Chapter 12: The Control Room
Arnold looked at his watch and with a sigh turned back to the computer that he was working on. Hammond had been gone for about an hour already and he had been steadily working. It was tough to try and write a brand new system, but they were making headway. He wouldn't have anything concrete until they uploaded it on the park's mainframe and activated it, but it was a start at least.
"Where are you at?" Nedry asked him from across the table, breaking the silence.
Arnold flicked the switch on his lighter and lit up another cigarette. His third of the hour.
"Electrical output from the electric fencing and the Control Center systems. What are you doing?" he asked, noticing that Nedry wasn't really doing anything.
"My job doesn't start yet," he replied with a smug smile. "I start work once we are on the island and integrate the system. I'm a debugger, remember? I don't write, I fix," he added, biting into a jelly donut.
Arnold just gave him a dirty look and continued with what he was doing. He finished writing a particular section of the program and leaned back in his chair.
"And, done. With that part finished, that just leaves the automated feeders and the tour program and the system will be set. Problem is we need the cars for the tour information to be loaded up and we need the feeding machines to get shipped in. Both things are being completed as we speak here, so when we get to Nublar they should be good to go," he exhaled the smoke from the cigarette and inserted the floppy disk into the computer so that he could save the program and bring it with him.
"Any idea on how many animals are going to be on the tour?" Nedry asked, lifting his head from the newspaper he was reading.
"No, I just know that the Tyrannosaurus is going to be the headliner animal. Due to her projected size, she needs a fairly large enclosure. Other than that, I suppose it depends on what else hatches in the new few months. We obviously have to make a decision soon, but if we clone enough herbivores they can get placed together in the same Paddock. I think Hammond wanted five or six Paddocks and one reserve Paddock," he answered, rubbing the cigarette butt out in the ashtray.
"Reserve Paddock, for what?" retorted Nedry
"Sick or injured dinosaurs." Arnold answered, "Maybe if we decide to introduce another species to the tour, it's just in case because with a project of this magnitude we need to cover our asses as much as we possibly can."
The sound of a door opening and closing rang through the room and they looked up and saw Hammond come walking back into the room.
"Hello everybody, how is going?" he asked, the old man goofy grin back on his face.
"It's going fine John, we have done about as much as we can here, the rest can only be completed once we get on Nublar," Arnold responded, lighting yet another cigarette.
"What was the urgency?" Muldoon asked, sitting at another table also reading the newspaper.
"Oh, it wasn't really an urgency exactly, all of the eggs started hatching. We now have over five species of living breathing animals," he said smiling.
"Also, Arnold, if you and Dennis are ready to, I was planning to go to Nublar so you guys can begin doing what ever system work needs done."
"Yeah, that's fine John," he said holding up the floppy disk. "I have it all right here."
The four men, at this point headed to the helipad where the helicopter was waiting for them, blades spinning and ready for liftoff. The flight took a little over an hour. As they passed over the island, by
looking out the window they could see the giant slab concrete bases for the Paddock fences. They could see the workers standing on the slabs and on large scaffolding ladders, feeding wire through the pins in the structure poles and into the slab. These were the conduction wires, the sole reason why electricity would flow through the fencing. The helicopter landed in the center of the island, about a hundred yards from the Visitor Center building.
The outside of the building was very shoddy, the workers still fixing the outer walls and setting up the fixtures and the shingles. The inside however, was completed already. Walking inside, they were greeted with a large rotunda with the middle wide open. Hammond informed them that two skeletons were going to be mounted in that space. They headed up the stairs and at the top of the stairs made a right, walking down a long hallway. There were two doorways in this hallway. The first one was the entrance to the control room, and the second the entrance to the labs. Hammond pointed out that a card key lock system was designed for these doors and as they entered the room, it was like Nedry and Arnold were in heaven.
There were more monitors they could count, and they were all at the command of three computers in the center of the room. Arnold looked around and noticed that another group of three monitors sat to the side in front of the stairwell.
"Nedry, that set of three can be your workstation. I'll take the one in the middle."
Nedry grumbled in response and went and sat down. Arnold took the floppy disk out of his pocket and inserted it into the main computer terminal. The screen flashed and an uploading screen popped up. He followed the commands as the program installed itself. All of the monitors turned on at this point, and they all had different direction prompts.
Arnold looked up and smiled, and lit another cigarette before getting back to work on the main terminal.