CH.3

Private Dylan sat quietly thinking. After awakening in the G-force infirmary, he was moved to a small room which was to be his temporary quarters. He had been there a half hour. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Dylan bid the knocker to come in. It was the professor from earlier.

"Hello again!" said he, "I see you are now fully awake, so I'll fill you in on your amazing story. After your incident we found you floating in the pacific, clinging to some debris. The explosion of your ship had apparently sent some shrapnel into your head, and you've been incapacitated ever since. We managed to save your life, barely."

"How long was I, as you said, incapacitated?"

"About a month now. There was a possibility that you may never have woken up. As I said, you are quite lucky. Have you any questions for me?"

"Yes, professor…I'm sorry, I don't believe I caught your name."

"I don't believe I threw it. The name's John Everett, head of the world organization's department of kaiju studies."

"Professor Everett…was I still delirious from the shrapnel, or did I hear you say that the creature I encountered was Godzilla?"

The professor's old face cocked a coy smile, as if he knew this question was coming. "Yes," he said, "you heard correctly. The monster that yours and the other ships encountered was indeed Godzilla."

"Impossible!" Dylan shouted angrily. "Godzilla is dead."

"One of them is." Replied the elder gentleman, "But evidence suggests that there is at least one more mutated Gojirasaurus in the world. People throughout the pacific islands have reported seeing Godzilla."

"Just like people in North America report seeing Bigfoot," Dylan replied, "or people in Scotland seeing Nessie."

"I thought you might say so. But I have proof."

The professor walked up to Dylan and produced a folder. Opening it, he removed an old photograph and handed it to Dylan.

"1965. A hiker takes this picture on one of the Japanese isles. The creature was described by him as being as tall as a two story building."

Dylan examined the photo. A blurry image of the woods, and a large dark shape poking through the trees. "It's an interesting image sir, but I don't think it signifies anything."

"Nobody else did either. Until 1979, when this photo was taken off the coast of Hawaii. It is believed to be the same creature, but grown quite a bit."

The professor handed the second picture to Dylan, and Dylan gasped immediately. This was a far clearer image, crystal clear. A side image of the creature, and there was no doubt in Dylan's mind that this was the beast that attacked them at sea. "That's what attacked us!" he exclaimed, "those spines on the back, they're identical to something I saw rise out of the ocean. A bit smaller, but the resemblance is uncanny!"

Indeed. I'm glad you recognized those. Now, compare that image to this, a photograph from Tokyo during the 1954 Godzilla attack."

Dylan was blown away there was no doubt that the creature that attacked his ship was nearly identical to the original Godzilla. "So if this new creature is a second Godzilla, why is it just now becoming a nuisance?"

The old scientist looked serious now. "When I was young, about your age… I went to Oto Island in the hopes of finding Gojirasaurus fossils. The Gojirasaurus was a new discovery at the time you see, and while we have the bones of the original Godzilla, there were, at the time, no Gojirasaurus fossils to compare it to. Had I found some, I would've become quite famous, not that I was in it for recognition…but this was not to be. Instead, I found a mutated egg, recently hatched. That was 1955, and all these years that monster from the egg has been growing. Now it is full grown, and it will likely behave in a similar fashion to the original Godzilla. I have been searching for it ever since that day, in the hopes that we could stop it before this day came. But I failed. We need not search for Godzilla anymore; he will come to us, blazing a trail of destruction. And when he does we will stop him."

The professor put the photos back into the folder and turned to exit the room. Dylan shouted after him.

"Sir, one more question: I heard the guards in the infirmary say something about a meteorite. What's that about?"

"I don't really know" was the reply, "there was a gigantic space-rock landed in the Nevada desert. The unusual thing about it was the way it landed. It didn't crash; as one would expect a meteorite to do…it just sort of…touched down. Anyway, I haven't kept up with that story, since both you and I are assigned to the Godzilla case, and it will take up all our time."

"Both of us?"

"Of course." the professor replied, "forget the Navy Private Dylan; I've just let you in on classified information…welcome to G-force."