9. The dinosaur cloning recipe—which became the basis for Jurassic Park—was first proposed by Charles Pellegrino, who agrees with Steven Spielberg that resurrecting the extinct is not science fiction, but science eventuality. In 1988, Pellegrino and Powell proposed—as a reality—“Dinosaur World Park, New Zealand.” They also, at that time, eliminated two errors from the original recipe: (1) Because insect digestive juices are unfriendly to DNA, and because amber-producing trees will not likely penetrate quickly to ingested dinosaur blood, mosquitoes ceased to be the insect of choice. Dinosaur flesh preserved on the mouth parts of biting flies will fare better. (2) A “match and patch” approach to reconstructing genetic coding sequences had eliminated any need for borrowing missing bits of code from frogs and other organisms (nevertheless, certain cell organelles, including nuclei and DNA structural elements, will have to be borrowed from present-living cells). Accordingly, the original recipe has been revised and updated for this book.

10. The starship detection method described in Chapter 2—reality.

11. The tunneling effects of a relativistic bomblet through the Earth’s atmosphere, as detailed by Powell and Pellegrino—reality.

12. The peculiar chemistry of carbonaceous chondrites— reality. A more detailed account can be found in Darwin’s Universe: Origins and Crises in the History of Life—which is the book Captain Tam snatched out of the air in Chapter 7.

13. The decline of literacy in favor of computer fastspeak and virtual reality—tragic but perhaps inevitable.

14. VR addiction—go look at what the entertainment industry is downloading into human minds. It’s not a long step to preferring virtual worlds to reality. In fact, sophisticated philosophical arguments might be made that an artificial reality is superior to the so-called real world which imposes itself on us against our will. VR worlds offer the experience of omnipotence if we make a circle of input-output for human minds. You can have anything you like in your mind.

15. The story of the Yorktown and Edith Russell’s pig—reality.

16. The story of astronaut Fred Haise and the piece of Aquarius—reality. Haise’s remark about “not dwelling on cracked heat shields” was made to Pellegrino when his candidacy for a space shuttle flight was under discussion in 1983, just prior to the first night launch of the ship Pellegrino hoped would carry him—her prow, titanic; her name, Challenger.

17. The 1985 Michael Jackson broadcast of “We Are the World”—reality.18. The temple of Buddha’s Tooth in Sri Lanka— reality.

19. The oral traditions surrounding Saint Issa and the Arks of the Cross—reality. As for the eventual reality of human cloning (although we are set against it)—a dead certainty. And please stand by, for we cannot escape the feeling that Cherene has another story to tell.

20. The deep Earth biosphere of hydrothermal bacteria: the evidence is indeed mounting that the greater living mass of the Earth exists beneath our feet. This is the real Gaia.

21. Project Biotime and its strange connection to life in the ocean depths—reality.

22. Molecular viruses—a purely speculative scenario, but nature does not forbid it.