Charger the Soldier (30 page)

"However, we have found clear and extensive
evidence that, in what used to be known as Australia, some
dinosaurs survived the asteroid impact and thrived for an
additional ten million years," Doctor Curtis continued. "We have
also found evidence that the dinosaurs seemed to be dying off some
ten million years before the impact event. So there's a bit of a
conundrum here. In certain parts of the world, a vast die-off was
happening, possibly due to diseases. Then an extinction event
followed that did not kill all the dinosaurs, but left some to
thrive for an additional period of time, secluded as they were on
an island continent."

Phil, as he was known to his students, was a
hippy type of the past, usually with a book in his face as he
wandered the halls of the campus. He was often described as 'that
guy with the busy feet,' for it seemed he was always moving.

"The curious thing is the type of Dinosauroid
that survived, and I use the term Dinosauroid deliberately. For it
seems that the simple Troodont, a small meat eater, bipedal in
design, produced the most common kind of fossil remains we've
found. These five-foot-tall dinosaurs apparently had enough time to
evolve into large-brained, possibly highly intelligent creatures.
We think they hunted in packs and had a social lifestyle similar to
wolves."

Phil pressed a few buttons, and before the
eyes of his students appeared three-dimensional pictures which
identified bones and their placement on the specimen. "You can
clearly see here, and here, that the backs of the skulls have
enlarged, the neck has shortened, and an almost human-like upright
posture has evolved." Phil pointed to aspects of the small image in
virtual space.

"Now, I'm not suggesting that these Troodont
drove cars." Several students chuckled. "But I am suggesting that
the Dinosauroids seemed to have evolved some rather puzzling
qualities."

The bell pinged and Doctor Curtis dismissed
his class for the day. He wandered back down the halls to his
favorite haunt to immerse himself in a book. He enjoyed reading
anything related to science, devouring book after book in his spare
time, often those that had little, if anything to do with
paleontology.

A stocky man with dark hair and brown eyes
approached Phil and introduced himself as Doctor Andy Kent. "By
god, you're an impossible man to track down. I must have asked
fifty people where you were, and was told to just keep wandering
the halls, and eventually I would stumble over you."

Phil gave him an odd look, for this was not
the typical greeting one would expect from a stranger. He responded
with a long drawn-out "Okaaay…"

"I'm hoping to persuade you to fly back to
England with me. I'm part of the team working on the city
discovered under Stonehenge, and we've found some stuff that we
think you might be able to help us with," Andy said, as he looked
for a place to sit down.

"You found dinosaur fossils in this city?"
Phil asked, with a chuckle.

"Oh, it's odder then that," replied Andy, who
could not help responding with a smug smile. "I study cultures,
which is why I'm on the dig site. We found a door that led to a
great room with many pictures on the walls. These pictures told of
life in this city during its existence, really fascinating
stuff!"

"If you say so," replied Phil. He really had
no interest in humans. In his opinion, most of them were a complete
waste of skin.

"I do. We have had teams of people in this
room in the center of the complex for weeks now. The pictures tell
of an amazing event, actual contact with beings which seem to be
dinosaurian in nature."

That got Phil's attention. He lowered the
book to his lap. "Dinosaurian? Are you sure?"

"That's why we need you. We want your
experience and expertise to help us establish whether or not this
is even possible," Andy pleaded.

"I think I can save you some time here," Phil
said, as he rose to his feet, ready to walk away. "There is little
to no possibility that humans ever met with dinosaurs, no matter
what pictures you have found. The whole idea is just
ludicrous."

"Wait! Before you go, just have a look at
this statue we found, and some of the photos," Andy said, as he
handed Phil a pair of 3D glasses.

Phil reluctantly put on the glasses, and
began viewing the images. His quick clicking through the pictures
slowed as he found some he simply could not dismiss. After a bit,
he stopped clicking the images forward and began backing up to
review pictures he had seen moments earlier. He was stunned by what
he was seeing. Forward and back, click after click, Phil repeatedly
examined the incredibly detailed three-dimensional images. Finally,
he stopped, removed the glasses and handed them back to Andy. "When
do we go?"

"Yes!" Andy executed an enthusiastic
arm-pump.

The next day found the two of them at the sky
port boarding a transport to England. The flight from New Denver to
Heathrow in Britain was brief; the transport ship flew into orbit,
then descended to the destination. The two men gathered their gear
from the holding bay and called for a ground transport to get them
to the dig site's main base. Only half a day had been spent in
travel, but it was growing dark when they arrived at the dig
site.

"We can tackle this in the morning, if you
like. There are living quarters just around back, open to all,"
Andy said.

"No, I'm good. I'll go look at this room you
found, if it's all right with you," Phil replied, as he tossed his
luggage and science gear down next to the entrance that led down to
the dig site.

"Knock yourself out! I'm bagged." Andy fought
back a yawn. "It's been a long day for me, so I'll see you in the
morning. Just ask around and someone will guide you to the living
quarters when you're done."

Phil headed down the long stairs that led to
the entrance to the dig site. He passed many wandering scientists,
all seemingly preoccupied with the work they carried. A young girl
at the base of the stairs pointed Phil in the direction of the
central room, and after some time, he managed to find the place. At
first, he paid little attention to the pictures on the walls,
though they seemed to move as he moved, for he had no interest in
human culture. But, after only a few seconds, he stopped walking
and just stared at the pictures and pedestals that held objects
upon them.

The next morning, Andy saw Phil in the
immense central room and, with a mug of tea in hand, he approached
and sat beside him. "Well, what great American insight can you add
to all this?" Andy asked.

"I don't even know where to begin. I've been
at this for hours, and I still can't come to terms with what I'm
seeing." Phil sounded a little lost. He had removed a small object
from one of the pedestals, and was turning it over in his hands.
"Look at this crystalline structure, and these pictures here that
make reference to the recipients of their stellar communication as
having some type of psychic power. What I mean is, one of them held
this object up to the frontal portion of his skull, and was thus
able to speak to the aliens he contacted. This can't be real, for
we know that humans have no psychic powers, and this crystal is
merely a piece of mineral." Phil blew out a gusty breath. "So part
of the puzzle here is mired in pseudoscience, and part of it is
based on real science!"

"So you're saying you don't have a clue as to
what all this is?" Andy asked.

"On the contrary, I understand exactly what
I'm looking at. It appears that the aliens being contacted were, in
fact, dinosaurian in nature. However, the two cultures found no
means of speaking to each other, so this pseudoscience mumbo jumbo
of pressing rocks to heads was the experimenters' only way of
convincing others in their society that some type of communication
was happening."

"I don't get it either," Andy said,
scratching his head. "Look, these pictures here show human elders
telling their people that they spoke to these creatures, but the
mechanisms they used are based on garbage science. However, the
creatures are either descendants from the dinosaurs here on Earth,
for the anatomical physiology is just too similar to be dismissed,
or we have the first-ever case of convergent evolution of life
forms on a different planet."

Phil placed the small object back on the
pedestal. "Simply put, we have alien dinosaurs from space, or we
have dinosaurs from Earth that evolved and left Earth, and then
were contacted by a forgotten society of ancient humans," Phil said
flatly.

"You think humans really could talk to them?"
Andy asked.

Phil rocked himself back on the seat and blew
out a long breath. "Okay, imagine you live back in the early 1900s,
when steamships and steam engines are the norm. Someone develops
the two-way radio and turns it on, and suddenly is speaking to
another voice. But no one else in the world has a radio. So, who is
he speaking to? These people had a science different from our own.
But the other devices here are clearly based on scientific
principles," Phil said, as he pointed to several pedestals around
the vast room.

"Their science is more advanced than our own
in some ways, and yet in others more primitive," Phil continued.
"And this statue, it is clearly a cross between a dinosaur and some
type of bipedal humanoid. See its physiology depicted here in the
pictures? Without a doubt, if humans did speak to these things,
they spoke to Dinosauroids. But I don't think that any meaningful
communication could ever be had, for it is impossible for these two
differing species to ever be able to understand one another."

"Then we do have a bit of a bind," Andy said.
"It appears that some of the other scientists have figured out a
way to turn this 'two-way radio' back on."

"I don't advise they do that, if it is a
communication with a dinosaurian race. They were never known to be
an understanding group of beings," Phil said cautiously.

"I have to admit I'm a bit surprised. You
seem so matter-of-fact about this whole thing," Andy said with a
hint of suspicion in his voice.

Phil replied quickly. "I have long been
puzzled by the fossils coming to my desk from old Australia.
Dinosaurs survived and developed for some ten million years after
the KT boundary."

"KT?" asked Andy.

"The cretaceous tertiary boundary, KT for
short, that's the point where the dinosaurs were wiped out, so we
think. Ten million years of suspect fossils that seem to show an
advancing physiology, and an increase in brain capacity, then
nothing. Poof! They disappear from the fossil record."

The two men sat for some time staring out at
the vast room and the pictures on the walls and the many pedestals
of unusual items. Then Phil asked, "Hey, where did you get the
tea?"

"Follow me," replied Andy, and they set off
to the surface of the dig site, back to their normal world. They
sat at a small table in a makeshift cafeteria tent, and Andy
finally had to ask. "So… ten million years, eh? How advanced do you
suppose these things could have gotten?"

"Are you kidding me?" Phil said. "The human
race may have taken a few million years to get to the Industrial
Revolution, but then we just took off in technology, like plants
that explode into bloom after a rain. These last few hundred years,
we've traveled to another world, cured many diseases, and our
computers are now almost as capable of thought as we are. The
problem is not how advanced did the Dinosauroids get back then, but
if they are still surviving, how advanced are they now? Imagine
sixty-five million years of evolution. No, we would seem like bugs
to them, so we'd best hope that no signals ever reached them."

"I hate to be the one to break this to you,
Phil, but the statue in that room suggests that our ancestors seem
to have already contacted them," Andy said. "That beam we triggered
that went out into the universe signaled our position for some time
before it shut off."

"Then we had damn well better hope that our
ancestors never left Earth due to that contact. If they return, we
might stand little chance of surviving," Phil said.

>>>

Several weeks passed as scientists worked out
the details of what life and culture had been like in this lost
city. Much progress was also made in establishing the city's power
grid since it closely resembled modern grids. The use of geothermal
heat to drive massive steam turbines, mixed with the use of exotic
subatomic particles, brought many areas of the city back to
life.

In the great room with the Dinosauroid
statue, one of the pedestals caught the attention of many
scientists, for it held a gel-like keyboard interface, with
unrecognizable symbols. Those studying it took extra caution not to
press a button for fear of activating the device.

Thus, when the interface started glowing and
clicking on its own, several scientists jumped back and asked who
had pushed a button. No one admitted to doing so. The device was
apparently being controlled from somewhere else. As it stirred to
life, many stopped working on other projects and moved closer to
investigate. Phil, who was studying the statue, also wandered over
to investigate. Objects in the room began moving about. Then the
lights went out.

The ground shook violently, and dust rained
down from the stone ceiling. The room sparked with light, but not
from any definable source, and a strange glow emanated from the
floor. Several of the female scientists with long hair noticed that
it was lifting from their heads, as if static permeated the room.
Then, in the center of the room, a single light source seemed to
hang in the air just feet above the floor. Everyone started to back
away from the multicolored light. The light source became brighter
and more intense, as it shot out tiny bolts of lightning, producing
an almost Tesla coil effect. A high-pitched whine caused several of
the scientists to cover their ears. Some left the room. The room
itself began to shimmer and fade.