Malcolm, laid out in the back of the jeep, feels something strange. He looks down, at the one of the T-rex footprints in the road. It's filled with water. The water in the puddle vibrates rhythmically. Malcolm's eyes widen. He looks around, frantically.
Malcolm: Anybody hear that?
Malcolm's staring, wide-eyed, at the rings in the water, which are getting bigger now.
Malcolm: Anybody hear that? It's a, um... It's an impact tremor, that's what it is... I'm fairly alarmed here.
Realizing everyone else has disappeared, Ellie and Muldoon return to the jeep.
Malcolm: Come on, we gotta get out of here! Now!
The booming is louder now, and faster. Much faster. They look back, over their shoulders. Ellie and Muldoon get into the jeep, Muldoon in the driver's seat.
Malcolm: Now! Right now! Let's go.
The tyrannosaur smashes out of the jungle foliage, bursts onto the road, and runs straight at them, moving at least thirty miles an hour. Muldoon fumbles for the keys, turns the jeep over, and slams it into gear. He drops the clutch, hits the gas, and tears ass out of there.
But the jeep is slow to work through the first few gears. Terrified, Ellie dares to look down, to the side view mirror, which tells her "Objects Are Closer Than They Appear." And they sure are.
The T-rex is still gaining on the slowly accelerating jeep.
Malcolm: Must go faster!
Ellie: Shit! Shit!
Malcolm: Here it comes! Step on it! Fifth gear! Fifth gear!
All three of them stare back at the rex in terror. Ellie sees a huge tree branch across the road.
Ellie: Look out!
Muldoon: Down!
The T-rex just runs right through the branch, smashing it entirely. They're bounced around pretty badly. Malcolm is knocked into the front, and in so doing knocks the gear shift into neutral. The engine races, the T-rex closes in again. Losing ground now, the dinosaur makes a final lunge for the jeep and crunches into the left rear quarter panel.
Muldoon: Get off the stick. Bloody move!
Muldoon slams it back into gear and guns it. The T-rex gives up, fading into the distance. They drive in silence for a few moments, all scared out of their wits.
Malcolm: You think they'll have that on the tour?
Grant and the kids make their way through Jurassic Park. Far in the distance, there's another roar. Grant hears it, but tries not to show it.
Lex: Are you hearing this?
They keep walking, but now Grant is looking around for a safe place to hide for the night. He looks up, to the towering trees around them. They climb up a tree. Grant is behind, watching the other two, giving them a push up when they need it.
Tim: I hate trees!
Lex: They don't bother me.
Tim: Oh yeah? Well, you weren't in the last one!
Now, near the top of the tree, the three of them sit there, dangling their legs, looking out over the park. It's an incredible view. They can see in all directions. And with the full moon, there's a lot of detail.
Most striking of all are dozens of sauropod heads, at the end of long necks, that tower over the park. Grant finds a solid web of branch and settles himself in it, leaning back against the trunk of the tree, with a little room on either side of him. Lex nestles up next to him on the branch. Grant is surprised, but accepts it.
Brachiosaurs hear Grant imitate their singing. Immediately, five or six of the heads turn in their direction and sing back.
Lex: Shh. Don't let the monsters come over here.
Grant: They're not monsters, Lex. They're just animals. And these are herbivores.
Tim: That means they only eat vegetables, but for you I think they'd make an exception.
Lex: Oh, I hate the other kind.
Grant gets comfortable, but something in his pocket pinches him. He winces and digs it out. It's the velociraptor claw he unearthed so long ago in Montana. Yesterday, actually. He looks at it, thinking a million thoughts, staring at this thing that used to be so priceless.
Lex: What are you and Ellie gonna do now if you don't have to pick up dinosaur bones any more?
Grant: I don't know. I guess we'll just have to evolve too.
Tim: What do you call a blind dinosaur?
Grant: I don't know. What do you call a blind dinosaur?
Tim: A Do-you-think-he-saurus.
Grant: Ha ha. Good one.
Tim: What do you call a blind dinosaur's dog?
Grant: You got me.
Tim: A Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex.
Grant laughs. Both kids finally close their eyes, but after a moment, Lex pops hers open again.
Lex: What if the dinosaurs come back while we're all asleep?
Grant: Hmm. I'll stay awake.
Lex: All night?
Grant [reassuringly]: All night.
Ellie comes into the darkened restaurant, following the source of the flickering light. A candle burns at a table in the corner. Hammond sits at the table, alone. There are containers of ice cream in the middle, and he's eating a dish of it, staring down morosely. Ellie draws up to the table and Hammond looks up at her. His eyes are puffy, for the first time we've seen him, the fire is gone from his eyes.
Hammond: It was all melting.
Ellie: Malcolm's okay for now. I gave him a shot of morphine.
Hammond: They'll be fine. Who better to get the children through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?
Ellie nods. Another pause. Hammond breaks it again.
Hammond: You know the first attraction I ever built when I came down south from Scotland? It was a Flea Circus, Petticoat Lane. Really quite wonderful. We had a wee trapeze, and a merry-go... carousel and a seesaw. They all moved, motorized of course, but people would say they could see the fleas.
"Oh, I see the fleas, mummy! Can't you see the fleas?" Clown fleas and high wire fleas and fleas on parade... But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.
Ellie: But you can't think your way through this, John. You have to feel it.
Hammond: You're right. You're absolutely right. Hiring Nedry was a mistake, that's obvious. We're over-dependent on automation. I can see that now. Now, the next time, everything is correctible...
Ellie: John...
Hammond: Creation is an act of sheer will. Next time it'll be flawless. When we have control again...
Ellie: You never had control, that's the illusion! I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too, I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now. The only thing that matters now are the people we love. Alan and Lex and Tim. John, they're out there where people are dying. . . . . So...
There is a long pause. Hammond avoids her gaze. Ellie reaches out and takes a spoon out of one of the containers of ice cream, and licks it.
Ellie: It's good.
Hammond: Spared no expense.
The sun comes up over Jurassic Park. The danger of the night before is overcome by the sheer beauty of the place, it really is like the Serengeti Plain. Over at the edge of a great open field, a huge tree marks the border between the open area and the thick of the jungle.
Grant, Tim, and Lex are asleep in the branches of the tree, both kids now curled up under Grant's arms. A heavy shadow falls over all three of them, blocking out the sun entirely. Grant awakens, only a little bit asleep, as a brachiosaur's head pushes into the tree branches, right up beside them.
It hesitates there for a second, seemingly staring at them. Grant just watches as it opens its mouth very wide and chomps down on a branch over their heads. The kids awaken with a start. Tim points, Lex opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Then . . . .
Lex: Go away!
Grant: It's OK. It's OK. It's a Brachiosaur.
Tim: It's a veggiesaurus, Lex! Veggiesaurus!
But Lex isn't taking any chances and scrambles back, away from its mouth. Tim and Grant come together on the branch, just staring at the dinosaur in wonder as it eats its breakfast. Grant gets another branch. Tim scampers up, trying to get the brachiosaur's attention. Grant moves forward and tries to feed the brachiosaur.
The animal gets the end of the branch and starts a tug-of-war with Grant. Tim tries to help him, they really begin to have a good time with the brachiosaur. The brachiosaur makes a loud honking noise, startling Grant and the kids. Tim reaches out, petting the dinosaur's head while it chews.
Tim: It looks like it has a cold.
Grant: Yeah, maybe.
Lex: Can I touch it?
Grant: Sure. Just think of it as kind of a big cow.
Lex: I like cows. [to a Brachiosaur] Come on, girl. I'm here, girl. Come on.
The dinosaur keeps chewing, not objecting to the inspection. Lex tentatively edges forward in the tree. She barely touches the thing on the tip of its nose and it sneezes. It's a vast explosion, and Lex falls back, dripping wet from head to toe.
Tim: God bless you!
Lex, her shirt is soaked, and face all wet, walks away from the tree. Tim and Grant follow. Lex is embarrassed and ticked off.
Lex: Yuck!
Tim: Oh, great. Now she'll never try anything anymore. She'll just sit in her room, and never come out, and play on her computer.
She wipes off some of the wet and throws it at Tim.
Lex: I'm a hacker!
Tim: That's what I said: you're a nerd.
Lex: I am not a computer nerd. I prefer to be called a hacker!
Tim and Lex continue talking, oblivious to Grant, who has stopped by a tree root trunk.
Grant is crouching on the ground below the tree where he landed, staring at something in the palm of his hand. They both come and look over his shoulder, curious. They stare in amazement at a whole clutch of dinosaur eggs! All hatched, now empty. Grant picks up one of the fragments, a large one, nearly half an egg.
Grant: Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.
Tim: But Grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls.
Grant: Amphibian DNA.
Lex: What's that?
Grant: Well, on the tour, the film said they used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog's. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right. Look . . .
We see a trail of baby dinosaur footprints.
Grant: Life found a way.
The mood in the control room is hopeless. Malcolm, his wounds bandaged, but in real pain, hangs around with Ellie and Muldoon, hoping for some development while Arnold is still at the computer terminal and looking a mess, he doggedly sorts through the computer system's lines of code. One. By one. By one.
They blip by, reflected in his glasses. He turns and stares up at Hammond with a look of absolute incredulity on his face. Hammond suggests that they shut down the entire system to restore it to the original start-up mode, but Arnold contends that the system may not come back up at all.
Muldoon [desperate]: What about the lysine contingency? We could put that into effect!
Ellie: What's that?
Hammond: That is absolutely out of the question.
Hammond walks away from the group.
Arnold: The lysine contingency is intended to prevent the spread of the animals in case they ever get off the island. Dr. Wu inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. The animals can't manufacture the amino acid lysine. Unless they're continually supplied with lysine by us, they'll slip into a coma and die.
Ellie: How could we cut off the lysine?
Arnold: No real trick to it. Just stop running the program, leaving them unattended.
Malcom: How long before they become comatose?
Arnold: It would be totally painless - they'd just slip into unconsciousness and die.
Malcom: How long until they slip into unconsciousness?
Arnold: Hmm... seven days, more or less.
Ellie: Seven days? Seven days? Oh, that's great. Clever!
Malcom: That'll be a first - man and dinosaur all die together. John's plan.
Hammond finally loses his cool. He bellows, summoning every ounce of authority at his command. And that's quite a bit.
Hammond: People. Are. Dying!
There is a moment in which no one dares to speak. Hammond regains himself.
Hammond: Mr. Arnold, will you please shut down the system.
Arnold swallows and gets to his feet.
Arnold: OK, but... you asked for it. Hold on to your butts!
He walks slowly across the room to a red metal box on the wall. He takes a key from his belt, unlocks the door, and opens it. There is a row of four switches inside. He flips them off, one by one, leaving only a single lever left. His hand hovers over it. . . and he flips the lever.
Every monitor, every terminal, every fluorescent light shuts out. plunging them into near-darkness. They just sit in eerie stillness for a moment. They wait, in tense silence. Hammond adjusts the wilting silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He notices Malcolm staring at him, his eyes full of disapproval.
Finally, Arnold turns back to the box. He flips the row of safety switches back again, then hesitates by the main switch. He throws it. And nothing happens. There is a very long pause. Arnold, who can't quite understand this, races over to the main monitor.
Arnold: Um... It's OK. Look, see that.
They stare at the monitor, which glows with a faint amber light, the only mechanical thing in the room that's on. The left hand corner of the screen displays two words - - /system ready. Arnold looks at them, his face triumphant.
Arnold: It's on. It worked.
Malcolm: What what do you mean, it worked? Everything's still off.
Arnold: Well, maybe the shutdown tripped the circuit breakers. All we have to do is turn them back on. Reboot a few systems in here. Telephones. Security doors, and a half dozen others but it worked. The system's ready.
Muldoon: Where are the breakers?
Arnold: Maintenance shed. At the other end of the compound. Three minutes, and I can have power back on in the entire park.
Hammond: Well, just to be safe I want everyone in the emergency bunker, until Mr. Arnold returns, and the whole system's up and running again.
Grant and the kids walk through the park grounds, heading across a relatively open area. They see a stampede of small dinosaurs, closer now, louder.
Grant: Tim. Tim, can you tell me what they are?
Tim: They're, Gal... uh... uh, Galli... uh, Gallimimus.
Lex: Are those... meat-eating... uh, meatasauruses?
Grant takes a few steps forward. As he watches, he can make out shapes in the distance. Dinosaurs. Dozens of them.
The dinosaurs change direction. Lex is ready to get out of there, but Grant and Tim hesitate, staring.
Grant: The wheel uniform changes just like a flock of birds evading a predator.
They look back towards the stampede. The herd spontaneously changes direction again, and now they're headed straight at them.
Tim: They're, uh... they're flocking this way.
The three of them take off, across the meadow, toward the relative cover of the jungle. It's a real foot race, but the herd is far faster, and Grant knows they're not going to make it. They jump over a huge root network. There's a space under it to hide, and Grant stops the kids, shoves them underneath, then follows them.
They cover their heads as the herd thunders over the roots. Chunks of everything fly everywhere as the herd plows overhead, their clawed feet striking the roots dangerously close to Grant and the kids. Finally, they pass. Grant peers up, over the top root. He looks toward the trees, which the herd is now running alongside.
A roar comes from somewhere within the trees. Grant scans the trees, looking for any sign of the T-rex - and then it bursts out, ahead of the herd, cutting them off, throwing them into disarray, scattering them everywhere. They all stare as the rex kicks it into overdrive, runs down one of the Gallimimus, and sinks its teeth into its neck. The T-rex makes the kill in a cloud of dust and debris. Tim and Grant stare in wonder.
Lex: I want to go now.
But Grant and Tim are transfixed, watching the T-rex.
Grant: Look how it eats.
Lex: Please!
Grant: I bet you'll never look at birds the same way again.
Tim nods in fascination. The T-rex pauses in the middle of its meal and roars. Lex turns and takes off, running as fast as she can, across the open plain. Tim and Grant tear themselves away and follow her.
Tim: Look at all the blood!
In the bunker room, Ellie paces impatiently.
Ellie: I can't wait any longer. Something went wrong.
Muldoon paces too. Hammond and Malcolm are also crammed in the underground bunker. Malcolm lays on a table, while Hammond tries to tend to his wounds.
Hammond speaks, still feeling the obligation of the host.
Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
Malcom: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.
Another pause. More pacing.
Ellie: I'm gonna' get the power back on
Muldoon: You can't just stroll down the road, you know?
Muldoon is going with her to the maintenance shed. He opens a steel cabinet, revealing an impressive array of weaponry inside. He removes a shotgun. Hammond searches out the set of blueprints, gets them out of the file cabinet and spreads them out on top of Malcolm.
Ellie and Muldoon join Hammond. Setting the breakers requires multiple steps and he plans to talk her through it. Ellie gets a couple of walkie-talkies from the shelf and shoves them in her belt.
Hammond: It ought to be me really going.
Ellie: Why?
Hammond: Well, I'm a... And you're, um, a...
Ellie: Look... We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back.
Grant, Tim, and Lex scrambles through the jungle, completely out of breath, exhausted. They arrive at the base of the big electrical fence that surrounds the main compound. Grant looks up at the fence. It must be over twenty feet high. Grant grabs a stick and climbs up on the ledge. He looks at the warning light on the fence. It's out. He throws a branch at the fence. No sparks fly.
Grant: I guess that means the power's off.
He moves in slowly and lays both hands on a cable and closes his fingers around it. Grant's body shakes! He screams. The kids scream! He stops, and turns around slowly...and smiles wickedly.
Lex: That's not funny.
Tim [laughing]: That was great.
Far in the distance, the T-rex roars. Without a second's delay, both kids leap to their feet.
|
