The airlock doors are open, and have been open for weeks. For now, the moon has a breathable atmosphere. For how long, I do not know. I know that one day the oxygen will get depleted and the dinosaurs will retreat back to storing up air between geyser bursts.

After the ceremony MJ came with me silently back to DM-5. Her kin split up and moved off in wildly varying directions, no doubt to begin spreading the gospel of MJ and to open up geysers wherever they went. I’m content to sit here alone by the pond, to stroke MJ’s head, and to relax by the pond. For the moment she seems to be content as well. Only one thing still disquiets me.

Where the HELL ARE YOU GUYS? Answer me.

I’ve created life, trekked across the moon, and witnessed the birth of a religion. Surely some of that piques your interest.

If not, how about this? I was meant to come to the moon to ring MJ to life. The minds of the sleeping dinosaurs pulled me here from the Earth to create her, the trigger. All of Dinosaur Moonpark was just the manifestation of their will. And once in place, she brought the world back to life.

The original Moony’s empty skull stares down at me. Was she the original life bringer? My heart tells me yes. All is quiet. Even MJ isn’t bellowing for once. And slowly, ever so slowly, a voice creeps into the edge of my hearing.

“Thank you.”

-Dean Brummley

God

At the very top of the mountain, I finally spied the tall slender necks of the brontosauri. They were arrayed like royal guards, in a circle facing outwards along the edges of a plateau of sorts. Just at the plateau’s base were large geyser holes and they were all active. The air was palpably moist. I continued my mad leaping from beast to beast at a rather fast clip, excited at the prospect of seeing Moony Jr. again. I was so excited that I didn’t notice that with my last leap I simply had nowhere to land. I came to an awkward if not quite crashing stop just in front of a geyser, and also just in time for the floor show it seemed. Vines were thick here, winding around the plateau, and flowering in the most wonder ways. There was a large boulder in the middle of what was now clearly a stage.

The central boulder was largely obscured by the ring of brontosauri, and I had a feeling I knew what I’d find atop it. Almost in unison the ring of creatures trumpeted. It was an otherworldly, mournful noise, and deep emotions were stirred within me. After a few minutes of these the brontos crouched down, stooping low as to lay their heads on the ground. My heart jumped. Sure enough, Moony Jr. stood on the centermost boulder. She seemed larger, as if she had grown noticeably in just the past week.

A hush fell on the crowd. As ludicrous as that sounds. But it’s true, and a million not quite reptilian eyes turned to fix upon the dinosaur that I had created. MJ, predictably, bellowed. She’d been doing so since the day she was born, every time she wanted something. But what did she want now? It was a louder, lower, more powerful bellow than before. Soon it was echoed by a few voices in the crowd, and within minutes the noise became so deafening that I feared for my tiny fragile drums. The wailing cry carried on for hours. I myself even joined in from time to time. I mean, everyone else was doing it, and did want to belong.

Abruptly Moony Jr. cut short her cry, and the others followed suit as soon as they noticed. Once again, there was not but silence.

It began to rain.

It became clear to me that this was more than just some unique evolutionary mishap that had led to a peculiar way for dinosaurs to survive the extremes of the moon. This was religion. This was death and resurrection. This was fate. This was life after death and indeed life eternal. Or a few billion years, any how.

And at the center of it all was Moony Jr. She had quite literally been resurrected, brought forth from literal death. And it was she who opened the fist geyser and called forth her disciples. Together they were bringing life back into the world, and causing signs and miracles to occur. Could rain on the moon be anything but a holy occurrence?

So there it was. My dinosaur was remaking the world anew. But if Moony Jr. is the messiah, and I created her from nothing, what does that make me? I shudder to think.

When I think on it, though, it seems too big of a coincidence. Our company has been working on putting dinosaurs on the moon for around a century. And now it they’ve been here the whole time in great numbers. Someone must have known. The founder? no, Dinosaur Moonpark was never more than a joke to him. But it was his idea, or so we’ve been led to believe. Someone else must have seen something in a super telescope or something and the rumor made its way to the founder as a jest, ultimately leading to my being stranded here all alone.

And why was I stranded? I’ve still had no word from you, even after all this. Is there some secret agenda that I’m not privy to? Perhaps you meant me to do exactly as I’ve done, teaching me how to clone during secret hypnotic sessions that I was they commanded me to forget. That’s completely ludicrous, but so is this entire enterprise.

After a few days, I noticed that the terrain was gradually skipping upward. And indeed off in the distance I could just make out the crest of a mountain, obscured by fog.

Fog.

What? How could there be fog? The moon had more mysteries to unveil to me, it would seem. Another mysterious happenstance was that the dinosaurs I encountered all seemed to be traveling in the same general direction as me. It was a constant struggle just not to be trampled. They also seemed somehow less aggressive, so in fact I no longer feared that I would wind up as someone’s lunch.

But I was weary in my moon shoes. Walking day in day out makes a scientist unaccustomed to physical exertion mighty tired, even at 1/6^th Earth gravity. A few more days of this and I might have had to stop. But then I was hit by the idea. And it was a doozy. It was mad, foolish, and brilliant. The most brilliant idea of mine since, well, when I cloned a fucking dinosaur with a turkey baster. Okay, so nothing can really hold a candle to that, but still, this was pretty good idea.

Scramblin up the back of the diplodocus was the hard part. He wasn’t exactly what I would call a willing participant in my little experiment. More like simply indifferent. So all the while he was moving, lumbering on, and I was holding onto his side, maintaining my grip with pure willpower. Ultimately, though, I pulled myself upright just behind where his neck started in earnest, and after a little bit of squirming, I had a rather good seat. Now, if he didn’t make any sudden movements, didn’t pas sout from lack of oxygen, didn’t get in any fights, and kept heading in the right direction there was a decent chance that I would make pretty good time. From scientist to space cowboy in the span of an afternoon. Not too shabby.

Occasionally, though, Dippy would turn and look at me with his large, cow-like eyes. Was there malice there, or was I just imagining it? I suppose I would be angry, too. But if he was, he made no attempt to back me. Perhaps he considered that beneath his sense of dignity.

As we trekked onwards the stream of dinosaurs on this holy exodus became a river. If not for my mount, I definitely would have found myself crushed or at the best simply unable to continue.

For the first time I was able to see all the dinosaurs of the land arrayed out in all their splendor. Most of the plant eaters were varying shades of gray, with gray stripes or spots. But the carnivores, who you would also expect to want camouflage, were anything but. Blue, pink, iridescent, feathered, mother of pearled, and sometimes even highly reflective they were. There have been some pretty fanciful drawings of dinosaurs over the years, but I bet no one thought you could fix your hair while looking at them.

The gradual incline was now steep, and I noticed that the frequency of air geysers was increasing. The fog was beginning to make a little bit of sense. If the trend kept up, the mountain would have an atmosphere of sorts, simply because of the sheer number of geysers propelling their contents outward. It was also about this time that condensation began to appear in my helmet. So much so that I had to periodically wipe it off to see clearly.

Eventually, 3 days later, halfway up the slope of the mountain and saddle sore to all hell, I took my helmet off. Breathing came easy, and the smell and taste of the air was the same as that which had been circulating within my suit since the first refill. I also learned that my trusty steed had quite a stench of his own. He smelled somewhat like a microbrewery that brews homemade alcoholic shit.

The next day brought plants. Timid little ferns, at first growing only around the rim of the geysers, but before long they covered the landscape. Suddenly I felt much more as if I was on a mysterious jungle island than the moon. But for the gravity and the always looming Earth I could have easily pretended so. Trees even were beginning to grow, but they were small and shy as of yet.

The path became slow, winding, and exceedingly rocky. I gave up even looking for a brontosaurus track and trusted that my lumbering companions had some idea of where they were going. Indeed the destination seemed obvious even to me. We were going to the summit, the very top of this mountain that dwarfed anything in my wildest imagination.

Some of the ferns had what appeared to be berries on them, and these I tried eagerly when they passed within reach. It wasn’t until I’d downed few handfuls that I realized just hungry I was. It had been days and days since I’d eaten and I hadn’t even noticed in the excitement. My fellow pilgrims were enjoying the greenery as well, much more greedily than me.

The summit was rapidly approaching and the great flood of dinosaurs had begun to resemble a rush hour traffic jam. Things began to grind to a halt, and I began to lose my patience. After several hours of staying in the same spot, I bid Dippy farewell and took a flying leap. I was propelled a decent ways and awkwardly landed on the head of an irate Iguanodan. And thus I began hopping to the summit.

My little escapade into the cave had dramatically changed the lunar landscape. Well, to be fair, any change is a dramatic one on the moon, which presumably had stayed still and gray for long millennia. But even so, this was a whopper. Now instead of the prospect of rocks and dust ahead, there was an even chance I might come across an irate allosaurus. And after my adventure in the cave, it wasn’t as exciting a prospect as it had been. But the truly remarkable change was the interaction between the dinosaurs. These dinosaurs obviously knew how to use the moon to their advantage and it came naturally to them. So they were jumping, leaping, and dancing. And they all landed gracefully as swans. Not that I’ve ever actually seen swans land. The other thing that was hard to miss was just how much mating there was going on. I’d never imagined that dinosaurs were very randy, but they really went at it. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen two diploduci love. I shouted “Get a cave!” through my helmet numerous times, to now avail. Other dinos were building nests out of various rocks.

I didn’t (and still don’t) know what to make of all this. But I suspect that if I had been freeze dried for countless centuries and I knew I had only a limited amount of oxygen before I collapsed again, I’d want to make the most of it too. Collapsing. The word jolted me back into thinking about my own limited air supply. Unless I found one of those oxygen geysers I was going to die a horrible gasping death. But I would have to depend on a dinosaur to find one for me, for I was far too weak to move the boulders myself. How aggravating. But I had to imagine that pretty soon every cave dweller who’d woken up would soon be searching, assuming they were smart enough. Maybe only MJ possessed the intellect to actively look for them. Maybe that’s why the others revered her so. I journeyed on, following tracks that I desperately hoped were brontosaurus. Now that we were away from the cave, they were easier to make out, and they seemed to be of the right size and number. If not, well then at least I had lived a full, if sadly brief life. And then…

A geyser. Spewing forth air and life. There were a handful of apparently harmless dinosaurs around it, taking turns gulping air. I was reminded of the maypole dances I had seen at the renaissance festival in my youth, or of hummingbirds at a feeder. Well, I had no problem being a hummingbird, so long as the giant, prehistoric hummingbirds didn’t crush me on accident. They did not. And after some fumbling about with the air valve, I was back up to full capacity.

And yet, the air was different. Richer, headier, and more flavorful somehow. It reeked of ancient times. The scent of a forest, strange flowers, and rotting meat all assailed me. It was at turns disgusting and intoxicating.

About 50 feet over to my left from the geyser was another cave entrance, and dinosaurs were spilling forth from its mouth. I was struck by the feeling that this was a chain reaction. Oxygen seemed to wake these giant slumberers. The first batch had awoken when I filled the cave with my air supply. And now they, escaped, would inevitably open up other geysers and free more dinosaurs. Pretty soon the whole moon’s surface would be crawling with the reawaken. But what did they eat, besides each other? And how long would these mysterious supplies of oxygen last? A day? A generation? Forever?

But no, the first batch of dinosaurs was not my doing. It was Moony Jr’s. It was only after she opened the geyser that we were attacked and then saved by her brethren. And if I was indeed on the right track, maybe she and her kin were opening the others as well. Maybe they were the only ones who could. Maybe it was their holy task. I walked on, more curious than afraid for the first time that day. I felt sure that I would live to see MJ again, and that the moon was undergoing some sort of strange and wonderful regeneration. I didn’t understand much of it, but at least some of the pieces were coming together. Somehow oxygen got stored up in mass quantities underneath the lunar surface, probably over millions of years. At some point a trigger sets off and the oxygen starts releasing, the dinosaurs awaken and a beautiful story of primeval life is told. Even during these periodic golden ages, though, oxygen above the surface is scarce, and exists only in the form of geysers. Perhaps in the cave systems below, though, it’s more abundant. And that’s where the vegetation grows. Who knows, maybe there are vast underground forests, of ferns, at least. Maybe when I get back to the moonbase I’ll bring them some new plants they’ve never seen. Assuming any of this is even remotely correct, and that I actually get back. But it’s that trigger that bothers me. On the moon, what normally sets it off? MJ appeared to be doing it this time, but they couldn’t always count on a cloned dinosaur to do so.

The path wound on and I encountered the same thing over and over. Open gushing geysers, caves spilling newly animated dinosaurs, and the timeless story of life, as told by very horny monsters. And yet I saw no brontosaurus, nor any sign of such, save the tracks I hoped was there.

Such a mix emotions. Despair. Awe. Regret. Guilt. Urgency.

The trail was easy to follow, as I predicted. This time it did not head for Crater X, and for this I was grateful. For it may have become muddled with the path the dinosaur had taken to return to the moonbase earlier. Instead they had veered right and walked around the base, and then headed off in exactly the opposite direction of the crater. This land was more hills than planes, and it was plain to the eye that it had seen its fair share of turmoil over the many millennia. Lava flows, seismic activity, and meteor strikes had left it tattered and scarred. But it was good for me, because I knew if caves were to be found, they would likely be here. So I might get to eat after all, if guilt would allow me to rest. I was foolish to let her go. Sure, the dinosaurs seemed to adore her, and possibly even worship her, but I had watched enough bad nature films to know that the natives who revere you as a god might just be waiting for the chance to boil you in their pot. I bet the brontosauri have a very large pot indeed.

As I followed the trail, I notice that almost every largish rock near the walking path seemed moved, slid along the dirt a few feet. It seemed the dinos were trying to find another air geyser. Which was odd, since they should still have had plenty air stored up from the base, if MJ was any indication. But what the hell do I know about anything?

A day passed before I realized obvious fact that I was not going to catch them. The smaller dinosaurs were keeping pace with the larger ones by hopping, so they were going at a fair clip. I was in a motorized vehicle, true, but the trail of air balloons slowed me down considerably, especially since the onboard AI didn’t take the balloons into account during the collision avoidance process. So it could no longer be trusted to not throw me on the ground suddenly and violently. But I figured that they would eventually reach their destination or circle back or something. And if not, I still had a week before I had to turn around.

Day 2 proved to be much as the first. Rocks, hills, dust, footprints, boulders that had been moved, and nothing moving save for my moon buggy. I was all alone with my thoughts, but I was used to that. Before MJ had sprung forth from the labs. I had been nothing but alone and had time for all sorts of quiet introspection. The problem was, I had explored every deep cranny of my soul, come to terms with my childhood trauma, and reminisced over all my best memories. So had nothing left to think about, save for the fact that my child was somewhere out there in the wild cold world. As if I could have thought about anything else for very long, anyways.

It was in this dark frame of mind that I came upon the cave entrance. I nearly passed it up, as a matter of fact. The glimmer of something shiny caught my eye, however, when the lights of the buggy passed over the cave.

As motivated as I was to find MJ and bring her back home, this was an opportunity I could not pass up. For starters, I was starving, and if I could seal the cave I could pressurize the chamber, unsuit and chow down on some food.

Crystals lined the cave mouth, making it look like a gigantic geode and a ravenous cave monster at the same time. I drove hungrily into the beast’s jaws without fear. Food had made me blind to danger. After the attack by the carnivores, you’d think I’d be wary.

The sight illuminated by the buggy’s head lamps was amazing. And I have seen a few amazing things, as well you know. They looked for all the world like mummies. Stacked on top of each other, strewn about in every conceivable space. And it was a large space. There were several passageways leading away down the cavern as well, and there were no doubt more in there. Dinosaurs, all kinds, sizes, colors- all deflated, yet preserved. And I was treading on their grave. It’s a good thing I don’t believe in ghosts.  The human variety is bad enough, according to the stories. I imagine mere mortals wouldn’t last long when faced with the otherworldly avenging spirit of a Tyrannosaur.

So for some unknown amount of time, I crawled among the corpses- reverent, but curious. Sure, I’d gotten to see MJ up close and personal, but she was only one specimen of the entire pantheon. Most of the dinosaurs I recognized, or at least remembered seeing in a book or someone’s lab notes once. But there were stranger creatures I had definitely never heard of before. Whether they were unique to the moon and its harsh and brutal living conditions, or simply of a type of dinosaur not yet discovered in the fossil record, I can’t say.

The thought came to me unbidden and sudden. There was a vast collection of DNA. I, or those who com after me could clone a dinosaur a day and still have years worth of unique species ahead of us. We never need hunt for elusive organic material on Earth again. Of course, now that the existence of living, occasionally breathing dinosaurs had been revealed, perhaps the whole idea of cloning was outdated and unnecessary. It could be that MJ would be the only cloned dinosaur to ever come into being. Whether that’s something to be proud of or simply sad about, I will decide later.

I proceeded to plug the cave entrance with an air balloon, and through a complex system of connecting balloons and turning valves I fill it up until it had snug fit. I then did the same with the other exits, clambering over sever dinosaurs to do so. I desperately hoped that their immense masses weren’t hiding any other exits. Once I felt that the main cabin was properly sealed I released the contents of the remaining ten balloons. In my mind I was trying to calculate the disbursement and density of air in a roughly calculated volume, but formal physics classes were years and a few lives ago.

Eventually I just hoped for the best and removed my helmet. The air was thin but breathable. I quickly removed the rest of the suit, spreading it out on the cave floor like a picnic blanket. My picnic consisted of watermelon, peaches, a couple of green tomatoes, some white bread the kitchen had made for me, and an ultra rare half a stick of beef jerky, included especially to keep my spirits up during this journey. It was delicious. It was all delicious. And it was just good to have freedom of movement again. Very good. Insanely good. Laughingly good. I laughed out loud in fact. Everything was suddenly frighteningly funny- The queer looking creatures stacked upon one another like laundry, the fragile and yet utterly crucial balloons. It was then that I realized the thinness of the air was making me vaguely high. Nothing does the trick like good ole oxygen deprivation, you know. My vision had started getting a bit wobbly, creating the effect that the dinosaurs were shifting and moving. Twitching. Jerking. Stretching. It was quite unsettling, actually. Even more unsettling was when one of the larger, more pointy-toothed dinosaurs opened his eyes, stood up, and let out a roar. This hallucination had gone from unsettling to increasingly disturbing, and when one hundred and one dinosaur stood up, stretched, and bellowed, it without a doubt was well into the realm of completely fucking terrifying. After the roaring died down, the fighting began. Teeth gnashed, tails lashed, spikes protected, and claws dissected. All for my viewing pleasure. It was a beautiful and compelling display of raw prehistoric majesty, and I was quite captivated. So much so that the fact that several dinosaurs were rushing headlong at some of the balloons keeping the air in almost escaped my attention. One thing I noticed straight off, though, was the pack of mean looking carnivores carving their way towards me. In a world where predators take down the weakest of the herd, I was pretty much toast. Without thinking I scrambled quickly under the body of the moon buggy. These creatures were larger, and the space was light, so it would be somewhat difficult to reach me. Unless they flipped the buggy itself, which was entirely possible. To my left I could just make out make out some sharp toothed behemoth trying to munch on a balloon. The balloons were tough, but even the boys at HQ hadn’t foreseen this particular predicament. To my right the hunters were zeroing in on the buggy, charging with heads down at what I hoped was their top speed. So at this point it was toss up what would kill me first: the sudden lack of atmosphere due to incredibly stupid but amazingly alive dinosaurs, or being skewered and eaten by ferocious but amazingly alive dinosaurs. Neither prospect seemed terribly pleasing to me. Near the front of the buggy, just out of reach was my spacesuit/picnic blanket. Being in that suit at the moment would have done wonders for my survival prospects. I’d have air, mitigating the first threat, and I’d have some amount of armor, somewhat lessening the second threat. But that was a world away with those beasts prowling outside. THUD. Yet another balloon was being repeatedly head butted by a creature whose skull cap looked as if it had been made for the purpose. THUD. The buggy creaked. THUD. The hunters circled around the front of the buggy and began to push against it. THUD. One of my pursuers noticed the food on top of the spread out suit and gave a quick high pitched shout. I wasn’t much for them, but they ate up the remnants of my meal quickly. They must have been hungry for carnivores to eat up fruits and veggies. I was glad that I had succumbed to temptation and eaten the half stick of beef jerky first. Finding nothing left to devour, one of the creatures nosed the suit, and threw it aside to see if perhaps any more edibles were hidden beneath. It flew close to and halfway under the buggy, my first bit off luck in the past half hour. I was one leg into the suit when the inevitable and much dreaded POP was heard, followed by the sound of rushing air, howls, and scurrying feet. At the very least, my hunters were now distracted. I lurched out from under the buggy, yanked on the rest of the suit, and scanned about for the helmet. AT the moment it was skittering across the cave floor, propelled by the whipping tail of some prehistoric soccer player. I ran, dove, picked up the erstwhile fishbowl and jammed it on my head in one amazing feat of acrobatics. Hardly missing a beat, I weaved in and out of panicked plant eaters towards the entrance, which, of course was still blocked with a balloon. Thanks to my opposable thumbs and ability to turn a valve, I made short work of it. Take that, dinosaurs.

I fled the cave of chaos and fleeing several score of dinosaur at my back. For some reason I thought I would be safe once outside, but I had forgotten that these were crazy moon dinosaurs and they were now full up on oxygen reserves. Fortuitously they seemed to be more preoccupied with their surroundings and each other than me, and I was soon alone again. Somehow I had survived and I had seen more than I had ever imagined possible. It took a few minutes to calm down, but soon my mind turned back to the reason I was out here. To find MJ and bring her back home. Stealing my few remaining nerves I resumed following the trail left by the brontosaurus herd. Or that is, I would have if I knew where it was. There were now a hundred tracks heading off in a hundred different directions. About the time this sunk in, I realized that I only had the oxygen in my suit left to me. And a quick and fearful trip back into the cave revealed that my buggy had been destroyed and the rest of the balloons popped. I was a couple of days drive from the moonbase, and no longer sure of the route. Who knows how long it would take to walk anyways. And I had at best 12 hours of air left to me. I was as dead as I would have been had I not put my suit on or if the meat eaters had gotten to me. Only now it would be slow and drawn out, rather than quick and sudden.

Oh well. There was nothing to do but walk in the general direction I thought MJ and her relatives had gone. I took a deep breath, chastised myself for taking a deep breath, and walked.

I awoke this morning to find the entire park of brontosauri forming a circle around Moony Jr. Thy were sitting, staring intently at her, and making low, humming noised. MJ, for her part, stood absolutely still and at least to me, looked vaguely uncomfortable. Also, she appeared to have a ring of vines about her head.

Nothing surprises me, anymore. After this ritual (for how else can it be described?) was concluded, the dinosaurs made it clear that they wanted outside again. They did this by charging the dome walls headlong in attempt to break them open. Fortunately they’re made of pretty strong stuff, as DMP’s faithful engineers spent years designing them to withstand just such a base. When this tactic did not work, MJ showed them the way of it. She stood at the airlock and bellowed. Soon they were all joining in, and I had no choice but to let them out. I wasn’t prepared with my own string of oxygen balloons, so sadly I could not travel with them. I simply suited up, led them to the airlock and let them go out en masse. I could have walked with them a while, but it simply be too sad to have to go back when my air let out. It was a graceful progression. Each brontosaurus was terrifying and beautiful, at once ancient and eternal, bathed in the cool glow of Earthlight.

After they were gone, I wondered if I would see them again. They had seemed to enjoy the vegetation and abundance of air, so I imagined they would. It must feel like Heaven compared to their everyday existence. Perhaps they were leaving simply to go get more dinosaurs and bring them back. I wonder how many the base could sustain in its present form. The vegetation had held up all right, but day after day of consumption might prove too much for it. Lost in such thoughts, it was about an hour before I realized that MJ had left with them. My dinosaur, my triumph, my creation, my only child, had left the comfort of home for the dark, uncaring surface of the moon. And I had not noticed.

Shamed, dazed, and with a growing sense of dread, I began to fill up oxygen balloons. At the very leas, their trail would be easy to follow. But where it leads to, I have no idea. Even as I type this, the last balloon is filling up. I should have enough oxygen to last me for weeks, and I’ve crammed the buggy with food as well. If I can find a cave to seal off, I could pressurize it, take the suit off, eat some food, put the suit back on, refill the balloons and be on my way. Not a bad system, really.

And that ding signifies that my preparations are complete. It occurs to me that this could very well be my last entry. If that is so, then heed my words. You must continue the quest. I don’t know why you have chosen to ignore me, but you must continue the quest. The moon contains unknown secret sand I am sure that I have only seen the barest beginnings of what it has to offer. Come after me, find the dinosaurs, and if one of them seems smaller and younger than the rest, take special care of her, for she is the first created by Dinosaur Moonpark, and blessed amongst all dinosaurs. Oh, and if you manage to find my body, just leave it. Perhaps a mad scientist will clone it one day.

For a while I was out of my head. Both my companions and the events that had transpired were too big for me to get my head around. I was vaguely aware of following something huge. Minutes or days or years may have passed. It was hard to tell. But I suppose it was only a few hours, as I did not run out of oxygen. I gradually returned to the realm of the fully conscious when the herd/pack/tribe came to a full stop. I was prepared for nothing and anything. Where would a flock of moon dinosaurs possibly be leading me, anyways? What I saw was a massive, clear, glass dome, filled with lush vegetation, a small building, and a rather nice pond. It was Dinosaur Moonbase 5. And for the first time in its brief history, it was about to welcome visitors.

I still have no idea what the moon dinosaurs eat on their own. Are there gardens deep below the ground in secluded caves? Is there a massive supply of Earth food preserved in deep ice reservoirs that the dinos then break out with the strength of the forelegs? I do not know, and I lack the education to make more than a blind guess. But I do know that these dinosaurs were very very hungry when they came to my base, and they launched into the bounty of the Eden project with the zeal of the starving. They also seemed to be impressed with the abundance of air and took deep, gasping, comical breaths. After  a bit, I noticed something curious, if indeed anything could actually get more curious. Moony Jr., for her part was very friendly, and often sought the the company of other dinosaurs. Inevitably, however, they would back away if she came too close to them. At first I found their behavior rude and told them so. “If you’re a guest in my moonbase you’ll show respect for my dinosaur.” But even as I said the words I realized that that’s exactly what they were doing. They weren’t moving away out of ear or disdain, but respect. Indeed, occasionally one of the larger creatures would grab a choice branch of lush, green leaves and lay it before MJ’s feet.

It appears I have given life to some sort of Moon dinosaur messiah. Perhaps the second coming of Moony is a legend that has been foretold in the mist and events of dinosaur prophecies. Or maybe they’re just grateful for the bounty of foodstuff she led them to.

After several hours of consuming, the dinosaurs, MJ included, settled down for a post meal nap. And there they have lain since, for the past 6 hours. Alone with my thoughts, the realization that this is now an actual dinosaur Moonpark in a very real sense has struck me. I should probably get to work constructing the brontosaur complex. Perhaps if some of the larger specimens can be trained to haul rocks, I could… but no. Of course, with the revelation that these guys can hold their breaths for days we could perhaps cut out some more ambitious parts of their structure. The dome, for instance. We could just build a fence around one of those oxygen geysers for instance.

Or maybe we could change the whole dome concept of the park. Make it more a safari to see the dinosaurs since evidently they exist in the wild.

For the first time in days, I have just remembered that I’m writing this entry for other Dinosaur Moonpark employees. How are you guys doing?

Oh my beloved moon dinosaur. What is the history of your race? How could it come to be that you store air as a camel might store water, or as a whale who submerges for a dive into the deepest depths of the ocean might store Earth breath.

It is too much to think on, and even on the journey I could not turn my mind to it for long before it skipped on to other topics. Instead, I turned my attention to the tracks we followed. Oh, I began to realize that there were now several pairs of footprints, all in different sizes. We must have picked some up at the filing station, as I now began to think of the rock-covered geyser. So the path was interesting for that reason. The other thing I noticed was that the smaller prints kept pace with the larger ones, and that was pretty strange. Typically, smaller animals have smaller strides, so their prints will be closer together and thus appear more frequently. The way it must have worked is this: The larger, oldest dinosaur walked at a leisurely, Earth-normal pace. Meanwhile, each smaller beast hopped along to keep pace. Slightly smaller creatures simply had a spring in their steps, but significantly more miniscule brontos must have leapt along. What site that would have been. Indeed, the larger the prints, the more staggered were the left and right footprint. Watching MJ, she walked normally, though. She was quite small. For now, at least, she was the eldest of her tribe. The tracks were interesting for another reason. Not that the existence of filling stations had been revealed, there was a very real possibility that somewhere on this rock there were still living dinosaurs, strangely adapted to their lunar home. This was my thought just as we were attacked.

The attack came swiftly from the west, or what I took to be the west. It was all pretty arbitrary up here, especially now that I had no idea where I was. Two blurry, furious shapes barreling out of my nightmares and into my waking vision. They looked a bit like miniature tyrannosaurs, but their arms were longer and stronger, and they had some odd bumps on their skulls that I didn’t remember from my studies of the T-Rex. But there was no time to perform a proper study of these altogether unexpected creatures, as they seemed to be about to kill us.

Suddenly I began to see the action before me as a series of 1940s era magazine covers. “Terror on the Moon!” was the first and it depicted two dinosaurs leaping for the reader. In the corners the words “From the mists of time comes a horror… in SPACE!” blasted out of a star. Next was “MJ’s Plight!”, which showed a young brontosaurus in the forefront, cowering before a leaping, teeth gnashing carnivore. Finally I saw before me “Foolish Human Throws his Life Away to Save Moonosaur.” This nonexistent pulp magazine showed a scraggly scientist standing between a wispy brontosaurus and two very hungry creatures.

I guess there are much worse ways to go than defending the life of the creature you created. My last coherent thought was that if the last few moments had actually been 1940s pulp stories, the editors would have replaced MJ with a scantily clad and terrified woman. People are weird.

But just as the dinosaurs closed in, a large grey black tail came whipping into view from behind me, swept the two attackers away, and swung out of sight again. They were now several hundred feet away and showed no signs of getting up. I turned around slowly, not quite knowing what to expect. I guess I imagined I would see a dinosaur. Probably a bigger version of MJ, something akin to the original Moony when she wore flesh. What I did see was the biggest mother-fucking creature anyone could imagine. I could barely make out its head. And behind it a host of others stood, smaller but still much larger than I was prepared for. And they were all staring at us. At me.

It occurred to me, surprisingly for the first time since I had arrived on the moon, that I had no idea what was going on.

We set forth four days ago on our improbable journey across the lunar landscape. I realized quickly that if I was bringing extra oxygen for Moony Jr., I could do so for myself as well. The solution comes in the form of huge, industrial-strength balloons. They’re actually used to seal cave entrances. The idea is that there are a surprising number of caves on the moon, formed when the moon was still a churning mass of lava. The cave mouth might only have a small hole on the surface, but they can stretch for miles underground. Some could hold cathedrals, town-halls, or more to the point, full-grown dinosaur herds. You use the balloon in the cave entrance to form an air tight seal and attempt to pressurize the cave with good ole O2. You use another balloon some distance down the cave so that you only have to fill a small part of the cave with oxygen. These are all temporary measures, of course, but well suited to site surveyors looking for initial places to build bases. But I’m not concerned with caves at the moment. My plan is much simpler. Fill the balloons with oxygen, tie them to the buggy in a chain, and refill the suits when necessary.

That part was easy. Getting Moony Jr. into her makeshift breathing apparatus was not quite as pleasant. The engineering of the thing was easy enough. A brontosaurus neck can’t actually support much weight, so I decided that the oxygen tanks should be strapped on either side of MJ’s flank. The mask I made by melting and stretching a plastic urine containment bottle. Some tubing, straps, and a few hours later and it was ready for action. Moony Jr., however, was not. She squirmed, bucked, and whined.

Eventually, though, we set out. Standing in the airlock was a nerve-wracking task. I was fairly certain that Moony Jr.’s mask would hold, that her skin was tough enough to stand bare to the world, and that she wouldn’t go running off without me. And yet. My fears were unfounded. The doors opened and she casually walked forward, oblivious to her new peril. I noticed with some amusement that the ground was still scarred and torn from dragging the original Moony’s huge bones through the airlock.

The scene, then, was this. Me, riding atop a moon buggy, being trailed by a long string of bouncing light, oxygen-filled balloons, threading to the far ends of the lunar horizon. In front a small dinosaur leads the way. The phrase “And a dinosaur shall lead them” kept reverberating through my brain.

From the beginning, MJ knew where she wanted to go. If you were to ask me now I’d say I had no idea why I had hooked up the intercom between our masks, but I had. And so every ten minutes or so I could hear MJ trumpet excitedly loud and crisp in my ears. You’d think I would’ve relished unending silence after days of constant harassment.

We followed the tracks of former moon buggy sojourns for a time, and I thought that perhaps she would lead us back to Crater X where the discovery was made. This seemed fitting to me. Why shouldn’t she wish to visit the gravesite of her mother and former self? But about 2/3rds of the way there Moony Jr. turned to the left suddenly, and the older tracks suddenly retreated from sight.

After that our track seemed less determined. Where before MJ had marched in a straight line, never wavering, she now began to amble about in wide arcs, as if drunk, assuming I know what a drunk dinosaur looks like. She moved her head from side to side, scanning the landscape for all it had to offer. Sometimes we would double back on our trail, and I began to fear that MJ had no true plan, after all. Well, I mean, how could she? She’d never been out of the Moonbase before this day. But she’d been so assertive and plaintive that I’d been willing to give her a chance.

A thought struck. This was just like one of those mystery novels where a dark, mysterious stranger leads the detective to a secret location, but takes a confusing and extremely inefficient path so that he will not know the location when he gets there. All MJ needed was a blindfold for me. But that theory was no good. For our trail was plain as day, and would stand until the end of time. So that was not it. Perhaps she was just not in a hurry to get where she was going.

As ridiculous as that idea was, it was soon replaced by an even more absurd, more disturbing thought. What if she –was- drunk? From oxygen deprivation. I have no idea how much oxygen dinosaurs use up with each passing moment and she might already be ready for a refill from the balloon tanks. But after rushing madly to her side, her tanks still showed that they were completely full, or as near enough as made no difference. My own tanks were close to halfway spent. I took a couple of moments to appreciate her oxygen efficiency and then we moved on, the mystery of her erratic behavior no closer to being solved.

Hours passed, and MJ’s loop-dee-loop path making continued. Still, we made some progress. We were walking on a vast unending plane of dust, and there were no rocks larger than my fist within eyesight. I was of course thoroughly lost by this point, but not terribly concerned. Then I noticed that up ahead there was a different section of MJ’s footprints. What section of the trail was this where our little loops had been a part of an even larger circle so that we backtracked on ourselves? How fruitless, tiring, and annoying. But as we grew closer, these tracks began to appear somehow different. I couldn’t place it at first, but an overwhelming sense of both apprehension and anticipation began to settle over me. MJ, once she caught sight of the tracks, ran towards them as fast as she could, so that soon she was waiting impatiently for me.

The first thing I realized was that there were no accompanying moon buggy tracks. But that was not so strange, as MJ was constantly wandering to and fro, and the buggy might just have been a little ways further. But as I drew closer still, the tracks became unmistakably larger than any tracks that Moony Jr. could have made. They appeared to be of the same sort of dinosaur, but at least twice as large. And they were fresh.

“Fresh tracks” was a chorus in my mind. But of course, how could they be anything but? There’ no wind on the moon, and not decays. These tracks would look newly made unto the end of time. So it was an immense discovery, but a perplexing one. These may have been made 5 million years ago or 5 days ago. But now I knew… dinosaurs once roamed the moon, and therefore the moon used to have an oxygen rich atmosphere. And speaking of oxygen, MJ’s tank still read full. How odd.

Now that we had “the scent” we were practically galloping across the moon. Leaping. Bounding. Following the tracks. The tracks. They might go on halfway across the planetoid. But we only had 4 days of air. Actually, I guess we had more, since MJ wasn’t using much of any. After a time the tracks seemed to halt at a patch of disturbed ground. There was a chaotic jumble of prints and scuffs and markings. In the center of all was a large boulder, a good two times my full speed. Several things fought for supremacy in my horror-struck mind at once.

1)    My flimsy homemade dinosaur oxygen mask smashing against the boulder.

2)    MJ dying of suffocation, blue and broken against the rock.

3)    MJ’s head smashing against the boulder, long neck snapping in two.

What I didn’t envision was the boulder giving way, which it did, sliding neatly to the side. I didn’t foresee a geyser of air gushing out of the newly revealed hole, which it did. In the darkest recesses of my imagine I didn’t conceive the possibility that Moony Jr. would run towards the geyser, put her head over the hole and suck air into her body. As she adjusted, her mouth to form a seal over the hole and the geyser disappeared. for the next several minutes, I watched my dinosaur fill herself up like a flat tire. My thoughts, for the record, were largely incoherent and primitive. I had a vision of a shaggy haired caveman fishing for trout, and there was a vague taste of metal in my mouth.

After a time MJ broke the seal, walked calmly over to the other side of the boulder and bashed it back over the reemerging geyser. Her oxygen mask lay on the ground, broken. Staring at the tanks at her side I noticed that not only were they still full, but I had never bothered to actually open the valve that turned them on. Silently, wordlessly, thoughtlessly, I helped MJ remove the burdensome, useless tanks. And there she stood, naked before the moon.

And I knew fear.

She seemed very alien to me then, clearly something wholly unknown, formerly undreamt of by man. A moon dinosaur of an alien or God knows what other origin, she was. I had created her, but I did not know her.

She began to follow the tracks where they left off. I stood rooted to my spot next to the boulder, overwhelmed by the flood of information and nonsense I had just witnessed. A few more steps and she turned to look at me. She bleated and, and though there was only silence now that the mask was discarded, I heard it all the same.

I followed.

Bleating. So much. Bleating. What could the little guy want? To drive me mad? Probably. She just stands at the airlock gates and bellows. Yesterday I tried stroking her neck to calm her, but she showed no notice. It really seems as if she desperately wants out to pee or something. I guess she doesn’t realize that she’d die of oxygen deprivation within minutes.

Of course, I could probably rig some sort of breathing apparatus for her. But that would just mean that… Well, actually I guess there aren’t any buts to speak of. If she wants out, we’ll go out. Since we’re the only living creatures on the entire surface of this barren sphere, I can’t see there being much danger. We’ll go for a leisurely stroll, my dinosaur and me. It’ll be just like the old days with Sergeant Scruffs. The good sergeant was a mongrel of a dog. he had one green eye and one blue eye and seemed for all the world to be wearing another dog’s fur, haphazardly staple gunned onto his bones in the dead of night.

If Sgt. Scruff was in any sort of actual army then he was a vigilant soldier. Every day required that he patrol the perimeter of the territory he was sworn to protect. And if any fire hydrants or trees or benches looked suspicious or gave him any guff, he pissed on them. Quick, decisive justice. No trial, no lawyers, no parole. Perhaps some countries I might mention might do well to adopt a similar system. Being the bodyguard of Sergeant Scruffs, it fell to me to accompany him on these patrols. Originally I thought I might have some say in the route we might take, but he was having none of that.

If I pulled him one way he would growl. If I doddled too long, he would growl. If I looked at him wrong, he would grow. If I picked up his poop, he would growl. He was a true sergeant, that one, and I his one soldier. Unless you count his fleas. But you couldn’t really count his fleas. There were too many and they hid too well. Covert ops.

His route was not that pleasant a one for humans. It involved a few alleyways, a marshy stretch of pasture, usually infested with mosquitoes, and a fence hop. Let’s hope that Moony Jr. picks a more sensible route. May she doesn’t even want to go outside. Hell, maybe she’s just howling at the moon like a coyote. Only the moon is all around, so she never stops howling.

Hmmm… Would a werewolf be constantly in full-on werewolf mode if it lived on the moon? I wonder if they screen potential astronauts for lycanthropy. You wouldn’t want a billion dollar project to go to hell just because a dark, horrible curse got in the way and caused all your handsome, well trained adventurers to die bloody deaths.