Monster Girl Base 5 Chapter 1

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

The lights from the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending, faded away to reveal the unmistakable shape of a triceratops on the outskirts of the base. My father’s world hopping machine had taken me to a few different prehistoric worlds, but Jurassic Park hadn’t been one of them. The massive creature had to be at least eight feet tall with two huge horns that came out of its forehead and a flat crown on its head that made it look even bigger.

The sky was so bright that I would’ve thought that we were in the middle of a city if I couldn’t see the stars. It was like the entire Milky Way shone down on the enlarged plants that surrounded us. The moon was barely a sliver, but I didn’t need it to see, and I wondered if this was what my world looked like before light pollution had blocked everything out.

“Dave,” Emma whispered from beside me.

The Victorian era woman had joined my little family on the second world that I’d gone to. Hers had been destroyed when Nikola Tesla tested an energy machine without a faraday cage. He’d intended to power the machines around the Earth so that energy would always be free, and it had worked, but it had killed almost every living being in the process. The ones that had survived had all been given lightning powers, and a tiny animal that can shoot lightning had been one of the most terrifying things that I’d ever seen, right next to the giant lawn mower that powered itself and almost mowed Fela and I down.

The pale beauty had shown up just in time to help me drive away a pack of wild dogs, and she’d decided to join Fela and I on our grand adventure. Not that I’d really intended it in the first place. The DEPP had dragged me away from my world, and I had no idea how to get it back. My father, Sol, had created it before the lizard pedo-people that worked for the government had killed him, but there wasn’t exactly a navigation system, and so far none of the other versions I’d met had been able to help.

“I know,” I said in an almost hysterical tone and tried not to jump up and down at the sight of a real life dinosaur.

“What is that, Dave Meyer?” Fela asked as she strolled up next to us.

The saber-tooth woman flicked her tail behind her, and her black tufted ears twitched as she listened for any signs of danger. Fela had been in the first world that I’d been taken to. The animals had evolved into humanoid creatures instead of actual humans, and I’d been the first one that she’d ever seen. Her and her pet miniature woolly mammoth, Floppy, had followed me back to the base right as it was about to jump, and she’d been snatched from her world.

At first, she’d been pissed and threatened to kill me, but I promised to take her back to her home once I knew how to actually pick which dimension that I wanted to go to. Her learning curve had been steep since her home was basically stuck in caveman times, but she was brilliant, and she’d picked up a ton already. She’d also decided that she wanted me to be her mate, and the sexy cat-woman and I planned to make lots of cubs.

“It’s a triceratops,” I said with a grin. “They died out forever ago in my world, and probably in yours, too.”

“Is it dangerous?” Her slitted pupils dilated until her yellow-green irises were almost completely black.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s just the sweetest thing,” Emma said in her posh accent. “I wonder if we would be able to ride it.”

“Like Floppy?” Fela asked and glanced over at her five foot tall miniature woolly mammoth.

The furry elephantine creature gave a quiet toot with its trunk and rolled his molten brown eyes. His ears twitched almost as much as Fela’s, and his attention was trained on the massive lizard less than a hundred feet from us. He may have been smaller than the woolly mammoth’s on my world, but he was strong, and had all the sass of a husky.

“No,” I said and shook my head. “We’re not going to try and ride the dinosaur. It is tempting, but I’m fairly certain that it would throw us like a bull.”

“You may have a point,” the raven haired woman said and a slight pout formed on her red lips.

“Can we eat it?” Acrasis asked as she joined the rest of us.

The oil-slick colored woman was an alien from one of the other alternate Earths that our travelling family had visited. The entire planet had been devoid of life, and it had been Acrasis’ doing. She’d landed on the planet after years of floating around in space and had been so hungry that she’d eaten every living organism, right down to the bacteria. Her plan had been to eat us, but she’d decided that she liked us and had decided to tag along instead. It had taken some getting used to since she’d literally tried to kill us, but she was one of us now, and I was glad that she’d come along.

“I’m sure you could,” I said and shrugged. “But I’m not sure the rest of us would be able to digest it. And I have to admit that is one fight that I’d like to avoid if we can. From what I remember, triceratops were supposed to have some pretty great fighting skills.”

“We’ve taken down creatures almost as big,” Fela said. “That armored creature from the desert world and the cockroaches were also very large.”

“Yeah,” I hedged. “But a prehistoric rollie pollie and a radioactive bug are very different from a powerful dinosaur that’s used to fighting things even bigger than it.”

“There are things bigger than that?” the sabertooth woman asked, and her tail flicked back and forth.

“According to Jurassic Park there were T-rex,” I said. “Though, that was a movie, and I’m pretty sure Hollywood just threw dinosaurs from different eras together. A real triceratops might not have even seen a T-rex.”

“Oh, I think I read something about them living at the same time,” Emma said and looked around like she expected the oversized lizard to pop up out of the trees.

“What is a T-Rex?” Acrasis asked.

“It’s… actually, there’s some debate about whether it was a predator or a scavenger,” I said. “But either way, it’s a huge carnivore dino that could easily be twice the size of that big boy right there.”

“That will be too big for us to fight,” Fela said with a nod to herself. “I would suggest a retreat if we see one of those.”

“Me, too,” I said. “But I’m more worried about the one right in front of us. I don’t remember too much from my dinosaur phase. I’m pretty sure it won’t try to eat us because it’s an herbivore, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be protective if this is its territory.”

“How long until our next move?” my raven haired girlfriend asked and glanced at my watch.

“Forty-eight hours, exactly,” I said and showed her the numbers. “I think that we should probably lay low while we’re here, though we might be able to find some building materials close by that we can use. There probably won’t be any people for us to run into, so at least we won’t have to worry about being attacked by cavemen.”

“Those bushes look like they would be very good for Floppy to eat,” my sabertooth girlfriend said and pointed to a fern that was bigger than any that I’d ever seen.

“Probably,” I said. “I trust his nose, but he may want to only eat a little bit until he’s sure that it won’t poison him.”

“If it’s good, then I’ll add it to our garden,” the Vitorian era woman said and reached over to pat Floppy’s side.

The triceratops lifted its massive head and swung it towards us as if it had just noticed us. A fern dangled from its beak-like mouth, but it didn’t make any moves to get closer to us, and the massive lizard just tilted its head and then swung it around to look at something that moved next to it.

Another of its kind emerged from the overgrown pines that had trunks big enough to rival the redwoods on the west coast. I didn’t think that there were any near Detroit, but then again the Aztecs had travelled across the US in one of the worlds we visited, so I couldn’t rule out tree migration either.

“It’s a pack,” Fela said and crouched down on her muscular calves, her Garden Weasel in her hand, and her ears pressed against her auburn hair. “You said that they do not hunt?”

“They don’t,” I said. “But they’re prey for bigger dinos, so they probably move as a herd so that it’s harder to be picked off.”

A smaller triceratops ran up to the other adults, chased by a slightly bigger one like two kids playing around their parents feet. The first one that we’d seen bent its head down to check on the baby and then looked up at the older one, and I couldn’t help but think of a mother scolding her children. The father gently ran his head into the teenager and motioned for it to go to his other side while the mother tore off some of the fern and handed it to her baby.

“They’re so cute,” Emma said and put a pale hand over her heart. “I really wish that we could pet it.”

“So do I,” I said. “But maybe during the day. They’re probably easily spooked at night, and I don’t want to see what stampeding triceratops look like.”

“There are more in the forest,” Acrasis said.

Her arms were stretched out so that her amoeba-like body could search the ground around us. She retracted them and reformed into the shapely woman that I’d grown to love. Her hair moved like there was a breeze, and she tore her emerald green eyes from the dinosaurs to look at us.

“That makes sense,” I said. “They don’t seem too worried about us, though. Maybe we can pet them. I wouldn’t mind trying to ride one of the smaller ones.”

“That baby is about the size of Floppy,” Emma said with a bright smile. “I think that we should be able to mount it.”

“I did see someone ride one,” I said. “Of course, that was on an episode of Doctor Who, so it’s not exactly the most reliable source of information.”

“What is this… Doctor Who?” Acrasis asked and tilted her head to the side.

“It’s a TV show,” I said. “It follows an alien, not a real one like you, but it’s his adventures through time and space. We might have it on the NAMSHUBs. I’ll have to check later.”

“So, this show is like us?” the alien woman asked.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Though, he travels in a blue police box and not with an old beat up Lincoln.”

“Honest Abe is wonderful,” my Victorian era woman said and then glanced over at the rust bucket like it would hear my unkind comments and get its feelings hurt.

“He is,” I chuckled. “But he’s not exactly bigger on the inside.”

I’d slept in the back seat of the old car for a few nights before we’d managed to build our first makeshift shelter on the travelling base. It had been cramped and hot, and I’d woken up with more knots in my back than when I used to sleep on an old futon on the floor. I even liked our tent with mattresses on bare earth more than sleeping in the old beater.

“I do like our new shelter,” Fela said and looked over at the shipping container behind us.

We’d retrieved it from a destroyed Detroit a couple of worlds ago. It had been guarded by an out of control machine that had built so much furniture and electronics that the planet had been evacuated. The machine had even created drill bots that made such deep canyons in the crust that the Earth was about to split apart when we’d arrived.

That world’s version of Sol had died before we could meet him, but he’d left instructions for anyone with his DNA. He’d created his own version of the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending, but the first world that he’d visited had been so radioactive that he’d died shortly after his return. Since we shared DNA, I was able to activate his fail-safe video, and we’d all worked together to take out the crazed machine.

There had also been cockroaches that had become huge after they ate some Little Debbie snack cakes that were doused in radioactive crap from a nuclear plant meltdown. I didn’t really like the little shits to begin with, but I had an even greater hatred for them after the drone winch picked up the shipping container and an army of leg sized roaches poured out. They’d tried to eat us, but we’d managed to overcome them and get back to the base in time to jump to the next world.

The last world we’d been to had actually had a living version of my father, and he’d been able to help us turn off the growth mechanism for the base. It had originally been set to grow with each new dimension, but we’d only been to a few worlds, and it was already a little too big. Sol had fixed it so that I could turn it back on if our family grew, but for the moment it would stay the exact same size.

“I can’t wait to install the Dimensional Entrance, Patent Observed,” I said.

The DEPO were sliding glass doors that the last world’s Sol had created. He’d basically solved homelessness and the problem of waste disposal overnight, and it had made him more than one enemy. His fans had formed a cult that worshipped the ground that he’d worked on, and they’d been more than happy to give him the doors for us when he asked.

“It will make storage so much easier,” Emma said and clasped her hands together in front of her. “I can have a real pantry. And I already have plans for a proper bedroom for all of us. We’ll need to construct a bed frame for all of those mattresses, but that shouldn’t be too hard with the wood that we have from the shed.”

“True,” I said and looked over at the neatly stacked planks of wood. “We can do that after that while we’re here. We should have plenty of time to work on the base since there won’t be any people to worry about.”

The shed had been one of our first attempts at a shelter. The wood and plaster had kept out the rising ocean from one of the dimension’s that we’d been stuck in, but it hadn’t been able to survive the earthquakes from the cockroach world. It had shaken apart almost as soon as we’d arrived, but most of the boards were still usable.

Something in the distance roared, and the mother triceratops lifted her head from the fern she grazed on. She glanced over at her mate, and the two had a silent conversation that I would’ve liked to have been a part of. They looked in the direction of the terrifying sound, and then went back to their meal.

“What was that, Dave Meyer?” Fela asked and looked through the woods like she might be able to see what had created the sound.

“No idea,” I said. “But mama didn’t seem too worried about it, so I’m sure it’s far enough away that it’s not a problem.”

“I will keep watch,” Acrasis said and extended part of herself into the dirt below her.

“Good,” I said. “If it’s anything bigger than the triceratops, let me know. We can take shelter in the shipping container.”

“Do you think that it’ll be able to survive an attack?” my sabertooth girlfriend said and gave the thin metal a dubious look. “It is strong, but that creature has large horns. And you said that it is a prey animal. Would its predator be bigger?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But most of them don’t have horns. They do have really big teeth that might be able to puncture the steel, but we’ll be safer in there than out in the open.”

“I trust your opinion, Dave Meyer,” Fela said.

“We also have the weapons that Sol gave us,” I reminded her. “One of the DEPOs leads to a storage room with guns and probably at least one rocket launcher if I know that paranoid bastard.”

“Sol does seem like the type to be prepared for anything,” Emma said with a small smile. “No matter which world we have met him in.”

“Exactly,” I said. “He even had his work room rigged to explode with C4 in my world. Actually… there’s probably some C4 in that DEPO, too. We’ll have to take an inventory.”

“I do love a good list,” the Gibson girl look-alike said and produced a leather bound notebook from her black bustle skirt. “I still need to add everything that we bought with Sol’s credit cards. I admit that I spent more than I probably should have…”

“Doubtful,” I laughed. “That Sol was a billionaire, with a B. And he was about to go on the run, so it’s not like he would have access to it.”

“And he did tell me to spend as much as possible,” the dark haired woman said. “It was very generous of him. And after he’d shared Doris’ recipes with me.”

“He was pretty nice,” I said. “At least after we convinced him of who we were.”

“He did not pull a weapon on you like the other Sol did,” Fela said. “Just that strange device that scanned for his… what did he call it?… His DNA.”

“That’s very true,” I said and shook my head.

The only other living version of my father that we’d found had been just as much of a shut-in as my old man had been. He’d greeted us with a sawed off shotgun the second the base appeared near his workshop, but he’d come around when he’d realized what Honest Abe was. His world had been overrun by corporations, but Emma and I had helped to bring down one of the biggest ones.

Sol had spent our visit with Fela and Floppy back at the base while the rest of us went into the city for supplies. We’d met up with Magpies, a bunch of techno rebels that looked like they were straight out of the eighties, and they’d been able to hook us up before we had to head back to the base. If it hadn’t been for them, then we wouldn’t have my NAMSHUBs.

The glasses had been programmed to connect with any satellite as soon as we entered a new dimension. The news updates and classified files that the digital version of Rigs found had been life saving. The NAMSHUBs also doubled as projectors so that I could show the girls the movies and TV shows that we’d been given.

“He seemed very kind,” Acrasis said and flashed a natural looking smile.

It had taken her a little while to get used to human signs of emotion since she had originally been a giant amoeba-like creature. She’d decided to take a human shape while she was with us, and had worked hard to learn how to blink and smile at regular intervals. Her psychic connection to each of us had helped with that, and she even had mannerisms of her own that she didn’t have to copy from Fela or Emma.

“He was,” I said. “And just as reckless as my Sol. He did blow up his own building.”

“It was a controlled explosion,” Emma defended. “We placed those charges exactly where he told us. And none of the surrounding buildings were hurt. Which, if my books are correct, is quite a huge feat since he was in the epicenter of the city.”

“I won’t deny that he’s a genius,” I said. “No matter what world we find him in. But that doesn’t mean he’s not also paranoid and a little off his rocker.”

“I do not understand what that means,” my alien girlfriend said. “What is this ‘off his rocker?’”

“It’s just a saying,” I said with a shrug. “It means he was a little crazy.”

“Ah,” the oil slick colored woman said. “He was indeed ‘off his rocker.’”

“Pretty sure all of them will be,” I chuckled. “It’s going to be one of those universal constants, like Doris.”

“I do hope we find a world where your mother lived,” my Victorian era girlfriend said with a whimsical smile. “The last Sol spoke so highly of her. I’m sure she would be the most amazing woman.”

“I’d like to meet her, too,” I said and squashed down the sadness that threatened to wash over me. “But hopefully we can get back to my world, and then you can meet my aunt. She was like a mother to me.”

My aunt had raised me after my world’s Doris had passed away giving birth to me. My father hadn’t been able to deal, so he’d given me to his sister to raise, and stayed in my life as my crazy uncle. I didn’t know that he was actually my father until he left me the message about how to operate the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending, and then yelled at me for not destroying it like he’d told me to.

In my defense, I’d accidentally started the damned thing when the suits showed up, and I’d been more worried that they’d kill me as well and destroy whatever invention he’d come up with. Of course, now I was stranded and forced to travel from world to world in search of a Sol that could help me learn how to control where the Lincoln landed.

On the up side, my life was infinitely better with my ladies than it had been back in my dimension. I’d drifted from part time job to part time job with barely any friends and no girlfriend to speak of. Now, I had three gorgeous women who wanted to have my children, and we travelled to different worlds on a never ending adventure.

“I’d like to meet her, too,” Emma said and squeezed my hand.

“I would also like to meet the woman who reared you,” Fela said with a smile that showed the long fangs that poked over her bottom lip. “I would like to thank her for raising a strong mate.”

“I’m sure she’d love to meet all of you,” I said. “And she’ll be more than happy to tell you all about raising me. There may even be embarrassing pictures of me naked in the bath.”

“I do like you naked,” the sabertooth woman purred and ran the tip of her pink tongue over her lips.

“That can be arranged,” I said and then glanced over at the triceratops.

They’d moved closer to us in their search for more food, but there wasn’t anything on the base that they could eat, so they were still just on the outskirts of the circle. The mother still had her baby right next to her, but the teen had wandered further off with its father. None of them seemed too concerned about us, though we weren’t exactly a threat without our weapons.

The baby glanced over at us, cocked its head to the side, and then looked up at its mother like it wanted permission to check us out. The larger triceratop narrowed its eyes at us, lifted its beak-like mouth into the air, and then sniffed in our direction. She must’ve been satisfied that we wouldn’t hurt her child, because she didn’t try to stop it when it wandered over to us.

“It’s coming over to us,” Emma squeaked and clapped her hands together.

“It is,” I said and forgot all about going to bed as the prehistoric creature walked over to us.

It was a little taller than Floppy, with horns that were as long as my arm, and thick skin that would probably make Fela’s Garden Weasel completely useless. The crown on the top of its head was just a little bigger than its horns, and its long tail swept back and forth across the ground like an excited puppy.

I stepped out in front of the girls just in case the thing decided to charge at us, and then stayed stock still as it leaned down to sniff me. My heart pounded in my chest, and I had to remind myself that it was an herbivore and probably wouldn’t eat me. I let out a grunt when it bumped me with its massive head, and the dinosaur tilted its head like it was confused by the sound that I made.

“I don’t think that it’s going to attack us,” I said. “But move slowly if you want to pet it.”

I tentatively reached up a hand and waited for it to sniff it before I put my palm on its snout. The skin was just as leathery as it looked, and a shiver ran through me as I petted the overgrown lizard. I watched its huge eyes while I moved around to pet its side, but the baby dinosaur seemed just as intrigued with me as I was with it.

Emma moved closer too, and Floppy let out a little toot of warning that grabbed the triceratop’s attention. It moved over a few steps until it could sniff the miniature woolly mammoth, and the two checked each other out like the rest of us weren’t there. Floppy eventually sat down to show that he wasn’t worried about the baby, but he still watched him for any signs of aggression.

“Oh,” my Victorian era girlfriend gasped. “It’s skin feels just like leather.”

“It does,” I said and managed to tamp down on my excitement so I didn’t spook the creature.

I’d loved dinosaurs when I was a kid and had even taken a few classes on paleontology in college before the school had shut down. Sol had made a few replicas, but he’d been sure that the creatures were closer to birds than lizards. I wished that he’d been there with me to see the magnificent creatures, though he would’ve huffed and said that they would’ve looked better with feathers.

“This creature is quite interesting,” Acrasis said and looked up at the crown on the top of its head. “I wonder what purpose that serves.”

“I think it’s to protect its neck,” I said. “If I remember correctly, they called it a frill, but it looks more like a crown to me.”

“It does,” Emma said with a nod. “Like it’s majestic and royal.”

“I wonder if it would let me ride it,” I said and looked over at Floppy. “Hey, Floppy, do you think you can give me a lift?”

The miniature woolly mammoth gave an indignant toot but pushed himself to his feet. His trunk wrapped around my waist and then lifted me into the air to gently place me on the baby triceratop’s back. He made a noise when the creature startled and then took a few steps back so that he could grab me if I fell.

I felt like I was king of the world. My legs fit over its neck perfectly, and the space between its shoulders was the perfect shape and size for me to sit. I tentatively reached up and ran a hand over its frill and then pursed my lips together so I wouldn’t shout for joy and scare the poor thing.

The mother triceratops noticed where I was and trundled over to find out what I was doing. Her beak-like nose was almost as big as my entire body, and I stayed completely still while she sniffed me. She checked in with her baby to make sure that it wasn’t hurt and then stared at me with a silent warning not to hurt her child.

“I want to ride him, too,” Emma said and walked over to Floppy. “Would you mind helping me?”

The huff that the furry elephantine ancestor gave said it all, but he still helped the Gibson girl look-alike up. He and the triceratops seemed to have an entire conversation that none of us could hear, and then the baby dino started to walk towards its mother and the ferns that she nibbled on.

“We’re riding a dinosaur,” I said in a tight voice filled with barely contained excitement.

“I do believe this may be my new favorite dimension,” my Victorian era girlfriend said. “I’m going to put a star next to the number’s for this world, and we’ll have to come back and visit our friend some time.”

“Good idea,” I said and then looked over at Floppy.

He’d walked over and extended his trunk to us like he wanted to pull us down. The ride was apparently over, and as the baby triceratops leaned down to grab some of the fern, our pet woolly mammoth safely delivered us back down to the ground.

“I can’t believe that we just did that,” I said and walked back to the base where Acrasis and Fela waited.

“We should go to bed, Dave Meyer,” my sabertooth girlfriend said. “The night is late. And we have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” I said and then looked over at Floppy. “Thanks for helping us with that. Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite.”

The furry creature rolled his molten brown eyes, but I could see that the compliment had made him happy. His ears flapped a little and there was a skip in his step as he followed us to the shipping container to turn in for the night.

I gave the herd of triceratops one last look and then followed my girls into our makeshift home. My eyelids grew heavy the second that I laid down with the ladies. I drifted off into happy dreams about dinosaurs and beautiful women.

And I woke up to the sound of a stampede.