CHAPTER 10: THE INSETTO PROBLEM

I'd never had so many headaches in such short a time in my life. Nedry's system was a mess; patched up all over, pieces missing, a list of malfunctions a mile long. There was no getting around the fact that the fat guy had screwed up. The more we pushed him to get it fixed, the more money he demanded from Hammond. In the end nothing ended up getting done, they were stuck in stalemate for months at a time, struggling over the fact that debugging the system hadn't been in the contract when he signed up.

But everybody ended up making the same argument against him; he had been contracted to make a very large control system, the prospect of which had been challenging to anybody from the start. He had given us half of one.

So it fell to me to make the repair work, fix all of the most pressing issues whilst they berated Nedry. All the while he sat there on his fat ass, chewing on candy bars and downing cans of cola, typing away and not really accomplishing anything very fast.

And that was what I did, for over a year and a half. Who else was going to do it?

Arnold did his best to help me along, but there wasn't much time aside for him; he was busy actually running the place, co-ordinating the teams and what-not.

At first it wasn't so bad; a problem arose every few weeks, and I'd do what I could to sort it out. Sometimes the problems solved themselves; just one offs. Others took a few days of coding to sort out. But it was manageable.

But then, after a while, the problems just kept on coming, faster and faster. The parks system had been constructed in a kind of hierarchy, it was necessary, but the way that it had to be done. But that meant that three systems could be based around another; the it failed all of them would go down. The most obvious example was of course the electricity supply. The dinosaurs locked up were powerful enough to tear the metal of the fence wiring to pieces in a few seconds, so they had to remain electrified with ten thousand volts at all times. Surprising that we managed it for so long, seeing as the power always went out in the visitor centre, which caused a load of weird crap every time it happened.

By the time the rest of the staff were beginning to think that they were getting finished; the animals in place and acclimatised, security systems up, construction now more utility than anything, it was just getting worse for me.

I was swamped.

Joel Anderson, 1997

Joel Anderson

May 5th, 1993

Control Room, Visitor Centre, Isla Nublar

"I can't take this!" Joel shouted, throwing the stack of papers in front of him into the air, and wheeled around to face Nedry, who sat eating loudly.

Nedry seemed unperturbed by his sudden outburst, and simply swivelled around in his chair to face him, revealing his chubby, chocolate covered face.

John Arnold looked from Joel to Nedry, but didn't say anything; just took a long drag from his cigarette, the crumbling clip glowing for a moment.

"What's wrong?" said Nedry brightly, the wrapper of his chocolate bar crinkling as he put it to his mouth.

"The problem is, this system has so many holes in it that it's worse than Swiss cheese!"

Arnold coughed out a laugh through his mouthful of smoke, and simply watched the exchange, his face immaculately lit by the glow of his monitor.

"It's not really that bad; everything works. And I'm starting on the bug list next Wednesday. Don't look so worried."

Nedry turned away, and began typing again. Straining in his seat, and peering over Nedry's shoulder from across the room, he could see Nedry's disgustingly disorganised desk. The images of mathematicians were in stark contrast to the empty cans of jolt cola, the chocolate wrappers, and even his VHS copy of the movie Jaws. On the monitor he could see an attractive woman on a zebra-striped patterned bed.

He stood up, and tore across the room, brandishing a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. He gripped the back of Nedry's seat, and swung him around, waving the paper in his face.

"Look at this. This, it's just a summary sheet. But I've had to print it in text so small that I need a magnifying glass just to get it all on one page. Let's see here," he looked at the first few lines of text, and began to read them out.

"02/11/91; we had reports that the automated feeding system in the Herbivore paddock A was dispensing additional lysine to all animals in the paddock every Wednesday, and would not respond to override commands. When we tried to pull out the lysine capsules from the feeding dispenser and decided to administer them by hand, alarms went off in the maintenance shed and we couldn't turn them off. It's continued every fortnight since then. That was two years ago!"

Nedry looked distantly surprised by this, but merely smiled. "It's probably just a glitch or a missing character, I'll sort it—"

Anderson continued. "14/06/92; Dilophosaurus paddock suffered a major disruption of its electrical supply. All of the capacitors overloaded, and we had to have all of the animals sedated for two days while their fences were repaired. We've had to keep checking the capacitor stations all over the island regularly ever since them."

Nedry started to babble, but Anderson cut him off.

"Whenever we lose power in the main control facility all of the door locks fail, invariably. The security systems – most notably the cameras – all turn themselves off. Do you want me to go on?"

Nedry sat motionless for a moment, and eyed Anderson, looking him up and down. He dropped his chocolate bar onto the desk, and pushed it away, as if he had suddenly lost his appetite. As if.

"What do you want from me, man?" he said, sucking his index finger absently.

"Your help would be nice," Arnold said, resuming typing. "I can take care of usual maintenance around here, and I know you've got your own people in Cambridge who can take care of the rest of the coding for you."

"Why should I debug this system?"

"It's your system!"

"I am not paid to fix it; only to design it."

Anderson sighed, and turned away from Nedry. "Moral reasons, maybe?"

Nedry's chair squeaked as he turned around. "What moral reasons?"

"You know how dangerous it is for everybody on this island if those fences go down at any time. The entire system needs to be flawless. There are going to be tourists all over this place; whole families, with kids."

Nedry simply sat, and said nothing.

Anderson sighed slowly, and stood for a moment, putting his hands over the back of his head. He strolled over to his seat, and sat down. He collected his sheets slowly, cursing.

Then Nedry's voice floated across the room towards him quietly; "I'll think about it."