After twenty minutes of standing in pretty much the same place, Darcy was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of their Fast Passes. Apparently, the ride only sat two people, and they only had so many of the giant hamster balls available. Even with people in the Fast Pass line getting seated three times as often as the budget line, it seemed like they might only get the chance to do the one ride before everything closed.

Darcy leaned tiredly against Loki as they stood on the trodden dirt path, but it wasn't him she wanted to go on the ride with. She wanted to go with Jane. That was the whole reason for the trip, and so far, they'd eaten some room service and spent a monorail ride together. And that was about it. The rest of the time, ever since the airport, their group had been divided up into couples, because putting Thor and Loki in a space together only ever ended badly. Expecting them to go on a ride together, with no apparent supervision, would only result in someone finding a dead body at the end of the day.

Finally, after what felt like a year, their group reached the front of the line. Darcy leaned against the gate, watching off into the distance to see if she could spot any approaching hamster balls. They hadn't been arriving at any regular intervals, and they didn't even seem to be following a set course. When a group of three of them all approached together, Darcy began to wonder how the ride was even conducted.

As the bored ride operator unlocked the first sphere to let the passengers out and Darcy and Loki in, Darcy looked back over the line behind them and couldn't believe that it seemed to be three times as long as it had been when they first joined it. Glad to finally be on after a 45 minute wait, Darcy settled into her seat and found her seatbelt while Loki climbed in beside her. The sphere was smaller inside than they seemed, with a cramped cockpit and very little leg room. Darcy tried not to laugh as Loki rolled his eyes while he tried to get both legs into the hamster ball without kneeing himself in the face.

"I'm surprised they don't have a maximum height requirement," Darcy said as Loki finally got his seatbelt fastened.

"They do," he said, watching as the ride operator shut the hatch. "I ignored it, and I don't think he cares enough to bother."

Darcy laughed as she tested the joystick between the two seats, sending the sphere lurching forward as Jimmy Fallon started giving an over-the-top guided tour that seemed more aimed at kids. As soon as they left the boarding zone, it became clear that they could take the ride just about anywhere they wanted, since it was entirely controlled from within.

"Bet this explains the wait time," she said, picking a direction and heading off over the bright green grass.

"All the technology in the world, and they couldn't pre-program a route?" asked Loki, looking out at the trees as they passed by.

Darcy inhaled deeply and tried not to think about it. She wasn't there to look for conspiracies or massive fraud cases. She was there to have fun. Ignoring Jimmy Fallon lighting himself on fire, Darcy followed a worn path in the grass, assuming it would take her somewhere interesting. But as they rode on, the flaws in the system began to become more and more apparent. Mud from the trail stuck to the outside of the sphere, and there was no clear way of cleaning it off from the inside.

"Ew," Darcy complained, moving off the trail and into the grass instead. The grass didn't really help, and only just spread the mud around on the outside.

"Seriously?" she complained, wondering how they were even supposed to see anything now. All she could see was brown smears of what she dearly hoped was just mud, though she tried very hard not to think about what else it could be.

Loki laughed beside her and started poking around at the screen in front of them.

"It's not funny. It's gross," Darcy said, even though she was laughing as well.

"It's a little funny," Loki said.

"We stood in line forever for this, and I can't see anything," Darcy complained.

As Loki poked at everything within reach, Jimmy Fallon was replaced with a virtual map of the area. Their hamsterball was marked at the centre of the screen, with a simple blue dot. Up to the left, a few other lighter blue dots roamed around, bouncing into one another again and again. There were also red dots off to the right, which moved slowly and steadily away.

"If I had to guess," Loki said slowly, pointing at the blue bumper dots, "these are tourists, and these are animals." He pointed at the group of red dots off to the right.

"Let's go see," Darcy said, hoping that moving across more grass would help clean up the transparent case. It slowly worked, first smearing the mud even more until it clouded the entire outside before finally being scraped away by the grass. Darcy only kept half an eye on the terrain ahead, paying more attention to the red dots on the screen.

"There! Look!" Loki said, pointing to Darcy's left.

She stopped the ball and looked to where Loki was pointing, able to see the animals they were following. She gasped at the sight of the herd as it moved slowly away. The stegosauruses were bigger than Darcy expected them to be, and even more graceful. They didn't lumber or stomp, shaking the ground with each step. They moved step by step, grazing on low, wide-leafed plants as they went. Darcy wanted to get closer, but they had long tails with huge spikes on the end that looked like they could have easily gone right through the hamsterball. She was so in awe of the creatures that she didn't even notice Loki taking control of the ball until they started moving closer to the animals.

"No, what are you doing?" Darcy said, trying to get him to stop.

"Moving over here," Loki said.

Darcy looked to where he was taking them, realising that he was moving along to their side, to get a better look. Keeping a wide berth, Loki matched their pace as they moved along the plants they grazed on.

"Wow, look at that," Darcy said, suddenly not even caring about the mud on the outside or the dodgy way the ride was run.

This was nothing like going to the zoo and looking at elephants. Seeing dolphins in California kind of came close, but still not really. These were giant monsters that hadn't been seen on this planet in millions of years, and now they were walking and eating and grunting at one another as if they had never even died off in the first place.

"What's that one doing?" she asked, pointing to one of the dinosaurs that had wandered off to dig around in the ground with its giant front foot. As it dug, it used its beak-like mouth to pick up stuff it found and eat them.

"Looking for worms?" Loki guessed, shrugging.

Darcy quickly reached for the brochure in her bag and flipped through the pages until she found the part that explained the Gyrosphere ride and the dinosaurs in it.

"Oh. Wow, listen to this," she said, finding something that looked relevant. "'Sometimes these dinosaurs will eat stones they dig up from the ground or find in creek beds. Don't worry. This is normal! These stones, called gastroliths, help the dinosaurs digest their food since they aren't able to chew up grass and plants well enough to digest them with their single-chambered stomachs.' Huh. That's weird. Apparently most of them do it."

"Crocodiles do that too," Loki said. "Some of the oldest creatures on the planet, and they can't even chew their own food."

Darcy snorted. "Maybe that's their secret," she said. Replacing the brochure in her bag, she pulled out her phone and snapped some pictures, trying to get a clear shot through the thin film of mud that covered the perspex case.

A few of the other stegosauruses were digging up rocks as well, using their feet and beaks to pull them out of the ground. Darcy and Loki stayed at a respectful distance and watched for a long while, until the dinosaurs had eaten their fill of plants and rocks and began to move on a little more quickly. Deciding against following them, Darcy started poking at the screen, eventually getting it to zoom out so she could see what else was in the area.

"Here's some," she said, pointing to the bottom left of the screen.

Loki spun the hamsterball around, watching the screen to make sure he was going the right way with it. They came to the second herd after a few minutes, finding triceratopses instead, grazing and lying lazily in the morning sun. There were about a dozen – the same as the stegosauruses – all spread out over a wide area near a stand of short trees and thick bushes.

"Hey, what's that?" Darcy asked, looking at the screen again. One of the light blue dots was sitting still nearby. She couldn't see it outside, but judging by its position on the screen, she thought it might be in the bushes. "Maybe they're stuck."

"Then perhaps we should help," Loki said impishly.

He took the hamsterball away from the dinosaurs, in a wide arc toward the bushes. The plants had broad, wide leaves, but the stems were soft and gave way easily beneath the weight of the machine as they crashed through.

"I don't think we're supposed to be in here," Darcy said, wondering how badly the plants were being crushed.

"Then they shouldn't let these things go here," Loki reasoned.

The hamsterball stopped as it struck the other one in the dense leaves. Through the gaps in the foliage, Darcy could see the startled teenagers inside struggling to pull up their pants from their prehistoric blowjob in the bushes.

"Oh my god!" Darcy cried, cackling.

Loki laughed right along with her, and even bounced the hamsterball into the other one again. The teenagers quickly gave up on getting back into their pants and reversed away quickly.

"We should get out of here too," Darcy suggested, looking over her shoulder, almost expecting to see park security glaring at them.

"Yeah," Loki agreed, already backing out back the way they had come.

The fern-like plants were a little trampled, but it probably wasn't anything worse than what the dinosaurs did to them.

Darcy expected the ride to get automatically called back after a certain amount of time, but as they explored more and more of the area, it began to become more and more apparent that it truly was a free-for-all. It wasn't until she got a text from Jane that she realised they had been out there for an hour and a half, finding dinosaurs to gawp at, and occasionally other riders to harass. They slowly made their way back to the loading area, struggling to find the way even with the helpful map. Eventually, as they found the small gazebo, Darcy was struck by the sheer size of the line waiting to board the ride. It snaked up the path, clear to the monorail station, and Darcy wasn't surprised at all. Not when she had just spent as long as she had on the ride, without even meaning to.

She had to wait for Loki to get out first, watching him as he tried to pull his knee closer to his chest in order to get his feet out of the footwell. After a few tries, he gave up and just tumbled out head-first, and gracelessly crawling out. It rather put having to climb over the joystick into a strange perspective.

"You okay?" she asked when they were both out of the hamsterball and on their feet.

"Fine," Loki said, pretending that he couldn't hear the crowd beside them laughing.

The people in line were treated to an encore a few moments later, when Jane and Thor's hamster ball rolled up, and Thor wound up having to do the same thing to get out, crawling out on his hands before getting far enough away to get his feet out. Both he and Loki took a good long moment to stretch their muscles before starting to head back to the monorail station. As they passed by a guy about Loki's height, Loki reached out and tapped the guy on the arm.

"Good luck," he said, immediately wiping the grin off the guy's face.

"Did you guys see the stegosauruses?" Darcy asked as they made their way back to the monorail station.

"I can't believe nobody's been killed by those things!" Jane said, wide-eyed. "These kids actually got hit by one."

"Jesus Christ," Darcy said, though she wasn't exactly surprised. The ride had been fun, but it was a giant liability on every front. "I'm going to be putting together a video on this place pretty soon."

"I'm pretty sure we went where we weren't supposed to for a while," Jane said, lightly backhanding Thor in the chest. "There was an open gate, and this one had to go see what was on the other side."

Darcy gawped so hard, she nearly tripped over her own feet. "What the hell?" she asked. "The shopping carts at Wal-mart don't even let you leave the parking lot. How did you leave the ride area?"

Jane shrugged dramatically.

They climbed the stairs up to the monorail station, trying to shuffle past the crowd of people who were trying to decide if it was worth waiting in line for the Gyrospheres. Darcy wanted to just tell them all to save their time and get there first thing the next morning, but their car was coming and she didn't have time to get past thinking about how to put the words together. The four of them pushed their way through the crowd, barely making it onto the monorail car before the doors shut. Inside was standing room only, making Darcy wonder if the crowd was heavier than normal because of Christmas, or if Christmas actually saw a drop in attendance. She hoped that it was heavier than normal, because otherwise, she had no idea how the park would have coped with more people on the island.

"Where are we going next, Darcy?" Jane asked, almost having to shout over the crowd.

Darcy pulled out her map again, trying to unfold it without elbowing someone in the tit. "Uh. Oh! The safari!" she said, looking for the next interesting stop.

hr

The safari was far more thought out and practical. Rather than being rider-controlled like the Gyrospheres, the safari was more of a guided tour in a giant, ten-seat jeep. As they drove over the hilly terrain, Darcy leaned out through the open side of the jeep, watching a herd of sort of duck-billed looking dinosaurs off in the distance. She kept trying to get pictures, but the jeep was going so fast, all she got was blur, so she gave up.

"It looks like to the left is a small herd of edmontosaurus," the jeep driver announced a few seconds later. "We have two herds of edmontosaurus on the island – one with eight animals, and one with twelve."

Darcy quickly flipped through her park brochure to find more information on the dinosaurs, but the jeep was going too fast even for that, and the ride was far too bumpy to be able to read it very well. Too afraid she was going to lose the brochure to the wind, where it would be eaten and choked on by one of the animals, Darcy crammed it back into her bag with her phone and snapped it shut.

Darcy couldn't figure out why they needed to go so quickly until they came over the next hill, and straight into a stampede of tall, spindly dinosaurs that ran on their hind feet. As fast as the jeep was going, some of the dinosaurs were still faster. One of them ran past the jeep, so close Darcy could see how big it was – taller than the jeep by a few feet, and nearly as long. They hissed and shrieked loudly, the combined sounds of all of them running sounding like an unending thunder.

"Holy shit!" Darcy shouted as another one ran even closer to the jeep, letting out a loud cry. Darcy leaned into Loki where he sat beside her laughing, as if the entire thing were some giant joke.

Able to hear other people shouting in alarm, Darcy didn't feel too bad. She didn't even realise until the dinosaurs turned quickly to run in another direction that the driver was still talking. She had no idea what he'd said at all, and wasn't sure if she was sad to have missed it, or if he was just stating the obvious, like how huge they were.

The jeep followed a path over the field, coming eventually to another herd of dinosaurs, these ones with a single long, curved horn on the backs of their heads. These ones were just as tall as the dinosaurs that had run alongside the jeep, but almost twice as long, and when they heard the car coming their way, they all bolted as well. Again, the ground shook and the sound of heavy foot-beats and alarmed shrieking from both people and animals filled the air.

As the dinosaurs ran away, Darcy wished they could have got to see them a little closer. Maybe if the jeep hadn't been going so fast, she thought they might not have been spooked into running.

"I wish they didn't keep getting scared away," Darcy complained.

"I wonder how many of them die from stress," Loki said cynically.

Jane turned around in her seat to look back at Darcy. "What was that?" she asked.

"They keep running away from being chased," Darcy said. "I wanted to see them, not scare them away."

Jane gave her the sort of look that said she didn't know what to say.

"I know, stop complaining, we're seeing dinosaurs," Darcy said, knowing she was doing it again, and ignoring the amazing things that were happening all around her just to focus on the not-so-amazing things. "But it just feels like going to the zoo when all of the animals are hiding."

"You're at work," Jane chastised. "Come have fun with the rest of us."

Darcy sighed. "I'm trying," she said.

But Jane was right. Darcy did feel like she was still at work. But it seemed like she'd picked up a lot of hard-to-break habits while working several 16-hour shifts every week for three years. After putting together stories on scandals and conspiracies for so long, scandal and conspiracy was all she was able to see anywhere.

Taking a deep breath, she elbowed Loki in the side. "You need to do your job better," she told him.

"I'd like to know how it became my job in the first place," Loki said.

Darcy wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but it didn't really matter. He was right about that, too.