"You've gotta be kidding me," I ranted a little too loudly as passengers were starting to arrive in the lounge area. I lowered my voice, if not my intensity, "That's a reason not to go over important details like 'Time Warrens can look like humans'?"
"Our unpredictable nature is our saving grace. And we are never more unpredictable than when we are left to discover things by ourselves. Besides, your friends would have to be complete morons not to notice the differences between one of the Lyrii in human form and a real human,"
Serghan defended himself.
I shook my head in disbelief. How could he not see what I realized immediately? Was it something in the water in the 30th generation?
"Serghan my friend, remember that question you asked as we came into the security area?"
He looked puzzled, searching for the memory I wanted.
"What evolutionary forces had to be present to make time travel a boon to natural selection? Does that ring any bells?"
"Of course, of course. A fine question indeed."
I left a pause, hoping the other shoe would drop without a lot of cumbersome explanation. All Serghan did was draw himself up cross-legged on the bench and shrug a little. Exasperated, I continued, "You're talking about a race who not only developed a biological means of time travel, but in the span of two months developed nearly perfect spoken language and the ability to shift into human form. You don't suppose that suggests an answer to your question, do you?"
"Oh my...," it was Danidesh who heard the other shoe thud to the ground first.
"What?" Serghan spat. "We've had our best people working on how they did these things."
"So you were curious," I smiled.
"Of course. But we didn't know jack about their race, their physiology, anything. Let me tell you, if you get a DNA sample from a new race with nothing to compare it to, all you have is a giant puzzle with no reference points. Comparing them to us wouldn't have been worth much."
"Maybe it would have," Danidesh mused. "With a lot of unraveling, you might have found a common ancestor with humans in one of the Lyrii but not the other."
I beamed a smile at Danidesh. "Well done."
"Okay, okay, catch me up now," Serghan grew restless. He fumbled at his belt where his flute pouch had been, then grumbled something about security.
"They didn't develop spoken language, perfect human spoken language in two months. They didn't evolve human appearance in the blink of a nanosecond across the long history of their species," I explained. "That would be completely impossible."
"But they did. I was there. I saw it," Serghan insisted.
"Come on Serghan, think. What is the evolutionary advantage to time travel?"
The look on his face told me he was starting to get it.
"You have literally forever to adapt, to anything, anywhere, anytime. To you that adaptation appeared to take two months. In reality that selection process had to take countless generations."
"But why? Why go to all that trouble?"
"You've alluded to the fact that humans have been rather a thorn in their sides. Perhaps for longer than you know. Maybe to the Lyrii it's not really trouble."
"What do you mean?" Danidesh wanted to know.
"Why do humans invent things? You've said we have kind of a niche in the Universe when it comes to Making. We have invented all kinds of contraptions, big and small. Why would they do it, except that they had a problem to solve and a curiosity to see what they could accomplish?"
"This is just too huge," Serghan whispered in awe.
"Yes, to those of us used to living very much in the moment, something that huge in scope boggles the mind. I may be dead wrong. My gut tells me I'm not. The evolutionary advantage to developing a biological means of time travel is that you then have all of time and space, the very nuts and bolts of evolution itself as your workbench. It sounds like a biological advantage to me."
"Shit. Does that ever change what we're up against."
"Well, in one important way, for sure. It doesn't seem so far fetched to me that a Time Warren, given all the time in the world to practice, could master our idiosyncrasies in verb tense."
"We have to get word to the others," Danidesh said with great urgency.
"But the flight..."Serghan protested.
"To hell with the flight," I huffed, marching off to find a connection I could use.
"Every time we hurry, I feel like we're trying to beat them at their own game," Danidesh mumbled falling in step behind me.
Serghan remained sitting at the gate, scratching his chin and smiling to himself.
