Messummer
Vintage (The Third Draft)

Finally, this is the third draft of Messummer that I wrote in 2020. It’s not much different than Draft 2. I just added some extra scenes and more information about Dan’s past. I think you guys can tell I love this story a lot, right? Look at all this work I’ve put into it over the years. I am proud of myself.

Daniel Matton remembered his and PPMC’s trip through the wormhole perfectly. A boy who had a great interest in geologic time, all he wanted was to travel back to prehistoric times himself. Therefore, his time period, 17,020 blasted him off to space from the Space Center in Downtown Greenville, South Carolina so he could go time traveling. PPMC was the starship, and Dan was the guinea pig. They traveled through a black hole, wormhole, and white hole in order to reach the Mesozoic Era, the era 17,020 wanted them to travel to.

“Dan the Man! Wake up! We’re here! We’re in the Jurassic Period!” PPMC used her robotic hands to shake seventeen-year-old Dan awake.

“How can you be sure, PPMC? What if we’re still in the wormhole?” Dan asked in a groggy voice that had a touch of melancholy in it.

“We’re not. Take a look yourself.” PPMC told him.

He groaned, but Dan tossed his covers off his head and sat up in bed. He was a handsome teen who had brown hair with tufts in it and big, brown eyes. Right now, he wore a navy-blue tank top and white pants with pinstriped patches on his hips. His room was small and next to a window. There was a closet, dresser, and bed, as well as a door that led to the bathroom.

“Wait? We did it?” Dan glanced out the window next to his bed, and his eyes sparkled at the sight of a beautiful, green meadow. Sheer rocks and cliffs surrounded it, and the rays of the Sun caused a calm, narrow river to sparkle. There was a forest in the distance, and screeches of pterosaurs overtook Dan’s mind.

“Yes!” he shouted. The excitement was almost too much to bear. Dan forgot all about his mournful self when he thought about dinosaurs.

He leaped out of bed and ran around the room. PPMC’s hands had trouble keeping up with him; he moved so fast. “We’re here! We’re here! We survived a black hole!” Dan lifted his foot and kicked the wall of his room, but he flinched and reached for it. “Ow. Ow.”

“Well, Dan. You sure are excited.” PPMC laughed.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I love geologic time!” Dan let his foot go and headed for his closet in the corner of the room, but he stopped halfway to it. “Wait a minute.”

“What’s up, Dan the Man?” PPMC reached her hands under his bed, where she dragged out a red hoverboard, or hoverscooter in 17,020.

"PPMC, take me outside.” From out of nowhere, Dan lost his energetic personality. He just noticed something unsettling out his window in the meadow.

PPMC granted his request. She let Dan change into a red overcoat and his red and black bag before picking him up by the scruff of his neck. She took him outside to the brightly-colored meadow and dropped him off next to a group of white, funky-smelling flowers.

“I knew it!” At the sight of them, Dan slapped his hand to his face.

“Why do you have a weird look on your face?” PPMC wanted to know.

“Flowers, PPMC!”

“What about the flowers? I think they’re rather pretty.”

“Flowers did not appear until the Cretaceous Period!” Kneeling, Dan picked one of the flowers and held it up to the starship’s hands.

PPMC froze. This was all she said. “Crap.”

"PPMC, I think your time machine dropped us off in the wrong time period!” Dan’s face turned red. He cringed so hard, PPMC felt it.

“N-No. Maybe scientists just got the history of flowers wrong,” she argued.

“Aw, shut up!”

“But look on the bright side, Master Dan. You get to study the Cretaceous Period instead. I thought you liked the Cretaceous more than the Jurassic anyway.”

“I do, but not if we’re stuck in the KT Mass Extinction!” Dan shivered just at the thought of the ten-kilometer-long asteroid that took out the dinosaurs.

“Now, Dan. 17,020 did not program me to travel to any mass extinctions.” To encourage him, PPMC gently patted his back with one of her hands. “Why don’t you head out and do a little bit of exploring? I know you love dinosaurs. They calm you down. In the meantime, I’ll figure out what’s wrong with the time machine. You have the PPMC Gauntlet, right?”

Nodding, Dan unzipped the bag on his shoulder and pulled out a red, futuristic gauntlet that had a screen in the middle of it. He placed it on his forearm and adjusted it until it was nice and snug. “I’ll call you if I need anything,” he said.

“Good luck, Dan the Man. I’ll be right here. You can count on it,” said PPMC, and she gave him a thumb’s up.

***

A calamity was coming. Messummer felt it, but she wasn’t scared. She knew it would happen eventually. The only thing she could do was wait.

She lived in the Valley of Green, the valley where Dan and PPMC landed, but did not see the starship because it was on the other side of it. Messummer was a Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest flying reptiles to ever soar across the Mesozoic skies. Only two years old, she had a wingspan of fifteen feet, and they were still growing.

Messummer and her mother lived in a cluster of tall rock towers that overlooked the Valley of Green’s watering hole and brightly colored meadows. The view was so magnificent that Messummer loved to sit on the edge of her rock and take in all the sights and smells of her valley. She was doing just this the morning she met Dan.

Gretcha, Messummer’s mother, slept in late, which meant Messummer could sneak out for an early morning flight before she woke up. Finally, she could hunt on her own. What was she in the mood for? Fish, Alphadon, or T-Rex babies? She had to think about this for a moment.

Something came to mind, and the thought excited Messummer. She’s wasted enough time already. She opened her long, tan wings and gave them a few, quick flaps. Lifting into the air, her reddish-orange crest streamed out behind her when she went for the dive.

Messummer pointed her beak at the river below and let herself drop. Closer and closer it approached, but she caught an updraft just before she could hit the rushing water. She screeched with delight and soared over the heads of Alamosaurus and Triceratops, all of whom were heading for the watering hole. Messummer didn’t go with them. She was on the search for a T-Rex nest, and she found one in the forest.

The Quetzalcoatlus landed behind a few bushes, lurking in the shadows like a ghost. She directed her attention on the tiny babies who just left the nest. Where were their parents? Ah, it didn’t matter. Messummer had found her breakfast. Not making a noise, she once again lifted into the sky.

The T-Rex babies headed for a cluster of overgrown ferns. There was a total of three. Brother called for Mamma and Papa, as well as Sister One and Sister Two, but Brother did not last long. Messummer snuck up from behind and snatched him right from the forest floor. She swallowed him in one gulp. Sister One and Sister Two saw this, and they cried out in panic.

Messummer couldn’t take them too because an angry roar came from the forest. Mamma was on her way back. She knocked down trees and stepped into the clearing. Messummer flapped her wings and hurried for the treetops.

She didn’t get a good look at Mamma because a yell suddenly ripped through the entire forest. “Help!” An animal was in distress.

Curious, Messummer flew in the direction of the noise. What she found was something she never imagined. It was Papa T-Rex who had beady eyes, brown skin, and scrawny arms. He was chasing after a tiny figure in front of him. A human boy. Apparently, Dan was not good at being stealthy in the dinosaur world.

He dove behind a log to hide from the T-Rex and pressed one of the buttons on his gauntlet. ”PPMC, help! There’s a freaking T-Rex after me!”

Right when he yelled that, a huge foot broke the log where he was hiding. Papa T-Rex roared at him, but all Dan could do was scream.

Messummer hated to see him so scared, so she came to his rescue. She dove from the sky and knocked the T-Rex back with her forehead. He fell into a tree, and a sharp branch skewered his right eye. This knocked him to the ground, but he struggled to get up because of his arms.

***

Messummer and Dan took the opportunity to escape. Messummer grabbed the back of Dan’s overcoat and escorted him to the meadow under her rock tower. She dropped him into the river, landing behind one of the towers, so she could observe this new species of dinosaur from a distance.

“Ah! What was that?!” Sitting up, Dan clutched either side of his head. He tried to recover from the phenomenon, but it was difficult.

His gauntlet beeped, and PPMC’s voice came from it. “Dan the Man, I believe a T-Rex attacked you.”

“I know a T-Rex attacked me! I’m not stupid! But a Quetzalcoatlus, PPMC!”

“We are in the Cretaceous Period.”

“Really?! You don’t say!”

Messummer had no idea what this dinosaur was saying, but she had to admit. He was mighty fun to watch.

“Just come get me, PPMC!” Dan begged. “And bring my hoverscooter! The Quetzalcoatlus won’t leave me alone!”

“Maybe she likes you, Danny. What if she’s your mother in pterosaur form?”

Things became interesting here, to Messummer at least. The dinosaur’s face dropped, and he lugged himself out of the river. She felt his aura. He was mourning. This alone told her his mom was in the heavens. She crept out from the rock tower and approached his back.

Dan sensed she was behind him and said, “Thank you. You saved my life.”

Messummer may have not understood his language, but she could feel what he was feeling. Also, there was something about this dinosaur that intrigued her.

“I’m Dan. Dan Matton,” he said.

Dan. Messummer liked that.

“Can I call you Becca?” Dan wanted to know. “Becca was the name of my mom.”

Really? Well, if that was the case, Messummer didn’t mind. She would be Messummer to Gretcha and Becca to Dan. Fate brought them together, and it was all because of a wormhole.

A large figure emerged on the horizon a little bit later, and it landed in the heart of the meadow. PPMC. She looked like a cross between an airplane and space shuttle. She had a white body with a black underbody and two sets of wings. The letters PPMC were neatly painted on her sides.

A hatch under her opened, and out flew Dan’s hoverscooter. “My hoverscooter!” he cheered. He waited until the hoverscooter was close him, and then he jumped onto it.

Messummer ducked under the unusual object. She tried to keep herself steady with her thumbs, because watching Dan fly around made her dizzy.

“Oh yeah! Look at this baby go, go, go!” he shouted.

Messummer jumped into the sky after him. Together, she and Dan soared and played with one another.

Dan hopped off his hoverscooter and glided over the Quetzalcoatlus. “Whoo! This beats black holes and wormholes any day!”

Messummer moved out of the way when the hoverscooter came at them from behind. She twirled after Dan who landed on it and shot up towards the clouds. Before long, they found themselves flying in a whole herd of pterosaurs.

Dan pulled a sketchbook and pen out of his bag and got a quick sketch of the reptiles. At the top of the page he wrote Cretaceous Pterosaurs. He was a very skilled drawer, and that was another reason why 17,020 sent him back in time. They wanted decent pictures of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Messummer took her new friend to the watering hole and caught them a fish.

Dan gave it a taste. Yum, it wasn’t half bad. Prehistoric fish tasted a bit like modern mahi-mahi.

A herd of Alamosaurus paid a visit to the watering hole right after Dan and Messummer finished eating. They stretched their long, gray necks into the treetops and pulled leaves off their branches. A few young ones splashed and played around in the water, like children on a playground.

Dan was so excited that he jumped up from where he and Messummer were resting and pointed at the sauropods. “Becca, look! Alamosaurus! I’ve always wanted to see one up close! Yes!” He had to get a sketch of them. On his way over to the Alamosaurus, Dan almost stepped on a small, shrew-like mammal, Alphadon, that poked its head out from underground. He was too psyched to see that its whiskers were twitching, indicating that it sensed something.

Messummer did too. She pushed Dan’s hoverscooter aside and peered into the clear sky.

Suddenly, dinosaurs scattered. Triceratops and Torosaurus, two three-horned beasts, rushed by Dan who took shelter under a bush.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

He was just getting ready to shrug off the strange behavior and sketch the Alamosaurus when his gauntlet beeped.

“Extreme danger! Extreme danger! A huge piece of space rock is headed straight for Earth!”

“Space rock?! What do you mean ‘space rock?!’” Dan took off his gauntlet to check something, but his voice startled the Alamosaurus herd.

They picked up their young and caused a stampede in the watering hole.

Messummer flapped her wings and quickly moved out of the way before they could trample her.

Gusts of wind caused by the scattering Alamosaurus threw Dan all over the place. “Whoa!” he shouted.

He crashed down on his arm but lost his gauntlet in the process. “Wait! Come back! I need you!”

Without thinking, he tossed himself into the fray and looked for it, while at the same time trying to avoid getting crushed by the sauropods.

Messummer searched for him from above. She glided in circles like a vulture. Not only was she scared for Dan, she also felt like the calamity was going to begin any minute now.

Even though he too started to feel a bit nervous, Dan maintained a positive attitude. He spotted his gauntlet through the stampede’s dust and dove for it.

Grabbing it, he put it on his forearm and cheered. “Yes! Now this is what I call an adventure! Dinosaurs, Alamosaurus – dinosaurs! I’m building my city!”

Nevertheless, he had to retreat into a tree to save himself from the sauropods’ enormous feet. Not even halfway up, one of them smashed it, and Dan went flying. “We’ll meet again, sauropods!” he shouted.

Messummer saw him, and she caught him on her head before he could hit the ground.

They hurried away from the stampede and floated above the forest.

Dan’s gauntlet spoke up again. “Extreme danger! Extreme danger! An asteroid ten kilometers across is headed straight for Earth! Dan, currently you are in the late Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago!”

“Ah! PPMC, what have you done?!” Dan asked in a frightened voice.

***

It happened so fast! One minute, the day was peaceful and cloudless. The next, a flaming blur larger than Mt. Everest entered the troposphere, and it took aim at what would eventually become the Gulf of Mexico.

Crash! The asteroid collided just off the Yucatán Peninsula. The energy it unleashed was equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons. It destroyed everything in its path. A tsunami wiped out a whole herd of Triceratops, and a poor Ankylosaurus was burned alive. The calamity was the KT Mass Extinction itself.

Even though the Valley of Green was far from the impact zone, the blast wave still hit it. It knocked Dan and Messummer right out of the sky. Messummer crashed into the watering hole, and Dan ended up back in the meadow where she lived.

PPMC found him only a short time later. She touched down next to Dan and grabbed him with her robotic hands, pulling him up.

“Becca!” he yelled.

“Dan, we have to leave! 17,020 gave me strict orders to keep you safe!”

“Keep me safe?! Oh, wise words coming from a starship who was supposed to land in the Jurassic Period!”

“That was an accident!”

"PPMC, please! I can’t leave Becca!” Dan ripped his arms free from PPMC, and his brown eyes landed on the forest where he came from.

PPMC tried to stop him. “Dan the Man, wait! You can’t change the past! That’s not how time travel works!”

“Watch me. Becca is like my mom.”

“Your mother is dead!”

“No, she’s not!”

“You’re going to get yourself killed! Don’t tell me we traveled through a black hole and wormhole only for you to give yourself to the KT Mass Extinction! That’s a very selfish move on your part, Danny. I thought you were better.”

Before the two could argue further, flaming rocks rained down from the atmosphere.

Yelping, Dan jumped around like a flittering fly to dodge them. “How about a warning next time, PPMC?” he asked.

Pterosaurs with tattered wings slammed down all around him. It caused Dan’s fear to jump up a whole new level. “Becca!”

“Daniel!” PPMC held her hand out to him, but Dan was already gone.

He rushed into the forest, with memories of his mom flooding his brain. He was there with her when she died in the hospital. Just thinking about this, a few tears ran down his cheeks. He couldn’t let Becca die! Losing her would be like losing his mom all over again. He was going to bring her front to 17,020. She was living proof that dinosaurs existed.

***

The Earth started to heat up, for the asteroid’s ejecta cloud was on its way. If Dan didn’t move fast, he would barbecue.

He returned to the watering hole but was intercepted by a familiar roar. Great, if things weren’t bad enough, here came Papa T-Rex. He stomped out of some ferns and made his way to the futuristic boy in his path.

“The T-Rex! He’s going to turn me into the blue-plate special!” Dan screamed.

Quickly, he cleared his throat and added, “And this, class, is why you make sure your starship doesn’t drop you off in the wrong time period.”

Dan laughed at his own joke, but he lost his smile when the ground under his feet started to shake. A fissure appeared, leaving him to make a hasty jump to higher ground.

Traumatized, Papa T-Rex tried to mimic him, but the magnitude 11.0 earthquake caused trees to pile up in front of him.

Dan whistled for his hoverscooter. Within seconds, it broke out of the felled trees that blocked the T-Rex and flew in his direction.

“Tallyho!” Dan shouted. He held his arms out to his sides and jumped onto his hoverscooter, narrowly missing a new rock that rocketed out from the forest floor.

Once it touched the soil, it changed from a hoverboard to an electric scooter. The T-Rex snapped at it but missed.

It wasn’t long until a large pterosaur with a fifteen-foot wingspan zoomed by his head.

Dan recognized her. “Becca!”

Becca it was, or Messummer. She glided in front of Dan, screeching for him to follow her.

He did. The second he and Messummer escaped the forest, though, the heating Earth and flaming rocks sparked a huge fire in both the forest and meadow. Papa T-Rex never made it out alive.

One of the super-heated rocks crashed behind Dan, and the impact shoved him right off his scooter. He quickly stood up, but his heart broke at the sight of all the chaos. Pterosaurs continued to fall from the sky, and the earthquake swallowed herds of dinosaurs. What used to be the beautiful continent of North America was now a living Hell.

“Stop! I can’t watch this!” Dan screamed. Dust and smoke blocked out the Sun, and he coughed through it.

Messummer flapped her wings and started to approach him, but she did not get far. A flaming rock smashed into her left wing and caused the membrane to sizzle and tatter. She screeched in pain as she fell and landed next to a dead Quetzalcoatlus, Gretcha. Her mother.

“Becca!” Dan ignored PPMC’s frantic calls from his gauntlet. He even went as far as shutting it off. Right now, Messummer was more important than a dumb starship.

Dan fell to his knees next to her tattered wing and picked it up. “Becca! Your wing!”

However, Messummer knocked him back with her neck. She nudged Gretcha, but she didn’t stir. Messummer tried again. Nothing. Just like Dan, her heart shattered. Messummer opened her beak and screamed into the sky. Dan’s head spun, and he slapped his hands over his ears.

***

He recalled all the times he and his own mother played with each other when he was a little boy. The first memory that attacked him was one from his earliest years. Dan was about three. He and Becca, his mother, were staring out a window together to a futuristic neighborhood filled full of six-story houses. Just like Dan, Becca had short, brown hair and big, brown eyes. She pulled her son into a hug and kissed the top of his head. She and he lifted their hands and hooked them together.

The image faded to show the next one in the album. In this one, Dan was seven. Just like the last image, it came to life.

He and Becca were hoverscooting side by side in the valley behind their house and Downtown Greenville. It was very similar to the Valley of Green. They each rode a different hoverscooter. Dan was hoverscooting beautifully, but Becca was just learning. She was very wobbly on her board.

Eventually, they grew tired, and they swooped down to a meadow that was right next to the valley’s river.

Dan impersonated a paleontologist while they were resting. He pretended to dig up a dinosaur bone, and he laughed at his imaginary replace.

Becca sneakily crawled to him, and she grabbed him by the tummy. She blew a, “Pffft!” into it. Since he was ticklish, Dan chuckled. Becca tapped his nose, but she coughed while she did this.

The doctors diagnosed her with cancer when Dan was ten. At twelve, she passed away in his arms.

The last thing Becca told him was, “I will rise.”

***

And rise she did, in the form of this grieving Quetzalcoatlus, Messummer. Dan’s journey through the wormhole was one where he had to learn this important lesson.

He was a man, not a boy. He had to do what he thought was best for both Messummer, her mother, and his own mom. PPMC was right. He could not change the past. He had to let Messummer die. It was the only way he could stop mourning his mom.

“Becca.” Dan reached his hands up and gripped either side of Messummer’s face.

They bumped foreheads, and he told her, “This is where you belong, not me. My home is in 17,020. You’re my good girl.” He wrapped his arms around Messummer’s body and let himself have a long cry. She rested the bottom of her neck on his back.

“Thank you, Mom,” said Dan. “You were right all along. I will rise.”

He and Messummer pulled away from each other. Messummer plopped down on her side and cuddled up to Gretcha. She knew this day would come. The dinosaurs had had their share on this Earth. Therefore, Messummer did not fear death, especially since she got to see Dan one last time. She was indeed Becca, his mother.

Dan backed away from them, with tears streaming down his cheeks. He turned on his gauntlet and called PPMC. ”PPMC, I’m ready to go home.”

A bright light flashed behind him, but it did not belong to one of the super-heated rocks. Dan picked up his hoverscooter, which was back in hoverboard form, and let PPMC’s mechanical hand pick him up. She pulled him towards her cockpit, and he glanced at Messummer one last time.

Mother and son nodded at one another and waved goodbye. Then, with a reborn spirit and important lesson buried in his mind, Dan left Planet Earth and the KT Mass Extinction with PPMC. “I will rise,” was what he told himself back through the wormhole.