By Today’s prompt: dinosaurs
Okay, that’s a little too broad. In reality we were each given a time period from the prehistoric past of earth and wrote a story. I like how my story turned out but oh my goodness, there were some excellent and wonderfully ridiculous stories from this prompt.
Journal Entry – Ship Log – Cretaceous Era Day 3
Jurassic Park did not prepare me for this. I was part of humanity at its peak, lead scientist on the first ship to go through the center of a black hole. We had been in cryo sleep for nearly a 1,000 years. The fear had been that going through the black hole would crush the ship or that the sheer amount of energy would burn us up. The hope had been to find a way to harvest the energy and to move across space faster via the worm holes. We were going to take humanity to the next level or die trying.
What we didn’t expect was to crash land. The black hole has a sense of humor and didn’t like to be invaded – the bastard sent us back to earth but millions of years into the past. Looks like we are back in Kansas, but this wasn’t Dorthy’s breezy Great Plains. We landed in the middle of, what I suspect, is the Western Interior Seaway. The water tension of the sea fractured our ship. Half of the crew drowned in the salty, alkaline water. Their bodies didn’t even have time to bloat in the humid atmosphere. We watched in horror as their bodies were devoured, devoured by every monster in those seas – snapped up whole by mosasaurus and cretoxyrhina. Many of the “smaller” fish tore them to pieces.
We had no time to think, no chance to act. We were people of science with a few military men on board and this was so far beyond any of our expertise. Even if we had studied this era of history, we would still have died as we did. Looking at the memories of old skeletons on the earth we had come from could not have prepared us for the ferocity and speed of these ancient predators.
We have currently been drifting for three days. The ship has plenty of food and water. It was the cryo pods and landing gear at the base of the ship that took on most of the water. We can see land – this sea is narrow – but the ship is stuck in the shallow water. Three men volunteered to swim to shore, we heard them scream in the dark. Half-a-dozen others have succumbed to the heat. Currently we are working on creating a large raft that we can use to ferry crew and supplies to shore. There are some good engineers with us and they are working hard.
Despite the terror and a fair bit of hopelessness, this past earth is beautiful. The sparkling aqua waves, the orange light of volcanoes far off to the south west. In truth even the predators are beautiful in their deadly way. By far my favorite site was a pod? of elasmosaurus that swam by late yesterday evening, their long graceful necks breaching the water. The young surrounded by the protective adults.
As a scientist I realize that when humans of the future find this ship that will be confused. Know this future fossil hunter, humans make it to the stars. We explore the vastness of the milky way and even though my crew and I will die here, know that humanity is destined for greatness.
This was a ton of fun to write. If you read my intro to Kansas post recently, you probably know that I’ve got dinosaurs on the brain at the moment. thus, this post was right up my alley. Do you enjoy dinosaurs and the prehistoric past? Let me know in the comments!
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McGee Travel Tales 