Jurassic World: Apocalypse – Chapter 5: The Time Transportation Device

A/N: What is the Time Transportation Device? Well, you'll be able to learn the answer in this chapter. That's not all we'll find! Chapter 5 also follows Tom and Alaina as they begin trying to figure out where to begin their search for answers concerning Dr. Grant's disappearance...and they'll also meet a familiar character from the JurassiQuest...We'll also see what dark practices Henry and the others are conducting and what Dr. Sorkin plans to do about them...sounds exciting! Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Jurassic Park except the very characters I've made up.

It was 2:00 a.m. on June 11, 2015 when Tom, Alaina and Brianna walked off the airplane that brought them to the Harlingen Airport in Harlingen, Texas. The airport was busy and now there was an additional 90 teenagers from Tom and Alaina's school to add to the crowded feel of the building. There were 30 adults – teachers, parents and the principle and his secretary – traveling with the school group so that they could the high schoolers in line. So everyone could keep together, they were all wearing shirts with their school's logo on it.

"Is it busy today or what?" Alaina asked.

"Tell me about it," Tom agreed. "I don't even know where we're supposed to go."

"Let's just follow the group," Brianna offered. "Then we won't get lost."

Principle Harmen stood in front of the teens and raised his hands to get their attention. "OK. Our bus that will take us to the Jurassic World ferry is late. So we're all going to wait in the airport cafeteria. I know you're all excited, but while we're here, I want you all to stay together with the group. That means no wandering off. I'm talking to you especially, Logan."

"I'm just standing here, Principle Harmen," Logan argued with a smirk.

"But we know what you tend to do, kid. Don't kid around with me. Now as I was saying, we're all going to stay together and wait in the cafeteria. Bathrooms are all on the right side of the cafeteria. Follow me everyone!"

Principle Harmen led the teens to the airport cafeteria where they all got seats. Tom, Alaina and Brianna found a three-seater table near one of the corners.

"So how old are you, Brianna?" Tom asked.

"I'm 15."

"Cool. So is this your first year at this school? I don't remember seeing you before."

"Yeah. I was going to a nearby school, but I was switched to this one. I think my parents just wanted me to get a better education." Then, Brianna looked toward the bathroom and asked, "Is it alright, if I go to the bathroom? I've gotta go."

"Oh sure, go right ahead." As soon as Brianna left, Alaina got out her brochure of Jurassic World and presented the map inside to Tom. Tom grinned. "This is going to be so much fun. Just look at all those attractions–"

"Yes, it'll be fun, but let's stay focused," Alaina told him. "Now, if we're going to get answers as to what happened to Dr. Grant, Luke and the others, where would you go first?"

"Hm..." Tom scanned the map of the island. He was looking for a place where they could start their inquiry and find answers. "I guess the Innovation Center. That's the only place I can think of."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Do you think they'll tell us anything?"

"They probably won't. What's our plan from there?"

"I wish I knew." Alaina brushed her hair from her face. "I suppose the best thing we can do is explore the different parts of the park and try to find answers."

Logan, Matt, John and Logan's flock of girls walked over to Tom and Alaina's table.

"Aw, that's cute," Logan cooed. "So you've got a girlfriend now? You couldn't stand all the mocking for not having a girlfriend, so you go get one. Tom, as hard as you try, you're too far behind the popular kids to ever catch up."

Tom looked up at Logan. He said, "Logan, not now. We're busy."

"Oh, so you're serious about the dating thing, eh?" He winked at his flock, who giggled in reply.

"No. We're not dating. She's not my girlfriend. We're just..."

"Just planning out our day in the park," Alaina interjected. "We don't want to waste time deciding what we're going to do, so we're planning ahead. You should do the same."

"Aw, look at that, she's defending her man."

Tom glared at Logan. "Logan, go somewhere. I'm bus...y..." across the room, he noticed a heavyset man with a balding head with little remnants of neatly combed black hair on top of his head, a little pair of spectacles on his nose, chubby cheeks, a bow tie, an expensive suit and a pair of suspenders. He was sitting at a small coffee table reading a book called If I Could Write a Book About a Dinosaur Theme Park That Failed by Micheal Crichton, and sipping his coffee. "Wait a minute..." Tom said, "I know that guy." Tom got up from his table.

"Hey! I'm not finished insulting you, runt," Logan said.

"Who's that?" Alaina asked.

"That's Dr. George Baselton!"

"What do you know about George Baselton?" Logan asked.

"More than you do, considering you know practically nothing."

For once, Logan seemed at a loss of words.

"Ow! Burn!" Matt exclaimed. He was quickly shunned by Logan. "Sorry, dude."

Tom went over to Dr. Baselton.

"Excuse me, you're Dr. Baselton?" Tom told him.

"Yep, that's what they call me," the scientist from Stanford University answered with a deep southern drawl. "And who are you?"

"I'm Tom McCarthy, I was the friend of the son of Dr. Alan Grant."

Dr. Baselton chuckled. "A friend of Luke Grant. Ha, poor kid. He had a dinosaur-loving lunatic for a father trying too hard to be a real paleontologist. I was really sorry for that kid."

"Hey, Dr. Grant wasn't a lunatic. He just wasn't able to support his ideas with scientific evidence."

"But that's the point, isn't it? If you have a scientific theory or hypothesis, you need scientific evidence to support your claims. Dr. Grant could produce none! Dr. Grant's theory on Velociraptors was completely immaterial."

"You still shouldn't have treated him so rudely in public."

"He was misleadin' people, kid! Leading all down the wrong road of thinking. If we're going to have award-winning scientists and scientific researchers in the future, we need to train our kids, teenagers and college students how to think critically about such things. Otherwise, we'll have scientists of the future believing in fairies, goblins and ghosts, among other things that have no place in real science. Dr. Grant had no evidence to support his ridiculous theory. Come on, I mean...pack-hunting raptors with the ability to vocalize with each other, that's–"

"Are you saying they couldn't vocalize?"

"No, of course not. I imagine they did vocalize, even communicating with each other. But Dr. Grant believed they were able to talk to each other in a degree we've never imagined – coordinating their attack patterns, making signals to each other and all that – that's just ludicrous."

"What if he was proven right?"

"He never would have been, kid. Trust me."

"But what if he was?"

Baselton sighed. "If Dr. Grant was ever proven right...well, I dunno what I'd do. But he's never gonna be right. Especially since he disappeared almost two years ago."

Tom asked, "Do you know anything about why he disappeared?"

"Not a clue. But given it wasn't long after my refutes I gave him in his last lecture, he probably went into hiding out of embarrassment."

"But he's not the only one who's gone missing. Several other people who weren't previously associated with him also disappeared the same day."

"Well, I can't say why they disappeared. All I know is that if Dr. Grant really believed his ridiculous theory could be proven, he'd be out there in the field trying to prove it alongside his team. Speaking of his team, ha, I pity them terribly too. Poor Billy Brennan can barely hold that team together..."

Tom was about to turn to leave, but instead asked, "Wait a minute, what are you doing at this airport anyway?"

"I'm on vacation. I'm going to visit the new dinosaur theme park."

"Oh, my school group and I are too."

Baselton nodded. "Well, hope you enjoy yourself. Nice talkin' with you, kid."

"Yeah, ditto."

Tom walked back over to where Alaina, Logan and the others were standing.

"See, I'm not the only one who thinks Luke's dad was a nutcase," Logan said.

"Just go somewhere already," Tom told him.

Logan snickered. "Come on, guys, we don't want to ruin their first date." He and the rest of his "gang" walked away, laughing.

Tom shook his head. "Sorry about that."

"Who is that guy anyway?" Alaina inquired.

"Oh that's Logan. He comes from a rich family; he's one of the more popular kids in the school. Luke and I never got along with him."

"Yeah, I figured he was popular, considering the harem that's worshiping the ground he walks on."

Tom decided to switch the subject. "Did you hear my conversation with Baselton?"

"Yep. Every word. He didn't tell you anything about Grant."

"Well, as you heard, he's less informed than I am."

"Hey guys, I'm back," Brianna told her friends as she took a seat. "So, did I miss anything?"

"Not much," Alaina told her. She winked at Tom.

Just then, Principle Harmen got the high-schooler's attention by clapping his hands. "Alright everyone!" he announced. "Our bus is here. I'd like everyone to line up along this wall so we can get going. We've got a long drive to the coast ahead of us."

Arnold took his keys from his pocket to open the door to a special room in the back of the Control Room. Behind him stood Henry, Masrani, Hammond and, as you might expect, Dianthus. The elephant was rubbing his head against the door, obviously wanting in.

"Hold on, little dude," Arnold told the diminutive mammal. "I just have to unlock the door first." He shoved the key into the keyhole and tried to turn it, but the door remained shut. "Hm...that's strange."

"Perhaps," Masrani began, "you are using the wrong key."

Arnold removed the key from the hole and nodded. "Thanks, Simon. You're right. It might help to use the right key." Arnold placed the key in the hole and gave it a turn. Click! The door was unlocked. Arnold pushed the door open and saw a long staircase to their right, descending down beneath the earth's surface; beneath the park itself. He turned to Hammond and said, "You're going to be very pleased with what Anthony, Henry and I have accomplished in the past few weeks, John."

With that, Masrani closed the door behind the five of them (four humans and one pachyderm) and they descended down the stairs. Little lights lined the ceiling, but the staircase was still quite dark. The stairs went downward for another 50 feet or so until they reached a small technological laboratory at the bottom. The room, bathed in blue iridescent light, was nothing fancy – concrete floors, shelves holding loads of computer equipment, a few large computer boxes, five desks (Anthony was sitting at one of the desks) with a computer monitor on each one...and on the wall of the room farthest from the bottom of the staircase...was a prototype. The prototype consisted of a platform with two large and mechanical four-foot tall cylinders, set about ten feet apart. Attached to each cylinder (which was pointed toward the center of the platform) was a ray gun.

"Wow," Masrani breathed. "Last time I was down here it was a pile of mechanical mess. Now it's...this...device...what are you calling it?"

"Well, until recently we've just been calling it 'the prototype'," Henry admitted. "but Arnold, Anthony and I have decided to call it...the Time Transportation Device, or TTD for short."

"And it's an exact replica of the original that was destroyed in 2013?"

"You bet," Anthony said as he got up from his chair at his desk. "The last 15 months working on this contraption have been a big headache. We were finally able to track down the computer virus that had screwed up the previous prototype's system, solve the problem, replicate the entire system, letter by letter, reprogrammed it and finally...here it is!"

"Well, almost," Arnold corrected. "We've still got some more programming to do. But I suspect she'll be up and running in a couple–"

"Months?" Hammond interjected.

"No...days, John. We're that close."

Dianthus walked onto the platform and touched one of the cylinders with his trunk.

"No, Dianthus," Hammond demanded. "Step away."

Dianthus looked at Hammond and groaned quietly, almost as if to ask, "Do I have to?"

Hammond waved his hand in the elephant's direction and Dianthus reluctantly obeyed. He turned back to Arnold and asked, "Days? You're going to have it up and running in just a few days?"

"Yes. I'm positive. This time I've installed a security watchdog in the prototype's computer system. It's designed to stop evil viruses dead in their tracks. It's also constantly downloading the latest software updates so that it is prepared for the next virus attack."

Hammond nodded in approval. "You spared no expense, I see." John walked next to the platform and sighed. "Maybe it's not too late to save Dr. Grant and the others."

"You say that as if you know they're still alive," Masrani noted.

"Whether or not they're alive now isn't an issue," Anthony explained. "You see, once we get this baby working, we can simply go back to the exact time Arnold had told them they were to return to the 21st century. It's a very simple procedure."

"What if you stopped them from going in the first place?"

"Too risky. We might disrupt the time line. Remember, it was because Henry couldn't figure out what was wrong with the prototype that he, Claire and Dr. Sorkin figured out how to clone the dinosaurs. So if we stopped them from going, we might have never been successful at cloning dinosaurs when we did."

"And then," Henry added, "we might not have built the park when it was built either, or Masrani Global Corporation might not have joined us at the appropriate time to help us with the project."

Henry walked next to Hammond and clasped his hands together. "No matter how long this takes," he said quietly, "we will get this thing to work. I owe it to the JurassiQuest team."

David Banks dropped bunches of fresh hay from the elevated catwalk around into the Parasaurolophus' paddock, which was set some ways away from the rest of the park. The five hadrosaurs in the enclosure bellowed happily as they walked over to their feeding station for their lunch. This paddock was part of Dr. Laura Sorkin's Field Lab. Back when the park was being constructed, as you know, Dr. Sorkin was very discontent with the direction the park was heading. So to keep her from complaining, she was given this outdoor laboratory so that Dr. Sorkin could continue her research without pestering Hammond, Henry and the others (they didn't want to fire her because her knowledge was valuable to the park). They even gave her several hadrosaurs to study to keep her occupied.

Dr. Sorkin watched as the Parasaurolophus fed on the hay. She shook her head slowly and crossed her arms. "I just don't understand these people."

"What people?" David asked.

"InGen – Hammond, Masrani, Henry – they all think they know what they're doing. I'm telling you, they're moving into uncharted waters here."

"They have made a lot of questionable moves over the past 22 months," David agreed.

As you might recall, Dr. Sorkin's first gripe against InGen was their use of frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps, but InGen had done several other things as of late that irritated Dr. Sorkin. One such thing they did was called the lysine contingency. The dinosaurs had been genetically-engineered to be unable to produce the amino acid lysine, essential for life. The lysine they needed could only be provided by the food from InGen. Unless given this special food, the dinosaurs would die within a week or so, hence preventing them from spreading away from the island.

"I told Henry that the lysine contingency was cruel to the dinosaurs," Dr. Sorkin said, "but they didn't listen. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they made them all female! And as if that wasn't enough, as we learned today, they took it a step farther, farther than I ever thought they'd go? They're actually cooking up their own dinosaurs! Seriously! A hybrid of all things!"

"Technically all the dinosaurs are hybrids, since they're mixed with frog DNA."

"True, but generally – with a few exceptions such as in the case of the Dilophosaurus – the frog DNA hasn't made too many anatomical changes to the animals. Therefore, most dinosaurs are almost the same as the ones we find in the fossil record. Not so for this...hybrid. What did they call it?"

"Indominus rex."

"That's right. Just because they want to keep all that long green flowing into their pockets! Don't they get it? These are animals – living organisms. They have a right to live. Henry and the others think they have an appropriate protocol for everything that they think could go wrong. What is it that they don't understand?"

"They're money-lovers," David told her.

Dr. Sorkin snickered. "Yeah, that's a fact." Originally, Dr. Sorkin insisted they create a nature reserve for the dinosaurs, rather than a theme park. But the Board of Directors turned her idea down because "there was no money in it", so they, according to Dr. Sorkin, "decided to create a spectacle". "When will they stop trying to create a spectacle. It's not fair to the thousands of tourists that visit this park and it's not fair to the dinosaurs. I wish they'd grow up and stop living in this fairy tale dream, thinking they have everything under control. They don't!"

One of the Parasaurolophus reared up onto its hind legs, bringing its head over the top of the fence. It emitted a low, B-flat-like sound. Dr. Sorkin grinned and gently scratched the herbivore on the snout. The Parasaurolophus gurgled contently, closing its eyes. "Why couldn't InGen listen to me?" Dr. Sorkin wondered.

"Because it's like you said," David told her, "it's all about the money."

"I guess 'spare no expense' doesn't apply to people living in the doghouse. They're going to regret all these careless things they're doing. I just know it. One day, it's going to come back to bite them." She looked away from the paddock and toward a relatively small shack – this building served as her laboratory. "But soon that won't matter." Over the past few months, Dr. Sorkin had been so discontent with InGen – specifically the lysine contingency – that she decided to put matters into her own hands. In secret, she and David had been working on a concoction that, when drunken from their main water supply, would "heal" the dinosaurs from the lysine contingency. She didn't dare tell Hammond, Ludlow or Henry, for she knew they would be absolutely furious! "I think our anti-lysine contingency fluids will be ready by tomorrow, don't you think?"

"Oh definitely."

"Good." Dr. Sorkin looked into the paddock, watching the Parasaurolophus, as she continued, "Finally, we can begin to show that Board of Directors our work and begin to fix the damage Henry and the others have caused."

A/N: Looks like we've got some interesting things about to take place in this story! What do you think of the Dr. Sorkin/David Banks subplot? Also, what do you guys think of the return of the time portal, Tom and Alaina's subplot? I figured that adding Dr. George Baselton would be a good move for the story. Do you guys think he'll be eating his own words about raptors once he gets to the park? There's a good possibility of that! Did you guys notice the title of the book Baselton was reading, by the way? Anyway, be sure to favorite and review this story. Also be sure to follow it, because you won't want to miss the next chapter, when the Malcolm's and Tom and Alaina finally arrive at Jurassic World. I'm sure they'll have a grand old time...because nothing ever goes wrong in Jurassic World. It's 100% safe!