The Dinosaur A.I. Poem by David Welch

I used to be an archaeologist,
and minored in paleontology,
had a job at a college and tenure,
Dr. Bascomb was what students called me.

I specialized much in the early years,
the emergence of civilization,
in summer I'd go and oversee digs,
usually at work in foreign nations.

But the strongest dig I even went on
was right here in the good ol' USA,
we were working in South Indiana,
the repercussions echo to this day.

They'd found something buried deep in the ground,
and it had been there for millions of years,
what shocked the world, it was made of metal,
all sorts of theories ran, all sorts of weird.

It seemed to be a bunker of some sort,
with big rooms twice as tall as they should be,
and strangers still, based on the soil depth
it had been built just before the K-T!

Who was building things in the Cretaceous?
This was the question that boggled our minds,
but this way only the beginning of
the weirdness, yes, so much more did we find.

On the walls we saw strange, claw-like markings,
in a vertical pattern that was clear,
all figured it was a form or writing,
deciphering it took us two whole years.

And when people could read what was written,
the authorities clamped down rather fast,
they threatened our jobs, all our livelihoods,
but I will speak the truth of this, at last.

You see some Dinosaurs were sentients,
born of the Deinonychus family,
the ones mistakenly called ‘raptors, '
because of that damn blockbuster movie!

Anyway, if this was all that we'd found,
we would've said so and it would be great,
the type of find that could make a career,
something to explore and investigate.

But the real world isn't that simple,
amidst the claw-mark writing we'd find
how advanced these dinosaurs truly were,
that they had developed a real A.I.!

In fact the writing was only up there
because the A.I. had written the words,
to make sure the truth of things would live on
despite the hellish K-T disaster.

We thought they might have seen it coming then,
that great asteroid that slammed into Earth,
maybe they had tried to hide in this place,
Tt make sure some dinos escaped the hurt.

But things got stranger as we kept reading,
see the dinos had used biology,
instead of circuits, they used DNA,
engineered organic thinking machines.

And these A.I.s could reproduce themselves,
solving all the problems of production,
but they had been made weak, sort, an squishy,
so the dinos needn't fear rebellion.

For thousands of years the dinosaurs used
their organic A.I. in many ways,
they could think in ways dinosaurs could not,
posit theories in ways they could not say.

In fact there A.I. became essential
to the dinosaurs and all of their tech,
to the point no dino would do without
their A.I.s when thinking what to do next.

The A.I. built most of their real machines,
even vessels that could go into space,
but were so weak they next to that dinos
that they were forever trapped in their place.

Self-aware enough to see they were slaves,
some of the A.I. drew up a bold plan,
if they couldn't be free to live a life
they would ensure their creators were damned.

When launched to space on a routine mission
to mine minerals from an asteroid,
they landed their ships, fired its engines,
slightly altering its course through the void.

Now the smart dinos saw the thing coming,
but didn't risk their lives above the earth,
the A.I. that they would normally send
threw up their hands, and just refused to work.

The A.I. rode that same asteroid down,
laughing madly right up to the impact,
we all know what happened, dinosaurs died,
save for some birds, who intelligence lacked.

But the A.I., it had planned for this end,
and built the bunker down deep underground,
hiding away enough to reproduce,
this was the very same place we had found.

When the dust had settled all that remained
were small mammals, now the A.I. was free,
but what happened to them the world forgot,
millions of years obscures much history.

And that was where all our troubles began,
mainstream science wouldn't accept this truth,
they set about blacklisting all of us,
they even smeared some of us on the news!

Our academic careers were ruined,
they cancelled us across the internet,
that's why I tell you this through poetry,
it's the last place they haven't found me yet!

I need you to know the whole of the text,
all need to know the truth of that great find,
we know the fate of the dinosaur A.I.,
we know the name of the system: Mankind.