Hi, Rebellious JPLover here with the third chapter of Alternative Jurassic Park. Don't be surprised if I changed the title soon, and the summary while I'm at it. Much thanks to Mondhase, who beta reads this story.
Dedication: Bob Peck, Richard Attenborough, and my two BFF's.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Jurassic Park triology, I only own my OC's and this story.
Rebellious JPLover is out,
Peace!
It was another scorching day in Montana, at the dig site that was run by my uncle, Alan Grant. I fanned myself with my hat, standing on my toes trying to see the dig site. My uncle and a woman who I considered to be my aunt, Ellen Sattler, were muttering indistinguishable words. I felt someone bump into me and I turned to see Mariah Sattler, who I considered a cousin or a sister at times. She was only fourteen, a year younger than me. Mariah was Ellie's real niece, and the resemblance was clear. They both had blonde hair, though Mariah's was a bit darker. She had the same athletic form as her aunt and they both were fast runners. Mariah was also standing on her toes, trying to see the dig.
"Hi, Rick." Mariah silently whispered to me. I smiled and nodded.
I heard Alan say something excitedly, rising a bit from his position, facing Ellie. I heard someone from behind me calling for Alan.
"Dr. Grant! Dr. Sattler! We're ready to try again!" The volunteer hollered towards them. Alan sighed and stood up, stretching his back.
"I hate computers." He muttered, putting on his sunglasses.
"Feeling's mutual." Ellie replied, wrapping Alan's red bandana around his neck. They both walked away from the dig site, me and Mariah following.
We called the area where we worked the 'badlands'. It was desert for miles and miles everywhere you looked. There was little vegetation and it was all brown and dry. The ground was checkered with excavations everywhere. There was a base camp, composed of five or six teepees, a tent, and a trailer/mobile home. There were about a dozen or so workers of all ages working at the digs. There were also about eight kids in total, running around, treating the place just like it was a giant sandbox. I frowned, knowing firsthand to have high respect for the dig site. There was one kid that was kicking sand into a dig site.
"What is that kid doing?" Alan asked angrily, not caring for an answer. "What are you doing there!? Excuse me! Can you just back off? This is very fragile! Are you out of your mind? Get off that and go find your parents!" Alan yelled to the kid, making sure he got the point. He turned to us. "Did you just see what he did?!" He asked us. We nodded gravely. The kid cursed and stormed off. Mariah looked away. She was sensitive to cursing, though she was surrounded by it day and night. Alan turned to Ellie, angry. "Why do they have to bring their kids?!" He groaned loudly.
"You could hire your help. But there's four summers of work here, with the money for one. And you say it's a learning experience, sort of a vacation, and you get volunteers with kids." Ellie explained to him calmly. "And besides, we bring our own kids." Ellie gestured to us. I and Mariah grinned widely.
"Ellie, he's not my son. I sometimes may view him as such, but he's just my nephew, and he needed help." Alan said, heading towards the tent. We followed.
"Nonsense, Alan. I'm sure your heart jumped for it the moment you were able to snatch him." Ellie brushed her hand by his shoulder.
"It did not, Ellie. There are tons of problems with him." Alan jokingly told Ellie as I mocked a scowl. My parents were involved in a car crash some six years ago. Dad didn't make it, but Mom did. However, a year after recovery, when I was ten, Mom started taking drugs. Because Uncle Alan was the only family Mom had left, she sent me to him. I've been with him since.
We arrived to where several volunteers were clustered around a computer that was set up on a table in the small tent, its flaps lashed open.
"Ready to give it a shot, Jerry?" Alan asked the volunteer who was at the computer, Jerry Ashe. Jerry was like my older brother and we treated each other as such. A little girl moved closer to the computer. Ellie looked down at her.
"Do you want to see the computer?" Ellie asked her gently, moving her to a place where she could see, and where she wasn't in Alan's way.
"Thumper ready?" Jerry asked a man, Bryan Fisher.
"Ready." Bryan replied, nodding.
"Fire." Jerry told Bryan. Bryan threw the switch on the machine. The whole thing hopped up into the air as it drove a soft lead pellet into the earth with a tremendous force. There was a dull thud as the whole world seemed to vibrate. Everyone's eyes turned to the computer screen.
"How long does this usually take?" Ellie asked Jerry.
"It should be immediate return. You shoot the radar into the ground, the image bounces back." Jerry explained. Suddenly the computer screen came to life, yellow contour lines tracing across it in three waves, detailing a dinosaur skeleton.
"This new program's incredible! A few more years of development and you don't have to dig anymore!" Jerry praised the program. Alan scowled.
"Where's the fun in that?" Alan asked, looking absolutely hurt. A couple of volunteers chuckled.
"Well...You won't get sunburns." I told him jokingly. Most of the volunteers laughed as Al glared at me playfully.
"It looks a little distorted, but I don't think it's the computer." Jerry said, squinting up at the computer screen.
"Postmortem contraction of the posterior neck ligaments." Ellie shook her head and turned to Alan. "Velociraptor?" She asked him.
"Yes. Good shape, too. Five, six feet high. I'm guessing nine feet long. Look at the-" Alan just barely touched the computer and the computer beeped and the image changed. Alan pulled his finger back quickly.
"What'd you do?" Jerry asked quickly, rapidly typing on the computer keyboard.
"He touched it. Dr. Grant's not machine compatible." Ellie told Jerry, who laughed and touched a different part of the screen, bringing the image back.
"They've got it in for me." Alan said jokingly, before admiring, but not touching the image.
"Look at the half-moon shaped bone in the wrist. No wonder these guys learned to fly." Alan said, gesturing to the wrists. Most of the volunteers laughed at his last statement. Alan looked at the group, a surprised expression on his face. My uncle believed that dinosaurs evolved to birds, slowly, but eventually they did. I wasn't sure if I believed in that or not. Some dinosaurs showed an eerie resemblance to birds, while others didn't.
"Now, seriously, show of hands, how many of you have read my book?" Alan asked. The group stopped laughing and most of them looked elsewhere. Ellie, Jerry, Mariah, and I supportively raised our hands. Alan sighed.
"Great. Well maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present-day birds than reptiles. Look at the pubic bone, it's turned backwards, just like a bird. The vertebrae, full of hollows and air sacs, just like a bird. Even the word raptor means "bird of prey"." Alan lectured, gesturing to the image. When he put the similarities between birds and dinosaurs together, it made his theory seem more reasonable.
"That doesn't look very scary...More like a six foot turkey." A younger voice said. Some of the volunteers laughed. Alan turned to look for who said that, and the volunteers stepped aside, revealing the kid who was kicking sand into the excavation site. Alan took off his sunglasses and looked at the kid like he just came from a different planet. I chuckled softly. I remembered that was the same look I had received when I had arrived at Alan's house for the first time to live with him. He had treated me like an alien. He slowly walked towards the kid, putting his hands in his pockets. I heard Ellie mumble something, softly shaking her head.
"Okay, try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous period. You'd get your first look at the six-foot turkey as you move into a clearing. But raptor, he knew you were there a long time ago. He moves like a bird; lightly, bobbing his head, and you keep still, because you think maybe his visual acuity's based on movement, like a T- rex, and he'll lose you if you don't move. But no. Not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares back. That's when the attack comes, no, not from the front, but from the side, from the other two raptors you didn't know were there." Alan walked to the other side, pulling his hands out of his pockets.
"Velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns, and he's out in force today. And he slashes at you with this-" Alan pulled a raptor claw out of his pockets. The kid's eyes went wide, and in the first time while Alan was lecturing him, he looked scared.
"A six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the middle toe. They don't bother to bite the jugular, like a lion, they just slash here, here-" Alan gestured to chest, lightly swiping the claw there. The kid flinched a little.
"Or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines." Alan traced the claw right across the boy's stomach. "Point is, you're alive when they start to eat you. Whole thing took about four seconds. "So, you know, you might try to show a little respect. Okay?" Alan got low, to about the kid's face. The kid looked like he was on the verge of tears.
"Okay." He nodded as he whispered. Alan nodded and walked off, me, Ellie, and Mariah following.
"You know, Alan, if you just wanted to scare the kid, you could've just pulled a gun on him." Ellie told him and Alan nodded.
"Yeah, kids these days...You want to have one of those?" Alan gestured to where the kid was.
"She has me and you have him." Mariah spoke up, gesturing to us.
"Exactly. And I don't want that child, but a breed of a child would be interesting, Dr. Grant." Ellie said, getting strange looks from both me and Mariah.
"A breed of a child?" I repeated humorously. Ellie glared at me, and playfully snatched my hat.
"As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted," Ellie tossed me back my hat, which I put back on my head. "What's so wrong with kids?" She asked Alan.
"Oh, Ellie, look. They're noisy, they're messy, they're sticky, they're expensive."
"I'm not noisy." Mariah put in.
"If you were as loud as the volume of the music you listen to, I would agree with him." Ellie argued, scoffing.
"I'm not messy." I confidentially told Alan.
"The teepee we share begs to differ." Alan said, gesturing to the general areas where the teepees were. I glared. Alan made every small clutter seem like a humongous mess.
"We're not sticky." Mariah said after a slight pause. Alan and Ellie stopped walking for a short moment, and then resumed walking.
"Okay, you're not usually sticky, and as for your comment about kids being expensive," Ellie turned to Alan, lightly jabbing a finger in his chest. "You are so cheap." She told him. There was a long pause.
"They smell." Alan said, continuing the subject.
"Oh my god, they do not! They do not smell!" Ellie scoffed, shaking her head.
"They do." Alan gestured to us. I scowled and glared at him.
"Sometimes, if they don't use deodorant or shower properly, then they do, but usually, they don't smell." Ellie brought out.
"Anything else, you old fossils?" Ellie asked jokingly after a long pause.
"Yeah, some of 'em can't even walk!" I told her. Ellie and Mariah shook their heads.
"It frustrates me that I love you so much, but I need to strangle you right now!" Ellie playfully took off Alan's hat and gave him a tight hug. I looked away, just because...in my opinion, romance is disgusting. I heard them kissing as I felt an odd rush of wind. Alan and Ellie let go of each other and looked around for the source.
"Helicopter!" Mariah yelled, pointing up as the loud roar of helicopter became more noticeable. Alan and Ellie were already running back to the site, yelling for people to cover up the dig. Alan ran up to the copter and gestured wildly for him to shut it down. The pilot gestured to the trailer. I ran over there, Alan following. Alan got ahead of me and slammed open the door.
"What do you think you're doing here?!" Alan asked angrily. Once I got in, I saw an old man, dressed completely in white. He was short, in his early seventies. He was digging in the fridge, his back to us. He turned around, pulling out a bottle of fancy champagne. Just as he turned around, the cork popped, and I caught it, accidentally hurting my hand.
"Hey, we were saving that!" Alan yelled, pointing to the bottle.
"For today, I guarantee it." The old man chuckled. He spoke with a light Scottish accent.
"And who in God's name do you think you are?" Alan asked, still angry with this old man.
The man hobbled to us and now I could see that he had a cane, with a piece of amber on top, a mosquito enclosed in it.
"John Hammond. And I am finally delighted to meet you in person, Dr. Grant." Alan hadn't offered a hand, so Mr. Hammond just shook Alan's index finger, blowing off the dust. "Who might you be?" Mr. Hammond asked me. Mr. Hammond was the person who funded our digs, who basically provided my uncle's life.
"Richard Pacer, Dr. Grant's nephew." I shook his hand respectfully, but not before wiping my hands on my jeans. Alan was still dumb-struck, trying to process this.
"I can see my fifty thousand a year are well spent." Mr. Hammond said, nodding approvingly while looking around the trailer. The door slapped opened again and Ellie and Mariah entered.
"Okay, who's the jerk?" Ellie demanded, snatching her hat off her head.
"Uh, this is our paleobotanist, Dr. Ellie..." Alan began to introduce Ellie.
"Sattler." Ellie finished his sentence.
"Sattler and her niece, Mariah Sattler. This is Mr. Hammond. John Hammond." Alan told Ellie. Ellie gasped and her eyes widened.
"Did I say jerk?" Ellie asked, embarrassed.
"I'm sorry for the dramatic entrance, but I'm in a hurry. Will you have a wee bit of a drink?" Mr. Hammond asked as he basically made himself at home in the trailer. Ellie tried to follow him and assist him.
"Come along then, don't let it get warm." There was a slight pause as Mr. Hammond started drying some dishes. "Come on in, all of you. Sit down." Mr. Hammond insisted. I opened the fridge and grabbed two water bottles, one for me and one for Mariah. We sat down on two high chairs.
"I have samples all over the kitchen." Ellie explained as she began moving some dishes.
"I know my way around the kitchen." Mr. Hammond lightly gestured her to where two chairs were standing. She sat down next to Alan, both taken back by Mr. Hammond's sudden appearance. Mr. Hammond turned to face all of us, sitting on the counter as he continued drying glasses.
"Well now, I'll get right to the point. I like you. All of you. I can tell instantly with people; it's a gift." Mr. Hammond gestured to us, but completely changed the subject. "I own an island. Off the coast of Costa Rica. I leased it from the government and spent the last five years setting up a kind of biological preserve down there. Really spectacular. Spared no expense. It makes the one I have in Kenya look like a petting zoo. No doubt that sooner or later our attractions will drive kids out of their minds." Mr. Hammond explained. I was a bit confused and threw a glance at Mariah. She shrugged.
"And what are those?" Alan asked. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that he was talking about what might the attractions be.
"Smaller versions of adults, honey." Ellie teased. Either she knew what he was talking about and chose to ignore it, or she was oblivious as to what he was asking about. It didn't matter, the reaction was the same, and Alan gave her a dirty look. I glanced at Mariah as we suppressed chuckles.
"And not just kids, but everyone. We're going to open next year. Unless the lawyers kill me first. I don't care for lawyers, do you?" Mr. Hammond asked us. Alan and Ellie looked at each other and shook their heads, stammering about how they didn't know any. I could tell Alan was lying. He had known two lawyers, one for the transfer of all my legal rights to him, and one time when we were almost kicked off the dig site.
"Well, I'm afraid I do. There's one, a particular pebble in my shoe. He represents my investors. He says they insist on outside opinions." Mr. Hammond explained. Alan looked at me.
"What sort of opinions?" I asked, giving Mr. Hammond my attention. Alan lightly kicked my ankle and glared at me.
"Not to put a fine point on it, your kind." Mr. Hammond gestured to Ellie and Alan. "Let's face it, in your particular field, you're the top minds. If I could just get you two to sign off on the park, you know, give a wee testimonial, I could get back on 'shedule', I mean schedule." Mr. Hammond corrected himself quickly. Ellie and Alan gave each other a quick glance.
"Why would they care what we think?" Ellie asked, lightly scoffing.
"Well, it's right up your alley." Mr. Hammond said as he passed a glass to Alan. "Look, why don't you all come down for the weekend. Love to have the opinion of a paleobotanist, and of course," Mr. Hammond smiled in our direction. "Our target audience." I offered a light smile and glanced at Alan. He had a slight frown on his face. I knew what he was thinking about, he was thinking about the dig. Mr. Hammond gave a drink to Ellie. "I've got a jet down by Choteau."
"No, I'm sorry, it wouldn't be possible. We've just discovered a new skeleton." Alan began to explain, but Mr. Hammond interrupted him.
"I could you by compensate you by fully funding your dig-" Mr. Hammond explained, but Alan didn't know that he wasn't finished.
"This would be an awfully unusual time." Alan said.
"For a further three years." Mr. Hammond finished his sentence. Ellie elbowed Alan hard.
"Where's the plane?" Ellie asked as the adults began clinking glasses, a slight chuckle in her voice. Me and Mariah quietly high-fived each other. A break from the dig would be grand.