quote:

theres a story im never going to remember the name of and i wonder if you can help me

it's about a woman in a position of power(?) in a global empire(?) who encounters a dude from another timeline of earth, who has the technology to hop between timelines and takes her on a journey until they accidentally go to the timeline where the dinosaurs never went extinct and have a highly technological society, "The Smiling Ones" i think theyre called

also theyre in spaceships i guess. they definitely are at the end because those smiling ones are in ships described as 'claw-shaped'.

it was definitely in like a best of the year anthology one of the ones edited by gardner dozois
i think it would have to have been before like 2012 because it was one of the first ones i read