"You're supposed to be bringing the mammoth back to life, not whatever this is," I said with a frown. This was why I made my visits, to keep the scientists from being too Dr. Frankenstein-ish.
"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 enormous," I said and looked at the eggs with a newfound 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 was not a coward at all. But, these eggs made me feel a little like one.
My wife would probably piss herself laughing at this situation, or at 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 Earth. Nothing in their time came even close in terms of deadliness and ferocity. In fact, from what little information that we've been able to obtain, they literally ate themselves extinct. They reproduced so rapidly and 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 who 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 aback 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 after I had pushed his butt remark out of my mind.
"Dino-spiders? Pssh, don't be…ridiculous," he said as his voice trailed off and deep sadness fell over his face.
"Do you wish you had thought of 'dino-spiders' first?" I said.
"Yes," he said, pouting.
"Were they venomous?" I asked to get him back on track.
"Oh, heavens, yes, more so than any species alive today. Their venom sacs 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 dramatic 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 within budget 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 number 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. Dr. Rose said there was evidence to suggest around one hundred to maybe one-twenty. She spends a tremendous amount of time studying these beauties and says that's about the average 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 and 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 durable, thick shell to protect them 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 fifty thousand different types that we know of. Give or take a few," Dr. Kale interrupted.
I took a deep breath to stop myself from smacking him. I could 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 tended to take you seriously when you started 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 sacs and pincers to take away any serious threat to us," he said in a reassuring and almost pleading voice.
"Wait, what? Pincers?"
Dr. Kale used his fingers to make pincers over his mouth and made clicking noises with his tongue. His eyebrows raised with each click.
"The amount of weapons these beautiful creatures had at their disposal was amazing! Their pincers could slice through humans with ease, and even if they 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 that 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 cat - 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 pressed into the glass case.
"It's ready."