late Cretaceous, instead of being back home.

  Drake moved fast, and then found their ledge. There were several ropes waiting and he grabbed at them, hauling them in and waiting for Helen and Ben to catch up.

  The oily layer was making Drake feel dizzy and nauseous, but he swallowed it down. They had mere minutes now, and he needed to focus. He handed Helen one of the ropes and she reached out to grab it but missed, with her movements slow and confused.

  Ben took another of the ropes and reached out for her.

  “I got her,” Drake said. He quickly used his belt to create a harness, and then wrapped a stout arm around her.

  “Okay?” Ben asked.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Drake said and jumped off, belaying down the elasticized rope, but faster than he wanted with the added weight of Helen.

  Ben came down, trying to keep up. They had over 100 feet to drop to the cave floor, and at about halfway there came a massive crack of thunder, and it felt like they suffered an electric shock.

  Everything went black and Drake felt himself falling in space.

  CHAPTER 53

  Eagle Eye Observatory, Burnet, Texas—End of Comet Apparition

  “Bingo.” Henson jumped to his feet. “Outta the park.” He held both fists up and grinned through his straggly beard.

  The cameras were focused on the southwestern quadrant of the sky and recorded the collision event. The smaller asteroid struck the comet—both were rebounded away, like billiard balls, just as both the astronomers hoped.

  However, the celestial impact was like fireworks on an astral scale, and it lit up the night-time Amazon jungle like it was noonday. The locals reported hearing thunder from a cloudless sky, but no one could verify it.

  Gallagher damped down his enthusiasm and rubbed his face—something was off. The thing was, it was already well after the impact. They had been watching like hawks, but somehow they’d missed the actual intersection event. He remembered watching the impact drawing close, but then everything went black in his mind, as if he was somewhere else for a while. But now they were back.

  “That’s it,” Henson said, folding his arms and turning in his seat with a huge grin plastered across his face. “We’ll probably never see them again.”

  Gallagher nodded. “Like you said, probably. Neither was destroyed by the collision. Primordia’s path was certainly disrupted, but we won’t know what its new cyclical orbit is going to be for many years yet, or at least until it stabilizes. For all we know, it’ll come back in 10 years, or every 100 years, or maybe even every single year. And maybe next time it’ll come closest to New York, or London, or…” He turned and lowered his glasses, “… Texas.”

  Henson put his hands together and looked skyward. “If you’re up there, Superman, please make it happen over Texas.” He laughed and then turned to his friend. “Nah, Primordia has been visiting us every 10 years like clockwork for who knows how many millions of years.” He shrugged. “Like I said before, everyone’s luck eventually runs out.”

  “Well, not us.” Henson sat back. “At least they both spun off away from our planet, so I’m calling it as dodging a bullet. No one is reporting any debris falling to Earth so the impact and ensuing fragment disbursement all occurred well away from us.”

  “Sad, I guess.” Henson sighed and turned to his aged and now very gray fellow astronomer. “It always came closest to the Venezuelan jungle. I wonder if they’ll miss it, or even notice.”

  “No one knows, no one cares.” Gallagher turned in his chair, shifting his bulk. “After all, my friend, life is like a box of chocolates.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Henson went back to reading his comic.

  EPILOGUE

  Greenberry, Ohio—3-months later

  “I woke up in a field,” Emma said softly.

  Ben nodded. “The rain shut off like a tap. We all fell, but it was like we fell into a vacuum. Like you, we blacked out, I think, or were in some sort of other place…no, more like between places, for nearly an hour according to our watches.”

  “It was horrible.” She turned, her eyes wet. “We had lost everything. We were cattle, farmed for our meat.” She buried her face in her hands. “Zach, you, the world, was all gone, and only I could see it.”

  He rose from his chair and came and sat next to her, throwing a large arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him.

  “We stopped it.” He exhaled. “Andy said he had so much left to do and see. Whatever that was, it must have been the major keystone events that changed everything.”

  She turned to the large windows that looked out on the green fields of Ohio. The sun shone, and there were far trees whose leaves glittered in the sun as a gentle breeze ruffled their branches.

  “Was it real?” she asked. “Did it really happen?”

  Ben grinned and thumbed over his shoulder to the staircase. “There’s a tiny flying reptile in a cage in Zach’s room; you better believe it was real.”

  She returned his smile. “He wanted you to bring him back something cool, remember?”

  “Then mission accomplished.” Ben snorted softly. “And he can keep it until it grows big enough to carry off a cow.”

  There came the skittering of paws, and a golden-haired missile launched itself to land between them on the couch. The wriggling golden lab was all wagging tail and licking tongue. Ben grabbed it and rubbed its head, and then looked into its face.

  “Belle, if I told you, you came within an inch of never existing, would you believe me?”

  Belle just wriggled her enjoyment from the attention even harder, and Emma stroked the dog’s head, calming her. Belle relaxed between them and Emma stared down at the dog for a few more moments.

  “You know what? We should tell someone,” she said.

  Ben bobbed his head. “Well, the story was pretty fantastic.”

  “So tell it, make your ancestor proud.” She leaned across to him. “After all, it was his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that started everything.”

  “Maybe I should tell it. As a story, let everyone think it’s fiction, but with a message.” He tilted his head. “Just not under my name.”

  “Then use your middle name—Greig—and change Ben to Beck, after one of my favorite singers.” She shrugged. “Let’s call it Primordia, and use it as a warning.”


  “Don’t mess with the past, huh?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Our world, us, and everything in it, is all just a big series of fluke events. We can’t mess it up ever again.” Emma nodded to him. “Go on, do it, tell the story.”

  END

  Read on for a free sample of Throwback

  AUTHORS NOTES & THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

  Many readers ask me about the background of my novels—is the science real or fiction? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters, or their expertise from, and just how much of any element has a basis in fact?

  For the entire PRIMORDIA series, in the case of the hidden plateau deep in the Amazon jungle, the novel, The Lost World, was my blueprint. And for the re-evolution phases, I nod to one of the modern great Sci-Fi writers by the name of Ray Bradbury, and his tale called the ‘Sound of Thunder’ written in 1952.

  Many of the creatures I include actually existed. However, some do not—these are the ones where I let my imagination run wild and describe what could evolve, and also, if mankind didn’t exist, just who or what would be there in its place.

  In this story, I further explore the paradox of time travel; can we really change the future through what we do in the past? Some theoreticians say we can. Others say we can’t and that time is immutable. I include theories arguing for both cases.

  Finally, Emma’s words at the end of the story are in fact my words: “Our world, us, and everything in it, is all just a big series of fluke events.”

  Enjoy it while we’ve got it!

  The Evolution of the Intelligent Dinosaur—Rise of the Dinosauroid

  The Troodon, a relatively small, bird-like dinosaur (appox. 100lbs) of the Cretaceous Period was among the first dinosaurs found in America. The genus name is Greek for “wounding tooth,” referring to the teeth that were lined with razor-sharp serrations.

  The Troodon possessed several other features which set them apart from their dinosaur and reptilian cousins of the time—they had large braincases, opposable thumbs, and binocular vision. They are also thought to have been social animals. This has led experts to believe that these dinosaurs were on the way to evolving into true intelligent lifeforms.

  In 1982, Dale Russell—then at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa—ran an extrapolation that indicated that the dinosaur’s modern-day descendants would have pretty much the same brain volume as humans do. This evolving “larger” brain would have changed the dinosaurs’ appearance, giving them more humanoid characteristics. These “dinosauroids” would have stood upright while still having their basic reptilian features, such as the scaly skin, hairlessness, and lack of external genitals.

  Russell then employed the services of a taxidermist and together they created a life-sized model of his “Dinosauroid,” which looks like a creature from another world (note: I urge you to Google “Dale Russell, Troodon, Dinosauroid,” as the model is extremely creepy).

  Of course, there is a lot of debate over whether dinosaurs could have evolved into sentient beings. But given that dinosaurs had a massive head start on mammals, there is no reason not to believe if they hadn’t been wiped out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, then it very well could be them ruling this world and not us.

  The Paradoxes of Time Travel

  I have been interested in time travel ever since watching some of the episodes of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. It has also been done magnificently in the movie adaptation of the Time Machine, and A Sound of Thunder.

  Interestingly, there is nothing in Einstein’s theories of relativity to rule out the possibility of time travel, even though the basic concept of time travel contravenes one of the foundation principles of physics—that is, one of causality.

  So, if we ignore the laws of cause and effect, then there automatically arise a number of inconsistencies with time travel that need to be explored, and however poorly, attempted to be explained.

  Below are some of the main timeline inconsistency theories—there are so many more, but they each get more complex and more into lower-level mathematics. The ones I have included also have been given movie treatments in the past.

  The Predestination Paradox

  A Predestination Paradox occurs when the actions of someone traveling back in time actually become part of those past events, and therefore may be the cause of the events that the person was trying to prevent in the first place.

  This paradox suggests that things are always destined to turn out the same way, or are predestined, and therefore whatever has happened will happen.

  This concept was explored in the remake of the Time Machine (2002) and was illustrated by Dr. Alexander Hartdegen witnessing his fiancée being killed by a mugger. This leads him to build a time machine to travel back in time to stop the fatal event occurring. However, his attempts to save her fail time and time again and this leads him to conclude, “I could come back a thousand times…and see her die a thousand ways.”

  Hartdegen then travels thousands of years into the future seeking an answer to why he keeps failing to rescue his beloved fiancée, to finally be told by the Morlock leader: “You built your time machine because of Emma’s death. If she had lived, it would never have existed, so how could you use your machine to go back and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy.”

  The Bootstrap Paradox

  A Bootstrap Paradox is a type of inconsistency in which an object, person, or piece of information sent back in time results in an infinite loop where the object has no identifiable origin and seems to exist without ever have been created.

  As an example of the paradox, imagine, a 20-year-old male time traveler goes back 21 years and meets a woman who he has an affair with. He then returns home and three months later without knowing, the woman becomes pregnant. Her child grows up to be that 20-year-old time traveler, who then travels back 21 years through time, meets the woman when she was younger, and so on, and so on. American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote a strange short story involving a sexual paradox similar to this in his 1959 classic “All You Zombies.”

  Grandfather Paradox

  This time paradox gives rise to what’s known as a “self-inconsistent solution,” because if you traveled to the past and killed your grandfather, you would never have been born and therefore would not have been able to travel to the past—hence a paradox.

  The Grandfather paradox is similar to the “Let’s kill Hitler” paradox. Killing Hitler would have far-reaching consequences for everyone in the world, and would certainly do, and undo, an enormous amount of significant historical events. The paradox arises from the idea that if you were successful in killing the man prior to him undertaking his monstrous actions, then those monstrous actions would not have occurred and none of them would trickle down through history. So, without those monstrous actions ever taking place, there would be no reason to time travel in the first place to cause you to want to make the attempt.

  A great film version of this occurred in an episode of the Twilight Zone called “Cradle of Darkness” that sums up the difficulties involved in trying to change history.

  Are Time Paradoxes Inevitable and what is the solution?

  The Butterfly Effect grew from the mathematical based Chaos Theory, where it was theorized that even minor changes could have devastating cascading reactions that can become ever more amplified over longer periods of time. This is the theory that I make use of in Primordia III.

  Consequently, the timeline corruption hypothesis states that time paradoxes are an unavoidable consequence of time travel, and even insignificant changes may be enough to distort history completely.

  The Great Lands of Laramidia and Appalachia

  From the Turonian age of the Late Cretaceous to the very beginning of the Paleocene, North America didn’t exist as a single continent. Instead, it was divided into two landmasses by an enormous body of water called the Western Interior Seaway. At its largest, this sea was 2,500 feet deep, 600 miles wide, and ov
er 2,000 miles long.

  The western landmass was called Laramidia and included what is now the west coast of Canada and the United States. To the east was Appalachia, the mountainous island landmass.

  As a result of the land separation, the creatures evolved differently on each landmass over that time. In Laramidia during the Cretaceous, the dominant predators were the massive theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex, etc. In addition, massive herds of hadrosaurs, the duck-billed plant-eaters, were perhaps why there were so many predators. The fossil record shows a staggering variety of hadrosaur forms in Laramidia.

  Other differences in genera appear between the island landmasses, such as the prevalence of massive pterosaurs dominating the mountain valleys. Also, there were armored dinosaurs such as the nodosaurs that appeared to have been plentiful in the mountainous Appalachia. Nodosaurs were large, herbivorous, armored dinosaurs resembling tank-sized armadillos.

  The seaway eventually shrank, split across the Dakotas, and first created a massive inland sea. This sea would eventually also dry up, trapping the massive sea-going beasts that remained there. When they too died out, they provided a wealth of fossils.

  The last of the water finally retreated toward the Gulf of Mexico and the Hudson Bay. Around 60 million years ago, the landmasses joined to unite the North American continent.

  Vampire Bats and Vampire Plants

  The Rise of the Vampires

  Bats are an old mammal species. However, since their small, delicate skeletons do not fossilize very well, there is more we don’t know about the evolution of bats than we do know. We do know that they are a mammal species that evolved around 60 million years ago, already in the form they are today, and even before the first dogs, cats, and horses.