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Rock Forsberg writes science fiction. He has published five novels, and likes to fiddle with short stories and poems. A dual citizen of Finland and Australia, he's always on the wrong continent.
Ken took a deep breath and turned his craft to face the looming black octahedron.
Telling someone not to think about dinosaurs is the surest way for them to think about dinosaurs.
The diverse group of reptiles once ruled the Earth. Massive creatures unlike anything before them or anything after them, they controlled the land, the sea, and the air.
Until something happened.
The dinosaurs went extinct in a blink of a pulsar.
Almost all life on Earth died. But a few survived. The strong ones.
Like cockroaches.
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In time, from those survivors grew multiple species, including a certain type of ape, Homo sapiens.
A feeble race, they developed qualities--opposable thumbs, social skills, big brains--that, in a few blinks of a pulsar, made them the mightiest race on the planet.
By collaborating and creating machines, Homo sapiens conquered the planet: they created tracks and roads to travel the land, ships to sail the seas, and planes to roam the skies.
Homo sapiens developed space flight.
Dinosaurs had nothing like that.
Homo sapiens applied science, and with science they studied the universe. They even surveyed events that had taken place millions of years before the first Homo sapiens was born.
They found out that a nuclear winter, a result of a meteor strike, had killed the dinosaurs.
But they were wrong. It had been the Dracoh.
Now, Ken thought of dinosaurs as he stared at the massive octahedron in front of him.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, the conqueror species Dracoh had destroyed his home planet Earth, and along with it, almost everything Ken's kin, Homo sapiens, had ever accomplished.
A few droplets remained: a handful of space stations, three long-distance spaceships, and a dozen outposts on Mars.
The outposts on Luna went out with Earth. And without interplanetary trade, Mars wouldn't hold for long.
He didn't want to think about it.
As he stared at the black octahedron, Ken wondered if he was a dinosaur, or if he was a cockroach. Would Homo sapiens prevail against the Dracoh, or would they perish like the dinosaurs?
With his captain's order, he maxed out the thrust of his engines, and readied his weapons.
Don't think about dinosaurs.
The End
This story was first published on Monday, February 14th, 2022
Author Comments
I was thinking about anthropocentrism in science fiction and had just discussed the ironic process theory with my son. Naturally these things merged into a story, and I'm glad that they did.
- Rock Forsberg
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