Pandora's Box

The dinosaurs didn’t have a chance either way…

The creature hid in the brush while the large animals passed on the trail. She knew the lumbering beasts couldn’t smell her, the wind was blowing her way. Otherwise, she would run to the forest and seek protection in the trees.

After they were gone, Chma continued gathering berries and nuts. There were hungry children in the cave and winter was approaching. Being eaten by a twenty ton animal was a serious risk. That had to be balanced against the threat of starvation, under a thick blanket of ice and snow.

Chma was the first of her kind to have a name. She gave it to herself. An ordinary task from the human perspective. For her, a giant step. Her species rarely used their brains for anything beyond survival.

She had never spoken her name. Her descendents will not speak for many thousands of generations. That is the nature of evolution.

Chma filled the basket and began the trek back to the cave. It was on the side of a mountain, behind the trees. Where the giants of the valley could not go.

She had learned how to make a basket out of thin branches and bark strips. A bird’s nest had fallen out of a tree. She had what humans call an idea. Birds take twigs and leaves and weave them together in a circle.

It did not take Chma long to do the same thing. She was smarter than any bird and had opposable thumbs. Birds only have a beak and claws.

On her planet, Chma was the first Leonardo Da Vinci. The first Steven Jobs. The discovery she was about to make would be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Eons ago, a massive asteroid collided with Earth. The atmosphere was choked with dust. It was an environmental catastrophe. The majority of life perished. Creatures as large as dinosaurs had no chance. Anything that big needs a lot of food to survive. With the sun blocked by thick, unrelenting dust clouds, vegetation dies.

What can survive a planet killing event? Something small. Something that can crawl into a hole. On Earth, that was our distant relative. A rodent-like mammal, who survived the calamity by hiding underground. They lived off of the detritus of the dinosaur age.

The planet slowly healed. The survivors crawled from their holes. Evolution picked up where it left off. Mammals now ruled the land. Millions of years passed. Some long extinct ancestor climbed down from the trees and started walking upright. The age of humans began.

No such event had occurred on Chma’s planet. The giant creatures still roamed. Her species eked out an existence, always in places the big animals could not go. Life is hard on the steep mountain slopes. Evolution is slow. A simple event tilted the balance forever.

It had been raining on and off all day. Chma walked faster as she heard the thunder closing in. She knew she would not make it back before the storm hit.

More than one of her clan had died in this kind of weather. Falling trees, landslides, and raging water are common threats.

She came to a massive tree that had fallen over. The roots had pulled out of the steep slope, leaving a gaping hole. She crawled in and waited out the storm.

The rain ebbed and the dark clouds rolled out. Chma noticed the smell of burning vegetation. Lightning had started a fire. Another threat. All land dwelling species have an instinctive fear of fire. Chma wanted to run. But her inner voice told her, “The forest is too wet to burn for very long. There is no threat today.” Instead of running, she walked toward the flames.

A dense, reed-like plant grows wherever the soil stays damp. Thick seed pods form at the end of long stalks. A patch of it was burning at the edge of the fire

Chma pulled up one of the stalks. She stared at the flaming pod. She’d seen them on fire before and knew it would burn slowly, for a long time. Her inner voice spoke.

It told her about the giant beasts she saw as a child. They had burned to death, trapped between a prairie fire and the edge of the forest. Even the largest animal cannot uproot a tree with a 20 foot thick trunk. The voice reminded her how the charred meat tasted.

It occurred to Chma that fire could be a weapon. Hunters in her clan used rocks and sharpened sticks to kill small prey. A thrown rock cannot bring down a towering beast. A sharp stick will not pierce thick flesh. Fire, on the other hand…

Chma pushed the stalk of the burning plant into the ground. Her inner voice invented a word that would translate as torch. She waded across the stream, up a slight hill, and scooped out a hole in the ground. She buried the basket and made a pile of rocks to mark the spot. The berries and nuts would wait until tomorrow.

The water had kept the fire from the plants on this side of the stream. She gathered as many of the stalks as she could carry. She crossed back, pulled the torch from the ground, and walked home.

Chma and her clan would use fire to force the giants out of the valleys. Those that avoided the flames would kill each other or starve. The age of dinosaurs came to an end on another planet.

© 2017 Serge Wlodarski

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The Iron Horseman

Ah, the origins of the use of fire, always an interesting subject, and linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs but moved to another planet to make cohabitation with humans possible! Avery neat plot idea, and so well written! Yhis is excellent, Serge. I loved it.