Chapter 23: Eden's history

"Move! Everyone aboard the ship!" "Shouldn't we wait for the boss?" "Fuck him! The boss is dead! He hasn't answered the radio for twenty minutes, like everyone else! We have to get out of here before the spinosaurus returns!" In addition to the poachers who had gone to hunt Sobek, there were still five remaining on the islet of the oxalaias. They had originally regretted being left behind to check the animals, but now they were thankful they hadn't gone chasing the spinosaurus with Wheathley. Now they were in a great hurry to leave: the instant their leader had ceased communications they had decided it was best to disappear before the spinosaurus returned for them too. "What do we do with the oxalaias?" "Get the cages with the cubs and leave the others here! Spinosaurs are territorial, we don't have time to bring even the adult specimens on the ship!" Suddenly one of the poachers shouted: "Over there! It is coming!" Under the terrified gaze of the poachers, a sail had appeared in the magroves and was moving at full speed against them. "Fuck the oxalaias! Let's get out of here!" The five men boarded the ship and quickly set it in motion. The craft could not move too fast due to swamp obstacles, but it quickly disappeared from view. Sobek had no intention of chasing them. Those who wanted to capture him were already dead. The few who were fleeing would not have returned to look for him: they just wanted to run away now. Even if they had told anyone else about him, he would probably have left that area by the time that happened, so it wasn't a problem. Furthermore, he would never have been able to destroy a ship. One thing was the motorboats, another was a real container ship. That ship was designed to transport dinosaurs and resist their eventual escape: there was no way he could sink it. Also, in their haste to leave, the poachers had abandoned the oxalaia. Sobek knew that some of them were probably already on board, but he didn't care: the main thing was that they leave most of them, so he wouldn't have lost his food supply. From a certain point of view, the hunt could be defined as lean: he had barely eaten six humans, which combined had earned him just 6,000 experience points and 3 skill points. However, Sobek knew that on the contrary, that hunt had been the most important he had ever carried out: now he had a cell phone, a means to discover the rest of the world! Leaving the still drugged oxalaias behind, he quickly returned to his islet and lay down on his bed, then he pulled one of the three cell phones he had stolen out of his [Inventory]. Unfortunately, the muscles and tendons of a spinosaurus weren't suitable for using such a small and precise instrument: have someone ever seen one of those beasts take to literature? On his first try, Sobek applied too much force and his claw shattered the cell phone. Fortunately, he had two more options, but before trying another cell phone he trained to measure his strength with a stone. On his second attempt he finally managed to turn on the cell phone; luckily there was no password. With all the delicacy with which he could appeal he managed to click on the Google icon and use the keyboard. It was a long, exhausting job, but in the end he got the information he was looking for. It was fortunate that, for some reason, he knew the language, so it was much easier. After an hour of searching and slow keystrokes, Sobek had completely reconstructed the geography and history of that world. As he already knew, Eden resembled the Earth very well, but there were some major differences. The biggest of them was that its diameter was ten times bigger, but thanks to the different laws of phisics the gravity on the surface was still 9,807 m/s2. Eden also had a Moon (as Sobek already know; he was still able to look up!); its axis was inclined by 25 degrees, thus slightly more than Earth's one, and so also on Eden there were the four seasons. For the rest, Eden orbited its Sun along with seven other planets; apparently every planet in Earth's solar system had its counterpart in that universe. There were four inner rocky planets, respectively called Raab (counterpart of Mercury), Sarah (counterpart of Venus), Eden and Davis (counterpart of Mars), and then there were four outer gas giant planets, called Behemoth (counterpart of Jupiter), Leviathan (counterpart of Saturn) , Ziz (counterpart of Uranus) and Nephilim (counterpart of Neptune). Sobek was pretty sure that all that names were something biblical, especially Leviathan, but he didn't care too much about that. Along with the planets, the solar system was filled with comets, asteroids, dwarf planets and all the other objects that could be found around any other star. Outside the solar system, the universe was exactly like Earth's one: multiple stars and galaxies in all directions, with the only difference that everything was ten times larger due to the different laws of gravity. However, Sobek wasn't so interested about astronomy. He wanted to know more about the world were he lived now. As God showed him, there were five continents on Eden, each one larger than all the continents of the Earth combined: they were called Laurentia, Saramir, Maakanar (the one where Sobek was), Tegrom and Latissa. On Earth, such landmasses would have been unlivable, since ocean currents would not have reached the interior which would therefore have remained constantly rainless, but on a planet ten times larger that same continents were still covered by huge forests. Almost all the biosphere were identical all over the planet, and that because of Eden's history. Apparently, for almost all the planet' history there were tens of 'small' continents, each one just little bigger than the Eurasia. On each one of this continents a different kind of animals had evolved indipendently. That's why creatures like the mammals was able to evolve in a world were dinosaurs never went extinct. In some continent the reptile-like mammals had evolved, in others dinosaurs had evolved, in others mammals, and so on. The laws of evolution were very similar to Earth's ones, except that the extinction didn't exist: when a new species was born, the previous one didn't disappear but continued to exist together with the new one. For some reason all the various species had evolved in the same time of their Earth's counterparts: the ones that on Earth appeared 10 million years ago on Eden appeared 10 million years ago, the ones that on Earth appeared 20 million years ago on Eden appeared 20 million years ago, etc. That means that sometimes some species just stopped evolving, even if they did it for millions of years. "Probably that is the moment when a clade of animals went extinct on Earth" Sobek thougth. '"Since God created this world to permit to Earth's species to exist forever, than there is no point to permit them to evolve more than they should" And what about the oceans? There was no need for natural barriers there: Eden's oceans were so large that Earth's ones looked like puddles. Even with the presence of titans such as megalodon or mosasaurus there were niches where animals such as whales could develop without any nuisance. There was too much space for a single species to become a danger to all the others. But if every kind of animals evolved in a separate continent respect of the others, than why now everyone of them lived all together? The answer was one more time the history of that world: almost 10 million years ago, in fact, all the landmasses had merged into one gigantic supercontinent. Thus all the previously separated animals had found themselves coexisting; ecosystems had merged and living creatures had adapted to the new situation. Dinosaurs had obviously become the rulers, while mammals and other smaller creatures had learned to avoid them. Nature had quickly found its equilibrium and so the distribution of species throughout the planet had become homogeneous. However, only five million years earlier the supercontinent was again divided into the current five continents. Sobek suspected that the phenomenon of tectonic plates was faster in that world than on Earth, because the continents had spaced quite a lot even though they had only separated for five million years; on Earth it would have taken much longer. On Earth, the fragmentation of a supercontinent would have triggered a global mass extinction event; this is because the enormous stress to which the tectonic plates were subjected caused the simultaneous eruption of thousands of volcanoes that with their aerosols caused a change in the climate at extreme levels. The Earth had repeatedly witnessed similar events: when Pangea was fragmented, about 250 million years ago, the whole of Siberia was submerged by lava and 95% of complex life forms met with extinction. Or the fragmentation of the supercontinent Rodinia, 750 million years ago, had resulted in the so-called 'Snowball Earth', where the aerosol from volcanoes had blocked so much sunlight that it turned the Earth into a cold, white sphere of ice, killing 99% of primordial life forms (especially bacteria). But on Eden things were different. The planet was bigger and the tectonic plates moved faster, so the volcanos hadn't had time to erupt enough aerosols to cause climate change on a global scale. Even if many large species had a really bad time, no one of them went extinct. However, the supercontinent divided 5 million years ago; that means that whatever species younger than that time could be found only in one continent. And of course, the perfect example were the humans: since it was just 300,000 years old (if not less), the species known as 'Homo sapiens sapiens' had developed just on the continent of Laurentia. For many scientists, the supercontinent's fragmentation was what permitted to humans to start to exist: thanks to the volcanos, all the large species decreased in number, and due to the lowering of the big predators the first australopithecus came down from the trees, starting the chain of events that would lead to human evolution. After a very short period of nomadism, humans locked themselves up in fortified towns and villages, their only defense against the dinosaurs. For millennia, each city had been a nation unto itself and had evolved its own culture, language and religion, without even knowing that other cities existed. Even so they were able to spread: periodically some humans, dissatisfied with the regime of a particular city, abandoned it and founded a new one. In doing so they were able to colonize the entire continent of Laurentia and part of Saramir, another continent that was north of Laurentia, connected to it by a short land bridge. Only with the advent of firearms things had changed: finally able to counter the dinosaurs, humans had begun to expand and hunt down the ferocious predators to drive them away from their lands. The great forests were cleared to prevent their return, and the human-dominated territory grew larger and larger. In this situation, the encounter with other human cities was inevitable. This was, of course, the beginning of a long and continuous period of wars that lasted more than three hundred years, at the end of which the great powers of Eden were established. Sobek was surprised by an interesting fact: after the Three Hundred Years War, humanity was so tired of the battles that the most powerful nations founded the NMWA, No More War Alliance. It was similar to the UN on Earth, but with one difference: the fundamental rule was that all the nations that were part of it had to stop all war research immediately, in order to avert even worse wars in the future. As a result, the worst weapon humans possessed was the tank! Sobek wasn't certainly stupid: he was sure that the great powers were carrying out some research in secret. However, he could only be happy: God hadn't lied, in that world there were no such things as the atomic bomb! And not even napalm, or poisonous gases, or all those horrible weapons that terrified the collective imagination on Earth... Sobek admitted that the humans of Eden were smarter than those of Earth. At least they had understand how immoral the war was; the humans of Earth still didn't comprehend that, even after terrible conflicts like World War II. Of course, that didn't mean Sobek and his army would have been safe when the time came. Eden's technology was by no means as backward as their weapons: the nations, with the war problem out of the way, had begun to compete economically and scientifically. As the cell phone in his hands testified, Eden's humanity had reached the same technological level as the Earth in the 21st century. And sadly, converting 'good' technology into a deadly weapon was very easy. Sobek knew that once he showed up and declared war on humanity it would only have been a matter of time, a few years at the most, before the atomic bomb appeared on Eden. Sobek shook his head. He would have thought about it when the time came: God had assured him that the System was designed to help him. As far as the present geography of the world was concerned, it was divided into numerous nations that had formed after the Three Hundred Years War. There were five major world powers. The first of them was the Meilong Republic, a huge state twice the size of Russia, located in the northern part of Saramir. Then there was the Prettania Kingdom, ten times the size of China, which occupied the western part of Laurentia. Again, the Confederate States of Vinland, located north of Saramir, three times the size of Canada and the first power in terms of influence, but third in economic terms. And then, the Almagna Empire, located in the eastern part of Laurentia, the biggest of all nations, with almost the same size of the Asia continent. Finally, the Gardarikian Federation, located in the center of Laurentia and composed of numerous internal states. These of course were only the most powerful nations: there were many more below them, much lower in terms of economic and political power. In their expansion, humans had also created colonies to the west, on the continent of Maakanar, where Sobek was located. Recently many of them had declared themselves independent, but since they had just become nations they were in a very difficult economic situation. The nations located on Maakanar could be said to be third world countries. Among them, the only one capable of sustaining itself was the nation known as Odaria. It was a very backward country both culturally and technologically. Although it officially proclaimed itself a republic, it was actually a dictatorial system ruled by the nation's most powerful families. The population of Odaria was rigidly divided into social classes and episodes of violence were not uncommon. Sobek finally had a clearer idea of the world around him. He also learned something else: his time was running out. During the Three Hundred Years War, the human nations had destroyed almost all the forests of Laurentia and Saramir and exterminated practically all the dinosaurs and dangerous animals to prevent the troops from taking risks. And that was only the start: many plants, in fact, needed animals to survive, and without them the biosphere started to disappear. Also, all the small animals were now without predators and so they spreaded without control, consuming resources rapidly. No forest and no big animals caused a chain reaction. And after that, pollution arrived. After the end of the war, the need to advance economically had drained all the resources of the two continents: even if on Eden there were much more carbon and oil than on Earth, after one hundred years in Laurentia and Saramir there were no more fossil fuels to appeal to. This led to a serious economic crisis which over the years was getting worse and worse. Such abundance of pollution caused a big death amongs insects; without bees and other pollinators, the last plants remained rapidly disappeared. Animals followed them after just few months. Four hundred years after the start of total human domination, Laurentia and Saramir became covered by nothing more than deserts and dry plains, with just little natural reserves and big cultivated fields as places were life could still be found. But even worse was the climate change. All the combustion that humans did every day was far worse than any volcanic eruption in Eden's history. Even more, the destruction of the forests had caused an interruption in the normal process that absorbed the carbon dioxide fron the atmosphere. And so, the climate on Eden was rapidly changing and it was close to the point of not return. Laurentia and Saramir were especially hard hit, but also the oceans and the other continents had started to suffer under the new, hotter climate. And also, the pollution of the oceans had caused great problems for marine life, decreasing the number of cyanobacteria and messing things even worse. Since they hadn't more resources in their continents, modern humans planned to colonize other continents, which were still full of resources since they had never been exploited. This obviously would have resulted in a major environmental disaster. The word 'ecology' was already born on Eden, but the environmentalist movements had just begun; the industrialists were obviously turning a deaf ear. Laurentia and Saramir, from continents covered with lush forests, had turned into enormous prairies and deserts, where all the survived animals could live only in nature reserves and zoos. But the prospects for Maakanar's future were even worse: since many small countries wished to strengthen themselves, they wouldn't have given much credit to nature. It was actually already happening. Up until two years earlier, the boundary line between the forest and human nations was located much further east, beyond a range of mountains that served as a natural barrier. Two years earlier, however, the nation known as Odaria had built the first colony and expanded much further into the continent, turning that part of the forest into a desert propped only by oil wells and coal mines. Obviously Maakanar was huge, so the amount of forest lost was infinitesimal, but seeing the speed with which humans expanded and knowing that other nations would soon have began colonization, it was clear that the continent didn't have much to live. And with every tree that fell and with every gram of coal extracted from the earth, climate change became more and more violent and irreversible. Sobek knew he had to hurry: he had to evolve as soon as possible. He couldn't put off any longer: leveling up wouldn't have done him much good and by now he had almost maximized his abilities. Only 2 skill points were needed to reach the level 5/5 of [Rapid digestion]. It was time to move on to the next stage. And to do that it had to attract the attention of humans. Sobek already had an idea of how to do it. Thanks to the information he found on Google, he knew that, as on Earth, there were biologists on Eden who went into the forest every year to study animals. Unlike the poachers they would not have tried to catch him, only to observe him. If he gave them something sensational, then his name would have spreaded to all scientists, which was more than enough to give him the million fame points he needed for his evolution. He certainly had no intention of showing his intelligence: that would have unleashed any kind of hunter against him. Also showing his skills was a really bad idea. No, he was aiming for size. From what he had read on Google, the largest spinosaurus ever seen in the wild was 'just' 15.8 meters long. Much larger specimens existed, but they were only found in zoos. Consequently if he had reached a larger size he would have been the largest new spinosaurus ever discovered in nature. To do this, he had to level up just a couple more times. "So it's decided. Let's become the biggest spinosaurus ever exist!"