Short Story: The Time Zoo
Early one morning, at a time you’re not supposed to pick up the phone, the phone rang. Groaning and moaning, I threw my arm wearily across my night stand and picked up my mobile. I found the call was from Daniel Fisic, my digging partner. You see, ever since I was a child, I had wanted to be an archaeologist. This was due to a combined force of Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park. I studied to be one, and in college, I met Dan, and we together headed a dig. This dig wasn't of dinosaurs, though. Just Indian pottery.
Grumbling, I answered the phone, mumbling, "Hello? Who's this?"
"Me."
"I suppose it is. Well, then, what do you want? Speak quickly! - I've got to get at least a few winks before the dig."
"Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to wink later. This is urgent."
I sat up in bed quite quickly. "Why? Is the site disturbed?"
"No. I haven't the time to chat at the moment. Just get up and get over to the Biju Patnaik International Airport at once!"
"Gee, what a mouthful to say in the morning. Alright, I'm a'coming."
"And don't forget to put your shoes on! Last time, I had to explain to the Inspector why you were wearing bunny rabbit slippers."
I grumbled some incoherent insult and slipped as slowly as I could out of my bed. I dressed into somewhat finer clothes, donned the trademark archaeologist fedora, and grabbing my wallet and phone, I slipped out of my apartment, told the bellboy I wasn't going to be here for a while or so, petted his dog Hunley, and ran off to hail a taxi.
Upon my arrival at the airport, I found Dan, along with another man, waiting for me. "There you are, old man!" crowed Dan, who happened to be older than I. "We've been waiting for you."
"And who is this?" I asked, gesturing toward the other, somewhat older man.
After I sent the cab driver off with no tip (he had muttered some very dark spells under his breath) Dan answered, "This is a very special acquaintance of mine."
"And how do you know this funny-looking guy?"
"He's my father."
"You may grovel for mercy later," said his father, whose name I later learned happened to be Gert Fisic. I assumed Gert was short for 'Gertrude'. "Right now, we've some serious business to discuss!" Gert forced his words through a plastic smile.
We wove our way through the Indian airport, and to a private jet. The door close to the cockpit was already opened, and a man-servant beckoned us inside. The interior of the aircraft was decked with bounds of holly, and an ornate set of cushioned chairs sat in a ring around a coffee table. Right at this moment, there were glasses of apple juice set on the table. Not my first choice of beverage.
"Are you rich?" I asked Gert in surprise.
"No; I just happened to steal this jet." He said this with a smile faker than a clown's. "Now, sit down, both of you. I have some news that may concern the two of you."
"You never told me your old man was rich," I complained indignantly to Dan. "He could have paid that bill last Spring!" We sat, and Gert called over a large man with extensive military background. His mural of pins and honors told of his career quite plainly.
"Boys," said Gert, "I want you to meet Colonel Stazzenberg. Colonel, these are our archaeologists."
"Hmph," murmured the colonel thoughtfully. "They don't exactly appear all that bright, but I guess they'll do. What do you dig? Dinosaurs? Amber with mosquitos in them? Well, speak up!"
"We happen to excavate traditional Indian pottery," offered Dan unhelpfully.
"Then why are you helping with a job such as this?!" demanded the colonel.
“Beats me.”
"Well, young nerdling, we were doing a project - deep sea exploration, if you will. You see, whenever scientists are trying to do something majorly scientific, its always got to be about space. It can never be about anything else, no matter how cool it is. Well, we wanted to go to the bottom of the ocean, where no man or machine has gone before; territory untainted by man. Well, I say, 'Let's taint it!' Actually, we came up with a diabolically ingenious plan in which to produce funding for our mission. I'm sure you have noticed those cute, ten dollar gift-wrapped boxes saying, 'Buy this and your money might fund the orphans.'"
"Did it?" asked Dan.
"Did it what?"
"Did the money fund the orphans?"
"Oh. No. You see, that was our clever little way of gaining dough for the project. That, and conning aristocratic dunces like Mr. Fisic over here to support our humble foundation."
Gert smiled.
"Well," I gruffly grunted. "Get along with your story. I'm starting to get sleepy."
"Fine. Ahem. Where was I?" I gave an enthralling yawn, which annoyed him into remembering what he had forgotten. "Oh, yes, I remember. Well, we at last accumulated enough money to forward our project. We began by building a giant submarine that could survive being dropped into a volcano and journeying to the center of the earth. We tested it by remote control at first, then, when we perceived it to be quite safe, we put a man in it. This journey was, for lack of a better word, more interesting. You'll excuse me for a moment if I take a drink. You can be sure the submarine man needed a drink after what he saw."
"For God's sake, what did he see?!" I thundered, slamming my fist impatiently.
"He saw a spaceship."
There's always at least one awkward reactor in a group. "Heh, heh," said Dan, rather timidly. "You're kidding, right? Ha. That's funny. Good joke. You thought you could pull my leg that easily, didn't you?"
"Don't be so puerile as to believe I was ever actually capable of cracking a joke," admonished Stazzenberg. "The whole tale is true, and nothing but. The guy in the submarine saw a spaceship outside the window. We even have it on tape. And so, we set a team back down there to examine it. Sure enough, a shining hull of metal it was found to be."
"Are you saying this spaceship was dropped to the bottom of the ocean upon liftoff?" I asked skeptically.
"You mistake the indication, my irascible fellow. This was no Earth-made craft. In fact, it was a rounded machine of an alien metal."
"Aliens?!" exclaimed Dan. "Gracious!"
"Oh, settle down, you!" growled Stazzenberg. "We don't know what it is! We just want to dig it out of the rock it's embedded into and see what it is!"
"So why are we here?" I asked. "We excavate Indian pottery. Not foreign spaceships."
"Yes, I realize that," said Gert, cutting his way into the conversation. "But who do you call when you need to dig out a spaceship? The paleontologists are much too slow, anyway."
"Plus," said the colonel dramatically, extinguishing the cigar Gert was about to smoke, "Mr. Fisic here says you'll work for peanuts."
The Mr. Fisic in question gave a Made In China smile.
"Well, your dear Mr. Fisic is wrong," I replied. "We demand satisfactory pay. What else is there?”
“Nothing. We just know that it's metal. We decided to wait until the experts got here. Instead, you're here, though."
*****
The next day, when we arrived, I was worried about the submarine breaking when we were twenty thousand leagues under the sea, but the ever-grinning Gert consoled me, saying there was only a slight chance of me dying in there. We got into the machine, equipping ourselves with reinforced digging tools and marine suits which looked like they belonged more to Iron Man. We didn't have to wear them for the whole trip, though; just if we got the idiot notion of going outside.
When all the vents and openings were unopened, there was a great ringing of bells, flashing of lights, and shaking of the vessel. After an hour of this, I was beginning to wonder when we would submerge, when Stazzenberg said, "We're here."
Windows were forbidden in this realm of the ocean, and so highly-durable marine cameras served as our window into this alien world. We saw first a black void of absolute nothingness, but then Dan turned on the luminescence and I witnessed a rocky blue world of caves. After a while of going down under, we saw the first creature; either a great fish that more resembled a slug, or a great slug that looked more like a fish. Not a very endearing specimen all together. Then there was a giant sea urchin, which was happily minding its business. The there was a slimy green mess of eyes that we took no great joy in looking at. Most of the creatures either left us alone or fled from us. But there was this one little tike who began to attack us rather viciously. He was a stout fish with a face eerily human, and he began to tear at the rubber around the sides of the ship. We scared the anthropomorphic fish off in a loud burst of sirens, then continued in our marine trek.
Finally, when I had about enough, Stazzenberg said, "We're here."
And upon turning around a corner of rock, there we saw it. Embedded in the cave walls was a hulking work of steel. Although it was covered in algae, it still glowed brightly; an unearthly, white light. A large section of the algae had been wiped clean to reveal the glowing mass underneath it. Dan gasped. I, however, could not repress an ironic grin.
"That's it?" I stated. "That's what you were all so excited about?"
"Well, what's wrong with it?" asked the colonel.
"What's wrong?!" I exclaimed. "It isn't a spaceship, that's what's wrong with it! It's just a pile of metal under the ocean. Nothing to get all hyped up about."
"Well, I disagree with you," said Dan, offended for some reason or other.
"When do you not?" I commented.
"How can metal glow if it's not a spaceship?" he challenged.
"How can metal glow if it is a spaceship?" I challenged back. "It's probably just some element we never discovered before."
"Well," said Stazzenberg, "spaceship or no spaceship, I still say we ought to dig it out. Well, you two are the experts. Go inspect it."
"Wait," I said, "are you saying you want us - as in me - to go out there and look at it?"
"Well, why not? After all, we didn't get you those neat suits for nothing."
"We're not going out there, are we, Dan?" I turned towards Dan, and lo and behold, he had already put on the suit.
"Let's do this!" exclaimed Dan excitedly, as if he were a mere youngster.
"Just do it!" said Stazzenberg to me. "If we're going to pay you anything, then you'd better do something other than begrudge the world. Now get!"
I dolefully donned my detestable suit and headed into the airlock, where Dan was waiting. All entrances were shut, and the room began to fill with water. I impatiently waited until the entire room was filled, and when it did, the lights suddenly shut off. We were immersed in water so black it might as well have been ink, and when the room shuddered, we could only guess that it was the gate lifting. We couldn't see the gate; however, we could see the shiny metal being revealed. Even in a world that could have been in outer space, it still shone brilliantly, dimmed only by the algae covering it.
We left the safety of the cubicle and floated gently, aided by the propulsion packs on our backs. When I tried to move my arms, it seemed that they had become too heavy; however, if I moved it just a little in one direction, the suit's computer would move the arm quickly in that direction. It took a little to get used to it, but I got it under control rather quickly. Dan, on the other hand, did not have it under control. He began weaving and turning around in the water, going haywire.
"Help!" he radioed to me.
"Just don't move!" I replied. "Stop turning your arms, and you'll be fine!"
He promptly ignored my advice, and eventually Stazzenberg reeled him in. It was just me now. Perfect.
I propelled myself over to the wall, and took a large electric pick axe from my belt and smashed it into the metal.
"What are you doing?!" exclaimed Stazzenberg angrily.
"Testing to see how hard this great hunk of humbug is," I responded. "It’s tough, alright. I'll test it with marine dynamite."
"Are you nuts?!" exclaimed the colonel, indignant.
"Don't worry, mom, I've got this under control!" With that, I stuck the metal cylinder into the rocks and propelled myself away, then denoted the weapon with a remote. A small flash emitted from the crevice, then a deep blue explosion took the wall apart. When it cleared, a large portion of the wall was gone, but the metal mass remained. It was now quite clear that what was in the walls was rounded.
"The foreign object is resilient," I said through my radio. "It wasn't even scratched by the blow."
"Well stop being so careless and get on with your work!" roared Stazzenberg. "Just tell me what we need to do in order to excavate it!"
"Well," I said, "it seems to me that dynamite works well."
"Okay, then, we'll blast it out. I'm coming out with more dynamite." A minute later, he arrived with a barrel of dynamite. When we were done with the explosives, we realized that we hadn't made much progress. We had to return to the surface and collect more supplies - and men, at that. We left Dan on the Island of Ash, though, because quite frankly, he was no help.
***
For two weeks we blasted away at the rock, destroying much marine life. So much for the marine biologists' project. We soon found that the metal curio was much larger than we ever expected. It had more width than a cathedral, and was shaped as a disk. I didn't believe as the others did that this was from another world in the sky. I didn't know what it was, but some things you can be sure of. Any way, when we finally unearthed it, we discovered it to be completely featureless; just smooth, shining steel. It didn't seem in any way marred by the explosives, which I found strange, seeing as how the dynamite ripped away rock walls that stood for thousands of years, causing several minor earthquakes. We discovered, whilst excavating the object, that it had been in the rock for over a million years. I was inclined to be skeptical about that.
Then there was the question of how to drag the metal hulk onto land. It seemed much too big to be hauled by the submarine, and so we eventually decided to attach a cord to the great metal disk, and tether the other end to the submarine, as well as a weight, in order to see how much strength we needed to pull the discovery to the surface. When we did do this, however, we discovered that the metal oddity was lighter than we ever expected; so light, in fact, that the submarine could drag the thing up all by itself. The weights read it to be merely fifty pounds.
"That thing fifty pounds?!" exclaimed Dan when we informed him of this tidbit. "But that's impossible!"
"Impossible indeed,” ‘I replied. "Obviously, the machines were faulty."
Anyway, we finally got the object of much fascination to the surface. The submarine couldn't drag it onto land, as a good submarine tended not to go on land, and although proven light, it did not stay afloat. That gave me the notion of getting a battalion of trucks and tanks to drag the hulk onto the man-made shore. But the ever-cheeky Gert said, "Oh, nonsense! If it really is that light, I'll do it myself!" and with that, he hopped onto a pink speedboat (or, in his mind, a salmon speedboat) and rode over to the shining structure, fixed a magnetic cord to the surface, and took it onto land, beaching his boat, spreading concrete ejecta onto the colonel, his hair blowing off in the wind.
A week later (after Stazzenberg got out of the hospital, in which he was being treated for concrete-related injuries) we still hadn't figured out how to open it. We used just about everything: bombs, saws, lasers. None of them even nicked the shell of this mystery. But when Stazzenberg arrived, all he did was lay his hand exasperatedly on the shining shell, and an opening materialized in the shell.
"Well," said the colonel candidly, "it seems this saucer recognizes authority!"
"It's not a flying saucer!" I exclaimed. "And it can't recognize anything!"
"Well, Mr. Indian Pottery," said Stazzenberg, "it certainly looks like an alien star-craft to me."
"Looks can be deceiving," I warned him.
"Well," said Dan excitedly, "let's enter that spaceship!"
"It's not a spaceship!" I proclaimed angrily. As usual, I was ignored. Dan, the colonel, Gert, and I, entered through the opening, and found ourselves in a room unlike any other.
First off, the walls were paper thin. With that off my chest, I can now describe to you the more incredible aspects. The room was brightly and cheerily lit, but there was no visible light source. There were clear crystal cubes floating in the air. But what they held inside caught my attention more. Inside on of them was a crumpled heap of feathers. In another, there was a collection of human skulls. Dan went over to the feathers, while I examined the skulls with Stazzenberg. There were labels beside the skulls, but written in an unintelligible language.
"These are skulls from different time periods," noted the colonel. "There is our skull. And there is the Neanderthal's. It's like a time museum."
"More like a time zoo," replied Dan, who was scrutinizing the feathers with his father. "Check this out."
We came over to him, and found it to be not a bird, but a velociraptor. A small, clawed specimen with pointed teeth and a tail that was arguably too long for a creature so small and feathery. "It's fake," I said immediately. "It's got to be."
"So quick to say so, eh?" said Gert through an increasingly annoying smile. Then he tried to open the floating cube, but lo and behold, it would not budge; it was solidly fixed in the air.
"Here," said Stazzenberg, with an air of authority. "I'll do it."
He was so confident he could do it I actually wished he would fail in opening it. Of course, as soon as he lay his hand atop the glass, the bottom slowly lowered down to the floor, while the top remained quite rigid in the air. With a smug little smirk, he proclaimed, "That's how it's done. Now, someone reach into that box and grab it, because I'm not going near that thing."
"It isn't real," I murmured under my breath, and I reached into the box and grabbed the dinosaur. I was so sure it would be stiff and plastic that I immediately recoiled when I touched a soft, flexible body. Then I tried to pick the box up, in order to dump the thing out, but the box would not budge. I eventually grabbed it by the tail and flung it out quickly, jumping pack, because for a second I thought it moved. But it didn't.
Dan took a lock blade from his pocket and began to cut open the velociraptor's head, as if he were carving a turkey. When asked what on earth he was doing, he responded with, "I'm seeing if this thing is real or not. Now don't interrupt me. I'm busy."
When he was done, we saw very plainly that there were true organs in its head, and what was more, there was a lot of blood. "It seems it just died," said Stazzenberg. "It isn't even stiff. But this spaceship has been under the ocean for millions of years."
"This isn't a spaceship!" I exclaimed angrily.
"Then what is it?" asked Gert, with a smile so smug it was almost as if he were asking to be punched.
As much as I wanted to, I did not hit him. Instead, I suggested we were on some failed Nazi experiment that was heavily laced with hallucinogens. "And you thought the spaceship idea was far-fetched?" asked Stazzenburg.
We found, hovering above a doorway, a paper thin sign that said many statements in many alien figures. Some were too complicated, whilst others were too simple. There was one such sentence that was merely a shiny blue line, that had nothing on it, but it hurt your eyes to look upon it, and when you turned away, the imprints of strange hexagonal shapes were left on your eyes. We passed through the doorway and found a room more shocking than the previous. The same glass cubes stood strongly in the air, only these ones were bigger. And they held not dinosaurs, but men.
They were all kinds of men. There was a business man in one box. A cave man in another. There was a knight and a Roman. There was an Egyptian slave and a British soldier. A man from every time period and most countries was in a box, every one of them slumped in a chair, dead. Whilst Stazzenburg opened the crystal cage of an Italian painter, I went over to some men who appeared to be from the future. His skin was tan, and his eyes were brightly shining. Several more men from the future, in silver clothing and holographic imaging, lay dead in their chairs. They seemed to get taller and weaker, then suddenly grow shorter, but not any stronger. The last one had a massive crack in his head.
After the postmortem, Stazzenburg said for all to hear, "This man has died from brain injury. His head was slammed rather forcefully into the glass."
"Now that you mentioned it," said Dan, "something didn't look quite right about the inside of that velociraptor's head. Now I think it too died by concussion. I think this spacecraft crashed accidentally into the ocean, and everything in here died on impact."
"A man from every time period," murmured Stazzenburg thoughtfully. "An extinct specimen. A future man. Is anyone thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Oh, come on!" I said loudly. “This is no extraterrestrial time machine! That's a preposterous argument!"
"And why's that?" asked the colonel. "Everything we find is pointing to aliens and time travel. We find a flying saucer inside a rock a million years old, then we come and see this time zoo and these alien rooms! If that's a hoax, explain to me how."
"Well, if they're dead, then how come they didn't rot away? After all, it's been a million years, and it seems as though they just died."
"Life seems to be preserved in here. Maybe there's an alien preserving machine in here somewhere."
"You can't just make things up as an explanation!"
"But don't you feel healthier and stronger in here?" I did, but I wasn't about to tell him.
"Hey, guys," said Dan, gesturing towards another room. "I believe I found the control room. It's an important-looking door, and I can't open it."
"Allow me," said Colonel Stazzenberg, deluded by grandeur, and he waltzed over to the silver sheet that was supposed to be a door and put his hand on it. It melted away, and we beheld a room that shocked us the most so far. For in it, we found the pilots.
The room was formed from black glass, and there were three silver objects that strongly resembles honey hives fixed in the air towards the back of the room, and a transparent, globular structure, shaking like gelatin, with a pink object that could have been either a heart or a brain, clung to some motors in the ceiling. Now to the weird things. Dark purple humanoid figures, as featureless as mannequins, were scattered about the room. Three were slumped over invisible chairs near the hives. One was right near the door where we were, laying on the floor. And one great one sat in the corner.
I naturally approached the one nearest to the floor, muttering to myself, "This is just a collection of cheap tricks," when I recoiled swiftly, for as I drew nearer to the purple wraith, its skin grew transparent, and revealed what was inside the creature. Orange gelatin filled its innards, and blue and red veins ran all throughout. Large white eyes were held in the usual place by vermilion tendons, and small, round white teeth set sideways were fixed in the lower section of the face. There were no bones to be seen other than the teeth, though there was a white, round brain the size of an orange.
After Gert inspected this, he grinned vehemently and said, "I thought aliens were supposed to be smart. How come his brain's so small?"
"I'd imagine this specimen was for labor the others couldn't handle," said Stazzenberg, coming over to where we were. "You see how muscular he is? Compare him to those other three over there, and you'll see what I mean."
It was true; the three hovering in the air were different. For one thing, they wore clothes. For another, they had eight fingers on each hand rather than three. And they, although taller than the strong one, were as thin as rails; thinner than any man could hope to be. It was eerie. And they had three brains, each larger than the one the strong one had. Of course, I was sure these were all just fakes.
Then there was the other alien. This alien was the most alien of them all. His hue was a deep blue, and his girth very wide. He was smaller than the others, and he wore a suit of a fine golden material. His small head was mostly taken up by his brain, which was so large it stretched down the area where his spine should have been. And as for his arms - well, he had none to speak for.
"I'm now definitely sure that this is a crashed vessel," said Dan, either to all of us or to no one in particular. "These thin aliens definitely have brain injury. See how their brains are squashed? And the skin around their heads are sort of ... cracked. See for the others if that's true."
Stazzenberg found that the strong one's back was smashed in by a silver canister object. The aliens appeared to have a firm glassy exoskeleton. The fat one was killed by brain injury as well. Of course, I wasn't born yesterday. I could tell that these ridiculous attempts at an alien scare were not going to work. Stazzenberg was at the moment amusing himself by sticking his cellphone up the strong one's back and seeing it through its skin. As an afterthought, he said, "Hey, pottery boys! Why don't you go out of the spaceship and contact the CIA? I think they’re gonna want to hear about this."
"Right-o," said Dan, and he and I left through another passage. Dan obviously wanted to do a little sight-seeing first. We crossed through a room of lions, tigers, and bears, all dead, then passed through a glass chamber. We were suddenly roared at by the face of a disgruntled Tyrannosaurus Rex.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Dan. "A T-Rex!"
"Get a grip!" I hollered back. "It's behind glass!"
"Yeah, I know that, but it's a T-Rex! I mean, you could only dream of seeing something like that! But why is it alive, and nothing else is?"
"There, now that goes to proof that none of this is real! If this - this - this spaceship was in the dirt for a million years, why is he still all roaring about and being hungry?! It's impossible; the whole thing!"
"Maybe he survived the impact," said Dan thoughtfully. "And maybe the preservation machine here can enable you to live without food."
"Now if that isn't far-fetched!” ‘I commented angrily. "It's obviously hypnosis, drugs or a master prank!"
"Can you imagine the conditions?" said Dan rather suddenly, looking up pitifully at the scaled monster who was trying his mightiest to eat him through the glass. "Being imprisoned in a featureless cage for a million years, no food, no company, nothing. Not even the comfort knowing that someday you would die. With only your dreams and idle thoughts to comfort you."
"Yeah, I'll cry for the dinosaur later,” ‘I said as we continued into a room of strange articles. "But right now, I'm preoccupied with the tedious job of dealing with a couple of gullible loons! None of this is real! None of it! This isn't a time machine, and these are not - not aliens gathering time trinkets for some kind of zoo! And there is no such thing as collecting all types of humans! There can't be!"
And as I rounded that fateful corner, I could never have known that this would be the minute my life was dramatically altered. I still remember the thin walls I rounded, how I was forcefully halted in my tracks as I beheld an impossible and terrible sight.
"No," I remember myself saying. "This must be some hallucination. There is no such thing as time travel. There can't be."
For there, slumped dead in a chair, was me.
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