Chapter 5: First Contact

Climbing back down from the mountain was actually harder than first thought, the artificial storm had made the terrain more challenging by making it slippery, what's more is that the snow was also a threat too as it could fall down as an avalanche at any point. This time around Peter had to be more and more careful as he got down, and never anticipated how long it would take for him to get back down. Going up the mountain had been easy for him, as there was an easy route to the top, but the storm had been so intense that it was not visible from the angle he was at.

It took until mid afternoon, or about 2 and a half hours, to get down to the flat-ish terrain at the bottom. Taking a couple more minutes to get to the shuttle, he looked down at the river to see that all the debris that was had been substantially cleared out of the river, and back to it's natural look. The event had caused many trees near the river to disappear, and those that stayed had been severely bent in the direction of the river flow. The shuttle had also been moved back by a couple meters, despite being anchored down to the ground, groves in the ground marked where the anchors moved through the ground.

"Hello? Alma you here?" Peter said opening the door, last time he heard from Alma it was outside, so he wasn't as sure that it made it inside before the storm wave came through. The lights were also off, presumably because of the same thing, so it made things hard to see beyond the ray of light that was cast from the entrance. One by one the cabin lights came on, eventually revealing Alma working around the main room of the shuttle.

"Ah, good to see you finally. I have somewhat decent news for you but before I give it, how was your trip down from the mountain?" Alma asked, a smile being displayed from its face.

"Don't start with that now that I'm back. I guess you had a rough time down here while I was up there?"

"Apart from the wave that hit, not exactly. You see this shuttle has a couple of cameras on the outside, and whilst checking them I noticed something peculiar. Have a look, you're not going to believe it!" Alma said with a higher pitched voice, emulating an excited atmosphere as it pushed Peter toward one of the computers around the shuttle. Alma selected the recording it took and played it for Peter. It showed the same Apatosaur as before, walking along the left side of the river - however what was remarkable was that it was carrying the small human that was with it previously.

"Can you believe it? Not only were they together but... they were together! Man this is one heck of an alternate universe you made Peter. Imagine the headlines when we get back home. Oh I can't wa-

Peter interrupted Alma by giving a stop sign kind of pose with his hand. "Lets not get too over-hyped just yet, we still don't know anything about this place other than what's here and where here is. We're going to need more info about these animals before we do anything fancy and give a major headline. We can't just say 'oh yeah we made a universe where dinosaurs and humans coexist', if we do go back now it's just going to be a mess in the long-run."

Alma turned from Peter and started making a whirring sound, a sign of calculating the odds and actually thinking, before turning back to Peter. "Fine then, well then I have a plan in that case. Tonight I'll go beyond the mountains and see if anything un-natural is there. If there is I'll set up a camera and a large mirror and tomorrow we'll see what happens."

"A mirror?" Peter merely replied in confusion, though it was justified, why would something like this ever need a mirror.

"You've seen those video's of animals behaving funny when they look at a mirror right? Well this is a normal self-conscious test, if an animal behaves like that then it thinks that it sees another of it's kind - just doing something similar to what they're doing. If they act like we do at a mirror then that animal is self-aware, signalling a high intelligence. After all, these dinosaurs have lived nearly sixty million years more than that did in our world, so who knows what might happen." Alma explained, and it was a nicely thought out idea, and night time was approaching. Tonight was going to be the best time to do it anyways, getting it over and done with would allow the two to leave on time with more info.

The bright bulb of the sun slowly went behind the hills, shadows that cast from Peter, Alma and the shuttle pointed toward the mountains. Once again nothing glowed from the horizon, and no lights were shining on the ground apart from the moon and the lights coming from the shuttle. However the decision as to who would go was still debated. On one side, Peter wanted to go alone because Alma would look freakish and unnatural to the natives of this world. Alma on the other hand, insisted that it would be more reasonable, and if anything bad were to happen Alma would stand a better chance of withstanding any attack than Peter.

Eventually, Alma was given the role to take the challenge, as it could stay up all night to monitor any activity should anything happen while setting up everything. As Peter rested for the night, Alma went out of the shuttle with one of the cameras, a half mile of thin cable, and some mirror panels. Fortunately for Alma it had to front beams of light that allowed it to see for up to 100 feet, and in case they turned off it could see with night vision or infrared. Maneuvering through the V-shaped valley was more difficult as knowing how close it was to the river edge proved slightly challenging.

Suddenly the V-shaped valley stopped, opening out to a flat area so large it was impossible to know during the night where it stopped. The moon wasn't full enough to show everything, and a slight blanket of fog within the area made it hard to see more than 20 feet. As it kept moving along, Alma soon encountered a sparse forest - albeit it was still difficult to go through without making any noise. The green-leafed trees transitioned to yellowish-orange-leafed trees, before something stopped Alma from moving. Looking down it's lights revealed a wooden fence, and looking up revealed a small, triangle shaped homestead made out of stone with a wooden roof.

Moving around the homestead, it found the remains of what used to be two fields of corn, along with a tall stone silo - of which were some unusual markings on the side. Eventually Alma found a suitable spot to place the mirror and camera: behind the homestead. Clouds covered the moon as the fog started to fade away. Alma was placing the final mirror panel as a crunching sound emerged from behind. The sudden noise prompted Alma to turn off the headlights and go into infrared mode - as if anything was near its body heat would show up. Looking around, there wasn't much out of the ordinary apart from in the homestead, but just to the left was a smaller body of heat, level with the thick grass.

The body of heat was moving toward Alma, who couldn't understand why it was doing so. That was until it realised that not all the lights on it were off: some parts glowed in the dark as a safety precaution, but in this situation it wasn't the case. Alma set up the camera slowly, before hiding behind the mirror. There Alma waited for what ever it was to see its reflection, however it didn't do so. Instead it moved around the object straight towards Alma. "Ugh, smart one." Alma whispered, not too loud for what ever was out there to hear, but nonetheless it continued its path. Eventually it stopped moving, though the sounds were being made right next to it. For a minute and a half all Alma could hear was breathing... slow, short breaths, as if it too was worried of what might happen.

Alma had two options; either enable the headlights and get away while it had to adjust, or do absolutely nothing. It was at that moment something touched Alma briefly before moving back, as if it had no idea what it just touched. On the infrared, it was just a blob of red standing from the cold blueish black background. Switching over to night-vision revealed a lot more detail on this thing. It was the same Apatosaur Alma had seen twice before, and couldn't believe it would see this thing a third time. Something was strikingly odd however: It did not attempt to attack or go near, and through the night-vision it looked worried, though that was self explanatory.

"Hello?" It said out of nowhere. Alma had not expected it to speak it plain English so fluently, and responded by shining its headlights on before moving out from the Apatosaur. Covering a good distance in short time, Alma had expected to leave without any thing else happening, but that thought soon vanished when a tail whipped Alma onto its side - A disadvantage as it had to get up. As Alma did so it turned down it's headlights as to not blind whatever was now in front of it. The clouds by now drifted away, leaving the moon to light up the area around.

"H-How do you know that language?" Alma responded, the Apatosaur moved back suddenly, surprised to hear Alma speak in its language. After a second though, it looked confused, mainly because it got to know the shape of Alma thanks to the moon.

"This is... how I normally speak? You can understand me?" The Apatosaur asked, Alma was still surprised, but eventually just went with it. "Yes, yes I can." Alma remarked. "So uh... why are you here? Never seen anything like you before." It said thoughtfully. "Of course you wouldn't, I'm new around here. Sorry for entering your property, I just wanted to know who lived here. Quite surprised it's talking dinosaurs but-"

Alma was interrupted by the Apatosaur "Talking dinosaur?"

"Yes, that's what we call animals like you. Before you ask, yes I'm not alone, but my friend didn't come with me to here. My name is ALMAT, but you can call me Alma. What's your name?" Alma asked, the Apatosaur didn't say much for a second before it responded. "My name? It's Arlo."

"Interesting. How brave are you?" Alma asked.

"Huh?"

"Your name: Arlo, it means courageous and brave where I come from. Anyways, I'll be leaving now so by-"

"Wait, before you go. Can you tell me at least what you are?" Arlo asked. For this specific question, Alma didn't know whether to explain what it was or just say without explanation.

"I'm what's known from where I come from as an artificially intelligent robot: a living piece of metal that can thinking and act just like you can, while still technically not being alive. I know it sounds confusing, but trust me that I'm telling the truth. I did not expect this to happen when I entered this area, and I'm sure my friend will be happy to hear all about you. Shall we meet up sometime? Me and Peter with you and... your family is it?" Alma asked. Arlo smiled, before replying with "Yes you're right, I think that's a nice idea. For a moment before I saw you I had thought an intruder had come in to steal our food for winter, at least now I know you're not so much of a threat. We'll meet up tomorrow right?"

"Maybe not tomorrow, maybe the day after. It's going to be hard for Peter to contemplate everything I'm going to say about you, and I'm sure your family won't believe you when you do the same. So give it a day to spread the idea before meeting up, okay?" Arlo nodded, before walking back to the homestead, Alma walked back to the shuttle, happy to tell Peter when morning would soon arrive.

A/N: Fun Fact #2: The name Arlo does in fact mean brave/courageous. I managed to find out the meaning behind the names of the Arlo family, so that's nice I guess. Sorry I didn't upload a chapter yesterday, I didn't want to make a silly April Fools chapter thing, but I will uplaod the next chapter tomorrow.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter - and more importantly the story so far, there's much more to come. Let me know what you think so far, and as always... see you, in the next chapter. Bye for now!

Next Chapter: Take Your Time to Explain the Impossible