Announcing 'Welcome... to Pleistocene Park' when activating the Breach Stabilizer is not recommended. Furthermore, the PA system in Access Room 21 is for important announcements, not John Williams fanfares.— Employee Handbook
Pleistocene Park
The breach opened on a chill, windswept grasslands, dotted with small clusters of trees. Drones had identified the region as roughly the location of modern Moscow, but there was no sign of any human habitation. The first sighting of a mammoth herd slowly lumbering its way across the tundra generated excitement, but that was nothing compared to the thrill of having a trio of sabre-toothed cats decide the bipeds were easier prey than the large quadrupeds.
No one was fatally injured, due more to the cats fleeing the unexpected noise of gunfire than to the effectiveness of the light sidearms the team was equipped with. The second team went in loaded for
bear....
Wither Humanity?
Anthropologists were, naturally, wetting themselves at the chance to study prehistoric humans in what seemed to be a natural environment - no ludicrously anachronistic animals were showing up, nor were any aberrant physics detected. There were plenty of species not previously found in the fossil record, of course, but all were entirely in keeping with the ecosystem in general. Expeditions, each with a mix of scientists and big game hunters (sometimes in one individual, but typically not) fanned out, heading to locales where human settlement was known to have existed. No sign of humans were found. This was not too discouraging; the exact year was unknown, and of course, this was an alternate reality; some seemingly minor shift could place humans in different spots.
(The extent of exploration far from the Breach was somewhat excessive, but certain documentary channels and prestigious museums had partnered to provide funds.)
Four long sojourns by different teams found nothing to indicate humans of any sort, including pre-modern species which should have left traces, were present. Given limited resources, BREACH wanted to just establish a station near the Moscow opening, with a skeleton crew doing basic research on the species surrounding them, any one of which could produce a career's worth of work. But as cool as mammoths and dire wolves and cave bears were, there was a demand to study early man in his "natural" state and thus end many debates about what pre-agricultural human society was really like. A team travelled across the Mediterannean and down into Africa, figuring that perhaps the human diaspora had occurred later than expected. Even if modern humans had not yet evolved, Nanderthal or Erectus bands would still be exciting.
No humans, pre-humans, or proto-humans were found. Digs at sites where hominid fossils were known to exist didn't turn up anything. Other than that,
primate evolution was about where it should be, and several previously unknown great ape species were found, but nothing anywhere along any evolutionary path to man. It looked like the branch that would lead to australiopithecines, and then to humans, was simply cut off at the root.
It's hard to say if the investors or the anthropologists were more disappointed. Probably the latter; the investors could minimize their losses by exploiting the thousands of hours of nature-documentary footage of dozens of extinct and spectacular megafauna. And there was another group which was almost ecstatic: Hunters.
A Sound of Thunder
BREACH is not a for-profit organization, but the governments that fund it have to answer to the taxpayers, and the "pure" scientific and sociological work that remains the organization's primary mission is easier to justify to the voting masses if the tax burden is low. Despite internal debate and the usual two-minutes-hate on social media, organized hunting expeditions began, with exorbitant prices eagerly paid. The ecological impact of a dozen such trips a year, with strict bag limits (easily enforced since there's only one way in or out), and the use of "green" energy to power the camps and vehicles, is extremely minimal.
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