GA Writing Prompts - 37. # 165 Thought to be extinct, until…

Thought to be extinct, until…

I read on this on the internet. I followed a link that I had seen on a news page. ‘Scientists make dead alive’. The title had captured my interest. This sounded like a sensation and I clicked the link out of curiosity. However, the article was not about what I had expected to find. They had not revived a corpse or brought back to life a deceased. No, the article was about scientists who were working on the genetic material of extinct species.

They had made progress in the previous years. They were meanwhile able to analyze genetic material, and DNA sequencing was popular among scientists in these days. They sequenced the DNA of humans and animals. It was almost like kind of a sport. It seemed to totally intrigue these nerds. But, apparently, a few of them had slowly been getting bored. They had been looking for something new to do and they had found a new field of research: experimenting with the DNA of extinct species.

Their goal was to find a complete and intact sequence of an extinct species and implant it in the egg of an animal that belonged to the nearest species alive. It sounded all plausible and easy to accomplish. They were confident that the embryo would develop and grow. Provided nothing unexpected happened, which they could not imagine it would, a specimen of an extinct species would thus be brought back into existence. They had not yet chosen which extinct species they would focus on, but chances were good that they reached a decision by the end of the following week as there was a meeting being held in Rio de Janeiro where the renowned scientists of the world would meet and discuss their findings and projects.

I made a mental note to check out the news by the end of the following week as I was interested to learn which extinct species the scientists would finally choose. A thought crossed my mind, albeit for only a second. Was it legal to revive extinct species? What if they revived some dangerous animal? Were they really aware of what they were doing? Why revive an extinct species anyway? Just for the sake of science and in order to satisfy the ego of the scientists and researchers? Well, I had to admit, that the idea intrigued me as well. It was a bit like finding a long lost treasure.

However, I forgot about the whole thing in the course of the week as I was busy with real life issues. I didn’t search for an article and I didn’t accidentally stumble across one. Perhaps I had missed the news, perhaps they had never published an article, in any case, a whole year passed before I was confronted again with the experiment on reviving extinct species. I did not read an article on the internet or in the newspaper, neither did I learn the news from TV. I was confronted with the matter personally and in a way that I would have never expected. Never would I have wished for a situation like this. Not even in my wildest dreams I would have dreamed about it. It was an accidental confrontation with a creature that seemed to have arisen from hell. The creature was classified phylum Arthropoda, subphylum Myriapoda, class Diplopoda. It was a millipede of two meters length.

No one knew how it had escaped the lab. But it had, soon after it had hatched, when it was very small and only few segments had developed. Investigations later showed that it definitely was one of the extinct creatures that the scientists had worked on and had finally brought back into existence.

I walked my dog on a November morning. Dawn had just come and the light was dim. The park was empty and I enjoyed the silence. I threw the branch of a tree and my dog hurried to get it. But then my dog barked loudly. It stood, yapping and snarling at some bushes and ferns. I hurried there, but I saw nothing. So I parted the ferns and then stepped through them. And there it lay, head raised and mouth opened. I gazed in horror at the giant worm’s jaws. A moment passed. It seemed the horrible creature was measuring me. And then it moved towards me, rapidly, blisteringly fast, thousands of feet pushing its body forward. I turned and I ran, as did my dog, but the beast was quick and it caught up. My dog snarled. I heard it yelp in pain. I glanced back and terror struck me. The sight was horrible and I stood in shock. The beast’s jaws chewed on my dog and blood flooded the ground of the park and streamed down the worm’s black body.

I can’t say how I made it home. I called the police and they shot the beast that the scientists had brought back into existence. However, my dog died on that unfortunate day. A creature from hell, or of the depths of time, remade in a modern lab, had killed it. It will never be brought back to life.