Prompt #12 I could, but I won't.

That's Too Much to Ask

Dennis Nedry sat alone in the Biosyn conference room as he opened his laptop. He pressed the power button after plugging the cord in the wall outlet. As he waited for the laptop to boot up, he thought about the recent assignment he had been tasked with. No one else on the team was computer literate, and so it meant working by himself. Lewis Dodgson had commissioned Nedry to create a virus that would destroy the networks of competing biotech companies. Once completed, Nedry would carry out installing the virus. He already had a name for the virus: Catch Me If You Can. Cetus was their main target, but Nedry couldn't wait to use the virus on InGen. He chuckled when he imagined Ray Arnold smoking cigarette after cigarette, distressed by Nedry's virus.

Just then, Sonya Durant walked in and took a seat next to him.

Sonya Durant was feisty, a badass daredevil. As the only woman on the team, she held her own amongst the group of men. She had been a guide in Tanganyika and enjoyed living dangerously. All the men on the team—including Nedry—were attracted to her. Nedry wasn't obvious about it. They had a good rapport and worked well together. Sometimes he flirted with her (or tried to, given his social awkwardness), and she made jokes. That was the extent of it. He liked making her laugh and seeing her dazzling smile always made his day. That was good enough for him.

Nedry contemplated what kind of virus he wanted to design. A macro virus? Trojan? Worms? A file infector? He supposed he could design a mega-virus that was a messy combination of all four.

"What kind of virus should I make for Lew?"

Sonya shrugged. "I'm clueless on how computer programs work, but that's why we love you, Denny."

Nedry smirked at hearing her nickname for him. Denny. He didn't have one for her except Sonya-pie.

"No one loves me here." Nedry tried to sound detached, but it was the truth: he was good at making enemies and bad at making friends.

"That's not true, I adore you!"

He clicked open a program and cast her a sideways glance. "How did that happen?"

"You won me over, Denny!" Sonya gushed.

Denny. Again, with that silly pet name.

"What do you want Sonya?" Nedry decided to cut to the chase. Although he enjoyed her attention, he had a feeling she was there for something else entirely different, aside from keeping him company. Her flattery gave her away.

Sonya folded her hands on the table and pretended to be serious. "I want you to be nice to Raúl. Make more of an effort to be friendly to him."

"You mean Dr. Lopez? Isn't that what he likes to be called?"

"Yes, Dr. Lopez."

The door opened and Sonya looked up while Nedry hammered away on his keyboard. He was grateful for the distraction as he hoped it would throw off Sonya from further pursuing the topic. Lopez got on his last nerve…and he got on Lopez's last nerve. He didn't know who started it first. It was almost like the chicken and the egg: which came first? In their case: who got on whose nerves first? Who hated who first?

"Am I interrupting anything?" George Lawala asked. He didn't go further into the conference room and remained standing in the doorway.

"Just Sonya asking me to be nice to Dr. Bones."

Lawala shrugged, indifferent. He remembered that Lopez had let a dilophosaur spit in his eyes during one of their assignments for Dodgson. At the time, Lopez was more concerned about getting the dinosaur back to Dodgson than he was about Lawala's safety. Lawala had his own thoughts about Lopez and Dodgson from that day, but he didn't reveal them to anyone. He appreciated Nedry for helping him that day when no one else on the Biosyn team bothered to check on him. Aside from that, any resentment he felt towards Lopez and Dodgson, he kept to himself.

"Should I be nice to Dr. Lopez?" Nedry asked Lawala. He stopped typing and noticed Lawala looked like he didn't want to get involved.

Still standing in the doorway, Lawala looked from Sonya to Nedry. "I plead the fifth."

Sonya sighed. "You're no help, George. Do you agree, Denny?"

"Agree with what?" Nedry had resumed typing at lightning speed.

"Agree to be nice to Raúl."

"I'll agree—if he's nice to me."

"He's always nice to you," Sonya insisted.

Nedry stopped what he was doing and closed his laptop. He couldn't focus on his assignment—and he felt overwhelmed by disgust. He noticed Lawala still hung around, listening to their conversation.

"I'm gonna count on my hand the times he's been nice to me. Ready, Sonya?"

Sonya nodded eagerly and then stopped when she saw Nedry's fists remained closed.

"Zero times—but I can count on both hands every single time Lopez has been a mean son of a bitch. One." Nedry counted one finger. "The night you both picked me up at Green Hills—he cuffed my hands too tight. Two, he pushed me so hard that I almost fell on my face—and he knew I couldn't break the fall."

"He had to act the role, and besides, you put yourself there."

Nedry flinched. He didn't expect Sonya to give him a dose of reality and truth. He fought back with a heap of denial and projection. "Not true. Arnold and Muldoon put me there."

"If that's what you wanna believe…"

"Three: I joked that he was 'extinct' and his response was that I was incarcerated—he embarrassed me in front of the entire team."

"You were incarcerated though," Sonya said, rolling her eyes. "He was speaking the truth."

"And I was joking with him. So, that makes point number four: he can't take a joke. Five, he loves throwing in my face that I was locked up. It's a constant thing with him. He has dirt in his past too with how his radical theories got him laughed out of academia, but you don't see me throwing that in his face all the time."

Sonya yawned in response.

Nedry held up his right hand, keeping his palm open. On his second hand he put up his thumb. "Six: he pulled rank with Tembo once—and Roland put him in line. Seven, he didn't care when Lawala got spat in the eyes by that—that thing that spits."

"It's called a dilophosaur and you got help for Georgy."

"Yeah, that was after I shouted at him that George was in a lot of pain, and that he might die."

"Obviously he didn't die because he's standing right here." Sonya pointed at Lawala.

Lawala shook his head as he left the conference room. The door banged closed behind him. Sonya didn't appear to notice Lawala's silent angry reaction. Nedry saw it, and Lawala's response gave him more ammunition. When he considered what he was about to say, he realized it was better that Lawala left. He didn't want Lawala to be further triggered by what happened that day.

"Are we done yet?" Sonya asked, sounding bored.

"Nope! You brought it up, so let's finish."

Sonya rolled her eyes, and Nedry hit his open palm on the table, making her jolt in her seat.

"Pay attention, Sonya. Eight: your precious buddy, Dr. Lopez, made jokes that day. His exact words were 'spitting blinding venom to disable its prey, I find it fascinating'. What the hell?! It gets better with number nine: he made more dumb comments about Lawala being blinded that day"

"Such as?"

"He asked if I could see or if I was blind too. And that's after number ten, when he wanted to throw his weight around, claiming he was in charge." Nedry sat up straight in his chair and held up his hands to indicate that he had come up with ten examples of Lopez's horrible character. "I came up with ten gross things about that wanna-be-but-never-will-be-Doctor-Alan-Grant. Ten! I owe him absolutely nothing."

"He was under a lot of stress." Sonya said, studying her nails.

"Why do you always have an excuse for him?"

"I don't always have excuses for him, and you haven't always been nice to him either."

"What did I do that got his beard all knotted up? Do tell."

Sonya locked eyes with Nedry, refusing to back down. "You told him 'Don't get sentimental over a stupid lizard' after our first assignment when you knew he was excited to bring back the dinosaur for Dodgson. You fell asleep when he gave his lecture about dilophosaurus. Before that, you said he knew nothing about them when all he has is dusty bones to study from."

"I thought paleontologists study ancient life, that they dig up bones."

"They do."

"So how is that offensive?" Nedry gave an exaggerated yawn. "You're reaching there."

"You also killed the dilophosaur that we captured."

"Boo-hoo, Sonya-pie, do you want a tissue?"

Sonya's eyes narrowed in anger. "No, but those examples show that you've been a jerk to him, too. Add all the countless times you were being an obnoxious sarcastic jackass."

"Ten to three. That last one doesn't count because I'm an obnoxious sarcastic jackass with everyone. I don't discriminate. It's not my problem that Dr. Lopez can't handle my unique charm."

Nedry pushed away from the table and quickly pressed the power button on the laptop so he could shut it down. He thought he heard Sonya talking to him, trying to refute his point. Right now, she was background noise to him as he went over and pulled out the power cord from the wall outlet. As Sonya yammered on, he caught snippets of what she said. He's not so bad. He's passionate about his field of work, just like you. Give him a chance. Nedry shook his head while putting away his laptop and power cord in his shoulder bag. He snatched it up and approached the door. Just as his hand grasped the doorknob, he heard Sonya shouting at him.

"You didn't answer my question, Dennis! You can't leave until you answer it!"

He scoffed. So much for 'Denny', he thought. Suppressing his annoyance, Nedry turned around. "What's your question? After all this time, what do you want from me?"

"I want to know if you'll try to get along with him."

Nedry flashed his infamous crocodile grin at her. It was the same menacing grin he always wore that infuriated everyone around him. "Sure, I could be nice to him…" Nedry's voice trailed off.

Sonya smiled broadly, triumphant. She had won the battle with Nedry…or so she thought.

"But I won't, 'cause that's too much to ask."

Without another word, Nedry marched out of the conference room with his shoulder bag, leaving Sonya frustrated and unable to respond to his rejecting her request.