ARACHNOEXTINCTION

A small, scrawny man walked out of the building. He stood about five and a half feet tall, which was a solid five or six inches shorter than me. He had thin black hair swept to the side, and eyes to match, staring at me from behind a pair of thin glasses. He had tanned skin and a broad, gleaming smile. The man wore a white lab coat with black pants. He offered out his hand as he walked down the front steps.

“Ivory Gale?” he asked as I gripped his hand.

“I honestly prefer just Dr. Gale, if you don’t mind,” I said in the nicest way possible. As much as I tried to avoid it, I always came off as pretentious. I just hated my first name with a passion.

“Ivory?” the mean guard said with a snort.

“Oh, now talking is okay,” I grumbled.

“Not a problem, Dr. Gale!” the scientist said and shook my hand with renewed enthusiasm.

My whole body started to shake from his excited grip, so I released his hand and pulled away.

“It’s a pleasure...,” I said realizing I didn’t know his name. It was probably in the report I skimmed through on the plane. I needed to be more thorough, but most of the stuff I have to read is so damn boring.

“I am Dr. Kale. Head of this fine cloning facility,” he said with another beaming smile. I felt a jolt of stupidity as I saw a name tag on Dr. Kale’s lab coat that read Hi my name is and had “Dr. Kale” scribbled beneath in sloppy handwriting. In all my training in medical school and through the years of schooling required to achieve my Ph.D., reading name-tags must have been a class I skipped over.

The mean guard snorted and said, “Your names rhyme. It’s kind of cute.”

“Like the disgusting food,” I said with a forced smile and ignoring the guard. It dawned on me I preferred the mean guard more than him; happy people aren’t to be trusted. The same with morning people, they’re unnatural.

He let out a high pitched laugh, which made everyone else visibly uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother him or he didn’t notice. The laugh was uncomfortable in a way like a coworker getting way to close to your face to whisper something and you feel their patchy beard scratching against your cheek or ear…and the coworker is a woman. That type of uncomfortable.

“Yes, like the disgusting food. I assume Justin and Darren were pleasant on the drive over from the airport? Darren loves driving around the island,” Dr. Kale said and motioned for us to come inside.

Airport? That’s what you want to call that dirt path of death?

“I think me and Justin are the best of friends,” I said and followed him, swapping my fancy sunglasses for my boring, regular black-rimmed glasses as we went inside. Dr. Kale pulled a spare lab coat from just inside the doors to the facility. I slipped it on over my boring white buttoned-up shirt and khaki pants.

The inside of the building was beyond beautiful. The walls and floors were made of green-tinted glass; I could see into each room on this floor, the sun shining down on the island, and the scientists working on the floor below me. The ceiling was tinted a dark blue, and the sunlight seemed to spread the color all over the building. Dozens of people were typing away at computers or combining colorful liquids in different glass beakers.

“I think I’m having a science-gasm,” I said aloud without thinking.

“Happens to me all the time, my friend,” Dr. Kale said and winked at me. “The trick is to double up on underwear.”

“Alright, well that’s something I’ll try to forget,” I said and shook my head, attempting to hold back the shudder that his wink sent spiraling through me. “Do you have a conference room?”

“Yes, follow me!” he said and took off at a brisk pace.

I had a jog a few steps to catch up, but then I was able to match his pace. My legs were longer than his, but I still struggled to maintain the pace that Dr. Kale had set. Justin and Darren split off on their own as I followed Dr. Kale. In a brisk walk, we sped through all the various rooms on this floor of the facility. My eyes were having a field day, jumping all over the place and lingering no more than a few seconds in an individual room. There was so much happening in each room and plenty to take in. I had a difficult time believing that so many people worked in this facility. I suppose cloning extinct animals would be a pretty massive group effort.

“If this is the only building on the island, where does everyone sleep? I was unaware there was such a large amount of people working here.”

“Right around one hundred!” Dr. Kale said and stuck out his chest in pride. “This might be the only building on the island, but I could fit groups much larger than this! There are several floors just for living. Not to mention the floors dedicated to recreational activities and workout rooms.” He gave me a thoughtful look. “You know, it’s kind of like living in college dorms.”

“But without all the drinking,” I said joking.

“...sure,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

We kept straight until we hit a large room; it had a large oak table in the center. Placed in the middle of the table was a glass box, at least, three feet wide and close to four feet long. The glass case contained what seemed to be a basket of very large eggs. They were about the size of ostrich eggs, but a very bright white color and freckled with black spots. There was a heating lamp inside the case and several wires that led from the case to a medical monitor. The monitor was on, but it wasn’t registering any activity.

“Now, normally I would save the main event for a little later after your arrival, once you got some rest and whatnot. But--but this is too exciting,” Dr. Kale said as we entered the room. He was wringing his hands and I’m pretty positive he was salivating in excitement. I’ve never seen a man give anything as powerful as the look Dr. Kale was giving these eggs. I was starting to get a bad vibe about this guy on top of my weariness about this trip.

“Do these eggs hold the Woolly Mammoth? They didn’t lay eggs; is this some cloning thing?” I asked as I pressed my face against the glass case.

“No no, we’re nowhere near ready to produce a live Woolly Mammoth. These are a much grander discovery,” Dr. Kale said, his eyes wide as he looked down at the eggs.

“You’re supposed to be bringing the mammoth back to life, not whatever this is,” I said with a frown. This is why I make my visits. To keep the scientists from being too Dr. Frankensteinish.

“Don’t worry, this was a discovery and had minimal cost. They were brought here to me by a friend, and this could be the biggest discovery of our lifetime.”

“Alright, what the hell are these?” I said. I was getting a serious evil genius vibe from Dr. Kale.

“Tell me, Dr. Gale, do you like spiders?” he said with a twisted smile.

“I like them dead,” I said. “Don’t tell me....”

“Yes!” Dr. Kale said, straightening up. “Prehistoric spider eggs have been discovered. Perfectly preserved!”

“Holy shit, these are freaking enourmous,” I said and looked at the eggs with a new found respect. A wave of fresh nerves and fear washed over me. Despite the eggs sitting there doing nothing, the way they were sitting there doing nothing came across as menacing. The eggs stared at me just as hard as I stared at them. I was losing a staring contest to eggs. I’m not a coward at all. My wife would probably piss herself laughing at this situation, or my face as I looked upon these stupid eggs.

“How old?” I asked him, hoping that moving the conversation forward would help me lose this feeling of impending doom.

“Post-Jurassic Era, but we’re having a hard time pinning down an exact time frame. But when these incredible spider species lived, they were the predominant predator on the earth. Nothing in their time came even close in terms of deadliness and ferociousness. In fact, from what little information that we’ve been able to obtain, they literally ate themselves extinct. They were such vicious predators that they killed everything they used for food; they either were forced to kill each other or starve.” Dr. Kale spoke with so much enthusiasm it was hard not to be excited by his words, but they were still spiders. So, no thanks.

“Who discovered them?” I asked Dr. Kale.

“One of my friends, her name is Dr. Caitlyn Rose. She was leading a group of scientists that were digging through glaciers and found these eggs preserved by the ice. She absolutely destroyed her knee finding these puppies. She may never be able to do field work again. She has the most perfect ass you could ever imagine. Like a perfectly fluffed pillow,” he said.

“Is that entirely necessary?” I asked him, a little taken back by his description of his ‘friend’.

“Of course! It’s completely relevant. I think it’s important to know where the eggs were discovered,” he said with a shrug.

“Wasn’t referring to the eggs,” I said.

“Well you should be! This discovery is beyond remarkable!” he half-yelled.

“Were these some sort of Dino-spiders?” I asked, pushing his butt remark out of my mind.

“Dino-spiders? Pssh, don’t be…ridiculous,” he said as his voice trailed off and a deep sadness fell over his face.

“Do you wish you thought of ‘Dino-spiders’ first?” I said.

“Yes,” he said pouting.

“Were they venomous?” I asked him to get back on track.

“Oh, heavens, yes, more so than any species alive today. Their venom sacks were as large as your head. We theorize that they could have even spat their venom a couple hundred feet or so.”

“Balls. How big were these bastards?” I said and inched away from the eggs. I had a bad feeling about these things. Just looking at the eggs made my stomach churn.

“Around the size of a mid-size sedan,” Dr. Kale said in a whisper. “Could you imagine if these babies were alive today?”

My mind took me to an image of a cowboy riding a giant spider around in the old west, because that’s the obvious thing to imagine in this situation.

“Are these eggs...salvageable?” I asked him, shaking the awesome cowboy out of my mind.

“I don’t believe so,” he said with a disappointed look. “We’ve done a few experiments to see if we could get the eggs to hatch, but it was a one in a billion shot. If not, worse. We would need millions more in funding to have them scuttling about.”

“Was this the normal amount of eggs they would lay at once?” I gave a quick count. “Fourteen?”

“No, this is the small number that survived the thousands of years they were hidden away. My friend said there was evidence to suggest between one hundred to maybe one-twenty. She spends a tremendous amount of time studying these beauties, says that’s about the average that was expected.”

“These look nothing like spider eggs from our time. These eggs look more like they belong in an oversized bird nest,” I said.

“Forget everything you know about spiders, which won’t be much, I suspect,” Dr. Kale said.

I opened my mouth to protest, but stopped because I knew he was right, he knew he was right, and there was no point in arguing. Better to let someone think you’re ignorant than to open your mouth a prove it.

“Very few similarities remain between this extinct species and the species that force you to cower in your shower,” Dr. Kale continued. “The eggs these species laid have a strong, thick shell to protect it from other spiders and predators. They are very strong and it takes a tremendous amount of force to even crack the outer shell. Different time period, completely different spider.”

“I know we have many different kinds of spiders today--”

“About 40,000 different types that we know of. Give or take a few,” interrupted Dr. Kale.

I took a deep breath to stop myself from smacking him. I can deal with a lot of annoying habits, but interrupting someone was something I despised.

“Okay,” I said slowly after I calmed myself. “Were there different kinds of these spiders?”

Dr. Kale frowned for a second. “There’s a few we know of. But research into these creatures is fairly new and very little is known. We know of four or five different kinds, with one being ultra-aggressive, intelligent, and deadly. These eggs belong to the less aggressive of the species. While still aggressive and wildly dangerous by the standards of today’s spiders, these are nothing compared to the aggressiveness of the species in their time.”

“Well this is interesting and everything, but you were supposed to be working on the Woolly Mammoth. If you want to continue to receive funding, that’s where we need to see results.” I said trying to get back on task, and away from these spider eggs. “How much money was wasted on these?”

“Minimal,” Dr. Kale said, and he looked longingly at the eggs. “But with our increased funding that I requested, we could have the Mammoth, a saber-tooth, and these spiders alive and kicking. Within two years.”

“Saber-tooth? Really?”

Man, they would love to have a mammoth and saber-toothed cat to show off. There would be millions of dollars of revenue gained just from these alone, easy.

“You’re supposed to sell me on giving you funding. Telling me those spider things could come back is doing the opposite,” I said as I pulled a notebook out of my pocket and jotted a few things down. I didn’t write any real notes; I scribbled gibberish in my notebook to seem important. People appear to take you serious when you start writing in a notebook.

Dr. Kale’s eyes flashed to the notebook, and then back up to me he began to laugh, less obnoxious this time. He cleared his throat and gave me a more serious look.

Notebook works every time.

“Don’t worry, we would remove the venom sacks and pincers to take away any serious threat to us,” he said in a reassuring and almost pleading voice.

“They have pincers?” I asked.

Dr. Kale used his fingers to make pincers over his mouth and making clicking noises with his tongue. His raised his eyebrows with each click.

“They amount of weapons these beautiful creatures had at their disposal was amazing! Their pincers could slice through humans with ease, and even if it didn’t, they would hold us in place and their massive fangs would do the rest. I believe their pincers were strong enough to tear through the metal of a car. The venom these creatures had would come into play only on rare occasions. Honestly, the venom would only be effective on something like a Woolly Mammoth, because only something that size would survive long enough for the venom even to come into the equation.” Dr. Kale spoke with such passion it started to make me a bit nervous. Like maybe he was a spider in disguise!

Kidding.

Sort of.

“Did they spin webs like today’s spiders?” I asked as I pictured the skyscrapers of Manhattan covered in spider webs. What a disgusting and horrifying apocalypse that would be. Nothing but spider webs covering all the cities in the world. Pass.

“Of course! They would easily trap other creatures the size of dogs, or even as large as bears in these webs. These were absolutely the perfect killing machine.” Dr. Kale flashed a look at the medical monitor, knowing it would show no signs of life, but hoping by some miracle that would change.

“Well I’m not going to lie, these are quite interesting. Maybe with the promise of the Woolly Mammoth AND saber-toothed tiger--that’s a very important ‘and’---I could get some funding so you can play with these spiders.”

Dr. Kale’s eyes lit up brighter than New York City on Christmas.

“You’re serious?”

I nodded. “I am. But, it would be under some extreme supervision and only one at a time. No way in hell I’m going to be the reason these things breed out of control and eat us extinct.”

“Well, then I have some good news for you,” Dr. Kale said in a whisper.

“What is it?” I said, terrified it was going to be more spiders.

He smiled at me, his face behind the glass case.

“It’s ready.”

“The mammoth?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You said it wasn’t.”

“The funding stops if the project is complete, we have so much more to do here. So many answer-less questions, so much research pushed aside that we can now dive into. There is so much creation yet to be done!”

Yeah, hardcore mad-scientist vibes now. But mad-scientist does tend to get the job done, I suppose. Having a crazy on your side can be great, as long as he doesn’t go and get everyone here killed thanks to his meddling in science.

“When can you have one walking around?” I said and pulled out my awesome high-tech phone.

“We have a machine that can produce a full-size, adult mammoth. It will have a short lifespan, and we don’t know if it will even eat or how it will act. It was made as nothing more than a publicity stunt. Something to simply create excitement in those that are signing our checks, as well as show the scientific world that we have the capability to create real life off DNA that is thousands of years old. To bring the Woolly Mammoth species back to the point where they can sustain life and reproduce like normal, it requires a different approach,” Dr. Kale said.

“What kind of different approach? We want these guys roaming our planet for as long as the planet can support their life. Not for a few months at a time,” I said.

“What we’ll need to do to get as close to a normal lifecycle for the mammoth is to impregnate a modern day elephant, more than likely the African elephant, and allow that elephant to give live birth to a newborn baby mammoth. Then it can grow and develop as normal as possible in today’s world. We can do this enough until we can breed the mammoths on their own and have the species walking around on this earth once again, fully alive and functional in the ecosystem.”

I said nothing as I scrolled through my phone contacts to a name that said ‘boss.’ I was never informed of the names of anyone I work for, extra security in case I was ever compromised or some crap like that. Because I was going to be kidnapped and interrogated for the information that my mind contained. Right. I think they just try to make this job seem as sketchy as possible for fun.

“If you can demonstrate that full grown mammoth and start the process leading to live birth of their young, then we may be able to increase your funding a bit. Probably not what you’re requesting, but an increase nonetheless,” I said as I clicked call.

“You won’t regret it!” Dr. Kale said in a hiss as I held the phone against my ear. He was rocking back-and-forth from the balls of his feet to his heels rubbing his hands together.

“This better be good, or I swear to God--” an angry voice started.

“Better than good. How would you like your very own Woolly Mammoth?” I said into the receiver.

“Sounds terrible. I would, however, like one in our future extinct animal zoo,” the voice said with the anger fading.

“They can make one. A fully grown mammoth. It’s short-lived, but it can satisfy the people it needs to. Plus, create a good buzz while they get ready to give live birth to one,” I said to him as Dr. Kale nodded with every word I said.

“Live birth? Really?” said his now thrilled voice. At least as thrilled as this man got. The voice was not furious, and that seems to be the best we can get.

The Woolly Mammoth was a great attraction, but the birth of a Woolly Mammoth? That would sell more seats than a…some famous old school rock band or pop star thing. I’m not good with keeping up with what’s “in” or whatever. Popularity was something I learned to hate in high school, big surprise there.

“Yes, sir. Through an elephant, these creatures could return and sustain life. Imagine the coverage we could with the first birth of the Woolly Mammoth. The return of a species. Every media outlet in the WORLD would show up for the birth. People would be spending tens of thousands of dollars to attend; the birth alone would gather more attention than any other tourist attraction in the world!” I said, scooting away from Dr. Kale because he was emitting an excited whine that was similar to a dog whistle, and was almost in tears.

“Do they absolutely need the ridiculous amount they requested for this?”

“Well probably not that amount...but I will suggest an increase in their funding if you want a saber-toothed cat running around.”

“A saber-tooth? Alright, Dr. Gale, I am very excited to read your report on this. Get it to me by tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get it sent over tonight,” I said.

“Words cannot express my excitement for this. I can hardly keep it contained,” he said in a monotone voice.

The phone clicked off. Under the assumption he wasn’t being sarcastic, I closed my phone with a confident smile.

“Things are looking good,” I said to Dr. Kale.

“Thank you!” he said, brimming with excitement.

“It took some smooth wording on my part, and he wasn’t happy, but, I refused to give in to get you the funding you need. It was a battle, but it seems I will prevail,” I announced to him.

“I was literally standing right here,” Dr. Kale said, each word slow and cautious. “None of that happened. I could hear every word both of you spoke.”

“Oh, right. Well,” I said. I may have gotten a bit carried away. I don’t tend to have that conversation in front of other people. That’s why I should never try to show off; I came across a tad bit stupid.

“Can I show you where we’ll be creating the mammoth?” Dr. Kale said, shaking off our previous interaction.

“In a bit. I would like a few hours to shake off jet lag and wash up. Could you have someone show me to my room?” I said.

“I would love to! This will give us time to get everything prepped for you. I get the feeling you are going to love what you will experience while you’re here. Nothing but excitement,” he said and flicked off the lights to the room and led me out.

Excitement was not a good thing in this line of work. Boring and easy was what I preferred. No surprises. I gave the spider eggs a weary glance as I followed Dr. Kale out of the room. For some reasons, I had my doubts about his last statement.

My phone chirped in my hand.

“Text from my wife,” I muttered to myself and flipped the phone open. Once I saw what she sent, I snapped the phone shut.

Dr. Kale whistled from over my shoulder, he had watched me check that message from my wife. “That’s your wife? No wonder you want to get to your room,” he winked and jabbed me with his elbow. “I’ll send down some extra sheets. Maybe a sock.”

“Just forget you saw that,” I said, I felt heat rising through my body. I hated his voice. Every word he spoke was a word closer to a mind-crushing migraine. I envisioned those oversized spiders coming to life and devouring Dr. Kale as he shrieked and cried out for help. It was a beautiful moment.

“I’ll try,” he said and I knew he wouldn’t make much of an effort to push it from his mind. He led me away from the room and down a few confusing twists in turns through these glass hallways that led us to the glass elevators. There were two elevator doors, that at this moment showed the cables the elevator cars would come up on. Dr. Kale hit a button with a satisfied sigh and we waited for one of the doors to open.

“I love pushing the buttons,” Dr. Kale said with a wide smile.

I gave him a polite smile and head nod and tried not to give him a crazy stare. Dr. Kale started humming and doing a little dance as I pleaded with the elevator door to open.

We were far enough away from the conference room that we didn’t see as the medical monitor that was attached to the eggs back in the conference room registered a heartbeat.