 Peter Beagle is more than a little slow in the uptake and has just now realized that it's literary quake X 10 LQ X. It's not locks This is this is very disappointing I'll read a fable I wrote some while ago, but I'm actually still fond of it's called the fable of the Tyrannosaurus Rex Once upon a very long ago in a hot and steamy jungle on an earth that was mostly hot and steamy jungle Delived a youngish Tyrannosaurus Rex Actually, we should probably refer to her as a Tyrannosaurus Reginus and she was a female but never mind Not quite fully grown. She measured almost 40 feet from nose to tail tip weighed more than six tons and a teeth the size of bananas Although no intellectual. She was of a generally good good humor disposition Accepting with equanimity the fact that being as huge as she was meant that she was always hungry except in her sleep This fortunately she had been constructed to deal with The Tyrannosaurus was without a doubt the queen of her late cretaceous world Which in addition to great predators like herself included the pack hunting velociraptor the three corn three horn triceratops the iguanodon with its horse duck face and the long-tailed Whipped long-necked whip-tailed Alamosaurus, but it was populated also by a sort of smaller animals much smaller Most of them distinguished from one another as far as she was concerned Largely by their degree of quickness and crunchiness and the amount of fur that was likely to get caught between her fangs In fact, she rarely bothered to pursue them since it generally cost her more in effort than the caloric intake was worth She did eat them now and then as we snap up potato chips or M&Ms But never consider them anything like a real meal or even so much as hors d'oeuvre. It was just a reflex something to do One afternoon however almost absentmindedly she pinned a tiny creature to earth under her left foot It saved itself from being crushed only by wriggling frantically into the space between two of her toes While simultaneously avoiding the rending claws in which they ended as the tyrannosaurus bent her head Daintly to snatch it up. She heard a minuscule cry wait wait. I have a very important message for you The tyrannosaurus and innocent in many ways had never had a personal message in her life And the notion was an exciting one her forearms were small and weak compared to her immense hind legs But she was able to grip the nondescript little animal and lift him 15 feet up Where she held him nose to nose his beady red brown eyes meeting her huge yellow ones with their long slit pupils Be quick. She advised him for I am hungry and where there's one of you. There's usually a whole lot like zucchini What was the message you wanted to give me? The creature if somewhat slow of action atone for this failing by thinking far faster than any dinosaur a Large asteroid is about to crash into the earth. It sure brightly back at the tyrannosaurus So if you happen to be nursing any unacted desires now would be the time to act them out I mean it added realizing that the tyrannosaurus was blinking in puzzlement at him. It'll happen next Thursday Asteroid the tyrannosaurus pondered what is an asteroid before the little creature? She held could answer she added She asked come to think of it. What's Thursday an? Asteroid is a rock the animal informed her a big rock up in the sky drifting through space This one is about half the size of that mountain on the horizon the one visible over the trees And it's heading straight for us and nothing can stop it you and most other life on earth are doomed My goodness said the tyrannosaurus. I'm certainly glad you told me about this after a thoughtful moment. She inquired What does it all mean? For your kind Absolute annihilation the animal pipe cheerfully for mine evolution I'm not very good with big words the tyrannosaurus said Apologetically if you could you'll all be gone the little creature said when the asteroid crashes into the earth It will raise a vast cloud of dust and debris that will circle the planet for years cutting off all sunlight Your dinosaurs won't be able to survive the drastic change in the climate. You'll mostly vanish within a couple of generations Then just as when the fall of great trees makes rumored last for the small ones struggling in their shadow Then we mammals will take our rightful place in the returning Sun Observing what it took to be a stricken expression on the tyrannosaurus's yard-wide face. It added. I'm really sorry I just thought you want to know and Your sort the tyrannosaurus ventured you will Evolute Evolve the creature corrected her that means to change over time and something quite different in size or shape Or in your very nature from what you were originally my friend max for instance smaller than I am right now Max is going to evolve into a horse if you'll believe it and Louise Louise who came out of the sea with the rest of us in the beginning Louise is planning to go back there and become a whale a Blue whale I think she said it'll take millions of years of course, but she's never in a hurry Louise and And me here it preened itself as grandly as possible as as anyone possibly can in the grasp of a tyrannosaurus Rex 15 feet in the air Me I'm a sort of shrew or something right now But I'm on my way to being a mammal with just two legs There were right books and fight wars and won't believe in evolution How cool is that and me the tyrannosaurus asked rather wistfully Everything will be changing everyone will be turning into something else don't my relatives and I get to evolve at all Actually, you do the shrew reassured her it will take a good while But some of you are going to fly my dear those of your descendants who survive will find their scales turning gradually to feathers Their mighty jaws will and time become a highly adaptable beak and they learn to build nests and sing songs and hunt bugs Well, so the tyrannosaurus I can't say I follow all of this, but I guess it's better than being a night and I what you said But where does this Thursday come into it? Well, exactly is a Thursday Thursday began the shrew but found itself with a disadvantage in trying to explain the arbitrary Concept of days weeks months and years to a beast who understood nothing beyond sunrise and sunset light and dark sun and moon He said finally Thursday will happen three sleeps from now. Oh Three sleeps the right now tyrannosaurus cried in great relief. Oh, you should have said I thought it was too Well, there's plenty of time then and she promptly gulped down the shrew in one bite Savory she thought nice crunch, too, but then again, there's that hair. They'd be better without the hair Turning away. She caught the scent of a nearby triceratops of a nearby triceratops on the wind And was about to start in that new and tempting direction when she was hit squarely on the back of the neck by the asteroid blazing from its descent through the atmosphere as Advertised its impact killed her and wiped out all the rest of her kind in the very short while at least by geological standards The shrew had simply miscalculated its arrival time Which is hardly a surprise as he didn't really have a good grasp in Thursdays either All fables have morals this is the moral of this one Gemini Virgo Aries or Taurus Knowing the future tends to bore us just like that poor tyrannosaurus. Thank you