Notes
Hypothetical casting:
Characters introduced in the previous story:
The late Jessica Walter as Susan Lynton.
Orlando Jones as Alistair Iger
Soundtrack suggestions:
Malcolm before the storm - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
-o-
At International Genetics' port complex in Puntarenas, barely four hundred animals were unloaded, a bit more than a third of Jurassic World's total collection, and then shipped by road, rail or even flown to the Farm, another facility located in the Ismaloya Mountains and also known as Site D. There, InGen intended to keep them in quarantine for a few weeks, in order to ensure their good health or put them back on their feet, before sending them to California where they were to be sold.
This transport to the United States was the last stage of Operation Fallen Kingdom, planned in great secrecy in the months that preceded Mount Sibo's eruption and the park's fall, but it needed authorizations from the United States government, authorizations which InGen didn't received, putting the operation on hold and disrupting its plans.
The fall of Jurassic World had been such a dramatic event that many in the United States expressed concern at the arrival of a large number of prehistoric animals, especially since the memory of the San Diego incident, which took place twenty years earlier, still lingered. This feeling of concern apparently influenced the US government, encouraging it to avoid giving InGen the necessary authorizations. But this was only a pretext and some, including within InGen, suspected senators and some government members of receiving backhanders from Biosyn or other bio-engineering corporations, who wished to weaken InGen as much as possible. When a member of the United States government was questioned about this decision, he justified it by declaring without any embarrassment that if a new incident were to occur soon, it would occur in Costa Rica and not in the United States, sparing American citizens from another San Diego incident, it aroused strong reactions in Costa Rica and many of its citizens expressed their displeasure on social networks or during demonstrations in front of the United States Embassy in San José.
During an entire year, debates raged and other demonstrations occurred. The United States congress ended up organizing a special commission tasked with reconsidering the issue and answering the following interrogation: Should InGen be allowed to transport its animals to the United States?
The hearing was held the last week of February 2019 within the capitol complex in Washington. The committee of senators were sitting behind a long curved table and facing the audience. In the latter's first rows, several notable personalities were seated. To the left of the central aisle which connected the door to the senators' table, were a seventyish woman with bobbed grey hair and a tall and slender fiftyish African American man: Susan Lyton and Alistair Iger, InGen's CEO and public relations director respectively. To the right of the aisle, sat a bespectacled young septuagenarian with a similar build to Iger's, a neatly trimmed white beard and black clothes: Professor Ian Malcolm, a mathematician from the Santa Fe Institute in Berkeley. Nearby, sat the Costa Rican ambassador to the United States, whom the commission had made sure to also invite.
The session's beginning was announced and after an introduction which re-established its context and purpose, the commission let Susan Lynton and Alistair Iger explain InGen's situation and argue in favour of the operation's resumption.
Once they were finished, they were thanked for their account and then the floor was given to Professor Malcolm, whom the commission had invited in order to benefit from a clear and impartial opinion on the matter, as the mathematician had witnessed the Jurassic Park incident in 1993 and San Diego's in 1997. In both, he had close encounters with the dinosaurs resurrected by the corporation.
"I think that InGen should have never brought its dinosaurs on the mainland," he declared a few moments later.
"We should have left them to die on their island?" asked Senator Sherwood, an overweight old man with a stern face.
"As cruel as that would have been, yes," the scientist replied.
This aroused several murmurs in the room and Senator Sherwood was forced to ask for silence.
"To be honest, Professor Malcolm, your stance is strange to me," said Senator Delgado, a small willowy forty-something woman with curly hair. "I remember that during the San Diego incident, you and Doctor Sarah Harding acted in favour of the rampaging Tyrannosaurus and its infant, saving their lives and allowing them to return to their island."
"Indeed. But I was involved in those events only unwillingly and for personal reasons due to John Hammond's little schemes, may he rest in peace. During the incident, Sarah… Dr. Harding was the one taking the decisions and I was just following her. But unlike her, the very preservation of the dinosaurs has never been among my biggest concerns."
"So what do you recommend?" Senator Delgado asked. "The euthanasia of the animals housed in InGen facilities in Burgo Nuevo?"
"It wouldn't change a lot of things," Malcolm replied with a shrug, "InGen probably has embryos stored in its vaults in addition to the equipment necessary for their development," he explained, glancing sideways at Lynton and Iger. "But we could take measures against genetic power. Prohibiting the de-extinction of prehistoric species could be a start."
"Without InGen's research in genetics, Medixal Health, another subsidiary of Masrani Global, would not have been able to achieve its advances in medicine," Iger said. "Lives have been saved thanks to them."
"And how many were destroyed because of your negligence and greed?" Malcolm asked him curtly. "Hundreds!"
"Most victims of the Fall of Isla Nublar can be attributed to the earthquake that preceded the eruption and to the various panic reactions that occurred. Unfortunately, Man can do nothing against such a natural event," InGen's director of public relations retorted. "Although a number of people have been killed by the animals we have cloned, this number is still lower than those of lives that have benefited from our research."
"According to some sources, you knew for months that Mount Sibo was going to experience a major eruption and you did nothing!" Malcolm accused them. "And that's without mentioning the Indominus rex…. A predatory dinosaur larger than any created by Nature but with the intelligence of a great ape, or a human being. The child born from Nature's rape by Man. Chaos in all its glory. When some claim that this monster was the prototype of a biological weapon, I'm greatly tempted to believe them. The fall of Jurassic World was a mass slaughter with falsification of evidence!"
"Professor Malcolm, you are playing in the hands of conspiracy theorists!" Lynton exclaimed, outraged. "I thought you were smarter than that! The Indominus is nothing but the result of Claire Dearing's megalomania. She threatened Henry Wu and forced him to modify the Indominus genome for her personal ambitions, with dire consequences."
"As the investigation made by federal authorities at InGen's premises found nothing, I'm afraid that those are indeed unfounded accusations," Senator Sherwood intervened.
"Yes, flights of fancy from resentful former employees and traitors," InGen's CEO said.
"Anyway, the Isla Nublar crisis ended months ago. Let's get back to the matter of the surviving animals," Senator Delgado suggested.
"Is it? The ambassador can confirm what I'm going to say but while we are discussing, some of InGen's creations are on the loose in Costa Rica and even beyond," Malcolm pointed out, drawing the attention of the Costa Rican Ambassador who nodded while listening to him with attention. "Incidents have already taken place, some resulting in injuries and even deaths. Some villages are terrorized by a band of small carnivorous dinosaurs, pterosaurs fly in the skies, and fishermen have strange encounters at sea with creatures which, according to the statements of Mr. Iger in the press, couldn't have left Jurassic World's lagoon.
"Except that those incidents were provoked or favored by our enemies," Lynton said. "We had a team dedicated to handling external incidents of this kind. Unfortunately, it was slaughtered during the Fall by the same paramilitary organization to which Costa Rica entrusted a part of its territory and which it continues to finance."
"You're quick to blame others, Mrs. Lynton," Malcolm replied. "You're definitely Peter Ludlow's worthy successor."
At the mention of the name of one of InGen's CEOs, the one who had removed John Hammond, his own uncle, from InGen's management and died during the incident in San Diego, the businesswoman sketched a rictus. She had known Peter Ludlow well and considered herself much better than him.
"Hammond and I differed on a lot of subjects," the mathematician continued, "but I think he would be ashamed to see what his legacy has become. No, the Isla Nublar crisis is not over and I fear that it's only a prologue."
"A prologue of what?" Senator Sherwood asked.
"You'll see if you allow InGen to bring its creatures to the United States and sell them," Malcolm said.
Both InGen executives looked up and sighed as he got into another of his famous tirades.
"Over the past century, we have accumulated tremendous technological power and consistently failed to harness it. Eighty years ago, who could have predicted nuclear proliferation? And now there is the genetic power. Fifteen years ago, InGen was the only entity mastering the de-extinction of long-gone species and Jurassic World the only establishment to house them. Today, that is no longer the case and the days of InGen's unchallenged monopoly are numbered, for better and for worse. Especially the worst because it won't stop with de-extinction, theme parks and a few animals on the loose..."
"I don't understand. What's your point?" Senator Sherwood asked.
"I am talking about cataclysmic man-made changes."
"What kind of changes?" asked another of the commission's senators.
"Change is like death. You don't know what it looks like until you're standing at its gates," Malcolm said.