The ride to the main structure had been a quiet one. Nobody knew what to do. Dinosaurs were real. Or rather, they were alive. How had they done it? That was the question bouncing around in Ronnie's brain. In everyone's brain, honestly. How was it possible?
"You know, we really are going to make a fortune with this place."
Or rather, the ride had been mostly quiet.
"The amount of cash to build it, your investors were suspicious, but this is- this is opportunity. We're all going to be rich." Gennaro, the lawyer and the real reason all of them were here, was petting his briefcase somewhat obsessively and watching the prehistoric world go by.
"Really. How much money could we charge? Ridiculous amounts. We don't need to put a limit on it." He hadn't stopped babbling the whole trip. Ronnie was impressed Malcolm put up with him.
"You had me going, John, really, you did, but this-this is incredible."
Yes, it is, isn't it," Hammond said with no small amount of pride. The jeeps pulled to a stop at their final resting place, in front of a huge stone building labeled Visitors Center with enormous stone columns and high chain-linked fences that read 'high voltage.' Everyone got out of the jeeps and followed after John Hammond and Gennaro, who was still talking Hammond's ear off.
Dennis Nedry lumbered off somewhere else without them, but Hammond didn't seem too concerned, so Ronnie assumed he had other sanctioned business to attend to. Gennaro opened the door to the grand building and held it for Hammond. He tried to pawn it off to Ellie, but either she didn't notice or was as fed up with his pesky voice as Ronnie was, and walked past him. Everyone followed suit, leaving the lawyer to be in the back of the pack.
The inside of the Visitor's Center was just as impressive as the outside. A huge T-rex skeleton took up the middle of the foyer, with an enormous red banner overhead reading 'when dinosaurs ruled the earth.' People were at work around them, fixing and cleaning or whatever it is you do when you work at a fucking dinosaur-themed theme park.
"It wasn't easy, you know," Hammond said, free of Gennaro's inisistant talking about money. "This is the most advanced theme park in the world, all the latest technologies. I'm not talking about just rides, no. Everyone has rides. I'm talking about living, breathing, biological attractions, so astonishing they will capture the hearts and imagination of the planet!"
This place would capture the public eye, that was for sure. And make a ridiculous amount of money. But was it safe? Accidents happened every day at Harambe, some deadly, but those animals were nowhere near as dangerous as these ones.
Hammond lead them up the grandiose stairs. The whole place was very pretty. Ronnie reached her hand out and pet the tip T-rex skull as she passed. It felt real.
One of it's teeth dropped out of the head and into Ronnie's hand. It was as big as her forefinger. And it was one of the smaller ones. Ronnie palmed it, deciding that nobody was going to look at the skeleton anyway when they had the real thing to gawk at.
"What are you thinking?" Ronnie heard Ellie say.
"That we're out of a job," Alan replied.
"Heh. Don't you mean extinct?" Ian popped between the two of them and moved up the stairs. Ronnie looked down at the stolen tooth in her hand. "No, but we might be."
・🦖❤︎🦖・
It turned out that Hammond's comedic talent was mostly made up. He had directed them all into a little theater, where he giggled over a video of himself, which he clumsily interacted with.
Then he sat down. The room grew darker, and slowly, a kitschy kids cartoon started playing.
A cartoon dinosaur was bitten by a mosquito as a little DNA man danced around the screen. Hammond's brilliance dawned on her at the sight of the mosquitos even as she grimaced at the way it was obviously being portrayed to appeal to children and consumer culture. Dinosaurs were not consumer commodities, they shouldn't be marketed with something like this, akin to a sunday cartoon or commercial.
Ronnie shook her head. "It looks like Schoolhouse, Rock," she whispered. This was genetic power unlike anything the world had ever seen, and the screen displayed it like a child's plaything.
"This can't be right," Alan Grant muttered from down the row.
"It isn't," Ian said. He but his lip and ran his thumb over the palm of his hand, repeatedly. "It's just God's creatures doing what they do best."
"And what's that?" Ellie asked, her eyes not leaving the TV screen, which now showed a scientist inserting a needle into a mosquito encased in amber. Hammond was a genius but arrogant as a fucking three year old. Ronnie couldn't help but wonder as the cheesy voice-over continued- how much of the park was designed like this? To market to consumers, and not to correctly contain and care for the new and incredible dangerous animals within the park? They had a T-rex for God's sake. Ronnie shuddered. Would they risk containing it in glass just so it could be seen by snotty five-year-olds with their faces pressed against it?
Ronnie wondered what would happen to the world if that was the case.
The barest bit of a smile played on Ian's face as he answered Ellie's question. "Fucking up," he said.
Amen to that.
Ronnie smiled slightly and leaned over to Ian and whispered, "I thought mathematicians didn't believe in God."
Ronnie caught a flash of teeth as his fingers drummed on the arm rest between them. "Only the bad ones."
The video finished and the ride (which was apparently a ride) lurched to the left as the voice over continued. A bar came down over their laps. "For your own safety!" Hammond called brightly from a few rows behind them.
The ride rode past a window that appeared to be a direct look into the labs that literally made the dinosaurs. The voice-over confirmed it. Ronnie leaned over the seat bar to see better, but then the car continued moving left-
"Can we see the unfertilized eggs?" Ellie yelled, leaned over the bar further than Ronnie was."Wait a minute, How do you interrupt the cellular mitosis! Grant said loudly, pushing up on the restraint bar.
"All in good time," Hammond said calmly from behind them.
"Can't you stop these things?!" Grant asked, an incredulous look on his face.
Hammond started to drone on about how 'this was a ride' and that was 'against company policy' but Malcolm rolled his eyes and signaled to Grant. He said, "One, two, three-"
The two of them lifted the restraint bar and all four scientists clambered off the ride to the door to the lab.
Grant jiggled to handle to the door to the lab but it was locked. There was a scanner next to it. "It's a retinal scanner, Ronnie said, recognizing it from Harambe. She stopped him. "The doors not gonna open without the right clearance."
Ellie cocked her head. "I'll just break it then," she said, her eyes sparkling with the threat of challenge. Her grin flashed as she put her hair up. Grant backed up and handed Ellie his shoe in a way that made Ronnie think this happened quite a bit. Ronnie and Ian made brief eye contact. Ellie lifted the shoe and aimed at the scanner-
"Stop!" Hammond yelled. He came up from behind to meet them, huffing and puffing. Gennaro wasn't far behind and the ride was stopped behind them. "Stop," he said breathlessly. "It's a retinal scanner. Just- just give me a moment."
Ellie lowered the shoe.
Hammond, catching his breath, got down at eye level and blinked at the scanner, then punched in a code. He pushed down on the handle and cracked open the door.
"Now, I know you're curious," he said, wiping the sweat off his brow. "But be careful. You're all meant to be fully sanitised before entering this room-"
Grant was through the door before Hammond could finish. The rest of them weren't far behind.The inside of the lab was white and sterile. Ronnie glanced down at her own clothing, dirty from a day of helicopter rides and hiking and jeep rides and sweating in the tropics, and thought that maybe Hammond was right about that one thing. Well, too late now.
"Good day, Henry," Hammond said to a man in a white coat with a clipboard as the rest of them looked and (in Grant's case) poked around, awed.
The man (Henry?) looked up briefly. "Oh, good day Sir," he said with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He looked like he couldn't be older than 25. But he also looked as though he must have been the head scientist. If anyone could answer her questions, show her the genome, authenticate her theories- it would be him.
"My God! Look!" Grant said before she got the chance to step over to the man.
Grant was on the other side of the lab, next to a big table with what appeared to be- dinosaur eggs? Were those freaking dinosaur eggs? Ronnie made her way over to them, Ellie already there. One of the eggs was hatching already.
"Ah, Henry! Why didn't you tell me!" Hammond scoffed as he shook his head, coming up next to Ellie at the table. "You know I insist on being here when they're born!"
Ronnie and the rest of the scientists watched, breathless, as a tiny dinosaur made its way out of the egg. Bits of membrane stuck to it as it blinked it's huge, orange eyes. It's claws were no bigger than toothpicks. This was amazing. This was the most important scientific development in years, decades, and it was right there. This was a goddamn miracle.
The baby dinosaur stumbled out of the egg and Ronnie reached a hand out for it.
Hammond picked it up gingerly before she could. "Well hello, little one!" he cooed. He smiled at the dinosaur.
Ronnie subconsciously reached out a hand after it.
"Why, do you want to hold it, my dear?" Hammond asked after a moment, as he looked away from the dinosaur still teetering about in his hand to Ronnie and her outstretched hand.
Did she? She did.
Hammond chuckled and smiled at the dinosaur for another moment. "Yes, I think you're sufficiently imprinted then!" he said to the dinosaur. It tried to take a swipe out of his nose. Hammond tsked, looking at the fucking dinosaur disapprovingly, before placing it in Ronnie's outstretched hands.
It slipped for a second before finding its footing.
Her breath caught.
She was holding a dinosaur.