Time passed…
A Jurassic Park gas powered jeep tore through the jungle as Jake sat in the driver's seat next to Henry. Both of them had weapons out and were aiming them at the trees ahead of them as a group of dilophosaurs leapt out and fired their venom.
"More of these guys?!" shouted Jake irate and terrified. "There's no way we made this many!"
"They must've bred on their own," said Henry through gritted teeth as he fired at them, knocking them down but not before a couple globs of venom hit the windshield and then fell off. The jeep then finally broke through the tree line and a damaged electric fence before racing up a long stone bridge over the jungle.
"Thanks goodness that's over," said Jake relieved as he briefly wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"I would breathe easy just yet," his colleague disagreed as he nodded his head up at the sky. "Look."
Jake opened his eyes and looked up and clearly didn't like what he saw. "Oh, shit," he remarked as dozens of pterodactyls lined the sky ahead of them clearly interested in attacking the jeep.
"Don't complain, just keep firing!" Henry ordered and the two continued unloading their guns into the sky mowing down dozens of the creatures as still more rained down on them sideswiping their jeep and nearly knocking it off the bridge. After a few very long minutes of this, the pterodactyls finally lessened their attacks as something nearly as deadly charged their way down the bridge.
"Trikes!" shouted Henry as the two fired at the massive three-horned dinosaurs. Their bullets were not powerful enough to break through the skull of the massive creatures but their shots did distract several of them and they fell off the bridge to the ground below. Still, even more got through and a couple sideswiped the jeep before continuing on.
But one triceratops wasn't charging them, instead it just sat there on the bridge and didn't look at it was going anywhere.
"If that thing's not moving…," Henry began ominously.
"…Then I guess we are!" Jake concluded as the jeep roared off the side of the rock bridge and slammed back down onto the ground. To both scientists amazement they didn't slam into any trees but then they were again set upon by dilophosaurs as the ground was also covered by sleeping ankylosaurs.
"And back to where we started," Jake grumbled as the two fired at the dilophosaurs attacking the jeep and to wake up the ankylosaurs that were in their way.
"Of course an ankylosaur would sleep through this and be the one creature most predators would find inedible," Henry remarked annoyed as the jeep whipped past a number of sign posts with the word "Caution!" on them seemingly mocking their desperate situation.
After several moments of being pounded and slamming into the sides of a few ankylosaurs, the jeep crashed through a cave ahead filled with rocks and wrecked Jurassic Park jeeps. It finally emerged down a jungle path.
"Looks like we're entering Area 2," Henry noticed.
"I'm amazed we've made it as far as we have," Jake admitted as he again wiped off his forehead from sweat. "Course, our jeep is just about a goner."
The jungle path was now filled with more sleeping Ankylosaurs but more importantly, several large living tree trunks spanned the road, those tree trunks being the necks and heads of brachiosaurs.
"Well we can't worry about that now," Henry said, stating the obvious as he fired at the brachiosaur necks. As with the anyklosaurs, the shots wouldn't kill the creatures, only sting them enough to get them to stop blocking the path. Unfortunately, one of the brachiosaurs didn't move in time and the jeep ricocheted off of the side of its head but somehow still managed to continue on its forward course. In the background, the dinosaurs were braying angrily.
"We can't take much more of this," Jake shouted over the noise. "We're in real danger here, Henry."
"Yeah, I can tell," Henry said as he continued firing as the jeep roared over another stone road over the trees and more brachiosaurs covered the area in front of them. "But if we can make it to the river we'll be fine until we get past the canyon."
"Right," said Jake as the jeep finished going over the stone road and returned once more to the underside of the canopy. It was a place that should've afforded them at least some protection from the brachiosaurs who now couldn't see them.
BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…
"Not this," Jake said defeated as brachiosaur feet suddenly began slamming down through the canopy all around them. Far too many one would think to account for the bodies somewhere higher up and out of sight.
And while the two tried to put a valiant fight to shoot the legs of these creatures to get them to lift up and clear their way…it was too much for the two scientists to overcome as their jeep raced straight at one of the legs they'd failed to hit.
"Jake, it's been a honor," Henry apologized as Jake threw up his hands in front of his face to try and ward off the inevitable. The jeep slammed into one of the brachiosaur legs and burst into flames.
…
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SNAP…POP!
"How can you two play this game so much and suck so badly at it?"
Jake lowered his arms and looked in front of him at a screen that read: "Continue?" and below which was a number counting down which had just reached zero. Around the screen was an arcade cabinet which at the top read: "Sega: Jurassic Park".
Looking behind their bench, the two they saw Sheila Matula standing behind it who had just popped a bubble with her gum and was now pulling it inside of her mouth to continue chewing on it.
"Badly?" scoffed Henry, bewildered by her statement. "This is the farthest we've gotten with only one life. When we first started we couldn't even get past the T-Rex at the beginning of the game."
Jake was putting in initials for their run and then the leader board appeared immediately thereafter.
"Still…compared to ol' one shot," Sheila pointed out as she tipped her head at the top of the best scores list which read: "LAR" a.k.a Lori Ruso's initials which were leaps and bounds above everyone else. A close second, relatively speaking, was KCM which were Katrice Maken's initials and then the scores plummeted from there.
"Don't blame them," said Lori cutting in as she was also hanging around in the arcade room wasting time. "I'm a military brat through and through. Living with my family meant constantly honing my abilities. It's not their fault my hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes sometimes means a higher score on some of these games."
The sound of basketballs hitting the net was heard and the quartet looked over to see Katrice at the basketball hoops game goofily throwing all sorts of trick shots with the mini basketballs and sinking every single one of them. Nearby, Collin was playing a custom made arcade game Ray Arnold had built had built called "Mr. DNA" where you had to quickly work hard on repairing a constantly revolving and changing DNA helix. The game had been developed during the days when the Dinosaur Revivification Project had driven everyone up the wall and it helped alleviate the stress.
"Then how do you explain her?" asked Sheila of Katrice before she popped another bubble. A particularly wild shot ricocheted off the rim and smacked into the screen of Collin's game startling him. He immediately snapped his head over at Katrice who was now beet red as she held her hands over her mouth in shock. Collin calmly bent down, picked up the ball, deposited it in the bin, and then dragged his protesting sibling from the room.
"Innocence of youth?" asked Lori taking a sip from her mug.
"I don't think anything explains her," Jake ruminated before returning to his position in his seat as Henry got up and stretched as Sheila took his place on the plastic bench designed to resemble the jeep.
"Still, isn't it kind of creepy playing this game now?" Sheila admitted unsettled as she watched the eye catch sequence play. "I mean when Hammond first gave it to us way back when it was kind of fun imagining a situation like this and being a one-person army fighting off hordes of dinosaurs. But after the Jurassic Park Incident and everything else…" the female programmer shuddered feeling chilled all of a sudden. Lori reached over and gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
It has been a week since the Lockdown had formally gone into effect. And Samantha Brown had been absolutely right with her statements during her speech on Nublar as a strange vibe had immediately settled over all the staff on the workers. It was difficult to explain how it felt, but there was definitely a sort of uneasy tension in the air. Sam Stone, sensing the unease amongst the workers the first day had immediately given everyone the week off. Ludlow had been against the idea but Samantha had managed to convince him it was for the best.
"You're right it is a little creepy," Jake agreed, surprising the others but not making light of Sheila's concerns. "But we still have to live our lives. Henry and I have been trying to improve our runs on this game for awhile now and we can't just give up on it."
"He's right," Henry agreed with a nod. "Normalcy is the one thing we still have right now. So we have to hold onto it as much as we can."
"And speaking of normalcy," said Sam Stone, Head of Operations on Sorna, as he walked into the room and leaned briefly against Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs arcade machine. "It's time for the senior staff meeting so let's get going. Sheila, we'll need you in the Control Room since Tim will be at the meeting."
Groans were heard amongst the others in the room as Sam gave them a soft shake of his head before turning and leaving the arcade room. The quartet filed out towards the exit when something occurred to Jake.
"Hey, Sheila, if you still really think that badly of my gaming skills then I'll challenge you to a game of your choice any day any time," he said with a hint of amusement in his eyes. Lori and Henry gave a soft chuckle at that as a sly grin spread across Sheila's face and her momentary funk seemed to finally clear.
"You're on," she promised and then split from the other three and headed for the basement and the Control Room. A couple years prior, Jake had challenged her to a round of Super Off-Road, an arcade game he played a lot, only for Sheila to hack the machine the night before so that when she put her name into the player field, it not only fully upgraded her vehicle but also gave her unlimited turbo boosts meaning she'd wiped the floor with him. It was a hack that still existed in the game today.
The trio of workers followed Sam down the hallways of the Operations Building, past the lobby with the Jurassic Park mural, and then into the administrative section of the building as they entered into the conference room. On the far wall was the food table which consisted of partially dried out bagels, muffins, and clearly re-filtered coffee. The latter perhaps explained why most of the workers around the table were clearly still trying to wake up despite it being 9:00 a.m. and why Roberta Carter looked like she was still in dreamland. At the far end of the table sat Stephanie Sandelder who was ready to start dictating notes. So far she'd been a little bit of an enigma to the rest of the group and was just one more sign of things being out of place.
"Morning everyone, sorry about the food but it's either start rationing now or starve later," Sam confessed as he took his seat at the head of the table and laid out his dossier.
"I thought we were still supposed to be getting regular shipments of food and other essential supplies from the mainland," said LoRu confused as she took her seat, took a bite of her muffin, grimaced briefly, and continued chewing on it.
"Are we 'supposed' to, yes," Daniela St. Ives confirmed. She was just to the side of Sam having decided to act as close second in command of the island rather than co-leader. With everything going on, the island needed a single person to provide leadership and this island wasn't hers to command. However, Sam had decided that the docks where her workers would be stationed was entirely her domain and he would exert no influence over them unless absolutely necessary. It was an arrangement for which she was grateful.
"But are we 'going' to, that's the real question," the former head of Indigo concluded as she drummed her fingers on the table. "I think we have to operate under the assumption that we really are alone out here cut off from the rest of the world. If we get supplies, that's great, but otherwise…"
"Right," said Lori leaning back in her chair not happy about it but knowing everyone was in the same boat together.
"The food situation is not terrible," said Sam to the group while putting a positive spin on it. "With strict rationing we have about 45 days worth of consumables plus what we can get out of the MREs afterwards. Now, we won't focus on this today or even tomorrow but I've got Alejandro looking into subsistence farming to supplement our food supply. He says that because we're in tropical climate, fruits are already growing on the trees which we can harvest. And by essentially turning parts of the island into plots we could grow other crops such as agama, soybeans, and other vegetables as well. He thinks we can do this with the supplies on hand."
That was news to the group as each considered that possibility.
"But he really thinks he can grow all this in the time that we have?" asked Gerry Harding having a hard time believing all of this. "I mean we could easily make a large compost pile with all the dinosaur dung and trash we have out in the landfill but none of this stuff will grow overnight."
Sam shrugged lightly.
"Well, yes and no," he told the group. "When InGen surveyed the island they didn't really completely comb the entire place to know every square inch. Even with all the work we've done we still probably have only expanded out to maybe 65 percent of the island and explored around 75 percent of it. Finding that Native American pyramid came as a shock to all of us and that thing was several stories tall."
Nicolette bristled at the thought of being shocked by anything, especially since her team had accidentally stumbled across that pyramid. But even she was feeling a little off by the lockdown and other issues going on so she said nothing to rebuke what had been said.
"But long before this island became our home it was originally a German mining site for a longer period of time than we've been here so far," Sam reminded the group. "They were on this island mining iron ore along with other minerals and when they weren't mining they were living and exploring here. Their notes that InGen later acquired show that they were also farming on this island and hopefully whatever they grew might still be around even today. So Alejandro will be taking a team to go into the places of the island we haven't gone and find these crops if they exist."
"And if they can't?" asked Jake, playing the usual role of naysayer. Sam turned towards the scientist.
"Then if the geneticists on this island aren't making dinosaurs then they should be looking into ways of accelerating the growth on these plants," he answered. Jake looked at him wide-eyed before exchanging a glance with Henry who was also stunned.
"That's not really our area of expertise," Henry began reluctantly. Sam nodded his head.
"No, but with everyone on your team some of them must have some experience in the area. See what you can come up with," Sam requested and turned back to the group. "Moving on to other matters, Roberta, how're things on your end?"
The Doctor snapped awake after a slight nudge from Lori.
"We finished our inventory at the end of June and the good news is that barring a major disaster, we should be fine until Jurassic Park: San Diego opens and we start getting supply shipments again," she began while reviewing her notes. "To try and conserve power we've stopped operating all the remote clinics. The Field Clinic and the small infirmaries inside of the Hammond Administration and Embryonics Administration buildings will still be staffed, but minimally. Instead of having many physical locations, we're going to try and send staff with any detail that might be doing hazardous work as well as convert some of the electric jeeps into portable hospitals and ambulances."
"Good," said Sam with a nod of his head, pleased. "And how is island morale?"
Bobbie just held up her hands as the response to that question.
"Fine," said Sam not happy about her flippant response but willing to let it go for now. "Lori, how is the tour going?"
"About as well as can be expected considering they question everything I show them and ask for details I often can't divulge. Beyond that, I've taken them everywhere within close walking distance so we may hop a ride out into boonies and then hike back," she let him know.
"Okay and how are the power saving measures going?" the Head of Operations asked next.
"On track," Lori acknowledged. "Floodlights around the island will only be switched on if we know a team is going to be out there at night. Motion trackers have also been disabled for the herbivore pens and will only do periodic sweeps of the carnivore pens at a daily set amount of random intervals."
The statement was unsettling to everyone but it was either that or have the fences fail that much sooner.
"Power has also been shut off to all emergency bunkers, supply depots, and boat houses; while the airfield will be shut off later today," Lori continued.
"What about power to the Village, are there any plans to cut that off to help power the fences?" asked Gerry cutting in. Sam shook his head.
"Not at the moment. Frankly things are bad enough without worrying about power outages here. The geothermal vents are giving us the juice we need to power this place for as long as they keep producing heat," Sam let the group know which provided some sense of relief. "But I'm not completely dismissing the idea. I've got electricians looking into the geothermal and fuel generators because right now the two systems are not compatible. The geothermal system was only designed to power the Workers Village, the perimeter fence around it, and a couple of the closer pens for temporary storage.
Once the Dinosaur Revivification Project took off, more infrastructure was needed which would have overwhelmed the geothermal system. So that's why we have the fuel-based generators which provide power to everything else on the island. Unfortunately, a situation like the one we're in now never occurred to anyone when the systems were designed and that's why we need to conserve every drop of fuel. So if the engineers come up with anything, I'll let you know," said Sam wrapping up that subject. "Tim, how're things on your end?"
The male programmer at the end of the table cleared his throat in order to gather his thoughts. "No complaints. The work on the tour vehicles has gone better than expected and should be fully online in the next two to three weeks."
Sam jotted some things down and then looked back at the programmer.
"I'm grateful that you and Sheila have been able to speed that up so much, but that's still a little bit later than I'd like. Could you shave any more time off of that?" Sam requested. Tim reluctantly shook his head.
"We were able to successfully import almost the entire coding for the tour vehicles from Jurassic Park, which helped take a lot of time off our initial projections. But it's the smaller technical issues that need the most work and if not done, will only cause problems down the road. We're debugging the entire tour program now because it will help cut down not only on maintenance later but also help a lot with conserving power. When they ran the tour program that final time on Nublar, the vehicle headlights were running off the car batteries. That's power wastage right there and it's not the only issue we've run across. Overall, we will be saving on fuel by switching over to the electric vehicles but the fewer of these issues we tackle head on, the less those savings will be in the long run.
Plus there's the fact that you'd like us to also introduce manual controls to the vehicles for stopping and starting as well as choosing track junctions if necessary. Switching maps in the tour vehicle OS is an easy thing to do because the GPS program was designed to allow for updates as the park expanded. But the system was never designed for any form of manual control. If you got out of the vehicle while it was moving, it would keep moving unless someone in the Control Room stopped the tour program. To introduce those parameters will require extensive programming and testing which we barely have time for with everything else going on. Now, we could go without the testing phase to cut time, but I'm sure Lori can provide plenty of reasons of why not to do that," Tim concluded. Lori nodded her head furiously at that. One runaway tour vehicle had been enough for her.
"Alright, alright," said Sam knowing when to back down. "Just do your best to get it done as quickly as you can. Speak with the shift supervisors in the motor pool about reassigning personnel to help you as needed and say its all fine with me," he suggested. Tim nodded his head, grateful.
"Anything else you'd like to bring up?" the Head of Operations asked. Tim glanced at his PDA.
"Just one for Jake and Henry," Tim began as the two scientists tensed. "Is Carly and a couple other geneticists doing a special project or something because over the past couple of weeks she and her team have been pulling a good amount of computer resources and I was curious why."
The two scientists knew better than to react to that so as not to draw undue attention to their secretive work on the lysine contingency. That news was of extreme interest to Gerry Harding and Nicolette Stefrassa.
"She and a handful of others are working on a special project," Henry acknowledged; although he made sure not to say what it was. "With the Crays offline that pretty much means no more new dinosaur DNA strands to clone. So to give some of our workers something to do, we're having them go back and look over the DNA strands currently on file for any anomalies and stuff like that. Everything they're doing is well within the limits you gave us on computing power."
"There's nothing to be concerned about, I hope," Sam half-joked nervously. Jake shook his head.
"I think our biggest issue is what's going to happen in 68 days," he remarked lightly while deflecting the question.
"Touché," Sam acknowledged. "You two have anything else to report?"
"Apparently we're now in the business of growing crops," began Jake sarcastically before he yelped in pain as somebody kicked him underneath the table.
"That aside, to conserve power we're down to about a clutch a week," stated Lori who was still involved in production even despite leading the tour around.
Daniela scrunched up her face briefly as she thought about that. "Couldn't you move production back into the Workers Village where power isn't an issue?"
Lori shook her head. "Not really. One of the reasons we moved out to the Hammond Administration Building, Embryonics Administration, and other outlying structures was because we'd expanded beyond the capabilities of what we had here plus we needed more space to operate. It also would've been too costly to upgrade what we had in the village than just build an entirely new system from scratch out in the field. We could move back but quality assurance would fall through the floor for anything we might be able to produce."
"Oh," said Daniela then turning silent and realizing once more how out of touch she'd been with events on this island. She had to get up to speed fast or else risk causing problems unintentionally from her lack of knowledge.
"In other news, Venn and Chang plus their crews think they they've got enough legwork done on a couple new species already in the pipeline that with the resources still available to us they can be brought to term," Wu noted before looking at Stone a little annoyed he had to be bring this up. "They want your approval to go ahead with embryo implantation and fertilization."
Sam shifted a little uneasily in his seat. As part of the lockdown procedures, decision making became largely centralized and that included things like the Dinosaur Revivification Project, something Sam knew little about and subsequently wanted nothing to do with.
"You sure it won't be a drain on resources?" he asked, cautiously. Jake and Henry both shook their heads.
"Tim and Nicolette both ran the numbers and they're well within acceptable limits," Whitacre added.
"Where would you store them while they're incubating and then afterwards once they hatch?" asked Sam for his next question. "I wouldn't be surprised if you and the rest of the scientists have to abandon the outlying buildings as we get closer to the days the fences fail."
"If that happens, we're going to see about maintenance getting the incubators inside the Operations Building fully serviced and ready for any eggs still in the gestation period. The original nursery is next to it and should house any juveniles we might have that are still too young to be introduced to the adult population," Henry answered. Sam sighed internally at being backed into a corner.
"And if I say no?" he had to ask defeatedly. Jake and Henry looked at him harshly.
"Then you'll have problems from above. Even though we're on lockdown, that doesn't mean the scientific staff can't quit and leave for more lucrative opportunities," Henry reminded him. "If we're not producing at least some new species periodically and doing genetics work on the ones we do have, we'll lose our best talent and this project will be hurting once everything is finally back to normal."
Sam nodded his head and waved his hand lazily to let them know to go for it.
"If I let you do this, I need a favor in return," he let them know. "I need you to go to the Fortress and tell Laura Sorkin she needs to vacate the place by the end of next week."
That was a little bit of a surprise to the two scientists. They had intended to speak to Laura sooner rather than later but not to bring the news she had to leave the facility. She wouldn't like that.
"Is that really necessary?" Henry asked confused. "The Fortress runs on its own local geothermal power source, it's not drawing power from the grid."
"I know that," said Sam annoyed at them trying to play the same delaying game he just had. "But they still need regular supply drops and we can't afford to send up a truck of supplies up the mountain every week. We also can't run track up there either because of the winding road to that place and I wouldn't trust any vehicle to make it up there that's running on automation. She's got to go, there's no other alternative."
"Okay," said Henry not pleased about that decision. "You realize if the fences fail, that's the probably one of the safest places on the island beside the Workers Village."
"Yes, I know. And it won't come to that," Sam swore. "Tim, I want you to send Sheila up there also because she'll need to be there to shut everything down."
"Right," said Tim, pleased that was working out like he'd hoped it would.
"I'd like to go too even if it's just to get away from doing the tour for a day," Lori requested. "I haven't been up there in ages and I'd like to do an equipment check and supply count of what they've got up there."
"Go for it," Sam agreed. "I'd like to know myself. Anyone else want to go?"
He wasn't expecting anyone else to volunteer but was floored when Nicolette spoke up.
"I need to venture up there as well. Although you were not being entirely serious about the fences failing, the truth is we need to be prepared for such an eventuality. The think tank and I are currently working on plans of action if the worst case scenario does occur and the Fortress is a very defensible position," she pointed out. She was also discussing a topic Sam would prefer to have avoided at this date so early in the lockdown.
"But it's not going to come to that is it?" asked Bobbie concerned.
"Is it 'supposed' to, no; but is it…," began Jake condescendingly when Sam held up his hand to shut him up.
"We're going to be fine, but it doesn't hurt to explore all possibilities," he remarked, trying to play peacemaker as Daniela glared at Jake. "Gerry, I'll hear your report next but I do have a request for you also. The DRT team is going to be doing a complete and thorough check of the fences on the island and since you're technically their boss, I'd like you to oversee them while they do this."
"Done," said Gerry immediately. From what he'd witnessed being trapped on Nublar after the fences failed, triple-checking everything was an excellent idea in his mind. "As for my report, there's not much to say. We've also completed our inventory check and we're good on supplies for now. As long as there isn't another stampede or any of the carnivores decide to turn on each other, we should be fine with treating them."
"But should we be treating them?" asked Daniela sharply. "In 68 days it'll either be them or us and the fewer their numbers..."
Sam could sense an argument brewing and made an effort to put a stop to it before tensions boiled over. It was going to be a long couple of months.
"Samantha said the only way we're going to get through this is if we stick to our set routines and continue on as normally," he made them remember. "Healing injured dinosaurs is something Gerry and his team has been doing for years now and that's not going to change unless it becomes too dangerous or we run out of supplies. And that's the same for everyone. Keep doing your job because it'll help keep your mind off everything else. Understood?"
The others grumbled their understanding as Stephanie wrote down numerous notes on the morale of the island.
"See that it stays that way," warned Stone before turning his head to his right. "Daniela, what's up on your end?"
The second-in-command was glad to be focused on matters she cared deeply about. "We're all settled in the visitors lodge and the team leaders and myself did an inspection of the east docks already. We're going to do a more thorough check with the entire team sometime this week and then develop and start training our employees on our new surroundings.
I do want to make one thing perfectly clear. In the past whenever a boat arrived here some of you would make a mad dash to the docks for your supplies. That's all over now. My team needs complete isolation to conduct a thorough inspection of everything coming onto this island and then release them where they will be distributed at the Workers Village. At no point are you to come to the docks when a boat is in the harbor and you are to never harass my employees to get your stuff pushed through sooner.
I trust you all here not to be that way and I need your commitment that you will relay this to the employees under your supervision and so on down the chain of command," Daniela requested. Everyone affirmed their commitment to that point and that they would make sure everyone knew the rules.
"Thank you," said Daniela a little relieved that hopefully dealing with this issue now would make things smoother as time went on.
"Okay, I think that concludes today's meeting," said Sam trying to relieve some of the tension in the room. "We've all got plenty to do to keep us busy for awhile and should make the time go faster."
"Yeah, but is that a good thing?" asked Jake trying to get in the last word as he got up and Daniela lightly whacked him on the back of the head as everyone headed out the door leaving just Sam and Stephanie, the latter of whom was writing down some final notes and then began putting her stuff away.
Sam let out a long breath of air to help relieve his stress as he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
"Regretting you came here?" he asked of his new administrative assistant.
"No," said Stephanie after a moment's thought. Sam shrugged lightly.
"I wouldn't hold it against if you did. It's not always easy reining them in," he admitted, mainly to himself.
"Do you ever wonder if they aren't telling you the whole truth?" Stephanie had to ask. Sam laughed at that.
"I'm not naïve by any means. I give my workers the benefit of the doubt that when it comes to telling me the truth they will. If I think something is becoming an issue then I'll confront them. But make no mistake about it; I really do think everyone here is committed to seeing the DRP project succeed and has everyone's best interests at heart," Sam promised her. "I know you can't see that now, but in time you will."
"Very well," said Stephanie not entirely convinced as she snapped the cap back on her pen and put it away.
"I forgot to ask if there was anything you needed to bring up at the meeting," Sam apologized. He was still getting used to having her around but she'd already made his job a lot easier by doing all the administrative tasks he'd been doing in addition to his own workload.
"For right now just some uninterrupted access to the file room so I can start organizing everything," she requested. Sam nodded his head and the two walked from the meeting room and to the file room. As they reached the door, Stephanie got out her keycard when Sam stopped her.
"Things aren't quite so fancy here I'm afraid," he remarked as he took out his keychain and began looking for the right key for the standard door lock. "We'll get you a copy of your own soon."
Stephanie looked at the sight of a standard door lock utterly confused.
"Why isn't there a standard keycard reader for this like the rest of the locks in this building? The door locks would be much stronger than a deadbolt," she remarked. Sam snorted at that heavily amused.
"A keycard reader won't do much good when your female technician who shouldn't have access to this room thinks it's a good idea to sneak a blonde-bomb in here to scare the crap out of one of your lead scientists in some half-baked form of revenge for missing gum so she makes her own dummy keycard," he said, shuddering as he remembered the incident. "The mess that made has never been fully cleaned up."
As he unlocked and opened the door, he flipped on the light revealing a room in near complete disarray. Several file cabinets were still resting against each other while others had their drawers open and papers sticking out in random directions while more stacks of papers were lying on the floor. Only a handful of cabinets looked untouched, although if the files were organized in them couldn't be known without opening them. Stephanie couldn't only wonder what had happened to cause this mess.
"How long ago did this happen?" Stephanie had to ask as he lightly stepped over papers and past listing cabinets.
"Seven months ago between the holidays and New Years," Sam recalled as he tapped his hand against his chin thoughtfully. "Good thing you're here too, my file cabinet is almost full because that's where I've been filing everything since then."
Stephanie knew better than to sigh as that was a form of weakness, but she sure felt the urge to groan. Ludlow had failed to mention this when he'd explained the specifics of her job here.
Still, she was never one to back down from a challenge…
"Very well, I should do my best to organize this as time and workload permits," she promised.
"Thanks," said Sam grateful as he gave a big smile. "If anyone needs me, I'll be at the airfield."
"Great. Have fun," said the Administrative Assistant miffed as she waded deep into the mess as Sam closed the door behind her. Stephanie refused to be undaunted by the mess in front of her. If anything, organizing it and learning what she could about the goings on with this island would allow her to better accomplish her mission that Ludlow had assigned her.
She just hoped she'd be done before another 65 million years had passed.
Outside, Sam Stone stepped out of the Operations Building and into the sunlight. It was going to be a beautiful day and for that he was grateful as he hoped it would get everyone off on the right mood to start working with the Lockdown into effect. Starting down the steps he headed for the garage to get a look at what vehicles were scheduled to go out into the field so he could plan his best route to getting to the airfield. As he joined his fellow workers who were also perusing the posted list and engaging in regular small talk, he couldn't help but feel that everything was going to be okay in the end.
…Because the power failing and E.L.E. being put into effect was almost too unbearable to think about.
68 days until fence failure.