quadibloc
2025-02-16 07:05:57 UTC
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Permalinkduring the
Triassic, while there _were_ dinosaurs, the Earth was not ruled by them.
Instead,
another group of giant reptiles, related to crocodiles, called the
rauisuchians
ruled the world, and many of them resembled dinosaurs that would later
reside.
This inspired a reverie in which I thought of how this could be the
basis of a
(not terribly original) science-fiction plot.
Returning to Earth from an interstellar mission, one of Earth's first
faster than
light spaceships drops out of subspace... to find itself in the middle
of a solar
flare. Given the tenuous nature of solar flares, little notice was paid
to this at
first.
But as the ship approaches Earth without receiving any radio signals
from it,
consternation grips the crew. A landing party is sent down in a
shuttlecraft.
What they find is a planet apparently overrun by dinosaurs!
Analysis of tissue samples eventually lets the landing party determine
that these
creatures aren't actually dinosaurs. Instead, their DNA indicates that
they're
descendants of crocodiles that radiated out to fill the same ecological
niches
that dinosaurs once filled.
This situation wasn't even unprecedented; the ship's computers brought
up
information on how creatures related to crocodiles known as rauisuchians
once
ruled the world during the Triassic, and many of them resembled some
better-known
dinosaurs. Also, the ship's sensors noted that the Earth's atmosphere
now had a
high carbon dioxide content, and the world's average temperature was
warmer than
expected, which would presumably why the crocodiles had all these
ecological
niches to expand into.
Except, of course, that this would normally take millions of years, not
the
amount of time the ship had spent on its space mission!
At this point, the solar flare was considered. Perhaps it disrupted the
delicate
process of transitioning from subspace to normal space, leading the ship
to
transition to normal space too late or too early, ending up in an
alternate
universe. The engineering staff went through the automated logs of the
ship's
transitions in and out of subspace to find out how to recalibrate the
next
transition to return the ship to its own reality.
In the meantime, sensor scans of the alternate Earth below were carried
out.
Ruins were found with a possible concentration of metal, perhaps
artifacts. The
landing party took the shuttlecraft there, and they did find some
ancient
computers, which they took aboard before returning to the spaceship.
They returned to the spaceship, none of the landing party having been
eaten by
giant reptiles. The ship entered subspace - and successfully left it in
a Solar
System with the Earth they knew.
And meanwhile, the storage units in the computers found on the alternate
Earth
yielded their secret. On this alternate world, the 45th President of the
United
States of America wasn't Hillary Rodham Clinton, as every schoolchild
knew.
Instead, it was someone by the name of Donald J. Trump. And apparently
he was
disdainful of the dangers of anthropogenic global warming. Among other
disturbing things.
Obviously, this is too preachy - too much like a Mary Sue, but intended
to
advocate for a particular political point of view - to succeed as
entertainment.
And it's a bit of a cross between the _Star Trek_ episode "Mirror,
Mirror" and
the original Planet of the Apes movie, so it lacks originality.
John Savard