Chapter 248: Unrest in the human world

It wasn't just the dinosaur world that was changing. Human world was also undergoing constant change. For a few months after the discovery of the existence of intelligent dinosaurs, fear had continued to spread through the streets. However, people adapted quickly. After nearly a year of peace, people got used to dinosaurs. By now people talked about dinosaurs as they talked about ethnic minorities or a country they were at odds with. The population of all nations was divided between those who aimed at coexistence and those who hoped for their total extermination. Humans were malleable and hypocritical creatures. The same people who in fear had asked governments to negotiate for peace a year earlier, now that the fear was gone wanted nothing more than to see the dinosaurs disappear from the world. John Hammond was at the head of those seeking a coexistence relationship with dinosaurs. For a whole year he had been promoting campaigns that favored lifestyles that were good for everyone, dinosaurs and humans. Many had joined his cause, especially the scientists. Thanks to the immense wealth obtained after buying the shares of the Reiden Global, Hammond was able to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy and recycling facilities. According to him, as long as humans learned to respect the planet, the dinosaurs would have no reason to fight them. After all, on Eden there was space for both the civilizations. Unfortunately, however, people hardly ever like to change, and above all they don't like to feel fear. Faced with the change and uncertainty towards the future that coexistence with dinosaurs meant, many humans much preferred to eliminate the problem at its root and destroy the dinosaurs so that they were once again the dominant species on the planet and not have to be afraid of an attack. Despite John Hammond's commitment and effort, public opinion was increasingly in favor of reopening hostilities rather than keeping the peace. This could be seen very clearly in newspapers, on social media and, of course, on television programs. "Welcome, dear viewers, to a new edition of Planet Debate, your trusted program that addresses national issues with attention and speed! Today we can welcome two very important guests: Parker Selfridge, executive of the commercial company RDA, and Grace Augustine, fervent supporter of John Hammond's recent active campaign that aims at coexistence with the dinosaurs!" The presenter applauded as the two characters entered the range of the camera. Planet Debate was one of the most watched television shows in the world. It wasn't that different from regular talk shows: when an important event occurred, they would just take two people involved and have them debate in front of millions of viewers. The more the topic of the debate was interesting, the more the show attracted. The program covered everything: politics, nature, environmental issues, international crises, financial collapses, anything that caught the attention of the public. And obviously the hottest topic of the moment was the dinosaur problem. The two people who were on the show that day were naturally two individuals with an almost opposite view. On the one hand there was the executive of the RDA (Resources Development Administration), an international company specializing in high technology, which like many others hoped for the extermination of dinosaurs in order to return to exploit other continents and recover new resources. On the other hand, there was a world-renowned biologist who had recently expressed a strong appreciation for her campaign. Parker Selfridge was a lanky man, not very tall, and with a perpetually frowning face. He had a snobbish bearing, but you could see how stiff he was, a clear sign that he was under pressure. He was not entirely wrong to be: the shareholders of the RDA would have been unhappy if he had made a bad impression. Since the situation had begun to calm down after the initial panic, the RDA had been one of the first companies to press for the extermination of the dinosaurs: it aimed at the rich resources of Maakanar, which were essential since the company was dealing with products such as high technology. Now the RDA was forced to exploit the last stocks of silicon, yttrium, terbium, osmium, dysprosium and other important minerals that had remained on the Laurentia and Saramir, many of which were sold at a high price by their owners who had smelled the deal. However, those stocks would run out within a decade, sending the RDA into bankruptcy. The RDA had previously hoped to solve everything when the colonization of Maakanar began and had put a lot of its resources on that project, but now that Maakanar and the other continents were off-limits, the RDA was in danger of collapsing at any moment. It was obvious that its shareholders wanted nothing more than to wipe the dinosaurs off the face of the planet. Grace Augustine, on the other hand, was a middle-aged woman with showy red hair and a penetrating gaze. Unlike Selfridge, he gave off a kind of aura of authority. She was a biologist, and also much renamed: perhaps the only scientist more famous than her in that field was Alan Grant. Many were the scientists who had sided in favor of the peace proposed by John Hammond and Grace was one of them. "Let's start with the first guest of the evening! Mr. Selfridge, you and your company have repeatedly expressed your disagreement with seeking a peaceful solution with the dinosaurs. What do you have to tell us about it?" the presenter began. "Pff! What is there to say? It's very clear what needs to be done" Selfridge replied. "We have to kill them all. Coexistence is just a crazy dream. Humans and dinosaurs cannot coexist. They represent a danger to every human being in this world, so they must be stopped immediately!" "This is ridiculous! How would you like to exterminate the dinosaurs?" Grace protested. "Killing them all means devastating half the planet. To flush them out we would have to burn all the forests, drain lakes and rivers, bomb entire acres and even then we won't be able to kill them all. To eliminate them we will have to eliminate every other living species as well. We will kick off a global fire extinguishing level event, and we will not be exempt from it! If the planet dies, we die with it!" "And what would you like to do? Your idea of coexistence is bankrupt" Selfridge retorted. "While we still don't understand how they get their food, predatory dinosaurs still have to eat. And from satellite images we know that the mutation has now spread to all reptiles, including marine ones. At this rate very soon it will also extend to mammals and reptile-mammals. With the entire animal kingdom affected by the mutation, what will predators eat? It has already been established that those creatures have stopped eating each other, so what do you think they will aim for when they run out of food? We will become their cattle" "First, there is no evidence that this will ever happen. The mutation may also have stopped as far as we know. Dr. Wu has destroyed all of his research, so it's impossible to tell exactly what level he'll get to" Grace replied. "Second, even if the whole animal world gets infected, we can still come out victorious. Making synthetic meat isn't as complicated as it sounds. We can get enough of it to feed both us and them, assuming such an eventuality occurs. From a logical point of view, it is absolutely unlikely that the dinosaurs will ever choose to attack us!" "Could we know why?" the presenter asked her, knowing how to do her job well and knew when it was time to give credit to one or the other. "Because unlike SOMEONE in this room, they are well aware that open warfare would destroy us all!" Grace answered glaring at Selfridge with her eyes. "They were able to muster an army without us noticing; if they wanted to destroy us they would have waited to have sufficient strength and only then would they have attacked. They are not looking for war, but for coexistence. Because they know we would destroy each other in a war context. Have the three hundred years of war that plagued our history really taught nothing? There is no real winner in the war, everyone is defeated. The only ones to benefit from it are a small elite, coincidentally the same one that pushes for war!" Grace Augustine didn't mince words; she was a direct woman who said things as they were. She had long since learned that aggressive communication was often the best way to persuade the masses and had no qualms about using it. "So what do you propose to do?" asked the presenter. "You should know by now: we have to change. Maintaining our current lifestyle is not an option anymore" Grace said. "If the dinosaurs attacked us the first time, it was because we are destroying their environment with our current policy. So what we need to do is try to strike the delicate balance between technological development and respect for the environment, and we have the opportunity to do so. We need to convert our basic energy sources with solar panels and geothermal power plants, and we need to replace our plastic and paper factories with waste recycling plants. We need to stop wanting too much and just take advantage of what we already have. If this planet is no longer plagued by our activities, then the dinosaurs will no longer have any reason to attack us". The biologist wrinkled her nose. "The real winners of a war aren't those who eliminate the enemy, but those who manage to avoid the war before it breaks out. Those brave enough to try to change and take the enemy's motivation to attack you. Those who manage to turn enemies into friends! These are the heroes who should be remembered in the history books, not the commanders who led to the death of thousands of soldiers!" "Is it diminishing the value of our founding fathers?" Selfridge asked mockingly. As a good businessman as he was, he knew that the best way to deprive a person of popular consent was to accuse him of insulting the history of that people, especially if the nation in question was very patriotic. But contrary to her expectations, Grace did not deny: "I only tell the truth. No one in this world has any idea what a war is, neither do I. I could tell you that war is a bloodbath, that millions of soldiers will never return home, that mothers will lose their children and children will lose their parents, that every single family on this planet will be deprived of at least one member... but it would be useless. Words cannot describe true horror. We are all born in a generation where wars have long since ended, and therefore we delude ourselves that war is something simple and that it will last a few months. No instead. What lies ahead of us is a conflict that will last for years, and that will leave nothing but a desert of ash in the end. If there are any survivors, they will die of hunger and thirst as all the resources of the planet have been destroyed. War is not an option, full stop, and those who say otherwise are either stupid or profit from it! We must strive to AVOID war! Dinosaurs do not want war and on the contrary they have repeatedly shown that they are very open to dialogue: the only obstacle that prevents us from living peacefully is ourselves! Or rather, they are those idiots who are convinced that sending millions of people to die is a better choice than letting them live happily with their children!" Grace's speech was absolutely logical and straightforward, but if there was one thing people disliked it was being contradicted, and Selfridge was no exception. Also, 'idiot' was an insult to anyone. "We cannot know that the dinosaurs will keep the peace! They could attack us at any moment!" "And why haven't they done it yet? Why give us time to organize, instead of attacking when we were still weak and disorganized?" Grace asked back. "These are not the actions of someone who aims to attack you!" "THEY ARE ANIMALS!" Selfridge roared. "Their actions do not follow a logical line! They've already attacked us once! Nothing assures us they won't do it again!" Selfridge aimed to exploit the greatest weakness of human beings: their desire to maintain tranquility. Faced with the uncertainty of a future in which humans and dinosaurs coexisted, people much preferred the normality in which humanity was the only dominant species and no one could threaten it. "Yes, they attacked us... after we destroyed their environment and attacked them first! I would say that their reaction was understandable if machine guns were used as a method of approach!" snapped Grace. "Let's do this, Mr. manager: tomorrow I'll demolish your house and I threaten to kill you, your wife and all your family, but don't try to complain, or worse still to try to stop me! Everything is normal according to your reasoning!" "It's different! We were there before! This world belongs to us, changing our habits to satisfy the dinosaurs is like bowing to them!" "I know that THEY were here before us, I advise you to review the geological periods. And anyway, we're not bowing to them at all! The change we are making now should have started years ago when the first signs of climate change emerged. By accepting to change and improve, we are protecting our own survival!" "Don't you have a minimum of self-love? We should defend our place. Dinosaurs can coexist with us, but they must remember that we are the ones at the top! We are the ones who first reached intelligence, so we must be the ones who dictate the law on this planet!" "According to his reasoning, Neanderthals should rule the world, not Homo sapiens! Being smarter does not mean being better than others, unfortunately we humans have forgotten this. We are all animals and we all have the same needs. What you propose is not coexistence, it is groped to remain anchored to a failed thought. If we want to improve, then first we must change our mentality, or we would end up repeating the mistakes of our past over and over again. We must give the rest of the animal kingdom, from which we are not exempt, the same importance we give to ourselves! Only in this way will we be able to avoid extinction, that if we continue to maintain the old mentality that this fool proposes, then it will be inevitable whether we go to war against dinosaurs or not!" And it went on like this for a whole hour. To each of Selfridge's desperate arguments, Grace responded with extreme skill. But the man was not willing to admit that he was wrong for obvious reasons, and so in the end that debate ended with no winners or losers. Unfortunately, however, people were willing to listen more to Selfridge than to Grace. Those who supported the coexistence campaign with the dinosaurs were almost all young, who were very open to change and indeed saw what was happening as an opportunity to allow the human species to improve. But all the others, especially the adults, were not willing to change and live in the uncertainty of tomorrow. Having reached a certain age, humans desired a sedentary life, and did not like to be forced to change their lifestyle or even just to fear that one day they would be forced to change it. If there was one thing common to almost all adults, it was that they did not like to change, did not like to act, did not like to take sides, and did not want to feel fear in any way. As a result, most people preferred to favor the total extermination of the dinosaurs, so that things would fall into place, not realizing what this actually entailed. As Grace had rightly pointed out, many were under the delusion that the war would last a few months and that only a few thousand soldiers would die, and obviously none of those enlisting thought it would be his turn. Due to the excessive publicity that new weapons such as napalm and ICBMs had received, people were convinced that when the war broke out they would just shoot dinosaurs from a safe distance. But in reality a war between humans and dinosaurs would have been a lot more bloody than that. Being able to exterminate all of Sobek's army meant having to kill every dinosaur, every pterosaur, every bird, every marine reptile, every snake, every crocodile and even every lizard in existence. To carry out such a massacre, humans would have had to completely raze all three continents where the Sobek herd was stationed, which would have resulted in the extinction of almost every form of terrestrial life. Not to mention that the oceans would have to be devastated to eliminate marine reptiles. With such a death, Eden's life would be completely extinct in a short time. And this without even taking into account the dinosaurs' counterattack. Sobek would certainly not have stood by and watched. The nations located on Maakanar, such as Odaria, would be completely destroyed. Marine reptiles would sink the ships and pterosaurs would tear apart planes and helicopters. And when the battle shifted to Laurentia or Saramir, dozens of towns would be razed to the ground. The number of civilian casualties would have been enormous. If humans had managed to win, they would have lost at least half of the world's population. And after the war, the effects of the devastation wreaked would have sentenced humans to starve, no matter how advanced their technology might be, because humans were by no means independent of their host planet even though they liked to believe otherwise. The only ones who would have benefited from all this would have been a small circle of people, coincidentally the rich and powerful ones, who would have had the resources not only to survive, but to come out even stronger than before, enslaving all the people who instead the resources. they didn't. Even if humanity had managed to survive, at least 95% of the world's population would have died, and the few survivors would have lived a miserable life under the dictatorship of the remaining powerful men, who would have become the rulers of that devastated world, at least until the absence of plants, algae and cyanobacteria would leave the planet without oxygen. Basically, in aiding the war, humans were digging their own grave, and they weren't even realizing it. And they looked with admiration those who proposed to exterminate the dinosaurs, not realizing that doing so would only unleash a long series of suffering on them. Unfortunately, humans were a stupid species. That was the only reason why Sobek couldn't unite the planet peacefully. If they had used their brains, humans would have realized for themselves the benefits of coexisting with dinosaurs. Instead, they preferred to help build the huge thermobaric missiles, which could have easily razed entire cities to the ground, but were seen as a manifestation of progress. But Sobek was unwilling to stand by and watch. Obviously, he had always kept himself informed of the situation through his spies on him. He knew very well how things were progressing on the human continents, and he had already decided that his patience had reached its limit. He had given the humans enough time to put salt in their pumpkins, but if they weren't willing to get their neurons to work, then he would show them what war really was. In what would be remembered by future generations as the day of the First True Proclamation, Sobek once again made its debut on screens around the world. *********** "Finally!" Jocelyne exclaimed when she saw the information Nero had sent him. "He took some time, but at least he kept faith with his word" "Is it that important?" a jeholopterus who was watching her perched on the window asked. "Oh, yes" the girl replied. "With this, my preparations are complete" The girl's lips curled into a sinister smile as she read the evidence of all the wrongdoing, corruption, criminal acts and extortion perpetrated by the heads of households. Thanks to them, she finally had the excuse to do... what she had been planning to do for a long time now. However, that wasn't what she cared about at the moment. What was important now was only the last part of the file that Nero had sent her. Within minutes, she downloaded all that information onto a cellphone and handed it over to the jeholopterus. "Bring it to Lord Sobek. Here is all the evidence for heavy weapons deployment on your borders that the NMWA plans to implement" The jeholopterus nodded and grabbed the phone. "Are you sure you don't need more time?" "No. I already have everything I need. Lord Sobek can initiate his part of the plan at any time" Having heard this, the jeholopterus spread its wings and flew away. Jocelyne didn't care about her cell phone: it was an old model and she could afford hundreds of them. The information she had just sent to Lord Sobek would also serve as an excuse. Since humans were a hypocritical species, they tended to look down on those who declared war without a 'casus belli'. Sobek didn't want to pass as the one in wrong and Jocelyne agreed with him; this would have made their plan very complicated in the future. No, they had to concentrate on playing the part of the victims. They had to make sure that future generations, when they studied history, would say 'they were absolutely right'. If Sobek had attacked without any provocation, he would surely have been in the wrong. But if he had found an excuse, everything would have changed. For example, the deployment of heavy weapons near the dinosaur territory. For nearly a year, the NMWA had been secretly making deals with the Odaria government to place a large number of highly destructive missiles in their country. In this way, when the conflict broke out, the NMWA could bomb the territory of the dinosaurs. If they had been on Earth, then those missiles could have traveled almost across the globe; but on a planet ten times larger this was impossible. An ICBM could travel a maximum of 5,500 kilometers, but the ocean separating Maakanar from the two human continents was wider. The NMWA therefore had no choice but to deploy the missiles to a nation located on Maakanar. That was a perfect 'casus belli'. No nation in the world would have stood by if a hostile power had placed missiles not far from its border. It would have been an act of extreme provocation to which anyone would have responded. It was like declaring war. The NMWA knew this, and in fact had acted in secret, contacting only the government and the nation's heads of households. After all, they expected that once the missiles were in place, the dinosaurs would react quickly. Therefore, it was much better to prevent the news from becoming public before the outbreak of an all-out war. But what the NMWA didn't expect was that... Jocelyne was the daughter of one of the heads of the household, and she knew exactly what was going on! Under normal circumstances this probably would have been irrelevant, but this time she was allied with the dinosaurs! With her knowledge and with Nero's help, she had gathered irrefutable evidence. She now she just had to wait for Sobek to put it to good use. Jocelyne knew the big change was on the way. That day, the world was one way; a few days later, it would have been completely different. "Given the situation, I think I'll give Abe and Jackson a few weeks of holiday..." Abe had been released from Cartago just a month earlier, along with the soldier he had met, Dariela. Despite his terrible experience, he was still doing his job as usual. Jocelyne would have no difficulty using that pretext to send him and her brother away for a while. After all, they both deserved some quiet time, and she had no intention of adding more trauma to their lives...