In the distance, Cynthia had Cassie around the waist, the little girl kicking and struggling to escape. Cynthia only managed to wrest the clicker out of the Cassie's hands before well placed kicks and punches caused the woman to lose her grip.

Cassie sprinted off in the direction of the lagoon.

"Fine!" Cynthia hollered, shaking her fist. "Get eaten by dinosaurs! See if I care!"

That's when she noticed the green streak heading the opposite direction. "Zelda! Get back here this instant! Don't make me turn your ass into dinosaur luggage!"

Ian glanced at Sarah and coughed. "Should we wait for her?"

Sarah shook her head. "Why don't you hang back and watch Kelly? I'll go with the guys and spy out the poacher camp."

"I don't need a babysitter, Dad," Kelly protested. "I'm almost in highschool."

"Quiet, Kelly, adults are talking." To Sarah: "What, am I babysitter now?"

Nick and Sarah exchanged knowing glances.

"Definitely," said Nick.

Sarah nodded. "Yeah. Sounds about right. He was sitting around while I did all the running back at The Park!"

"That's because my leg was in a tourniquet! I got attacked by a T-Rex!"

Nick gave a shrug like And there you have it.'

"That wasn't my fault!"

Sarah crossed her arms. "Kelly is your daughter. Not every father gets this much quality time with their kid!"

Kelly gave Ian a look that said Yeah, Dad.'

Ian blew a raspberry. "Sarah. You wouldn't have been invited on this expedition if it wasn't for me."

"And I thank you for that. I'd also appreciate it a lot if you watch Kelly."

"You guys are going to get yourselves in trouble or killed, and I'm not going to be there to help you, because I'll be busy babysitting."

Sarah smirked at him. "That's the spirit! We'll be back in a couple hours. I promise I'll be careful."

We sat around the trailer's front steps, watching the others march confidently away, Nick with his camera, Eddie with a gun and loaded rucksack, muttering something to Sarah about how Ian would be the one who would "Get in trouble or killed."

Ian glared at them. "I heard that!"

Sarah gave him the finger, then blew him a kiss.

Ian sniffed his daughter, grimaced in disgust. "Kelly, there's a shower in the trailer. Please use it. Just remember we have a limited water supply, so make it a short shower."

The girl scoffed, but stepped inside.

A bulky figure rustled the nearby plants. An elephant trunk waved to me.

When I waved back, the figure lumbered closer. I mouthed no, gesturing for him to go away, but he misunderstood, further closing the gap.

Ian gaped at my friend. "What in the hell is that?"

I feigned ignorance. "What's what?"

He pointed. "That."

"I don't see anything."

"Don't bite me, but..." He gingerly turned my head sideways so I could get a better look. "I know you guys have excellent peripheral vision..."

Still feigning ignorance. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"It has spider legs, kind of a Triceratops face, with an elephant trunk. In fact, it's coming this way..."

"You mean you can see my imaginary friend too?"

Ian suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Your...imaginary friend?"

"Yeah. You know, sometimes I see him really clearly...When I eat..." I thought carefully about his dinner. "Recalled potatoes...or bad pudding..."

Lucky for me, we didn't have Kelly present to contradict my statement.

"Good Lord, first the turkey, now this. I knew I should have checked our supplies more carefully!"

"Don't worry, it'll go away eventually."

I quickly rushed up to my big friend, speaking in low tones. "I was trying to warn you to get out of here! They're rounding up dinosaurs!" When he didn't understand, I switched to Spanish.

"Cassie said I could have salad dressing."

"Wait until everyone leaves and look under the trailer."

I returned to Ian. "Yeah, it definitely takes time to wear off. We both ate the same things. I'm thinking it might be the turkey."

"No, I don't think that's a side effect of Botulism. Might have been the potatoes or something else with an Ergot fungus. Funny we're both seeing the same thing, though."

I played up the hallucination gag. "Uh...was she pink? With polka dots?"

Ian did a double take. "Uh, no."

"Guess we didn't see the same thing after all. Of course, there was a lot of medieval armor decorating her body."

Now the man blinked like a frog in a hailstorm. "Armor?"

He looked again, but by this time Heffalump had gone into hiding. "You know, I don't feel that sick..."

Kelly emerged from the trailer, dressed in the same clothes, hair dripping. "Where's everyone going?"

"Oh, just to stake out the hunter camp, give away our location, that kind of thing..."

"We should follow them. You know, as backup."

Ian shook his head. "I'm supposed to hang back and babysit you and the dinosaurs."

Kelly crossed her arms. "Dad, would you listen to yourself? You gonna let them boss you around? Besides, what if something happens, and they need help?"

"Fair point, but we can't be getting in the way, either."

"Who says get in the way? Just kinda...stalk them a little. Make sure they're safe."

I could tell Ian faked his hesitation. "All...right, but let's be very cautious about this, and not draw attention to ourselves and/or distract the team."

Kelly eagerly raced across the field.

Ian limped after her. "Hey! I said cautious! You even know where you're going?"

"Yep! Saw them out the window!"

The man glanced back at me. "Hey, where's your flashlight?"

"What flashlight?"

"You took it outside when you ate that bad turkey."

"Oh. That flashlight. I, uh, kinda filled it up with food and gave it to a little girl."

"You mean like they did on the Brady Bunch?"

I reddened. "Was I really that obvious?"

"So...the girl was real. Not a hallucination."

"Yeah, she's definitely real."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Did she take the flashlight with her?"

"I...I don't think so." I checked under the trailer and pulled it out. "It's still full of food residue."

"It'll still work if the contacts are clean. What did you do with the batteries?"

To make a long story short, we ended up having to run to catch up with Kelly, since she'd made it so far up ahead in our absence...And she took gymnastics in school.

Anyway, that's how we ended up joining Sarah and the others as they staked out the hunter camp.

We watched from a high cliff, flat on our bellies, to keep out of view. Eddie kept a lookout some distance behind us.

They let me peek through the binoculars. One lens, of course. A messy camp down there, on account of all the celebratory partying. They'd flattened all the plants, strewn trash everywhere. Sarah and Nick pointed out the rows of cages, the hunters' vehicles at the perimeter of the camp.

A plethora of smells around that place. Nick's antiperspirant breaking down. Spilled hunter beer. Burning firewood, some too green to be in a fire. The distinct scent of herbivore flatulence from the cages below us, Sarah Harding's suntan lotion, Kelly's bubble gum and skin lotion, Ian's hair gel, the weeds and whatnot, vehicle exhaust.

Sarah gestured to the dinosaur area. "They got the small scavengers over there, like the Compsognathus."

Ian peered through his binoculars. "I knew I recognized that guy in khakis. It's Peter Ludlow. Guess that's why Hammond was in such a rush to get us here. He knew Ludlow was coming...Sarah, you look pale. You all right?"

"You may not believe it, but I'm scared of heights."

I chuckled. "Says a woman who did a trapeze act above a falling T-Rex skeleton."

I could tell by Ian's facial expression that he hadn't witnessed such a thing...And might even chalk it up to my imagination. After a confirming glance from Sarah, though..."She pushes past it, just like how she pushes her arm shoulder deep in Triceratops feces to find out what they ate."

Now I regarded Ian with skepticism. "She did what?"

Sarah looked embarrassed. "I'd rather not get into that right now. We should get back to camp...So they're just collecting dinosaurs to sell for a profit?"

"They think they're losing a lot of money on The Park." Ian scoffed. "I can't believe Ludlow is running all this. That guy is such a nincompoop."

"He's not. Look next to the fire." Sarah directed Ian's binoculars toward the center of the camp.

"Huh. Who's he?"

"Caught him poaching jaguars in Brazil. With spears. Started boxing me into the corner with his arguments. Is it really poaching if you challenge them in a fair fight?'"

"So that guy's in charge..." Ian leaned in closer. "And he's just stepped away from camp."

Nick stood up. "Now's our chance."

Ian looked at him like he were crazy. "Huh?"

"This is no different from Greenpeace, when we fought the whalers and nuclear waste dumping." Nick pulled out a hunting knife and a bolt cutter. "Viva libertad."

Sarah gaped at him. "So you're not just a cameraman, you're a tree hugger?"

Nick snapped the bolt cutter. "I believe there's a secondary reason I got picked for this expedition."

Ian glanced at Kelly, then appeared to perform mental calculations, muttering to himself as he pointed his finger at Sarah, Nick, Eddie, then me.

"What?" Sarah blurted.

"Someone has to take Kelly back."

I raised my claw. "Ooh! I'm on it!"

Ian's face said no before his mouth did.

"We already assigned you babysitter duty, Ian. You brought her up here."

"Sarah, I'm concerned—"

"You want me to do that now? When I could be down there, teaching that big muscular jerk a lesson?"

Ian groaned. "Jeez, never mind."

As our companions disappeared somewhere below the cliff, Ian brought out his Satphone, retreating behind some trees, to limit the sound carrying into the camp. "Cynthia, what are you doing?"

Wind noise and static crackled on the other end of the line. I could barely hear anything. "A little busy right now!"

Ian plugged his other ear with his finger. "We uh, kinda need you to take Kelly back to the trailer. We're at the poacher encampment."

More static. He kept fiddling with the connection, trying to make it work.

I looked at Kelly, pointed to my collar, pantomimed turning a key.

She shrugged, then mimed peering across a horizon.

I crossed my arms over my chest, like Thank you.'

"Hello?...Hello?" With a reluctant frown, Ian put the Satphone away, taking a deep breath. "Kelly, Albert, stay here and wait for Cynthia. don't move. Don't even breathe...Actually, if anyone catches you here, run. Albert, I give you permission to go into attack mode if someone grabs Kelly, but try to limit the disemboweling and murder if possible."

"Yes sir."

With that, Ian limped downhill, leaving us to our own devices.

[0000]

Want to hear more about my adventure with Araceli in the cave? Good.

When Araceli took off, Heffalump quickly rushed out after her. Personally, I thought the girl to be in good hands (or, more accurately, a good trunk, bug legs and stumpy elephant type feet), but Cynthia still felt concerned that Araceli's father might possibly retain some tender feelings for the child, and notice her absence at some point...when he became maudlin and put down the bottle, that is.

Cynthia snatched up a really powerful Jurassic Park flashlight, racing through the wine cellar, into the storage cavern.

Humans. So easy to catch up with. I barely broke a sweat following Cynthia around. Okay, okay, I have scales that prevent water evaporation, so I don't actually perspire, but you get the idea.

"Hey!" the woman hollered into the dark tunnel at the edge of the cavern. "You come back here this instant, missy! ¡Vuelve! ¡Vuelve!" When Araceli didn't obey, "When I find you, you're getting a whooping! And to think I was going to go easy on you because your dad's just like my old man! ¡Estás recibendo una paliza!

As she caught her breath, Cynthia noted, with an annoyed look, that I didn't seem tired at all. She pointed to the connecting cave system. "Albert, fetch!"

I rolled my eyes. "Say please."

Cynthia folded her hands in a begging gesture. "Please! ¡Ayudame, por favor!"

"All right..."

The girl's scent, and the electric lights, bore downwards in a twisting manner for a good couple miles before terminating at a mine elevator...An elevator currently descending through a mine shaft.

A flashlight shined through the roof of the car, the child's hand and Heffalump's trunk waving to me.

I ran back and informed Cynthia of the development, then accompanied her on a return trip.

The woman donned a hard hat. "Kids have way too much energy. I need to drain some of that from her and put it into me."

"I've never heard of a transplant like that before."

"Neither have I, but it doesn't stop me from wishing for one. FYI, they don't make hard hats for dinosaurs, so watch for falling rocks.

The elevator, although seeming to be stable enough to hold construction workers and equipment, did not look strong enough to carry dinosaurs, or dinosaur hybrids like Heffalump. Cynthia hesitated to bring me in, but had to. Buttface, Webby and Zelda, though, she absolutely refused.

"Tell your wife to stay back and watch the house."

I communicated the message in raptorese.

The machine can hold Heffalump,' Zelda argued, marching closer to the elevator.

"Where is the scaredy cat wife who didn't want to get on a paddleboat or a landscaping cart with me?"

Humans put me in things like this all day.'

Cynthia told her Please no, danger' in raptor, and Zelda took the hint, putting Webby on her back to keep her from following us.

Buttface, though...Cynthia couldn't stop her.

"Any idea what floor the girl picked?"

I sniffed the buttons, but Cynthia pushed one before I could say anything.

"Are you developing a raptor's sense of smell?"

"Nope!" the woman closed the gate, pointing to a Bozo the Clown sticker next to a floor number. "Lucky guess."

"Oh yeah. That show. It always pisses me off when the kids throw ping pong balls into two buckets, then hurl the other ones into the audience. C'mon, it's not that hard. Don't you want that Schwinn bicycle?"

Pretty scary place, that elevator. Essentially a metal cage that allowed you to see all the rocks, scaffolds and power cables on the way down. The machinery made some very disconcerting groans as it lowered us into the depths, the lights teasingly hinting that, at any moment, we could be cast into absolute and total darkness.

Also, not too keen on Buttface marking the elevator as her territory.

"I don't like how this thing sounds. I hope Hefty didn't snap any cables."

"I hope so too." I pointed to the hard hat. "You seem...familiar with spelunking. Why is that?"

"Been to a few cavern tours in my day."

The elevator took us way down into the earth. Not too much of a surprise, I mean, how else would Zelda access an undersea tunnel to another island?...Well, if she knew how to operate buttons. Anyway, somewhat a relief when we finally got out again.

Cynthia's flashlight didn't appear to have good batteries. It kept flickering and turning a feeble yellow, not lighting anything very well. "C'mon, you piece of crap." She activated the light on her hardhat, but someone didn't check the batteries on that thing either. "All right, Albert, let's get this girl back to the house, pronto."

It would be easy to get lost in that labyrinthine network of tunnels. While people had put up lights and brightly colored signs in certain passages to indicate where the power lines traveled, and where you could find a toilet or a work station, the others twisted and turned every which way.

I reflected (as I briefly had in the Mayan tomb) that this would be an excellent place for play sword fights and pretend fantasy adventures, in a fashion similar to Roberta Williams in the Sierra company (I'm fascinated by computer game magazines).

Buttface announced that she could lead me back from anywhere, because she'd marked every cavern. I supposed it did beat leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

Cynthia's flashlight went dark. "No no no! Not down here!"

She pounded on the thing, and the light came back on. "We really need to hustle."

I tracked Araceli by scent. Big surprise' that she did not follow the lights and red, yellow and white signs, but rather slipped off down an adjoining tunnel a mile down.

The girl's trails lingered strongly around knife marks in the cavern walls, new and old. Not a stranger to the place, it seemed. A poorly adhering Bozo sticker next to the first set of scratches indicated I should follow the X. Two miles down, I found her and Heffalump awaiting me in a cavern with popcorn stalactites.

I stared, addressing her in Spanish. The basic gist of our conversation: "Kid...how...do you know this place?"

"When Father worked at Site B, I got bored and went exploring many times, especially in the summer. Me and my brother Miguel, we do LARPing in these caves. I like battles in the caves."

"What's LARPing?"

She explained the concept.

"Oh! Like Roberta Williams and Sierra Games! What fun!"

I had to explain King's Quest to her. "I'd better go tell Cynthia where you are."

Of course, when I did this, the child had run a mile further...well, ridden on Heffalump's back a mile further. And hiked a mile beyond that.

Really creepy to be traveling this far down. I started making mental associations with Dante's Inferno.

When I caught up with Araceli this time, she stood in front of a massive stone door.

Uber weird. You know that gold record on the Voyager satellite? The one with the naked people on it? This door had naked dinosaur people doing that same exact pose. And some similar figures in armor, in martial arts poses...And etchings of dinosaur skulls, plants and flowers. The whole surface had been covered in these pictures.

"Cool!"

Araceli consulted the explorer's notebook, then pointed to a moon above the male dinosaur's head, waving her pendant.

"Okay? So It's like Goonies with that skull key thing?"

"No entiendo." The girl pointed to the sun above the female, handed me Cassie's pendant. "Por favor, aquí."

I wiggled my brow ridges, trying hard not to look overly excited. "If I must..."

I placed Cassie's pendant in the sun socket, and, due to being a little on the short side, Araceli got up on Heffalump's back to plug in the other.

The journal said we had to turn the pendants at the same exact time, like the President's Big Red Atomic Button.

"...Tres, dos, uno..."

Crack! It kinda reminded me of turning the dial on a washing machine, except made out of stone, and it sounded like I broke something when I turned it.

"Albert!" Cynthia called from the tunnel behind me. "You were supposed to come back and help me locate the kid!"

Yeah!' Zelda chirped indignantly

I stared at Cynthia's dead miner's light, and her hands, not bearing a flashlight. "You came here in the dark?"

"Yeah, thanks to your wife."

My wife growled in annoyance. Her hands were all over my rear.'

"I couldn't see squat, and it was all I could find in the dark, okay?"

Zelda rolled her neck at me. Are you doing something fun without me?'

Webby yipped from Zelda's back about how she wanted to have fun too.

"Oh, and your wife can operate elevator buttons, by the way."

"Guess that explains how you found us. And the Mayan tomb. I—"

At this point, the door scraped and groaned so much that she couldn't hear anything I said.

Cynthia's mouth hung open in shock at what lay beyond. "What the flipping heck?"

Steel plating and neon tube lighting. The absolute last thing you'd expect to find behind a centuries old stone door.

"I thought that notebook was full of BS!"

I frowned. "You sure this isn't one of Hammond's...eccentricities?"

"I...don't think so." Cynthia pointed at a glowing half, human half reptilian figure standing within the chrome corridor.

The same scary creature that had thrown a javelin at me back in the Mayan tomb. She now held that same javelin beside her, like the pitchfork on Grant Wood's American Gothic (or, alternately, Oliver Wendell Douglas on Green Acres).

"Ghost!" I cried, diving behind Heffalump.

"¡Sí, fantasma muy mono!"

I pointed to the dinosaur ghost. "You see that?"

Cynthia gawked at her. "Uh...yes, actually...and it's super creepy!"

"That's the same ghostly hot chick that from the tomb! She threw a spear at me! You believe me now, don't you?"

Cynthia sighed. "I...guess?" She glanced over her shoulder. "You want to leave? Because this place is kinda freaking me out..."

"N-no, it's fine...Let's stay and look around."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah. I did say she's hot."

The creature actually spoke this time.

A little hard to follow, it sounded sort of like English, but with a lot of raptorese mixed in. If I understood correctly: "Greetings, scaly friends. Welcome to Castle Roogna-Grayskull. I am Troi, your computerized guide to our amazing underground civilization. Please come in and make yourselves at home. We have been awaiting this moment for aeons."

Cynthia trembled. "Albert, d-did that thing just say what I think it did?"

"Not sure. It's really weird that they chose to blend English and raptor like that...and how the heck do they know about He-Man and Xanth? She's got to be a million years old, right?" I gasped. "Unless the cartoon is real!"

My friend laughed. "You've watched too much TV...It is weird, though. Maybe the thing monitored our broadcasts and mistranslated something?"

Araceli asked for an explanation. When I translated it into Spanish, she still didn't understand.

"¿Por qué no habla Español?"

"No se." I also explained that we didn't know why the creature referenced He-Man and Piers Anthony.

Araceli grinned like we'd just uncovered Disneyland, rushing through the open door.

"Hey! Don't go in there!" Cynthia yelled. "¡Detener!"

I looked the woman in the eyes. "C'mon, don't tell me you don't want to take a look at this thing. Aren't you in the least bit curious?"

Cynthia trembled. "No. I'm about to pee my pants."

"If you gotta go, I think nobody will notice if you use one of these caverns..."

"Don't be a smartass, Albert! I'm scared!"

I forced myself to be brave. "I'll protect you from the sexy dinosaur woman ghost!" Hey, I figured if Araceli didn't fear the eerie creature that spoke our language (and, more importantly, didn't try to harm any of us), I should be a bit bolder myself. I hurried in after her.

Cynthia muttered to herself and flipped a coin. It appeared that heads won, for the cleared her throat and said, "All right...Guess we'd better explore this place before somebody else comes and loots it." So she, Buttface, my wife and kid, brought up the rear.

Definitely reminded me of a spaceship hallway from some scifi movie. Automatic sliding doors, button panels like Star Trek. Considering Troi's greeting, I couldn't help but wonder if it had been built this way as an homage. They did have some interesting murals of space on the walls, and a bunch of pictograms suggestive of pop culture.

Not a lot of scents in that place. Well, except dust. The ages must have evaporated all those clingy odors.

I didn't recognize the language written on anything. It seemed like English, but written upside down and backwards, with funny claw marks thrown in everywhere.

Heffalump pointed to a huge map etched into the floor, remarking it would make a good Dungeons and Dragons campaign map.

Araceli mutely gaped, open mouthed at the sights, probably because this happened to be the closest thing to an amusement park as she could afford (well, other than the dinosaur island, or maybe a fleeting glimpse at my previous home).

I looked into a mirror, then flinched as a stranger's face appeared.

A fat, stripy Protoceratops with a fin running down his back. The creature smiled and sang in that English-Raptor language, something like "May the dinosaur society live forever" (I could have sworn he used the word Dinosaucer' in there somewhere). And then he danced.

Although fascinated by this, and the place as a whole, we found the cute lizard woman even more fascinating, especially when she gave Heffalump and I a wink like This way, boys,' gesturing to a doorway.

Zelda growled indignantly at me.

I gasped. "You're right, honey! This could be a trap!"

Araceli, though, peered through the doorway. "¡Deportes!"

Zelda snarled at me, but I joined the girl at the door anyway, then waved to my wife when I saw what lay inside.

A gymnasium...of sorts.

The place was huge. One end held a combat training area, part dojo, part knight practice arena. In the middle, kind of a basketball court with soccer goals, and a big plastic Jersey barrier in the center. Lots of sports equipment scattered all over, protective football type pads and helmets...Instead of footballs or basketballs and such, however, they had a rubber Icosahedron the size of a microwave, marble swirled medicine balls, and a set of softball sized marbles.

Treadmills, weights and other gym accessories (with the exception of exercise bikes - not practical for our body type, especially when we can run at speeds at or above 30 MPH).

A lot of the stuff showed definite signs of aging, corroded practice dummies, barely recognizable as such, plastics on the football pads crumbling, the rubber on the balls cracked, not much left of the soccer nets, but still, not bad for stuff that had been sitting around since, what, World War 2? The Industrial Revolution?

Troi made other ghosts appear: Beings of her race who leapt back and forth over the Jersey barrier, hurling the giant ball, other reptile people doing a bowling type activity with the giant marbles. The medicine balls got bounced and tossed like basketballs.

Araceli and Webby stared in wide eyed silence. Heffalump cheered. Zelda...appeared to like the reptile men.

Cynthia pointed to the ghostly knights in training. "They're doing the Prince of Thieves thing over here."

Indeed, the medieval activities I witnessed could prepare a band of Merry Men, especially the archery.

Troi led us into a connecting room. Although the furniture and equipment looked a little strange, I could tell it either once served as a library for tiny dinosaurs (like Compsognathus) or...

I squealed, squeezing Zelda's claw. "Baby school!"

Zelda nuzzled my neck and licked me. "Abyzool."

Low desks, like Asian chabudai tables., an abundance of toys depicting dinosaurs as beautiful and heroic, shelves full of books, many hand crafted rather than printed. They had large star charts and pictures of nature. Got rather fixated on astrology and time measurement.

All the books had that unusual English-claw mark script. No chairs. Not even at the teacher's desk. Body type. Instead they had little tatami cushions everywhere.

Not sure what they made the books from, but they withstood the test of time. Perhaps they discovered a new, longer lasting material, on the order of plastic and Styrofoam. The tatami appeared to be fashioned from the same stuff they used to make the sporting equipment and nets, so they had decayed, leaving piles of powder, plastic rings, and thread. The desks, though, they'd crafted from durable metals.

As Araceli settled behind a desk and studied a dusty book on prehistoric insects, Reptile Lady conjured up ghostly saurian classmates for her, and an image of herself teaching.

Heffalump found a big spot on the floor and watched Reptile Lady too. His Spanish pick-up lines fell on deaf ears.

"This is incredible!" Cynthia cried. "So these guys crashed their spaceship into earth a million years ago, and built this Atlantis kind of place?"

"I...don't know. How could this stuff last a million years?"

"That door was sealed pretty tight. Maybe it kept the moisture and stuff out?...I admit it's not a perfect state of preservation..."

"I...don't know."

The teacher's desk held a computer, one specifically designed for their species: Monitors set up on the peripheral, rather than straight out in front...and aromatherapy!

By the way, kinetic power. The thing didn't work until I jogged on a little treadmill for a couple minutes.

The teacher's screen saver: Herself and a male (...Dinosaucer?) standing beside a lake, in a prehistoric looking forest (could have been an artificial backdrop, who knows?) Fresh forest and earthen scents, the moist tinge of petrichor...and...

Cynthia ran her hand up my tail. "Whatcha doing?"

"Yeah, a little weird of her, but what I sniffed on the computer trumped all that: "I have a great-granddaughter?"

The woman quickly put her hands to her sides. "Wait, what?"

Her eyes darted back and forth, in apparent mental calculations. "Alien spacecraft crashes into prehistoric earth. Pilot gets bitten by a mosquito that gets trapped in tree sap for a million years, scientists clone what they think to be a Velociraptor, but actually clone a pilot, putting a human brain into its skull...My head is going to explode!"

"Why were you playing with my tail?"

Cynthia's face flushed red. "No reason. Just petting you. I like the silky smooth texture."

"You didn't pet me on the head or back."

She petted me there, but only because I said something. I cast her a suspicious look. "You think I'm part space alien?"

The woman shrugged. "I don't know, Albert! How do you have grandkids in an ancient cave?"

"Great-grandkids," I corrected.

"Right. How?"

"Not sure, but I smelled Zelda on her too. Seems like an incredible coincidence that we'd be cloned from married aliens and wind up marrying just like them."

"How do you know they're married?"

"They got rubber rings."

"The fudge?" She squinted at the screen, then rubbed her head like she had a migraine. "Way too many coincidences. What are the odds? Barring the existence of a time traveling Delorean, this has got to be some elaborate hidden camera gag set up by Mister Hammond, or I'm having the weirdest freaking dream!"

Araceli had been listening to the teacher' and watching her classmates' (a basic lesson a child could follow, with a picture book) but our commotion drew her to the computer.

It took a bit of explaining, in Spanish, for her to understand the situation...well, as much as we did.

We looked into a kitchen. Mostly a lot of stainless steel and porcelain, the food having disappeared with the passage of time...and pests. You'd find a lot familiar in the place, as the reptiles and humans shared some pretty good kitchen ideas. The plumbing seemed to be shockingly well preserved, though I didn't trust the cabinets and refrigeration machines.

The silverware...more like oversized thimbles, you know, on account of our claws.

Cynthia took a look in a corner and shrieked. "Good Lord! What the hell is that?"

It seemed to be a robot. Built from copper, with a passing resemblance to Twinkie from Buck Rogers. It twitched like a dying cockroach in the shadows, muttering something about gathering food, maintaining fabrics and gym equipment, getting some kitchen equipment and computer systems fixed...the rest got garbled in transmission.

"Guess that explains why the place looks so tidy. You think there are living dinosaur people here?"

"I...dunno."

This is about the time when our guide led us to the spaceship bridge' with all the skeletons and stuff.

Right, so you know Cynthia wanted nothing to do with this. I just smiled and examined the computers.

The individual stations had those peripheral monitors and (now familiar) aromatherapy systems.

I grinned when I noticed how strongly the interface resembled NES joypads. I eagerly rubbed my claws together. "Yeah! I was born for this!"

You know what I'm not born for? Seeing myself and Zelda in skeleton form.

The moment I poked the buttons, a wall panel slid open, revealing two Velociraptor skeletons in a glass case.

At first, I thought, hey, they could be anybody. We're not the only raptors on the planet.

But then I noticed the rubber wedding rings. Also, the display had aromatherapy computers on the sides. I activated one, and...that familiar perfume I inhaled when making love to my wife. The other...Well, honestly, do you know what you smell like? Zelda and Heffalump swore it smelled like me.

Cynthia frowned at the display, arms akimbo. "But that's not how cloning works! You can't clone a personality! How can you be this freaking similar?"

I shrugged. "Delorean?"

My face appeared on a nearby monitor. It appeared I had aged a couple hundred years. The other me waved.

I pointed. "Hey, maybe this guy will be able to tell us something!"

"One can only hope," Cynthia groaned.

The older me spoke. "Right now you're probably making several assumptions about evolution, ancient astronauts, and/or usage of a time machine, possibly in the form of a sports car, but you would be incorrect."

At this point Old Me broke into a coughing fit. "Hope you didn't press your nostrils to anything. The natives gave us all a terminal disease."

I gulped, making the sign of the cross over my chest.

Okay, so...going back to what happened in that weird underground place we found...

The computers quietly hummed, a great deal less noisy than the PC I had in my cell at the Visitor Center. Not a lot of noise besides that machinery, as we stood miles underground in a spaceship looking thing. So quiet we could hear each other breathing.

Not a lot of scents, either, besides ours. The reptile people had been dead long enough to turn to skeletons.

On a related note...

I trembled, staring at Cynthia in worriment. "I used the nose computers. There could be some disease in there."

Cynthia shrugged. "I've never heard of anyone catching a plague from stuff they found in an archaeological dig. I think there's a shelf life to most bacteria and viruses."

"You sure?" I stammered. "Because I'm pretty sure they stuck million year old chromosomes onto some animal virus to make my cloned dinosaur cells."

"Okay Doctor Albert," Cynthia groaned. "I guess you're gonna die. Is that what you want to hear? But how come people can uncover like, a mummy of an Egyptian who died from what, the Spanish Flu, and not die from it themselves?"

"Egyptian air is very dry and salty. And they didn't sniff mummy dust. Plus, haven't you heard anything about a mummy's curse?"

"Fine. It's been nice knowing you, Doctor Albert."

"You...don't know how to treat it?"

"Seriously? How would I know anything about that? All I can tell you is you'd have to inject a version of the virus into yourself and get your white blood cells to fight it...And we don't know where it is...How about we watch, uh, future you and see if he knows something."

I guess the hologram lady noticed we'd been ignoring the video, so she rewound it a bit. Again, this is all in an English-raptorese creole language. Araceli constantly had this puzzled dog look on her face, Cynthia grimacing as she tried to focus on the meaning. Heffalump struggled too. Zelda, though, had this look like this was the best TV show ever.

"Before we get into the mechanics, let me introduce myself. G'day, my name's King Albert Raptor of the Dinosaucers..." He coughed, bringing a sickly version of my wife into view. "And this is April. We're cloned dinosaurs (cough) manufactured by the labs of John Hammond, for his (cough cough) Prehistoric Park (cough cough) Australian Outback."

"Dinosaucers?" Cynthia whispered. "You mean like that stupid cartoon?"

I shushed her.

Zelda...Well, April, coughed and sneezed beside the raptor on the monitor.

"Sorry. Cavemen and their diseases." The other Albert paused to drink a considerable quantity of tea. "We're Hammond's pet projects, cloned Velociraptors, human (cough cough) park. (Cough cough) had trouble getting good dinosaur chromosomes (cough) hard to believe, but experimenting with the Einstein Rosenbridge, opening a portal (cough) parallel universe (Cough). Soviets invaded Sydney, took over the Park (cough cough) cell. I escaped..."

He held up a copper colored object resembling a television remote. "Used this to travel to this world. (Cough) was year 1997, but here...prehistory? (Cough cough) I and April, finally free, settled down, built a house..."

"Is there a non-coughing transcript of this somewhere?" Cynthia remarked. "You'd think it would be easier to just write it out."

I shook my head. "I...don't know if we'd be able to read it."

"Named our civilization after my favorite cartoon show...(cough cough)...Picked up deadly disease from a tribe of humans. We're all dying."

Cynthia smacked her face. "Albert, I bet if you built this place, it would have been called the Technodrome."

"Hmmm!" I rubbed my chin thoughtfully.

The stripy Protoceratops creature leaned into the camera, coughing and muttering how they would not be able to enjoy the annual Dinosaucer Days celebration.

Old Me couldn't speak for a whole minute, sneezing, blowing his nose, coughing, getting liquids. "Snuffy, would you mind taking over? My throat is sore."

The stripy one filled the screen, speaking in his Russian accented broken English. "Albert children...raptor-human hybrid. Very smart."

Heffalump stared and pointed to himself. "That does not look like me."

"Parallel universe," I whispered in Spanish. "You're still God's cocktail of random dinosaur genes. Try to keep up."

"Albert know thing from book, but kids, they build from book! (Cough cough) Whole Dinosaucer civilization! All geniuses. Take all Snuffy's lifetime, but they build camera." He pointed to the screen, broke into a long hacking fit.

"Hey, it's not just his kids," a familiar voice cut in.

I jumped back when Cynthia appeared on the screen. Although wearing a surgical mask and a head of gray hair, unmistakable...Plus, she adjusted it for a moment and showed her face.

Other Me rolled his eyes. "Everyone, meet Professor Cynthia Yu, or should I say, Cynthia Torg? (Cough) in between growing pot, marrying the natives and fermenting one hundred percent proof mango alcohol, (cough) is responsible for helping us skip past the Bronze Age and jump straight into the Industrial Revolution."

It could have been my imagination, but I think our Cynthia's hair stood straight up. "W-what the fudge? I'm married? To a caveman?"

"You're...not surprised about the Professor part?"

She gave an indifferent shrug. "Everyone knows I'm a genius. (Damn, I look good when I'm old!)"

"Me and the ladies are making you guys some soup," Gray Haired Cynthia announced. "Be done in a few." She vanished from the screen.

Ancient Me took over again, holding the remote control thing to the camera. I think he'd found a herbal cough drop or something. "If you are a human-dinosaur hybrid like me, and the virus hasn't survived the centuries, you might be able to use this for the benefit of Dinosaucer Kind. If you also (cough cough) prisoner (cough) Hammond's Park (cough cough) spirit of adventure, you may take the Timer with my blessing. Snuffy, could you explain how it works?"

Stripy Dinosaur grabbed the device with a previously unseen tentacle, pointed to a LED display and buttons with another tentacle. "This is Timer. Solar power (cough) like Gold Airplane raptor grandchildren build (cough cough) little Oppenheimers (cough cough)." He coughed and brushed the readout with a suction cup. "Once active, digital readout say how many day, hour and minute before next dimensional rift."

He coughed profusely, wiped away snot. The readout, I noted, had 9's nearly all the way across. "It is counting down to next rift, but we will be fossil coal before it opens (cough cough)!"

Ancient Me leaned over his shoulder. "We Dinosaucers have lived full lives, free from imprisonment. We are placing the Timer in the—"

Old Albert could barely speak at this point. "(Cough cough cough) printed instructions. Only, do not allow the—" His coughing became so bad that he couldn't continue. The recording ended.

We all stared at the darkened monitor in befuddlement, Araceli doubly so because she couldn't speak raptor or English that well.

Cynthia put her hands on her hips. "Okay, so where is this...cough cough place where he's keeping the thing?"

Ever attentive, Hologram Dinosaur Lady led us down the hallway to a mausoleum.

Not your standard shelving and name plate system. Dozens of skeletons stood around us in glass coffins, decorations and nose computers indicating who they were. They even had Snuffy propped up in an extra large case.

Not just reptile people. Four happened to be human.

Cynthia glanced at a name badge attached to a human skeleton and crossed herself. "So this is what it feels like to step on your own grave!" She frowned at the one next to it. "Wait, what the hell is Bryan doing beside me? shouldn't I be with my caveman husband?"

"Maybe he is your caveman husband," I joked.

She looked super disgusted. "Funny. I distinctly heard the last name Trog."

"Maybe this is like how they do astronaut memorials. I mean, they didn't make a statue of Buzz Aldrin's wife, did they?"

Cynthia wrinkled her brow. "That makes me feel better about lonely old Snuffy!...Now why am I suddenly wondering if I'm my own grandma?'"

"Actually, I think that would make you Your own great great great great great—"

"Shut up."

That must have been some kind of secret password, for the moment she said this, a pedestal rose out of the floor, revealing the gold remote in an illuminated jewelry display.

We stared through the glass at the device's readout...

Still functional. Still counting down.

Now, however, instead of all 9's, it said:

29 DAYS

16 HOURS

37 MINUTES