As we walked into the room, my jaw dropped straight through the floor.
"Dr. Gale… welcome to my mammoth room."
The room was gigantic, bigger than I had imagined. At least forty feet high, maybe fifty. The walls and ceiling were made of some kind of dark gray metal. No glass walls here. I could assume that was an extra security measure to ensure no one saw what was happening within this room.
I was left wondering how the heck I had not noticed this giant metal part of the facility when I had first entered the building. The room was as long and wide as a football field. Right in the middle of the room, was a metal tube that rose and connected to the ceiling. It was about forty feet in diameter and had dozens of wires attached to the back.
The wires ran across the floor and then fed into a small room that was attached to the ceiling and the far wall. That room was a small metal box, but had a large glass window that faced toward the tube.
"Good lord almighty," was all I could say as I took everything in.
"Like what you see?" Dr. Kale asked, his smugness radiating off him.
"How long would it take to get the mammoth up and going?" I asked.
"Not long at all," he said. "It's fully formed, all organs ready and working. It's basically in nothing more than a deep sleep, ready to be awakened."
"So, what? You flip a switch and it's wandering around like no big deal?" I said. It seemed a bit far-fetched. Then again, we were talking about bringing an extinct animal back to life, so maybe nothing was as far-fetched as I would normally think.
"That's what it boils down to, I suppose, but it's a little more involved than just that. We would need at least an hour's notice to run all the final tests; we would want to be positive it won't die a miserable death right as it finally lives again. But yes, a flip of a switch, and we will have a live mammoth stomping around. Alive and well. For the first time in our history, humans bring a species of animal back to life instead of driving them to extinction," Dr. Kale said and began shuffling across the floor.
"It is certainly historic, if nothing else. But unfortunately, first things first. We have a problem to solve before the fun can begin. Are the security cameras in that room?" I asked and pointed to the room near the ceiling.
"Yes, indeedy, my good sir! That's my personal office in this fine facility. I hope you're not afraid of heights," he said. "We have a decent climb up some stairs without any sides or railings."
"For the most part, no, I'm not afraid of heights. I mean, sometimes. I fly in planes and ride roller coasters, I can do that kind of stuff just fine. I wouldn't go parachuting or, I don't know, jumping down a massive hole with some kind of rope tied to me. Not a big fan of helicopters, really. But for this moment, as long as nothing in that room has eight legs and eyes, I'm fine," I said.
"So, is there anything else you fear more than spiders?" Dr. Kale asked me. He seemed almost offended.
"Snakes," I said with a shrug.
"Oh, do I have some amazing prehistoric snakes to show you!" he said with an excited roar of laughter. "The length of these snakes, I mean, my goodness. And the teeth! Oh, the massive fangs some of these slithering beasts had. They could tear through cars, buses even! They make these spiders seem like cuddly teddy bears."
Dr. Kale gave a satisfied sigh as he swooned over the snakes. "What a time to be alive."
"What on Earth is wrong with you? Pass. Don't even try to bring those back," I said with a stern look that I hoped was intimidating.
"Yeah, yeah," he said, waving me off. "We have more than enough going on here."
We made it across the room and stood underneath the office. I glanced over at Dr. Kale to see if he was going to do anything. There were no stairs or any other way up to the room.
"Um-," I started.
Then Dr. Kale slapped his hand against the metal wall and held it there for a moment. The metal around his hand grew bright red, and a loud "ding" echoed across the room. Above us, a loud hum came from the office, and the floor started to lower out of the room and come down toward the ground.
"The entire floor of your office comes down?" I asked.
"It's an effective way to get there, don't waste time with doors or stairs, nothing like that," he said. "I was kidding about climbing stairs a moment ago."
"What a terrible joke. You have the weirdest sense of humor I've encountered. That's including my wife," I said as I stepped onto the dark-colored carpeted floor that was now resting in front of me.
"I would love to meet your wife," Dr. Kale said with a sick grin.
"Hey, you ever been thrown off your moving floor before?" I asked him.
He grumbled an incoherent reply, and his grin drooped into a pout.
The floor started to shake, forcing me to grab onto Dr. Kale for balance. Then it began to raise us into the room Dr. Kale referred to as his office. He patted my back as I straightened myself out.
"You'll get used to it," he said.
"I hope I'm not here long enough to get used to anything," I mumbled to myself.
The floor brought us up into the room after about thirty seconds, and I swore I was in some sort of insane, overdone science fiction evil genius room. There were several monitors in scattered locations around the room. There was very little floor space to walk on since desks and different-sized computers took up almost every foot of space. Flashing lights lit up the room and leaning against the wall there was a desk with a small computer monitor.
"Okay, all this might give me a seizure," I said as I looked at all the lights, buttons, and levers that filled every inch of the room.
"I can run every aspect of the building from here, see everything and communicate with anyone. This room is used as the headquarters of this entire operation. Where I am able to run the entire damn show! All of it! Under my power and only my power...I, alone, am in complete control from here," Dr. Kale said as he settled into his desk chair and started fidgeting with a black screen on the desk.
Getting awfully close to sounding like a villain monologuing there.
Seconds later, the screen leaped to life, and several small boxes flooded the screen. Dr. Kale clicked around a bit, hesitating on a view of what looked like people getting undressed, and then he continued clicking away until there was only one small box left. He then brought that box to full-screen mode so we could have a better view.
Before I leave I think I need to make sure everyone knows what he can see through these cameras.
He started muttering to himself and touching each egg on the screen.
"This is the live feed of the room where the eggs are kept… It looks like another one has gone missing. Yeah, there's only twelve there, two… two are missing now," he said and looked at me, and for the first time, I could see he was bothered.
"Another one went missing? We were just there not even fifteen minutes ago!" I said.
"Something is definitely up… hm," he said, his face scrunched in concern.
"It's not like there was anyone else around us. I was looking everywhere, the floors were clear besides us," I said.
"Well, thank God I have complete video access to every inch of this facility," Dr. Kale said. His eyes glossed over, and a stupid smile spread across his face like a man thinking back on his fondest memories.
"I will never thank God, or anyone, for you having that kind of access and power. For now, I'm just going to focus on how we should be able to see what happened here," I said. "Start it from when we entered the room for the first time together."
"Alright, here we go. Let's start from the beginning and find out exactly what happened once we left," he said, and I leaned over his shoulder to watch. He smelled like burnt, moldy cheese. His smell was as weird as his personality; I couldn't say I wasn't surprised.
He sped back through hours of tape to get to the moment we first entered the room. The video flew by in a blur. I wasn't able to make anything out until he slowed it down to a stop.
"This is around the time we went in," he said, talking in a low tone to himself. He slowed the tape down, and once the two of us appeared at the table, he ran the video at normal speed. I watched as we talked and then turned to leave the room.
"Here's where your wife sent you that rather erotic photo," he said and he slowed the video down and zoomed in on my cell phone. I pushed him away from the computer and sped forward through the video feed to the point where my phone was no longer visible.
Dr. Kale grumbled his discontent under his breath and took control of the computer back over.
"Focus on the table," I said in almost a growl.
He made faces at the computer and zoomed in close, so the table almost filled the entire screen. We could get a clear look at anyone interacting with the table.
"Becca, play Dr. Kale's station," Dr. Kale said.
Becca's voice came bursting from the ceiling.
"Did you just-?! I am turning off the oxygen," her voice said.
I am going to make an assumption that the AI did not appreciate that request. Noted.
"Haha you joker. She jokes. It's fine. Whatever. Alright, now we play the waiting game," Dr. Kale said and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. After several minutes of no one entering the room, I started to get bored and wondered if the voice on the walkie-talkie was just messing with us.
Maybe someone was hiding the eggs as some sort of dumb prank. They must have known someone from the government was coming and decided to mess with me.
"I have names for all the eggs," Dr. Kale said without removing his eyes from the screen. "Would you like to hear them?"
"Absolutely not," I said in a whisper. I had almost talked myself into this prank theory. I felt that my body had started to relax a bit. I always made situations worse in my head, which was part of why I was so nervous all the time. I blew even the smallest situations way out of proportion and tended to make them a larger degree worse than they really were. Dr. Kale was not panicked, and if he wasn't freaking out about this, then why should I? These eggs were essentially his babies, or so it would seem. If there was any risk to the spider eggs, then he would not be sitting here with such a calm demeanor. Everything was going to be just fine.
That's when I saw it.
An egg moved.