I still had a couple more hours of oxygen left, but the motorcycle's batteries were at zero, so I decided not to wait for the painful and inevitable agony and took off my helmet. Before everything darkened before my eyes, I managed to smile and hope that in four billion years another champion wouldn't take initiatives as stupid as mine to force life to start all over again.
How to have sex in Jurassic
Copyright Notice: by Sergiu Somesan. All rights reserved.
The above information forms this copyright notice:
„This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.”
When I took part in my first time-bike race, I placed a modest thirteenth. Bad luck, some would say, but I was only 18, and as it was only my first race among the veterans of this type of racing, I thought the result was quite formidable.
As there have been countless reports and live broadcasts about time-bike racing, I suspect that quite a lot is known about it, so I won't dwell on it. Instead, I will say a few things about the behind-the-scenes aspects of these races that are less well known to the general public, but which are, after all, part of their very substance.
As is well known, all racing time-bikes are fitted with a standard 200 horsepower chronowatt generator, so in principle all competitors should be able to go the same distance in time. It's the fact that they don't that gives these races their charm and makes them watched by millions of fans.
Once launched into the race, a competitor has to face the currents of time that in a normal and natural passage of time are normally not felt, but when you cross backwards time, you hit them like a wall if you don't dodge them in time. The comparison with the wall is perhaps a little forced and I think it would be more appropriate to say that it is a wall with a certain elasticity which, even if it doesn't prevent you from passing, slows down your speed. That's really what the mastery of each racer is all about, getting around these elastic and treacherous temporal fog leaks that, if you're not careful, can stop you altogether or leave you going only a few hundred years in the past.
Once the competitor reaches the limit in the past, he pulls out his pistol and fires the radioactive marker into the famous Yorkshire granite cliff that has remained unchanged for tens of millions of years. That's why all the competitors, and not just them, call it the Target Rock.
On their return, the judging panel extracts each competitor's radioactive stove and, according to the degree of radioactive decay of the event, determines the ranking.
As I said, in the first race I took an honorable thirteenth place, although, to be honest, I wasn't hoping for that either. I say this because just before my temporary engine choked and misfired, I saw around the famous granite cliff a couple of people who, although they looked quite primitive, were human, so I couldn't have gotten too far. As time strained its powers behind me to pull me back to the present, I raised my pistol and fired at the rock, an instant before I was jerked forcefully back to the present.
I felt a powerful shock, and had I not been forewarned by his brutality, I might have dropped the pistol from my hand. But so I held it tightly, and it was not until I turned around that I plucked up the courage to holster it again.
While the commission was examining the radioactive samples, a man between two ages approached me, dark-haired and with an expressive and pleasant face.
"Well done, young man!" he said and held out his hand to congratulate me. "You did one of the most beautiful races."
I took a long look at him, to see if he was mocking me, but the man seemed sincere, so I replied:
"Beautiful my ass, sir. I don't think we've gone past ten thousand. Maybe not even that."
The man smiled and reassured me:
"On my first run, I only traveled far enough to meet my grandmother if she'd been around Target Rock."
We both laughed at his joke, he heartily and I more out of politeness. He looked familiar, but I didn't know where to take it, so, realizing my confusion, he introduced himself:
"I thought you knew me! I'm Steven McTroy, who has the pleasure of organizing these contests."
His photos littered the place, so surely I should have recognized him, but since I had entered the contest through an intermediary, I hadn't had a chance to speak to him in person until then.
I offered to apologize, but he stopped me with a gesture:
"That's not the case, young man. Here it's all about results and I'm telling you honestly that after a bit of training you'll be in first place. You'll have to get around the headwinds of the Middle Ages, which have used up almost half of your momentum. If you make time, we'll study the race charts later."
I agreed enthusiastically. Listen to him, if only I'd made time for that!
That little bit of training McTroy was talking about so I could take first place took no less than five years, but it was worth every moment I spent there. At some point I got to feel the currents of time, for I can't find another word for it, so I got further than any other competitor, even to where the Target Rock hadn't even appeared yet, and the Jury had to find other ways of dating it. Anyway, we got as far as sixty-five million years ago and I was able to confirm to the scientists that the extinction of the dinosaurs was due to a combination of factors, the most important of which was an asteroid collision with the Earth. What they found most astonishing of all the data I brought back was the hint that it wasn't a collision, but a fall. Our planet had captured the asteroid and it was only after many thousands of revolutions in an increasingly low orbit that it finally fell somewhere near Mexico. And they deduced from the photographs they brought back that the asteroid was not ten kilometers in diameter at all, as had been calculated, but almost double that.
But these were details of interest only to scientists. It was of little interest to me, to be honest, because I had become a champion in one of the most popular sports, with all that that entails: money, fame and women.
McTroy tried to temper me, but I was unstoppable, especially when I learned that my temporal abilities were due to genetic traits, so I wasn't going to deny myself anything that money and glory could give me.
Those at the Time Research Institute, where the first time generator had been discovered and developed, were relentless in their criticism of time-bike racing, arguing that it altered the intimate structure of time. Not to mention their criticism of me, personally, saying that it was not normal to hand over a chronogenerator to a man with no responsibility and a passion for partying and women.
In the end, it turned out that they were right, but it was a long time before I found that out and I wasn't too worried about the future, because I had just discovered a new game. The girls who proved more recalcitrant to my overtures and who were not even impressed by my champion status, I lured away with a trip to the Jurassic. Especially as I had made a kind of 'path' for myself, so I could get there with my eyes closed. I would plan my trips so that I would arrive just as the asteroid that was about to fall to Earth was passing overhead. Scientists were still arguing after I brought them pictures of it evolving low overhead and sending up a thick trail of black smoke. At one point they suspected me of faking the photos just to confuse them, but I really didn't care about them. I had perfected a repertoire of something like "you see what can happen at any time and in our times, so let's live our lives!". Most agreed, and although the trip into the past lasted no more than a few seconds, it seemed to impress them forever.
The asteroid passing tumultuously overhead, dinosaurs howling in despair in the distance as if sensing their doom - it was more than a young girl could bear, and as time tensed its muscles and dragged us into the present, they all abandoned themselves without hesitation into my arms.
The trouble began when I met Eliza, a tiny little bookworm, bespectacled and seemingly without any charm. Actually, I say "when I met her" wrong, because she was the one who sought me out after hearing from her classmates about my past excursions. She was a biology student, and had just learned in a class about the emergence of angiosperms, so she wanted to see for herself when flowering plants first appeared. In college she had been told that they appeared in the mid-Jurassic, but she suspected that they appeared a bit earlier, so... would I be so good as to transport her back to a hundred and twenty million years ago to convince her?
This girl must have mistaken me for a time taxi, or it wouldn't explain the confidence with which she approached me.
"My dear girl," I told her bluntly, "I don't know if your coworkers who sent you to me told you, but such a trip costs..."
I let the phrase float in the air, but she nodded delightedly and that's when I suspected one of her coworkers was trying to mock me.
'It's been explained to me,' she said, her glasses glittering with excitement. I haven't spent a penny of my scholarship for three months, just for this."
I gaped and cautiously looked around to see who had organized such a subtle prank on me, but I saw no one. And that's when it occurred to me to turn the prank on them and take the bookworm to see her flowers without any payment.
We made an appointment the next day, and the girl was punctual:
"When do I pay you?" she asked cautiously. "Now or when I get back?"
I took another long look at her, but she didn't really have anything appealing about her, and the few pennies she was clutching in her palm I don't think I could have gotten enough for a martini at one of the bars I normally frequent.
"I'm working pro bono today!" I said, and from the odd look she gave me, I got the impression that I had used that Latin expression in the wrong context, but I didn't care and waved her to the saddle behind me.
In part, I have to admit that it's my fault for what happened, but I couldn't imagine that anyone could be as dumb as this girl. Because I was making this trip somewhat in silly, I admit that I didn't give her the necessary attention and because of that I didn't do a minimum of training with her. I wanted to get away as quickly as possible and I accelerated with all the speed given by the five hundred revs of the newly acquired chronomotocycle. It was not for sale, but for me, a champion for so many years, it was not a problem to get the necessary authorizations. The problem was that I sometimes forgot how powerful it was and how hard it stretched the threads of time, especially when I was accelerating like this. Sometimes I barely managed to stay in the time I wanted for a few seconds, because like a bungee jumping rope stretched really tight, time was pulling me back to where I belonged.
The same thing happened to me now: having reached the time where the girl wanted me, I accelerated to the limit of the power the generator would give me, to keep us in place, in a more or less static time. Eliza was clutching my waist feverishly, and I think she was looking eagerly around, when suddenly I heard her squeaking like a mouse and pointing to a flower somewhere near us.
"I was right, but I'd like to ask you one more favor!" she said and I think I felt her blush behind me.
"What is it?" I asked not too happy about the unforeseen complications.
"I'd like to have sex here so I can brag to my coworkers that I had sex in Jurassic because none of them have ever done anything like this!"
I must have gasped, but as I never turn down a shag, we left the chronomopedic bike packed, we both got off, stripped naked and rolled around in the rough grass of the middle Jurassic.
I was just explaining to her that it's not good to get more than fifty feet away from the chronomotocycle because it might get out of sync and yank us back to the present when she let out an exclamation of amazement:
"There's another one closer," she exclaimed delightedly and, before I could get a word in edgewise, she hurried a few steps toward the flower.
"I must get it and show them all that I'm right!" she said.
"Asshole, get back on your bike!" I shouted at her and saw her turn a small, ready to burst into tears face toward me:
"Please talk nicely to me!" she said, and those were the last words I ever heard her say, because at the same instant I saw the chronomotocycle start to move and I jumped on it at the last second and time grabbed me and pulled me brutally into the present.
I arrived at the garage where I set off on my fateful journey, but I wasn't more than a few moments late, just long enough to change my battery, and I set off back after that stupid girl. The chance of hitting the same second and finding her was infinitesimal, and, as I expected, my search, for there were many, was fruitless.
As I expected, it took several days for her absence to be noticed and, after studying the time-travel charts, they inevitably reached me.
It turns out that such an offense was not yet provided for by law, so it took quite a while before I was charged, but eventually I was sought out by the lawmen who, after explaining the loophole I had gotten myself into, also offered me an alternative.
All I had to do was perform a time-travel for the researchers at the Institute of Time Research, take a few photographs and then I would be exonerated of all charges. Thinking of Eliza's frightened eyes the moment I abandoned her in the Jurassic, I agreed and only then wondered why on earth one of their specialists wasn't making the trip.
It wasn't until the terms of the trip were explained to me that I realized that the Institute must have tried and failed, and now they were pinning all their hopes on me. Years ago, after a complete set of tests, McTroy explained to me that I had the best combination of genes ever encountered that would allow me to perform in ways unmatched by other time travelers.
According to their proposal, I should have reached the Earth's past sometime 3.8 billion years ago, and the first time I heard this figure I burst out laughing: not even a billion years ago, at least to my knowledge, had anyone yet arrived.
"Well, it's not quite like that" - an old professor from the Institute explained and showed me the diagrams from their latest experiments.
As far as I could tell, their best man had gotten as far as two billion or so ago, and then got stuck. I immediately spotted a few mistakes he had made and showed them to Iwao Suzuki, the old professor with the stern samurai face.
He smiled smugly when he saw that I had spotted their man's mistakes so quickly, then introduced me to the team who were going to prepare my moped, if you could call it that. It was huge, had over a mega of chronowath and equipped with pretty much everything one would want for someone set on haunting through time.
During the journey, I would have to don a lightweight, flexible suit, much like the kind used by astronauts, fitted with oxygen tanks that gave me a four-hour range.
"In the early Precambrian, where we're hoping to end up, the oxygen isn't yet formed, so you'll need this suit to survive."
After being thoroughly briefed on the journey, I was also briefed on its purpose. It seemed silly to me, but I kept quiet, because beyond all the science, the champion in me was gloating: I was going down in history as the man who had traveled the furthest into the planet's past!
As the team that was to send me to the Precambrian explained to me, in recent years all sorts of hypotheses had been put forward about the origin of life on Earth. Two hypotheses were battling for supremacy: the first was that life arose over billions of years in the organic soup in the shallow waters off the coast, and the second hypothesis was that the first manifestations of life arose because alien germs were brought to Earth by meteorites. The second hypothesis was called panspermia and did nothing more than throw the dead cat in the neighbor's yard, because it still didn't explain how life arose from inorganic substances, but just moved the problem to other planets, where it would be brought from by meteors.
As if all these problems weren't enough, even the panspermists were split in two: some said that life originated on another planet in the depths of space that eventually exploded for who knows what reason, and pieces of it ended up on Earth in the form of meteorites.
The second group agreed that life had been inseminated from the outside onto Earth, but argued that this didn't happen by accident, but was directed by an extraterrestrial intelligence that was in the business of inseminating all the life-breeding planets in the universe.
After much research and simulations, they were able to pinpoint the exact time and place where life had begun on Earth, and I was going to travel to the calculated time, take pictures and see what I would find there: a meteorite filled with the seeds of life or a space probe launched by aliens.
On the appointed day, I put on my space suit, waited until all its functions had been checked, then climbed into my time tank, which I couldn't call a chronomotocycle, as it was so massive and equipped with everything.
At the appointed moment, I was launched and, although I knew that such a thing was almost impossible, I felt myself being pushed backward by the temporal velocity with which I was propelled. I wished the invention now being worked on in the Institute, which automatically bypassed time vortices, was ready, but as it wasn't, I had to stretch my attention to the limit.
I sped like lightning through the historical period, then into pre-history and accelerated, so now it only took a few minutes to get to the period where I lost Eliza, and even as I looked for her, I was aware that I couldn't have stopped even if I'd caught a glimpse of her. But I didn't see her, first because the experience was taking place somewhere else entirely, and second because the time tachometer was scrolling its digits on the display far too fast to keep track of anything.
We changed the scale to millions of years per second and soon we were at a time depth of a billion years. It may be wrong to say that I was "sinking" in time, but that's exactly what it felt like. I felt the same pressure that I felt when I made my first real dive somewhere in the southern seas.
When I reached two billion years, the pressure became almost palpable, and I gripped the handlebars of the motorcycle tighter, as if to assure myself of the material support of some known object.
The temporal motorcycle's program was set to take me there, to the point and time calculated by the scientists, but my role was not only to take the photographs, but also to bypass the temporal nodes. I gritted my teeth and drove on through an increasingly desolate and darkening world: the sky had gone black and the stars were constantly visible. As I neared the predicted time, the bike's time speed dropped, and according to the software, the scale automatically scaled to thousands of years per second this time.
It seems that the scientists calculated the exact time of the arrival of the alien germs. Just as precisely they calculated the location, so that whatever arrived from the sky fell within a few meters of me.
This time I used the classic motorcycle functions and got as close as I could to the object that was smoking and sizzling nearby.
It was right on the edge of a puddle, and as I got closer, I saw that the scientists in the second category were right: the object consisted of two conical bodies that were clamped together at the base, and I could see that they were slowly unscrewing from each other, no doubt to release their spore load.
I hastily snapped a few photos, then, because I could feel the elastic cords of time tightening, I bent down and picked up the double cone, holding it tightly in my arms so as not to drop it during the shock when I was pulled back to the present.
I smiled victoriously: I was truly a champion, because instead of bringing the scientists a set of photographs, I was going to bring them something tangible.
As I said before, on the way back my role was more decorative, because the bike was simply dragged back to the present on the old time road, without having to ride it at all. And the return trip, instead of still taking an hour, as the Precambrian trip had done, would this time take only a few minutes. I had, therefore, more time to admire the places or, perhaps it would be better to say, the times through which I was returning, so I could see that something was wrong even before I reached the Jurassic. The sky, which should have turned blue as soon as oxygen appeared in the atmosphere, was still black. When I arrived 65 million years ago, instead of a planet teeming with life, all I saw around me were barren cliffs and a few volcanoes erupting in the distance. The asteroid also fell on the same lifeless world.
In my arms, the two cones tried to buzz apart, but I, eager to bring them intact to the scientists, held them with all my might, so that I didn't even realize I had arrived in the present until the tachometer gave a final, end-of-travel clink.
I looked around expecting applause and cheers, but instead all I saw were the desolate cliffs that looked exactly as desolate as the Precambrian.
Out of surprise, I dropped the two conjoined cones from my hand and in mere seconds they broke open and spilled their liquid contents onto the barren soil of the Earth.
It was many minutes before I understood, but I finally did, and looking at the germinating liquid oozing into the soil seeding the Planet, I realized that it would be almost another four billion years before a civilization like the one we knew would finally be born.
I still had a couple more hours of oxygen left, but the motorcycle's batteries were at zero, so I decided not to wait for the painful and inevitable agony and took off my helmet. Before everything darkened before my eyes, I managed to smile and hope that in four billion years another champion wouldn't take initiatives as stupid as mine to force life to start all over again.