I sit there, knowing I’m acting spoiled. I came from a world where surviving mostly meant pulling something out of a plastic packet and putting it in a magical heating box. There are no magical heating boxes here, just fires and grumpy alien kings.
“So this is what we’re going to do? We’re just going to try to survive until we can’t anymore?”
“That is the life story of every creature on every planet everywhere,” he says. “No matter where you live, how rich or poor you might be, we are all mortal.”
“There aren’t immortals?” I wonder if he knows the answer to that question. It’s one I’ve pondered from time to time.
“The universe does not deal in immortals. It thrives on change. Those before us are gone so we may exist, and so we must give way to those who will yet come. We are here, for as long as we are here, to do whatever we might do.”
“That’s vague.”
“It is vague,” he agrees. “But it’s also simple.”
“I guess.”
“We will have to make some others to replace us, if we can.” He says it so casually, I almost don’t register the full implications of what he’s suggesting. Last night he painted me with his seed. He used it to mark me as his own. I am still sticky with it. I wonder what would happen if he pumped it inside me. Would I get pregnant? Are we going to have to find some way to make condoms out of dinosaurs?
“That’s your way of telling me you want to make babies in a world full of dinosaurs?”
“Did the world you came from not have dangers of its own?”
“Oh god, yes. It was practically all dangers. Couldn’t walk out the front door without a ton of metal flying by driven by someone who was probably looking at their phone. But we also had hospitals and maternity care, and people who could tell you how the baby was doing when it was inside you, and stitch you back up afterward…”
Just as I talk myself somewhat into the idea, I seem to be talking him out of it.
“You raise a good point. It is mortally dangerous to procreate. I could lose you…”
* * *
Rex
I could lose her. I could be left with no offspring and no mate. I could be alone in this world again. But if she survives the ordeal of procreation, I could have a family. But then who would that family mate with? Since I arrived on this world, I have resigned myself to it in many ways. I created a place in which I could survive, and in the process I anchored myself. But what future is there? I thought taking it one day at a time would lead me to some kind of future, but Kristine’s arrival proves otherwise.
She is the light at the end of the tunnel which turns out to be a no exit sign, to use a phrase I have heard the exposition chest use. I used to speak to the chest for hours at a time before she came. Now I no longer feel the need. I have a real woman to hold, to love, and to protect.
“We have to escape this world,” I proclaim. “We must find a way out. There is no way to have a family here. There is no way to be anything other than two anomalies in a very wild wilderness.”
“We could listen to the exposition chest,” she suggests. “It could have clues.”
“I listened to it many times when I first came here, and what I heard almost drove me mad.”
“It can’t be that bad, whatever it is.”
“It tells the truth.”
“Okay, isn’t that a good thing?” She looks confused, and for good reason.
“The truth is… it’s not what you think it is. I believe this place makes us forget much of our past. I also believe that although it is dangerous here, there is something keeping us safe. Some force which will not allow us to be harmed. But something…” It is hard to explain what I think is happening on this strange world. We accept what we see, taste, smell without question, but I do not know that it is wise to entirely believe it.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she accuses me. “You know something, don’t you.”
“There is a lot I am not telling you, mostly for your own good. A little knowledge could tear you apart.”
* * *
Kristine
“Hello, exposition chest.”
I told Rex I had to relieve myself. He was so busy working on the bow that he barely grunted. Instead of peeing, I sneaked up here and sought an audience with the chest. The first time I disobeyed him, he punished me. This time…
“Hello.”
I didn’t expect it to reply. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I addressed it as if it would reply, and I knew it could speak, or at least, make words.