Conditional Reality

On the frontier we excavated fossils left from previous epochs. We had to go down several thousand feet to find them. They were long stringy things, flexible like cotton, but strong as anything you could imagine. We sent most of them to the cities back home, where people decorated their hats with them. We miners speculated on the appearance of the city folk, with dug up fossils hanging from their headware. It was easy to mock the city folk. We put the fossils on ice and watched them writhe, then struggle, eat, mate, and become our loyal companions for life.