Primordial Interlopers

Primordial Interlopers

The first reports by telephone were an interesting and fairly entertaining joke to both local law enforcement and newspaper offices in the late evening, early morning hours.

“Well.. we didn’t know what to make of it in the slightest”, reports an obviously tired, exasperated Sheriff Elizabeth Cadieux-Andrea.

The Sheriff, a dedicated woman born in the town of Larson and known dedicated community servant was woken in the night roughly around 2:30 a.m., receiving a call from the on station Officer Howard James.

“At first I thought it had to be a joke. Of course it was. I thought, anyway.. I mean, we’ve had crank calls. Calls about a lake monster on the peninsula, stories about ghosts prowling the cemetery. So of course I thought this was a joke—wouldn’t you?”

After a shaky and brief communication with Howard, the Sheriff woke her husband before quickly changing into uniform and stepping out to the surprisingly still muggy air. It must’ve been strange, let alone frustrating: shambling to a police car at ungodly hours of the morning for another ridiculous report beneath seemingly endlessly Milky Way starlight. Mrs. Cadieux-Andrea reports that she was just about to turn at the end of her street heading north before locking eyes with a sight that would forever change her life.

“I thought at first.. I thought a first I was seeing things. You know what I mean—rub your eyes, shake your head. Laugh it off even because it can’t possibly be there. It just can’t. But there it was. Tall as a man with talons and jaws, big as a goddamn lion. Bigger.”

Sheriff Cadieux-Andrea was seeing a dinosaur. My paleontologist contact in the local museum tells me a Ceratosaurus Nasicornis based on a more detailed description the Sheriff would give under oath the following day which described the distinctive nasal horn, small four-fingered hands, and dorsal ridges characteristic of this Jurassic predator. A creature extinct for nearly a hundred million years was striding across a suburban road.

“He just watched me with those eyes. They reflected the most ghastly pale white I’ve ever seen in my life, like wolves in the dark..”

And as quickly as the creature had been sighted, it disappeared quickly into a nearby strand of trees alongside the homes to her right. By the time Cadieux-Andrea had arrived at the police station: nearly two hundred phone calls had been received documenting similar encounters across the entirety of the town.

A local man smoking a cigarette on his front porch watched as a small group of bone-headed herbivorous dinosaurs, Pachycephalosaurus, quickly marched down the road. He noted the animals were seemingly agitated which must’ve been an accurate representation as within moments of being sighted the dinosaurs began to ram into the parked vehicles nearby. The stunned observer told this reporter that the time-stranded creatures did an incredibly bizarre dance between impacting their metallic foes, like jungle birds, and that he could catch glimpses of vivid colors when the dinosaurs briefly stepped under the streetlights.

An young couple (who wished to remain anonymous because of the nature of their rebellious activities) were giddily driving home close to the shores of Lake Rose when, like a primordial fever dream, a massive horn-faced dinosaur (identified as the recently discovered Ultraceratops from a magnificent Deseret fossil bed) crosses the desolate wooded road. The first young woman of the couple said that it was immense: seemingly larger than the elephant from the local zoo, and that in the headlights it’s striking frill was akin to haunting patterns found on moth species. This quote especially sticks with this reporter: “It was like it had a pair of giant, crimson eyes, ringed by black and blue! Like it was starring back at us...!” After what had likely been only a moment or two, the herbivorous titan disappeared back into the forest.

Local celebrity and irritating miscreant of this newspaper (who shall remain nameless to irritate them immensely) spoke to an associate of the Larson Times, quote: “A big bird ate my dog, my poor Princess! It was like—like an eagle big as a jungle cat, with curving claws and black feathers, and it snatched up my poor baby when I let her out! Goddamn monsters! Must be the Soviets, come here to eat and torment the godly, patriotic pets of Americans!” (As of the publishing of this article no connection between the prehistoric arrivals and the United Soviet Socialist Republics has been documented.)

The stories are many, many indeed. And it seems, all in a single night: the mysterious primordial arrivals simply vanished. Searches since Wednesday night have turned up nothing, involving animal specialists and big game hunters and wacky cryptozoologists. Physicists from Moscow, London, and Chicago have arrived, all speculating endlessly on this fantastical scientific curiosity. We hope to publish more citizen accounts in the coming days as the interview process continues. In the meantime: watch out for dinosaurs.

- published in the Larson Times, 1///, prior to the Incident at Harper Town.

Sunset at Dawn

Time is changing.

Things waver like heat rising off of distant highway asphalt. They shiver and shudder, mirages in the desolate desert, before vanishing.

Cities melt in on themselves, warping beneath Gods’ gaze, disheleved and surreal, glassy dreams crashing without sound. Highways buckle to dust. Swallowed by hungry earth. Monuments vanish with furious whispers as history is rewritten under an unending tide of revision. For heartbeats—for moments—the Earth shudders beneath paradoxical floods, human history and construct devoured by nightmarish blur.

And then: change. Birth. Colossal woodland seems to warble into the timeline melody with vigor. Wet greenery. Enormous trees hundreds of meters tall, centuries old, armor-plated bark crisscrossed by slippery clover, dripping moss. Soil dark as midnight, alive with scent, moving as living things course inside. Forgotten mountains blossom like stony flowers, topped by monumental glaciers or vivid lava flows down shadowed sides; visages turned real from this ethereal fog. Angry rivers pulse through reinvigorated channels; rebirthed by new waters. Valleys crag from split earth, swamps and marshes millions of years dried once again humidly infernal.

Life. Creatures once again. Beings big and small. Armored in scales, adorned in feathers. Titanic structures of black stone thrown up at the sky, thorny, and imposing. Crimson light hums, throbs, glows.

Humanity lies in fragments. Quiet and enthralled. Afraid. Night comes, speaking in a million animal languages. Gifted new breath from fossil tombs. And electric minds dance, electricity and glass, electricity and glass..

Arthur Morgan, and the Rings of Paradise

Arthur was confused.

His mind reeled and his stomach ached like he’d been drowning his insides in putrid liquor. Doubled over, coughing, half laughing at his predicament he remembered lengthy drinking binges with Lenny or John or Javier. He wiped spittle from his chin as the daze began to be replaced by a painfully everpresent dull ache. The outlaw scratched unkempt hair from under his hat, looking this way and that, looking for his horse. Arthur was alone, too, on a familiar lookin grassy plane surrounded by sparse woodland islands. Birds’ egg blue skies embraced him. A gentle breeze whispered here and there.

He whistled in vain, sputtering out into a coughing fit. “Rachael! Oh, goddamn creature, run off again... What the hell did we drink last night..?” Arthur wiped his eyes and very suddenly, something caught his uncertain gaze.

Foggy disorientation vanished from his thoughts in an instant.

The sky above him arched upward into an elegant, impossible Ring growing increasingly thin and tiny against a dreamlike blue-black sky. Before and behind him stretched landscape and horizon as it reached into the air. He saw gorgeous oceans, crimson deserts, steaming jungles, glacially entombed mountains, hissing badlands: all in endless glory above him.

Arthur Morgan fell to his knees in silence, staring upward in disbelief. Thoughts of fireside roars by Dutch about paradise echoed in his mind, stories of rich eternity in an untamed and uninhabited frontier. Arthur Morgan felt tears prickle at his eyes. The weight of his rifle and repeating shotgun and revolvers, his aged knapsack, the weight of running from the law, the weight of fear that had grown in him as dreams of paradise slipped away into unreality: all seemed to evaporate into nothingness. Another life.

Then: a scream in the skies above him. Arthur threw himself to the ground and drew his ornate revolvers, turning upward just in time to watch bulbous, unnatural shapes wrought in organic purplish-black racing overhead. The flying machines were larger than any carriage or steamboat he’d ever seen, and they flew like horrendous angels!

More strange craft like howling demons passed overhead and away from him, thrumming with predatory energy. Suddenly the Outlaw felt very, very small.

When Arthur noticed he was not alone, and when Arthur saw the hulking giant metal man carrying a rifle unlike any he’d ever seen, a singular thought grew in his thoughts.

What the in the goddamn hell did I get myself into?

Excerpt from the Intergalactic: Unrest on the Frontier

In an interview with the Intergalactic, David Randal (photographed above in his Exo-Multiplatform Unit, or EMU) expressed the viewpoints common amongst spacers in these trying times. “It’s hard work, work that can kill or maim with even the greatest in safety tech. And out here, on the frontier? We’re undersupplied, practically forgotten about. Now rumors of war, whispers of aggressive aliens? The Company has practically abandoned us to the Deep Black.”

Tensions continue to mount as protests Galaxywide have spread to nearly five hundred systems now. We reached out to Haven-Uros-Iln Industries for commentary, and respectfully received none.

Notice Operations

Until further notice, IDS-47 through IDS-219 are closed for ontological maintenance. All staff should avoid these areas until further notice, and should continue to be diligent about any unpredictable or unprecedented activity within range of the containment sites. Non-compliance will result in immediate termination via patrolling IDS-security systems.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Night of the Metal Trees

I am lost.

I stand, unsure, afraid. Unfamiliar light and painful sounds and rushing motion blare at me with an unnatural malice.

I turn and turn and turn, slashing with claws and snapping jaws, quills raised, iron feathers shivering.

Where am I?

My vastness dwarfs such tiny glassy-metal trees, but I am fearful, and step uncomfortably, slipping, careening into painful metallic thorns. My calls do not bring familiarity, my connection to the Earth severed and dull.

Is this Uhan, the Bleak Underworld? Or something else..?

I scramble, limping, howling.

Running.