[previously, but not mandatory]
“So,” Vangelis says when they’re out of sight of the clearing. “How ya feelin’?”
Bammo shakes his head and stares out into the jungle. “We’re really out here selling rail guns to dinosaurs.”
The drone of the Jeep’s engine blankets everything else. Vangelis keeps driving.
Bammo begins, “So they’re —”
“Don’t think about it.”
“But —”
Vangelis cuts him off again. “I’m serious. If you’re smart, don’t think about it and don’t ask questions.”
Bammo says nothing as they rattle back toward extraction. “Okay,” he says at last, reluctantly. “Just one thing.”
Vangelis says nothing.
“That wasn’t the type of dinosaur that… we… do business with?”
Vangelis shrugs. “I don’t ask questions.”
“No, but, like,” Bammo turns in his seat, looking back into the jungle behind them, “I’m new, I don’t know how things work, I get it, but in training, they told us if you see anything besides the Iguanodon type to report it.”
“And that wasn’t an Iguanodon type?”
“Are you — what, were you just, like, never into dinosaurs as a kid?”
“I liked fishing as a kid.”
“Bullsh — well, actually that would explain a lot about you,” Bammo says, inspecting his counterpart.
“What’s that supposed to —”
“But no, that was definitely not an Iguanodon type, it was a raptor type. Like, you have to have seen Jurassic Park. It’s older than I am.”
“Please stop.”
“Okay, but we’ve gotta report that.”
Vangelis slams on the breaks and the Jeep halts, idling in the middle of the jungle.
“No reports,” says Vangelis. “As far as you’re concerned, you didn’t see a dinosaur at the drop. You still haven’t seen a dinosaur. Because that would be foolish and insane.”
“Yeah yeah. Sure. Okay. Come on, man, I’ve done black ops before. But are you not concerned that we just gave electromagnetic technology to the wrong dinosaurs? What if that falls into the wrong… hands? Claws? Whatever they’re called?”
“Manus,” Vangelis says, quiet, matter-of-fact.
“What?”
“An animal hand is called a manus.”
“My dude. What. Is. Going. On here.”
Vangelis looks him dead in the eyes. “I’m here to get paid. If my job is to drive a Jeep through the jungle, I drive a Jeep through the jungle. If my job is to hand rail guns to dinosaurs, then I hand rail guns to dinosaurs. Stick to the job, stay out of trouble. If you didn’t learn that in Basic, then you missed the whole point, and if you still haven’t learned it, then you’re an irredeemable idiot.”
Bammo shakes his head. “I get that, I do. But I was told two months ago that this — what just happened to us — isn’t what is supposed to happen. That we, as a company, are dealing with Iguanodon-type dinosaurs.”
“Do you know how dinosaur race relations work?” Vangelis bursts out suddenly. “Maybe they’re friends. Maybe they’re helpers or servants, getting sent to do the manual work. Maybe they have a symbiotic relationship.”
“Wait, are you saying it’s okay if we’re complicit in dinosaur slavery?”
“I am saying that you signed up to be out of your depth!” Vangelis barks. Then, after a moment, he sighs. “You and I are complicit in a hell of a lot more than dinosaur slavery, my friend,” he says wearily. “As I said. Don’t think about it. Don’t ask questions.”
Bammo’s brow furrows.
Vangelis puts a hand on his shoulder and nods slowly, and his voice is abruptly gentle. “Okay. You’re almost there. You can think out loud if you need to.”
“The dinosaurs that… no. Which… no. Why are we giving guns to dinosaurs. What the — what the hell are we doing?” Bammo is almost shouting by the end, and Vangelis muffles him with a hand.
“There you go. Good job. Happens to us all. And the answer? Which you already know.”
Bammo grimaces. “We’re giving weapons in exchange for the rights to use their empty land as testing grounds.”
“And there you go. We’re testing weapons here that will change how we protect our nation, but are too dangerous and sensitive to test back home.” Vangelis claps him on the back. “Welcome to contracting for legacy programs. It sucks. Especially because you can’t tell the good stories.”
“This is —”
“This is why you get paid the big bucks.”
Bammo looks back towards the clearing again, shakes his head in chagrin. “What do they even need rail guns for, anyway?”
“Why don’t we talk about the testing range, instead of thinking about that?” suggests Vangelis, and puts the Jeep back into drive.
They’re just around the bend from the extraction point when they hear the distinctive crackling of the Knot — what everyone at Anodyne calls the large machine that punches through probability to create a hole from the humans’ own strand to this dinosaur strand — gradually replaced with the sound of a running engine.
“Didn’t realize anyone would be out this quick after us,” Vangelis muses.
Bammo cranes his neck to try and see around the trees ahead. “Did we take too long and they sent out a party?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No?”
“No, they don’t send out search parties here. Once it’s lost, it’s gone.”
“Oh.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just surprising.”
They come around the bend just in time to see a Jeep not unlike their own driving away from the Knot.
And they’re just in time to see the entire Knot explode, and to see a shock wave full of tree splinters, machine shrapnel, and fire spew in every direction.
Hello hello!
Here we are again. Thanks, reader, for reading! Don’t worry, it’s not all true. But what if it was?
I’m in DC and I finally got to see snow for the first time in like 4 years. I love it. And I love not driving in it. I hope you’re able to enjoy whatever winter you may be having right now (or summer, if that’s more your thing).
Next week we’ll get into product launches — what if the people who had the means to change the world, actually did? We’re all about asking the tough (and, obviously, completely hypothetical) questions here.
See you next time!
:: Jaer