WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY, IT DOES SEEM LIKE TEMPTING FATE: “Just in case extracting the DNA of the ancestor of bubonic plague from the teeth of neolithic skulls doesn’t trigger the final boss fight of 2020 A.D., scientists are also feeding nutrients to dormant hundred-million-year-old bacteria from the benthic mud of the abyssal plains of the ocean to wake them up and see what happens.”