Permian Spring

Apparently, they aren't even reptiles.

With skin covered in scutes, boasting a vertebral sail and powerful jaws, this thing looks like a fat, bear-sized lizard, but Russell Hansard seems to think the wildlife around here predates the dinosaurs by fifty million years. Out of the two thousand surviving passengers on board the Cruise Ship Eudora, Mr Hansard is the only one who claims to be schooled in palaeobiology.

Too bad he isn't here to see this monster. Somehow it managed to get into the ship and feast on an elderly couple lodging in one of the balcony cabins.

"It's the biggest one yet," I gasp, having abandoned living in fear; embracing this impossible, marvellous world.

"What the hell is that thing?" Guillermo Michalik, a bartender, never let go of his fear.

"Corner it," yells Kelly Slade, clutching her makeshift spear. The ex-manager leads our brigade of volunteers up to the next level.

I move closer to Guillermo. "Russell called them pelycosaurs."

Killing the beast proves difficult. Like always, the forty-five-degree incline of the decks makes hunting it onerous. The Eudora sat tilted on her starboard, sunk deep into a sand dune. The surrounding desert stretched out forever, as far as the eye could see. A primordial sun beat down onto the white hull, heating it, and pushing the nuclear-powered climate system to its limits.

Both factions work together. The Upper Deck Bloc - comprising mainly of crew and workers, and the Lower Deck Coalition - mostly tourists who got more than they bargained for. With pikes fashioned out of mop handles, the two brigades force the creature to the open-air terrace. Hissing, it tramples over a fitness instructor, killing him, and launches itself through the plate glass fence, splashing down into the algae and dragonfly-infested pool.

The decrepit state of the swimming pool inflames the despair I've been suppressing for the last thirty-eight days. One minute I'm floating on sapphire waters, sipping a Raspberry Mojito, the next minute... madness.

Cronostorm.

That's what I heard the captain, Lorenzo Bannerman, refer to it as. To most of us, it felt like the mother of all hurricanes. The ferocity of the wind, the violence of the sea, and the towering bolts of lightning left us all in a state of shock and panic.

It all began with a star exploding, turning night into day. Then the storm hit us, followed by a maddening descent into an oceanic hell. An hour in, the Eudora struck something hard, jolting everybody aboard. I broke my nose and fainted. When I awoke, the world was upside down, or at least slanted at an insane angle. Sliding down to the promenade, I climbed up a davit and looked out at the world. I discovered a vast red desert stretching out into the grey/blue sky. The air was hot and foul. I knew right then this was not the Earth I knew. On the very first day, before the slaughter and factional struggles, Captain Lorenzo assumed command. He explained to all of us what he thought the flash of light up in space was.

The SinoPac Orbitor.

It made sense. The three supranationals were engaged in an arms race. This rivalry had been pushing science to its limits for decades. When news broke out that the time barrier had been breached, the newsbots were less than impressed. Sending particles back through time seemed like a novel way to spend trillions. Few people were interested; fewer believed such a stunt was possible. When rumours of time bombs surfaced, public hysteria waxed and waned. Humanity's deep-rooted fear of atomics only existed because mankind had unleashed upon itself such titanic power.

With time bombs, however...

No one understood the technology, let alone feared it. Temporal-tourism speculators positioned themselves to make a fortune. Competing supranationals built massive Higgs-field displacers in orbit, and I took a vacation away from my scientific-data-appropriation business.