Long ago, in my early gnome lifetimes, I specialized in working with huge prehistoric animals. I’m not sure why I thought this was such a fascinating specialty. I could have worked with any animals. But nothing caught my interest like dinosaurs.

This eagerness to work with those large and dangerous reptiles is what got me assigned to planet Earth those many millions of years ago. They were looking for gnomes who were interested in moving to this up-and-coming but out-of-the-way planet. I volunteered, along with dozens of my fellow gnomes.

The situation was that the creator gods, who design most animals in the universes, had just started a new experiment on Earth working with newly created dinosaurs. They decided to program some of these dinosaurs for unlimited growth to see how large the animals could get in a world that was perfectly designed for them.

I arrived on Earth soon after the gods had set up plants and animals, stabilized the environment, signed off on the concept, and moved on to other projects.

Back then, Earth was not in a configuration anyone would recognize today. The landmass had not yet drifted into separate continents. Instead, the rocky plates were jammed together into one giant supercontinent that was perfect for the development of many types of life.

Although Earth has always been a green planet, it was incredibly lush back then. Carbon dioxide levels were high, resulting in warm climates and huge plants. The vegetation created perfect conditions for all manner of animals, both predator and prey.

I can still feel the oppressive heat and humidity of the ancient Mesozoic Era, so intense that it was hard to breathe. I remember my fear of being tripped up and trapped by the huge plants or being eaten by a larger animal. Any potential meal that could not defend itself or flee did not last long in that prehistoric world.

Earth was not a quiet world. Any tranquility was destroyed by earthquakes, the constant whine of oversized insects, roars of land animals, and vibrating growls of the immense dinosaurs. Not surprisingly, all of us gnomes working there felt a constant sense of fear.

Gnomes are used to all kinds of work environments, but keep in mind that we’re not gods, we’re merely magical beings occupying physical bodies. Earth was at the limits of temperature and danger that any type of humanoid can bear. Our bodies could have been easily damaged by overheating or from a quick attack from extremely large and powerful animals. We had to be very careful.

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We set up a gnome village, built using fast-growing bamboo. Reinforced huts, tall fences and nightly watchers allowed us to sleep safely. It’s fortunate that gnomes live in the light of the Creator and seldom eat, since cooking attracted every nearby scavenger. It’s difficult to eat your fern and pine nut stew when you’re afraid a lurking oversized vulture will swoop down and grab you.

Have you ever tried to care for a sick brontosaurus? Or have you ever stitched up a face wound on an allosaurus? No, of course not, nobody would want to do either of those things. Yet we had to learn to help these huge and scary dinosaurs without being torn apart or crushed. It took all of our skills and creativity to find ways to mend their wounds, monitor their growth, and measure their vital functions. All of this while dodging flying pterodactyls, carnivorous plants and animals, and vicious little reptiles that tried to attack our ankles. I spent many of my Earth lifetimes covered in scars from various predators.

I remember the sense of wonder that kept our group going on the most difficult days. Most of us gnomes really started to develop affection for the huge bad-tempered dinosaurs. They weren’t like anything that had been created before, on any planet. The dinosaur body designs were innovative and at a whole new level in the universe. The dinosaurs increased in size generation after generation, fulfilling their creators’ hopes.

Gradually, where any of us would have failed working as a single gnome, our gnome group succeeded. We did manage to find ways to caretake the massive dinosaurs. We observed and methodically noted our experiences. We gathered huge amounts of charts, statistics and commentary on what we were seeing every day. It is no exaggeration to say that gnomes wrote the book on dinosaurs.

I and my fellow gnomes not only wrote the book on how these new animals were progressing, we shared that book with the creator gods. We were involved in endless conferences and notes and projects, both with the gods and their entourage of assistants. We tried to make sure the creator gods knew they had something very special on Earth.

We felt the dinosaurs were evolving rapidly and successfully. Indeed, all of the gnomes had only positive things to say about the dinosaurs’ success both as an experiment and their potential as a long-term commitment.

Once we briefed the gods and had their approval, we submitted our archives to the prestigious scholarly database portion of the akashic records. This was the first time most of our gnome group were requesting to add material to these records, so we were quite excited indeed.

You can imagine our joy when our documents were accepted. It meant that our work was considered valuable and would now be an important reference for future researchers. And if I’m honest, best of all was that our names would be enshrined in the akashic records for all time. Literally, the dinosaur volumes will be part of the akashic records for as long as this universe exists. Our families were incredibly proud of our achievement.

We were extremely happy gnomes at this point. We eagerly moved on to the next steps in the experiment. We attended new planning meetings concerning the evolution of the dinosaurs, thinking that the creator gods were as happy as we were. Sadly, this turned out to be untrue. We never expected what happened next.