Night enveloped the city in a black mist of oblivion. The jagged skyline thrust upward into the firmament, reaching away from the soft, comforting glow of the streets, rising into a cold dark world of their own. They were backlit by a full moon that shone from behind thin wisps of cloud, hanging brilliantly in the otherwise clear vault of the sky. The towers reflected in shades of gray, standing out from the surrounding zenith of pure black. In this high, dark realm of spires and embellishments, washed in the pale, ethereal light of the moon, something moved. It moved briskly, swinging, gliding, jumping from building to building, the moonlight glinting off its lean, humanoid body as it twisted and contorted and flipped its way across the city. A keening, prehistoric cry cut through the night. The racing figure reached the edge of a building, arriving at an intersection. With no hesitation, it leapt off the tower into the void of the urban chasm, plummeting towards the lit asphalt and concrete so far below. As it fell, somersaulting through space, long wings unfurled, catching the air, leveling the creature into a glide. It soared, following the track of the broad avenue, reveling in the night. The likes of this creature had not been seen in sixty-five million years. As it flew, another cry pierced the air; the cry of a Pterodactyl.

Dave sat in a dimly lit room, scribbling on a sheet of paper. His desk lamp lit the spread of papers and books before him. With a sigh he dropped his pencil onto the desk and held his head in his hands. His girlfriend had dumped him. He picked up his pencil and resumed his frantic scratching of calculations, digging into the sheet of paper with the short stub of wood. The pencil’s lead snapped. Well, she wasn’t really his girlfriend, but they had gone out. “Damn,” he muttered, searching his cluttered desk for another pencil. Okay, they hadn’t really gone out, but they were friends...and they had been to a party together once. In his search for a pencil, Dave accidentally upset a book on his desk, spilling it, and a huge pile of papers, onto the floor. And now she was going out with some guy named Brian who was probably as intelligent as Dave and a lot better looking. “Damn,” he muttered trying to collect his papers into some logical order. As he attempted to stand, holding most of his dumped research in his arms, he hit his head on the underside of his desk, dropping everything. So now his hopes of going out with the girl were dashed and Dave had nothing to do but work. It was after midnight. On a Friday night. “Damn,” he muttered, holding his pounding head for a moment. He tried to collect all his papers for a second time. It took him about 20 minutes.

Dave took one last glance at his work and stood, raising his 23 year old body to its full height. He was 6 foot 1, so there were a lot of people taller than him, but Dave was long, and often appeared to tower over everyone else in the room. He brushed his medium length, dark brown hair back over his forehead and leaned over the computer to make some final adjustments. As Dave typed, he made a vague wish that women would find paleontologists more exciting. Of course, his work wasn’t normal paleontology; Dave had managed to combine many of his numerous interests into a field that was practically unique. He worked for a rather large company named Nazarene, Inc. It was one of those massive conglomerates that has interests in everything, from science, to snack foods. Dave had an impressive lab in one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city and worked in a team of about 20 paleontologists on various projects with possible commercial tie-ins. Currently, he was taking an idea from books like Jurassic Park (ignoring, of course, the warning message against tampering with nature that was contained in such works) and trying to synthesize dinosaur DNA. His project had taken an interesting turn. Instead of trying to synthesize DNA from scratch, Dave was working on a high power energy beam that would arrange DNA from living material (in this case, plant material) into the sequence of DNA for a particular dinosaur. Right now he was making final adjustments for a preliminary test. He had some mild misgivings; concerns that he should wait for his associates to be there to witness the trial, but he wanted to take his mind off of the idea that the girl of his dreams was going out with another guy. On his UNIX terminal he loaded X windows, and, after running the application he had named ‘M_CRICHTON,’ double clicked on an icon labeled ‘Ptero_DNA.’

The part of the lab he was currently seated in was a room enclosed completely by glass. In the experiment room’s center was a table on which a Petri dish rested. In the dish a small tuft of clover lay with its roots exposed to the air. Mounted on a stand nearby, and pointed at the clover, was a large device that looked like some sort of laser cannon from a low budget sci-fi movie; this was the basis of Dave’s experiment. He had jokingly nicknamed the device the “BFG-9000,” borrowing the name from a popular video game of his youth. Seated by the door of the room about five feet away from the experiment itself, Dave was sitting in front of a computer terminal and trying to relax in his comfortable office chair. The only light in the room was one fluorescent overhead fixture; the rest of the lab was pitch black. Dave hit one more key and the room began to vibrate. A humming noise slowly grew as power built up. The experiment had begun. The BFG made a sudden, brief, high pitch noise and a spot of blue light appeared on the clover plant. Dave hit another key. A mist of water sprayed from the mounting around the lens of the BFG, revealing the deep blue beam that emanated from the device. The mist wasn’t really necessary; it just let Dave see the nifty light show. Dave leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head; the beam would have to be on the plant for approximately 15 minutes for the device to do its job. Results wouldn’t be evident, if it worked, for several weeks. Dave had time to think. As the reassuring hum of the beam continued, Dave thought about the girl and life in general and citrus fruit and...his mind wandered. He daydreamed contentedly, temporarily unaware of the experiment next to him.

What the experiment should have done was resequence the DNA of the clover. Then, as new growth appeared and cells were replaced, the plant, theoretically, would slowly change to exhibit some of the characteristics of the intended animal. Tonight’s animal was a Pterodactyl, one of Dave's favorite prehistoric creatures. At this stage, Dave didn’t expect much, maybe a slight change in color or texture, but eventually the BFG would, conceivably, cause plants to change completely into dinosaur embryos, ready to be grown in incubators. He knew it seemed far-fetched, but Dave was relatively confident in his research.

Right now, however, he was immersed in other thoughts, completely oblivious to the quiet squeaking of the BFG as its base began to turn. In his preoccupation, Dave had forgotten to latch the device in position, and now its weight caused it to slowly swivel, the beam tracing a path across the wall of the room, gradually inching away from the clover. As the young scientist sat, pondering his situation, the beam slowly worked its way towards his body. He began to feel an odd tingling sensation when, suddenly, the building shook. At that moment, two improbable events happened simultaneously. First, a light earthquake occurred, practically unheard of in Dave’s part of the country. Second, a massive power surge erupted on the city’s power grid. The earthquake shifted the BFG to point squarely at Dave, and the power surge overwhelmed the device’s systems, causing it to produce massive amounts of energy. This was not fun for Dave; as the newly energized beam struck his body, he fell from his chair, writhing in agony. The beam tracked his fall and the BFG continued to bombard him until it finally overloaded the local substation, putting a quarter of the city in the dark. As he absorbed the bright blue beam, Dave grunted and twitched, obviously in pain. When the power finally cut off, his body remained smoking for hours. It lay sprawled on the floor of the lab, surrounded by carbon scoring, its skin blackened and clothes burnt to shreds. The body rested undisturbed for nineteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and fifty-four seconds.

When night fell on the city, the parasites emerged. Not the rats; the rats were actually pretty friendly. It was the humans that citizens had to worry about. In the evolution of the city, criminals had almost abandoned common thievery in favor of more creative and profitable ventures. There were still robbers and muggers, but they were an accepted fact of life, unlike some of the real criminals. The moment dusk set in, these personalities all began to emerge from the proverbial woodwork. The darkness belonged to their ilk. The police tried to combat the crime, but were drastically outnumbered. Besides, any officer, with a desire to live, much preferred a brightly lit Dunkin’ Donuts to the dark alleys and side streets they would have to patrol. It was in one of these dark alleys that Mike found himself. He had only been in the city a short time, and had taken a wrong turn, accidentally straying from the well-lit mainstreets. “Oh, man,” he said in a kind of fearful awe, staring at the dead end into which he had wandered. A sudden sense of forboding struck him, and he turned around slowly, cautiously, afraid to see what was behind him. All that was there was the trash strewn alley, devoid of conscious life save for a few highly evolved paramecia, which were microscopic anyway. Mike breathed a sigh of relief and began to retrace his steps. He suddenly felt as though someone was following him. He whirled around. Again, there was no one there. “Man, now I’m jumping at shadows.” He found the sound of his voice comforting and resolved not to look the next time he had the feeling someone was behind him. The feeling reemerged after he wandered for a couple of minutes, trying to find his way back to a civilized area. He clenched his teeth and resisted the urge to look. It’s probably best that he didn’t look; if he had, he would have gotten a tire-iron to the face. As it was, it just connected solidly with the back of his head. Mike fell to the ground, his skull pounding. As his vision faded to black, he saw a group of muscular figures encircling him and drawing nearer. He had an odd feeling that the ground was shaking, but the shadowy figures were the more pressing concern, and Mike groaned weakly as they approached. He was already unconscious when they began to kick him.

Somewhere in the city, a shot rang out. Then a burst of machine gun fire. Then a major explosion....this is the kind of city it was, but it’s so much more poetic if you just mention the single shot.

The night passed slowly, loomingly. When the sun finally rose, the darkness seemed to linger in some of the city’s crevices, unwilling to let go. Soon, the morning light finally took hold, reflecting off the skyline in pale vermilion glory, illuminating the conglomeration of old and very modern buildings that rose into the deep blue sky. During the daytime the city looked pretty darn impressive. One building that stood out as a modern structure was the Nazarene, Inc. Headquarters. Three connected towers of shining glass soared into the air, almost eclipsing the sun as it struggled over the horizon. One floor of the right hand tower had a sole occupant. As an observer zoomed in on the windows of the thirteenth floor, they would notice that the window, on one side, was vaguely fogged with smoke. Through the window, sunlight streamed into the lab, hardly encumbered by the sooty residue. The light brightly lit the area (as good light tends to do) and shone through to the experiment room. If it could have made a conscious decision to stay away from illuminating the floor of the room, it probably would have, but unknowingly it simply poured over everything, no matter how unpleasant. It glinted off a black-streaked young face that lay pressed against the smooth tile floor, and streamed over a contorted, scorched body, catching on the shreds of clothes and continuing across the room. As it left the other side, the light revealed jagged edges of broken glass. Most of the windows of the central room were shattered. Their shards formed a mosaic with the vast tracks of ash that marbled the floor. And the body in the center of the destruction lay lifeless, still smoking slightly in the morning rays. Four more hours.

Mike groaned and rolled, very slowly. He lay in a pool of his own dried blood and though he was very much alive, his body felt like it had been trampled by a Mongol horde. “My God,” he thought. He didn’t add anything more profound, because it hurt to think. He did try to open his eyes. He saw, through swollen lids, blue sky between the dark towers that had haunted him the previous night. The new day was starting out warmly, and the sunlight streaming down mercifully prevented his battered body from shivering. As he tried to regain his strength, mostly by lying in the same place, he could only hope that this day would be better.

The sun rose higher, and more light filled the lab. By now it had that distinctive mid-morning look to it. The mid-morning light continued its path across the body. For a moment the body looked as though its faced twitched, a small spasm as it rested on the cool floor. On closer inspection it was revealed not as muscle movement, but as a small stream of blood slowly trickling from the corner of its mouth. The mid-morning sunlight brought out the deep red color rather nicely. Thirty-five more minutes.

Mike continued to stagger forward slowly. He was astounded that he could move at all, much less walk. His head was ringing, his body ached all over, and his wallet was missing, but otherwise he was doing great. Except for the dizzy spells. He briefly leaned against the wall, as he waited for the world to stop spinning so fast. After a moment he continued, limping along in his blood stained clothes. He knew he was almost to a main street. Then he could find a police station. Then everything would be okay. Then he could sleep. When he staggered out onto the sidewalk of a major boulevard, Mike revised his plan. Sleep suddenly took top priority and he collapsed onto the pavement, exhausted.

Somewhere in the building a janitor was vacuming. The lab’s walls were soundproofed, however, so none of the Saturday noises penetrated its sanctity. Dave’s body had now been resting peacefully for nine hours, thirty-six minutes, and twenty seconds. Dust had begun to settle, creeping into the sterile environment through the broken windows. Thirty-four seconds passed in the unchanging scene. Then something changed. Dave’s eyelids snapped open. The rest of his body remained perfectly still, but his eyelids actually snapped open, revealing the oddly colored eyes underneath. Something seemed wrong. The strange elongated pupils stared blankly, while the iris contracted and released wildly. His eyes darted around for a moment then were still once again. There was something slightly off about them that couldn’t quite be placed; something alien... The eyelids closed and the body was still once more. The rest of the day in the lab was going to be pretty monotonous.

In the city, life was continuing as normal, people going about their business in the bustling streets, traffic becoming congested, obscenities cheerfully flying this way and that. It was a normal day. Not many had even noticed the earthquake of the night before and no damage was evident. All power was up-and-running as well. The only effects most had noticed from the previous night was that their VCR’s, microwaves, and clocks were blinking 12:00 again. Of course, this meant that some people’s alarm clocks had not gone off. This being a Saturday, it didn’t make a difference in most cases. In most cases.

She hurried down the street, holding her paper cup of disgusting fast food coffee in one hand and a lap top computer under her arm. Today was an important day, but she had gone to a party the night before, gotten home late, and not noticed that her clock was blinking. “Damn,” she muttered, glancing at her watch. She was already an hour late.