Next morning, Isla Sorna: "That could've gone better," Jake remarked offhand as he sat at a staff meeting with Henry, Lori, Bobbie, Nicolette, and Sam. There had been quite a loud uproar after Sam officially announced what had happened to Jurassic Park and the changes they were going to implement on Site B accordingly and it had only died down after everyone got too tired to keep arguing. That and they all knew that Sam was only a messenger and just trying to watch out for everyone by making changes in the first place.
"And you didn't help matters either," Bobbie accused of Nicolette. Nikki bristled at that comment.
"They asked me for a genuine appraisal of InGen's situation and I gave them one," she responded harshly as if she had done nothing wrong. "I choose not to sugar coat things because that can only lead to problems in the long run if the truth ends up sounding much worse. I also warned them that it was only an answer based on what little information I had. If they took it badly, that's their problem."
Sam grumbled something at that but didn't make an actual statement about her increasingly negative attitude about things. But such an attitude was nothing out of the ordinary for her and they just had to grin and bear it because they couldn't make hiring or firing decisions based on the secrecy of the islands. Only Samantha could do that and she was in San Diego and technically Nicolette had done nothing wrong.
"What's done is done, so now we have to move on," he finally declared. "Jake, Lori, Henry, I know the plan is to keep Embryonics Administration and the egg production plants online, but if you could determine a minimum work output so we can divert the extra energy elsewhere so we can use less fuel, I'd appreciate it."
"Will do," said Lori jotting down some notes for later.
"Bobbie, with all the craziness going on, I feel as though we're neglecting you. Is there anything you need or want to say?" asked Sam. Bobbie shrugged lightly.
"I'm well stocked with supplies and thankfully accidents around here have been few and far between as of late. That being said, if those fences go down then that will change real fast," she replied. "Right now I'm trying to get my staff ready in case that day ever comes."
"Nicolette, what've you got as far as preliminary analyses regarding power failure?" asked Sam next. Nicolette looked over her notes.
"I'll spare you the complicate statistical analyses and just simply say that with the current fuel consumption along with current supplies assuming no replenishment that the fences will fail in approximately ninety seven days," she said as looks of dread fell over the rest in the room. "The first fences to go will be the farthest ones from the power generators and then encroach inwards until they're all gone. The time between the first fence failing and the last will be seven hours. Following complete failure, it stands to reason that the Velociraptors, Deinonychosaurs, Dimetrodons, and Tyrannosaurus Rexes will be the first to break free of their enclosures within a couple hours following that."
"Not the Spino?" asked Jake a little surprised.
"The bars around its enclosure were specifically designed to stop it from escaping even in the case of complete power failure," Nicolette reminded him. "In time, with repeated attempts to break free and the natural aging of the fences themselves, it could very well escape, but that would not be for at least a few months to a year. I also do not see the pterodactyls escaping their enclosure either for that matter unless the cage is unlocked."
Sam nodded his head at that. "I'm also looking into what power we could save by laying out electric tracks and using the tour vehicles we have. Tim assures me it would be pretty simple to put in new destinations once the track is initialized in the system."
"And none of what happened the last time?" Lori asked, needing reassurance.
"He said they pretty much got the OS fixed on Nublar. There might be some small problems with grinding gears and lights, but no runaway tour vehicles," Sam replied as he took a sip of his coffee.
"Speaking of Tim, he's now basically the de facto lead of the programming team with Sheila now second in command," Henry pointed out. "So shouldn't he be at these meetings?"
"I suppose. But for now I'm not really sure what he'd get out of them. The control room needs to stay operational no matter what happens," Sam said dismissively. "Beyond just this meeting, we're going to have departmental breakouts with the supervisors who will then breakout with their subordinates to again try and limit our power usage as much as possible. That is our top priority right now."
"Not the inspection?" asked Lori perplexed. Sam shook his head.
"If we have to worry about that, it'll be later. All the waxing and polishing in the world won't mean jack if the fences go down," said Sam. "And as much as I'd like to prolong this meeting, we really do need to meet with our departments to try and prevent panic from breaking out. So unless anyone has anything else, you're dismissed."
The rest of the members slowly filed out leaving Sam and alone with his thoughts before he too collected his notes and went to go meet up with the laborer supervisors.
Control Room: Tim and Sheila were sitting around a central terminal as they watched the video feed from the conference room. The control room was a small cramped space in the basement of the Operations Building. A central terminal along with two rows of computers squeezed together with several servers adorning the room and cables everywhere and a lone projector hanging on the ceiling filled the room almost completely. Sorna had far less automation than Nublar and so the processing power was also considerably less hence not needing as much space. Not that Sheila and Tim liked where they were holed up when compared to Jurassic Park's spacious and modern facilities. They were the two full-time programmers and the other spaces were often filled with temps borrowed from HQ and originally Ray Arnold.
"See, they are trying to cut us out of the loop!" Sheila insisted as she had some of her yogurt.
"Ah, you're just overreacting," Tim told her as he flipped off the feed and then went back to rooting through the computer's codes.
"I'm telling you, this is just the start. They'll start making crazy demands on us and not paying us overtime and then….," she began before noticing what he was doing. "What's going on, I don't remember them assigning you to go rooting through the code for this island."
"They didn't and this isn't the code for Sorna, it's the remote feed so I can look at the code from Nublar," Tim explained as he continued looking through the data in front of him.
"What're you looking for? I thought we already got the tour OS downloaded," said Sheila confused. Tim looked around nervously to see if anyone else was in the room.
"Can you keep a secret?" he asked to Sheila. Her eyes widened at that and she nodded her head vigorously.
"Nedry was responsible for causing the security systems to fail on Jurassic Park. That means he had a backdoor somewhere buried in the code to do that. If he had it there, then he might've had that same code put in here. I need to find out what that code was and delete it out of here before it potentially causes chaos here as well," Tim answered. "I've got a tracer program working on finding commands to deactivate the security systems but it'll take awhile to run so I'm looking in directories where I think it could be hiding in the meantime."
"Ooh," said Sheila as the light turned on in her head. "We find it and then we can hold all the cards!"
"What? No!" shouted Tim astonished at her suggestion before he forced himself to think about it. "…Well, maybe. Maybe that code would benefit the island somehow, I don't know. But I want to see what that command is supposed to do first of all. I also don't want to cause a panic so don't tell anybody, okay? We're on pins and needles as it is with the fences running out of juice and the last thing we need is everyone thinking what happened to Site A could potentially happen here at Site B. Okay?"
"Right on," said Sheila with a big grin.
"Now get back to work!" Tim commanded. "Just because I'm in charge doesn't mean you can slack off!"
Sheila fake pouted at that before going back to working on the programming of the island.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: At an old townhouse apartment, a large oak wooden door opened into a room full of dust. Inside walked a landlord along with a team of four individuals.
"You sure he won't find out about this?" asked the Landlord of the tenant who lived in the place.
"No," John Brown responded while shaking his head. "Besides, you can open this place for tours and that's what we want. If Arnold Nedry doesn't like that, he can complain to me."
He then took out a series of bills and handed them to the landlord who looked at them gratefully and then made his exit, only requesting that they lock the door when leaving. As soon as the door shut, the three team members from Pacific Pharmaceuticals began setting up their gear. Two of them immediately began combing the place for evidence, a task impeded by how messy the place was, while the third sat down at Nedry's workstation and squatted underneath the desk to get a look at his hard drives and servers.
"I think the on button is at the front of the terminal," John joked as he picked up a copy of Alice and Wonderland that was sitting on a special holder on the shelf.
"Just making sure he didn't booby trap it," the team computer expert, Cassie, answered. "Based on that profile you read to us on the flight over here that Lorne compiled, I wouldn't put it past this guy to cover his tracks any way possible."
John nodded his head in agreement at that as he let her continue to work. He then looked at the other two workers.
"Anything?" he asked. The others shrugged noncommittally.
"This guy didn't like Hammond," one said as the pointed to a dartboard with a piece of paper featuring the CEOs face taped onto it and some darts through it. Below it the message read: "Pay me more now, dad?" Evidently Nedry really had a dim view of the CEO.
"You ever meet him?" asked the worker and then in clarification pointed to Hammond's image.
"Once at a city function," John replied as he began flipping through the book in his hands. "He's a nice enough man, but I got the impression he tends to focus too much on the destination and not on the journey."
"Wow, I didn't know you were a psychologist, boss," said Cassie with a grin as she produced a small device and plugged it into the back of the server. John groaned at that before finishing flipping through the book and putting it back as a piece of paper fell out the back. Leaning over to pick it up, he saw an ASCII image of a rabbit using 0s and 1s. He looked at it confused before folding it and putting it in his jacket pocket for further reference.
"Got it," said Cassie as she powered up the terminal and sat at the desk and began working on logging into the computer.
"Booby trapped?" asked John walking over and pulling up a chair.
"Like you wouldn't believe," Cassie said, wiping some sweat off of her forehead. "But fixing it so I could turn it on without it blanking the data was the easy part. Using the actual software is going to be more of a challenge. Nedry may have been a slob, but he knew how to program."
Cassie cracked her knuckles and plugged a floppy disk into the drive that had wires leading to a smaller device that she began using along with the larger terminal itself.
"We just need to dump whatever data we can about any possible dealings he may have had with Biosyn," John requested and then went to join the other two in searching the room for clues.
Nearby: A car sat across the street and a man in it peered through his binoculars at the apartment. He jotted down some notes and pulled out a mobile phone and began dialing into it.
"What is it, Howard?" asked Lew Dodgson on the other end.
"It's as you suspected, Pacific Pharmaceuticals is making its move," Howard King, Dodgon's assistant, told him. He was met with silence as Dodgson contemplated this turn of events.
"Then we'll need to make sure they find nothing else," Dodgson replied and hung up the phone. At his office, the biophysicist pulled out a file he had prepared in case something went wrong with Nedry and began consulting it on their next move. John Brown was no slouch when it came to finding out the truth, but Dodgson was the king of avoiding blame. He would win this battle, he was sure of it.
Palo Alto, California: At a large plant designed to manufacture vehicles and other equipment need for scientists operating in the field, its owner Jack 'Doc' Thorne sat conversing with his workers about some of the new specs for a mobile research lab that consisted of two trailers joined together by a connecting arm codenamed 'Challenger'. As soon as he finished, the workers dispersed to get to work.
"Hey, Doc, what's new?" asked Eddie Carr, Thorne's second in command in charge of the facility. He was a middle-aged slightly balding man, but an expert when it came to devising field systems.
"Oh, hey, Eddie, how'd the field tests go?" asked Thorne curious. Eddie held up the device in his hand along with a mobile phone.
"Good to go. As long as the phone is active and properly synched, the tracker can find it within a hundred mile distance," said his assistant pleased with himself. If there was one thing Eddie was a stickler for, it was field testing. After all, if you put untested technology into practical situations and it failed to work, then you'd be in for a considerable amount of trouble.
"I'm sure Sarah will be pleased to hear that," said Thorne as he headed for his office. Sarah Harding was an old friend of the two as she constantly came to them whenever she needed. This tracking device was actually one of her ideas as she was constantly misplacing her backpack in the field and always having to look for it. With her phone inside, she could now always track it down.
"So what's this I hear about Dr. Levine needing you for some mission?" asked Eddie curious as the two entered into Thorne's office high above the central staging area for the building of equipment. Thorne gave an impression of having a bad taste in his mouth as he sat behind his desk. Although the company was private, Levine had invested a large portion of money to get it off the ground for Thorne. As such, he occasionally made the odd request for compensation for his troubles.
"Apparently InGen had an incident of some sort on an island in the Pacific Ocean and Levine's been contacted to go in and investigate another one of their islands to see if it is safe. There's a lot of technology on that island and he needs me to check it out," Thorne commented. "Of course I'm going to do my damndest to turn him down, but I don't think he'll hear it."
"What sort of technology?" asked Eddie. He loved examining new technology.
"Well…," began Thorne as he turned around and pulled a file from his cabinet and began rattling off various pieces of technology from vehicles to buildings to gene sequencers to electrified fences.
"What are they doing on that island?" Eddie asked bewildered. Thorne held his hands up in defeat.
"No idea and I don't think I'll want to find out," he told him as he propped his feet up on the desk. "I don't suppose you could go in my place?"
Eddie chuckled at that. "I'd love to if I could. But I'm already full of devices that need to be field tested and then sold off or mass marketed. I can't, I'm sorry. But look on the bright side. Whatever they're paying you we could easily put into Research and Development."
Thorne had to nod his head at that for being a reasonable suggestion. There was a knock at the door and Levine poked his head in.
"Well?" he asked, hopeful. Levine wasn't really one for small talk. Thorne shot a look at Eddie who gave him an apologetic look as Thorne sighed heavily and rubbed his face.
"Fine, I'll go," he relented.
"Great! We leave at the end of next week," said Levine with a big grin and he vanished from the room. Thorne leaned back heavily in his chair as he felt a migraine came on as Eddie laughed at his misfortune despite himself. Thorne immediately began reaching for the aspirin.
Indigo: Daniela was typing up some reports to send to San Diego about how her island had taken the news when she told them Jurassic Park had had an incident, when a knock was heard at her door.
"Enter," she said as her secretary poked her head in.
"Your appointment is here," she stated and then left. Daniela immediately shifted her attention to the door as a worker entered into the room.
"Hello ma'am," said the worker a little nervous as he squeezed his hat in his hands.
"Hello Mr. Stevens, please take a seat," Daniela said as she motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk. She pulled out his personnel file and laid it on her desk and glanced through it.
"I see you've been working for us for three months now," she noted. "How've you been adjusting to working out here so far away from home?"
Stevens blinked at that, curious. "It's really not been too difficult. I mean, yes, I'm only allowed to go home every other weekend, but I'm paid well so I can't complain."
Daniela nodded her head at that. It was a common complaint amongst the laborers about the inability to constantly see friends and family, but they'd known that when they'd signed the contracts and it was also why InGen had offered higher wages to them than normal. The question was, whether this worker had received any additional income from an outside source regarding Nedry and his passage through Indigo.
"Is something the matter?" asked the worker. Daniela crossed her hands in front of her face.
"Five days ago you were responsible for checking Arnold Nedry's belongings as he passed through customs," she remarked. The worker thought about that and then nodded his head.
"Yes, and he was unhappy about it as usual," Stevens agreed. Daniela leaned forward at that comment.
"So you do you see Nedry through customs regularly," she stated. She knew of course already, but that wasn't the point of the question.
"Unfortunately," Stevens answered noncommittally. "But yes, I do."
"By choice or…?" began Daniela curious.
"I'm the new guy, the new guys gets saddled with checking Nedry's and Nicolette's things when they came through," said Stevens a little amused though also fed up with that notion. "If you hired someone new so they could do that, I would not complain."
"Well we'll see," said Daniela with a mild smile to try and be disarming. She had hoped the answer would've been more useful than that. "Tell me, how were you hired?"
"InGen was looking for day laborers on the San Diego docks and I applied," said Stevens even more confused. "Can I ask what this is all about?"
"I wish you could," said Daniela dismissively. "But let's focus back to Nedry, you checked his stuff his last time through. Tell me about that."
Stevens didn't want to move on, but Daniela was his ultimate boss and so he did as he was told.
"He came through with a bunch of stuff and I cleared him," was all he could think to say.
"Did he seem nervous at all?" asked Daniela next.
"He seemed more obnoxious than usual and I guess more nervous. But the tour was coming up and I'd say we were all on edge at the time," Stevens reasoned. "Probably more so now after what you said happened."
"When you went through his things did you notice anything unusual?" Daniela continued.
"Not that I can recall," said Stevens simply. "Was there something? I just remember a bunch of technical journals, candy and I think a can of shaving cream."
"Did the can work?" asked Daniela trying to sound nonchalant now that the conversation had gotten to where she needed it to.
"Yeah," said Stevens nodding his head as he thought about his encounter with Nedry. "You know, now that I think about it the weight on the thing did seem a little bit off. But some contents may have shifted during the course of the flight, as they say."
Daniela instantly focused on the man after that statement.
"You know that if there's even a hint of suspicion that you should x-ray all of the item's contents," Daniela told him.
"I know," said Stevens as if that was obvious. "I'm well aware of the rules."
"So did you scan Nedry's things?" Daniela demanded. To think that one small slipup may have cost them everything was the one event she had made sure the workers were trained hard to avoid.
"No," said Stevens bluntly.
"Why not?" shouted Daniela suddenly irate. Stevens blinked at that, surprised by her anger and then dropped a bombshell that took the leader of Indigo for a loop.
…
"I was told not to," he answered. Daniela's jaw dropped at that.
"By who?" asked Daniela in shock over this turn of events.
"My line supervisor," Stevens answered. "I told him that I thought something might be off with the can, but he told me to push it through and let Nedry leave. So he went and I thought nothing more of it."
Daniela sat back at that.
"You didn't think to report that decision to anyone else?" she asked lamely, knowing what the answer would be.
"All line supervisors report to you and I didn't think it was worth the trouble. I'm not sure why you're so focused on a can of shaving cream. It worked and I really didn't have much other reason to hold him," said Stevens, giving her the answer she was expecting.
"Can you prove all of this?" asked Daniela next.
"Check the security cams," Stevens requested. Daniela nodded her head at that as her mind was too much focused on other things. If there was any hint of suspicion, the contents had to x-rayed, that was SOP. But the line supervisors had been known to exercise some leeway with those rules. The question was, why here and why now. That this particular leeway had resulted in Nedry potentially taking an unauthorized device onto Nublar was far too coincidental in her mind.
She needed to look into this further than she had initially thought she would. Just like she needed to find out who had authorized the mass exodus of personnel from Nublar during the tour.
"Ma'am?" asked Stevens after she had not said anything for several moments. Daniela refocused her attention on him.
"You're free to go, but tell no one of this conversation," she ordered. Stevens nodded and happily left the room, glad the conversation was over. Daniela just wished the same was true for her. She had a lot of work to do to get to the bottom of all of this.
Cambridge: "Got it," said Cassie pleased. She shut down the computer and unplugged her portable terminal.
"You dumped the entire database?" John asked. Cassie nodded.
"I'll need to work on it when we get back to base because it's still heavily encrypted and still full of traps, but there I'll have more tools at my disposal," she said. John nodded, also happy with this turn of events as he looked to the other two who had finished combing the entire apartment.
"Let's go," he ordered. The other two nodded and headed for the exit with John and Cassie. As they left, they shut the door and then descended down the steps to the roadway as a car hastily left from a nearby spot and drove off.
"You think Biosyn knows what we're doing?" asked one of the team members as they headed for their SUV.
"Undoubtedly," said John watching the car go.
"You think they'll be able to stop us?" asked Cassie. John gave an evil grin at that.
"Unlikely," he promised with a chuckle as they got into the vehicle and drove off back to the nearest Pacific Pharmaceuticals location.
Sorna: "Now you're sure there's no breeding going on?" Jake asked. He and Henry were in the Control Room talking to Tim after their meeting. There really hadn't been much to say at their breakout only that they needed to cut back on production and also in attempt to get their minds off of InGen's troubles, that they needed to figure out if the dinosaurs were breeding or not.
"You designed them, you tell me," Tim retorted as Sheila chuckled in the background. Jake narrowly avoided rolling his eyes at that as Henry tried a new tactic.
"Can you pull up the latest motion tracker numbers for here and Nublar?" Henry asked. Tim nodded and fired them up. The far wall displayed an image from the projector and Henry and Jake walked up to it. The chart was laid out in five columns with the first column indicating the dinosaur names while the second and third column indicated the expected number of dinosaurs along with the found number. Those columns descriptions were then repeated again for columns four and five, the difference being columns two and three had Nublar's numbers and four and five had Sorna's. Nublar's numbers naturally didn't match due to predators being on the loose hunting the herbivores and some areas were blank for animals that didn't exist on Nublar but did on Sorna.
"As you can see, there is not one instance of a number being higher than what's expected," Tim concluded as if it was an open and shut case. In his mind it was. Technology like the motion trackers had been specifically designed not to make a mistake because of how important population control was when dealing with dinosaurs. Jake looked at the numbers with a mixture of doubt and cluelessness. He didn't understand the technology, he never had. His job was to find out how to make dinosaurs and that was it. Henry didn't know how the technology worked either. But as far as the other scientists were concerned they dinosaurs couldn't breed and this was wild goose chase. Only he was willing to harbor some agreement with Jake that something could be amiss that they didn't know about.
"How difficult would it be to do a spot check of all the dinosaurs on the island?" Henry had to ask. Tim laughed at that.
"Difficult? Try impossible. We've got more than two hundred dinosaurs on this island and they're constantly moving around. Even distinguishing one from the next is pretty near impossible," the programmer replied. "Sure we've got the tracker chips inside each one, but that still won't help you keep track of which is which after you've scanned it."
"Unless we found one that wouldn't scan," Jake said. Tim shook his head.
"Not if the chip's busted or offline," he answered. "We've had some of that already which is why we've been upgrading all chips on the dinos being sent to Nublar."
An idea occurred to Henry on hearing that. "Could we do a spot check and compare the chip numbers on Nublar with the results from the motion trackers?"
Tim had to think about that one for a moment. He hadn't really been responsible for either of the two programs.
"It wouldn't work because the range on those chips only extends so far," Sheila answered for him. "The chips were designed in case we had to track one down if it ever got loose. It wasn't intended as a backup in case the motion sensors failed. That's why it took us awhile to track down that oviraptor on Indigo and…well I guess I don't need to bring up A-1."
Very few people knew about A-1 but Sheila did because she'd designed the tracker to find the chips which is how the team had tracked down the Deinonychosaurs in Costa Rica. It had taken them several days in the jungle before they'd gotten a signal to follow and by the time they honed in, it was too late.
"Nuts," said Jake disappointed as he rubbed his face. "Are these numbers tracked over time?"
"Yeah, but the problem with Nublar's numbers is that we lost a good number of the backed up data thanks to the reset," Tim told him. "And before you ask, those numbers are of the currently living and breathing creatures. The trackers can't find ones that are dead and on occasion, asleep."
"Don't forget that some of the Nublar trackers might not be working after that storm, the reset, and all the chaos that ensued," Sheila chimed in from her workstation. Jake sighed at that, still thinking there should be some way to use the trackers to find out if there were more dinosaurs than there should be. But he didn't know where to begin with this technology.
"Back to the drawing board, checking the gene sequences," he complained. Henry gave him lightly patted him on the shoulder in sympathy.
"I know," he agreed and the two left the room after thanking Tim for his help.
"Well we dodged that bullet," said Sheila after they left. Tim looked at her confused.
"At least they didn't tell us to find a way of figuring out if the dinosaurs were breeding with the motion trackers," she added. A smile cracked across Tim's face.
"Maybe they didn't, but I'm assigning you that task anyway," he ordered as Sheila's expression turned to shock. She then grumbled something and went to work trying to wrap her head around accomplishing that task.
"I hate you," she said after a few moments. Tim laughed at that.
"I know," he responded wistfully and went back to work rooting through more directories. The two sat in silence for several moments working.
"You wanna go get some lunch?" asked Sheila a moment later, her previous statement seemingly having never been made.
"Yeah," said Tim and the two left the room.
InGen HQ, San Diego: The Board reconvened again to further discuss the fate of their company.
"So the investigation team is prepped?" asked Stevenson, one of the board members. Ludlow nodded his head.
"I also contacted a local defense firm and they'll provide us with armed workers to defend the team and they don't ask questions," he added. He then shifted uneasily as the conversation he'd had the night before with his uncle weighed heavily on his mind.
"Something wrong?" asked Samantha concerned. Ludlow leaned forward and said something he knew his uncle would never forgive him before.
"Based on the testimony from the survivors of Nublar, and the satellite photos we've recently secured that I'll be showing to you, I already don't believe the island can be recovered," he said hesitantly, not even able to meet their eyes.
"You mean…?" began Samantha in a hushed tone. Ludlow nodded his head looking at the board now and gave the answer they'd all been anticipating and dreading at the same time.
"We have no choice. We're going to liquidate Jurassic Park,"