By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
This journal has already become incredibly long, but really there is so much to explain, and even now I feel like I am just glossing over everything in a hurry. There are a few other specific tidbits I wanted to make clear, as a courtesy to our admittedly fragile working relationship up to this point.
You may still be wondering why I can speak English. Maybe you think I am using some kind of universal translating device. We do have things like that, but even a universal translating device needs to hear you speak before it can translate what you have said. It’s much more convenient to simply be able to speak the language. And because of the strange way that the frozen time of my world interacts with our brains, remembering things—anything—becomes remarkably easy. For that reason, as us dinosaurs have observed your world, most of us have taken it upon ourselves to learn a few languages. English is one of the more common languages to learn, and most of us learned a handful of tongues to fluency before even the first honeymoon trips to your world ever took place. For the record, I can speak English, Chinese, and Portuguese.
Before I came, too, I prepared what I would tell the people of Final Pumpkin about where I came from. In retrospect, the story I gave about oversleeping was really stupid, but I am not sure it was any less believable than this the real deal—would you have believed me on the first day if I opened up by talking about dinosaurs from a timeless dimension harvesting materials from the earth and breeding on time traveling honeymoon trips throughout history? And I really had lived near Final Pumpkin in your distant past. Also, the fact that your people had a nickname for my species—king of the dinosaurs—was just too cute for me to pass up. I simply had to claim I was your king. Plus I enjoy commanding people to do things, so I really wanted to give royalty a try, at least for a while.
As I said, I also went back to earth’s dinosaur age, and I put my footprints around the area as proof that I am your king. You are probably thinking it doesn’t make any sense that those fossilized footprints would remain many millions of years, and that’s true. It doesn’t make sense. However, when dinosaurs interfere with your timeline, as I said before, the reverberations through time have strange effects, and the fact that I jumped through time from there to here seems to have had a preserving effect on my footprints… as well as on my dinosaur poop underneath your house.
Sorry about that.
Oh, and my pants. I had those made because it seems that your people have a cultural prohibition against the exposure of body parts related to sexual reproduction. I don’t get it, but I thought I should try to follow the conventions of your culture, and therefore trousers.
There is more to my story of course. There is always more to say. But I wanted to know if it was true, if my mate and many others were really killed because of romantic trips and pilfering organic material from your world connected to other pockets of time throughout history and the dinosaurs dwelling in them (gosh, it’s hard to write about this whole issue sensibly in English!). If I am right, then my people are hiding the truth and destroying the lives of many. Not just dinosaurs, but even more so the people of your earth.
Part of the issue is also that my people are stealing raw materials, metals and rocks and such, and those raw materials are causing buildings to collapse and conking out electronics in your world. That makes your electrician’s business really busy, doesn’t it?
But then there’s the actual deaths.
When I saw the boy from the bacon restaurant fall, I was seeing my mate all over again. It was so similar. And it was horrific. I could not just stand by and watch him suffer, just as I could not stand by and allow my mate’s death to be covered up and lied about. And as I have realized that so many human beings and other animals may also be suffering because of these harvesting policies, I have come to the realization that I have to do something. My people must stop stealing from your people and destroying your lives.
Because as I learned during my investigations into this issue, at the time the bacon boy nearly died and several others did perish, a family of brachiosaurs returned from their honeymoon time period in the past. They re-entered the frozen kingdom at the same time (funneled through the effects of the portal) that a number of people died or were crippled by the disappearing death virus. I confirmed all of this with Thinkwilder, as I am still in contact with him.
Everything I have gathered so far points to my people’s guilt. I am trying to collect as much evidence as I can, but the truth seems apparent to me already. And I have to do everything in my power to stop this murderous business. I am sure you probably still have a lot of questions, but they will have to wait. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I hope you will at least take the time to read this letter thoroughly and carefully and consider honestly and with an open heart the critical information I am telling you. We may be able to save many more lives throughout history if we move quickly.
Take care, Wal.
Warbell