Still the Dinosaur

Unexpected Landing

When she woke up, the dinosaur was still there. Circling high above, its enormous, bat-like wings flapping, then stretching taut as army canvas. It was both terrifying and beautiful to behold.

With shaky hands, Sarah gingerly touched the throbbing lump where her head had collided with one of the huge white ovals surrounding her. A tiny, blood smeared crack on one of the eggs showed the evidence of her plummet to unconsciousness.

The shattered remains of her camera were strewn across the floor of the nest. The photographic evidence of prehistoric life she had been hunting for a year, culminating in the dangerous mountainous trek ironically destroyed by the creature itself.

The despair she felt when seeing the camera began to dissolve, replaced with triumph, as she found the memory card intact. No longer would she be laughed out of scientific gatherings, her articles to prestigious journals returned with curt rejections. She, Sarah Denthrop, would soon be world-renowned. The scientist who discovered the survival of pterodactyls into modern times. What would this mean for humanity? Our understanding of evolution? Our staunch belief that the dinosaurs were all extinct… would her findings be the start of massive explorations into unexplored parts of land and sea to see what else still lived from millennia past? Whatever it meant, Sarah would be at the forefront of this wave of scientific exploration. Finally granted the expert status she so deserved. She just needed to get back to her campsite and radio her coordinates for a rescue.

Sarah started to rise to look over the edge of the nest, but incredible pain exploded in her ankle and black dots blurred her vision. She cried out in agony.

As if awoken by her cries, Sarah saw spreading cracks from all around her, as pointed beaks with razor-sharp teeth began to emerge from each of the eggs.

Purgatory

When he woke, the dinosaur was still there. It leered above him clutching the plastic tube in its claw. Memories of the 100-litre enema that had caused Aldin to faint, flooded back to his mind in much the same way as the freezing water had invaded his body. He struggled against his binds. “Why are you doing this to me?” He pleaded to his reptilian captor, who had abandoned the tubing in exchange for an electric cattle prod. Aldin looked around him and saw hundreds of similar stations: a pitiful, naked human tethered to a pole, each with an extinct lizard presiding. The dinosaur above him shrugged casually, “This is Purgatory, what did you expect? Tea and biscuits?”

Relieved that conversation was delaying the torture, he pressed on, “But why are you doing this? Surely your kind must feel some empathy?” His captor lowered the prod. “Each prepotent species must punish the dead of the next dominating group, until that group is replaced by another species.”
Aldin gulped. “What happens then?”
“We are finally free.” it said longingly, a far-away look in its cold eye.
Aldin was shocked, “So this torment is to continue until humanity’s reign is ended?” The dinosaur nodded.
“And afterwards I am expected do this to others?” The scaled beast’s head tilted forward once more.

Aldin bristled with indignation. “I will not! I may have been a lawyer during my life on Earth and that is likely why I’m here and not in heaven, but humans care about the lives of others! I could never torture another species as your kind seems so willing to do!”

The dinosaur in front of him grinned widely, showing its pointed teeth. “I suppose we will see who is right in a few centuries when the cockroaches arrive.”

Robotic Romance

When he woke up the dinosaur was still there. Why the designers thought a dinosaur would be an appropriate avatar for a virtual dating app was beyond Marvin.

He was the last of his friendship group to succumb to the lure of artificial romance, despite the intensity of the advertising that pervaded all areas of life, both awake and asleep.

For Marvin it was curiosity more than anything that had lead him to sign up to the system that had caused the many changes he had noticed in campus life. The gym, bars and cafes had become progressively emptier over the months, as student after student became lost in their personal VR worlds, choosing to spend time with their AI lovers, instead of one another.

Marvin had decided to try the tech for himself last night to see what all the fuss was about. He found the image of the grinning dinosaur, which reminded him of a childhood cartoon character, beyond off-putting for a supposed dating service. Marvin had been so weirded out that he had taken off the headset and gone to bed.

Now once again, the waving t-Rex in front of his eyes invited him to reset the avatar to whatever his heart desired. Suddenly, Marvin realised the significance of the dinosaur. It symbolised extinction. The fate of his species would follow that of these ancient reptiles if human thought and contact were rejected in favour of this new ‘perfect dating system’.

With finality, Marvin took off the headset and left his room in search of others who preferred messy, awkward, unpredictable reality to pandering machinery. Maybe they could become the next stage of human evolution.