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Spoiler: click to toggle I don't have formal chapters, but I'll post as I go with things.
Part 1 The sun swept down over the horizon, washing a bright orange light across the island below. It refracted of the wide ocean around the island and set the entirety of Isla Nublar in a corona of flame-colored light. A troodon sprung up from the small cave it bedded down in, letting out a low whistle and hopping haphazardly away from its home. Another troodon’s head popped up from a shrubby pile of leaves, orange light glinting off of its large, forward facing eyes. It stretched a feathered arm up to its neck, scratching its neck with a long, curled claw, before hopping off after the other troodon. The two hopped to each other, whistling and opening their mouths wide.
A red light behind them began to flash, and the air was filled with a high pitched series of three beeps. The troodons snapped at each other excitedly, puffing up the striated feathers on the back of their necks. A platform rose from the ground, and on it, held under a metal cage, was a goat. It looked up at the troodons as it rose, bleated pitifully. The platform came to a halt and the light stopped beeping, and, for a moment, all was quiet. Then there was the quiet noise of machinery as the cage lifted up. One of the troodons opened its mouth to the sky and made a noise that sounded eerily identical to the noise of the alarm that pinged for the arrival of the troodons’ food.
The goat bleated and took off running from the two speckled troodons in front of it. The one not imitating the alarm took off briskly at the goat, leaping into the air. It flexed back the long recurved talon on its toe and fanned out its arms like wings, hissing loudly. It landed on the goat’s back, causing the mammal to let out a scream, and the troodon lanced its claws through the fur and flesh of the goat, drawing spurts of blood. The other troodon ran up beside the goat, snapping its jaws down on the goat’s neck and pulling it to the ground. Blood pooled out from the dying goat, which let out a feeble breath. The two troodons began to tear flesh from the goat as it tried to bleat, tossing their heads back and swallowing bloody chunks of meat.
The pair ate for several minutes before they had their fill, each taking hold of the goat’s neck and dragging it off together to a small hollow behind a large tree. The two kicked up dry leaves over the goats corpse, one of them imitating a goat’s bleat. The sun had set, and the two troodons snapped at each other playfully before returning to their den, whispering quiet bleats and siren noises as the lay down. The dry leaves crunched under their gracile, clawed feet, and they curled up alongside each other, tucking their long snouts under the wing-like feathers covering their arms, before drifting off to a quiet and sated sleep.
~~~~~
“The really interesting thing about troodon is that it is crepuscular! That means that...that it’s active during...during dawn and…” Liz Jenkins surveyed the crowd of small children surrounding her, dotted with the occasional parent of nanny but mostly just a group of 15 brats. She sighed. They weren’t listening to her speech. She had done her masters thesis on the activity patterns of small theropod dinosaurs, before she had been hired by Jurassic Park, but all of that seemed to be completely ignored by both the higher ups at her job and the masses of children gathered around her. Smile and wave, Liz, she whispered to herself, smile and wave and tell them which way T-rex is. Liz adjusted the brim of her Jurassic Park™ cap, putting on the most genuine smile she could pull off in the glaring Costa Rican sun. “Okay kids, which one of you want to see the Tyrannosaurus rex?”
Liz was almost knocked back over the railing by the screeching of the children in front of her. She started walking towards the shuttle that would take the tour group to the Tyrannosaur building, and was almost flattened by the stampede of screaming kindergartners. However, as she got onto the shuttle, she was distracted by a slight tug on her hand. “Um, miss, what were you going to say earlier?” Liz looked down and, holding her hand, was a young black girl, no older than 7. The brightly colored clips in her hair and pink frock reminded Liz of her own appearance when she was that age. “You said cr-cre-crep…”
“Crepuscular?” Liz said, tentatively.
The girl’s face lit up. “Uh-huh! You said that that means the dinosaur,” the girl lisped this word with an almost reverent tone, “it means the dinosaur is active during dawn and...then you stopped talking.”
Liz took a sharp breath in. Someone is listening to me?, she thought to herself. And it’s not a an old man who thinks I’ll fuck him for his paleontology? “Oh! It means active during dawn and dusk, sweetheart. Those troodons back there, they use their big eyes, which face forward, like our eyes,” she pointed at her own face here, “to see really well when there isn’t a lot of light.”
The little girl giggled and opened her eyes very wide. “Am I like the trudon now?” She opened her mouth as if to roar, before looking back up at Liz. “What noise does trudon make?”
Liz smiled. “Well we didn’t know much about their vocalizations before, from fossils, but…” She paused. This was a child. “They can make lots of noises! We found that they’re kind of like mockingbirds, or parrots, or crows, because they can imitate other noises they hear. But they like to whistle a lot!”
“I...mi...tate…” The little girl smiled, her curls bouncing with the stopping of the shuttle. “I can’t whistle like the trudons, but I can pretend to be one anyways!” She opened her eyes very wide and made soft cooing noises, squawks, and noises that sounded like sirens.
Liz smiled. “What’s your name, sweetheart? Where’s your parents?”
The girl looked at Liz pensively. “I’m Chloe! My Mama and Papa are down at the big swimming pool but they said I should go on the T-rex tour while they settle down and then we can go and look at the other dinosaurs later!”
Sighing, Liz remembered her own parents’ similarly apathetic reaction to her working at the park. They had nodded, saying ‘Yes sweetie we’re very glad for you’ but also ‘No sweetie, I don’t think we can visit. We don’t like flying, and all that hassle isn’t worth it to see a few big lizards, is it? Go have fun with those dinosaurs though!’. She remembered how her parents had supported her interest in dinosaurs when she was a little girl, but quickly grew tired of her persistence for her childish interests by the time she was in high school. And college was even worse.
“I’m Dr. Jenkins, Chloe!” Liz extended a hand to the little girl in front of her. Chloe took her hand and shook with the vigorousness only found in a child meeting a ‘cool’ adult for the first time.
Liz laughed as the doors opened wide.
Liz, now in a noticeably better mood, led the gaggle of impatient children and their bored nannies of the shuttle, the PDA declaring “Welcome to Tyrannosaur Island!” in a loud, tinny voice.
“Come on kids! The T-Rex and other tyrannosaurs are up this path.” Liz shouted to the kids that were already beginning to move off towards the pathway leading to the aquarium, one child even preparing to jump over the railing to the ocean before Liz drew him back in. She motioned up the steps ahead of her and began to head up, the children following behind, gazing in wonder at the cartoon cutouts of tyrannosaurs alongside the path that gazed back with stupid, bobbly eyes. Liz pushed open the doors that led the first room of the Tyrannosaur building, which housed smaller tyrannosaurids, all in evolutionary order. She was affronted by the hot, damp air of a tropical pine forest, and the long elevated walkway that cut through a riverine exhibit. Below, several 3 meter long Guanlong lay like birds on one side of the river. Their bodies were an olive green but dappled like a leopard, but the thing that stood out the most was the bright orange crest jutting from the head of each. “Below you, you’ll see Guanlong wucaii”, Liz said to the children behind her. “This is one of the first relatives of T-rex, and they have a distinctive crest that is larger on the males, although the males are smaller and-”
“Miss! When are we going to see Teerex,” The child that interrupted Liz stretched out the “t”, pouting. “I want to see Teerex”.
Liz sighed, ready to lead the group off to the bigger tyrannosaurs. She felt like Guanlong was somehow cheated, as it was just as majestic and interesting as its larger relative, but Tyrannosaurus got all the glory. A small voice interrupted the chattering crowd, Chloe waving her hands above her heads in the air. “Wait! Dr. Jenkins said that those are like T-rex cousins!”
One older boy glared at Chloe. “They look like dumb birds. That’s not a T-rex.”
Liz sighed. As much as she hated the fact that these people were hating on these Guanlong, they were going to be in for a shocker once they saw the Tyrannosaurus rex. “Come along, then! Follow me, please.” She led the group along the elevated path that stretched up towards the cliff overlooking the Tyrannosaurus enclosure. Her feet ached, the long day of walking having strained her feet. Liz looked at her watch. The sun would go down soon, and this was her last ‘Theropod tour’ of the day. And it was Friday, so she just had to get through one more pack of insufferable kids and then could relax for a few days.
“I think I see something”, one of the kids shouted as the tour group crested the cliff. The overlook to the Tyrannosaurus pasture was crowded as always, the plain below dotted with trees and shrubbery.
Liz gestured at the lift to her left, waving her tour guide pass and cutting through the line, her group following behind. “Jurassic Park currently has two individual Tyrannosaurus rex on display in this exhibit: “Ellie” and “Alexis”, named after two characters in the original Michael Crichton novel that inspired the park. If you will all follow me down the lift over here, we can see if these two ladies are out today!” Liz smiled and the children filed in after her excitedly. As much as she hated working with kids, especially ones that were so unappreciative of the wonder in front of them, Liz loved the moments like these that were filled with suspense right before seeing their favorite dinosaurs.
The lift opened up into a thick plexiglass tunnel that ran from one end of the Tyrannosaurus paddock to the other. The tunnel was able to withstand nearly 100 tons of weight applied anywhere on its length, so Ellie and Alexis provided no threat. It ended in a large viewing area, open on many sides, and provided a view of a large chunk of the park’s T-rex’s territory. Liz led her tour group into the center of the viewing area, and hushed them. “Now, if we’re lucky, while we wait here we’ll be able to see them.”
As if on cue, the dense underbrush that started about 20 feet from the viewing area began to rustle. The conifers and palm ferns parted as an enormous reptilian beast walked heavily towards the viewing area. The tour group was silent, except for one young girl’s high pitched squeal as she pushed against her nanny’s legs.
“This,” Liz said, “Is Alexis, our younger Tyrannosaurus.” Alexis cocked her head. She couldn’t see through the plexiglass, but she had heard noises. The usual, of course. The 32 foot long monster ruffled the thick coat of tan-grey feathers that adorned her entire body, except her snout, shaking herself gently. She stretched her short arms, which seemed to almost bear very tiny feathered wings. With a heavy thump, she slouched to the ground, laying her four foot long head directly on the plexiglass.
Chloe was the first of the awestruck children to speak. “Um...Dr. Jenkins...what is the Trex doing?”
Liz smiled. “As far as I can tell? She’s sleeping, or listening to us. She can’t see us through the bubble, but her hearing is very good, so she probably hears us talking. By sleeping right above us, she can make sure that, if we were food, she could catch us or scare us off.”
The children whispered with fear to each other, but Alexis just slept on, breathing softly. Her downy feathers ruffled slightly in the wind. Ellie was nowhere to be seen in the thick trees outside of the dome’s clearing. Dr. Jenkins answered questions, before her watch started to beep. “Okay, everyone. It’s getting late, and it’s time for me to bring you all back to the visitor center to meet your parents!” She walked off back towards the lift. One of the babysitters took an iPhone selfie with the sleeping t-rex, before following the reast of the crowd back. Liz led the group to the lift, and once everyone was on it, she pressed the button that would take the group up to the top level.
The elevator didn’t start, and the light sputtered briefly. “That’s odd…”, Liz mumbled to herself. She pressed the button again, harder this time, and the elevator shook briefly, before moving back up at a normal pace to the surface. I’ll have to report this to maintenance, I guess, Liz thought to herself. The lift reached the surface, and she led the tour group back off towards the shuttle. Behind her, she didn’t notice a whispered voice from the underside of the elevator.
“That’s odd...that’s odd...that’s odd…” A troodontid stuck its head stealthily out from the crawlspace under the elevator, whispering in a mimicking birdlike voice. “That’s odd....that’s odd…”, it whispered, before grabbing a chunk of wiring in its mouth, ripping it free, and hopping up the the path, clambering up a sandy cliff at the side of the now empty path, disappearing into the brush at the top. “That’s odd...that’s odd…”, it murmured softly, trotting away, dark feathers reflecting the setting sun.
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