"Sorry About The Dinosaurs"

"SORRY ABOUT THE DINOSAURS"


"Hello, yes, we're just calling from the future to say..."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We were just ringing you on your primitive communic- ah, telephone, to apologize for a few things."

"Like what? And who is this anyhow? This is a serious science lab!"

"Atoms."

"What about them?"

"They don't exist. Sorry. We want to apologize for nudging past research in the wrong direction. Matter's not made out of atoms or waves even."

"Oh? What's it made out of them?"

"Well - ahem - I don't expect you'll understand this, but in the primitive symbolic dialog - ah, I mean in the language of your time, you might say that all matter is made out of fishing boats."

"Fishing boats?!"

"Yes, I think - yes that's what the translator says. The word signifies something that floats on an large fluid base with nets underneath it, managed by semi-intelligent agent hierarchies. Is 'fishing boat' not the right word for that meaning?"

"Now listen here -!"

"And the dinosaurs. We want to apologize for them too."

"That's my line of work here at the labs. Dinosaur DNA."

"Ah. Yes. Well. That's actually really why we're ringing?"

"Is this some kind of government agency, because if it is I'll have you know -"

"We're sorry about bringing them back."

"Back? You mean recreating them in the future?"

"Uh - ahem! - actually, we mean recreating them in the past. In the Cretaceous Era, to be exact. We, um, sent back a number of nuclear weapons and biological weapons to exterminate the, uh, difficulty, but it appears you have, um, found us. So we're sorry. You've accidently found your future descendants buried in the fossil record, and, well, we're darned if we know what to do about it. So we just thought we'd, ah, drop you a line, and see what you thought we should do? And apologize of course."

"I think you should take your phone and -" and the scientist proceded to describe in anatomical detail exactly where the time travelling caller could deposit the telephone receiver.

There was a pained silence on the other end of the line.

"I'm afraid this receiver doesn't have those capabilities, but I assure you, given the generally metaphoric language of your time, we will carefully analyze your suggestion for research purposes and discover whether we can resolve the problem that way."

The line went dead. The paleologist stalked back to his work, dissecting a large frozen mass of arctic dinosaur tissue just this week discovered. But before he could don his mask his assistant ran up with an ashen face.

"Doctor," she said, "there's something you need to take a look at."

"What is it?"

She led him to the freshly revealed dinosaur tissue. "There."

"What on earth is it?"

They both peered at the small smooth handle embedded in the dinosaur tissue.

"I think," the assistant said slowly, "I think it's a telephone receiver!"

Author's note:
I write so many of these science-fiction storyettes that I thought I might post one up here for the world to see.