Project: ReGenesis

“I’d like to thank the three of you for coming. You’re here to be updated on Project: ReGenesis,”

said Dr. Kacey Kincaid, Her six-foot frame and Nordic features, a testament to the Goddess, Freya.

“We have a lot to cover. We should proceed immediately.”

The gentleman to her right, a smaller figure with thick glasses and hematite-java skin nodded as Dr. Kincaid spoke. He entered the minutes with a one-handed keyboard as Dr Kincaid spoke. He was Dr. Rohan Shah, the leading Theoretical Physicist from India’s International Astrophysics program. You could wallpaper an office with his doctorates. In addition to ambidexterity, he was an expert fisherman.

To Dr Kincaid’s left was the Enigmatic General Vladimir Rome, a former Putinist and loyalist of the short-lived Putinist Revolution that occurred near the end of the Ukrainian war in Crimea in the spring of ’26.

He was a tanker during the Ukrainian Independence War, though rumors were that his kill totals were only exceeded by the losses the Russians suffered under his command. He was captured by the Ukrainians at the end of the war. They tried to hang him four different times, once even mis-hanging him so that he dangled for twelve hours before being removed from the gallows.

Eventually, he was repatriated to the new Russian Czar, who in the political instability that followed ended up officially exiling Rome to a small, remote Chechen town. That was the last anyone heard of the man until recent events.

When the dinosaurs appeared, and overwhelmed the world’s armed forces, the remnants unified under the banner of Earth’s Resistance Forces with a resurrected General Vladimir Rome as their Commandant-General. Age had hardened his features, and combat his personality.

A diminutive young Chinese woman, Dr Xue Liang sat across from Dr Kincaid. She didn’t speak often, but when she did she was succinct and robotic. The young woman glanced at the General as he sat forward and spoke. Though her mannerisms were less mechanical, they were precise with no wasted movement.

“The Dinos have destroyed two-thirds of Moscow, and all of Belarus, and the Caucuses will be overrun by month’s end even with my new Chechen Cyborgs!"

General Rome screamed while pounding a fist on the meeting table.

"By all means Dr. Kincaid, get on with your report!”

The burly Russian general scowled at her. He had been drinking, and it fouled his already volcanic temperament.

“Please, General, let her speak and she will,”

Dr Shah said, who then turned and nodded to Dr Kincaid. He pushed his glasses back with a finger to reveal a rather striking middle-aged man. He was still typing with his left hand. He wore a classic holo-moodtie from the 2050s, featuring ocean fish busily swimming. They brought instant calm when one focused on them. Dr. Shah adjusted it, which brought the General’s gaze to the fish.

“Thank you, Dr. Shah, General Rome, I’m sorry. Please relax. Unraveling this SNAFU has taken everything we have.”

The General sighed and banged his hands on the table loudly. He withdrew a metal flask from his uniform coat and took a long pull. He finished it off and shot Dr. Kincaid his thousand-yard star as he screwed the cap back on.

“Project ReGenesis began ten years ago as the effects of Climate Change led to the deaths of the first billion people on Earth. That was 2065. The project’s goal was to capitalize on the newly discovered Balakrishnan Correlate to Einstein’s Relativity Model, as presented at the world’s International Physics Conference in 2051.

It postulated details about the Quantum Matrix our Universe rests in that allowed us to create the Interphasic Multifrequency Quantum Resonance Generators, or put simply: The Portal Guns.

“Our goal was well-intentioned: We sought climate data from nearby parallel Earths in hopes of arresting or reversing Earth Prime’s climate change. We found some drought-resistant seeds in the process, but the parallel Earths closest to us in the quantum matrix were all in similar states to our own, which yielded very little other usable causality data.

“At that point, we expanded the program and created teams of Portal Agents with various scientific specialties and military training who we hoped might be able to perform more advanced data retrieval than our initial ventures by our scientists alone.

It took a year to train a squad of seven of those agents. At the height of the program, we had twenty who formed three squads of temporal-quantum deployable teams.

“Looking to innovate the program further we re-examined the Multifrequency Quantum Resonance data and developed an algorithm we hoped would help us innovate the guns in a way we hadn't initially expected.

The algorithm proved to us that the similarities in the parallel universes we’d visited were related to their proximity to Earth Prime’s location in the Quantum Matrix. This meant adjusting the Quantum Frequencies into the higher would propel our portal agents further into the Quantum Matrix.

“The first data we received back from these “deeper jumps” was grim. Most of the Earths outside of our Local Parallel Universe Group (LPUg) were still populated by Dinosaurs!

The further from Earth Prime we sent the agents the more likely they’d experience three hundred million-year-old dinosaurs that had never gone extinct. We discovered from these second wave of jumps that the comet that hit Earth Prime only happened in a fraction of the universes we visited, and they were all LPUg-Earths.

“The LPUgs turned out to be a group of three to four hundred parallel Earths located within ten QDUs (Quantum Distance Units) of Earth-Prime.

Up until then, we’d assumed all universes were arranged like sticks lying beside one another on a sidewalk. What we discovered upon deeper data analysis was that the sticks we'd imagined were haphazardly arranged, as if someone had dropped them on the sidewalk from waist height. This led us to the discovery of intersecting or ‘perpendicular universes.’

“The perpendicular universes created ‘weak points’, in the Quantum Matrix where they cross Earth Prime. We had to throw out the QDU measurements entirely, as they no longer had meaning.

Perpendicular Earths were always already right here, we just never knew how to look before. Traveling to them was never about distance, it was always about frequency!

The data began to show that contact with one another had always been responsible for things like ghost sightings and other phenomena like the Bermuda Triangle, the Oregon Vortex, and on and on. We’ve had a strong influence on Earth-Prime from these perpendicular universes far longer than we’ve ever understood.

“For the third generation of jumps, we tweaked The Quantum Frequencies again in hopes of reaching the perpendicular universes, but we failed. Initially, we failed. There was no way to travel to the Earths under the safety protocols that were established early in the program. The only avenue open to us were the banned X-Band Frequencies.

In time we received approval to push the Quantum Frequencies into them despite the possible risks of catastrophic side-effects. In doing so we were finally able to begin sending portal agents to the perpendicular universes that crossed Earth Prime for the first time.

During the first of those missions, after the use of the X-Band, the Quantum Fissures appeared in Southern Colorado Prime. Within days of the appearance of the fissures, random quantum portals began to open across the entire state. Within days the first dinosaur was sighted on Earth Prime.

“The fissures got worse as we continued the program. We were desperate, We were on the verge of losing a second billion people to the blistering heat, so despite the mounting evidence that the dinosaurs were the result of our portal guns, we continued on.

The Western US was overrun, beyond isolated pockets of civilization living underground here in Denver, in Portland, and in Salt Lake City. Pterodactyls patrol the Rocky Mountains, and Brontosaurus dominate the prairies. Raptors own the streets here in the former Denver Metro from Broomfield to Castle Rock.”

General Rome shook his head. He stood up and walked around the table angrily pounding his fists on it. He paced back and forth while swearing in Russian. He shook his head as he did then spit on the floor near the far wall. The enigmatic Russian turned and stepped back to the head of the table.

“So it was you idiots in the West that did this to us? Climate Change wasn’t enough for you?"

His deep voice echoed off the meeting room’s glass walls.

“Now you brought monsters to our world? You should be executed for crimes against humanity! Where is my International Criminal Court? Don’t you see why Putin hated you all?” He raised his arms in spectacular fashion to indicate the three scientists.

“General, please have a seat.”

Dr Kincaid said stepping up to him. She was his equal in height.

“We’re not here for debate. I appreciate your anger. We opened Pandora’s Box, you’re correct, but if we’re going to close it General, we have to work together. Isn’t that why you came out of exile in the first place?”

General Rome looked at her with eyes that reflected disgust. He shook his head again. He looked away from her, turned, and ran his eyes across the table.

He rapped his knuckles on it loudly enough for the sound to echo around the room. With a wrinkled lip, he sighed and reached for a Cuban cigar inside his coat pocket.

It was an odd luxury, Dr. Liang quietly noted.

He clipped the tip with a fancy golden cigar cutter and lit the stogie. He puffed until the room grew smokey.

“You ladies know how hard it is to find a real Cuban cigar anymore? It’s easier to mine gold than find one, but you know what? I’m cigar-rich!"

He withdrew three others from his vest and offered one to each of the scientists. They turned him down and he shrugged his shoulders.

“So you’ll kill the Earth with your stupid portals and dinosaurs, but none of you will smoke the greatest cigar women have ever rolled?” He snorted in derision.

“You’re correct that I must work with you,”

he said, disdain tainting his words

“But I never have to like it, or the unnaturalness you brought to our world. Tell me something, do any of you know anything of Modern Russian surnames?” The three nodded.

“It’s not easy to be a Rome in Russia. It’s a burden and a duty. A mantle of sorts that all of my family learned to bear. We were the descendants of war heroes, and our countrymen expected us to continue to bring honor to their legacy and to live our duty every day like true Cossacks... but we were just people,”

He said with a shrug.

“I was a ‘Rome’ in Russia and my father dared to name me Vladimir! So my name alone gave me a double burden of duty to my homeland. Vladimir Rome, war chief of the unifying Russians! I took this to heart like any good Cossack, but I also knew I was really just a kid from Saratov looking to play football.

“Still, I did my duty for my people until there were no longer any duties left to perform. My fellow Putinists went to the streets and burned their uniforms, and the remaining billionaires formed their own armies.

Russia fell into chaos once again, and the politicians sent me to Chechnya hoping I'd be swallowed up. Hah, look at me now! If not for me and my Chechens Moscow would be in the belly of the lizards!

But now we sing Freedom or Death in the streets where Putin once ordered strikes on my adopted Chechen family, and that's irony like rusty steel and tool grease wouldn't you agree Dr Liang?

Rome turned to the diminutive Chinese woman. She returned his look with a typically robotic non-response. He continued on, smiling at her.

“I honor my adopted family’s customs though I am but a Slav from Saratov. Do you know what my home looks like now? The one where I was born? Four species of four-legged monsters larger than Russian tanks roam the steppe.

T-Rexes hunt them for sport and the surviving Russian people for their hors d’oeuvres! Have any of you seen what a T-Rex does to a human being? Have you seen them eat the…after carnage when they destroy a city and pick through the refuse? No. You haven’t! None of you have seen a live T-Rex, let alone one you’ve slain, no one has, except me and my Chechens!"

The General pounded his chest like an ape, audibly.

“No, you’ve all sat here in your safe little boxes pushing your little buttons and watching your little screens while the world burns. As a Rome, I cast the lot of you as Nero! Your fiddling set the world afire, and now you’ve become some kind of twisted dinosaur piped pipers! So yes, Dr Kincaid I do know my duty! I only wish the lot of you knew yours!”

He slammed both hands on the table, jostling the notes, and tablets sprawled around it. A coffee cup crashed to the floor, breaking into pieces.

The other two doctors stood up. Dr. Shah put aside his keyboard. He took a deep breath, his features striking under the fluorescent light. A dash of salt seasoned his otherwise peppery black hair.

“General, please... You have been drinking all afternoon! If you’d like to resign your commission do it now. We won’t tolerate your drunkenness any longer. Dr. Kincaid needs to finish!”

Dr. Shah became animated in a way that surprised the women. He had the soft hands, pleasant features, and grooming of a man who took pride in his appearance. His harsh tone was unfamiliar. Dr. Liang spoke before the General could respond.

“I am not Western, General. Let us all have tea.”

She said, pouring a cup from the steaming pot beside her. She passed one to each of them.

“I must report when Dr. Kincaid finishes. You have fought hard for Earth, yet we all have sins we must own. Your Ukraine war was not what you and your people say it was, and you know that general. We all have dirty hands.

“Respectfully, my people have been your people’s friends for many decades now. We didn’t always trust the West either, yet all conflicts must eventually reach a stage of forgiveness, or they will consume us all, and in the face of a greater enemy, we must rise above the past.

"I lost my father during the Western war for Taiwan, General. He was killed by a Western bomb. Yet I helped bring the dinosaurs here too. We have all lost very good people to the horrors of the modern Western world, yet we must also acknowledge our own actions, respectfully General Rome.”

Dr. Liang spoke firmly as a hush fell over the quartet. The General towered above Dr. Liang on the other side of the table, yet a surreal balance between them hung in the air. Dr. Shah cleared his throat innocuously, breaking the moment. Everyone sat back down.

“Of course, Dr. Liang. You are correct,” The General said with a respectful nod.

“During the third phase of ReGenesis,”

Dr Kincaid continued, seizing the moment

“We tweaked the the Multifrequency Quantum Resonance into the X-band. We simply had no further options.

“There were early problems with the X-banded portals, but we ignored them or performed workarounds. They lingered longer than they should. Some became over-large. One persisted for weeks inside a lab, despite repeated attempts to cut its power.

“The program was overseen back then by Dr. Cornelius Pearson, of London who gave the ok to try and ‘force the X-band into compliance using a Reverse Oscillation technique.’ This decision allowed us to use the X-banded frequencies also led to the Quantum fissures.

“Currently we are monitoring fourteen persistent portals in North America, along with a total of forty-three worldwide. At least twice that number of short-duration portals open and close on Earth-Prime during any one given day.

Earth Prime is now populated by an uncountable number of Dinosaurs. The biggest threat is the T-Rexes. Beyond the Chechen Mechanized units, we have no means of stopping them. As grim as this has been, please be patient as Dr. Liang presents her work.”

Dr Kincaid eyed the General as she finished. She sat as Dr. Liang stood.

“Thank you, Dr. Kincaid. I have have a small team of four portal agents, who have been continuing to pursue travel into the reverse-oscillated X-band frequencies, but with carefully regulated attempts to mitigate the negative effects of the reverse oscillations.

“In doing so my team has discovered a ‘clean’ Earth. There is no human life, but all other life proliferates, almost as if the lack of human life is the difference between it and Earth Prime. We don’t have time to conduct full planetary soil, water, and atmospheric surveys, but we’ve done enough research around the local area to begin colonization plans immediately.

“Given the state of Earth-Prime, and the possibility it may not be habitable to humans long term we are commissioning three thousand emergency colonial call-ups.We’re calling this perpendicular Earth, Terra. We shall begin the colonization of Terra in hopes of creating a new home free of dinosaurs.”

The General shook his head in disgust. He took a nip from his flask and puffed heartily on the cigar.

Two years later. Terra Colony: Bravo (Epilogue)

Officer Arianna Chronis: final log entry- 04/19/2077

It’s hard to explain in one journal entry what’s wrong with Terra, but the scientists couldn’t have known why this planet had no humans. None of us could have known without years of soil samples, and rad readings from more than one location in Colorado-T.

We discovered as we erected the military facilities and essential infrastructure that Terra had suffered a nuclear holocaust hundreds of years prior to our arrival. More importantly, the fauna that developed as a result appeared to advance genetically in real-time.

It’s as if Life on Terra evolves with each generation. Beneficial mutations appear commonly across all the faunal species our scientists have examined to date.

Alpha Colony was destroyed by repeated attacks from what we started calling The Dire Wolves. They’re as big as horses and speak to one another in an advanced canine language. They travel with packs of dogs who do for them what dogs had always done for humans before Point, hunt, track, and raise alarms for their masters.

Despite our technological advantages, Alpha Colony was overwhelmed when at least a half-dozen Dire Wolf packs made a coordinated attack on the colony. We counted just over Ninety wolves and hundreds of dogs who murdered one thousand people in less than a day. This was an intelligent, ruthless attack that targeted critical infrastructure and personnel tactically and strategically.

Charlie Colony died of The Sickness. The microbial profiles from the original soil, air, and water samples taken back to Earth Prime were identical to ours. Air, water, all of it was identical down to the claws of the Azotobacter, Azospirillium, and Clostridium bacteria in the soil. But like all life on Terra, we discovered that even the bacteria evolved faster.

Unobtrusive soil bacteria quickly adapted to our strongest Antibiotics and became lethal to humans before we could finish researching how the bacteria reacted to us in the first place. Bravo soldiers burned Charlie Colony to ash, but even that proved disastrous as the Sickness made its way to them too.

Bravo Colony is down to myself, and forty other personnel. The Dire Wolves hit us pretty hard, and then we lost about a third of our survivors to The Sickness once our soldiers returned from Charlie Colony.

We were preparing our return to Earth to present our report when we discovered that all forty-one of us survivors are carriers of the Sickness.

God, Allah, and Yahweh bless us one and all.

So we die here, eaten by wolves or consumed by bacteria. I have isolated two dozen blood samples, which you’ll find in this case, along with my full report on Earth-Prime's failure to colonize Terra.

Citizens of Earth-Prime: Do not come here! Terra doesn’t want you!

-Dr. Arianna Chronis