Jurassic Beer

I wish I could find bee trapped in a bit of amber from the Jurassic Period. I'd cut open the casing and dab the bee gently with a fine brush. Then I'd dip the brush in a small vial of malt water and wait.

With luck, a small quantity of dormant yeast, harvested from the bee's proboscis, would take hold in the liquid, consume the simple sugars and begin to multiply. Before long, I would have a viable colony of prehistoric yeast.

Yeast, like all living organisms, evolves over time. Which means the colony in my vial would be different than any yeast available today. It would be closer to the yeast that Betty Rubble might use to bake a cake for Bam Bam's birthday.

What would I do with the yeast? Why, make beer, of course.

I would call it "Jurassic Beer." It would be an ale, most likely. And it would probably taste like dinosaur shit. But it would be mine.

I would drink it all and lie down to take a nap inside a sensory deprivation chamber. Then, filled with the yeast from another time and high on ale, I would perhaps begin to de-evolve into a proto-human, very much like William Hurt in "Altered States."



I'd break out of the chamber, now a primitive humanoid and still quite drunk, and lope around New York City in search of my favorite prey, a small deer-like animal. I would settle for a dog that looked something like that. I would fall asleep on a street corner. Later, I would awake, hungover and still de-evolved, and screech as a large yellow animal with circle legs whizzed by.

"What is this strange place?" I would ask myself in a crude illiterate way that sounded something like: "Bwa deru blah?" I would somehow make my way to Brooklyn, not knowing it was Brooklyn, then break into a dwelling. The dwelling, ironically, would be my own apartment. Exhausted, I would collapse in my own bed and dream of proto-women.

The next morning I would get out of bed and look around. Somehow, my hairy foot would step on the TV remote and on would pop a daytime talk show: Maury Povich. I would squat in the living room and watch the strange images magically flicker before my uncomprehending eyes. The show would teach me my first words. I would learn to say "talk to the hand!" and "don't judge me!" Eventually, I would learn to use the phone to call for pizza. The delivery guy would look like a fellow proto-human, and I would try and communicate with him. I'd stuff some green paper into his outstretched palm, and when he asked for a tip, I'd say: "Talk to the hand."

Weeks would pass. Now fluent in English, I would stumble over an old pay stub and learn where I worked. I'd shave my body to look like Maury Povich, then take the subway into work, enter my office and start writing copy.



I'd present a headline to my boss. The headline would read: "The mobile phone to take, wherever life takes you." My boss would complain that it was a little expected, and I'd pound my chest and smear the wall with feces. He would relent and the headline would end up on a postcard. The postcard would be mailed to six million people and sales would increase by 45 percent. When my boss told me the good news, I'd scratch my ass.

I would lunch that day at Han Bat, ordering the bibimbab and a Coke.

I would get married and have 2.5 half human/half proto-human children.

At 65, I would retire and receive a gold watch, which I would eat.

I would die three weeks later of gold watch poisoning.

No one would learn my secret.

Ten million years later, X-boxorg, a half-human/half-computer superbeing, would find a remnant of a beer bottle in a vast wasteland that was once Brooklyn. The petrified label would read: "Jurassic Beer." He would dab the glass shard with a futuristic brush, cultivate the yeast with his mind and brew beer. Into a sensory deprivation chamber he would go, emerging as a proto-human.

No one would ever learn his secret.

Somewhere, in a bit of cracked amber, the prehistoric bee would awake, raise his little hands up in a gesture of sassy innocence and say: "Don't judge me!"