No Time for Dinosaurs
No Time For Dinosaurs
By
John Benjamin Sciarra
All Rights Reserved © 2016 by John Benjamin Sciarra
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means except for brief quotations for review purposes, without the written permission of the author.
John Benjamin Sciarra
246 Meridian St.
Groton, CT 06340
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people:
Beth Bruno and Nina Grigoreous for editing and proofreading. However, any mistakes are my own.
Dan Uitti for formatting and marketing advice.
The Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association (CAPA and CAPA-SE) for support.
Keith M. Cowley for his beautiful illustrations (those that are signed) and his advice in paleontology.
Prologue
The hands on the clock moved incessantly forward in their march into infinity. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Kyle watched the hands move. Slowly at first. Then the hands began to move with ever-increasing speed. Faster and faster, the hands moved across the face of the old clock until it was a blur.
Kyle blinked his eyes several times and shook his head. Sitting bolt upright, he realized he wasn’t looking at a clock at all. The room was pitch dark.
He got up out of bed and opened the door to his room. The house was silent—too still and too quiet—as if no one was home. But that’s silly, he thought. Everyone is asleep, of course. That’s why I can’t hear anything.
He descended the stairs somewhat hesitantly. A nightlight illuminated the walls, an eerie green light. Suddenly, a shadow whisked across one of the walls. Fear shot through him as if struck by lightning. For just a moment, he could have sworn it was the head of a tyrannosaurus. His mind was playing tricks on him. Maybe he was still asleep. That’s it, he thought. I’m asleep and this is a dream.
Kyle chuckled that his mind would play such games. In the middle of the night, everything was just a little more frightening.
The living room appeared to float in the small, glowing, nightlight at the base of the stairs. His mind swirled and he felt as if the room was moving. To bring a sense of reality to the night, he walked to the door of the kitchen and felt for the switch to turn on the light.
The light slowly came on as the gases in the fluorescent bulbs sparked to life. Finally, the light flickered once, twice and then popped to full illumination. Kyle closed his eyes in the intensity of the bright light. Slowly he opened them as his eyes adjusted.
The first thing he noticed was the clock on the wall. The shorter hand pointed closest to three and the long hand at ten as the red second hand smoothly moved across the green face of the clock.
As he looked around the room, he noticed that the furniture wasn’t quite right. The kitchen table was against the wall, whereas he remembered it in the middle of the room. The walls, too, were a different color. The pictures were different as well. He couldn’t be dreaming this. It felt too real. Really, what is the difference between reality and dreams?
One picture hanging on the wall showed a family of four. His father was standing tall and important—a credit to his station in life as the chief scientist of his research company. He was a handsome man with a shock of white hair adorning each ear and a perfectly trimmed reddish mustache to match the reddish hues on his head. His mother, much shorter, quite petite, with her long luxuriant jet-black hair, and perennially tan complexion, stood next to him with her arm around Teresa, his sister. She was much younger than he was by two years. But, something was wrong. The boy standing next to Teresa was—younger. Who was he? And…where was his picture in the photo? Was his mind playing tricks on him again?
He looked back at the clock. The small hand was now on the five while the longer minute hand still pointed to ten. However, there was no second hand and now the clock was red, not green.
He rubbed his eyes with his fingers and blinked several times, and looked again. The hour hand was on the six, the minute hand on ten. Surely, he must be going mad.
Am I still asleep?
Frightened out of his wits, he ran up the stairs yelling.
“Mom! Dad! Wake up! Help! Help!”
He knocked on the door to his parent’s bedroom.
“Please! Open up! Moooom!”
The door creaked slowly open. It stopped part way. A bright light shone from inside the room. Tentatively, he looked inside.
“Mom? Dad?”
He pushed the door open and what he saw scared him more than anything ever had before in his life. He stared into nothingness. Kyle screamed, but no sound came out. He sensed emptiness. A void. Suddenly, he was falling forward. Drifting. Drifting. Drifting.
Chapter One
Michael Jordan drove down the lane. No one stepped forward to challenge him out of fear and respect. Kyle, though only 14-years-old, couldn’t allow that to happen. His reddish-orange hair lay matted against his head from the intense sweating. It was up to him. No one else had the skill. The speed.
He shoved Lebron James aside as if he were made of feathers. James fell backwards, his mouth gaped open in awe.
Michael feinted right, switched the ball between hands several times at the speed of light, or so it seemed, and then left the floor in one of his gravity-defying leaps. The ball swept up over the basket. An easy dunk.
Kyle vaulted from the floor. Up, up and over Michael with his right hand—an amazing feat for someone only 5-foot-seven—and came down on the ball.
BLINK.
“Kyle! Are you paying attention?”
Just like that, his dream evaporated like cotton candy melting in the hot sun.
“Uh…”
“You see, that’s your problem. You never pay attention. You are never going to amount to anything, Kyle. Look at me when I’m talking to you! Your sister gets straight ‘A’s’ on every single one of her classes. STRAIGHT ‘A’S!’ Why can’t you be more like her?”
“But…Dad…”
“Noooo, you have to bring home 3 ‘C’s’ and two ‘D’s’!”
“I got a ‘B’ in…“
“Phys Ed. Big deal! What does that say? Nothing! Kyle, you’re an embarrassment to me. I had high hopes you’d follow me into quantum physics, but more than likely, you’ll wind up an auto mechanic somewhere.”
That last comment stung.
“Well, someone has to repair your Beemer…”
“Are you trying to be funny? That’s it! I’m finished with you!” Kyle’s father, red-faced, and blisteringly angry with Kyle for bringing home a bad report card, pointed a quivering finger upwards. “Go to your room. You’re grounded for…for…six months!”
“Six months?” squeaked Kyle incredulously.
“Make it eight. Open your mouth again and it will be a year. Do you want to try for a year?”
Dejected, defeated, and humiliated, Kyle dragged his disconsolate body up the stairs to his room. Every step seemed like an eternity. It was as if the Earth’s gravitational forces were tugging at his every bone, pulling on every fiber of his being. Eternity. That thought struck him as odd. Here he was, grounded for half his life, and all he could think about was time. How time seemed to drag sometimes and others—such as when he was playing basketball with his friends—it flew by so fast, hours seemed like seconds.
“I’ll show him!” said Kyle aloud.
“Who?“ Kyle, his nerves raw for the lambasting he just took, jumped when his sister Teresa popped her head out from behind the door to her room. “Who are you going to show what?”
“You never miss anything, do you? Besides, it’s all your fault I’m grou
nded, ya know.”
“My fault. What did I do?”
“You and your great report card. Can’t you get a ‘B’ once in a while?”
“Hey, I can’t help it if I’m smarter than you.”
“Ha! Smarter? You’re not smarter. You can’t even figure out how to download stuff off the computer without my help. In fact, I should be getting an ‘A’ for helping you!”
“Oh shut up, Kyle. You’re such a…a…”
“Dummy? That’s what Dad says. I’m not as stupid as he thinks I am, ya know.”
Teresa softened. She knew that Kyle did help her a lot. And she knew that their dad was particularly tough on Kyle for reasons she couldn’t fathom. She knew Kyle was smart, too—really smart. How he could know so much, yet do so poorly in school was an enigma.
“Don’t worry, Kyle. Someday you’ll be as smart as Einstein. In time.”
“Yeah. Maybe. In time. Always ‘in time.’ Why does everything have to be controlled by stupid time.”
“Kyle…you can’t change time no matter how smart you are.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Teresa rolled her eyes. “Get real.” She shut her door and Kyle moped off to his room—his haven for the next six long months.
Chapter Two
Later that evening, Kyle’s father came up into his room. He was in a better mood.
“Come on, Kyle. I have to take you and Teresa with me to the lab. Your mom’s out and I have a very important experiment that needs attention. I expect you to be on your very best behavior. If this experiment works out the way I hope, we’re all going to be very, very rich!”
“Great. Can I leave my homework until tomorrow? It’s Saturday.”
“Not a chance. Bring it with you. There may be hope yet—if you apply yourself.”
***
Kyle’s father was one of the brightest and most respected scientists in the world and an expert in quantum physics. He was compared to Newton and Einstein by the scientific community, appeared on talk shows and was the subject of a documentary about the future of quantum physics—the study of sub atomic particles and their manipulation.
Control. That was what his father was all about, thought Kyle. It wasn’t that his father really cared about him; it was about what others would say if anyone knew he had a son that did so poorly in school.
Kyle berated himself for being so spacey. He didn’t understand it, so how could he possibly explain it to his father? Yes, some day, he thought, I will show him I’m no dummy. Someday.
***
Kyle, Teresa and Sonja sat quietly in the laboratory lounge of their fathers’ research facility. The laboratory was part of a huge research conglomerate funded by the government for a variety of science projects. The rows of white buildings may have been part of a series of warehouses years ago. Each building contained independent companies devoted to a different field of research: U. S. Weather Research Group, Energy Conservation and Hydrogen Conversion Laboratories, Astrophysics Consortium, to name a few. The five-story-tall building housing the Quantum Physics Labs was lit up on the top floor like a neon sign. Kyle surmised that that was where all the action was taking place. Lights flashed on and off. One minute it was brilliant light, the next an electric blue.
Kyle couldn’t concentrate on his homework. He couldn’t get his father’s words out of his head. He said very, very rich. What could he be doing up there?
“I’m bored. When’s Dad coming back? What do you think is going on?”
“He said he’d only be a few minutes,” said Teresa consolingly.
“That was a half hour ago,” said Kyle with a sigh. “Let’s go find him.”
“My father said we should wait here,” said Sonja, a pretty girl with long black hair, and a tan complexion. She and her family were from India.
Kyle got up and went to the door. “There’s no one in the lab. Where are they?”
“Maybe upstairs,” said Teresa. “Sonja’s right. We should just wait.”
A younger sister telling her older brother what to do was just asking for trouble. “I know they’re upstairs, you ninny. Why aren’t they down yet? It’s been hours!’
Sonja looked at her watch. “Actually, it is only been thirty-two minutes.”
“Oh, good grief!” Kyle pushed the door open and went out.
“Kyle!” yelled Teresa. She rolled her eyes and ran after him with Sonja following close behind with a puzzled look.
In the blink of an eye, Kyle was in the lab. Teresa tried the door. It locked automatically.
“How did he get in?” asked Sonja.
“You have to know Kyle.”
Teresa banged on the door, but Kyle just made a face at her, turned and disappeared. She banged harder until he finally showed back up and let them in.
“You keep banging on the door like Bungle from the Jungle, Dad will fer sure come flying down here. Come in. But, for crying out loud, keep it down. No more bongos.”
“Okay. But…how did you know the security code?”
“Dad pushed the buttons when he and Dr. Bashan went in. I saw which ones he pushed. No biggie.”
Teresa shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Be careful around my brother, Sonja. He’ll get you into trouble quick.”
Sonja was still puzzled.
“Well…No sign of our dads yet,” said Kyle. “Let’s look around. Hey…what’s that lab over there for?”
“But there is a 'No Admittance' sign on the door,” said Sonja. “You can read?”
Kyle ignored her. He was 14 and both of them were 12. They were like little babies to him. He pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge.
The girls giggled. “Ha, ha. You can’t get in that one. There’s a scanner on it that checks your finger prints.”
Still giggling, the two girls meandered off leaving Kyle to ponder his problem.
“There is an elevator here, no?” asked Sonja.
“Yeah, I think there is.”
Teresa and Sonja found the elevator at the end of a long corridor. Sonja pressed the call button. A keypad on the side lit up. It said; “Enter code now.”
“Great,” said Teresa. “Looks like a dead end. Let’s grab Kyle and get out of here before he gets us in trouble.”
The girls looked around in awe at all of the computers, wires in large bundles, L.E.D. screens everywhere with numbers scrolling up and down and…immense glass tubes filled with a thick, emerald-green liquid that glowed. Small, spiraled hoses ran the length of the large laboratory carrying the same strange glowing liquid.
“What is all this?” said Teresa with her mouth hanging open. Completely mesmerized, all they could do was stare in astonishment.
***
Kyle, meanwhile, contemplated his dilemma. He remembered something he saw on television, CSI once, a show where crime scene investigators lifted fingerprints from a latex glove. He wondered if his father or someone else used gloves in their work. It couldn’t hurt to look, he thought. Kyle hoped the cleaning people hadn’t emptied the garbage yet.
He looked around the lab. There was nothing in the first can but a bag. It was the same with the second. In the third, however, there was a single glove at the bottom stuck in the fold of the bag.
Kyle took the glove out and carefully turned it inside out. He then pulled the glove on his own hand being careful not to touch the tips. It slipped on easily.
Kyle put his gloved hand against the reader and pressed the access button. There’s no way this is going to work.
***
Teresa and Sonja contained their excitement enough to wander around examining the complex structure. Eventually, they worked their way back to the lab, but there was no sign of Kyle.
“Where did he go now?” asked Teresa.
“Do you think he got into the main lab?”
“With Kyle, anything’s possible.”
“That is…unbelievable. Your brother must be very smart,” said Sonja.
“Well, that’s n
ot what our dad says. He does terrible in school. My dad grounded him for six months for bringing home a bad report card.”
Sonja was surprised. “I do not understand. How could he figure out how to get into the lab like that?”
Teresa was about to answer when all of the computers suddenly started going haywire. The liquid in the tubes began moving faster and glowing brighter.
“What is happening?” asked Sonja.
Teresa looked shocked. "It has to be Kyle!"
Chapter Three
They ran to the locked door and began pounding on it. "Kyle, are you in there?" they shouted. A sign blinked rapidly above the lab that read: “Activation in Progress.”
“Oh no!” said Teresa. “What has he done? We’re going to be in serious trouble.”
A loud whirring noise caused the girls to step back from the door. The door moved slowly at first. Then it swung open. The door was thick like a bank vault—at least a foot thick.
Kyle’s head appeared around the corner. His eyes were wide with excitement.
“You guys have to see this!”
“Kyle, you shouldn’t be in there. Get out before Dad finds out.”
"Okay, okay, but you have to see this first!" Kyle responded, as he pulled Sonja into the lab. "Come on, Teresa. You can come, too."
Fear of being alone in the lab, Teresa jumped through the door as it started to close. The girls' mouths dropped open when they stepped inside. If they were awestruck with the outside of the lab, they were stunned as they stared at the strangest device either of them had ever laid eyes on.
The walls of the room were over thirty-feet high and made of polished stainless steel. Shafts of light pulsed from the ceiling downward converging in a point of intense light so bright it seemed as if the sun itself were in the room. Below the sun-like object was a dome-topped cylinder encased in glowing green fluid.
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