Return to Jurassic Park
4: TRANSITION

Part One: A Race to the Finish
April 1994: Continued

Epson sped through the jungle toward the helipad. It was only a few miles away and closeness of the trees to the path they drove would help to guard against attacks from the side.

After bringing the incubator back down from the roof of the lodge Epson and another man went and got two of the jeeps, somehow avoiding the raptors patrolling around. Of the eight men left, four of them took the first jeep and went ahead to prepare things at the helipad, while Epson and the other three loaded the large incubator into the back of the second jeep.

Epson slammed the brakes and caused the jeep to skid sideways, narrowly avoiding a large downed tree and sliding off the road in the process. Fortunately he didn't have to come to a complete stop. There was enough room to drive around the tree and Epson used the momentum of the jeep to keep going.

Epson stared ahead into the thinning fog, still luminescent from moonlight. Now that morning was approaching, visibility in the fog was increasing. There was a roar off to Epson's right, but it was unimportant. The only thing that mattered was getting to the helipad.

Epson's jeep burst from the jungle a quarter mile from the electrified gate that allowed access to the helipad – and stopped.

The two guys in the back seat stood up to get a better view, but what they saw was real and undeniable.

The Rex had come out of the jungle at the same time as them and charged the helipad, where the large chopper was waiting, blades still spinning down.

In a matter of seconds the Rex had charged across the clearing and smashed into the large generator that had been setup outside the fence, sending it through the repaired section of the fence. They watched as the chopper blades began to spin faster and the generator slid across the platform, narrowly missing the chopper, and fell into the river below.

The Rex, having not lost momentum, charged up onto the platform and grabbed the chopper by the slowly spinning blades and jerked it sideways.

Epson saw the first of the platform supports give way and come free from the ground. After that it was like watching dominoes fall as the platform collapsed, and the Rex and chopper fell into the river. From the jeep they heard the Rex roar in surprise.

Part Two: Rebuilding from the Ashes
May 1997:

Tina Bowman walked through the LAX terminal. At sixteen years old this was her first flight across the country alone. Her parents had wanted to come with her, but she wanted to do this alone.

Her parents worried about her, and with good reason in their minds. To them she was obsessed with nothing. But eight years ago the doctors' answers seemed wrong, misinformed. Even to her, an eight-year-old girl. The doctors seemed like they didn't know what to make of the drawing and of the information she gave them, but were too full of pride to admit that they knew nothing.

"A basiliscus amoratus" Guitierrez had told them. Some of the physical details were wrong, but it could have been nothing else. Later she found out that in another part of the country a nurse had chased off three lizards from a patient's room. All that the lizards left were three toed tracks.

And so, after redrawing the image, Tina began to write and fax various reptile experts the details she had. All of them had theories. A previously undiscovered variety of lizard that had been driven from the Costa Rican jungles. A mutation of the amoratus lizard. The list went on and on.

But after a month her parents told her she should stop. They said she shouldn't be obsessed with something as mundane as a new form of lizard. And besides, Tina was to go back to school soon and should focus her attention there.

It wasn't until 1992 that her interest in the subject was rekindled.

September 1992:

Tina scribbled in the last part of the shadow beneath the lizard. Eleven years old and already she was a terrific artist. Several of her drawings had won awards in local competitions, and one was mentioned in a local paper, the Fort Worth Star.

Tina held the drawing up for a second, getting a different perspective on it, then stuck it beneath the clear plastic that covered her binder. She had decided to make the lizard in the drawing more fierce. It was in a running position, one foot in front of the other, the tail rigid behind, and the body leaned forward.

Chris, the boy that sat next to her, leaned over and looked at the drawing. "Wow, nice drawing."

Tina smiled. " Thank you." At their age girls and boys usually hung out with their own kind, but Tina and Chris were like brother and sister, although they didn't see each other outside of school.

Chris cocked his sideways to get a better look at it, scrutinizing it. "What dinosaur is that?"

Dinosaur? How could this be a dinosaur? Everybody knew dinosaurs were extinct. "What do you mean?" Where Tina was interested in acting, Chris was into dinosaurs. He would occasionally tell her of a movie he watched where a dinosaur at some prehistoric cavemen or of some dinosaur species he had recently read about. Most recently he had told her of a book by a man named Alan Grant, a paleontologist.

"Well, it looks like a dinosaur."

"No," Tina said. "This is a lizard I saw when I went to Costa Rica several years back."

Chris shook his head, looking at the picture. "I don't know. Are you sure you got a good look at it?"

"Yeah. It was at the edge of a beach in the middle of the day. It came out from some mangrove roots and walked up my arm. Besides, I thought dinosaurs were supposed to be large."

"Well, some of them were," Chris said. "There were also some that were small, about the size of a cat or a chicken."

"Do you know what it is?"

"I think it's a compy. That's short for comp-something or another."

Tine gave a short laugh. "Compsomethingoranother? I doubt that's a dinosaur."

"You know, my dad works for the museum as a paleontologist. He's one reason that I'm into dinosaurs."

Tina thought for a moment. "No, I did not know that."

"Well, Dad is supposed to pick me up today and take me to the museum. They got some new raptor bones and Dad promised I could see them."

"Raptor?"

"Yeah." Chris smiled real big. "Velociraptor, one of the fiercest predators to walk the face of the earth. But I wasn't going to talk about that. I was going to suggest that you show that drawing to Dad after school today."

Tina thought for a moment. She felt a little stupid for not having thought it a dinosaur, or at least some distant relative.

...

Ian Malcolm sat on the hood of the blue Mustang. Next to him was Mike Gartin, a local paleontologist in Dallas at the Natural Museum of History. In the past year they had struck up a friendship of sorts.

It was a chance meeting. Malcolm was returning from Costa Rica, having been there more than a year in the hospital. Malcolm was flying to Dallas and his plane had a stopover in San Antonio. Gartin was on business down in San Antonio and was catching the flight to get back to Dallas the same day.

Gartin recognized Malcolm on sight, and indeed occupied the seat next to him. Malcolm thought at first that Gartin was probably another fan that didn't know shit about anything he was going to say. It turned out, however, that Gartin had done research on the subject of chaos theory. In his research Gartin had read a paper written by Malcolm on chaos theory back in the middle eighties. Then another one about two years ago where Malcolm applied Chaos Theory to the running of a resort. The resort was not any resort, but an island inhabited by dinosaurs. Complete with tours and rides.

Gartin had thought the idea amusing, but still a practical idea that could happen with real life animals. The conversation they had on the short flight to Dallas that afternoon and given Malcolm some respect for this paleontologist. And since then Malcolm had called him up several times to discuss possibilities. Malcolm needed information on dinosaurs and Gartin was the best person for that at the moment. And he was also someone that Malcolm could get along with.

Now, Malcolm sat on the hood of the Mustang and watched as Chris walked from the school toward them, chatting with a young girl. Malcolm had met Chris once before when Mike went to pick Chris up from school, which he did fairly frequently. Malcolm squinted, studying her face.

"Hey, Dad," Chris said as he and the girl walked up to them.

"Hi, Chris. You remember Dr. Malcolm, don't you?"

"Sure do." Chris stuck out his hand and Malcolm shifted his cane to shake it. "Nice to see you again."

"Ditto," Malcolm said.

Chris turned to the girl. "Tina, this is my father, Mike, and a friend, Ian Malcolm."

Tina shook hands with each of them, introducing herself. "Tina Bowman, nice to meet you."

Bowman. Why was that name familiar to Malcolm?

"Show Dad that drawing," Chris said to Tina.

Tina reached into her backpack and removed a small three-ring-binder with a drawing stuck in the front. She handed it to Gartin and Malcolm shifted his position to see the drawing. Immediately he recognized it for what it was. The animal in the drawing was perhaps more fierce looking than the real thing, but it was unmistakably a compy. Right down to the coloring of its skin.

"I was wondering what kind of lizard this was. For years nobody's been able to give me a straight answer. When I got through drawing this today Chris said it looked like a dinosaur. What was it you called it?"

"A compy," Chris said.

Mike nodded. "That's what this looks like. The body's a little slimmer than I might have imagined, but it is unmistakably a compsognathus."

No, Malcolm thought, she had it just right. Maybe even a little overweight.

"Where'd you get the idea for the coloring?" Gartin asked.

"This is a lizard," Tina said, pointing to the drawing, "I saw down in Costa Rica about three years back. All the lizard experts said it had to be, uh, what did they call it? Bas-Basil-"

"A basiliscus amoratus," Malcolm finished.

Tina, Chris, and Mike looked at Malcolm.

"Yeah," Tina said. "That's it."

"Are you familiar with it?" Gartin asked.

"Yes, I am," Malcolm said. "And I can tell you the experts are wrong. This is not a basiliscus amoratus. I'm not so sure that it's a compy either."

"With the distinctive shape," Gartin ran his finger along the drawing, "what else can it be? And how do you know of them?"

"Well, when I was down in Costa Rica, a man by the name of Guitierrez came to visit me."

"Doctor Guitierrez?" Tina broke in. "Spoke with a southern accent?"

Malcolm nodded. "Yes, that's him. Anyway, among the things we talked about, when I was lucid that is, he mentioned that there were various reports of amoratus attacks all along the west coast of the country. Some of them had even been killed, and one of their bodies had been sent to him for identification. I don't really know much more than that."

"That's where I saw mine," Tina said. "A beach on the west coast of Costa Rica."

Tina looked at her watch. "Well, I guess it's time I get home." Gartin handed the binder back to Tina, who stuck it in her backpack again. She shook hands with Gartin and Malcolm and then left.

Tina Bowman, Malcolm thought. So this was the girl that Guitierrez had told him about.