Flawed (284 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-09-24 16:40:17 EDT
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The teeth were the size of bananas. Small bananas.
I know that is a ludicrous analogy, but I want you to be able to picture the moment clearly.
Doctor Wakeman was sitting by one of the windows in the ruined laboratory, using daylight filtering down through the trees to compose his notes.
The others were using that daylight to explore the damage done to the laboratory, and I was writing this account of what happened to us on my laptop.
I am certain none of these writings will survive to be found. Ink scribbles on paper and data on a disk drive dependant on a dying battery will not endure sixty-five millions years of environmental changes and geologic upheavals.
The jaws crashed through what little double-glazed glass remained in the window.
The teeth were five to six inches long, with the same girth and curvature as a banana. Most of the teeth came to rounded points. Some of them were shattered into clusters of sharp points like a fistful of steak knives.
The experiment had been flawed.
*
On paper it was simple, and so earth-shaking it was considered nonsense by those who received press releases. I was only one of two visitors who showed up on the appointed day. Not because I thought that Edmund Wakeman had put his doctorate in physics to good use and built a 'time displacement chamber,' as stated in the glossy single-page press release, but because I thought I had a good human-interest story to work on. Genuine eccentrics are few and far between, lost in a sea of poseurs with carefully crafted quirks.
Wakeman had sprouts of gray hair growing out of his ears, his wrinkled shirt had a dirty collar, and there was what looked like a pee stain on one leg of his tan trousers. Wakeman wasn't looking for fame in a camera lens. Insane or not, his dedication to his own work was complete. Everything else, including personal grooming, came second.
I had driven my car into the Alberta foothills only a few hours ago. The Rockies loomed over the gray concrete slabs that made up Wakeman's laboratory.
The old man had been teaching at the University of Calgary for a quarter century. He was one of those characters you read about in Popular Mechanics or Time Magazine, always espousing some grand theory, always on the verge of some magnificent breakthrough.
Doctor Wakeman had come close to fame so many times that he was now considered a boy who cried wolf in the world of physics.
*
Everyone scattered. Ted Banner ran into Jill Yashita and they stumbled on an overturned chair. Marti Jefferson ran by me so fast she was a blur. The Russian, Oleg Ivanova, backed away from the row of windows. Thomas Haynes simply stared in disbelief from the far side of the room. He was clutching his bible. Haynes had been against the event that brought us here from the very beginning. Despite objections based purely on faith, I had to admit he made the right call. The kid, James Ogilvy, let out a yelp of either terror or laughter. He pointed at Haynes bible and shouted, "Revision time!"
I only took a few steps back. I knew I was safe for the moment.
Doctor Wakeman was the first course on this hot-blooded menu.
The teeth were set into massive jaws. Exhaled breath filled the room as a roar came out of that nightmarish mouth. Jill vomited all over Ted's pant legs. I couldn't blame her.
The jaws closed and I saw a row of those huge teeth sink into Wakeman's forearm. They must have passed between the radius and the ulna. The bones were forced apart. Blood welled and something popped in Wakeman's wrist. Only then did he scream. A length of bloody bone ripped through skin and muscle. I could hear viscera tearing.
Wakeman looked me in the eye, just for a moment, and then he was pulled through the window.
*
When I showed up at his lab I was the only credentialed member of the media in attendance. I wasn't surprised. Newspapers and TV need flash and pizzazz these days to draw eyes away from computer screens. Doctor Wakeman was just a soft-spoken old man in an ugly plaid shirt.
Ted Banner, Jill Yashita, and Marti Jefferson were grad students assisting the Doctor. Oleg Ivanova was on some kind of government sponsored information exchange program. James Ogilvy was a very sharp kid, riding a fast track through school. He was only seventeen, but he was right in there with the others, aligning the grid. I didn't know much about Haynes. He had introduced himself as a writer doing a feature for the Christian Science Monitor, but since he showed up with a bible tucked under one arm I was quite sure he was more a right-wing soldier or spy for Christ and the Church than an unbiased observer.
Introductions were made, and Haynes and I took seats a few feet away from a double row of sturdy worktables in Wakeman's laboratory.
I took a few pictures with my digital camera and made a note on my laptop to ask about the interconnected components of the tables, a profusion of wires and humming boxes surrounding a glass and metal mesh cube about one meter high. All I really recognized were the many laptops used by the students as they followed Wakeman's instructions.
Wakeman said little. As stated in his press release, he was going to create a "plasma displacement chamber" and "reach into the past and grab whatever I can."
When I asked if he had done this previously he showed me a few rock samples and half of a broad, wilted leaf, explaining that the previous incarnation of the chamber had been quite small.
I asked him what powered the chamber and he said, "A plasma grid, of course."
Young Ogilvy saw the blank look on my face and pointed to a squat black metal box in one end of the room. "That's a self-contained mini-reactor, and it generates a plasma field that we can manipulate like a knife. If you think of time as something malleable, you'll see how we are able to cut a slice out of the past and retrieve it for study. Our cube will be filled with whatever the plasma grid encounters. Rocks or dirt, atmospheric dust and pollen, hopefully an insect or two and some more plants."
Marti Jefferson laughed and said, "Yeah, maybe even a slice of a living creature if a hadrosaur happens to walk by nice and slow at the right time."
For the first time I noticed she was wearing a t-shirt that read 'Gravity is every man's dream: She sucks and swallows.'
Raising his head from behind a rat's nest of wires and cables on the far side of the table, Ted Banner grinned in agreement. "Wouldn't a tender Edmontosaurus steak just kick ass?"
Jill Yashita frowned and shook her head. James Ogilvy let out a high-pitched laugh, reminding me he was just a kid. Wakeman snapped his fingers, and his students returned their concentration to the grid.
"Doctor," I asked, "Are you saying you can control what period of the past this plasma grid... visits?"
"Within reason," Wakeman replied, reaching into a high framework holding a maze of circuit boards. There was an abrupt buzzing sound and Wakeman pulled his hand back. "We are targeting the late Cretaceous. It was the time of the dinosaurs, of course, but also the time of many insects and birds, and bees as well, busily pollinating a profusion of flowering plants. Quite a hectic time, indeed."
The Doctor stuck the reddened end of one finger in his mouth.
*
"Not good," Ivanova said, his accent heavy. "I said it before. Not good, to take a seat near the window."
We could hear something huge and agile moving in the jungle outside. The entire room we were in was canted on an angle, and we could feel deep vibrations in the broken floor.
I went to the window. I couldn't help myself. I was a writer. More than that, I was an observer.
Haynes followed. So did Ivanova.
A few yards away was a tremendous clawed foot, and a leg with muscles as big as sandbags. The leathery skin had a sheen to it that displayed subtle changes in color as it moved.
"This color of the skin..." Ivanova said, raising his head and looking upward. "Most beautiful. Most unexpected."
"That's a dinosaur," Haynes said. "A tyrannosaurus. My Lord."
I'd seen things like just like this in dozens of movies, clutching a container of popcorn in a cozy seat. Seeing and hearing and smelling the real thing was almost more than I could bear.
My heart was racing and my lips felt numb. I wondered if I was going into shock.
Wakeman was screaming, high-pitched shrieks that were almost unbearable. His forearm was still caught on the teeth of the tyrannosaurus rex, and his body flopped and flipped on the end of the dislocated limb. The great lizard was raising and lowering its head, trying to shake Wakeman free. The small forelimbs swiped at the Doctor, tearing away his shirt and gouging his flesh, but they were too weak to dislodge him.
Haynes crossed himself.
*
The Doctor continued to tweak wires, moving between glowing laptop displays of his creation and the hard reality of the device.
"Assuming that this device works at all," Haynes said, speaking up for the first time, "And accepting your confidence in that miniature nuclear reactor in the corner, how do we know your grid will not retrieve some bacteria or virus to which humanity has no immunity? After all, according to your science, at this stage of the Earth's development only the smallest primate ancestors were scurrying about. I can't imagine the University endorsing something so fraught with risk."
I glanced at Haynes, feeling ashamed by my own poor judgment of the man. I had expected him to start thumping his bible and crying blasphemy.
I waited for Wakeman to blow him off with some blather regarding the strict observation of highest possible standards of safety.
The Doctor grinned at Haynes. "Most astute, my friend. Yes, there is a danger. Yes, the University is funding this work. And yes, we are in an isolated building at the foot of the mountains for a reason. If something goes wrong, it will be contained. If someone tries to spy on us from the outside, and you would be shocked at the lows to which my fellow academics will sink, we are protected by a state of the art electronic web built into this structure, one that makes eavesdropping by any means an impossible task. One does not explore a new frontier without risk, wouldn't you agree?"
Before I could even reply the Doctor said, "We are ready to begin."
For the first time I really noticed the heavy concrete blocks under a fresh coat of paint, the reinforced and sealed windows, the air circulation system out of the ceiling.
"This is wrong," Haynes said. "The hand of man is not the hand of God. Only His perfection can shape the world. Whenever men try, they fail. Doctor, do not do this."
Wakeman frowned. "I don't play by the rules of any mythological being. I play by the rules of Physics. No reasonable man of science will let baseless beliefs in a so-called supreme being steer him in his quest for knowledge."
Wrong, I thought, as Haynes spoke up.
"Einstein said science without religion is lame."
"Complete his quote, if you please," Wakeman said, with growing irritation. "Religion without science is blind."
Haynes smiled, but his eyes were dark. "Einstein also said that technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
Wakeman sighed. "If you feel at risk you are free to leave. No one is holding you here against your will."
Haynes crossed his arms. "I am here to observe."
The Doctor gave a curt nod. Young Ogilvy handed out shaded goggles, and everyone slipped them on.
"There will be a flash inside the grid," Wakeman said. "And we will reach back in time and steal a piece of another world."
Switches were flicked and dials were turned. The lights dimmed overhead and a low hum filled my head as if the bones of my skull were vibrating.
Wakeman raised and arm and said, "Ready..."
My mind filled with images of the old black and white Frankenstein movie, and I cursed quietly.
"Now!" Wakeman lowered his arm and struck a single key on a keyboard in front of him.
*
The tyrannosaur began swinging Wakeman up and down, opening its mouth wide every time Wakeman rose up into the air.
"Such coordination," Ivanova said. "Such intelligence."
Doctor Wakeman rose up into the air one final time, his arm tore free, and the jaws snapped shut on his torso. There was an explosion of blood as the tyrannosaur began to chew, and I lowered my eyes.
Muscles in the towering leg quivered. Runnels of blood ran across that nearly iridescent skin. Something heavy fell into the undergrowth. Poking out from behind the thick stem of a tall fern was a loafer, a foot, and most of a leg.
"Oh my fuck," Marti whispered.
As the T-rex chewed and swallowed it turned away from us. Its back was seething with crawling insects, and it moved in a cloud of flies and wasps. A small furred creature that looked like a cross between a possum and a monkey scurried up along the dinosaur's back and perched there, holding itself in place with three feet like tiny hands. Its tail stuck up in the air like a question mark. With its free hand it collected writhing grubs and little shiny beetles, stuffing them into its mouth until its cheeks bulged.
There was a hollow hooting cry from somewhere in the distance, and the tyrannosaur quickly moved away. The little mammal leaped onto a tree branch and disappeared.
"Bigger prey than us," Ivanova said with a grim smile.
When the jungle was quiet I went back to my seat, a heavy plastic packing crate, and continued writing on my laptop.
*
My first thought was that Doctor Wakeman's device had blown us all to hell.
In retrospect, that would have been preferable.
I had been watching the glass and wire cube for the flash of light, waiting to see if this device really would scoop something from the past. Instead, I was dazzled by a burst of white light that filled the windows and appeared to blaze through seams in the floor, walls and ceiling.
Every one of us was knocked off our feet. The floor dropped out from under us, thick stone slabs fracturing, as the entire building seemed to settle on a slight grade. One wall of the laboratory collapsed and revealed a wall of tree trunks. Most of the windows shattered and almost every light went out, from the big fluorescents overhead to the many colored displays in front of me. Aside from daylight filtering down through the trees and seeping through the windows on the far side of the room, the only lights I saw were tiny green and amber power indicators on a few of the laptops in the room, mine included.
When the structure around us stopped settling, we realized that the quiet of the lab had been replaced by a thousand different sounds, most if them small and soft.
Insects buzzed and chirped. There were tiny pipe-like hoots from high in the trees, and further off we heard a deeper hooting call.
"That sounds like a didgeridoo," Marti said, delicately probing a bleeding scratch on her forehead with her fingertips.
"Or somebody with an oboe stuffed up their ass," Ted replied. "Hey, anybody see my glasses anywhere?"
Jill handed Ted his glasses. They were scratched, the wire frames bent, but he could still see. "Thank fuck for space-age plastics, eh?"
Marti let out a hiss. "You little bitch!" She swatted at a bug perched on her arm. An ugly red welt was already forming. "Whatever that was, it had a hell of a bite."
The kid looked scared shitless.
"Hey, Ogilvy," I said. "You okay?"
He nodded, looked at the trees beyond the fallen wall, and took his dell phone out of his pocket.
"No signal," he said.
"Of course there's no signal," Doctor Wakeman said. "There won't be any cell phones in the world for sixty-five million years."
*
There was a cacophony of screams and shouts and curses. Jill was the most reserved.
The Doctor didn't lose his composure when I asked him what went wrong. He didn't react when Haynes said something about God punishing us for our over-reaching pride and referenced the Tower of Babel. He didn't say a thing when Ogilvy asked if we were going to die, and when Marti said that we were all 'toast.'
"Well," Ted said. "This little experiment sure as shit went tits-up."
Only then did Wakeman react. "What did you say?"
Ivanova was watching a pair of beetles crawl up a tree trunk. "He said the test was a failure."
"A failure?" Wakeman's face reddened. "It was no failure," he roared. "If anything the device worked too well!"
No one said a thing.
"Don't you see? Instead of retrieving a piece of the past inside the grid, the grid itself somehow expanded beyond the containment cube, perhaps using profusion of wires and fiber optic cables encircling that laboratory. In any case, time displacement was achieved. The laboratory and everything in it have been sent back to the late cretaceous period. We should be celebrating."
The Doctor picked up a pad of paper and a pen and went to one of the windows. He righted a toppled chair, sat down, and began to write.
"My friend," Ivanova said, his voice a harsh rumble. "To sit by the broken window, I think it is not advisable."
The Doctor ignored him.
His students began sorting through the mess of equipment thrown onto the floor.
"Wherever we are," Jill said softly, "We need a few essentials. Light. Food. Water. And if anyone smokes, matches or a lighter might come in handy.
Doctor Wakeman ignored everyone, furiously writing on the pad of paper.
That was when I saw the teeth outside the window.
*
After the incident with Doctor Wakeman, I was outside, with Ivanova and Haynes.
The air was very warm and moist.
We cautiously made our way to a clearing in the trees, and before us was a body of water that reached to the horizon.
There were four little dinosaurs nearby, darting their slender heads into a dark green bush. They looked like plucked chickens. Chickens with tiny arms and greenish skin. Chickens with tiny teeth. Trying to evade their attacks was another of the small mammals with a tail like a
question mark. The little mammal chattered. It had huge eyes.
I kicked out at the little dinosaurs and they scattered into the undergrowth.
The long-tailed whatever-it-was looked me in the eye a moment, and then literally high-tailed it for the nearest tree.
I looked at the endless body of water again, and then I looked over my shoulder. Through gaps in the thick growth of towering trees I could see the jagged peaks of mountains.
"Where the hell are we?"
"We are where we began," Ivanova said. "At the foot of the Rocky Mountains. And that..." he said with a broad gesture. "That is the Western Interior Seaway. It reaches from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. We are in the past, and the tyrannosaurus tells me that we are in the Cretaceous period. Sixty-five million years ago, is now."
"It is beautiful," Haynes said. He sounded calm.
I glanced down at the bible Haynes was still carrying. "Doesn't all of this contradict what's written in that book?" I was trying to sound cool, trying not to let my mind wander. I was afraid I'd go mad if I didn't keep a tight grip.
"I'm not a fanatic," Haynes said. "It isn't God's fault I have to readjust my understanding of His works."
"It is glorious, this world," Ivanova said. "But I think we will not survive long. We are merely defenseless meat."
"You don't think we can start the human race right here, Oleg?" My heart was hammering in my chest, and I was straining to keep my tone light. "We have three women and plenty of men. Wouldn't that give us enough diversity to get the ball rolling?"
Ivanova looked me up and down and gave me a roguish smile. "Which one of us would you choose?"
The thought of seeing any of these guys naked was more disturbing than the thought of being eaten by a big lizard.
I blew him a kiss and said, "I'll let you know when the time comes."
The Russian laughed, and we all stood quietly, looking at the sea.
Haynes spoke softly. "If God intends this to be Eden and us to be Adams and Eves... He has gone a little over the top with the serpents."
I was so tense that my laughter exploded out of my chest.
"So," I said, "Can we live here? Somehow?"
The laboratory was in ruins and it was more than likely that Doctor Wakeman was soaking in digestive juices right about now, so there was no going back.
"If we could survive," the Russian said, squinting up into the sky. "We may spawn one generation, or two, but I think even those children would die off. Eventually. Only the smallest mammals now living will survive to... to become us."
"And it would interfere with God's plan," Haynes said. "I do not take the bible literally. I am willing to believe in evolution, but I still believe that it is the will of God guiding the ascent of man, not mere chance."
"What is that sound?" I had been aware of it for a minute or more, the faraway roar of jet passing overhead.
"We are about to see if the hand of God will protect us, or if we play no part of His plan," Ivanova said.
Something came over the mountains, far up in the sky, a bright and massive object leaving a roiling trail of smoke or steam behind it, something so vast the ground shook with its passage and our ears rang with its roar.
"Our timing, it is spectacular," the Russian cried. For the first time he looked horribly distressed.
The others came running up behind us, stopping dead when they saw the object in the sky. It was descending as it crossed the great sea.
Young Ogilvy's lips moved. I couldn't hear him, but I could read his lips easily enough. "No."
Jill reached for the boy and started crying. They hugged each other.
Marti and Ted reached out for each other without dropping their eyes from the sky and held each other's hands.
I had to shout to be heard. "What is that?"
The noise diminished a little.
"The K-T Extinction," Ted replied. "The biggest show on Earth."
Ivanova reached out and put a large, gentle hand on my shoulder.
"An asteroid, its orbit flawed, falling to Earth. This is the most likely cause for the demise of the dinosaurs. A rock the size of a modern city. It struck the Yucatan Peninsula. It hit this world with such strength that debris was blown back into space. There were earthquakes. Hurricanes. Wildfires."
All of us drew together and watched the fiery ball disappear over the horizon.
Ivanova's hand on my shoulder was reassuring. "Dust and ash filled the atmosphere. Blocked the sun. Created what we would call nuclear winter. Plants died. Large plant eaters died. Beasts like the tyrannosaurus died, because their meat was no more. The weather changed, and most of the cold-blooded reptiles died off. Only the smallest mammals survived the cold to come. "
I thought of the little creature with the curled tail, hiding somewhere in the trees.
I wished it the best of luck.
We huddled together, waiting.
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