“See you tomorrow, friend.”
After their goodbyes Michael hung the phone up and opened up his small chromebook. In the light of the early morning sun he was able to see just how dilapidated the chromebook was. Of course, the only modern thing here was still from 2017, at least 10 years old. He looked at his task list:
Subject: Task List 2/12/27
Content: Dear Michael, your task list for today is:
Check electric fence
Check perimeter wall
Check electric blankets
Check in with caretakers
Bonus: clean visible hallway, this task will be considered complete when I check the cameras
Now, the worst part of this is that all these jobs, except the bonus, took place inside the habitat. He considered putting the power armor on, but he also wanted to be able to run away, even with the armor he would be a victim to the jaws of a T. Rex. Michael decided it would just be better to bring the shotgun with him into the enclosure. He put on the snow clothes he wore on day one and went out into the freezing cold of the habitat through the door in the middle. Now he had to walk along the entire perimeter of the habitat and write down when something was wrong.
At first it wasn't so bad, the tyrannosaurs didn’t notice as he walked around the edge of the habitat, snow crunching beneath his feet. The trees were tall but alien in this enclosure, ginkgos and monkey puzzles here, not oaks and pondorossas. The world was shaded, and wet. Or supposed to be wet. The cold had made the river and lake in the habitat nearly frozen over. The smaller ferns and club mosses were shriveled up and dead from the cold.
But then the mother spotted him through the snow and vines. He couldn’t see her, but she could very easily see him. A practically trivial thing, especially since the sun was rising. She could see the individual hairs on his skin, the singular pores and mites, let alone his breaths temperature. And because of all these details, she knew this wasn’t any of the caretakers. In the meantime, Michael had almost completely checked the concrete walls of his sarcophagus, all head to do now was get into the light and check the fence. That was in the fullbright of the morning sun. He crawled onto the wall and got onto the little ledge around the fence.
Once on the ledge, he thought about how he could actually test the electric fence, so he looked around for a long thin object he could use. He ended up choosing a fallen Ginkgo branch and tapping the fence lightly.
The branch exploded.
His first concern was checking himself for injury after being knocked to the ground by the sudden BANG of the branch detonating on him, but thankfully there was nothing wrong with his arm, and he could at least confirm that the fence did work. He then went back to square one as each section of the fence had to be tested. Thankfully, a lot of monkey puzzle pinecones covered the ground, so he decided to use the skills he learned from grade school rugby and hurled the pinecones.
Each time one of the pinecones found their mark, exploding on impact with the fence. He was able to confirm every part of the fence did work. After that he slid down the trench and climbed into the main habitat.
But when he was at the top of the stairs into the habitat, he was face to face with the mother Tyrannosaur. Warm, wet, yet silent breath blew into his face. He couldn’t even begin to think of how such a large animal had moved completely silently, how he didn’t even notice the 15 ton giant even making a small crunch in the snow. He felt his hair get sucked towards the giant as she sniffed him. What she smelled was a mix of sweat and urine. Michael was completely frozen in place as the behemoth in front of him put its face so close to his he could see the fleas on her scales. Each scale was probably about the size of his hand, and only then did he realize just how big these things were.
Thankfully for him, the titanic creature pulled her face away from him and walked silently back to the garage. The garage he would have to go into to check both the electric blanket and caretakers. He marched through the open snow of the habitat, just behind the mother rex. The baby hopped beside him, thankfully she was far more clumsy than her mother, and actually made sounds in the snow when she moved. The baby was curious as ever, sniffing Michael and shoving him around with its shockingly sharp head. It felt odd being playful around an 8 foot tall creature that you knew nearly tore the arm off of a person that was at least twice your size, so he ignored its attempts at play.
As he marched over to the garage, he realized quickly just how much these things moved. The entire garage had the scent of dog crap, except a lot bigger. A massive litter box that could have sufficed for the bottom layer of a massive play fort was in the corner of the room, right next to the caretaker's door. The caretakers were lucky, they could leave the tyrannosaur area and go to another habitat anytime they wanted, and were appropriately armed with high quality power armor and guns that could actually penetrate these things scales. He walked over to the massive pile of hay that acted as the nest of the Tyrannosaurs and flicked a lever a couple of times to see if the arm mechanism of the blanket worked. You couldn’t exactly tuck a T.rex into bed with your arms alone. Then he checked the heating element of the blanket once it was on the nest. It worked just fine. He then reset the blanket and mechanism to walk over to the caretakers door and knock on it. The Tyrannosaur’s mother had made a grunting sound behind him, so he checked behind him to see her sticking her head out of the massive pile of hay. Apparently, Tyrannosaurs like to cover themselves up. He ran over to the electric blanket and put it back down on her and heated it up. It was almost funny to him how needy this animal acted despite having killed a woman before.
He waited for a few moments before a girl that was at most 4’11 ran over and opened the door. She was quite energetic, and surprisingly young for someone who worked here, they were probably 16 or 17 and not in their 30’s like every single other person here. The other two caretakers were, also quite shockingly, in their late teens. One of them, another girl, was at least 6 feet tall and very lanky, and the other was a lanky dude about his height with curly hair, his face covered in pimples. Again, he could barely believe that this company hired teens, but then again he had never interacted with the caretakers, until now. Caretakers, much like folks on theropod duty, were stuck with their dinosaurs for a month. Unlike theropod duty workers, the dinosaurs liked them, and they were given decent food.
“Hey, I’m Emiko!” Said the teeny tiny girl, practically tugging him into the room “Wanna have breakfast with us?”
This was not what he expected when he was told “check in on the caretakers”, but he didn’t mind, he got to eat pancakes made by the GOAT of theropod care, Godzilla. Michael sat down at the four person table after getting himself a heaping plate of pancakes (Godzilla made a lot of them) and bacon. Emiko must have been starving as they were scarfing food down into their faces. While she was busy with that, Michael decided to introduce himself to the others.
“I’m Michael, I'm the one on Theropod duty with you three this month.”
The dude spoke back first, “I’m Ember, I'm in charge of preparing the animals food here”Never mind, not a single dude other than Michael.
“Glad to meet you, mate.” Michael said, trying his hardest to reduce his scottish-ness. He failed. “And you are?” He said, asking the extremely tall girl
“I'm Lindsey,” She said while counting out some little white pills. “I do the medicine for the animals.”
“Then what does Emiko do?”
Ember responded, “She cleans the animals, all of them, the pachies, rexes, trikes, and Struthis, so wish them luck”
Another thing with being a caretaker, their room attaches to the garage of two, or in this case four habitats.
“Aye, hell of a job is it?”“It is,” Emiko said through a mouth full of pancake before swallowing, “But the little ones love to play while being cleaned, so that's always fun.”
“Ugghh, play,” Michael said, “The rex baby nearly broke my window because I didn’t keep on playing laser with it.”
“She can be a forceful one at times, but as long as you make sure she gets tuckered out by it you’re good, or if she’s fed.”
“Says the one with functional power armor,”
“It's still not good enough to get through a rex bite, or a really angry trike.” said Lindsey, clearly, she was the quiet one of the group.
“Fair eneth,”
“Anyways, where are you from?”
“I'm Scottish, you?”
“New Zealand! Weird being here actually, so few cat people.”
“Well then, what bout you Ember?”
“I'm from Mars.”
“Off worlder, eh? How was it up there at mars?”
“Boiling.”
“Makes sense, and ye Lindsey?”
“From right here in the UINA.”
“Ah, only non-immigrant here I see.”
“Yep, proudly American since I was born.”
“What part of America were ye born in?”
“I'm from North Mexico.”
“Ah, how was it back there?”
“Mom’s cooking was the best.”
Micahael had finished his food, so he got up and gave them all a small salute “I best be on me way, mop the hallways of my area.”
“Oh, dang,” Ember said “Good luck with that… just don't get sick. If you need help I can bring you some of our equipment.”
“It's not that bad, is it?”
Photo Credits: Liam Flanagin
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