  At Auger energies only model predictions enable us to extract primary cosmic
ray features. The simulation of the shower evolution depends sensitively on the
first few interactions, necessarily related to the quality of our understanding
of high energy hadronic collisions. Distortions of the standard ``soft
semi-hard'' scenario include novel large compact dimensions and a string or
quantum gravity scale not far above the electroweak scale. Na\"{\i}vely, the
additional degrees of freedom yield unification of all forces in the TeV range.
In this article we study the influence of such precocious unification during
atmospheric cascade developments by analyzing the most relevant observables in
proton induced showers.
