Primordial Chapter 6
Title: Primordial
Author: Aquaseamage
Pairing: None
Genre: Action/Adventure/ Humor
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Takes place during “On Stranger Tides” so spoiler warning
Summary: AU for both OST and JP.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to Disney and Amblin/Universal. This is just for fun.
John Hammond paced in the darkened control room nervously as the tropical storm raged overhead. Dennis had done something to the computers and now John Arnold, the chief Engineer of Jurassic Park, was trying to fix it. But it wasn’t easy and Mr. Arnold was disgusted with Dennis’ workstation. He swept a pile of trash, mostly empty candy wrappers, chip bags and soda cans, onto the floor with his hand. Of course, Dennis himself was nowhere to be found and that was part of the problem. He had said he was going to the soda machine but hadn’t been there at all. Nor had he been in the bathroom or in the cafeteria. He had just vanished into thin air and had left them a huge mess.
“This White Rabbit Object did it.” Mr. Arnold said as he chewed on his cigar, smoke puffing in clouds out of his mouth. “He didn’t want us to see what he was doing so he hid it, turned off the cameras and most of the fences. Only the raptor fences are still on…”
“But why would he turn off all of the others?” John asked, clearly perplexed. “He knows very well that there’s some very dangerous animals on this island and with the fences off, they could get out of their paddocks. Thank God we ended the tour early and everyone is back here safe!”
Robert Muldoon, the Park’s main warden, frowned at John’s words. “Were not safe here in the Visitor center, not with some of the dinosaurs you’ve made. The tyrannosaur could break right through the doors if it wanted to…”
“This is chaos theory in action.” Eon added from where he reclined near the back of the room. “Strange attractants, things you can’t predict, weird events..I told you before that there’s no way you can control these creatures. Just a little thing like the power going out or a computer failure and boom, all of your creatures get loose! What if the Park had been full of people on tours? How many would have died?
“The power is not off and the computer did not fail..” John corrected him stiffly, clearly annoyed.
“No, it was worse than that. It was sabotage.” Eon corrected. “But computers do get glitches. And power does fail. Why don’t you have a backup system, John?”
John sighed, clearly exhausted from all of the stress he was under. “Yes, I see that you’re right. And we do have backups, of course, but Dennis clearly has them goofed up as well with his program. He is one of the best computer people around, I assure you.”
“There must be a million lines of code here…” Mr. Arnold grunted as he scrolled through the lines of computer code that was on the monitor. “We’ll never find the right one. The only thing we can do is shut the whole system down and turn it back on, hoping it’ll come back up in the original start mode.”
“Will that erase what he did?” John asked.
“It should…” Mr. Arnold answered as he chewed more on his cigar. “But it’s risky. We never shut the entire system down before, so it might not restart at all - but if it does, we should get it all back: lights, phones, the fences, everything.”
Dr. Grant and Dr. Satler sat in the back of the room near Eon, listening and watching with concerned expressions on their faces.
The door to the Control Room opened and Dr. Wu walked in at a rapid pace. He wore a worried and fearful expression on his face as he went up to John Hammond. “I have some bad news…”
“What is it?” John asked in a weary voice. “I thought you were going to the boats…”
“I was going to, but then I saw the door was open, that one near my lab. I went through the gate and saw evidence that someone had passed through just recently. There was no one in sight, of course, so I quickly returned here.” Dr. Wu’s dark eyes flickered around the room, seeing that most of the guests were still there. “I fear it may have been the children. The boy in particular had been very curious about that door…”
John’s eyes widened in horror and he gasped out loud. “That door was to be kept locked at all times! You know what’s behind it…”
“It’s this White Rabbit that did it…” Mr. Arnold grumbled. “It unlocked all of the doors in this place…”
John Hammond turned then and slowly walked up to where Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler and Eon were sitting. “Dr. Grant, I have a confession to make. I don’t know if you’d believe this or not, but I swear to you it is true. I really didn’t create dinosaurs from fossilized mosquitoes in amber - that’s just my cover story. I had to lie to protect the secrets I had uncovered…”
“What sort of secrets?” Dr. Grant asked uneasily.
“And how did you create the dinosaurs then?" Dr. Sattler asked as she leaned forward in her chair, eager to learn John’s real secrets. “I see you have many species of extinct plants here as well and I couldn’t understand how you had recreated those. Preserved blood from a mosquito wouldn’t help you recreate plants…”
“No, the plants are the real thing, just like the dinosaurs.”
“Wait…” Dr. Grant rose to his feet, his eyes locked on John. “Are you saying the dinosaurs are real ones, that you didn’t tamper with their DNA or add frog elements? That they are truly as they were millions of years ago in the past?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what they are: the real thing.” John stared at the piece of ember on top of his cane, the shiny smooth piece even glinting just a bit in the darkened room. “You see, many years ago I went searching for the Fountain of Youth. I had found written accounts of a previous expedition, one led by a British Royal Navy Captain, if you can believe that. They had been sent out by King George II. I was growing older, you see, and I still had many things I wanted to do. I had the money to go on the quest, of course, so I went. I found the chalices that were needed and I found the cave, the one that led to the Fountain. And to my utter amazement, I found a lost world just like in those old science fiction stories! There were real dinosaurs there and they were the most amazing thing I had ever seen!”
Dr. Grant shook his head. “And you thought up the idea for this park…”
“Of course! How could I not bring these wondrous creatures back to our own time? It would be the most fantastic thing ever! All I had to do was take a few eggs and I did. But some creature bit me on my leg and now I use this walking staff, but it is a small price to pay.”
“And making a fortune off of this park is just a side affect…”
“Well, I’ve spent a fortune making this place as well.” John quickly added. “I spared no expense and I hired the tops in each field. But now I fear that my grandchildren, Tim and Lex, have gone through the doorway and are lost millions of years in the past. It’s a very dangerous place, of course. The last team I sent in to get eggs has never returned and I fear them all dead. I really don’t know how two children could survive. Would you be so kind to go there and bring them back?”
“There’s a doorway to the past on this island,” Dr. Grant asked, truly surprised at the news. “one that you can just walk through and be in the Age of Dinosaurs?”
“Yes. That’s why I leased this island from the Costa Rican government. In fact, I actually found a few…”
“And things can just come through them?”
“Well, one needs the chalices but once the doorway is open it tends to stay open unless you go back through it with the chalices. I didn’t want to be opening it and closing it all of the time, so I just left the one here in the Visitor Center open. That clearly was a mistake, but I never imagined a problem like the one Dennis has caused. And I did have it securely locked.”
Dr. Grant turned to look at Dr. Satler. Her eyes were sparkling with the idea of going to the ancient past to see real dinosaurs in their natural setting.
“When can we leave?” She asked, clearly excited.
John looked a bit distressed at the idea of her going. “Oh, but it’s a very dangerous and wild place. Are you sure you want to go? I mean, there’s raptor packs running free, giant spinosaurus and all sorts of nasty predators! I do have a few buildings there, of course, but they were nearly impossible to build due to the conditions. And as I said, the last team I sent in had never returned.”
“Look, I may be a woman but I know just as much about dinosaurs as Dr. Grant. And do you want your grandchildren eating poison plants because they’re starving? Many of the plants and trees we have now didn’t even exist back then…”
John’s face fell at the thought. “No, you’re right, but I just hate the idea of you getting hurt. I would feel just awful.”
“Look, we’ll go and find the kids for you.” Dr. Grant promised as nervous excitement fluttered in his gut. “But I don’t like the bit about roaming raptor packs. The other ones we can handle, I think, even the big ones, but the raptors…”
“We have guns, of course…” John quickly added.
“Guns are little good against raptors.” Robert Muldoon spoke up from where he stood. “They’re fast, deadly and smart. Look at them and you can see them thinking. I bet that’s why the last team never made it back: the raptors got them.”
“You don’t know that for a fact.” John quickly added. “It could have been anything.”
“I have something in my room that might help…it’s a prototype but I think I’d like to have it with me on this trip.” Dr. Grant turned to head to the door. “A map of the place would be helpful as some basic survival supplies in a backpack.”
“Of course, anything you want!” Hammond quickly agreed as he turned to a nearby filing cabinet. “I have a full map of Site C right here…”
“John…” Mr. Arnold called from where he sat at Dennis’s work station of three computers. “I realize you’re concerned about your grandkids, but I need a decision here. Should I shut down the computer and restart it?”
“Yes, please. We need to get the Park back up and running…”
000
Dennis Nedry drove through the pouring rain in his gas-powered jeep, hunched over the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. He could barely see where he was going due to the downpour and he mumbled to himself nervously. “I should have been there already….should have been there already…where is that stupid port anyway?”
An unpleasant feeling in his gut told him he was lost but he didn’t want to admit that. How could he get lost? The island may be large but it only had so many roads and he had tested the route several times, timing himself to see how quickly he could do it. But all of his tests had been during dry weather, not during a tropical storm that might be a hurricane. He had never seen a real hurricane so was unsure if they looked like this or not.
The jeep’s wheels skidded on the wet pavement and the vehicle slid, slamming into a signpost. The sign was knocked over and the heavily overweight man sighed in utter frustration. “Stupid sign! Now I have to go out into the rain to see what it says!”
He pulled up the hood of his bright yellow rain jacket and opened the door of the jeep. Instantly his jeans were soaked through with freezing rain and he climbed out. Hurrying to the sign, he picked it up and looked at the arrow that pointed the way to the dock. It had come loose and was pointing straight up into the sky. He turned it this way and that, trying to guess which way it was supposed to point. It was hopeless. Disgusted, he dropped it back down into the mud and climbed back into the jeep. Grabbing the steering wheel with dripping hands, he backed the jeep up and headed left, praying it was the correct direction.
“Gotta hurry, gotta hurry….” He stepped on the gas pedal, almost flooring it although he knew it was an incredibly dumb thing to do. With the roads slick and some areas possibly flooded, his tires would lose contact with the road and he might slam right into a tree. But a million dollars…!
There was a sharp turn up ahead and the jeep skidded, flying off of the road and down a steep hill. The jeep bounced wildly down the steep incline, his head bouncing against the cab’s roof several times and jarring all of his teeth. At the bottom, which was approaching all too rapidly for his tastes, was a rain-swollen stream, a bunch of trees and was that a road there? He thought he was about to hit a tree and he braced himself for the sharp pain that was surely about to come, but then his eyes noticed an odd shimmer hanging in the air before him. He noted it but paid little attention as the tree was his main worry. Maybe it was a mirage or some odd rainbow, who knows? It didn’t matter…
But the strange shimmer did matter…
The jeep bounced through it and suddenly Dennis found himself on a different steep incline, the tree in front of him gone! “What the …?”
Looking about wildly, he found himself driving downward on a hill covered in grass and weeds towards a sort of valley. “What the kind of crazy park did John build? Where’s the road? Where did the trees go?”
And what about the storm and the rain - it had been pouring just a moment ago yet here the sky was clear and the grass appeared dry!
He had no idea about any of it. The nervous feeling in his gut grew worse and worse, his eyes scanning all about him. He knew the crazy old man had some really big things in his park, dangerous things. He didn’t really know anything about dinosaurs at all, except for what the average person knew. Some ate plants and some ate meat. He heard something roar and the sound sent shivers of icy fear down his back. Without thinking, he stepped on the gas pedal and rolled down the hill even faster. In the distance he could see one of John’s buildings, a safety bunker by the looks of it. He recalled the safety drills he had been forced to do before, leaving his post and huffing all of the way to the dumb bunker in the heat. What a pain! But now it all came back to him and he was thankful to John for forcing him to do the drills.
But what would he say to John and the others, how would he explain his actions? Maybe he could blame it on a glitch? Computers got glitches all of the time…
The jeep reached the bottom of the slope and started into the tall grass, the motor humming to itself. Soon he would be there and be safe.
TBC…
Author: Aquaseamage
Pairing: None
Genre: Action/Adventure/ Humor
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Takes place during “On Stranger Tides” so spoiler warning
Summary: AU for both OST and JP.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to Disney and Amblin/Universal. This is just for fun.
John Hammond paced in the darkened control room nervously as the tropical storm raged overhead. Dennis had done something to the computers and now John Arnold, the chief Engineer of Jurassic Park, was trying to fix it. But it wasn’t easy and Mr. Arnold was disgusted with Dennis’ workstation. He swept a pile of trash, mostly empty candy wrappers, chip bags and soda cans, onto the floor with his hand. Of course, Dennis himself was nowhere to be found and that was part of the problem. He had said he was going to the soda machine but hadn’t been there at all. Nor had he been in the bathroom or in the cafeteria. He had just vanished into thin air and had left them a huge mess.
“This White Rabbit Object did it.” Mr. Arnold said as he chewed on his cigar, smoke puffing in clouds out of his mouth. “He didn’t want us to see what he was doing so he hid it, turned off the cameras and most of the fences. Only the raptor fences are still on…”
“But why would he turn off all of the others?” John asked, clearly perplexed. “He knows very well that there’s some very dangerous animals on this island and with the fences off, they could get out of their paddocks. Thank God we ended the tour early and everyone is back here safe!”
Robert Muldoon, the Park’s main warden, frowned at John’s words. “Were not safe here in the Visitor center, not with some of the dinosaurs you’ve made. The tyrannosaur could break right through the doors if it wanted to…”
“This is chaos theory in action.” Eon added from where he reclined near the back of the room. “Strange attractants, things you can’t predict, weird events..I told you before that there’s no way you can control these creatures. Just a little thing like the power going out or a computer failure and boom, all of your creatures get loose! What if the Park had been full of people on tours? How many would have died?
“The power is not off and the computer did not fail..” John corrected him stiffly, clearly annoyed.
“No, it was worse than that. It was sabotage.” Eon corrected. “But computers do get glitches. And power does fail. Why don’t you have a backup system, John?”
John sighed, clearly exhausted from all of the stress he was under. “Yes, I see that you’re right. And we do have backups, of course, but Dennis clearly has them goofed up as well with his program. He is one of the best computer people around, I assure you.”
“There must be a million lines of code here…” Mr. Arnold grunted as he scrolled through the lines of computer code that was on the monitor. “We’ll never find the right one. The only thing we can do is shut the whole system down and turn it back on, hoping it’ll come back up in the original start mode.”
“Will that erase what he did?” John asked.
“It should…” Mr. Arnold answered as he chewed more on his cigar. “But it’s risky. We never shut the entire system down before, so it might not restart at all - but if it does, we should get it all back: lights, phones, the fences, everything.”
Dr. Grant and Dr. Satler sat in the back of the room near Eon, listening and watching with concerned expressions on their faces.
The door to the Control Room opened and Dr. Wu walked in at a rapid pace. He wore a worried and fearful expression on his face as he went up to John Hammond. “I have some bad news…”
“What is it?” John asked in a weary voice. “I thought you were going to the boats…”
“I was going to, but then I saw the door was open, that one near my lab. I went through the gate and saw evidence that someone had passed through just recently. There was no one in sight, of course, so I quickly returned here.” Dr. Wu’s dark eyes flickered around the room, seeing that most of the guests were still there. “I fear it may have been the children. The boy in particular had been very curious about that door…”
John’s eyes widened in horror and he gasped out loud. “That door was to be kept locked at all times! You know what’s behind it…”
“It’s this White Rabbit that did it…” Mr. Arnold grumbled. “It unlocked all of the doors in this place…”
John Hammond turned then and slowly walked up to where Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler and Eon were sitting. “Dr. Grant, I have a confession to make. I don’t know if you’d believe this or not, but I swear to you it is true. I really didn’t create dinosaurs from fossilized mosquitoes in amber - that’s just my cover story. I had to lie to protect the secrets I had uncovered…”
“What sort of secrets?” Dr. Grant asked uneasily.
“And how did you create the dinosaurs then?" Dr. Sattler asked as she leaned forward in her chair, eager to learn John’s real secrets. “I see you have many species of extinct plants here as well and I couldn’t understand how you had recreated those. Preserved blood from a mosquito wouldn’t help you recreate plants…”
“No, the plants are the real thing, just like the dinosaurs.”
“Wait…” Dr. Grant rose to his feet, his eyes locked on John. “Are you saying the dinosaurs are real ones, that you didn’t tamper with their DNA or add frog elements? That they are truly as they were millions of years ago in the past?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what they are: the real thing.” John stared at the piece of ember on top of his cane, the shiny smooth piece even glinting just a bit in the darkened room. “You see, many years ago I went searching for the Fountain of Youth. I had found written accounts of a previous expedition, one led by a British Royal Navy Captain, if you can believe that. They had been sent out by King George II. I was growing older, you see, and I still had many things I wanted to do. I had the money to go on the quest, of course, so I went. I found the chalices that were needed and I found the cave, the one that led to the Fountain. And to my utter amazement, I found a lost world just like in those old science fiction stories! There were real dinosaurs there and they were the most amazing thing I had ever seen!”
Dr. Grant shook his head. “And you thought up the idea for this park…”
“Of course! How could I not bring these wondrous creatures back to our own time? It would be the most fantastic thing ever! All I had to do was take a few eggs and I did. But some creature bit me on my leg and now I use this walking staff, but it is a small price to pay.”
“And making a fortune off of this park is just a side affect…”
“Well, I’ve spent a fortune making this place as well.” John quickly added. “I spared no expense and I hired the tops in each field. But now I fear that my grandchildren, Tim and Lex, have gone through the doorway and are lost millions of years in the past. It’s a very dangerous place, of course. The last team I sent in to get eggs has never returned and I fear them all dead. I really don’t know how two children could survive. Would you be so kind to go there and bring them back?”
“There’s a doorway to the past on this island,” Dr. Grant asked, truly surprised at the news. “one that you can just walk through and be in the Age of Dinosaurs?”
“Yes. That’s why I leased this island from the Costa Rican government. In fact, I actually found a few…”
“And things can just come through them?”
“Well, one needs the chalices but once the doorway is open it tends to stay open unless you go back through it with the chalices. I didn’t want to be opening it and closing it all of the time, so I just left the one here in the Visitor Center open. That clearly was a mistake, but I never imagined a problem like the one Dennis has caused. And I did have it securely locked.”
Dr. Grant turned to look at Dr. Satler. Her eyes were sparkling with the idea of going to the ancient past to see real dinosaurs in their natural setting.
“When can we leave?” She asked, clearly excited.
John looked a bit distressed at the idea of her going. “Oh, but it’s a very dangerous and wild place. Are you sure you want to go? I mean, there’s raptor packs running free, giant spinosaurus and all sorts of nasty predators! I do have a few buildings there, of course, but they were nearly impossible to build due to the conditions. And as I said, the last team I sent in had never returned.”
“Look, I may be a woman but I know just as much about dinosaurs as Dr. Grant. And do you want your grandchildren eating poison plants because they’re starving? Many of the plants and trees we have now didn’t even exist back then…”
John’s face fell at the thought. “No, you’re right, but I just hate the idea of you getting hurt. I would feel just awful.”
“Look, we’ll go and find the kids for you.” Dr. Grant promised as nervous excitement fluttered in his gut. “But I don’t like the bit about roaming raptor packs. The other ones we can handle, I think, even the big ones, but the raptors…”
“We have guns, of course…” John quickly added.
“Guns are little good against raptors.” Robert Muldoon spoke up from where he stood. “They’re fast, deadly and smart. Look at them and you can see them thinking. I bet that’s why the last team never made it back: the raptors got them.”
“You don’t know that for a fact.” John quickly added. “It could have been anything.”
“I have something in my room that might help…it’s a prototype but I think I’d like to have it with me on this trip.” Dr. Grant turned to head to the door. “A map of the place would be helpful as some basic survival supplies in a backpack.”
“Of course, anything you want!” Hammond quickly agreed as he turned to a nearby filing cabinet. “I have a full map of Site C right here…”
“John…” Mr. Arnold called from where he sat at Dennis’s work station of three computers. “I realize you’re concerned about your grandkids, but I need a decision here. Should I shut down the computer and restart it?”
“Yes, please. We need to get the Park back up and running…”
000
Dennis Nedry drove through the pouring rain in his gas-powered jeep, hunched over the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. He could barely see where he was going due to the downpour and he mumbled to himself nervously. “I should have been there already….should have been there already…where is that stupid port anyway?”
An unpleasant feeling in his gut told him he was lost but he didn’t want to admit that. How could he get lost? The island may be large but it only had so many roads and he had tested the route several times, timing himself to see how quickly he could do it. But all of his tests had been during dry weather, not during a tropical storm that might be a hurricane. He had never seen a real hurricane so was unsure if they looked like this or not.
The jeep’s wheels skidded on the wet pavement and the vehicle slid, slamming into a signpost. The sign was knocked over and the heavily overweight man sighed in utter frustration. “Stupid sign! Now I have to go out into the rain to see what it says!”
He pulled up the hood of his bright yellow rain jacket and opened the door of the jeep. Instantly his jeans were soaked through with freezing rain and he climbed out. Hurrying to the sign, he picked it up and looked at the arrow that pointed the way to the dock. It had come loose and was pointing straight up into the sky. He turned it this way and that, trying to guess which way it was supposed to point. It was hopeless. Disgusted, he dropped it back down into the mud and climbed back into the jeep. Grabbing the steering wheel with dripping hands, he backed the jeep up and headed left, praying it was the correct direction.
“Gotta hurry, gotta hurry….” He stepped on the gas pedal, almost flooring it although he knew it was an incredibly dumb thing to do. With the roads slick and some areas possibly flooded, his tires would lose contact with the road and he might slam right into a tree. But a million dollars…!
There was a sharp turn up ahead and the jeep skidded, flying off of the road and down a steep hill. The jeep bounced wildly down the steep incline, his head bouncing against the cab’s roof several times and jarring all of his teeth. At the bottom, which was approaching all too rapidly for his tastes, was a rain-swollen stream, a bunch of trees and was that a road there? He thought he was about to hit a tree and he braced himself for the sharp pain that was surely about to come, but then his eyes noticed an odd shimmer hanging in the air before him. He noted it but paid little attention as the tree was his main worry. Maybe it was a mirage or some odd rainbow, who knows? It didn’t matter…
But the strange shimmer did matter…
The jeep bounced through it and suddenly Dennis found himself on a different steep incline, the tree in front of him gone! “What the …?”
Looking about wildly, he found himself driving downward on a hill covered in grass and weeds towards a sort of valley. “What the kind of crazy park did John build? Where’s the road? Where did the trees go?”
And what about the storm and the rain - it had been pouring just a moment ago yet here the sky was clear and the grass appeared dry!
He had no idea about any of it. The nervous feeling in his gut grew worse and worse, his eyes scanning all about him. He knew the crazy old man had some really big things in his park, dangerous things. He didn’t really know anything about dinosaurs at all, except for what the average person knew. Some ate plants and some ate meat. He heard something roar and the sound sent shivers of icy fear down his back. Without thinking, he stepped on the gas pedal and rolled down the hill even faster. In the distance he could see one of John’s buildings, a safety bunker by the looks of it. He recalled the safety drills he had been forced to do before, leaving his post and huffing all of the way to the dumb bunker in the heat. What a pain! But now it all came back to him and he was thankful to John for forcing him to do the drills.
But what would he say to John and the others, how would he explain his actions? Maybe he could blame it on a glitch? Computers got glitches all of the time…
The jeep reached the bottom of the slope and started into the tall grass, the motor humming to itself. Soon he would be there and be safe.
TBC…