Getting close to the end now...


Wu.

"As all properly educated beings know," Loong Fuchan began, "we live in a vast, probably infinite labyrinth of universes, a multiverse filled with possibilities and alternate realities."

Wu nodded. "I'm familiar with that Many-Worlds theory. And now I'm one of the few human beings to have actually seen the proof for myself," he wryly smiled as he looked back over at the sizzling M.I.N.D. Machine.

"In yours," Loong Fuchan said, "65 million years ago, a great asteroid, the size of the largest mountain on your planet, collided with the Earth in what your species calls the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico."

Mount Everest, Wu thought. Or Manhattan.

"Yes, the Alvarez impact theory," he replied. "Postulated by Walter and Luis Alvarez on the basis of unusually high concentrations of the heavy metal iridium in end-Cretaceous sediments, as well as shocked quartz granules, tektites, and microspheres of glass. I wasn't aware that the impact site was in the Yucatan however," he added in interest. "It makes sense though, considering that the tektites and shocked quartz are most abundant in deposits from the Caribbean area."

"The impact shattered, vaporized both the asteroid and hundreds of your cubic miles of stone, flinging it into your earth's atmosphere, heating the very air to incandescence for several hours as red-hot stones and other ejecta fell back to earth, setting off massive wildfires, while the shock waves triggered violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions."

Loong Fuchan paused, hanging his head with great sadness as he went on.

"Naturally, during those terrible first several hours before the planet's atmosphere began to cool at last, any living creatures who couldn't take shelter burned to death, were roasted alive…including most dinosaurs."

"Some did manage to make it through of course, as buried eggs, lucky individuals who had the presence of mind and luck to seek shelter in a cave, or were in an area experiencing heavy rainfall or snow when the asteroid hit. But they were soon finished off by longer-term effects of the great collision."

"Like global dimming," Wu replied. "And severe genetic bottlenecks, inability to find mates, things like that."

"Exactly," Loong Fuchan said gravely. "Only the birds survived to carry on our glorious legacy."

"It didn't help that we were already in dire straits at that time," Toswai added. "There was a high degree of volcanic activity occurring at the time as well, producing toxins, changing the climate, harming vegetation…"

"And the asteroid was the deathblow," Wu said knowingly. "But in this strange other version of earth, the killer asteroid missed by that much, and at least some of you non-avian dinosaurs pulled through."

"Yes," Loong Fuchan said. "We lived on. In time, some of us evolved high intelligence."

"And it was us maniraptors who were the first!" Toswai declared proudly in glee.

"In time though, all dinosaurs became intelligent beings. We became civilized too, abandoning our base aggressive tendencies, our greed, transformed ourselves into a wise and philosophical race, bettering the world around us and our condition. A thousand years ago, we were also able to extract the DNA of our forefathers and clone them, which is why you see dinosaurs from all different time periods coexisting."

"Well, it looks to me like you've done a superb job," Wu replied. "I was convinced this place was heaven for a reason when I awoke here, after all. And I still feel that way. But how did I get here? And why?"

Loong Fuchan just gave him an otherworldly, peaceful smile. "Why do you ask if you already know the answer?"

Wu's mind raced. "You used your own M.I.N.D. Machine to capture my soul, awareness, whatever you'd call it after I died in my world, right? Then you kept it in some sort of stasis, I suppose, while you somehow got my actual corpse from the park in my world, brought it here, and fixed it, healed it, until it was healthy and functioning. Then it was lights back on for Dr. Wu."

"Your guess about your consciousness was correct," Loong Fuchan replied. "But not your flesh-and-blood body. What the pair of the very raptors you cloned did to it can never be undone. But I am a geneticist too, keep in mind," he hinted, before Wu could say anything.

Overwhelmed by the idea, Wu felt a chill go through his body-his cloned body!-as he suddenly glanced down at his thighs, his stomach, felt his heart beat, felt and patted his ribs, his face, his thick hair, his shoulders, his collarbones.

It couldn't be! Everything felt right, normal, like the skin he'd been in all his life.

"You mean to tell me…" he said lowly, struggling to accept and understand, "that I'm living in an identical twin of myself right now?!"

"Precisely," Loong Fuchan confirmed.

"What in fiery hell!" Wu shrieked as he leapt to his feet, staring at his hands, arms, then at both scientists. "But how? How did you get my DNA to do the procedure with? How did you grow and age this body to its early thirties?"

"I think you know where we got it," Toswai replied. "When you died in your universe, it was rather messy, let's just say. When Muldoon, knowing you were beyond help, shut the door to the Safari Lodge, and the raptors left you to chase Ellie-"

"She got away from them, didn't she?" Wu asked desperately. "Please tell me that my death served that much purpose, at least."

"She escaped successfully," Loong Fuchan assured him. "With some timely help from Harding."

Wu felt his new body sag back into the chair with relief. "Thank Christ. And thank you two in advance."

"Kindnesses are welcome," Tosawi smiled.

"At that moment," Loong Fuchan said, "when there would be no risk of being seen or attacked by the feral ones, we sent another brave scientist, a Compsognathus known as Kurt, there through with this, our own M.I.N.D. Machine, one far more advanced than the one created by Bertram Phillips. He used a scalpel to cut loose a piece of your muscle tissue…" The dinosaur let it hang.

"And then you had plenty of my DNA to work with."

"Yes," Tosawi confirmed. "We used an artificial womb, then all types of other complex treatments, to produce different clones of you, aging them with hormone treatments…until we achieved a result that was the mirror image of the one you were born to. We brought your consciousness out of stasis, sent it into that chosen body with the machine, and here you are."

"Well, thank you," Wu told them in breathless gratitude. "Thank all of you so much for giving me a second body and a second chance. But why is it scarred like this? Why does it look like I survived-my last moments, when my true body actually didn't?"

"It is wounded and scarred," Loong Fuchan replied, "because, as risky and illogical as it was, once we had several potential bodies ready, one of our colleagues deliberately, in the same clinical and exact way each time, inflicted the same wounds upon them with his natural weapons that the pair of raptors caused on you at your death. Which we then immediately treated, of course."

Wu felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he shot a fearful glance at Toswai.

"Not me," the Deinonychus said. "I'm too small for that. The colleague of ours who did it will be known later as an Achillobator in your world. You and the other people at the park called them Velociraptor because you knew no differently."

"My God!" Wu exclaimed in shock as he looked at the dinosaurs, then raised his T-shirt to look at the healed stomach slash, then at the dinosaurs again, voice low as he snapped, "What the hell was going on in your heads when you decided to do that?! You obviously had to understand how stupid and dangerous that was, that even with prompt medical attention, there was no guarantee the clones of me would survive that shock and trauma, so what possessed you to do such a thing?!"

"We know," Toswai said. "And indeed, we lost one good body from complications."

"But it was necessary," Loong Fuchan supplied, "for the scars are there to remind you for the rest of your days of the cost of being blind, of knowledge without wisdom, of not anticipating and respecting the power of the formidable and unfamiliar creatures your hand brought back into the world."

Anger flared up in Wu, although he knew the Iggy was right.

"Don't you dare start talking like Malcolm at me," he hissed angrily as he got to his feet. "Sorry to speak ill of the dead, but Nedry's the one who kicked off the great big clusterfuck by turning the power off to steal embryos, and Hammond set the entire stage for it by trying to be cheap with his billions, have everything he could be automated, run on computers with precious few experienced people to step in if something went wrong, not having effective, lethal weapons, thinking electric fences and other barriers would be enough to keep the dinosaurs contained, having the park located far out at sea where it's difficult to get assistance in any amount of time, and a whole lot of other things. I tried to warn him, Muldoon tried to warn him, Malcolm tried to warn him…but he just would not listen and use some common sense, thinking that the whole park, the whole system, was perfectly safe and sound, when it was anything but!"

"That may be so, that Hammond was primarily responsible for the disaster by his attitude and choices," Loong Fuchan replied as he met Wu's gaze, "but with all due respect to you Henry, disasters are made by the collective choices of many people, seldom just a few. There is always freedom to make decisions, and it also takes two to tango, as some of your species say."

Another flash of petulant rage welled up within Wu then-and suddenly he remembered something Patience had told him in regards to the same topic. Stop thinking everything's peaches and cream, Henry, because it isn't.

Wu reluctantly mentally rolled back the carpet to look at what lay underneath. It made him slump in contriteness and shame. There were some things he'd turned away from, been too proud and confident about the animals he'd created to admit or take into account. And it had cost him his life.

Slowly, he looked back up at the Iguanodon, expecting to be chided or rebuked.

But Loong Fuchan's wise eyes were gentle and compassionate.

"There is no need for concern," he told him. "I have no desire for anything other than to help make you see. I wouldn't cause you any further anguish beyond what you've unintentionally brought on yourself."

But remorse and the understanding of his culpability still coursed through Wu's cloned veins. One thing that particularly stabbed at the geneticist was the thought of all the young dinosaurs he or another technician had put to sleep, killed, all because they didn't look the way he felt they should, act the way they should, conform to the expectations of visitors. And then there was his proposal of Version 4.4-which now, after having spent days in the body of a dinosaur himself, seemed to Wu disturbingly like The Final Solution of the Nazis.

He was astonished Tosawi and Loong Fuchan didn't despise him with a passion for such crimes against their fellow dinosaurs. He felt he certainly would have if he'd been in their place. Could they even hate at all?

"Oh, we can," Loong Fuchan said. "Any creature can. But to judge and hate is easy. Forgiving and understanding though, takes maturity and strength."

Wu nodded. "So," he said at length, "what are you going to do with me, now that you're given me a new, living body? Send me back to the island, I'd assume."

"No," Tosawi said regretfully, shaking her head. "There's no going back I'm afraid."

"And although Zane and Patience already told you, this is a huge reason why," Loong Fuchan said.

Suddenly, Henry Wu found himself in a horrible vision, back on an Isla Nublar where chaos and destruction and slaughter reigned. Helicopters wheeled and shot over his head, the sound of their rotors astonishingly loud. Machine guns sputtered, the jackhammering of their bullets like thunder. Huge fireballs exploded into the air like falling suns as the island was carpet bombed. Dinosaurs-his dinosaurs!-roared and honked and screamed in agony and panic as the bullets remorselessly tore into their hides, were blown to pieces, lit on fire by napalm, their own flesh crisping and falling away. Another white flash, and Henry Wu saw the genetics lab vanish into shrapnel. Destroyed, along with all his hard-fought successes, the fruits of such exacting labors.

He squeezed his eyes shut. "No more, please! Just make it quit! Make it go away!" It felt as if his heart was being ripped from his chest, like he was seeing his own children being slaughtered.

As quickly as it had come, the horrible scene ended. Wu felt physically sick as he laid back in the chair, trembling and fighting back tears of anguish and loss and defeat.

Loong Fuchan approached him then, and placed his hand on Wu's scalp.

When the Iguanodon touched his skin, Wu suddenly felt the same serenity that filled the dinosaur's eyes, a profound compassion and sympathy, seem to come out of his soul, a stream that went directly into his own and soothed him.

He gave a shaky breath and looked up again as the Iggy backed away.

"It wasn't easy to have to show you that," Loong Fuchan said gently. "We knew it would induce terrible pain. But do you understand that you needed to see it for yourself?"

Wu gravely nodded. "No more future in any way, shape or form for me on Isla Nublar or with InGen."

"Nor anywhere else in your entire world," Toswai added. "And I think you know why, Henry."

He nodded.

"It is a very sad thing, about humans," Loong Fuchan said, "that all too often, they fear and hate and attack things and those that they don't understand."

Those were words that resonated deeply with Henry Wu. Being Chinese-American, he knew all too well something of what the dinosaur was talking about.

"Yes," he agreed sadly. "And if I was found alive anywhere back in my world…one way or another, the Costa Rican government would get a hold of me, and prosecute me to the fullest extent of the law. With Hammond dead, they'd unleash all their anger at what happened, the lies they'd been told, the irresponsibility they perceived in our actions, squarely on me. I'd be locked up for a long time, and probably never be able to find work in the genetics field again."

"There's no going back," Toswai repeated. "Only going forward."

"And that's why you find yourself here," Loong Fuchan said. "I know the questions you are asking, Henry. Why you? Why did we go to all this trouble? Why should we, in the Dinoverse, care whether you live or die? Why have you been spared?"

"They definitely crossed my mind," Wu admitted. Spooky, how much the dinosaur could tell about him.

"We're both selfish in our own way," Loong Fuchan said smoothly. "You signed on to Hammond's project because you wanted to make your mark, be respected and saluted among your fellow scientists, achieve what anyone else would say couldn't be done, and bring the fantastic, magnificent beasts which so enthralled you as a child back to life."

"Well, I certainly won't deny that," Wu admitted. "But what's in this for you, by keeping me around?"

"Making you a means to an end. While it's too late for the dinosaurs you created on Nublar, what you did there, you can also do with the right support in another. You have a brilliant, beautiful mind, Henry. Too good and too valuable to be allowed to slip away forever into oblivion. And we here have need of it."

"You mean that you want me to serve you here, in the Dinoverse?"

"No," Toswai replied. "We want you to be the pivot point, the catalyst for the birth of a new world, one that marries both this one, and that of humans."

Wu looked at her in confusion. "But how-"

"Humans are a flawed species," Loong Fuchan said. "But there is so much potential in your race, so much light, so much that is worthy."

"And it is a true sadness that you have to live alone on your planet in your brilliance, a species that is unspeakably lonely in its cosmic solitude," Toswai said, commiserating.

"But you could change that, Henry," Loong Fuchan said. "You could bring dinosaurs back to life a second time, on another Earth…and then, in time, utilizing proper respect and care every step of the way, plant the seeds of a new Dinoverse in them, an intelligence which would flower into a world where two races of intelligent beings, human and uplifted dinosaur, live side by side as equals."

"So, you want me to play God for you. You want me to be like John the Baptist, working and preparing the way for the coming of this new kingdom you've envisioned with my petri dishes and syringes and pipettes and unfertilized chicken eggs."

"Yes. You see now?"

Wu was silent for a time.

"Right now, let's not count our intelligent dinosaurs before they've hatched," he said. "At this moment, I'm just delighted enough to still have any future at all before I start looking that far ahead."

"But I have some questions though. For one thing, what sort of alternate Earth are you planning to send me to, if I can't go back to my own?"

Loong Fuchan gave a soft smile. "Perhaps that might ring a bell for you," he said, gesturing at the M.I.N.D Machine.

Wu immediately understood. Where Wetherford is, he thought. It made perfect sense, and warmed him. He'd have an adult friend right away in Mr. London. He'd also have Will and Zane for company too. And of course, Patience.

"That's right," Toswai said. "Wetherford, Montana, whose high school, at the end, became a nexus between realities, a house of doors…at least, until one of our great scientists made everything right there again, and his own student counterpart became one with that great nexus, seeking to heal all the scarred realities."

Wu found himself blinking in incomprehension as he stared at the talking Deinonychus.

"May you live in interesting times indeed," he muttered. "Wow. Things most certainly haven't been dull there, that's plain to see. Now I almost want to go there just to find out more about the other insane things that happened."

"You're welcome to satisfy your curiosity then," Loong Fuchan replied, indicating the M.I.N.D Machine.

Wu decided to stand up and hesitantly, took a few steps toward it.

"All right. But-expecting me to just show up in Wetherford and take up where I left off…it's not that simple, guys. I'll need a roof over my head, a way to support myself, to rent a place and buy food, clothing, pay my bills, and all the other essentials."

"And to make things even more complicated, I'm going to be the legal equivalent of a ghost in the machine there. No birth certificate, no Social Security number, no driver's license, no fingerprint records, no-"

Wu was brought up short when he saw the faint smiles of amusement spread across the faces of both dinosaurs.

"What?" he said baffled. "I'm very grateful to be alive, I really am, but this still isn't a laughing matter. It could take me years to sort all these problems out-years I'm sure you'd much rather see me using to make a second Jurassic Park a reality."

"Look in your wallet," Loong Funchan smiled.

Taking the black billfold of crocodile hide out of the right pocket of his shorts, Wu noted a distinct thickness, a stiffness underneath the leather.

The first thing he saw were stiff cards. Astonishment came over Wu as he looked at the first one. It had a dimmed background showing jungle-covered covered hills, and a great volcano spewing an umbrella of dark ash into a blue sky. His face looked back at him from the upper left. Below was his signature, printed and cursive. His Costa Rican driver's license. Looking at the expiration date, he saw with bafflement that it was marked as 5-16-2001. That was quite a bit farther into the future than the 1991 he'd been familiar with.

But then he remembered that the machine and their four companions had come from ten years into his future. It might be interesting to see how things had progressed since then, he supposed.

In the main pocket of the wallet, to Wu's astonishment, he saw cash too. Hundred-dollar bills, fifteen in all. That was probably enough to get by on until he could find himself a steady job. More than enough.

He looked up at them in amazement and confusion.

"We told you that the Dinoverse contains machines which can make nearly anything, didn't we?" Loong Fuchan said.

"They even produce lab-grown meat," Toswai added, "so that flesh-eaters like me don't need to kill or spill blood."

"As for the other documents you'll need," the Iguanodon added, "just look no further than that nearby chair."

Turning, Wu saw a thin briefcase sitting on other chair. He didn't need to be told to go open it and inspect the contents.

A birth certificate that gave his date of arrival on the blue planet as May 16th, 1970, not 1956. A forged high school diploma. A bogus undergraduate diploma. A perfect replica of his graduate degree from Stanford. And several blocks of fifty-dollar bills.

Wu couldn't help but grin. It was like something from a James Bond movie.

"I see you were nice enough to even shave off three years," he smiled in pleasure. "Are you certain that they'll hold up to scrutiny? I can't tell any obvious differences myself, but I'm sure there might be things an electronic scanner or something might pick up…"

"There aren't," Loong Fuchan replied. "We've tested them and been very exacting. You have no problems to worry about."

Wu nodded as he placed all the documents needed to begin a new adult life on a new earth back in the suitcase and shut it with a click, breathing deep as he grabbed the handle and turned to look at the machine, then at the dinosaur scientists.

"Well," he said acceptingly, a bit nervously, "I suppose this is the part where you show me the door and we bid adieu. Not that I have any other choice in the matter."

"You are always free to choose," Toswai said gently. "That thought is a deeply alarming one…but also very beautiful."

"But you really should be going, yes," Loong Fuchan said. "Not just to finish your story and fulfill the task we hope you'll undertake on our behalf one day, but also for your own sake. As exhilarating and peaceful and extraordinary as the Dinoverse may be…humans like you need the touch, voice, and companionship of their own kind."

Wu nodded in understanding. It was time to surrender himself to the machine.

"Yes. Thank you. Both of you. I'll never forget this, how you took the time and the effort and I'm sure, a good deal of money to give me a second chance, the destiny I deserve, the chance to get to the finish line. I'll never take it for granted, I promise."

He then gratefully extended his free right hand to both of them.

Toswai and Loong Fuchan glanced at his proffered hand, surprised, then at each other, visibly baffled.

"Don't you dinosaurs ever shake hands?"

Loong Fuchan grunted a negative. "We're fully aware that humans engage in that custom, but no, we don't shake hands."

"Well, there's a first time for everything," Wu smiled as he offered it to the Iguanodon.

Timidly, Loong Fuchan reached out, looking into Wu's eyes as the geneticist felt the scaly digits of the dinosaur's hand wrap around his own.

He formally pumped it three times. The Iguanodon's forward-facing eyes widened with delight, and his beak opened in a grin.

"Toswai," he told his colleague, "this is amazing! You can feel the utter trust and good will he expresses with this act! It's delightful!"

The Deinonychus made herself do the same, carefully making sure not to hurt Wu with her hand claws as he grasped her feathered wrist and shook twice.

They got an even better joyful new experience when Henry Wu then hugged each of them in pure gratitude, a depth of thankfulness and jubilation no amount of words could accurately delve into.

And now he was as ready as he could make himself, clutching the suitcase handle tightly as he faced the machine. The idea was both terrifying and invigorating.

Was he strong enough to do this? Could he stand being cast so utterly off from everything he'd come to love and know?

"You'll be strong enough," Loong Fuchan assured him. "The wonderful thing about us frail, mortal creatures is that we're so much tougher than we look."

"We have to be," Wu replied simply.

"But that's also exactly why life finds a way," Toswai said profoundly.

He thought of all the people he'd miss, the people he'd leave behind, never see again. His mother. His father. His brother and sisters. His friends from elementary school, high school, college, graduate school, the people he'd directed and worked with, hung out with, at Jurassic Park.

It was a hard and bitter pill to swallow.

But his parents, he was sure, would understand, if they could only know about this momentous decision. In both Buddhism and Taoism, a person became better, wiser, more enlightened and spiritually powerful by learning to let go, to rid themselves of attachments and boldly striding forward into the promise of the future with determination and hope.

"This may be asking a lot," Wu said quietly, not turning around as he addressed both the dinosaurian scientists. "But if you can, could you somehow influence things so that my remains-the body I was born to-get a dignified send-off and resting place? He-we-suffered terribly at the end."

"We'll do what we can," Loong Fuchan promised him.

Once more, Henry Wu looked intently at the gateway, the upgraded machine that was patiently awaiting his will and surrender.

He longingly held the faces and voices of family and friends in his mind for a time, affectionately regarding each one. He'd miss them immensely.

But then he thought of the future waiting for him, one where he wouldn't be entirely alone. He thought of Zane. Of Will. Of Robert London. And of Patience, whose life had intertwined with his in friendship, and then familial love.

For some reason, a snatch of the song Zane had been singing with Nedry after the drenching rains had finally quit came to him then: Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.

As if to give him that final extra helping of reassurance, Wu then received a sort of stream of knowledge that seeped into him from his Iguanodon alter ego.

While the dinosaurs on Nublar were dead, the ones on Sorna, Site B, wouldn't be found. Six years later, Ian Malcolm would come to that island, with Sarah Harding, Eddie Carr, Jack Thorne, and two children, Arby Benton and Kelly Curtis, to rescue a man named Richard Levine. Another group from BioSyn would too though, led by Lewis Dodgson himself.

Malcolm and most of his group, except for Eddie, would survive their adventure of Sorna with its dinosaurs, sailing to the safety of the mainland in a boat, with the island's radio and wireless network being tapped into by their own equipment so that they could later study the dinosaurs remotely.

Three months later, in a calculated group decision, knowing that the Costa Rican military was turning up the heat in their search for the place where the dinosaur bodies were coming from, Levine and Malcolm would make a preemptive declaration, an announcement to the world about Isla Sorna and the once-vanished, awe-inspiring giants that were calling it home. And the human race would know, that the fantasy once hidden and rumored about was actually real, giving a collective cry of delight and excitement.

Red-faced but pragmatic, the Costa Rican government would have no choice but to play the wallflower, and later, in response to some major diplomatic and international arm-twisting, backed up by innumerable pleas and petitions, designate Isla Sorna as a research preserve with limited tourism access.

In the ruins of the labs, people would find print outs, files, photos, floppy disks, Post-It notes, and other abundant evidence to bear testimony of what had been done on both islands to bring the magnificent terrible lizards in all their grandeur and diversity back from oblivion, and that the architect of the great miracle had a name which would become immortal: Dr. Henry Wu. Even though it would be posthumous in that world, he would've made his mark, achieved respect.

Wu found himself giving a serene smile. Now it was time to do it in a second world, one where he'd still be around to see it come to fruition, enjoy and revel in the results first hand.

Life's like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending.

But all that really didn't seem to matter much anymore. Now, Wu knew that it was ultimately so much better to just be alive, to feel one's heart beating, to stand in the sunlight, to see and touch, to draw breath and feel hot and cold, pleasure and pain. And to experience love.

He knew someone would be waiting on the other side who already loved him.

I've always wanted a dad, Henry.

"I'm ready," he told the M.I.N.D. machine in Cantonese. It understood.

Tendrils of blue-white lightning reached out as he clutched the suitcase's handle in an iron grip. They encircled him, flowed through his body, pulled it toward the epicenter as the machine formed the lightning into a corridor of blinding royal blue light. Wu didn't fight it. He'd given the device permission, and it would do the rest.

He closed his eyes and tensed as his body met the light-

For several seconds, the electric hurricane of the machine was abruptly no more. For a few, surpassingly peaceful moments, Wu found himself standing on the African savanna, the sky completely covered in black clouds from which rain poured down, but no drops touched him. Before him was a great herd of elephants, grazing, trumpeting in joy, swinging their trunks, embracing their calves and herd mates, rolling and kicking in the wet dirt on their sides. It was a place filled with their gentle, comforting rumbles, the sweet smells of rain and grass and the elephants, the darkness of the clouds pierced by several brilliant fingers of light, in some of which rainbows shone.

Wu never forgot the wild bliss and joy that leapt up inside him at that moment, nor the certainty that he was seeing in the elephants the type of creatures human beings could be, if only they'd cast aside their pettiness and primitive, low impulses of anger, mistrust and greed, a picture of the world that his dinosaurian counterpart wanted him to see, a universe where there was dazzling light and hope behind the darkness, countering it….couldn't he see it through the gaps in the clouds, in the rainbows?

Then he was gone, to another place in a multiverse full of possibilities.


Once more, just take my word for it that all three of our scientists here are speaking in Cantonese throughout this chapter.

Just three chapters left until the finish!