"It is not so? What other reason could you have?" the giganotosaurus growled.
“A brain that works, for example. This is what I have. Tell me, have you tried to think even for a second what an open warf with humans would entail at the moment?" Sobek returned Snork's defiant gaze. “Tell me, would exterminating the humans present here have helped our brothers who are still prisoners? Can you run fast enough to cross the ocean in time to save them? If we went to war, who do you think would be the first humans to turn against? We, who are well armed, or our brothers still prisoners, who are instead defenseless and therefore an excellent means to vent their anger?"
Snock fell silent for a moment. It was clear that he didn't have an answer to that question.
Sobek sighed. Like all hotheads, Snock had only looked at the immediate result, without thinking in a more forward-looking way. He wasted no time and added to the dose: “Tell me, what would happen
Jocelyne watched the setting sun settle behind the trees that flowed past her eyes with a blank stare. She seemed not to have the strength to do anything else. She had stood still for so long that Jackson finally asked him, “Are you feeling bad, miss? Do you want I stop the car?"The girl shook her head: “No, keep driving. I was just lost in my thoughts""You should take advantage of this trip to rest a little, miss. You don't look good lately""Shut up and drive"Jocelyne knew she was a mess. She was pretty sure that if she looked in the mirror she would see two huge dark circles beneath her eyes, a far more hollow face and her hair set in absurd hairstyles. But there was nothing she could do about it: the period she was experiencing was definitely not calm.In the first place she had had to deal with the anger of the Commission. Many governments were already furious with her for having been 'too autonomous' in the negotiations and wer
Jocelyne couldn't relax. The others had already retired for a while, but she wasn't calm at all. She couldn't stay still in her bed doing nothing. Hammond had made sure she had every kind of comfort, from books to video games, but she didn't want to take out her frustration on them.She eventually chose to just take a walk. Hammond had told her that she could move freely in her mansion, so she might as well take a stroll. And then she wanted to enter the strange corridor she had glimpsed when they entered.She quickly went down the stairs and found herself in the hall. She wondered if Hammond didn't want strangers to pull out into the hall, but if he did, why not put a door in it? It was obvious that the elderly tycoon didn't care so much about that.So she turned the corner and entered the corridor. What she saw surprised her greatly.The corridor was very long and was completely in a straight line; whoever built it seemed to have paid close attention to
While Jocelyne and Hammond were discussing their business, another meeting was taking place in another room.Jackson and his father sat on either side of a table. Both had a glass of beer by their side and kept their heads down, not having the courage to look each other in the eye.Jackson didn't know what to say. He had imagined that meeting many times over the past few weeks, repeating in his mind every word he wanted to say to his father. Yet he now he did not remember even one. What did he mean? Was he sorry? Proud of the old man of him? Did he admire him? He didn't know. He almost would have preferred Robert to insult him or boast; it would have been much easier.In the end, he simply chose to say what was on his mind. "I owe you an apology...""Jackson..." Robert murmured, but his son stopped him. Jackson didn't want his father to talk, or he wouldn't be able to go on anymore. He didn't dare look him in the eye because he knew that if he looked into
Sobek was sure that even in his absence, the dinosaurs would do just fine. In fact, every time he went to sleep, the pack was in danger of unbalancing.The lack of a strong central figure created not a few problems, not so much for the common dinosaurs but above all among the 'higher spheres', namely Buck, Old Li, Blue, Carnopo and Apache. All the other dinosaurs were their subjects, so no one would dare disobey them; but there was no hierarchical relationship between them. To decide, they couldn't just order each other what to do because they were all on the same level.For animals there were only two categories: commanders and commandeds. In a pack it was unthinkable that there wasn't a single individual at the center of all to command all the others. Hierarchies could exist, but only if there was a strong central figure to mediate during the discussions would the pack have avoided breaking apart.Buck, Carnopo, Old Li, Apache and Blue were therefore in a prec
Chloe urgently needed a good amount of caffeine. Her mind was now falling apart and her body was practically begging for mercy. Being a direct employee of the Commission was sometimes downright detrimental, especially if you were involved in important state matters. Unfortunately for her, Chloe had been involved in the most important and complicated question of state that humanity had ever experienced. Since she returned, every day had been a constant filling out of paperwork, answering questions, holding interviews, talking to important people, running from one part of her and other countries to another, and often sustaining real interrogations by the Commission. She had so much work to do that she once couldn't sleep for two full days. She was pretty sure she got an ulcer just for stress. And then that damned little girl got into it too! She admired Jocelyne's work, but so far she had done nothing but cause her problems. Not only did she create an excessive number of headaches in
[Evolution completed! Congratulations, you have evolved to Spinosaurus perfectus!]"At long last! Who knows what happened while I was sleeping” was Sobek's first thought as soon as he opened his eyes. As usual, his much better senses than before confused him, since he was now much more powerful seeing, hearing and smelling, but he tried to pay attention to them as little as possible.Fortunately, Old Li was there waiting for him. "Pack leader, you are awake!"The words of the ankylosaurus were received with even more intensity due to Sobek's amplified hearing, which confused the spinosaurus even more. As usual after each evolution, Sobek found himself hoping for a bit of silence. “Let's think about the important things! Did something relevant happen while I was asleep?""No, pack leader, you can rest assured!" Old Li answered. “The humans respected the covenants and there were no conflicts. Everything went exactly as you wanted""
“Old Li, call Apache. I have a job for him" he ordered.The ankylosaurus did not have it repeated twice and ran away, albeit rather awkwardly due to its size. Sobek turned to Buck: “How's the recruiting going? And the training?"In the two weeks in which he had evolved he had not been able, for obvious reasons, to receive the daily report on how the increase in the troops of his army was proceeding, so he wanted to inquire immediately."It's going well" Buck replied. "So far, about three hundred thousand dinosaurs have completed training and are ready for battle. As for recruiting… according to our scouts, only a few herds of dinosaurs have yet to join us. Our herd has now exceeded the figure of one million individuals"'If that's the case, then it's shortly before he rises to the rank of beast lord' Sobek mused. "Very good. When all the dinosaurs on the continent are gathered and trained, we will have an army more than sufficient to op
The pterosaurs he had sent to other continents didn't take long to reach other continents. As Sobek already knew, those animals were suitable for flying very long distances and thanks to their beaks they could easily feed while fishing. In addition, some of them had a high resistance to salinity, like some birds, and this allowed them to drink sea water.In just four days they had crossed the thousands of miles of oceans that separated them from other continents. After that, using the mind-sharing ability of [Contract], Sobek began receiving several images of the places they were visiting.However, the images he received were not of the quality he expected. The pterosaurs spent almost all of their lives in the sky, so all he received was an overview of the territory. However, this caused him to miss out on many details that would have been crucial to establishing a base there. He needed more details: the conformation of the territory, the steepness of the cliffs, which
It took Sobek a few moments before he realized he was back in the room where it all began. That room where time and space ceased to exist, and where everything and nothing seemed to have changed at the same time. He already knew where he had to go; walking through the infinitely large (or perhaps infinitely small) room, in a few minutes (or perhaps a few centuries, who knows) he reached the familiar armchair on which was seated a woman with white skin and light hair.God didn't even seem to move since she sent him to Eden. Even her expression didn't seem to have changed at all. She was still the same, beautiful and terrible at the same time, whose gaze was both magnetic and loving on him. “Welcome back, son,” she greeted him in her crystal clear voice.Sobek advanced on her. This time there wasn't an armchair waiting for him, but a large mattress wide enough to allow him to lie down. She lay back on it and gazed intently at God. Even now, after he'd grown i
On the continent of Maakanar, near a river that was once a typical spinosaurus nesting place, something immense could be seen. A huge creature was lying on its belly, but nevertheless it was so tall that its dorsal sail towered over the surrounding masts.Sobek was now thirty-three years old. To say he had grown into a behemoth was an understatement: he now measured 150 meters from head to tail and reached 45.6 meters in height. Even without activating the mutation he was now larger than Godzilla: the gigantic atomic reptile was a tiny lizard compared to him. All kaiju would be small compared to him. Even King Ghidorah would have been forced to acknowledge its superiority.In the last five years he had hardly moved. After the death of his last loyalist he returned to his birthplace and settled there. He ate what was provided to him from the [Personal Manger] and drank the water from the river. Otherwise, he remained calm, warming himself in the sun or admiring the star
After a few days Nefertiti settled at the lake together with her father and her last remaining uncle. With the help and indications of Sobek she built a comfortable nest and there she laid her egg.Thus began the brood. The female spinosaurus never moved from above her little egg, keeping it constantly warm. Sobek and Buck brought her food and water. When Nefertiti was hot, Sobek used her huge wing as a parasol and Buck fanned her with his tail. In the rare moments when it was cold, the two of her huddled to help her warm up.That routine went on for three months. Finally, at the end of the third month, a familiar clicking sound came from under Nefertiti's paws.The female spinosaurus reared up and looked down. A small crack was opening on the egg. With a smile she moved from above it. The crack widened more and more and finally a large piece of egg broke off, showing a lively green eye that stared intently at Nefertiti.“Hello, baby. I'm your mothe
Time had passed again. Sobek couldn't even figure out how much time had actually passed now. One year? Two? Maybe three? He didn't know.After his retirement, Sobek had gone deep into the forest of Maakanar. It was hard for him to move his huge body through the trees and very often ended up destroying them: his passage was evident as a trail of uprooted trunks was always behind him. He had moved permanently to the lake where he had met Buck and where he had established his first army. And he hadn't gone there alone.Carnopo and Buck had joined him just a month after his departure. They, too, had decided they'd had enough and abandoned their roles entirely. After all, in the new world there was no longer a need for either an army commander or one of the shock legion. Now there was peace, and the old war veterans had no reason to try to find their place in their world. So they had decided to do what they had always done: follow their pack leader.The trio spent th
Another year had passed. In Sobek's eyes, time seemed to have begun to flow more rapidly. The months and weeks all passed almost the same and in a flash the morning turned into evening.Humanity had continued its advance. By now, Aphrodites had been fully colonized. Whole cities had sprung up on it and millions of settlers had begun to live there. Davis had now reached more than a billion inhabitants and Hermes now owned thousands of mining establishments.Thanks to teleportation technology it was so advanced that traveling between planets was even easier than going from one city to another. Since energy and material consumption were now no longer a concern thanks to solar panels on Hermes and mining plants on asteroids, everyone had a portable teleportation device. By now, being hired to work a mine on an asteroid was no different than being hired to work at the local convenience store.Colonies on the moons of Leviathan and Behemoth had multiplied, providing e
More time, more changes. In just one year, many things had changed.Nefertiti had assumed control of the entire astrophysics division of the dinosaur pack, effectively acting as acting pack leader for them. After the first shared mission, she had begun to promote more policies of integration and union between humans and animals. She had facilitated interspecies interspace operations, sending animals and humans to work together in the new worlds to be colonized. Furthermore, there was still much to colonize, as human attention was slowly shifting beyond the outer Solar System to the dwarf planets and comets of the Oort Cloud.The work was not cheap and with it the possibilities of working together. With the Dyson Sphere nearing completion, energy was no longer an issue. After determining which moons to colonize, the Eden Union had begun an intensive mining program in the asteroids of the main belt in order to be able to build huge lenses to capture the sunlight and also
One more year, more innovations. The more time passed, the more progress seemed to accelerate. It was like a speeding train that multiplied its speed every second: first slow, then faster and faster, until it turned into a giant projectile.Sobek knew that progress was bound to accelerate more and more, after all it was his nature. For each new discovery, countless doors open. And every door leads to other doors. This was the nature of progress. It was no coincidence that it took humanity less than two hundred years to go from horses to aircraft capable of leaving the orbit of their home planet.He recalled that on Earth, where he came from, progress had become so fast in the 21st century that it was enough to be born even a generation later or further back to find oneself in a completely different world. While in 1990 the main communication system was the satellite phone, in 2020 people used social networks for the most disparate things. While in 1990 movies were watc
More time had passed. This time it was a year… or maybe a year and a half? I don't know. Not that it mattered much, actually.The world's attention to the inner solar system was gradually waning. Now that three planets had been terraformed, even if one of them still wasn't enough, and Hermes had become a stable colony that was continuously producing large panels of glass that joined in the orbit of the Sun to form the Dyson Sphere, the humanity was beginning to anticipate new challenges. From the inner solar system it was time to move to the outer solar system.Although some colony outposts were already present on some moons of Behemoth, they could not be defined as true colonies. However, now that energy consumption was no longer a problem thanks to the Dyson Sphere, which although not completed already released enormous amounts of energy, the Eden Union decided to start an exploration program of the entire outer solar system, or at least of the space between B
Two more years had passed. The advance of humanity towards the stars continued inexorably.The hypotheses of the scientists had proved to be correct: using a combination of gravity control technology and energy obtained from the Dyson sphere, although still incomplete, they had managed to accelerate the rotation of Aphrodites. The planet was slowly accelerating, though not too fast. There was generally talk of an hour each week. At this speed there was no risk of destroying the infrastructure already present on the planet. Yes two years, the rotation period had gone from 2082 hours to 1978 hours. Continuing at this rate, it was expected to reach 24 hours in 'just' another 38 years.Once this process was completed, the huge orbiting mirrors could finally be taken off. The day/night cycle would no longer be artificially determined and there would no longer be the risk that something would go wrong due to the impact of a micrometeorite. In addition, the accelerated rotati