Fossils of Us

In July’s second, free to read and share, story, John Wiswell takes us on a little ride. ~ Julian and Fran, July 6, 2025

It’s our fourth July bringing you four great, free, Sunday Morning short stories! Yes: a whole month of free goodness from The Sunday Morning Transport — by Vajra Chandrasekera, John Wiswell, Fawaz Al-Matrouk, and Izzy Wasserstein. We hope you love these and all our stories as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays.

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Fossils of Us

by John Wiswell

(This story originally appeared in the print anthology Back 2 Omnipark. This is its first appearance online.)

You said I’d have control this time, Dalton. If I’m supposed to run this operation, then where on earth did she come from?

I didn’t fly around the world to play second fiddle.

When the Chinese wanted a roller coaster that flew through the fossils of a diplodocus’s body and came corkscrewing out around its neck, they called me. I made it happen. And it was me and me alone who built the Tornado of Darwin in Australia when everyone else said it was unethical and unsafe. You know Shattuck and Masaru’s rides wouldn’t go twenty feet without me. I’m the guy who makes the gears turn—literally. I do it all.

But there’s one thing I won’t do, and that’s fly halfway around the world to play second fiddle to a lunatic. You put somebody I’ve never heard of in charge of the Realm of Man? Tomorrow you’d better send me a sweetly worded wire explaining why I’m working under this Wilma person.

I touched down in this jungle so jet-lagged it felt like a Tuesday and next weekend all at once. None of the other so-called Technosophers you hired had to trek out here, and they darned sure are allowed to talk about where they’re going, unlike yours truly. I’m not even allowed to write the name of the country I’m in? Seriously? Do you think some rival company is going to catch the name off my paper via spy satellite and steal our secrets? There is no rival company. Nobody would even be able to put together what we’re doing, let alone create a competing product.

I stepped off the plane, and immediately sweat soaked through my shirt. I’d packed Egyptian cotton because it breathes better, but the climate here is still an assault on the senses. I’ve always been scrawny, but here I felt like I was just bones. Funny, right? Bones?

Anyway, I’d scarcely had time to wipe the sweat off my brow when that woman strode onto the tarmac. She was smiling and smug, almost as if she liked being covered in perspiration and bugbites. In that sleeveless top you could see what a meal the mosquitoes had made of her arms. Her black hair was bound up in small braids, pulled back into a bun behind her head, skewered in place by two steel pins.

She asked, “Erasmus Haymer?”

Didn’t you say to be discreet? So why isn’t she following protocol? She said my full name aloud, right in public. Doesn’t that raise your paranoia, Dalton?

I asked, “They have lady chauffeurs here?”

“I’m not here to drive you, Mr. Haymer” was all she said. “I’m here to introduce you to the origins of humanity.”

Now, I live down the street from a professional bodybuilder. He’s a mountain chiseled out of muscle. They use his picture in ads in the back of comics and magazines to advertise miracle supplements he’s never actually tried. The guy crushes my hand every time we shake.

This woman made that guy’s handshake feel as gentle as a warm towel after a shave. She squeezed and looked me square in the eyes like she was enjoying watching me fight to keep my knees from buckling.

I said, “The Organization didn’t mention you.”

She smiled. “Then they’re not as organized as they should be. I had to find your flight myself.”

I groused about how neither of us has ever been fully informed by you, ever since we started this thing. Then I asked her, “So what do I call you?”

Her smile widened. “Do you watch much television, Mr. Haymer?”

I shrugged. “I watch the news when I want to be lied to. TV is a dying fad.”

“So you don’t watch cartoons?” She raised an eyebrow.

I scoffed. “Not since I got old enough to buy my own cigarettes.”

“Well,” she said. “With where we’re going, you can call me Wilma.”

That’s what talking to her is like. She wouldn’t even let me in the truck until I put out my cigarette. I half expected her to blindfold me like we were spies. Wilma spent most of the ride staring unblinkingly out the windows, lecturing me on microbiomes that could exist between any two passing trees, and how apartments were merely the illusion of solitude while actually sharing a space. I spent the ride scrutinizing her bugbites. She never scratched them once, like she was too focused to be bothered with itching.

The room was three stories underground, with concrete walls twice as thick as they needed to be. Wilma’s unit had its own separate ventilation system, which meant that while it was a sweltering crotch rot of a summer up above, it could’ve been the first virgin touch of autumn down there. And it was dry as a rock. The samples resided in individual metal cabinets that she had to unlock using a physical key and a keypad simultaneously. I’ve never seen storage locked down this tightly, and I’ve been in that bunker in New Mexico that supposedly doesn't exist. Remember?

Wilma walked past me and gestured to the cabinets. She said, “Most of this is from my private collection.”

I scanned the room appreciatively. “I’m sure the Technosophers would be impressed. You talk to them often?”

“You’re the first one I’ve bothered contacting,” she said. “So please behave yourself.”

She placed a steel suitcase-looking thing on the table. The container was nearly as long as Wilma is tall. It hissed mechanically when she unfastened it.

Inside was a slice of earth that had been carefully peeled away, dust layer by dust layer. Trapped in that hard-packed earth was a skeleton that could’ve been a monkey or a man. I circled the case, craning my neck at different angles to try to figure out which it was. One of its legs was stretched out as far as it could go, the thigh and ankle bones more exposed from the dirt than the rest, while the other leg was drawn up to its chest. Whatever this thing was, it’d been trapped eternally in the last jump of its life, or so it looked to me. Its toothless mouth was wide open in a silent scream. And it was tiny—too small to be human.

This could’ve been the literal Missing Link. I envisioned something like this screaming at the riders at the entrance to the Realm of Man. Give them a good scare to start things off. We need these bones, Dalton. There’s nothing else like them.

I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice as I asked, “What am I looking at?”

She hummed fondly, like this skeleton was her own child. “Not what. Who. This is the oldest complete Australopithecus skeleton humanity has ever found. He was born almost a thousand miles from where humans discovered his remains; in his own way, he was one of the first great explorers. I’m proud to introduce you to each other. You can call him Fred.”

I leaned in closer, scrutinizing the bones. For remains that old, his bones were remarkably well-preserved. I couldn’t imagine what natural conditions had kept him like this across all those silent millennia beneath the ground. I asked, “Did you find him here?”

Wilma shook her head. “He wasn’t found in this country. He was discovered by a shell company in another country, and I shipped him here for preservation purposes. Sometimes the local governments plant fake stories about the discovery of ancient human ancestors to cover up the theft. All they want are the dollars that international dig grants will inspire, and the kickbacks from the shell company. It’s all quite complicated.”

I contemplated all the international chess she’d had to run to get him this far. “I don’t know how we’re going to smuggle him to the United States. But it’ll be worth it. Everyone who comes to the park will be terrified of him.”

She placed her hands gently on the case, as if she might scoop little Fred out of the earth and into her arms. “He is not going to be displayed anywhere. I’ll never let the world have him. He’s been through enough. He’s going to rest.”

My brow furrowed. “You just brought me here to—what, look at him? I just spent twelve hours on a plane because Dalton Teague told me you had something worth bringing back.”

“And I do, Mr. Haymer,” she replied. “I do indeed. You’ll see Fred’s relatives today, and the Neanderthals, and humans from a hundred thousand years ago. What I’m going to show you this week is everything you and I no longer are, and what everyone who visits your park could be. This is far more significant than any animatronic prop you could ever build.”

“Significant,” I repeated, stepping back from Wilma and her petrified pet. “Dr. Teague likes to use that word too. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t go in for mysticism. This park is going to be about the sciences. Humans evolved out of beings like Fred. He’s a late model—obsolete. It’s us who won evolution’s war.”

She shot me a stare that could’ve cut glass. “Evolution isn’t the only way people change.”

I rolled my eyes and patted my pocket for my cigarettes. “Spare me the pseudoscience. I don’t believe in destiny or new-age astral projection or whatever you’re going to try to sell me. I believe in bones. We’re just the products of natural selection.”

She chuckled softly. “You’re the one building a ride about evolution in Texas, where they glue the pages of biology textbooks together.” She placed her hand over mine, refusing to let me pull a cigarette out of the pack. “Smoking is forbidden in this room. This is your final warning.”

When our hands touched, my stomach tightened. You know sneaking into a concert feels fine until the first cop looks your way? This was like that, but with the volume cranked all the way up. Like I suddenly belonged in the concert of her species.

Still holding my hand, she said, “You have to be careful with fire. The first primates to hold fire—to own fire? It seemed impossible. Yet there was a first fire. A first hammer. I have samples to show you of the first bags our ancestors ever made. You will respect every first thing we’ve created. And when you return to Texas, you had better build something that reminds people of everything we were before now. Remind them of when we had nothing but the bones of our dead. I had better want to ride your ride, Mr. Haymer.”

What do you say to something like that? My pulse thundered in my ears, the way it’s thundering now, remembering that moment.

I gave a nod that felt too small, avoiding eye contact with her. I asked, “So you don’t smoke?”

She grinned. “Only when I’m angry.”

So thanks, Dalton. This is who I’m working with. I’ll get you for this.

*

You know what I woke up to last night, Dalton?

A monkey sitting at the foot of my bed, smoking a cigarette.

The smell of tobacco smoke woke me from a dream about bones in the desert. My first thought was that I’d left a butt burning in the ashtray. I groped in the dark and found all my cigarettes were stubbed out thoroughly, but my pack was missing.

Then I noticed the orange glow near my feet, the cigarette burning just bright enough to illuminate the thief’s furry muzzle. Despite the light being near its face, its eyes were darker than the shadows. It was perched square on top of the right bedpost. Its long fingers held the burning cigarette near its face. It was watching me.

This couldn’t be happening. It was so absurd that I pinched myself to wake up.

The thing screeched like a trumpet having a heart attack. It leaped off the bedpost right for me, and in that moment, I saw it was more than a monkey. Chimps or bonobos or whatever aren’t this big. Its legs were too long; its face too broad. And its face— I’ve never seen an animal glare with such contempt. It wasn’t spooked. It was furious, and it scampered across the bed with a long-fingered hand outstretched, grabbing for my hair.

I tried to run while still lying down. Its fingered feet kicked me in the stomach and the pain sent my whole body lurching. I writhed, trying to roll out of the bed, but it grabbed the sheets. The sheets trapped me like a net, and I wriggled against them, putting all my body weight against the seams. I had to be bigger than this thing, but I couldn’t outmuscle it. Its rank breath fell on the back of my neck, and I squirmed further under the covers for escape. When it grabbed onto one end of the covers, I jumped out through the bottom and fell onto the floor.

Hearing that thing howling after me, I scrambled for the door. I jerked it open and threw myself outside, hoping to get clear. The last thing I saw, right as I slipped into the hall and slammed the door to lock the thing inside the room, was those long fingers flicking my own cigarette at me.

I ran downstairs and spent the rest of the night in the safety of the lobby while the hotel manager called the constables, all the while eyeing me as if I was a mental patient. Said nothing like this has ever happened, and that there aren’t any giant monkeys around here. But I’ve still got ash burns on my neck. When the police finally arrived, they inspected the whole room and said they found no evidence of any such animal—just a cigarette stubbed out on the floor. They were laughing when they left.

I’m switching to another motel until I can get out of here—which I can’t do for another three days, because that’s when the next flight leaves. Of course, you could send a plane yourself. You’ve got the cash to spend. But you haven’t even responded to a single one of my messages yet. What am I here for if you care so little that I can’t get a word? After what I’ve been through, I’m starting to feel like I don’t even exist anymore.

*

“How do you think the animal felt?” was all Wilma said when I told her.

I survived a nightmarish assault last night, didn’t sleep a wink, and couldn’t even smoke my own cigarettes because of God-only-knows what disease that animal might’ve left on them. After everything I’d been through, this is how that woman greeted me.

According to her, she’d come with me to make sure I was safe on my morning walk through the sweltering streets. I let her tag along, maybe as a security blanket, but mostly as a second pair of eyes as I went looking for a newsstand or tobacco shop. I was dying for a smoke.

She asked again, “Haven’t you considered what the animal felt when it saw you?”

I snorted a laugh. “It probably felt great. That’s got to be the most expensive cigarette it’s ever had.”

Then she had the gall to look at me like I was somehow out of line.

“This is an opportunity for you, Mr. Haymer,” she said. “You can view the event in two ways. One: you can see that hotel room through the animal’s eyes, and question what it would feel like to be alien to the modern world.”

I asked, “Or I can realize I was nearly killed? Is that it?”

“Or two,” she said without breaking stride, “you can reflect on how small you felt when you encountered another primate. You were surrounded by tools, and comforts, and society. One alien event in your civilized world took the feelings of civilization away. You can reflect on how that felt, and share that feeling. This can be your inspiration for your little theme park.”

There went my patience. I’d just survived an attack that nearly left me dead, and Wilma was talking to me about OmniPark. I couldn’t put up with her for another minute. I’d rather be lost in a foreign country than get rambled at by some crank who keeps bones in an underground vault.

I stormed my way down the street in search of any relief. I figured any city this size must have thousands of smoke shops, but I couldn’t find one. With Wilma following me, asking about how going extinct might feel, I would’ve settled for finding a butt in the gutter. I quickened my stride just to get clear of her.

In hindsight, I should’ve kept her around. Then that nudist wacko would have attacked her instead.

I wove down several alleys trying to shake off Wilma and find a main street where more shops might be open. I heard the cry of roasted nut vendors not so far off. Maybe I’d find something to drink, too, along with that cigarette.

Instead I ran face-first into this nudist. Calling her a woman would be too kind. She crouched at the end of the alley, with the light from the street streaming in behind her. Not a stitch of clothing on—just brown fur.

Nudism is not common in this country; my first thought was that she must be on some mind-altering drug. She rose and revealed she was stark naked. I would’ve sworn I was looking into the face of one of those Neanderthal fossils in Wilma’s collection, except this one was obviously alive in the flesh. The broad cheeks, the protruding brow, and even her ears were tucked back into her hair all funny. The skin around her eyes and lips was all pink and puffy, like she was allergic to the modern world.

I stopped in my tracks, and she breathed at me noisily, like the act of breathing itself hurt her.

And then she said, “Remember this feeling.”

Her words didn’t register right away. Part of me was surprised she was capable of speech at all. Some deep animal part of me expected her to grunt at me in a primeval proto-language. But I was the one grunting as I backed away from her, desperately looking up the street for Wilma.

The nudist said, “Are you afraid? Are you looking at someone strange? Or does seeing this make you the stranger?”

She advanced on me, closing the gap I made by backing away. Her broken fingernails and puffy pink fingers stretched out, trying to snatch my shirt. I banged into a wall and kicked out a bag of rotted vegetables, scrambling to keep her at bay.

No matter how fast I ran, I heard her bare feet slapping the dirt behind me. She was close enough that her breath touched the skin of my neck, making me shudder.

“This is what we were,” she snarled. “Show them what we were.”

As I neared the escape, I cast one more glimpse back at her. But she wasn’t there. Down the alley, the darkness shattered into a flash of light. I’ve never seen something so pure and bright—so bright that it seared away my sight, and everything else too. That’s why I didn’t hear the crowds of people as I ran right into them, and bounced off two burly men, falling into a wall. I shook my head and the roar of the city rushed over me, welcoming me back to reality. Yet in some way, ever since, it’s like I can still see that queer light in the corners of my eyes.

I don’t know what’s happening here, Dalton. But you’ve got to get me the hell out of here. If I don’t hear from you today, I swear I’m going to barricade myself in the airport until I can catch the next plane across the border.

*

Where are you, Dalton? I haven’t gotten one reply from you since I landed here. How long has it even been since I landed in this miserable place? How long has it been since that nudist attacked me, and you didn’t bother to respond? I’ve checked both the Western Union and the original hotel. Nothing from you or any of the Technosophers. What is going on?

Instead, I got a message from Wilma.

She offered to let me stay at her place tonight and wants to talk. She wonders if I want to apologize for anything. If I want to apologize?

I’ll be dead and buried before I take shelter with that madwoman.

So I’m staying at the airport. If you want to reach me, forward something there. The next flight isn’t for two days, and I won’t set foot outside the terminal until then. If you want fossils from this godforsaken place, you can work with Wilma yourself.

*

What do you mean, she doesn’t work for you?

She met me at the airport. She brought me to her collection of pre-human fossils. She knows what we’re building.

She must be part of the project, or else one of the other Technosophers must’ve brought her in. How does she know what we’re working on if she isn’t one of us? This can’t be espionage. I’ve had spies trifle with me before, to get access to some oligarch or another. This has been nothing like that. Do you think she’s part of some Neanderthal spy network?

Don’t ask me who she is. You tell me who she is. You must know something.

That’s your job, though. If you want to send me another message, put it on the plane you send for me. I’m done with this. Done with the park, the research, the destinations that don’t officially exist—all of it. I quit.

*

All right, Dalton. This isn’t easy for me to say, but I was wrong. I’m admitting it. I was completely wrong about this project, and I need to make amends.

You were wrong once too, but now you know better, as I do. You and I will fix this. We’ll make a ride that teaches everyone how to fix this.

In the hours before dawn, the airport was quiet as a graveyard with travel brochures instead of tombstones. Not even the one ticketing clerk was still there. My only company was the hum of power generators, which also perfumed the airport lounge like a diesel cigar. I was watching the sky out one window, counting the stars and willing any of them to start moving and turn out to be the lights of an oncoming plane. But the sky was empty of opportunities.

Then a light erupted in the dark terminal, bright and colorless. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I knew I wasn’t alone anymore.

In that first split second when I turned, I thought I saw the same animal that’d broken into my hotel room. The thing that had stolen my cigarettes and smoked one at the foot of my bed.

I screamed and fell into a rack of travel brochures, casting about wildly for anything that might serve as a defensive weapon.

But it wasn’t the same animal standing with me at the window. Not unless you accept that humans are animals.

It was Wilma, standing there in a white dress that left her arms bare, showing off all the bugbites on her shoulders. She was pointing at me.

“This ride better show me something, Mr. Haymer,” she said.

A chill went down my back and my whole body stiffened. I hadn’t felt this way since I was a kid in school, like when I’d get called on to explain a math problem that I hadn’t done yet. Humiliation churned in my guts. I couldn’t look her in the face.

And yet, I stood and faced her. I had no choice.

“We’re not that far from where we were,” she said. “We tell ourselves stories of the heights we’ve ascended to. About how the animal kingdom is for everyone else in the food chain. These are untrue stories, Mr. Haymer. You’re going to go back to Texas and tell the people a truthful one.”

She wasn’t in the white dress anymore. It’s not that she took it off, nor did I see her put anything else on. It’s simply that she finished speaking and was suddenly a different person. She was that nudist—the Neanderthal from the alley, with the puffy pink flesh around her eyes, and the dark brown fur. She’d caught up to me after all.

We weren’t in the alley. We were in the airport terminal. Alone, with our history.

I looked into this new version of her face, her Neanderthal broad brow and features expressing the same contempt her human face had worn. I imagined her going back to her climate-controlled basement every morning, and sleeping through the day in one of her metal suitcases. Like a vampire with her coffin.

I was wrong, Dalton. The truth is so much bigger, and we’re a part of it too.

And the first step toward accepting the truth was asking her the only question that mattered.

“What are you?” I asked.

“I’m what we were. And what we could become if we face the truth of what we are.”

Then she wasn’t wearing fur or a dress. She was a light that didn’t hurt my eyes. Every wall in the terminal lit up from her glow. Every crack in the floor was clear as the outlines of a maze. The windows flared so bright it was like everything outdoors was erased from existence.

The funny thing is, I couldn’t describe what she looked like in that moment. I felt like a mosquito trying to describe a light bulb. Every feature of her face I tried to look at was a glow that slipped from my mind. I couldn’t comprehend her, no matter how much I looked. Yet I couldn’t look away from her light.

Wilma asked, “Do you see it now?”

I wiped a tear from my left eye. “I’m starting to.”

“What do you see?” she asked.

Like now as I write to you, Dalton, I couldn’t say. “I don’t have the words,” I told her. “I don’t know.”

She smiled. “You just know how intensely you feel it. You know what the people who come to your park should feel now. You know what they need from the ride you’re going to build.”

“You care about the park?” I asked. “With all that you can do? With what you are?”

She nodded. “Your ride needs to make them see it, Mr. Haymer. Remind people how small they were, so they can become something more. You will build something worth my time. Worth our time. Something that gives everyone the experience I’ve given you.”

Now the tears were flowing too fast for me to wipe them away. I slumped against the nearest window. “I don’t know how to do that.”

That woman—the light—reached out for me. With infinite kindness she said, “I’ll help you climb.”

The plans I’ve attached aren’t really my own. They’re a collaboration. A beginning. They’re completely different from our original plans for the Realm of Man, I know. They will pose engineering problems like nothing I’ve ever tackled. And I can’t wait to try it. They might seem impossible, but you can see how they’ll work, if you look carefully. If you look with an open mind. It’ll show people where they came from and where they can go.

Don’t you want to ride this ride, Dalton?

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His fiction has been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, won the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. His second novel, WEARING THE LION, released in June of 2025. You can find out more about John here: https://linktr.ee/johnwiswell

“Fossils of Us,” © John Wiswell, 2023.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!