JurassiQuest – Chapter 3: Through the Orb

A/N: Alright everyone! Here's chapter 3! For those of you who might be confused, Grant's side of the story takes place one week after the InGen side of the story. This chapter will feature both story sides. Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Jurassic Park except the very characters I've made up.


Dr. Alan Grant sighed as he exited the bathroom. He didn't go in there to use it, but it was the only place he could think of where he could recuperate without the press at his back. He didn't want to talk to the press right now, or anybody for that matter. Unfortunately that's not what fate had in store for him.

"Oh! Dr. Grant!" exclaimed a reporter as she and several other newspaper anchors approached the paleontologist. "I have a quick question. Dr. Baselton had some very scientific objections to your theories on raptors, could you comment?"

"Not right now," Grant said. He kept repeating those three words to every reporter who asked him questions, and he had to say them it seemed hundreds of times. The reporters were almost like a mob, but more annoying than angry.

Finally, he found Dr. Sattler near the crowded entrance of the museum. He went over to her.

"Hey, you OK?" Ellie asked.

"Aside from the fact that that hotshot excuse for a paleontologist completely humiliated me in front of hundreds of influential people," Grant said grimly, "I'm doing great."

"Well, if it isn't Dr. Alan Grant," said an all too familiar male voice.

Grant and Sattler turned around and saw Dr. George Baselton approaching them.

"Shouldn't you be going to your next lecture?" Grant asked.

"Shouldn't you be out there raising money to support your dig site?" Baselton asked.

"Well I wouldn't have to do that if you would quit interrupting my lectures. What is your problem?"

Baselton chuckled. "See, you know what your problem is, Dr. Grant? You have no concept of differing views. You're too . . . wishy-washy. You think you see evidence for one thing and you flock toward it. You have no point of view. You're too narrow-minded."

"How is my theory narrow-minded? I offer a brand new opinion and you reject it."

"Because there's not enough evidence to support it."

"Maybe it's because you are too narrow-minded. But that's beside the point, you still have no right to humiliate me like you did tonight, like you do at every single one of my latest lectures. That's all you do. You utterly bulldoze-down any scientist that comes in your way. What happened to the freedom of science."

"Freedom has limits, Dr. Grant."

"But I did have some evidence to point toward my theory. Even if my theory is incorrect, you still didn't have to do what you did. Why don't you just consult me privately?"

"Because you're misleading the flock," Baselton said. "You're leading people down the wrong path, trying to get them all to believe your no-evidence theory with no water behind it. You can't do this. Many of the people in that auditorium tonight were young folks – graduate students – who are considering paleontology to be their career. We can't have them be free-lance thinkers who are always thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box can be a good thing, but not always. We need these people to stick with the theories on paleontology that have been formed and generally agreed upon by all main scientists. People like you and I are responsible for influencing these young people, and we need them to think reasonably."

"But you're not even leaving room for–"

"Dr. Grant." The older scientist straightened his glasses. "Let me get something through your head: the way you are, you are just a sad, strange little poor excuse for a scientist and you will never get very far in your career."

Without another word, Baselton turned around and left the couple.

Grant sighed. "Now why did he have to say that?"

"Just let it go, Grant," Ellie said.

"I'm ready to go home. I need some rest."

"Let's go see where–"

Before she could finish the sentence, a young boy, only 15 years old approached Grant and Ellie. He had short brown straight hair. "Dad, are you OK?"

Grant frowned. "Well, not exactly."

Luke Grant was Alan's son from his previous marriage. He had been in the auditorium watching his father's lecture. Luke could tell by the expression on his dad's face that he was exhausted. "Where are we going now?"

"We're going to drop Ellie off and then go home."

"But . . . weren't we supposed to go to the movies tonight, just the two of us?"

"Sorry son, not tonight."

Luke's face fell, but he nodded understandably. "Yeah, OK. Maybe tomorrow."

With no further reason to stay in the museum, Grant, Ellie and Luke headed outside to get in the car.


One week earlier . . .

Nedry took a sip of his soda. He, Arnold, Hammond and Henry gazed at the beautiful glowing object they'd just created. Nedry said, "We've created an orb of light and energy. Big deal. We need to prove it actually works in the way it's supposed to."

Henry nodded. "Yes, I suppose we should. But what could it do to harm us, right? I mean, we should be able to enter it."

"There's no way of knowing for sure," Arnold said. "Right now, we have no way of knowing whether we'll be able to walk into it or whether all that energy will simply destroy a living thing. We need some sort of living thing to go through it–"

"I say we through the little elephant in there," Nedry suggested.

Everyone turned toward Dianthus. The little elephant was still frightened by the orb of light and huddled underneath Arnold's desk. Henry shook his head.

"No, it took too long to recreate a dwarf elephant," he said. "An elephant's gestation period is 22 months, that's a long time and that doesn't count the amount of time I had to spend sifting through genes, finding out which ones are responsible for certain characteristics in the elephant genetic makeup. I'm not doing that again anytime soon."

"Well, something has to go through it," Nedry said.

"I'll do it," Hammond said.

"What? No, you can't," Henry said. He shook his head. "You're the boss of this company. We loose you, we've got big problems."

Henry thought he heard the sound of a helicopter nearby, but there were no windows and the laboratory they were in wasn't close to the outside world. "What is that?"

"What do you mean?" Hammond asked.

"I hear a buzzing sound, sounds almost like a helicopter propeller or something, but I don't know from what."

"Must be one of the rotors," Nedry said.

Arnold backed him up. "Yeah, Nedry's probably right. Once some of this machinery has been running for a little while, it sometimes makes a whirring sound that sounds almost like–"

A pair large insect zoomed out of the glowing orb.

"Duck!" Henry cried. Everyone ducked just as the two creatures zoomed over their heads and began flying around the room. "What in the world?"

The two insects resembled dragonflies, as were long and skinny, bearing six legs, large heads with humongous green eyes. They flew with giant almost-transparent wings. However, these insects were much larger than dragonflies, with a two foot wingspan! The dragonflies darted around the small, dark room.

"I didn't know dragonflies grew that big!" Nedry said.

"They don't . . . in modern times," Henry said.

"What are they?" Arnold asked.

Henry shook his head in awe. He didn't remember what they were called at the moment; he tried to stretch back through his memory; he tried to recall the animals by name . . . "Meganeura monyi, that's what they are. They don't exist anymore but . . ." he looked at the orb. He laughed and cried. "I can't believe it . . . we've created the first working time portal." Who knew the first organisms in history to time travel would be insects.

"I'll be famous after this."

"It's great that all of our hard work paid off," Nedry said, "but, uh . . . we've got to figure out what to do with these bugs." The other three men looked over at Henry's desk and saw that the giant insects were resting, one on the computer and the other on the backrest of Henry's chair.

"You know, we might have an interesting problem here," Henry said. "No one alive today has ever seen a living Meganeura. I think we should keep these animals, for study purposes."

"If that's the case, we might need to do some research," Arnold said. "We have no idea what these animals eat, what habitat they like or anything for that matter. What would you suggest we do next, Hammond? Hammond?"

Henry and Arnold glanced in Hammond's direction to see that he was standing in front of the orb. "It's really beautiful, what you three have created. You three should be proud."

"Hammond . . . what are you doing?"

Hammond reached his hand out, trying to touch the spiraling shards circling the glowing orb. "We're at the edge of one of the most incredible discoveries of our time . . . and now we must take full advantage of this opportunity . . ." Hammond took a step forward, and another, he was walking into the time portal.

"Hammond, wait!"

But Hammond entered the time portal and disappeared.

"Where's he gone?" Nedry asked. "Think he's still alive or what?"

"He better be." With that, Henry plunged into the time portal after his boss.


Henry rushed into the time portal and exited out the other side. With Hammond now at his side, he was amazed by what he saw: he and Hammond had landed in a great swampy forest. There were great tree-like plants soaring 150 feet into the sky with fern-like fronds extending from their tops. Mist floated through some parts of the bog, giving it a mysterious appearance. It appeared to be about noontime, as the sun was directly above them. Even the ground was different – instead of being made up completely of soil, it appeared to be composed of some soil, but also tree roots and plant matter, much like a modern quaking bog . . . a totally different world from their own.

Buzzing sounds to the left. Henry saw dozens of giant dragonflies darting around the swamp. He shook his head in amazement.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Hammond asked.

"You shouldn't have just charged through the time portal like that," Henry cautioned. "We didn't know if it was safe."

"The dragonflies came through it unharmed, so I didn't see any danger in it. Do you know where we are?"

"Well, based on the plants and animal life, we're in the Carboniferous." Henry remembered reading about these Carboniferous forests; they would eventually become deposited in loads of sediment and would then transform into one of the fossil fuels we use today: coal. Henry glanced around some more and spotted some strange salamander-like creatures basking on the riverbank. They were three feet long and had mouthfuls of sharp teeth. "We won't find any dinosaurs here; they didn't live in the Carboniferous."

"So it's safe." Hammond started walking forward, but Henry grabbed him back.

"We don't know everything about the Carboniferous. There may be something dangerous out here that we don't know about."

Hammond shook his head. "I don't understand you, Henry. I don't think you're giving yourself your due credit. You've designed something nobody has ever done before. You deserve to see what your creation has allowed you access to."

"But I don't want to die doing it. Look, we can come back. But we need to take the necessary precautions. We can further discuss our next course of action in the 21st century. Come along, John."

Reluctantly, Hammond allowed himself to be pulled back in the direction of the portal, back to the present.

"See?" Henry said. "We're already biting off more than we can chew!"


Nedry and Arnold waited at the other end of the time portal.

"Maybe we should go in after them," Arnold said. "We need to make sure they're OK."

"I think they're fine," Nedry said as he took another swig of soda.

"I don't know. We don't have any idea what's on the other side of the portal–"

Hammond and Henry reappeared through the time portal; they both looked awestruck with fascination.

"What was it like on the other side?" Arnold asked.

"It was . . ." Henry breathed heavily. "Breathtaking. I've never seen anything like it. We just went back in time!"

"Fascinating."

The door to the laboratory opened and light spewed into the room, alerting the dragonflies so that they took to the air. The janitor came into the room.

"Hello, guys," he said. "I've just . . ." he saw the time portal. "By golly! What's that?"

Henry hissed to Hammond, "You forgot to lock the door."

"Oh dear–"

A dragonfly zoomed toward the janitor, who ducked, and before they knew it the insect flew out of the room. "What's going on in here?"

Henry, Arnold, Hammond and Nedry rushed out of the room, shoving the janitor out of the way and Henry locked the door behind him. The insect flew in great circles around the building. The InGen complex was a big and open building. If someone left a window open, the dragonfly could escape into the world!

"We've got to catch that dragonfly!" Henry exclaimed. "If that thing gets out, it could collapse entire ecological food chains!"

The dragonfly didn't care about the trouble it was causing and flew toward the second story of the building (the InGen headquarters was three stories tall). Its pursuers ran into the nearest elevator and punched in the button for the 2nd floor. Unfortunately, the elevator was relatively slow.

"Sorry about not locking the door behind me," Hammond said. "I should have remembered that."

"Never mind now," Arnold said. "We have to get a hold of that dragonfly."

The elevator dinged and the doors opened just in time to see the flying animal dart to the third floor. Everyone sighed and the elevator went further up. This time, they had caught up with the fast dragonfly. It flew away from the elevator and toward an open office door. Running as fast as they could without crashing into people walking down the hall, the four men followed. It must have been strange for everyone else to see these four running around in the building after a giant bug.

Unfortunately, the insect was much faster than the humans and was able to keep ahead of them. The dragonfly flew into a woman's office. The woman was at her desk using her computer when she saw it.

"Ah!" she screamed. She picked up a stack of manilla folders and threw them at the insect. The insect dodged the folders and circled the room. "Get away from me! Get away! Get away! Get away!"

Finally, the dragonfly landed gracefully on her desk. The woman got out of her chair and got herself into the nearest corner, petrified by the insect. She picked up a heavy book . . .

Hammond, Henry, Nedry and Arnold rushed into the room and saw the woman aiming the book.

"No, wait, don't–"

It was too late, as she threw the book the agile dragonfly flew upwards and out of the room through a window leading to the neighboring office.

The woman looked at the men. "What was that thing?"

"Um . . ." Henry wasn't sure how to explain this. "We can tell you later." With no further explanation, they headed to the other office.

Once the dragonfly was seen by the man working in that office, he had a similar reaction to that of the woman. "What is that thing?!" he yelled. But the dragonfly didn't stay long. It went out of that office and into a conference room, and it was in use.


In front of several business people sitting at a long table, a man in a black suit was drawing their attention to some numbers and words on the chalk board. "Now, the purpose of this endeavor, is success. If we're going to succeed, we're going to need to all focus and work together. We need to think–"

"Dragonfly!" a woman exclaimed.

"No, we're not – oh my goodness!" the man at the chalk board cried.

They all saw the dragonfly circle the room near the ceiling. Some of them screamed, others covered their heads with folders or whatever they could find in immediate reach; others did both. The man at the black board stood motionless, shocked to see a dragonfly so big. A moment later, it flew toward an open window and landed on the windowsill.

"Shoo it out the window," someone suggested.

"No! Don't!" Henry exclaimed as he and the other three men rushed into the room.

"Mr. Hammond," the man at the black board began. "What's going on here?"

"I'll talk to you later, Frank."

For the moment, the insect was still, save the low beating of the creature's wing beats. But Henry knew that the moment it was alarmed, it would once again take to the air; this time, it would fly out the window, and there would be little chance of catching it again.

Slowly, very slowly, Henry crept toward the giant bug from the past. So far, it hadn't moved from its position. "Come on little guy," he whispered. "You don't want to go out there. It's not your world out there any more . . ." Henry flung his hands in the dragonfly's direction and he clung onto its back. The insect flapped its large, transparent wings, trying to take off, but Henry had a firm grip on it. He picked it up to get a better grip on it. "Got you," he said.

"Um . . . what's going on here?" Frank asked.

"It's uh . . . a rare species of dragonfly from the Indonesian rainforests," Henry said. "Very rare species. Probably less than 100 left in the wild. Important research opportunity." Henry and the other three men started out of the room.

"But I've never seen a dragonfly that big."

"Very rare species," Henry repeated. Then he left the room.


In InGen's biological department, the two Meganeura were resting in a temporary holding enclosure, similar to a butterfly enclosure, but larger. It wasn't much, but it would likely keep the dragonflies content for now.

"So let me get this straight," Claire said, "these are two Meganeura from the ancient past?"

"Yes," Henry said.

Claire Sampson was a tall, brown and curly-haired woman with glasses and a lab coat. She was the head of InGen's biology department. Normally, this department was responsible for the study of cells, bacteria, physiology and anatomy, sometimes even botany, but they'd never had to care for anything like this.

"How long are they staying?" she asked.

Henry shrugged. "Until we can get sort of permanent housing for them. We don't know yet."

"What do they eat?"

"We don't know exactly. I'll do some research and let you know. But they haven't been out of their time for too long, so they should be OK for now."

Claire sighed. "Alright Henry, whatever you say."

"Thanks, Claire."

Henry walked briskly back to his laboratory where the time portal was and met back up with Arnold, Hammond and Nedry. When he arrived, the other three men were staring amazed at the time portal.

"What do we do with this now?" Nedry asked.

"We should turn it off," Arnold said. "We don't need anything else coming in."

Nedry nodded and turned the machine off. In a flash, the glowing orb grew brighter than it normally was before suddenly disappearing into nothing. Now there was nothing visible between the two ray guns. Personally, Henry, as much as he wanted to go back through the time portal, he'd had enough for one day.

Arnold chuckled to himself.

"What?" Hammond said.

"We did it!" he exclaimed. "We actually did it: we built a working time portal, you two traveled back in time and we even have to insect specimens from the past. 10 years of research . . . and it finally boiled down to this very moment. International Genetic Technologies has a bright future ahead of it."

Henry nodded. He looked over at Hammond. "Can I see you in the genetics lab, Hammond?"


A/N: Well, how did you all like this chapter? How did you like my inclusion of the Meganeura? A giant dragonfly made an appearance in the Jurassic Park novel, and they haven't made an appearance in anything else related to Jurassic Park so I decided they'd be a great addition to the story. I also thought it would be a good idea to add it since it's a little different than something you'd expect from a Jurassic Park story. Anyway, please be sure to favorite, follow and review this story and I'll see you all soon! R&r!