Ouroborosaurus

Epilogue

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It was a time before the heatlamp had been named by Henry’s hotdogs. It was a time before the roller had been studied with analytical intent. It was millions of years before this theropod, whom shall be known as Kevin, would be fossilized, exhumed, and curated. He was currently strolling through the foliage of this humid otherworldly earth. The same heat beat down on this beast as that which would beat down on Henry eons hence, when the paleontological team would dig up Kevin’s fossilized remains. He is blissfully ignorant, his thoughts focused on more pressing matters.

Kevin was feeling a familiar funny tingle somewhere in his walnut sized brain. This was a sense he associated with a free meal, not unlike the scent of blood on the air. Like the scent of blood drew him to carrion, this was a close second favorite feeling. The tingly organ in his head, detecting whatever it was detecting, is already magnitudes of sensitivity greater than that of Kevin’s parents’, and his ancestors had had no such sense. Kevin the First, as it were, had come across the phenomenon wholly by chance, and selection had done for Kevin the job of isolating and magnifying the precipitous indicators.

Waving a head full of sharp teeth, he sought the stronger pull. He was feeling for the presence of a nexus, the center of a strange disturbance that did not so much as stir the air. Kevin lumbered through the wet leaves, ignoring the light slaps and caresses of the damp greenery. His footfalls sounded in the earth and impressed upon the soil, trampling detritus and leaving evidence to be discovered eons ahead of his time. The surrounding plants were not immense to Kevin, as he himself was equally immense, but there were small furred creatures scurrying about, several of which would have to work hard to become a mouthful to him. They were too small and quick and unwilling to die. What Kevin sought was larger, slower, and less resistant to Kevin’s arsenal in this primordial arms race.

In a place not unlike the others through which Kevin had traveled, the tingly sense reached a fever pitch. Kevin stopped and waited. Before him lay a plain patch of ground. Invisible to the eye, but setting his brain buzzing, was a commotion of mysterious energy, as inexplicable to this creature as Sol’s radiation is to the leaf of a terrestrial plant. It was silent here. Kevin was often avoided by anything bite-sized with its wits about it.

The mysterious force maintained a violent level of turbulence. If it had been visible, it would have been like a dust devil in a glitter factory. Kevin grew more alert, watching for the culmination of the phenomenon his species had come to exploit. It filled him with anxiety and he began to fidget, watching intently for any change in the otherwise unremarkable area. He instinctively obscured himself in the shade of the greenery. It was almost time.

It happened like the countless other times, without so much as a flurry of leaves or even a pop. In the opening now stood a wide-eyed and wild thing, high on the excitement of scientific discovery. It was bidpedal, multi-dactyl, mammalian, terran, and yet completely alien. It was also excited beyond belief. Kevin did not react. He stood stock still. Like so many other predators, his brain worked on triggers, often waiting for minutia to launch the whole beast unabashedly into a decisive and efficient attack. The moment was not right. Kevin watched this new thing from his hidden spot.

It turned slowly, taking in the surroundings. The thing exclaimed. With a hooting roar, it spasmed, pumping its arms in the air. Lacking the capacity to understand, Kevin heard the thing yell, “I did it!” repeatedly. None of this startled or unnerved Kevin, as these were common activities for the prey that miraculously appeared at these nexuses, and were therefore of no major interest.

More exclamations punctuated an overwhelming sense of awe. The thing looked at the broad leaves and claustrophobic wilderness with the eyes like a hatchling, as though it had never seen them before. As the excitement and awe wore thing, awkward disappointment set in. The thing felt that something was missing. Something which had lured it across time was not here. Where was the source of the siren song? It yearned to see an avatar of tooth and claw, described to it poorly by the eons-old stone of its own time.

It toddled about, either woozy from the phenomenon or simply by its own nature, Kevin could not tell. It seemed less coordinated, pudgy, and generally weaker than anything else in this savage wilderness. It had no fangs, no plumage, scant fur, and a pitiable amount of muscle mass. None of Kevins’s previous encounters with this kind of creature had shown these things to run very fast. A couple had attempted to climb, and possibly try to fly, but none had managed to escape, flummoxed by the makeup of the plants. They were easy to catch and eat, making this phenomenon an exploitable source of food for Kevin and his relatives.

The trigger came. Kevin’s eyes dilated. He hunched out of instinct, compelled by some minor thing in the visitor’s mannerism. The ground shook gently as he strode in careful, measured steps towards the lost creature. The tremors of the step converted all excitement to mind-numbing fear. As through in a trance, the visitor watched Kevin emerging from cover. He towered. Here was its siren, several tons heavy and grinning with sharp teeth.

In this moment, the visitor knew there was no time. It had considered itself untouchable. Now it knew that whatever device or method by which it had come was far and away. The sequences required to whisk it to safety were unavailable to it, its mind muddled by fear. Here was death, engineered by nature for this explicit purpose.

The hotdog’s screams went unheeded. Like the countless times before, the time-stream of this backwater universe readjusted. Kevin would go on to produce children, who would produce him grand children, and so on. They would get better at finding these visitors, whatever their method of arrival. The time would come when mass extinction would rewrite the world and the bones of Kevin’s lineage would inspire these incautious travelers, luring them out of safety and into waiting jaws.