ADAPTATIONS
25 – One Girl's Fear, Another Man's Quest
November drug on into December, followed by January and finally February. The winter cold had taken its toll on Pet as she mostly stayed indoors and bundled up beneath her heating blanket. Today was the first time it wasn't unbearable unlike the days prior that were in the twenties and thirties. The only thing that made the day feel crappy was the thick grey clouds lingering above the Fort Peck Lake area. Though the clouds threatened rain and Pet smelling it in the air, it never did.
March, April and now May. Rain, rain and more rain. And here Pet thought the islands got a lot of rain...
Skin flake after skin flake hit the trash can in front of the couch. Pet peeled off another piece and frowned. Sitting next to her and watching her over a heaping bowl of chocolate pebble cereal was Derek. "Do you really have to do that right here?"
The hybrid snorted. "I was sitting here first before you came to join me."
Terrence nodded from where he sat at the dining table, shoving a bite of waffles into his mouth. "This is true."
Derek scooped up a big bite of cereal, ignoring the small pieces of falling off the spoon and onto the floor, and shoved it into his mouth. "Damn it, Derek! It's shit like that is how we get ants!" Pet looked at the mess around his feet. "You're cleaning that up, just so you know."
"Cween whut uwp," he questioned through his mouthful of breakfast.
"Dare I remind you what happened last week when you ate chips in your bed? All those ants were drawn to the crumbs." Pet smiled wickedly. "How are all those bites, by the way, hmm?"
Terrence snickered. Derek swallowed his mouthful and glared at Pet. "That's not funny..."
"That's why you need to clean your messes..." She peeled off another skin flake, sneering at the man.
"You look like you have the creeping flesh rot."
"You looked like you had some other type of rot on your ass after all those ants had their way with you." Pet and Terrence burst into laughter when the man got up and went to the bunk room, bowl in hand.
The trailer door opened, it being Billy. "Hey babe," he stated, eyes staring straight at the molting hybrid. "You need to come check out the morning news. I think you'll want to see this."
Without bothering with socks, Pet slid on her boots and followed the other back to his and Grant's trailer with Terrence on her heels. She went inside and looked at the TV showing the morning news. The woman's attention instantly went to the bottom of the screen where large letters read, 'InGen Integrates with Masrani Corporation.' Meanwhile, detailing the integration were two news broadcasters.
"This looks to be a great move on InGen's part," stated one broadcaster, a brunette woman. "Especially given their unfortunate history, such as with the San Diego Incident."
The male broadcaster of African American descent, continued. "We were unable to get in contact with InGen's interim CEO, Jonathon Stevens, on his thoughts about the matter but we were able to meet with Simon Masrani, CEO of Masrani Global Corporation."
The screen then shifted over to show the Indian man Pet remembered from her past. He was in his early twenties, then, when she first met him. That was approximately ten years ago, meaning he was in his early thirties now. His smile was warm and friendly, just as she remembered, while he was being interviewed by the brunette news anchor. "Mr. Masrani, now that you've successfully acquired InGen and have integrated it with your company, what are your immediate plans?"
"My primary goal is to fulfill John Hammond's dream." There was a scheming twinkle in his dark eyes that greatly bothered Pet.
"Ah shit," she mumbled, her posture slouching.
Billy looked from an off put Grant and over to the hybrid. "You don't think they're going to try and make another park, do you?"
"I sure as hell hope not." Pet leaned against the kitchen cabinet on her folded arm. "Surely he's read the files and reports pertaining to Jurassic Park and will learn from InGen's mistake before it's too late."
Grant heaved a sigh and ran a hand through is hair. "Well what other 'big dream' did Hammond have other than to recreate dinosaurs?"
All four people fell quiet and studied the other in debate. They could only hope history was not about to repeat itself.
That was three days ago. Simon Masrani unbuttoned his smoky grey suit coat before taking a seat behind his polished cherry wood desk in his new Palo Alto, California office. On top of it were two stacks of folders. One stack on the left was the usual weekly reports from his oil industry while the second stack on the right offered much more enticement. Just as he had requested of his secretary the day before, all the files once belonging to InGen and pertaining to Jurassic Park sat in the right stack of his desk. A smile stretched across the man's bearded face.
He pushed aside the oil reports and instantly starting thumbing through the array of files until one regarding Dr. Henry Wu caught his fancy. Simon visually scrolled over reports of the genius geneticist's involvement with Jurassic Park and his involvement with creating the animals themselves. He had been impressed with the scientist's latest achievement of creating the hybrid plant, Karacosis wutansis. The more he read on about this man's work with InGen, the more he wanted to include the extremely desired mind in the grand scheme of things.
Simon picked up his office phone and paged his secretary. "Locate the contact information for geneticist Dr. Henry Wu." He hung up the phone and closed the file, placing it in the top right drawer of his desk. He allowed himself to get lost in the collection of boyish fantasies he sought to make real as per John Hammond's dying wish.
For the past fifteen minutes, Pet hadn't said a word. Derek would occasionally look over at the hybrid frantically reading and scrolling through articles she had found on the internet using the nearest town's public library. Ever since Simon Masrani took over InGen, all the woman could go on about was wanting to find out more about him. Though she didn't state it, everyone thought it; she was trying to find out if the man was trying to recreate another dinosaur themed amusement park. Much to her dissatisfaction, she found nothing. Whatever his goal was, she wasn't finding it anywhere. Then came the unspoken mutual worry if whether or not he would try sending a hunting party for her once he learned about her.
Pet leaned over her good friend's shoulder and whispered, "Any way you can get in contact with that person who knows a person inside InGen to find out what's going on?"
"Been there, tried that," Derek replied. He pressed out a regretful expression behind thinned lips and shrugged. "I did that right after watching the news. Sadly, my contact's contact knows nothing other than a big change is coming to InGen."
"Crap." Pet sighed and continued poking through the different web pages addressing content related to Masrani. "There has to be more to this guy than what the internet is displaying."
"Or maybe nothing..."
The woman glared at the man sitting next to her. "Really? Nothing...What other reason can you think of in buying a company specializing in genetics other than nothing?"
"Well you know that one guy wrote that book. Something, something Evolution and God's Concepts? Then he went and made that hybrid plant that people oohed and awed over. Perhaps that's all this Maserati guy is wanting to do; create new plants…and maybe clone sheep."
"It's Masrani, dumb ass, not Maserati." She smacked him upside the back of the head. "And I doubt a successful company based on oil and telecommunications would buy a genetics company to make new species of flowers and clone sheep."
"Who said it would be just sheep? Never know...Maybe he'll try and recreate the extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Now that would be cool." He smiled boyishly.
"Right. So, every other trigger-happy hunter and poacher can go out there and blast it back into extinction." Pet groaned a sigh and erased her current search topic. She sat, tapping a finger's claw on the mouse wheel in debate on how to reword her next search thought.
Simon rested his face in his hands propped up by the elbows on his office desk. It was already late at night. He had long removed his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his white dress shirt as his tan suit coat jacket hung on the back of his high back office chair. He had been going through the different folders as well as reading everything loaded onto disks and in files saved on the company's computer drive. Sooo much to read!
Meanwhile, the oil field reports had gone untouched as they were now relocated to the floor beside his desk's trash can. Not that they weren't important. He was just more interested in reading and learning from others' mistakes regarding Jurassic Park. Dennis Nedry was one file he had been led to after reading John Hammond's initial report detailing the incident. This was why background checks on employees placed in sensitive positions were needed. Not to mention, not hiring someone who could potentially be a risk. Nedry screamed it all as far as caution went. Because of his tight financial issues, he could easily be bought off to do something dangerous for the right price.
Then there was always one other park employee with a questionable past, Robert Muldoon. That man's file was just as colorful in reasons to not be hired as Nedry's. Instead of financial issues, it was repeatable offensives ranging from on the job alcohol abuse, piss poor attitude to fellow employees as well as a blatant disregard to follow his employer's orders. Simon remembered the first time he went to the zoo, along with his father, and hearing all the great things Hammond had to say about the most senior game warden. Yet his file spoke differently.
Simon stopped in his current reviewing of a file record on Dr. Garry Harding to think back on Muldoon's record. Come to think about it, he never finished looking it over before having to break away for a board meeting. He closed Harding's file and sat it on top of one of the three stacks of Jurassic Park personnel folders to thumb through another for the sought after file.
In Simon's shuffling through the many folders, the stack became uneven and strewn about the top of his desk. After finding Muldoon's file, he tossed it aside so as not to get it mixed up with the others, again, and re-organized the stack. He picked up a file and was about to stack it with the others when a wallet sized picture fell out. Intrigued, Simon picked up the picture and studied it. It was of a young woman appearing to be in her early twenties and her bright, golden hazel eyes cast down to the ground. She had a tanned complexion and her long, brunette hair a tangled mess.
The man's brow furrowed in thought. He recognized this person, but from where? He flipped the picture over in hopes of finding a name or something, but nothing was there. For several minutes he sat there, trying to remember the recognizable face, before giving up and propping the picture against his desk's pen cup. Another few moments were sparred to study the picture one last time and that was it. No immediate recollection of the young woman could be made and it bothered Simon, a bit. He always prided himself in being good with remembering faces and names. Being the businessman he was, it was something he found extremely useful seeing how he was constantly associating with people directly. Admitting defeat, for the moment, the man opened Muldoon's file to continue where he left off.
Simon flipped through the pages until something looked and sounded familiar. Oh yes, how could he forget? He had stopped right at a nasty review of the game warden's on the job attitude while working at Animal Kingdom that was written and sighed by Hammond dating back to nineteen seventy-five. Reading the letter in full to himself, Simon came across the mention of something addressed as I-10 HY and how Muldoon almost got fired because of it. What was this I-10 HY? He had seen something about this in a previous folder somewhere on his desk. Or was it in a file on the company's drive? Damn it! He was curious to know what this object of question was.
Simon spent the next forty-five minutes digging through each folder on his desk and in the company drives. Finally, he found it. It was in an In-Gen computer file labeled I-260102 0579. He clicked on it and brought up a file that was basically worthless. Almost all of the file's contents were blacked out. But why? What was so secretive about this thing to have information on it be redacted? He slimmed his gaze down on the computer screen and rested his chin in his hand. There was something about this file that wasn't supposed to be known. He scrolled down the file, though, eyes darting between the words that hadn't been blacked out. Nothing proved to be of use. No matter how many times he scrolled through the information and stared at the different words, he wasn't going to learn anything. Maybe what he needed to learn wasn't in the company drives, but on the disk John Hammond gave him the last time they met.
Was this, by chance, the 'greatest accomplishment' Hammond told him about? Simon unlocked the top center drawer of his desk and withdrew the black disk case off a stack of papers. He took the disk out of its case and dropped it into his computer's disk drive. He typed in I-10HY into the password block but it was rejected as wrong entry. Next, he tried I-260102 0579 but it was denied, too.
Simon tried each label again, this time without the dashes. Nothing. A third time without the spaces. Nothing. A fourth attempt with the dashes but no spaces. Denied. No matter how he tried to enter the two codes, all were unsuccessful. Then he decided to try both combined together in the various ways he could. Still nothing.
The frustrated man groaned a sigh in defeat again. He rubbed at his tired eyes and sat there, trying to think over the forming headache starting to throb in his ears. He felt like he was getting nowhere in this. Enough was enough. He wasn't going to learn anything by thinking too much on it. Not wanting to immediately call it a night, he resumed reviewing Muldoon's file.
The mysterious I-10HY was brought up again. Apparently, whatever it was, this man had been directly involved with it. Was it a project he oversaw at Hammond's zoo in Kenya? Was it an animal that Hammond had perhaps recreated or cloned, as his once healthy company had been known to do? What was I-10 HY? After browsing through everything the file had to offer, Simon was even more a complete and utter disaster of wanting to know what the super-secret project was. It had to be about the 'her' Hammond talked about. What else could it be? Sir Lockwood mentioned the possibility of 'her' being the first Velociraptor InGen ever created, but that definitely wasn't it. Everything Simon wanted to know about every dinosaur ever created since the very start was right there in the company's file titled 'Jurassic Park'. No, this was something else.
How was it, just seeing the mention of the I-10HY derailed Simon off his focus on reading through that one damn folder he held in his hands? He forcibly pushed the burning questions to the back of his mind to refocus on his reading of Jurassic Park's employees.
Simon continued to flip through the pages of Muldoon's file. The further he skimmed, however, the more positive the annual reports became. Before, the troubled man teetered on the brink of getting fired. That was in nine seventy-five. Simon remembered that after reading the nasty report previously. Then the reports started to improve that same year after becoming involved with the highly secretive I-10HY. It was after becoming involved in the project that he stopped his excessive drinking and his work ethics significantly improved. But why? What was so damned special about the project to make someone doomed to failure do a complete one eighty in their life for success?
Simon kept trying to tell himself it was nothing to concern himself about, that it was probably some failed InGen experiment. If that was the case, then why was so much information about it redacted? There were other files and reports on past failed experiments and yet, none of their information was redacted; just this one particular topic. If this Muldoon was so involved in this experiment, or whatever it was, it begged to question how many other zoo and InGen personnel were too.
This had to be something with the strictest of security access. Come to think about it, why was Muldoon even allowed near the project with such a questionable background prior to his participation with the project? Simon found it hard to believe some average zoo employee, intern or docent would have any knowledge on this.
Suddenly an idea came to him. Simon's sleep deprived, blood shot eyes snapped open and darted in their sockets back to the picture of the young woman. That's it! That's who the picture was of! The docent game warden he met all those years ago at Hammond's Animal Kingdom. For the first time since overly stressing himself with reviewing the files and trying to make sense of the mysterious I-10HY, he smiled in at least remembering something. Even if it was minor compared to everything else major to man, it was still a positive notch compared to the dead-end searches. He huffed a laugh to himself. No wonder he didn't immediately recall where he had seen the young woman. That was sometime around ten years ago when initially coming across her and even then, only encountered her a few times. He didn't even know her name, come to think about it. He had heard her be called Pat, or something like that, in his passing by her and the other game wardens working.
Simon picked up the picture and in being content with finally remembering, opened the top drawer of his desk and sat the picture inside. He'd have to figure out what file it came from and put it back, after finishing up in reading over the present file. Perhaps it was a file detailing the educational summer docent program. How it got mixed up in the personnel files was beyond him.
Now, back to real business. One name he had come across in Muldoon's file pertained to a geneticist named Dr. Albert Jacobs. Apparently, this particular game warden and the geneticist didn't get along too well and it mostly being about I-10 HY. Simon instantly went to his computer to search there for the scientist's file before attempting to comb through the mess on his desk, yet again.
What he found on the computer ended up in him eventually going through the hard files on his desk to find the appropriate one. He cracked it open and carefully went through it, page by page, line by line.
A couple of hours after crawling over every word of Doctor Albert Jacob's information, Simon found mention of the little enigma I-10 HY and felt a flutter of excitement. Was he finally starting to get somewhere? He pulled up another screen on his computer that belonged to a personnel database regarding everyone presently working for InGen and typed in Jacobs's name.
"Ah hah!" Cheered the CEO as he clapped his hands together in both excitement and relief.
Dr. Albert Jacobs just so happened to still work for InGen and at lab in InGen's Palo Alto headquarters. Finally, a potential end to the mass confusion and tangle of questions. Looks like he and this particular doctor were going to have to have a little chat.
