Jurassic World: Apocalypse – Chapter 4: Hail...to the Untameable King
A/N: OK, readers. I think this is one of the best chapters I've written so far in the story. Firstly, if you're a fan of that Jurassic Park character who comes in black, you're going to adore this chapter. That's right, Dr. Ian Malcolm has arrived! Also, we'll see more of Tom and Alaina and what they have to do with Jurassic World...and lastly, as Gennaro and Ludlow have doubts about how long the park will be a popular success, we'll get our first (or quite possibly second) glimpse of Jurassic World's soon-to-be-opened attraction...please enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Jurassic Park except the very characters I've made up.
"...so I think we could both benefit from your visit to our park, Dr. Malcolm," explained Peter Ludlow via the telephone.
"What kind of benefit?" Malcolm asked.
"It's all about endorsement and marketing, Dr. Malcolm. We believe that if you and your wife were to visit the park, more people would be interested in our project. And–"
"Having a park full of large dinosaurs isn't enough to keep you guys in business?"
Ludlow laughed. "No, no, no. I didn't say that. It's just that we believe in giving our guests what they want. We want to feature famous people to our park and, since your wife happens to be a paleontologist, I think it's pretty good idea. Of course, you'll also be compensated for you're efforts."
Malcolm nodded. "Well, I'd have to talk it over with my wife first–"
"Oh that's find. Just give me a call when you make up your mind."
"Alright, talk to you later."
"Goodbye now."
Malcolm hung up his phone and placed it on his desk. Dr. Ian Malcolm was a mathematician from California who specialized in the branch of mathematics known as the Chaos Theory. According to Malcolm, the Chaos Theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems which are highly sensitive to their initial conditions and can be changed dramatically by even the slightest alternation.
As he began sifting through paperwork, his wife, Dr. Sarah "Harding" Malcolm entered his office (he was working from home today). Sarah was a young paleontologist who also happened to specialize in the behavior of modern animals. This is because her studies of modern creatures often helped her understand extinct ones. Several of Sarah's theories were rather controversial, somewhat like those of Dr. Grant's, but were less criticized than those of the latter scientist. Sarah was easily recognized by were reddish-brown hair, which at the moment was flowing freely from her head and down her back.
"Who was on the phone?" Sarah asked.
"Ludlow again," Malcolm told her. "He still wants us to visit the park."
Sarah shrugged. "Where's the brochure?"
Malcolm looked through the piles of papers on his desk until he found what she requested and handed it to her. She read it aloud: "'Welcome to Jurassic World, one of the parks in the only theme park chain in the world where you can come face-to-face with real-live dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. This incredible place is great for the whole family. After you board the ferry to the island, you will be immersed into the ancient world where dinosaurs still roam. Glide over Isla Nublar on a round-trip tour of our amazing island in our monorail system. Begin your adventure in the Innovation Center and see how science is shaping the past, present and future of our new Jurassic era. In the Hammond Creation Lab, see how we turn DNA into dinosaurs through the magic of genetic engineering. Take a jeep tour through the valley of the Isla Nublar sun and observe our flocks of gallivanting Gallimimus and hooting hadrosaurs. Roll around with our dinosaurs in our glass-encased gyrospheres. Satisfy your prehistoric appetite for thrills when our massive Mosasaurus gets a serving of shark. Get as close as you dare to the most infamous dinosaur ever to stalk the earth at T. rex Kingdom. If you like it wet, cool down and make a Mosasaurus-sized splash at our Aquatic Park. If relaxation is what you're looking for, check out the Cretaceous Cruise and kayak down Isla Nublar's pristine river and see over 100 types of prehistoric flora and fauna. These attractions and many more await you! The Jurassic World is yours to explore!' Ian, I can't believe you didn't just tell that lawyer that we wanted to come."
"Well, I just thought..." Malcolm tried finding a reason to argue, but he was coming up short. "I don't know..."
"Come on, Ian. It'll be a great opportunity for the family. At least admit you're interested."
"Sure, I'm interested, but I just–"
The front door to their house opened.
"Mom! Dad! I'm home!" It was Kelly, their daughter. Kelly was an African-American girl around 12 years old. She dropped her backpack and walked into her father's office. "What's going on?"
"Oh, I was just trying to convince your father that we should visit Jurassic World," Sarah answered casually.
Kelly gasped. "Oh my gosh! Really? Don't tell me, Dad was thinking about whether or not we should go." She looked at Malcolm.
"What?" Malcolm asked.
"Please can we go, Dad?" she asked. "Please?"
Malcolm looked at Kelly, then he looked at Sarah, both silently begging him to say yes. Finally, he threw his hands up. "Fine. We can go."
"Great! Thanks, Dad! This is going to be awesome!"
"So, Sarah," he continued, "when should I tell Ludlow we can visit the park?"
"How about the 12th?" Sarah suggested. "That way we can stay the whole weekend. Next weekend won't be good for us because I've been requested to appear at the dinosaur trackway site in southern Utah, remember?"
Malcolm nodded. "Alright, this weekend sounds good. I'll give him a call."
Hammond (followed by Dianthus), Masrani, Owen and Gerry Harding, were led to a large paddock segregated from the rest of the park by Claire and Henry. The paddock was similar to the raptor paddock, but this one had an indoor observation deck from which one could watch the residents of the enclosure from above. As they walked, Ludlow and Gennaro (lawyer of one of Hammond's investors) had joined the group.
"What's the latest news from the investors, Gennaro?" Hammond asked.
"Oh they love the Jurassic World project," he answered. "They want to know about what attractions the park intends to open next. They're interested in knowing what's coming up."
"I see. What about you Ludlow. What's the progress on your publicity endeavor?"
"I got a call from Dr. Ian Malcolm, and he says that he and his family would like to visit the park. That should be good for the park's publicity."
Owen shook his head. "Seriously? I think we'll need more than a few celebrities to keep this park popular."
"What are you guys talking about?" Harding asked. "Are you guys really thinking that this park's popularity could go downhill? I mean, we've got living dinosaurs!"
"True," Ludlow said, "but dinosaurs won't keep the public excited forever. I'm sure they will for a time, but how long will the popularity last? Humanity has a habit of always wanting something more than they are getting. They want to know what's next. Humanity has been that way since the beginning."
"That is why," Masrani said, "Hammond brought forth the idea to start hosting famous people – especially scientists – at the park."
As the Public Operations Manager, Claire felt obliged to interject. "Our overall plan for the park is to create a new experience every time a person revisits our park. We want a fresh image of the park to always be in the public's mind."
"Exactly," Masrani agreed.
Dianthus trumpeted as he nearly accidentally caused Ludlow to trip over him. Ludlow scowled.
"Does this flea-carrying pachyderm have to follow you everywhere, Uncle?" he asked in irritation.
"When since did an elephant ever get fleas?" Hammond asked. "Mammoths and mastodons might, perhaps, but Dianthus doesn't have much hair to speak of. So where would the fleas reside? They can't. And yes he has to follow me everywhere. He's my friend."
"You're friend?"
"Can we get back on topic?" Owen asked, clearly annoyed by Ludlow's interruption.
"Of course," Masrani announced. "As we were saying, the first VIP we decided – actually it was Gennaro's decision – to invite Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician from California."
"Isn't he a little too...trendy?" Hammond asked. "And why him? He hardly has any relevance to the nature of this park! This is a dinosaur-oriented theme park–"
"True," Ludlow said, "but his wife is a paleontologist. Dr. Sarah Malcolm, though she's more popularly known by her pre-marriage name, Sarah Harding. See, Malcolm has the popularity, and Sarah, in addition to popularity, is a dinosaur-expert herself. If we can get them and other people to endorse the park, we can benefit greatly in the long run and we'll make even more money so we can expand this amazing project."
"I still think we'll need new attractions to keep public interest in Jurassic World and the other Jurassic parks," Gennaro commented.
"I wasn't saying otherwise," Ludlow agreed.
Finally, the group had reached their destination. They passed several armed ACU guards as they approached the staircase that led to the observation deck. It is important to note that with the exception of Hammond, Claire and Henry, the group had no idea what they had awaiting them in this paddock.
"What's in this building?" Gennaro asked as they made their way up the staircase.
"You said you wanted a new attraction," Henry announced, "so we're showing you one."
Gennaro was surprised. "I didn't know you guys were already building the next attraction. What kind of ride is it?"
"We're not building anything. And it's not a ride," Claire told him. "It's a living, biological attraction,"
Tom and Alaina sat next to each other in the history classroom of their last period that day. Their history teacher, Mr. James Martin, pointed to Mesopotamia on his map of the Middle East on the board behind him.
"...so in a sense," he explained, "Mesopotamia is in fact the cradle of civilization. You might think that people older than the Egyptians were primitive, unintelligent hunter-gatherers. But people in Mesopotamia decided that this way of living was very inefficient. For one thing, the climate is quite dry. Most of the plants growing in these lands are very low in nutrients and the animals are hard to catch and hunt. They had no idea where their next meal would come from. This is why those clever Mesopotamians abandoned their hunter-gatherer ways and invented agriculture. They grew fruits and vegetables, they farmed livestock and began building cities. One of the most interesting cities of the time was Uruk, which, at one time, was ruled by the great king Gilgamesh."
A student raised his hand. The teacher acknowledged and the student continued. "Wasn't Gilgamesh a fictitious king from the Epic of Gilgamesh?"
"Several accounts in the Epic of Gilgamesh might be inspired by true events, but the epic is regarded as fictitious. However, Gilgamesh was not fictitious and is actually the author of his epics–"
There was a rapid knocking sequence on the door. Mr. Martin sighed, "Come in."
In stepped the principle's secretary, Mary Anning.
"I'm in the middle of teaching a class here," Mr. Martin told her, crossing his arms. "I've only got a few minutes left you know."
"Sorry, but this announcement from Principle Harmon can't wait. It's already a bit of a late notice as it is. Anyway, I'm here to announce that the school has finally planned a school field trip to the new theme park Jurassic World in Isla Nublar, off the coast of Texas." Gasps of surprise and delight filled the room. Even Mr. Martin seemed intrigued. Anning continued to talk as she started giving each of the students permission slips. "As it says on the slips, we'll be leaving on Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 4:30 pm. And we'll be returning on June 15th at 11:45 pm. We have a special flight already scheduled to take us to Texas, and then we'll board the ferry to the park itself. Permission slips are due tomorrow morning."
Mr. Martin asked, "You do realize that these kids' parents will have to read, have an esophagus spasm and decide whether or not their child is going on the trip by tomorrow morning, right?"
"Principle Harmon wants to apologize for the late notice due to his and the Board of Director's poor planning skills."
As Tom was handed a permission slip, he smiled at Alaina.
"Hey, a free ticket to Jurassic World," Alaina said.
"Yeah, I know," Tom acknowledged.
"But don't you get it? The company that owns this park is the same one that was responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Grant and Luke and those other people."
"Yeah...what's your point?"
"Don't you see? You wanted answers to why they disappeared right?"
Tom winced. It took him a few seconds to realize what Alaina was getting at. Was it true? Could his long-asked questions finally get answered in just a couple of days? He hoped his parents would allow him to go on the trip on such short notice.
"Can I get back to my class now?" Mr. Martin asked. "I was talking about Mesopotamia."
"Of course," Anning said as she left the room.
Mr. Martin smiled. As he opened his mouth to say the next word, Anning peeked her head back through the door.
"By the way," she said, "as a form of apology for his poor planning skills, Principle Harmon said class is dismissed early today."
Mr. Martin slapped his forehead and scowled. "Class dismissed, everyone," he mumbled.
"So here's our new attraction," Claire announced as she and the others made their way onto the observation deck. Below, most of the paddock was filled with thick foliage. Bones from previous meals fed to the creature that resided here lay strewn about on the ground. Gennaro and Ludlow grimaced at this sight.
"Plants?" Ludlow asked. "That's what's going to attract more visitors to the park?"
"No, no," Hammond said knowingly. "There's a creature concealed by the trees and other plants. We spared no expense on the foliage for this exhibit so that it can hide easily. It's staring at us now."
Masrani glared though the glass windows. "Where are we supposed to be looking?"
"It's right...there," Henry told them. They looked in the direction his finger was pointing. Peering out of the foliage at them was a pair of red eyes. The eyes remained fixed on the humans, watching them. The monster must have stood at least 20 feet tall, because its eyes were seen high above the ground. Its reptilian jaws were held agape below its eyes. The teeth were sharp, jagged and gnarly. They glinted in the light of the hot afternoon sun. With every rise and fall of its body, it became obvious that this creature was a deadly predator, waiting for its next meal.
Henry continued, "Hammond, Claire and myself were concerned that the attractions we have in the park at present might not give guests the same wonder and excitement forever, so even before the park opened, Claire and I have created something new."
Harding said, "So it's a new species of dinosaur?"
"Yes," Claire said, "it's all-new, never been seen before. You see, we have learned more in the past decade from genetics, than we have over a century of digging up bones. A whole new frontier has opened up."
"If it has anything to do with genetics," Ludlow began, "you know Dr. Sorkin will have a fit about it–"
"I'll have a fit about what?"
Everyone turned to see a female scientist with blond, short hair, a lab coat and glasses in front of her eyes. By her side was a young man by the name of David Banks. The others groaned.
"Laura," Henry said, "what are you doing here?"
As you might recall, Dr. Laura Sorkin was InGen's co-chief geneticist alongside Dr. Henry Wu in 2013. They, with Claire, began researching how they might bring dinosaurs back to life. However, they had a problem – in order to bring dinosaurs back to life, they needed the complete genetic codes of the creatures they wanted to bring back. Because the DNA in the amber they collected was so old, it was severely fractured. But Henry came up with a solution: they would use frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. Dr. Sorkin didn't like this idea, and she made them very aware of that. She argued that using frog DNA was unnecessary and potentially dangerous, as they didn't know anything about the side-effects this move could deliver. She believed that with more time, the DNA strands could be completed with dinosaur DNA from more research. This was time the Board of Directors didn't want to spend. Dr. Sorkin lost her role as chief geneticist. As the cloning of dinosaurs begun, Dr. Sorkin grew more and more against the park project and the rest of InGen grew more irritated by her. Two notable examples of her park objections were that they used a lysine contingency (this was to keep the dinosaurs from spreading from their island) and that they built a park in the first place (she had wanted to create a nature reserve for the dinosaurs instead). Now, she continued her work in Field Lab in a separate region of the northwestern portion of the island, mostly kept out of the loop.
Dr. Sorkin approached the others and said, "I went over to your laboratory because I needed access to some of your files. But I was told that you weren't there; you were at here. It's a good thing I showed up, by the looks of it. What's going on? I heard Claire say something about genetics."
Claire moaned, then, pretending Dr. Sorkin was absent, she continued, "Like I was saying, a whole new frontier has opened up. We have created our first, genetically-modified hybrid." Silenced awe. Claire grinned at Hammond and Henry. Then she added, "Do you think it'll scare the kids?"
"This will give the parents nightmares," Masrani said in approval. He turned to Hammond, "I like this surprise, Hammond."
"Wait," Owen said, wincing, "so you just went and made a new dinosaur? Probably not a good idea."
"Why not? It's kind of what we do here. We have the appropriate security measures. We can successfully contain and care for dangerous dinosaurs like Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex, so why not this beauty."
"What is she?" Masrani asked.
"We're calling her Indominus rex, meaning 'fierce' or 'untamable king'. She's currently 40 feet long and she's going to be the most fearsome dinosaur ever to be displayed at Jurassic World."
"At first glance," Henry explained, "she closely resembles a T. rex, but I. rex–"
Dr. Sorkin interrupted with a huff. "Sounds more like the brand name for a new Iphone."
Henry ignored the insult. "...but I. rex is not related to T. rex in the slightest. She's been genetically-engineered from the DNA of four different species of dinosaurs: Rugops, Majungasaurus, Carnotaurus and Giganotosaurus, the latter being one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs of all."
"Fearsome indeed," Harding commented.
"Will it eat live food?" Masrani asked.
From the back of the room came the answer: "No."
The group turned to see a Hamada, the Japanese dinosaur wrangler we met earlier during the raptor breakout. Hamada could best be described as a coiled spring, a comfortably calm presence but full of deadly energy. "No live animals. Not for her. When I was a boy, I had a snake. Mamushi snake. I raised it on dead mice. One afternoon, my friends come to the house, wanting a show. So we buy a live mouse, drop it in. Mamushi looks at the mouse, watching it from the shadows for the longest time. The mouse calmly walks around the cage, thinking 'this is my new home'...then strike! It's little heart goes fast, then slow, then..." Hamada held out a still hand before continuing. "After that, Mamushi won't look at a dead mouse again. Only live food."
"Frankly, I'm quite appalled by what you're doing here," Dr. Sorkin said. "We've barely brought back dinosaurs from extinction...and your tampering with their DNA...again. This time, I think you've really crossed the line."
"Laura," said Henry, "you've never agreed with our work in the first place."
"When we were doing clean, relatively simple science at a studying pace, I was fine. But now you've gone too far. You've cloned this...this monster that never has existed before in the history of life on earth. For what reason? To satisfy the park visitors? What a poor use of good science. We could have made something of our science, Henry. I don't believe it. I just don't." She turned and walked out of the observation deck. "Come on, David," she told her assistant, "we have hadrosaurs to feed."
She and David left the room. After they left, there was an awkward silence as Hamada drew closer to the glass, as if the others weren't even there; as if Dr. Sorkin had not spoken. Quietly, he added, "Trust me, you don't want this animal to taste things that move and bleed."
A/N: Well, we've officially met the predator that will "scare the kids and give their parents nightmares"...Indominus rex! Do you readers think this is the creature that will utterly destroy civilization as we know it and set the stage for the setting of my prequel, "JurassiQuest"? You'll have to wait to find out! Again, please let me know if the story is moving too fast. I really need to know. By the way, how do you like the inclusion of Dr. Ian Malcolm, Dr. Sarah "Harding" Malcolm and Kelly in the story? As Dr. Grant, Ellie Sattler and the lot are absent (at least, for now), we need someone from the original movies to carry out the action scenes, and Ian and Sarah are just the duo to do that in my opinion! As always, please be sure to favorite, review and definitely follow this story, because let me tell you...you won't want to miss the next chapter! In the meantime, spare no expense!