The seventh day of May marked the start of the internship for Claire. That day, Elijah Mills organized a videoconference with her and also Alexander Singer. The aim of this videoconference was to introduce them and remind them of the context and objectives of their collaboration. He also revealed them that the animals would be leaving Costa Rica on the first day of July and he told Claire that she needed to contact Jocelyn Hodgson, Site D's manager, to arrange for an arrival date in Burgo Nuevo in the second half of June, so that she, Owen and the DPG members can assist Site D's staff in the transport's preparation.
Alexander informed them that in addition to him, there would also be the NGO's veterinarian, Zia Rodriguez.
Searching her memory, Claire remembered seeing an internship candidate file in that name among all those that Kurtzmann, the park's human resources manager, had transferred to her shortly before the Fall. Since being an intern at Jurassic World had been the ultimate dream of any student at InGen-Masrani Global Academy, Claire felt some guilt towards Zia and hoped that the latter would not accuse her of shattering her dream.
The DPG founder added that a third member of their association might come with them but that he still hasn't decided. Initiating action and impressing Eli on that occasion, Claire reminded Alexander that his team needed to be assembled as soon as possible so that she could book plane tickets and transport between San Jose and the Ismaloya Mountains, and therefore asked him to contact her again within the week to confirm the number of DPG members joining the operation.
During this videoconference and those that followed, Claire took care to wear her half-mask, in order to not make the others uncomfortable. Although he was polite, Alexander Singer was nervous with her and Claire suspected that the founder of the Dinosaur Protection Group was unlikely to like the woman accused of being responsible for the fall of Jurassic World, and Guillaume Vuillier, who had given her his email address during the reception, had confirmed to her that the ex-keeper had spoken of her with disdain.
At the end of this introductory videoconference, Alexander left but Eli chatted with Claire a bit afterwards, to inform her that InGen didn't want her, Owen and the DPG members to be accommodated at Site D and that they therefore had to find accommodation outside, preferably in Burgo Nuevo. The Lockwood Foundation was willing to pay their costs but for that, Claire had to send them the bills for the various reservations. But she needed Alexander's answer before making these.
Later that day, Claire emailed Jocelyn Hodgson, asking when they could come to Burgo Nuevo and if there was the possibility for Zia Rodriguez to assist the veterinary team during their stay. She also took the opportunity to ask her the list of animals housed at Site D.
Hodgson answered her at the end of the week, asking her if the date of June 22nd suited her, and that she would see with Brice Le Goff, Site D's veterinarian, about Zia. However, she couldn't give her the list of animals, at least not before the press conference scheduled for June 1st.
Claire was in no way surprised by this refusal. How could the woman who destroyed Jurassic World and who was blacklisted by InGen's higher-ups be trusted? It was hard to prove her wrong and had their roles been reversed, Claire knew she probably would have had the same attitude. She had only seen Jocelyn Hodgson on a couple of occasions in 2017, when she had just taken up her post, and Claire recalled that Palo Alto appointing an American employee as Site D's manager had been widely criticized in Costa Rica because it was a position that had been until then occupied exclusively by InGen's Costa Rican employees.
Claire told Elijah about that and during the weekend, she received an email from the manager of the Lockwood Foundation, which contained the much-requested list as an attachment file and which she forwarded to the DPG. She and Owen consulted it:
Species Headcount
Dinosaurs
Saurischians
Achillobator 1
Acrocanthosaurus 2
Amargasaurus 2
Ampelosaurus 1
Anzu 2
Apatosaurus 6
Archaeopteryx 2
Avimimus 12
Baryonyx 3
Carnotaurus 3
Coelophysis 11
Compsognathus 30
Deinocheirus 1
Dilophosaurus 2
Gallimimus 9
Gargantuavis 2
Guanlong 7
Herrerasaurus 4
Masiakasaurus 1
Metriacanthosaurus 1
Mononykus 4
Mussaurus 3
Nigersaurus 1
Ornitholestes 1
Oviraptor 3
Pelecanimimus7
Rugops 1
Therizinosaurus 1
Unenlagia 3
Velociraptor 5
Yi qi 1
Ornithischians
Achelousaurus 3
Corythosaurus 5
Dryosaurus 37
Euoplocephalus 2
Homalocephale 5
Hypsilophodon 16
Kunbarrasaurus 2
Lambeosaurus 4
Maiasaura 6
Mantellisaurus 4
Microceratus 9
Ouranosaurus 5
Pachycephalosaurus 6
Panoplosaurus 3
Parasaurolophus 7
Pegomastax 1
Scutellosaurus 2
Shantungosaurus 4
Sinoceratops 5
Stegosaurus 5
Triceratops 6
Udanoceratops 1
Yinlong 6
Pterosaurs
Cearadactylus 3
Dimorphodon 2
Europejara 2
Geosternbergia 3
Germanodactylus 5
Harpactognathus 3
Pterodactylus 10
Tupandactylus 2
Other archosauriforms
Baurusuchus 3
Euparkeria 1
Kaprosuchus 2
Proterosuchus 5
Simosuchus 1
Synapsids
Didelphodon 1
Diictodon 4
Dimetrodon 3
Estemmenosuchus 1
Lycaenops 2
Moschorhinus 2
Placerias 2
Purgatorius 2
Amphibians
Beelzebufo 2
Miscellaneous
Longisquama 1
Nothosaurus 1
Seymouria 1
With that list, they could finally work with Elijah on the matter of housing the animals in the estate.
The weekend arrived and the couple took advantage of the mild weather on Sunday's afternoon to go fishing at the lake next to their cabin. Seated in camping chairs at the end of the small wooden pontoon that jutted out over the water, they were gazing at the lake and its surroundings, occasionally glancing at the ends of their fishing rods' threads. Claire had only recently learned to fish when Owen encouraged her to go fishing with him at the start of the season, explaining that it was a relaxing activity that would do her good, but for her, this was only half true because waiting for a fish to come and bite the bait was wearing her patience. Nevertheless, she had agreed to participate in this activity with her boyfriend because it allowed her to get some fresh air and enjoy the sun as well as the pleasant warmth of the spring air. Although the snow at their elevation had melted more than a month earlier, it still lingered at the peaks to the east, beyond the opposite shore of the lake.
At one point, the couple ended up talking about the founder of the Dinosaur Protection Group, who hadn't given his answer to Claire about his colleagues, which was starting to seriously irritate her:
"I remember that Jonas and the others talked about him sometimes," Owen said.
"What were they saying?" Claire asked him, not taking her eyes off her line, waiting for a fish to finally come and bite.
"Some called him Muppet, others just called him Moron. Jonas also told me that he got his job at the park just because one of his parents worked for Masrani Global."
"Hence the bootlicking of Masrani on their website… Mr. Vuillier doesn't have a high opinion of him either and despite all his stupid smiles, I know that our friend from the DPG doesn't like me much."
"I spoke to Jonas about our internship. He wishes us good luck with him..."
"I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of fun in Burgo Nuevo…," she muttered. "In the meantime, he still hasn't given me an answer about his companions' number. I wonder if we'll wait for them before booking our tickets..."
A few days later, while studying the reactions of Internet users to the resumption of the operation, she came across a variation of the Internet meme Perfection (1) which made her snort and then sigh because it reflected what people thought of her. She appeared there between two characters from Game of Thrones, Queens Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen and in this variant of the meme, she saw Michael Fassbender asking to be shown the real Queen of the Ashes, a sinister title that was also given to the two queens, the first due to the bombing she staged at the end of the sixth season and in which her political opponents and the Sept of Baelor were burned to ashes in a powerful explosion of Wildfire, and the second because she had purely and simply slaughtered the population of the city of King's Landing with her dragon and her army in the fifth episode of the eighth season, which aired only a few days earlier, and this act had earned her to be considered the real Queen of the Ashes by the Internet user who created this variant of the meme.
Claire had not seen the episode but Owen had and at her request, he had told her what had happened in it and judging by his descriptions, it seemed that certain parts evoked strongly the Fall of Jurassic World, more particularly the pterosaur attack at Burroughs and the later invasion of the city by the Indominus and her pack and the massacres they committed. She had also inquired about episode three, also influenced by the Fall and whose title was The Long Night, but her boyfriend had only said that it was disappointing and afterwards, she had seen someone had wrote that the series' long-awaited Long Night ended up being a mummer's farce compared to the one thousands of people trapped on Isla Nublar had experienced.
The similarities between certain parts of the Fall and the events depicted in the eighth season of HBO's series were such that the episodes mentioned had made many of the survivors of Isla Nublar's collapse uncomfortable and smart alecs had fun creating other montages. One was some kind of Spot the difference game with King's Landing and Burroughs side by side, both in flames and hovered by one or several flying reptiles, and a video montage had taken the sequence of the King's Landing slaughter, except that the editor had replaced the Dragon Queen's head with that of the Indominus, those of her soldiers had been replaced with the heads of neoraptors and proceratosaurs, the Lannister lioness' with Claire's.
Her cell phone, which rested on the coffee table next to the laptop, vibrated. Claire grabbed it and saw the name she had assigned to the calling number: Alexander, DPG.
"Yes," she snapped, still annoyed by the meme.
"Yes, hello Claire. I'm calling you to confirm that we will indeed be three and that you can therefore book the plane tickets…"
"About time," she replied irritably. "I don't know if you saw the message I sent you Sunday, but you were supposed to answer me at the start of the week. Know that I have already booked my ticket and Owen's. He and I will depart from Reno. Therefore, we'll only meet with you in San José the next morning."
"Alright… I apologize for the delay, truly…"
"Yeah yeah...," she interrupted him. "Look, I'm going to book your plane tickets along with the transport and the hotel. I'll send you an email once it'll be done, by the end of the day. Send scans of your IDs, and within the hour please. I might need them for the different reservations... Call me when it's done."
"Okay," he replied in a low, timid voice.
She ended the call and put her cell phone back on the coffee table.
"Muppet…," she sighed.
Alexander complied and sent her the requested scans just under an hour later. Looking at the ID cards, Claire saw that the third NGO member who was going to be part of the adventure was the manager of their website and IT technician, Franklin Webb, whom she had already seen in the photo of their site's home page. She booked plane tickets for the three DPG members as well as hotel rooms and looked for transportation between Juan Santamaria airport and Burgo Nuevo.
Once all the reservations were made, she gathered all the associated documents in a ZIP folder which she sent to Elijah.
While waiting for the press conference on the first day of June, she continued the work she had started with Owen when they got the list of the animals. Him using his knowledge of animal biology and zootechnics and her using her better ease with math as well as her managerial skills and sense of logistics, working in a complementary way, they studied the plans and photos of the enclosures which Eli sent them, in order to think about the animals' distribution in the enclosures, the necessary small construction works and the enrichments to add, and they calculated the necessary amount of food for the entirety of their stay at the estate. Claire ended up contacting various wholesalers as well as almost every farmer in the counties of Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity and Siskiyou so they could start supplying the estate by the last days of June.
-o-
Notes
(1) The Perfection meme alludes to an exploitable macro-image from the film X-Men: First Class and in which Magneto (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) asks to be shown the real x (and x can be anything with the meme's various variations). He asks twice, and finally seeing what he was looking for, he says « Perfection ». The x he is looking for is the joke's punchline.