Chapter 12: Catch-Up Time
The shuttle was still in the air, nothing but the muffled sound of engines and the slight rattling of loose equipment were the sounds inside. They had now begun to fly over the Atlantic with the sun rising slowly. Things were calm for once and for a while it seemed that way, the phone beside Peter alarmed, buzzing so much that it dropped onto the floor as if the desk was made of silk.
"Alma, would you mind taking the controls?" Peter asked tiredly. Alma didn't move an inch while speaking, "Mate, I've been on the controls ever since we took off. I disabled the manual controls and watched amusingly as you thought you were piloting. Anyways sure I'll take control." Peter scowled slightly at Alma as he picked up the phone before folding it open, seeing that it was Sarah that was calling him.
Swiftly moving away from Alma, he began to speak "Hey Sarah, how's it go-"
"Peter where the hell have you been for the last six weeks!? Me and the team at NEASA were convinced you were dead, and now you show up in Sydney of all places with some robotic dinos? What have you been up to?" Peter knew she was frantic about it, they had not seen him for 6 weeks, and if he were to guess there had surely been a rescue party for his last known location. He calmed down and tried to calm her down too.
"It's complicated okay. If I were to tell you, well... lets just say you wouldn't the best at believing me."
"I'm not the best at believing you're still alive, yet here you are on the phone. Start talking now, where were you?" Alma had been listening in on the conversation even if Peter tried his best to hide the sound. He glanced over to Alma, and it nodded to him. Turning back to the phone he replied, "Okay, you want the truth, and as a friend I'll give you the truth..." the next thing he said was said as fast as he could "The shuttle we were on shut down momentarily and we were heading toward the ground but somehow ended up going through a cloud tunnel that took us to an asteroid that was heading toward the Earth but I stopped it in time before going back through the tunnel but we ended up in a world where dinosaurs can both talk and didn't die out- we managed to find a family of them who were happy to give us their hospitality and wanted to come with us back home for a while."
"What's going on Peter?" Ida asked, the family had heard Peter talking about them and were intrigued.
"Who's that?" Sarah asked, Peter sighed heavily before enabling the speaker. "Sarah, meet the family. Arlo, Buck, Libby, Ida - meet Sarah." Peter then enabled the webcam so that either side could see each other. "Look, believe it or not they're the real deal, we're going to New York right now to find a place to keep them hidden from the public, especially after what happened at Sydney. You think you have a better spot?"
"Actually I do, there's an abandoned farm just on the outskirts of San Jose, it's only a few hundred feet from the new towers."
"Hold up, what now?"
"Oh, forgot to mention. While you were away our manager got fired from the 'incident' that happened with you. Our friend Andrew has replaced the role so there's that. He planned and built like a hundred of these three-hundred feet towers at a twenty-five mile radius from the NEASA Center. We're not quite sure what they're for but we think it has to do with the recent blackouts that have been happening every evening. We've talked to him and he says it's for an energy source that's better then Fusion, which I find hard to believe. We kind of need you at the board to ask him personally, since you and him are very close friends."
"Sounds great I guess. Uh guys could we speak in private now?" Peter asked, disabling the speaker and the webcam. The family happily went out of the room into the main cargo bay area as the door shut. "Okay, wee need to keep their coverage as hidden as possible. We don't know what could happen if the public knew these were real dinosaurs."
He heard a sigh from the other end "I can already think of what might happen, this is about both an entire un-extinct species and a machine that can go through time and into parallel universes. If any or even both of those things got out there would be as much panic and disorder as the Solar Eclipse Earthquake of 2017! Look, just keep them hidden from now on, and we'll both be fine. I still find it intriguing how you stopped the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, but I guess that's what you get huh. Okay I'll see you soon, bye!" Peter closed the phone before looking at Alma. For some unknown reason it's eyes were blinking with an exclamation mark symbol.
"What now? Fuel gone?" Peter asked, to which it's eyes changed to arrows pointing to his right. Turning right he soon realised that the door never actually closed, and the family had heard just about everything he said. They walked up to him slowly in confusion, as if they had a thousand questions to ask again.
"What did she mean by 'asteroid that killed the dinosaurs'?" Ida asked, Peter physically and mentally gulped as they waited for his response. After a minute of silence he spoke, "There's something I should have said quite some time ago. You see, the reason why you guys exist at all, is because of me." They all got startled, not too obvious but enough to be seen. He continued, "There's a difference between our worlds. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid hit the planet and killed all the non-avian dinosaurs, the only animals like dinosaurs today are birds. However in your world this never happened, I stopped that from happening without realizing. You guys wouldn't be alive if that asteroid hit."
There was a long moment of pause, "Well it seems you guys have caught up on everything, so let's get to the main topic of the day. We've landed at San Jose, or at least the very outskirts." Alma interrupted, the shuttle shook quite violently as it landed on uneven ground, eventually calming down to a whirring shake - the engines still on. Walking out of the shuttle they looked upon the abandoned farm, it certainly was big at least. Moving casually toward the half-rusted door, it made a screeching sound that was unbearable to hear.
"Okay, that's one thing to fix soon." Peter said to himself, only for the sound of a car door closing to come from behind. "Yeah it really does. My goodness they're bigger than I expected, it's going to be very difficult keeping you guys hidden." Sarah said eerily. The inside of the homestead was nothing short of tiled floor littered with grass. "Maybe we could remove the tiles?" Libby asked, Sarah was undoubtedly surprised by the comment, though through Peter it was understandable. "They're from a stone-age-esque time. Cold flat floors isn't really their thing." He explained. Room after room the list of things to do to the place were mounting, and it wouldn't be long before Peter got called in to work once more. He had an idea of how to save time renovating the area whilst also keeping a low profile, all he needed was a little bit of teamwork from everyone.
A/N: My goodness I'm so sorry I haven't uploaded in a while. The exams this year took all of my time away, and it's taken until now for them to cease. I'll be making more chapters from now on and hopefully finishing this story soon. I hope you enjoyed this chapter - and more importantly the story so far, there's much more to come, though how many chapters specifically I'm not sure. Let me know what you think so far, and as always... see you, in the next chapter. Bye for now!
Next Chapter: Undercover Mission
Notable Facts: Solar Eclipse Earthquake... did I actually write that?
