Crocodile -2000- -

The disc spat out a man. Not a reed-man or a mud-man. This one wore a smooth, white skin over his body and a clear shell over his face. He carried a stick that sparked.

K’tharr’s jaws, strong enough to crush a turtle’s shell, strong enough to hold a drowning ox, closed around the man’s middle. The white suit cracked. The clear helmet shattered. The stick flew into the water, hissing impotently.

He did not think attack . He simply moved.

Two thousand pounds of muscle exploded from the mud. The man from the disc had time to whisper, “But you’re just a—“ crocodile -2000-

One evening, the sky did not bruise purple, but split open with a sound like a stone tablet cracking in half. A silver disc, no bigger than a scarab beetle, hovered over the river. Then it screamed. A high, thin noise that made K’tharr’s ancient bones hum.

He settled back onto his mudbank, the one he had guarded for two thousand years before this moment. He closed his bad eye.

K’tharr understood one thing. This thing was in his river. And it was trying to make the world go quiet. The disc spat out a man

Then the disc went dark.

K’tharr did not understand the words. But he understood the smell. The man’s stick hissed, and a grey fog rolled across the water. Where it touched, tadpoles froze mid-wiggle. Lily pads turned to dust. A fish floated to the surface, not dead, but unborn .

The man looked into K’tharr’s one good eye. “You don’t… understand. I’m from the year… 3000 AD. You were supposed to be a specimen. Just a… crocodile.” He carried a stick that sparked

Hunger. That was all that was left. The oldest, stupidest, strongest thing in his brain.

Year: 2000 BC. Location: The lush, unnamed delta of a river that will one day be called the Nile.

He was not a guardian of history. He was not a hero. He was just a crocodile, doing what crocodiles do.