The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Read online

  The

  Jurassic

  Chronicles

  WINDRIFT BOOKS

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  THE JURASSIC CHRONICLES

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright holder listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.

  The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any place, event, or person—whether furred, feathered, scaled, skinned or any combination thereof—is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  The Jurassic Chronicles copyright © 2017 Samuel Peralta and Windrift Books.

  “Resurrecting the Dinosaur” copyright © 2012 by Samuel Peralta. First published in Tango Desolado (2012) by Samuel Peralta. Used by permission of the author.

  “Fatal Mutation” by Anthony J Melchiorri, copyright © 2017 Anthony J Melchiorri. Used by permission of the author.

  “Noble Savage” by Terry Maggert, copyright © 2017 Terry Maggert. Used by permission of the author.

  “An Implant and a Hard Place” by Zen DiPietro, copyright © 2017 Zen DiPietro. Used by permission of the author.

  “Szcar’s Trial” by Harry Manners, copyright © 2017 Harry Manners. Used by permission of the author.

  “Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror” by Philip Harris, copyright © 2017 Philip Harris. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” by Stant Litore, copyright © 2017 Daniel Fusch. Used by permission of the author.

  “Ugly” by Laxmi Hariharan, copyright © 2017 Laxmi Hariharan. Used by permission of the author.

  “Cryptoscience” by Emily Mah, copyright © 2017 Emily Mah. Used by permission of the author.

  “Victor Mula’s Earth Dream” by M. J. Kelley, copyright © 2017 M. J. Kelley. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Thundering Grind of Jurassic Gears” by Ed Gosney, copyright © 2017 Ed Gosney. Used by permission of the author.

  “A Spear for Allosaur” by Victor Milán, copyright © 2017 Victor Milán. Used by permission of the author.

  “Monsters” by Piers Beckley, copyright © 2017 Piers Beckley. Used by permission of the author.

  “Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies for What is About to Happen (But You Started It)” by Seanan McGuire, copyright © 2017 Seanan McGuire. Used by permission of the author.

  All other text copyright © 2017 by Samuel Peralta.

  Edited by Crystal Watanabe (www.pikkoshouse.com)

  Cover art and design by Adam Hall (www.aroundthepages.com)

  Print formatting by Crystal Watanabe (www.pikkoshouse.com)

  The Jurassic Chronicles is part of The Future Chronicles series produced by Samuel Peralta (www.samuelperalta.com).

  978-1-988268-05-7

  THE JURASSIC CHRONICLES

  STORY SYNOPSES

  Fatal Mutation (Anthony J Melchiorri)

  A Baltimore beat cop is called to check out screams coming from a run-down laboratory. But when she answers the seemingly routine call, she finds herself embroiled in a deadly race to solve a terrifying mystery compounded by two hundred million years of evolution.

  Noble Savage (Terry Maggert)

  Other worlds are possible through the massive engine of The Point project, but where it leads will reveal that humanity is the alpha predator only as long as it remains on Earth. With the promise of unlimited power, one woman will make the decision to match wits with beings who are not our equal. They’re better.

  An Implant and a Hard Place (Zen DiPietro)

  To achieve her dream of becoming a cyberneticist, Brak had to fight everything it means to be Briveen. Now, she has to wrestle with her morals. Can she disregard them in order to help other people?

  Szcar’s Trial (Harry Manners)

  Another hunt, ruined. Szcar faces exile from her pack. Without them, she faces a slow death in the desert, if hungry jaws don’t find her first. But a strange flying orb has appeared from across the sands, and with it comes Szcar’s last chance to win her pack’s respect.

  Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror (Philip Harris)

  A routine flight turns to terror when Dwayne “Glitch” Mitchell and his friends crash land on an island filled with deadly creatures from Earth’s distant past. But is it just a land that time forgot, or is there something more sinister at work?

  The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur (Stant Litore)

  The Hunger Games meets The Lost World. In the far future, young athletes compete with tyrannosaurs. In space.

  Ugly (Laxmi Hariharan)

  When Zoya inherits a piece from the asteroid that ended the Jurassic Age, she also unearths a secret that will change the destiny of Earth forever.

  Cryptoscience (Emily Mah)

  Daryl McPhie was once a reputable biologist, but he’s frittered his credibility away, investigating cryptozoology. When a known snake oil salesman approaches him with a creature that just might be real, it should be the happiest day of his life. And yet—redemption doesn’t come easily.

  Victor Mula’s Earth Dream (M. J. Kelley)

  Long after Earth’s demise, select plants, animals, and genetic records are all that remain of the mythical home world. Collecting these remnants, Victor Mula breaks deals and then disappears. When Flint loses his crew and starship working for Mula, he vows to find him, discover his secret, and exact revenge.

  The Thundering Grind of Jurassic Gears (Ed Gosney)

  Fred Wichman waited 14 years for the most realistic, animatronic dinosaurs ever built to come back to his local zoo. It was also 14 years ago that Fred’s psionic powers kicked in. And he’s been practicing ever since, becoming, in his mind, a great artist. It was supposed to be a good day. A nice time to spend with his mother. But when Fred’s nemesis from school shows up, the day turns out better than he could have imagined.

  A Spear for Allosaur (Victor Milán)

  Peasants of Nuevaropa have begun reporting attacks from what the Book of True Names called an Allosaurus fragilis. Karyl Vladevich Bogomirskiy—scion of a family of dinosaur-slayers—is asked to deal with the monster, and his worst nightmare has just begun.

  Monsters (Piers Beckley)

  In the near future, technology has made it possible to re-engineer the human genome and alter the body you wear by splicing in the DNA of other creatures. Some people choose to become cats or foxes. And some people choose to become monsters.

  Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies for What is About to Happen (But You Started It) (Seanan McGuire)

  Dr. Constance O’Malley was twelve when the film Jurassic Park came to the theater near her house. She stole five dollars from her mother’s purse, using it to purchase a ticket into the flickering splendor of a future she now wants to make real.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Fatal Mutation (Anthony J Melchiorri)

  Noble Savage (Terry Maggert)

  An Implant and a Hard Place (Zen DiPietro)

  Szcar�
�s Trial (Harry Manners)

  Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror (Philip Harris)

  The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur (Stant Litore)

  Ugly (Laxmi Hariharan)

  Cryptoscience (Emily Mah)

  Victor Mula’s Earth Dream (M. J. Kelley)

  The Thundering Grind of Jurassic Gears (Ed Gosney)

  A Spear for Allosaur (Victor Milán)

  Monsters (Piers Beckley)

  Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies for What is About to Happen (But You Started It) (Seanan McGuire)

  A Note to Readers

  Foreword

  Resurrecting the Dinosaur

  by Samuel Peralta

  Chance meeting at the Tyrrell Museum,

  and you think it’s fate. You talk about our

  past life as if it could be resurrected,

  as if a passion now glacial could be melted,

  rekindled into the fire it used to be.

  You might try to draw out the DNA

  of our desire, our tempestuous, archosaurian

  relationship, re-sequence the base pairs of the

  broken code, clone ancient affection into a

  molecularly indistinguishable emotion.

  But you’d have to dig deep, beyond

  the Jurassic layers of this heart, to unearth

  any part of me that might still hold hope.

  And what is left lies fossilized in amber,

  frozen in the throes of an agonized death.

  Or you might try to nudge us back to where

  we were, taking advantage of the slightest waver

  in my desire to evolve anew, away from you;

  like triggering a latent developmental branch

  during the embryonic stages of a bird:

  To coax it to spread five delicate fingers, instead

  of three, on each tiny front limb; intimate a jagged

  whisper of teeth along a formative beak; and curl

  twenty-two vertebrae of its fragile spine in and up

  and around its frame, into a saurian tail.

  Yes, we did love once. But that love's extinction

  is irrevocable: there is no soft tissue to draw

  genetic material from, no chemical switch

  or biological window to turn back time, no course

  to revert the unwary bird into the dinosaur.

  And even if there were—best let the past lie

  buried in the sediments of your memory; lest

  history repeat itself; lest you recreate instead

  the theropod of hate, that would remember,

  rise and devour you, a raging tyrannosaur.

  __________

  Samuel Peralta is a physicist and storyteller. An award-winning author, he is also the creator and driving force behind the speculative fiction anthology series The Future Chronicles.

  www.amazon.com/author/samuelperalta

  Fatal Mutation

  by Anthony J Melchiorri

  1

  March 2, 2056

  Baltimore, Maryland

  WATER TRICKLED from the thawing snow banks. If Officer Ana Dellaporta closed her eyes and pinched her nose, she could almost pretend she was next to one of the melting glaciers she’d visited in Alaska. But the scent of garbage wafting from overflowing dumpsters was a pungent contrast to the glacial breezes of the Alaskan frontier. And the snow and ice lining Baltimore’s plowed streets was stained brown and black instead of gleaming crisp white. The hum of the softball-sized security drone hovering overhead was the last reminder that she was back from vacation.

  Ana tucked her chin deeper into the collar of her Baltimore PD–issued jacket. “Thought it would be a bit warmer by now.”

  “Freakish winter,” her partner, Miguel Cruz, said, crunching over the ice and snow. He carried a steaming cup of coffee. “Surprised you didn’t head to the beach instead.”

  “Sometimes I don’t think these things through.” Ana adjusted her grip around the paper bag in her right hand before it slipped from her gloves. She paused near the entrance to an alley. “Drone, light it up.”

  The security drone buzzed ahead and swiveled into the alley. Bright white LEDs washed over the space, illuminating graffiti-scarred brick walls. A shape bundled in shredded blankets and old jackets huddled in a small alcove. Ana nodded toward the shape and began walking. Miguel followed, and the drone hummed along softly above them.

  “Hey,” Ana said to the huddled person. “Hey, you all right?” She knelt, and the drone spun over her right shoulder to maintain a constant video feed of the blanketed subject.

  “Er, yeah, yeah, I got the dancing blues, right on top of me, swiveling and a hopping,” a face sang, peeking out from beneath the blankets. His eyes were bloodshot. “Oh, Officer, you ain’t here for my concert, are you?”

  “Not tonight, Eddy,” Ana said, holding out the paper bag. “Got ya fried rice tonight.”

  Eddy snatched the bag, then eyed the coffee cup in Miguel’s hand hungrily. “That ‘un for me, too? I only got the one song for ya tonight. Can’t sing no others.”

  Miguel held the cup out. “Keep yourself warm, ‘kay, Eddy? Don’t want to scoop your frozen ass off the street tomorrow.”

  “You is a hoot, Officer Cruz. A real hoot.”

  “He’s not kidding,” Ana said. “You should get yourself somewhere warm. St. Francis has open beds.”

  “Snow’s softer than those bags of trash they call beds. Too many damn bedbugs. I’m singing the blues now, but don’t wanna be singing ‘bout no red rashes on ma’ rear, you dig?”

  “I get it,” Ana said. “But you call me if it gets too cold out here. Deal?”

  Eddy shot her a sincere smile filled with yellowed, broken teeth, then winked. “I’m only calling you if it’s about dinner, and I’m not talking the kind you bring me.”

  “Okay, Eddy,” Ana said. The webs of bright red vessels in his eyes spoke of his synthetic drug high. “You get yourself off the synths, and I promise we’ll talk.”

  Ana and Miguel trudged out of the alley with the drone recording every step. All the while Eddy whistled his rendition of “Autumn Leaves.”

  “Guy’s never getting off the synths,” Miguel said.

  “I know,” Ana said, as much as she hated to admit it was true. “That’s why I can make that promise.”

  They walked back to their patrol car. Water dripped off icicles and ran through rusted gutters punctuating the otherwise quiet night. With the widespread rise of biotech came the democratization of biology and chemistry. Ana could run to the store to buy a high-def holodisplay for streaming movies and then go next door to pick herself up a countertop genetic modification kit to make homegrown pharmaceuticals, ranging from antibiotics to drugs more addictive than twentieth-century opioids.

  “It’s gotten way too easy for people to make synths,” Miguel said.

  “Blame it on the biohackers,” Ana said. Some particularly nefarious biohackers tinkered with the human genome in their home labs. They produced a wide array of gene mods—so-called “genies”—that purported to do everything from bolstering muscular girth to providing enhanced night vision to imparting photographic memory. She shook her head. “If half their claims were true, the human race as we know it would be extinct.”

  Most genies didn’t work worth a damn. Ana guessed there was no point in making them work when you could fill them with addictive synths instead. It was a more lucrative way to guarantee yourself a return customer.

  When they slid back into the warmth of the patrol car, Ana glanced at the back seat. A self-warming tray holding boxes of fried rice and cups of coffee filled the car with a mixture of salty and bitter smells. The holoscreen embedded in the dashboard reported officers responding to routine traffic stops, accidents, and a burglary in process.

  But nothing abnormal for a night in Baltimore.

  “Pretty calm, huh?” Ana asked.

  “Even the genie dealers and enhancers are smart enough to sta
y inside.” Miguel rubbed his hands together and blew into them. Enhancers were the people tampering with their genome through street-bought genies.

  “Smart isn’t the first word that comes to mind when I think of enhancers. No way are we getting through shift without at least one call responding to a bastard hopped up on malfunctioning genies.”

  “Back to delivery service, then?” Miguel asked, gesturing to the food in their back seat.

  “Sounds good,” Ana said. She punched a destination into the holoscreen. The electric motor whirred to life, and autodrive took over. She settled in for the ride until the radio chirped.

  “Special beat patrols,” the dispatcher said. “We got reports of a possible 273D in progress. Witness heard screaming.”

  “Domestic violence,” Miguel said. “Take it?”

  “Probably should,” Ana said, pointing to the GPS on their holo. “Close enough.” She tapped the touchscreen. “Dispatch, special beat ninety-two, we can take the 273D.”

  “Thanks, ninety-two. Response logged.”

  Miguel squinted at the map as the car’s autodrive system took control of the vehicle’s navigation. “I’m a bit confused.”

  “Why’s that?” Ana asked.

  “Dispatch said domestic violence. We’re not headed to a residential district.”