By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
At that time in my life, I was all raw nerves and no patience. Maybe I am still that way sometimes here, but I was worse then. Maybe it was also the fact that Furbud was still grumbling at Thinkwilder at my feet. I snapped a little bit.
“How did you know that?” I hissed. “Did you do something?”
“I did something, yes,” said Thinkwilder. “I saw my mate die, too. Walking beside me, yes, walking beside, and then suddenly she wasn’t. She was on the ground. Twitching. Broken. Dead within seconds.”
Thinkwilder’s neck had stopped whirling about, and now his head was just inches from mine, our eyes awkwardly meeting.
“The medics came, you know?” he continued. “And they performed their autopsy. Yes, they did. And I think you know what they said.”
I looked down at the floor. Furbud was bumping his head against Thinkwilder’s thigh, and I reached out and nuzzled him to calm him down.
“Heart attack,” I said.
“Mmm,” said Thinkwilder. “Yes. Heart attack. And, yes, I saw my Peacewhistle die, and I saw the readout, the body monitor. Organs badly damaged. Organs missing their walls. Internal bleeding. That is not a heart attack unless a heart attack means the heart is eating you from the inside, right? But that’s not how a heart attacks. And I argued, yes, I did. I argued and argued. I told them about what the monitor said, but they replied…”
“Malfunctions,” I said.
“Funny how unreliable our cyber-enhancements are when a heart attack comes along, yes?” Thinkwilder said, his head beginning to bob again. “Work just fine, just fine, until you need them the most.”
I sat back on my haunches, the floor bulging out and softening to become a chair for my behind as I settled back.
“What are you saying?” I asked as the insta-couch blossomed around me. “How did you know to talk to me?”
“Didn’t know, I really didn’t,” Thinkwilder said, and he bared his teeth in a sort of grim grin. “I am asking everyone who lost their mate. Several similar stories came up. They truly did. Not everyone, but so far…”
“But why did they die?” I asked. “Why did my mate die?”
“Ahh,” the sauropod said, and he clucked his tongue, softly. “I don’t know the reason. I am just asking the questions. But folks don’t want the questions asked. And in that case it’s all the more important to do the asking.”
“You have some idea why,” I said. “Right? Are you saying that the Kingdom of all Eternity and Protection of our People is killing its own citizens?”
“Well, I do have a theory,” Thinkwilder said.
He also sat down, and the floor ballooned up around him to support him. A section of the newly formed chair extruded a cooled section shaped like a pillow to give a sense of refreshment to my guest. I needed a cool pillow myself, and touched the controls to have one made.
Since we didn’t eat, and didn’t really have needs in the frozen kingdom, we dinosaurs created special pillows that change temperature to give us comfort. You saw me with one the first day we met.
Anyway, the conversation continued.
“Think about it,” Thinkwilder said. “What happens in that world over there where time keeps moving when we take lots of materials to our frozen world? Hm? And what happens when some of those materials are organic materials? What possible effect might it have on the world to take those things away?”