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Chapter 10

I am become Death, The shatterer of Worlds."

- Bhagavad Gita -Chapter 11; Verse 32

**

Lucien gulped the last of his coffee and leaned back and looked up at General Weinberg.

“I’m sorry General—can you repeat your last sentence, please?”

“Of course, sir.” said Weinberg. He picked up a sheet of paper and glanced over it again. “As of 10:45 pm Eastern Standard Time—about 20 minutes ago—we can now confirm the loss of the following military bases.” Weinberg cleared his throat as he glanced once more at the sheet. Lucien noticed that—for just a fraction of a moment—a look of great sadness and pain crossed Weinberg’s face before the ‘professional military face’ came up.

“CFB Montreal has been confirmed to have been…vanished—along with at least three large sections of the city itself. CFB Shilo—in Manitoba—has vanished as well, along with one runway of CFB Cold Lake in Alberta. That leaves just two runways on that base. CFB Cold Lake is our largest air force base, sir, incidentally. CFB Moose Jaw has also vanished—along with most of the city of Moose Jaw itself. CFB Moose Jaw operates…operated… a NATO Flying training school by the way, sir—we believe about 40 pilots from various NATO countries were on the facility at the time. CFB Esquimalt –located just west of Victoria – has also been confirmed to have vanished. There was at least 2 frigates and one coastal defence vessel docked there when the …event … occurred..”

“I can also confirm the destruction of CFB Wainwright in Alberta—along with the entire town of Wainwright and several other smaller communities.”

“Destruction?”

“Yes, sir. An area approxiamately fifty kilometers across has been destroyed by a…ummm…tidal wave.”

“Tidal wave? In Alberta?!?”

“Yes, sir.” said Weinberg.

“How the hell is that possible?” screamed Lucien.

“Western Interior Sea.” piped up a small quiet voice.

Lucien and Weinberg turned to face the figure who had been quietly sitting at the end of the table taking down notes.

Sebastiano Lomagno glanced up and seemed to notice for the first time the two of them staring at him.

“Uh…for most of the Cretaceous, there was a large sea that cut the North American continent in half. It stretched from the Gulf of Mexico, covered all of Texas, most of the Rocky Mountain states, and nearly all of Saskatchewan and Alberta before connecting to the Arctic Ocean. It’s the reason why there’s oil in Texas and Alberta and all that coal in the rest of the areas, sir—millions of years of dead plants and animals piling up.”

“The whole middle section of the continent?” asked Weinberg, incredulously.

Sebastiano nodded his head. “Pretty much. Obviously it fluctuated a lot in size and shape over the years as the Rockies were being formed—“

Now it was Lucien who piped up “Uh—being formed? You mean—the Rockies didn’t exist back then either?”

“Most of them are pretty young—geologically speaking. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Rocky Mountains have…uh…vanished.”

Weinberg wrinkled his brow and glanced down at his papers. He shuffled through them for a few seconds before pulling out a sheet. Looking at it for a brief moment, he glanced at Sebastiano for a second or two before turning to face Lucien.

“I was going to bring this up later after I had it confirmed but there has been unconfirmed reports that at least two mountains have…vanished.”

Lucien turned to Sebastiano. “How deep was this sea?”

Sebastiano shrugged his shoulders. “Depends a lot on the where and when but no more than a few hundred meters usually. I think at its deepest point it would have been something like 800 meters deep or so.”

Weinberg leaned back, rubbing his face with a hand. “Ah, Christ! As if things aren’t bad enough, now we have to worry about fucking tidal waves all across the prairies!”

“The good news, general-“, said Sebastiano, “—is that we don’t have too much to worry about from those dinosaurs in that area.”

Lucien and Weinberg looked at him in confusion.

“Bottom of a sea, remember? Ninety percent of all the dinosaurs that came through would be marine animals. They’re dead once all the water drains away or dries up. Except for those few that manage to make it to a lake or a river, they’ll all be dead in a few days. Even then—the Sea was mostly saltwater so I’m not sure how long they can survive in freshwater.”

“So—no worries about the dinosaurs—but so sorry about the 200 meter high tidal waves sweeping across the land, huh?” said Weinberg with a sarcastic edge in his voice.

Sebastiano shrugged his shoulders again. “Beats having a 200 meter high tidal wave and having all the dinosaurs still surviving”

Weinberg just leaned back and shook his head. “Just when things can’t get any weirder—now we have to worry about the entire central portion of North America turning into one big sea. Damn—that’s going to really mess up all the wheat production there…”. Weinberg scribbled down a note on one of the sheets in front of him.

“General—back to the topic at hand—how are the rest of our bases?”

“The surviving bases are all at full readiness, sir. They’re assisting both RCMP and local police forces in numerous search and rescue, evacuation, and refugee relocation operations as well as various, uh, dino-hunts.”

“Ah—I see. Good.”

“I’m also pleased to announce that we’ve established contact with our forces in Afghanistan, sir.”

Lucien blinked.

“How are they?”

“Except for a patrol that hasn’t checked in yet, all personnel and the entire base are safe and sound—with the exception of three slightly damaged Leopard tanks.”

“Tanks?”

“Seems that several of our tanks ran into a---“ --Weinberg glanced down and picked up a sheet of paper and started reading from it— “—uh, ran into a ‘bus sized armadillo like thing with spikes and shit like that all over its back and a big-ass cannon ball on its tail’ – this is a direct quote from the tank force commander, sir—and engaged in a firefight with said creature.”

Lucien raised an eyebrow in vague amusement.

“Our tanks got into a fight with a fucking dinosaur?!”

“Yes, sir—popped right out of nowhere and proceeded to start attacking our tanks with that club tail. Our forces—after the initial understandable confusion and surprise—opened fire on the creature with—“ –glance down on the sheet—“—with 14 tank shells and approximately 1500 rounds of machinegun ammo into it.”

Lucien had seen videos of the tanks in action—especially what just one tank shell could do.

“Uh—general—14 tank shells into a bus size creature—isn’t that somewhat ….excessive?”

“I guess they wanted to make sure that the creature was dead, sir.”

“And is the creature dead, general?”

“Oh yes sir!” said Weinberg, beaming “Very much so!”

Weinberg glanced down at his notes and continued, the smile gone from his face now. “Our forces there are attempting to re-establish contact with other NATO forces at other bases in the region. So far, we’ve managed to get in contact with the 2000 or so Italian and the 500 or so Norwegian troops there but no luck so far with the rest. We’re going to keep trying, of course.”

“How’s the rest of the communications coming along?”

“A little bit better than before—we’ve managed to establish contact with people in about two hundred or so various towns, cities and military installations in the U.S. and about half that many overseas. With the exceptions of the Lieutenant Governors of Michigan and Montana and various base commanders, so far nobody in any real authority beyond municipal level has been reached unfortunately.”

“Can communications really be that messed up, general? Don’t we have all kinds of back-ups—satellite phones, cellphones, landlines, internet, -“

“With all due respect, sir”, said Weinberg, interrupting Lucien, “—we had all that stuff before. Now massive chunks of the landline system are missing, at least one third of all the satellites in orbit that handled cell phones and telecommunications are gone, god knows how many radio transmitters are either missing or destroyed and even the oceans weren’t immune from all the…uh…replacements. Some of the undersea cables have been sliced as well, sir. Then there’s the fact that we are facing what is essentially a worldwide power blackout….”

Weinberg trailed off, letting out a deep sigh. When he started again, he had what Lucien had come to see as the ‘General Face’ again – completely formal and professional.

“Yes—eventually we will be able to stitch together all the broken bits and pieces into something resembling a whole. Yes—eventually we’ll come up with workaround solutions to all the missing satellites. Yes—eventually we’ll have the power back on. Yes—eventually we will have replaced all the destroyed transmitters. But that’s going to take time, sir….”

Lucien nodded his head.

“What kind of information are we getting about the outside world, general?”

“Looks like our suspicions about this being a global phenomenon have been confirmed. From what bits and pieces of information we’ve been able to put together, every major country has been hit to some extent. And yes—everyone has been seeing dinosaurs. You wouldn’t believe how many people were relieved to know that they’re not the only ones. As to how the other countries are handling it—pretty much the same way as we are. In fact—there’s indications we may be in slightly better shape than anyone else.”

“How so?”

“Second biggest country in the world but only a population of 33 million, sir. A large percentage of the replacement areas that occurred in our country happened in largely uninhabited regions that were already wilderness to begin with. That’s going to be a major headache long term when we have to start hunting down all the dinosaurs but short term—big chunks of our infrastructure and population base are still intact. In total chaos at the moment, of course, but still reasonably intact. Can you imagine what kind of damage must have occurred in some of the more densely populated areas like Southeast Asia or Europe? That tidal wave in Alberta, for example, destroyed an area 50 kilometres across but the death toll is estimated to be at less than 5000. Imagine the death toll from a tidal wave 200 meters high sweeping across 50 kilometres of, say, England or France or India?”

Lucien didn’t even want to try to contemplate that.

“General—about the cities that have…vanished….”

Weinberg and Sebastiano exchanged a glance. They nodded and Weinberg turned back towards Lucien.

“I’ll have Mr. Lomagno handle this part of the debriefing, sir.”

Sebastiano shuffled through a stack of papers in front of him for a few seconds and then glanced up.

“As of 10:45 pm, these are the urban centres besides Ottawa that have been affected: Hamilton Airport along with approximately the southern third of the city; three sections of the Island of Montreal, each about 2 kilometres across but nowhere else in the rest of the city; the eastern half of Drummondville; the entire city of North York; the—“

“Just a moment”, interrupted Lucien. “Uh—how much of North York is…gone?”

“Uh—“ –glance down – “—from highway 407 to highway 401 and from Warden Avenue to Bathurst Street, sir…”

“Sir?” asked Sebastiano.

Lucien shook his head. “Go on…”

“Yes, sir. Uh…a five kilometre section centered on Bradford, Ontario. A ten kilometre section centred on Weyburn, Saskatchewan. And a section with a radius of five kilometres that was centered on highway 363 that lies between Moose Jaw and the Canadian Forces Base Moose Jaw—this had the effect of taking out the entire city and the base. Those are the major centres that were affected. Of course, there’s a number of small villages and towns that have been affected as well but we’re still trying to confirm the details on those. We’ll have a clearer idea of the extent tomorrow morning. ”

Lucien shook his head again.

“How many?”, asked Lucien. “How many people in total have vanished?”. He noticed that his voice wasn’t breaking like last time.

“Ummm…the total number of people who have vanished now stands at approximately 1.8 million, sir.”

“And the number of dead?”

Sebastiano glanced at Weinberg. Weinberg leaned forward.

“That’s impossible to say at this time, sir” said Weinberg. “At least 10,000 are suspected at this point from the various natural disasters that have occurred but that’s just an estimate at this point and it doesn’t include the ones killed by all the dinosaurs running around. It’s going to be days…maybe even weeks…before we can give you a better number. I’m…I’m sorry, sir.”

Lucien nodded his head.

“Keep me posted on further developments, General.”

“I’ll have another report ready for you at 0600, sir.”

“Then I guess we better get some sleep…”

Lucien couldn’t sleep.

Everytime he tried to shut his eyes, he kept having visions of thousands…millions…of people screaming and calling out for his help.

Lucien decided to get himself a tea or something and walked into the canteen of the centre—and did a double take when he saw Sebastiano there quietly sipping coffee, his two hands wrapped around a large mug—just like a little old lady with poor circulation would do.

Sebastiano glanced up. “Evening, Mr. Prime Minister. Trouble sleeping?”

Lucien nodded “Anything in this place that can help?”

“There’s some chamomile tea in the cupboard behind you. I would recommend staying away from the coffee if you know what’s good for you.”

“That bad?”

“Depends on whether or not you think coffee should have both the consistency and taste of tar, sir.”

“Ah. One cup of tea coming up then.”

Lucien sat down while waiting for the water to boil.

“By the way Sebastiano—may I ask—what exactly is your function here?”

Sebastiano leaned back in deep contemplation.

“That’s a good question. I think that I’ve become by default the unofficial science advisor here”

“Want to make it official?”

“Sir?”

“I’m going to need lots of smart people helping me out and you obviously seem to know a lot about dinosaurs—“

“I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, sir” protested Sebastiano.

“You know a hell more than anyone else here and in addition, were able to put together a very informative report in less than an hour despite having just been plucked out of Ground Zero in Ottawa. In my book, anybody who can go through all that and still do his job deserves to get a promotion.”

“So—what kind of benefits do I get as Official Prime Ministerial Science Advisor?”

“Pretty much what you were getting as Unofficial Prime Ministerial Science Advisor but now you get a cool title.”

“Ah—government….”

“Take the job?”

“But of course, sir. Thank you.”

“So—before you got here—what were you doing for the government?”

“My official title? I was a policy and research advisor attached to the Associate Deputy Minister’s Office. My job was ostensibly to just write and analyze various projects but my duties became steadily….uh….I believe the term the human resources lady used was ‘robust’, sir.”

“Such as?”

“Wrote speeches, briefing notes, clarified talking points and a wide variety of similar tasks for both the Associate Deputy Minister and the Deputy Minister.”

“Ah—so you were the guy who actually made those guys look like they were smart and informed?”

Sebastiano blushed for a second and snickered for a moment before replying “Well—I wouldn’t go so far as to—“

“Relax—I’m well aware of the reputations that many of my colleagues and their immediate subordinates have among the public service. I’m also aware that if it weren’t for guys like you covering their asses all the time, the entire government structure would have fallen apart sometime around…oh…1889 or so. It’s pretty much the case in every other country, don’t you know.”

“Indeed I do—took a lot of history and political science courses in university.”

Lucien glanced questioningly at Sebastiano. “I thought you took science courses? At least that’s the impression I got from your presentations.”

Sebastiano blushed “Well—let’s just say that I was what you would call a professional student back in college.”

The water began to boil and Lucien got up and poured two cups of tea and set them down in front of them.

“Professional student? Go on….”

“You sure you want to hear this story, sir?”

“As I’m hiring you as my new science advisor, I believe I am required to check your references, so—yeah I want to hear…” said Lucien, smirking.

“Well…”, started Sebastiano, “When I started McGill university I was like many other students—liked the idea of university—no freaking clue what exactly I wanted to do with my life. So I started off doing a major in psychology, switched to anthropology the next semester, then switched to history the semester after that, then biology then physics then geology then wildlife management –“

Lucien raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“—my ‘wilderness period’, sir…”

“Ahhhhhh….”

“—then journalism, then…well…you get the idea, sir. Anyway—after six years of university—“

Another raised eyebrow from Lucien.

“—like I said—‘professional student’—I was asked by the university ever so politely to just pick one major and stick with it once and for all. So that’s how I ended up with a BA Honours in Esoterica with a double minor in Sexual Diversity Studies and Earth & Planetary Sciences.”

“Uh—Esoterica? I wasn’t aware that McGill offered that as a major.”

“They don’t—but they made an exception for me. I’m the only student to graduate with that major in the history of McGill.” said Sebastiano with more than a little pride in his voice. “Now a guy graduating with that...uh…eclectic educational background would have a hard time getting a job in the private sector. As a joke, I applied to a government job.”

“And?”

“Hired almost instantly. I believe the term they used was ‘my diverse educational background would prove to be an asset in the public service’, sir”

Lucien nodded his head in understanding.

“Anyway—I bounced around for a while and then got the job as that advisor but I eventually became more like an assistant to him.”

“So—wait—you were essentially an Assistant Associate Deputy Minister?”

“Government, huh?” said Sebastiano, nodding his head and smiling. “Anyway, my boss Derek—“

“Sorry? Derek?”

“My ADM—Derek Hicks…”

“Derek Hicks?! That’s my Associate Deputy Minister! You were the one that made him look smart!?”

“I take it you met him?”

“The guy couldn’t write two coherent sentences in a row to save his life and yet he ended up being seen as a rising young star in the system because of his impressive speeches and reports. That was you?”

“Yup.”

“Guess I did a good job hiring you then.”

“If you say so, sir”

“So what were you doing in Ottawa?”

“Finishing off a report for him that was due on Thursday. I went off to the bathroom to take a leak and—boom!—the next thing I know half the building was gone. The dividing line for the replacement area stopped at the urinal right next to me, by the way—rather disconcerting experience I can assure you. Then I found myself faced with the problem of getting out of a partially wrecked building—while being on the sixth floor of the building.”

“How did you get out?!”

“By jumping from what was left of the bathroom onto a 60 foot high tree that now existed where my cubicle used to be and shimmying down. Unfortunately I stepped in front of a large sauropod—“

“Sauropod?”

“Brontosaurus like dinosaur, sir. You know—they say that they were herbivores and harmless. They don’t mention that they were angry mean bastards who get upset at strange humans interrupting their dinner. So he chased me out of the forest and for about twelve blocks before giving up on me. That’s when I found myself in the middle of a half flooded street. So I decided to run south. Found myself on an abandoned section of highway—with about 20 or so cars that had been abandoned as well—keys still in the ignition. Like whoever had been there had taken off as fast as humanely possible without bothering to get anything out of the cars. Then I had some pterodactyls flying overhead buzz me. Then I got chased by these two foot high raptor like thingies. Let me tell you this—they may have been only two feet high but they had scary looking fangs and claws and there were about a dozen of them coming after me. So I ran about another ten blocks in a different direction before they got distracted by another sauropod that was chewing up a small park. Then I almost got buried by a burning house that collapsed in the street I was on. All that happened in the first 20 minutes. Things get a little bit confusing after that, sir…”

“My God—how the hell did you get out of the city?!”

“Passing army helicopter. I waved it down, they asked me for ID, I showed them my pass, they ran it through a computer and then told me that they’re taking me with them to Smiths Falls. I get there and they show me a stack of documents and stuff and said to me ‘You’re an analyst—so analyse this!’ And here I am…”

“Damn….” was all Lucien could say.

The two of them paused a few minutes to sip their teas.

“Sebastiano—honest opinion. What the hell do you think happened?”

“No ideas—although I find it most intriguing that it seems that it’s Cretaceous dinosaurs that came forward.”

“How so?”

“The explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs is still unknown.”

“Huh? I thought that it was that asteroid? They found the crater in Central America and everything.”

“Yucatan to be precise. But there’s all kinds of problems with the theory and the present thinking is that there were other contributory factors involved, like massive volcanic eruptions in India or maybe even additional comet or asteroid impacts or combination of the two. But with all this now….”

“Wait—you think that the reason the dinosaurs went extinct was because…they ended up in the future? In our time?”

“It does appear that’s what’s happening, sir…”

“Wait—so how did this happen to begin with? What started it?”

Sebastiano shrugged his shoulders “Beats the hell out of me, sir.”

Lucien stared out into space, still sipping his tea.

“By the way, sir—I think you’re doing a good job”

“Now you’re just sucking up to your boss, Sebastiano”

“On the contrary—most people upon being told that they are now the new Prime Minister of Canada and—by the way—half the country is wrecked and the other half is now over-run with dinosaurs, would have gone stark raving mad. The fact that you’re still sane—“

“—More or less—“ said Lucien, with a small smirk on his lips.

“—more or less—says wonders about you. I think you’ll do well—at least as well as anyone else under the current circumstances.”

“It’s been a very crazy day.”

“It has been a crazy day, sir.”

Lucien looked at Sebastiano quizzically.

“It’s 12:05 am, sir. It’s now August 20—a new day.”

“Then here’s to a new day—and that it will be less insane than today has been.”

“Indeed”, said Sebastiano, clicking tea mugs with Lucien.

Later on, Lucien realized how wrong he was.

~~

On to Chapter 11

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