082417

The Fabulous Phanerozoic!*

"I need to get away," Charles announced the day mandatory overtime ended. "Now!"

They thought about the Jovian moons, but Charles didn't want to be "cooped up in a metal can."

"What about the past? Peace and quiet. No cans," Sylvie suggested.

--

The Watsons marveled at the primitive landscape. Plants grew only near the shore. No animal bigger than a cricket lived on land. In the sea, trilobites like spiny pill bugs grazed on azure and emerald algae, brachiopods clacked, brittle stars writhed, and "rocks" crawled across minute stone forests. Mr. Watson questioned the pretty young tour guide about everything from the short Ordovician nights to what it was like living in the past.

And of course, soon the children were bored. The arcade sucked them in. They tossed ping-pong balls to win pet trilobites. They rode Bumper Jellies and the Amazing Flingatron. And they got hungry. Jimmy and Timmy were as picky as any kids, but somehow the food vendor talked them into trying fried trilobite. Sylvie was astonished that her children liked the leggy things.

"And they're not sold now? I mean, in the future?"

"Not available after the Permian."

That conversation took place 450 million years and two weeks before Charles ran off with the exchange student from Ganymede.

--

"Should have seen this coming," Sylvie told herself, editing Charles out of the family albums. "Hope she gives him SAIDS."

A single mother of two, Sylvie had to supplement the meager alimony payments somehow. Surely anyone could write a cookbook. Combine that with a unique import business....

"How to eat trilobite

"Boil them like crabs. The ventral skeleton is scarcely mineralized. People peel shrimp. You don't have to peel a trilobite. Grasp the legs firmly between thumb and forefinger and yank them off. Spread flavored butter, paté, cocktail sauce, or any edible paste on the ventral surface. Scrape the meat out with your teeth. You can't eat the shells, but they're great for the garden. Lots of calcium.

"This is how you eat ptychoparioids, phacopids, or any average-size variety. The tiny agnostids, which spend their whole lives swimming in the plankton, are best tossed into soup. In the soft-shell phase they can be sprinkled on salads.

Some isotelids are 2 feet long. One of these babies will feed the whole family! They are best grilled, the dorsal shell providing a natural dish to keep sauces on the meat and prevent drips. The legs are large enough to crack and eat like crab legs."

I could name that recipe after Charles, Sylvie thought.

Publ. Daily Cabal, 2009

*Eon of visible life.

070117c

543 million years later

and they're still kicking,

under a few kilometers of water

and up to their endopodites in mud,

blind as a bat and stupid as dirt,

but what the hey.

it's a living.

I meant to write sooner, but anyway,

I think of you a lot,

out there in yesterday's tomorrow,

sailing an A.U. in an augenblick,

closer and closer to the ultimate velocity,

and the terminal gulfs between galaxies.

I saw your mother last weekend,

told her the yen for science skips generations,

she told me you're an engineer

but I knew that.

By the time you get this message it'll be

years from now and the end of an eon.

They found some trilobites down in the trenches.

Maybe that'll make it into the digest they

send you this year,

but just in case.

Think about it!

All those millennia of millennia,

burrowing blindly in ooze, down there

where the crust does a perfect 10.0 into the mantle.

The sea floor itself is a spring chicken compared to them.

Heck, they don't look so different from the bugs I used to study,

back in the Middle Cambrian.

Now we finally know what their bellies look like.

I'm kinda hoping that cryosleep thing will work out,

and soon, cos my time is running short.

It would be nice to see some great grandchildren,

In a billenium or two,

when you get home.

I hope you're still writing music;

your mom was pretty good, you know, had a flair for it

before she got too busy,

and I was happy that you'd taken it up.

As you know, I can't tuna fish.

And speaking of fish,

I remember when I read about the coelacanth,

that ancient model of our own Carboniferous ancestors,

caught right before they ventured onto land.

Of course the modern coelacanths can't take that step themselves-

They live down deep, safe

from rapacious upstart cousins.

But face it, we are cousins,

and what's a couple hundred million years

if it's all in the family?

Things aren't going so well since that trouble out in Kansas;

they probably didn't tell you about that.

Maybe the idea of freezing myself is a dead end.

I mean, who's going to tend the freezers

for all that time?

And good old American know how sure

won't keep them going without maintenance.

Maybe I should just leave a note with the coelacanths,

they'll still be around when you return.

The trilobites, now, they're hardly relatives at all.

We parted company a good 543,000,000 years ago,

never looked back,

don't owe them a thing.

But you've got to hand it to them:

If we blow ourselves up they'll still be down there;

with all that water to protect them,

they should outlast the roaches too.