The Site of Big Shoulders: Fiction: Sue Alive!

Sue Alive! -- original fiction and images by Doug Boldt

The time has come to recall the terror which swept through Chicago last summer. You may deny the facts, or perhaps hear of it for the first time, since the news media generally ignored the incident or treated it as a hoax, despite thousands of eyewitness accounts and even video evidence. Others remember the horror all to well, but it has made them paranoid and their grasp upon reality uncertain. However, as new information has come to light, we must attempt to understand the mysterious circumstances behind this extraordinary event.

Sixty-seven million years ago this place, which in the unimaginably distant future will be called Chicago, sits in a vast aromatic swamp. Six hundred miles to the northwest a river winds through a region which will one day be known as The Badlands. Gigantic beasts roam the tropical river valley which floods annually in heavy rains. One unfortunate creature, a Tyrannosaurs Rex, meets her untimely demise in the rushing waters, and is quickly buried in a time capsule of mud and gravel.

Approximately 66,999,650 years pass. A tribe of humans called People Who Dwell with Cloud Spirits live near that same river, although its course has changed countless times through the ages. A hunting party stumbles upon the remnants of a mythical Thunder Being protruding from the underside of a cliff. They hurry back to their tribe to tell of the miraculous discovery. They return to the site with a medicine man, who directs them to excavate several pieces from the find. The old shaman fashions a ceremonial drum from the fossilized bones and buffalo hide which he will use to speak with the spirit beings.

Three hundred years go by, a mere blink of an eye to a fossil, before an exhilarated Sue Hendrickson unearths the fossilized bones which will be named after her. By now, People Who Dwell with the Cloud Spirits have long since disappeared from the plains. Only a few scattered descendants have somehow survived the turbulent centuries to dwell in our modern world. Seven years after the rediscovery of the bones, they are purchased by the Chicago Field Museum.

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