Playing God
Here we are with another week’s Friday Fictioneers, the weekly photo prompt hosted by Rochelle over at Addicted to Purple. This week’s photo, which inspires our 100-ish word stories, was contributed by fellow fictioneerer Douglas M. MacIlroy.
All our stories are added to the link-up during the week, so click on the little frog badge to read them, and add your own if you wish!
Copyright Douglas M. MacIlroy
Professor Drake smiled as his team celebrated. Inside the tank hundreds of insects buzzed, painstakingly cloned from the DNA of a single specimen entombed in amber for millions of years.
“Science fiction no longer!” he proclaimed to his applauding staff.
Unseen, one of the insects escaped the tank and flew into an air duct.
Drake lay on the floor of his lab, listening to the silence of a world populated by seven billion corpses. How did the dinosaurs really die out? he wondered as his last breath rattled through his lungs. A meteorite, or the bite of a simple insect?
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Friday Fictioneers
draliman on life 
This is my worst nightmare. You nailed it.
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One of mine too. Thanks!
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Eek! Creepy picture and the story definitely goes along with it.
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Very creepy picture, I thought it deserved a creepy story!
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Oh, that was good!
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Glad you liked it 🙂
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Wowsa! This is like the alternate ending to “The Thing”, you never know when or if it will end.
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I’m sure I’ve seen The Thing, though I can’t remember the ending. Scary stuff all the same.
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Ali, Wow! Let’s hope that never happens. Let’s hope a few people are immune.
Well written and scary as heck. 🙂 — Susan
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It’s pretty frightening to think about this happening. Fingers crossed it doesn’t! Maybe there will be a few survivors to rebuild the human race.
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yikes, frighteningly realistic! I can’t believe Drake’s the last survivor of the plague he caused though – fate is a mysterious thing.
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Yes, he got to see everything he’d (inadvertently) caused before succumbing himself. As if he didn’t feel bad enough about it already 🙂
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Memories of The Stand.
DJ
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Yep (I looked it up on Wikipedia!).
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YIKES…I think we’re taking over by insecs..the fleas are all over me 😀 Pawkisses 🙂 ❤
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Ooh noo – get some flea spray and get rid of those pesky things 😦
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I don’t EVEN want to know what comes next. To me, cloning is a very, very bad idea.
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I certainly don’t see anything good coming out of cloning entire animals.
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Bloody scientist! Who knows what they’re up to behind closed doors. Gonna have nightmares tonight. Great story, D-man 🙂
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For all we know, this could be happening somewhere right now 😦
Glad you liked it!
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LOL! Ewww! Love it! 😀
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Thanks 🙂
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That’s what you get for messing with nature. Well done.
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Yes, leave well enough alone would be my motto.
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Dear Ali,
That was the big EEW. Creepy and very well written.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle,
A creepy story for a creepy picture 🙂
Thanks!
Ali
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Dear Draliman,
Perfectly conceived, brilliantly written and executed. This was a a great tale that could easily be a novel. Well done.
Aloha,
Doug
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Dear Doug,
Thank you! I had a few other ideas through the day but when this one occurred to me it pretty much wrote itself.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it (and thanks for the inspirational picture).
Ali
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This is why genetic researchers need to stick to glowing potatoes… at least it would be totally cool if we got wiped off the face of the earth by an army of glowing tubers!
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I’ll store that idea for a future story! In Kim Harrison’s “Hollows” series the world is nearly wiped out by a genetically modified tomato…
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nice touch,,, I do expect will backfire?
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I think it already has 🙂
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darn, murphy’s law strikes again!
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Damn that Murphy and his Law.
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This wasn’t one of my nightmares, until today… when I read that one of hte insects escaped I knew something was going wrong, even if still hundreds were locked!
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It’s that “uh-oh” moment. It only takes one!
It’s been a few weeks since I last wiped out the entire population so it was past due 🙂
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Perplexing question and a great story this week! I always think we’re going to do it to ourselves, and it will be unintended. Well done.
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I also reckon it will be an accidental “mishap” if it happens. Glad you liked it!
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Oh .. this was something that nightmares are made of.. and yes it might not have been a meteorite.
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I’m always worried that someone’s new pathogen will get loose, and I believe just recently they found a virus millions of years old frozen in the ice. Yeeks!
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Creepy crawlies! Putting air ducts on my list of things to worry about one night when I can’t get to sleep.
This wasn great, doc!
Ellespeth
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Time to tape up those air ducts and get loads of tinned food and bottled water in!
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What a frightening thought you’ve conjured. Taps into our fears that we really are a fragile species on a fragile planet. Any small thing could tip the balance.
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It is a very delicate balance we have here on Earth.
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Perfect draliman! IMO You could’ve ended with the one flying into the air duct. That was a great provoking visual. Until next week…
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Glad you liked it!
Very true, that would have been quite a teaser ending.
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That is scary. I can imagine the swarm coming to get us.
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It’s a frightening thought. And they’re small enough to get in almost anywhere…
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A very thought provoking, very scary tale ~ Thanks for the inspirational pleasure ~
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I sometimes wonder if there are groups of scientists doing this very thing in hidden labs. Glad you enjoyed it!
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I am sure there are my friend one slip as you have so eloquently descibed is all it takes. Thanks again ~
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