Chapter 6
DX
The sun was beginning to set in New York, throwing the city into silhouette form. The sky was turning a mixture of spectacular colours, like an immense rainbow, stretching towards the horizon. The lights of the countless skyscrapers were flicking on, one by one, lighting up like so many Christmas trees. It was a beautiful sight, clearly seen through the glass wall of InGen Headquarters building, but nobody paid it any attention. They were in deep concentration.
They all sat around the huge glass table, staring at Tim, who looked as if gathering his thoughts. Apart from the distant sound of cars below in the streets, it was completely silent in the InGen building, almost peaceful. They gave him a moment, then Guiterrez spoke, impatiently.
"So, now can you tell us why we're here?" he asked. Tim stood up and began pacing backwards and forwards behind his chair, muttering to himself for a few moments. Then he spoke.
"I need your help. You alone can help me sufficiently. I'm organizing a small expedition to go to our island and recover some valuable materials. I need you to accompany me."
There was a brief dumbstruck silence that filled the room, ringing harshly in their ears. Malcolm looked at Tim incredulously for a second, then turned to face Harding and Guiterrez, both of whom looked just as scandalized.
"You're insane," whispered Malcolm. Tim glanced at him and a small grin crossed his face. He continued pacing for a few moments.
"I assure you that I am not. You see; the Costa Rican government suspects that this outbreak is coming from our island. That is, I'm afraid, completely true. For a long time InGen had a big problem during the manufacturing process of the dinosaurs it was making. They couldn't find out what was causing it. 60 of the dinosaurs produced were simply becoming sick and dying. One thing was obvious to everybody. It was a disease."
Malcolm was shaking his head, but Tim continued, ignoring him. "This disease was completely unknown to mankind. It had no official classification; it had never been seen in the animal kingdom. Our scientists named it DX. It plagued the company for several years. Then, merely a few months before the incident at Jurassic Park, something was important was uncovered. The carnivore's food source was contaminated. Protein fragments were acting as prions."
"Jesus," said Guiterrez.
Tim nodded. "Indeed. This was a massively expensive new technology, and when the dinosaurs were finally resurrected they were dying. My grandfather was furious, but there was little that could be done about it at the time, we were unequipped to combat it. But that wasn't the biggest problem. While it was at first merely spreading to other animals, of which were mostly newborns, this disease was starting to spread, not just between the dinosaurs, but it was being passed on to humans. Nothing serious was occurring at the time, employees took it at first to be a bad case of the flu. It was fortunate that it was still reported, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to find out about this so soon. But there was always the absolute possibility that it could mutate. My grandfather saw this as a means for concern, he was preparing to open the most ambitious amusement park in the history of the world, but he could not risk his visitors falling ill with a completely unknown allergen. Dr. Wu here was working around the clock to find a cure. And he came very close, in fact, he was preparing for initial testing when the Jurassic Park incident occurred. But he had no opportunity to retrieve his work, as all of it was stored on the computer mainframe at Isla Nublar. Not that anybody would consider it necessary to recover it, Jurassic Park had failed. But now it seems that we do."
"Wait a minute, Isla Nublar was destroyed, how do expect to collect this information?" said Malcolm. He stared at Tim for a long time, who had stopped pacing. Tim looked calculating, staring back at Malcolm. Somehow Ian knew the answer that was to follow, and he felt a chill run through him.
"No. It was not," said Tim in a steely voice. Malcolm looked dismayed, he heaved a heavy sigh. He shook his head again and whispered, "I should have expected something like this. Hammond was always too attached to his creations."
Tim turned away and began pacing again, but he was smiling.
"Isla Nublar still exists to this day," he said.
"Please, don't tell me it's still inhabited by dinosaurs," sighed Ian. Tim shrugged slightly.
"I can't do that, Dr. Malcolm. The dinosaurs of Isla Nublar are still very much alive."
"How many?" asked Guiterrez, leaning forwards, his face bearing an expression of benign interest. Once again, Tim smiled, this time he gave a small laugh. His eyes were glinting with interest and excitement.
"All of them, Dr. Guiterrez. It seems that all of our dinosaurs are aware of their engineered state of deficiency. They have learned to ingest plants that are rich in the amino acid lysine, just like their counterparts on Isla Sorna."
"How many of them managed to survive?"
"All of them. Well, all of the species have anyway. Of course single members of each have fallen as prey occasionally."
"Wait a minute, how is that possible? Isla Nublar is a lot smaller than Isla Sorna, right?" asked Malcolm.
"Indeed it is, but Jurassic Park held a far smaller contingent of dinosaurs than Site B. As you already know Site B was where the dinosaurs were created and matured. But they had to remain there until they're enclosures at Jurassic Park were complete. Obviously, only a fraction of the population was ever successfully introduced, but that's still quite a large number."
"But I thought that food had to be shipped to the island once every two weeks?"
"Yes, it did. But it seems that many of the larger herbivores are migratory, they keep moving. They feed a little, then move on. This way they have managed to maintain a considerable amount of vegetation on the island."
"Won't they eventually deplete it? An island that size cannot maintain such a population of large animals, despite any methods used to slow the consumption of their food source."
"Eventually, yes. There are already several severely deforested areas. But there is sufficient vegetation to last the dinosaur population a considerable period."
"How long?"
"At the current rate of consumption, several years, and--"
"One moment here, what happened to all of that money that InGen expended on the deconstruction of the Isla Nublar facilities?" said Malcolm, frowning.
"Oh, very good, Dr. Malcolm. Not even I remembered at first. While my grandfather may have officially recorded those expenditures as used to deconstruct Jurassic Park, he did not. He used that money to…persuade certain people to turn a blind eye to its existence, and to deny it if ever asked about it by unwanted visitors." There was a brief moment, as they all absorbed this information. Malcolm still looked dismayed, even disappointed.
"That's pretty dark," he said.
"Yes, well, as I said my grandfather was especially attached to his creations."
"Who knows about this?"
"Apart from a few high up Costa Rican officials, they are all sitting in this room. My grandfather was highly secretive about this, he never wanted anybody to know. There are no government agencies that keep such a watchful eye on Isla Nublar as they do on Sorna. He told me this, on his death bed, when he named me his successor."
Guiterrez seemed to be the only one impressed by this information; Wu looked troubled and sullen, Malcolm still remained incredulous, as did Sarah. But Guiterrez was intrigued, so dinosaurs existed elsewhere? And he was being offered the chance to see them, in the flesh.
"Why us? What do you need us for?" asked Malcolm.
"I cannot trust any of the previous people who worked for my grandfather, the construction workers, or the scientists. Other than them, you are the only people alive that have knowledge about the layout of island. My grandfather is dead, as is the game warden, the chief engineer and the lawyer in charge of InGen. And as I was quite young at the time of the incident, my knowledge is limited at best. I need you. We have no idea how far this disease could spread, we could be preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths."
"Saving the world kinda stuff, huh?" said Guiterrez. Tim shrugged and smiled meekly. They all sat, considering it.
"Say we were to agree to this little adventure of yours, what's the plan?" asked Malcolm, his hand moving over his chin thoughtfully. For answer, Tim picked up a long black remote control that was lying in front of his chair, and clicked a large rectangular red button at the top. There was a loud, high pitched electronic chime that filled the room. Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a whirring of a motor. Behind Tim, the portrait of John Hammond began to rise upwards, towards the ceiling. As it neared the top, a large black LED television screen was revealed. A small portion of the ceiling retracted, providing room for the portrait, which continued upwards, moving out of view. Then, with a dull clunk it disappeared and the ceiling moved back into position. Another electronic beep filled their ears and the television flickered to life. On the screen, it perfectly sharp focus, was a large topographical map of Isla Nublar, and to the left were several readouts.
Guiterrez gave a long whistle, his eyes wide.
"Slick, very slick," said Malcolm, for the first time looking impressed. Tim moved to the side of the screen, to give them a better view. The map of the island was overlaid with infa-red dots and circles, and contour lines riddled the surface, most concentrated at the North and the East.
"Over the years, my grandfather collected information from many satellite passes. Over time he learned the typical ranges and nesting sites of all of the dinosaur species on the island, which you can see here, as the red dots and circles here. When I found out about this disease I studied them closely, and have fortunately discovered that this information greatly decreases the risk of my plan. Dr. Wu's research data is stored on file, on the highest access level of the Jurassic Park computer mainframe. To access this we will need to restore power to the park's systems, here."
He clicked the remote control again, which emitted another beep, and the screen on the TV changed. A red rectangle appeared near the southern tip of the island, which began expanding to the point where it filled the screen. Now it showed a zoomed in view of the south. Most of the map showed jungle, a few patches of fields of grass showed through. In the centre was a large single, bunker like building, constructed of concrete.
"This is the island's geothermal power plant. The island is a seamount, created by a volcanic up thrust in the Earth's crust. The south of the island is still fairly active, there are steam vents all over the place and the ground is sometimes hot underfoot. Now, the geothermal plant was designed to bear harsh conditions, it was never supposed to need maintaining. After all of these years being offline it should still work."
"Wait, why would it be offline? Did somebody go in afterwards and turn it off?" said Malcolm.
"No, no. When John Arnold gave the shutdown command, it turned off all of the power sources. When the reset the circuit breakers, it was for the gasoline generator only. For a short time it could run the fences by itself. Now, when the park was still online it was run in conjunction with several other power sources, including the large gasoline generator and a hydroelectric power plant. At the time, they were all needed to run at once to generate the power needed to operate the miles of electrified fencing around the island for any extended period of time. But this alone should be sufficient to run the computer systems-"
"Why don't we use the gasoline generator then?"
"Because after all of these years the gas would have long since evaporated, and it would be impossible to refuel it quickly enough."
"Well, what about the hydroelectric plant then, according to this map it's a lot closer."
Tim shook his head. "No, the hydroelectric plant would take far too long to bring back online and to generate the necessary power. I'm afraid the geothermal plant is our only option. Now, from the information the satellite passes I'm determined that no dinosaur species that bare any threat occupy this area."
"That bare any threat?" said Malcolm, raising his eyebrows.
"The area is home to the Microceratops, small herbivores." Malcolm nodded approvingly. Tim continued.
"We'll fly in by helicopter and get the power back online. Then," he clicked the remote control again, which beeped once more and showed a new image, which showed several large buildings, "we will re-enter the helicopters and be dropped off here, at the visitor centre. The satellite images show that this area is almost completely devoid of dinosaurs. Here, we can access the computer systems and get the information. That's the second reason why I need you Dr. Wu; you're the only person left in the world with the access codes to the computers. After we've got the data we'll fly out of there, get back here. Hopefully then Dr. Wu can complete his research and we can present the cure to the Costa Rican government, and this will all be under control. Hopefully we can do this before they get to it?"
"What do you mean?"
"They want to destroy it. And I have no doubt that they will, unless we can stop the virus."
"Look, if you're the head of InGen, why don't you just send in the cavalry? I'm sure that you could simply overwhelm the island and take it by force, instead of going in with a small group like this."
"Because, nobody knows that it exists, and I plan to keep it that way. If they all of a sudden so an armada approaching the island I'm sure they'll be able to put one and one together."
"Why? Why do you care?"
"I made a promise to my grandfather; to protect his creations. And I plan to keep it. The Costa Rican government doesn't want this getting out either, their economy would be severely crippled, and they rely on tourism."
"But you said that the Costa Rican government would destroy the island eventually. Won't that alert everybody in the same way?"
"Yes, I'm fairly certain that eventually they would destroy it, regardless of what happens to their economy. That is why we have to get there first".
Tim clicked the remote again, and with a final beep the screen went blank. The ceiling retracted once more and the portrait of Hammond came back into view. The motor whirred until the TV was completely concealed, then left a piercing silence. Tim looked at his grandfather for a moment, smiling. Then he slipped the remote into the pocket of his suit and turned back to the table.
"So, are you in?" he asked.
Wu was nodding, and put the tips of his fingers together.
"If it's a matter of saving lives, how can I refuse? I'm with you Tim," he said. Tim nodded. He turned to Guiterrez.
"Your knowledge of diseases could be very useful to us Dr. Guiterrez; your help would be much appreciated." Marty sat for a moment, his eyes closed. Then, he nodded slowly. Tim turned to Malcolm, apprehensive for the first time. Malcolm was still frowning, deep in thought. He turned the face Tim.
"As much as I hate those islands, I have to agree with Dr. Wu. If it's a matter of saving lives, I'm in. But I must warn you that things will not go according to plan. You have made several mistakes, just as Hammond did before you." Tim twitched irritably, but nodded all the same. He turned to Harding.
"If Ian's going, I'm going," she said.
"Alright then, thank you. All of you."
"When were you planning to leave?" asked Malcolm.
"As soon as possible; Tomorrow morning. I'll have my choppers pick us up at a nearby airport and we'll fly down to Costa Rica, then to the islands. Now, get some sleep, all of you. You shall be given accommodation in this building, which I think you will find suited to your needs. If you need to contact anybody or if you need anything, just ask. We leave at sunrise. Any questions?"
The room was silent, and Tim smiled, triumphant.
"Ok guys, good luck to us all."
Tim clicked a button on the table and a man popped his head in.
"Yes, Mr. Murphy?" he said.
"Please show these people to the quarters we have prepared."
"Yes, sir. Please, follow me," he said to them and left.
They all nodded, and stood. Wu, Harding and Guiterrez headed for the door, but Malcolm stayed where he was. At the threshold and turned, their expressions quizzical.
"Dr. Malcolm, what did you mean when you said that things won't go according to plan?" murmured Tim.
Malcolm smiled, and headed for the door.
"You'll see," he said over his shoulder.