To the Time Machine! - Part 50

NOTE: Posted out of order.


TIME: Before Recorded Time



RFS Sanderson sat up with a start. His chest heaved as his lungs gulped in air. His cold blood pounded in his head and the bright light stabbed his snake-like eyes.

When his breathing slowed, he tasted the air. Clean. Very clean. Too clean, really. He hoped that meant his jump had been successful.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he drank in the warm sunshine, his body warming. He looked around. All about him was a lush, deciduous paradise.

He heard the distant roar of a waterfall. Chirping birds filled the air with a song that Sanderson suspected was newly written.

Did they have to sing so loud?? If he was when he thought he was, aspirins had not been invented yet.

He stumbled upright onto his clawed feet, and headed toward the sound of the waterfall. It was already too loud and growing louder as he approached.

What was that? He stopped, crouched low, and listened. Singing. Not the singing of birds, but vocals disgustingly human.

He crouched low and skulked slowly through the plant life, careful not to disturb his surroundings, for fear of distraction.

What he found shocked him. A naked woman!

Sanderson was forced to move into the shade to lower his blood temperature. He watched the nude beauty from the shadow of a palm tree.

He disgusted himself by even finding her attractive, but he could not help himself. He never would have been interested in a human before the Procedure.

This was the most perfectly wrought mammal he'd ever seen, somehow more human and more beautiful than any woman he'd ever encountered.

But he had no time for such thoughts, and quickly shook them from his brain. He reminded himself this woman was the forbearer of the entire human race in all its greedy, warring, hating arrogance.

He had a job to do.