Nosy palaeontologists

"Palaeontologists," a dinosaur grumbled. "Nosy parkers. I can't do anything without them knowing about it. I break my leg one day and a few millennia later a palaeontologist will be messing around with my bones, saying, "Look at that, this clumsy woman broke her leg." I eat a diet of grass and millennia later they poke through my poo and say, "She ate a diet of grass." It's not like I travel to the future and tell everybody what they eat."

"Maybe we should."

So they went forward in time, dug through the palaeontologists' rubbish bins, and paraded the packets and wrappings down the street.

"Cup Noodle! Cheap cornflakes! Chocolate bars!"

"This one eats nothing but pizza!"

The palaeontologists were abashed.

"Let's put this in a museum," the dinosaurs laughed. They built a museum and filled it with evidence of palaeontologists.

The palaeontologists rolled around in sorrow.

Ancient conveniences: enlightenment.

A tyrannosaurus rex stood alone in the rain like a boat on the sea.

A memory from the future ran backwards through the centuries and she thought, "I am alone in the rain like a boat on the sea." Then: "What does that mean?"

Infused with curiosity and determination she ran through the grasslands asking the other tyrannosaurs, "What is a boat?"

No one was sure. "A new kind of tree? A beetle? Describe it. What does it do?"

"It goes on the sea."

"And?"

But that was all she knew.

"You're thinking of a wave," they said. "Waves go on the sea."

She went to the beach and stared at the waves.

"That's not it."

The dinosaurs pointed to other objects floating on the sea: a log, a leaf.

"No, no, oh, I felt it, I am it, it is me, I am it, the boat ..."

"It sounds to me as if you've answered your own question," said a tyrannosaur who had a reputation for wisdom. "The boat is you and you are the boat. Float on the sea and you will be fulfilled."

She got into the sea and paddled to and fro. "Yes! This is it! I am the boat!"

The others danced on the beach, chanting, "She is fulfilled, she is enlightened, she is a boat on the sea."

"Let me try," said her friend. He shut his eyes and concentrated on enlightenment until the future occurred to him. "I am ... a plane in the air."

"He is a plane in the air!"

"I am enlightened. See what I have for you ..."

They ate the trays of plastic-wrapped muffins and reconstituted powdered scrambled egg, remarking, "This really is delicious."

40 000 years ago or somewhere around there.

A young shark was swimming in the Timor Sea when it found itself in mid-air many centuries ago. The ground below was dry and a man was cutting the throat of an animal. "Help me," the shark gasped. It could barely breathe.

"I am sorry but I cannot speak with you. Shark is not my animal," the man said. "The person you want is over there."

The shark tried to swim to the other person but its breath failed and it fainted. Then it was in the water again, in the present day.

"I had a terrible dream," it said.

"You saw the ancient land-bridge," said an old shark. "Now you are a man."

At this the shark grew legs and the other sharks ate him.