Down-and-out lesbian dinosaurs hang out at the Chix Club. This is a loose pun on “Chicxulub,” a morbid reference to the meteorite impact that will one day cause a mass extinction event, obliterating the world as the down-and-out lesbian dinosaurs know it. It is an equally loose pun on the birds who will descend and evolve from the lucky escapees of the worst of the Chicxulub destruction, the avian dinosaurs. Lesbian dinosaurs are as gifted in clairvoyance as they are in being insufferable, and better at both than they are at jokes.
The most clairvoyant and the most insufferable of the dinosaurs – one is named Red Forest Viewed From Above and the other is World’s Loudest Song, and don’t worry too hard about which is which – sit on the roof of Xenasauridae, where down-and-out lesbian dinosaurs go when they are too down-and-out, or too shy, for the Chix Club. Red tries nightly to convince Song to gather xyr courage and come with Red to the Chix Club, but Song won’t do it, and Red won’t do it without Song, so they are at an impasse.
Song takes a drag of smoldering ergot rolled in ginkgo. “I feel it again,” xe says, blowing out a breath. “I feel it coming. It’s going to be soon, Red. Within our lifetimes. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tonight would be a little too convenient,” Red says. “Tomorrow I can believe.”
“Fern says we’ve got time. Time to convince the council to begin work on the energy shield, time to build the deep-space seedbank just in case the energy shield doesn’t work. Well, Fern, it won’t work, not if you can’t get the fucking –“
“She’d have a conniption if she heard you calling her that.”
“Ugh. Well, A Thousand Ferns And Then A Thousand More And Then A Thousand More –“
“That’s better.”
“If you can’t convince the council to divert energy away from heating the watering hole for a year – just a year! If we even have a year left, which we don’t –“
“Did you actually say any of that to her?”
“Of course not,” Song mutters, sucking in another bitter cloud of ginkgo smoke. “Of course I didn’t. I’m too chicken to walk into the Chix Club because what if the hot bouncer tells me no.”
“Chicken. That’s meta. That’s cool.”
“Ugh.” Song squeezes xyr eyes shut, shakes xyr head, a susurrus of bony plates shifting on xyr neck and eyelids.
Red sits a while in silence, then rises and plods over to the edge of the roof, first looking down at her fellow dinosaurs milling around in the night, then up at the sky and the million stars. “Do you think it’s that one?” She says. “Or that one. I don’t think I’ve seen that star before.”
“Be serious.”
“I am.” Pause. “I almost don’t mind the idea of extinction, per se. I just hope we can get the seedbank out. I’d like to leave a trace. A deliberate trace. I’d like us to have some say in how we’re remembered, by whoever comes next. By the mammals.”
“Has anyone ever divined… I mean, do we know what they’ll know about us?”
“Not for certain. If they know what signs to look for, they might figure out our solar tech. But that’s a big if. I wonder sometimes if the Gossamer Generators are a little too gossamer for the fossil record. I haven’t seen them in my visions, but that doesn’t mean much.”
Pause. “Can you tell me again about that dream you had? Why we call ourselves…?”
Red blows out a breath. Raises a forefoot to scratch at an itchy scar amid the feathers under her chin. “Yeah. Let me see. So, the tectonic plates are going to keep shifting. There’s going to be this little island called Lesbos, and mammals are going to live there.”
“Pause. Stop. I just realized I can’t deal with this right now.” Song is breathing heavily, big gulps of air richer in oxygen than air may ever be again. Fuck. The hot bouncer would be laughing at xem right now, xe’s sure. “Fuck.” Xe’s so afraid and so angry. “Fuck! I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen after us! Just because something is predestined, why does that mean it has to happen? Why does that mean…” xe lets out a scream, a long clear scream that makes sense of xyr name. Xe shakes the roof of Xenasauridae, rattles the broadleaf trees and the distant mountains.
Red stares at xem, giving xem space to bug out. Xe likes that about her, most of the time, but sometimes xe wishes she’d step in. Stop xem, save xem, hold xem back. Pull xem away from the edge of this roof.
“What’s going to happen to us?”
“Depends, I guess. If you mean us as in everybody… well, ferns will still be there. Not Fern, but ferns, real ones. And ginkgoes. And magnolias.”
“I suppose,” Song rasps. Xe’s got no more roar in xem, and that’s a bit like regaining xyr composure. “What if I mean us as in just you and me?”
“Then I say we go to the Chix Club.”
“I can’t,” Song replies, almost automatically. “I’m all tearstained and snotty.”
“If our world ends tonight, you can choose which bar it ends in. Maybe some mammal digs you up someday, in the ruins of the Chix Club, and says, damn, xe must’ve been really cool. Or maybe we all get smashed to dust and nobody ever even finds our bones, and it meant something to you, and that’s all you get. You know what definitely won’t happen, not in all the possible futures anybody could ever dream? Nobody is going to say, ‘Wow, I’m sure glad on the last night of Song’s life, after doing all xe could to prevent the apocalypse, xe sat on some roof and cried and didn’t let xemself have any fun. It really helped, when xe suffered like that.’ Come on. Who cares if you’re snotty? That bouncer you’re obsessed with? I heard she has a crooked cloaca piercing.”
Song takes another long look upward, squinting at the stars. It really could be any of them, up there. How would they know, until it’s too late?
“Alright,” xe says. Stubs out the butt of xyr smoke on the tough hide of xyr leg. Dusts xemself off. Golden-yellow flakes of ginkgo leaf scatter, glittering, into the dark air of this sweet and lonely world. “Yeah. Alright. Let’s go.”