The Billion Dollar Omelet

On the run from gunpowder snorting child soldiers in Chad, Mr. Vespers and Dr.Chimes caught a moment of reprieve. Some nomads camped out at an oasis offered protection. Dr. Chimes was finally able to do an inventory of their parcel. Mr. Vespers was able to clean his guns.

Dr. Chimes looked up from the makeshift lab he'd assembled on a blanket. "The DNA appears to be uncorrupted."

"Only thing in this country that is."

"But our situation is precarious."

The word had gotten out and antagonists within the Chad Ministry of Tourism were vying for the eventual payoff. If Westerners paid good money to see elephants...

"We don't know if the Nomads will keep these Kotokos from killing us."

"We're alive now."

"Now. Tonight? We don't know. I propose we don't keep our eggs in one basket."

"You want to split up?"

"Hell no! I need your protection, Vespers. You're the only reason I'm still alive. But I noticed that some dwarf crocodiles have laid a cache of eggs down by the water. I could extract some of the DNA..."

"You're not seriously..."

"It's quite possible our valuable commodity could be destroyed in the days ahead, or we may have to bargain with it for our lives. If we can temporarily store some in a natural storage device, we could recoup our possible losses."

"Or make a billion dollar omelet."

"Joke if you want, but it's sitting in a very fragile beaker right now, and if we could grow some more..."

"You want to let the genie out of the bottle."

"I don't want to kill the last Genie."

"Okay, you've got a point."

Dr. Chimes went down to the pond with a microscope and a collection of syringes.

The next morning at dawn, the Kotoko Boys attacked and killed all the Nomads. Dr. Chimes and Mr. Vespers had already fled, on some horses they'd bought for a gun. Now they had fifty days to unload their parcel, and return to the oasis, before the first T-rex in 65 million years was born...

--Dan Kilian
----------------------------------------------------- Dawn of Language
----------------------------------------------------- Godzilla's Ghost