Abe reached Cartago after a full day's drive. The city was more than 1200 kilometers away from Serapode, the capital of Odaria where the Jersey family resided, so even driving at 100 km/h he took hours to reach it.Once there he made his way to what he knew was the expedition center in the forest. Anyone wishing to enter the uncolonized area had to register there, provided he wanted to do something legal. But of course, Abe knew that there were other ways to go into the deep forest.Once inside he already knew who his target was. He quickly walked over to a skinny man who was playing with his cell phone leaning against a wall. "Hello, my name is Abe" he introduced himself."Carver" grumbled the man without looking up. "What do you want?""Join next week's expedition"Carver finally looked at him, and his gaze was not good. "It's an exclusive government-funded expedition, man. Few well-armed people will go and outsiders are not allowed. Go away, I d
When Markus Jersey finished to work it was already late at night. Looking at his prized wristwatch, he realized it was after three in the morning. He let out a grunt: he really needed to settle down. As his wife continually pointed out, working so hard was not good for his health at all. The house was extraordinarily quiet. Even if hardly any sounds were heard even during the day due to the size of the villa, at night that silence seemed to condense and become even more oppressive. Markus left his study and, after locking it, headed for his bedroom. His wife surely had already fallen asleep for some time, or at least this was what she hoped for her: he didn't crave the idea of finding her awake waiting for him ready to give him a groom on the importance of a good rest. However, as he walked through the corridors, he noticed that one of the windows was open. For a moment he thought of an oversight, but the servants would hardly ever forget to close it and especially the guards woul
Near the lake two pyroraptors, two dromeosaurs with reddish plumage, were walking quietly. And one of the two couldn't stop talking. "You should have seen me! I jumped on that stegosaurus and got it from the back of my head! In a real fight he would have died! So I got promoted and...""Yes, Echo, I was there too! They promoted both of us!" the other pyroraptor growled. "Now stay silent! We are on patrol, we mustn't be distracted!""Uff. You are such a curmudgeon, Delta!""I'm not a curmudgeon, I'm professional! Unlike you, I know what 'responsibility' means!""I can be responsible too!""Then shut up!"The two pyroraptors were both two-star warriors, and in fact had two yellow lines on their cheeks. Given their rank they had been assigned to the reconnaissance section and had the task of controlling the boundaries of the lands of the herd. They weren't exactly high up in the pack hierarchy, but they weren't at the lowest rank either.
When Dreyfus saw Malcolm returning from the expedition break into his office without even knocking and shouting 'we need to talk' he knew something serious had happened. However, nothing could prepare him for what he learned of.Dreyfus was one who thought he had seen everything in his life. He had seen rich people begging for alms just for the sake of feeling poor and poor pretending to be rich to swindle companies and earn enough to escape and support themselves. He had seen the worst suffering and the worst dilemmas. I had seen oil gushing from the most unthinkable places and plants growing even in the most desert areas. But never, never would he have thought he would see one of his better men than him so upset and hear him talk about something so absurd. After Malcolm told him about talking dinosaurs he struggled to believe him; had it not been for the fact that he knew his friend well he would have already called the medical service to give him an electroencephalogram.
As expected, the news raised a fuss as it reached the dinosaurs. When Rambo and his partner returned to the lake that evening, the debate broke out. The dinosaurs had gathered around Sobek and were arguing heatedly while waiting for their pack leader to decide what to do. The spinosaurus for his part remained calm and sought a solution to that problem. "We must attack now!" Carnopo roared. "Before they attack us!" "It's right! If humans invade the forest up to here then we will lose acres of land!" Buck gave him support. Many dinosaurs gave their assent. But Old Li was of another opinion. "We're not ready" he pointed out. "We don't have the numbers to defeat the entire human army. We are still a long way from that goal" Sobek knew that Old Li wasn't wrong. Currently following him were more than 200,000 dinosaurs which amounted to at least an army of two million humans. With such an army he could have fought on an equal footing with two human superpowers. But Eden had five superpow
If there was one thing that Sobek didn't lack, it was inventiveness. One of the few things he had inherited from the human part of him was the art in which human beings best excelled above all other creatures: malice.Humans knew how to exploit the feelings of the masses in their favor, especially the powerful. The people were an important weapon, perhaps the most important, and with the right words it was easy to incite. Or with the right actions.Sobek knew that in an open fight he and his army would lose miserably. They were by no means ready to face a coalition made up of all human armies. If they just revealed themselves, it would all be over in no time. But if the people had sided with them... then things changed.Sobek was aiming for this. He had devised a cunning trap not to get a victory, but to force ordinary people to take sides with him, even if unwittingly. Unbeknownst to them, they would have kept the politicians from making their moves… and
"I think that there are many more than one hundred" Dreyfus said with a tone halfway between mocking and worried. His old face was crisscrossed with tension lines and even through his thick glasses Malcolm could see the concern in his eyes. It was rare that Dreyfus was so anxious, but after all in this situation it was more than justifiable.Malcolm stared at the dinosaur pack. They were motionless in their positions, there in front of the walls, and all of them had not very reassuring expressions on their faces (or snouts?). At a guess, there must have been at least two thousand. There were of all kinds, herbivores and carnivores. And before them, kneeling in plain sight, were the thousands of workers who worked in the various mines, sawmills, factories, oil wells and so on scattered throughout the colony. "Did they catch them?" he whispered.Dreyfus nodded. "It is clear that they want to make some kind of demonstration. I don't know if they want to kill them in front
As they returned Sobek was approached by Buck. "I don't understand. Why did we release the prisoners?""To prove that we aren't barbarians" Sobek explained."And is it important?""Not at the moment. But in the future it will be. When we take the city we will have to maintain order and discipline. Also we will soon have to go down to negotiations. It'll be easier if humans don't see us as killer monsters"Sobek knew he was playing a dangerous and extremely delicate game. He couldn't afford any mistakes. He needed humans to fear him, but he also need that they see him as a creature they could reason with. Only then would he be able to buy enough time to complete the formation of his army.And for this to happen, for this delicate balance between fear and respect to be achieved, several steps were needed. Sobek had built a big stage and had only finished the first scene for now. There was so much more to do. Even so, though, the payoffs were showing
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