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Jurassic Park: X Factor (Chapter Two - Return to Chaos)
By drucifer67
Jurassic Park: X Factor
Chapter Two – Return to Chaos
One dark eye peered past the chain on the hardwood door.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not the least bit happy to see you two?”
“Charming, as always, Ian,” Grant replied. Ian stepped aside and opened the door, welcoming his surprise guests with a flourish. “Please, come in. My curiosity has once again overwhelmed my good judgement.”
Lex and Dr. Grant crossed into the center of Ian Malcolm’s living room. Lex was taken with the starkness of the décor—everything was done in black and shades of gray broken by a few sparse and scattered white accents. Above the sofa was a simple painting of black lines forming incomplete squares on white canvas. On the opposing wall was a colored-ink drawing of a velociraptor wearing glasses like Malcolm’s.
“To what do I owe the, uh, honor of this visit?”
“We need some information,” Grant began.
“Ah...good, good. Information I can do. Forgive me for jumping to conclusions, but seeing two of my fellow survivors together, uh, in the same place, well, I immediately assumed there was something…insane going on.”
“What we would like for you to do, Dr. Malcolm,” Lex said, “is to share everything you know about Isla Sorna. Between you and Dr. Grant, I think we can—“
But Malcolm was already shaking his head. “It’s in my book. It’s pretty good, if I do say so myself. You should read it.”
“I’ve read it,” Grant and Lex said simultaneously—she with a sort of congratulatory lilt in her voice, and he with what sounded like disgust.
“Ah…so…so what can I possibly offer you that hasn’t already been written? Not that discussing it again would be easy. I wrote my book as catharsis, uh, after having nearly been eaten several times. Not my favorite topic of conversation.”
Lex stepped forward. “I know what you mean, Dr. Malcolm. I can’t forget about it, either. I have dreams. Except in the dreams…some of us don’t get away.”
The sympathy in Ian Malcolm’s eyes was very real, and Lex was grateful for it, but she dared not stop now. He needed convincing, and she knew intuitively that she must strike while the iron was hot. “We need to put our heads together. Map out the island. Get a layout of where the different species tend to gather. We need to make a plan.”
“Ah…a plan…” Malcolm replied, holding up one long finger, “…the word ‘plan’ implies that there is something insane going on here after all.”
“No one’s asking you to go back there,” Grant added. “Just your recollections of the layout of the island. Nothing else, unless you happen to know a highly-trained team of dinosaur hunters we can take along with us.”
Lex turned to Grant, surprised. He looked back at her, and his expression confirmed what she thought she had heard: Yes, Lex, I said ‘us’.
“Oh no, no, no, no…Dr. Grant, ah…Lex...this is a bad, very bad idea… For God’s sake, Dr. Grant, why on earth would you go back to that place? I’d be willing to bet it hasn’t improved much. Europe…Europe is absolutely lovely this time of year. Come on, sit down, we’ll have a cup of coffee and I’ll call the asylum, they can give you Thorazine until you start making sense.”
“Dr. Malcolm,” Lex pleaded, “My brother is there…Tim is there. He’s overdue to return. Someone has to go back there.”
“Tim? Tim? Little Tim went back? What could possibly have possessed him to go back? Why would anyone go back? I admit, I was foolish enough to go a second time, because someone I cared about was in grave danger, and, and, I can see, ah, why you would do the same, ah, Lex…but, but, why the hell would Tim go back?”
“He went with Dr. Michael Reilly,” Grant explained.
“Reilly? I’ve heard of him. He’s still around? He’s still a doctor?”
“They went with a team to investigate…something on the island,” Lex added.
“To investigate what?” asked Malcolm. “Feeding habits of the Tyrannosaur? I can tell them what they need to know on that subject without sending some poor team to that island. It’s quite simple, really, it’s like the old joke…ah…what does a 10-ton dinosaur eat? Anything he wants, of course. What could they possibly want to study?”
“I’m not sure I understood it all, and Tim said he couldn’t give me all the details anyway. He said they were looking for evidence of the X Factor.”
Grant and Malcolm exchanged a puzzled look.
“I’m sorry, that’s all I know. I don’t know what the X Factor is, and Tim said he couldn’t tell me. He said the whole trip was classified.”
“Classified? Classified? That would indicate, ah, that the United States government is involved.”
“They are,” Lex responded. “And Costa Rica, too.”
“Why don’t they put together a rescue operation of their own?” Grant wondered.
“It’s so strictly classified they won’t even admit anyone is there at all.”
“All an extension of the quarantine measures, I would think,” Grant suggested.
“Not likely,” Malcolm argued. “Isla Nublar, ah, and… Isla Sorna, aren’t secrets anymore. They lost their grip on that a long time ago. The whole world knows what’s there. After San Diego the whole world knows exactly what’s there. The secrecy, that stems from…well, from whatever this X Factor is, that’s where the secrecy stems from.”
“There’s something serious they’re not telling us about,” Grant added.
“So how many were on this team?” Malcolm asked.
“Six or seven,” Lex answered doubtfully. “I’m not really sure.”
“When were they due back?”
“Two weeks ago. Tim swore to me that they had the best equipment money could buy. He said the helicopters would remain on standby ten minutes away.”
“A lot of things could have gone wrong,” Grant said, considering. “Equipment failure is very likely, no matter how good their radios.”
“That’s the thing, though,” Lex continued, “Tim also told me they’d be picked up on the fifteenth, regardless. It was a…a failsafe, in case their radios failed.”
“Then something kept them from making the rendezvous,” Grant concluded.
“Again, not necessarily,” Malcolm argued, his characteristic single forefinger raised as he made his point. “If the government is involved, it’s doubtful they’d go searching if the team was late. So if the helicopters made it, ah, to the extraction point and the team wasn’t there, they likely would have left them, they would have assumed they were all…well, you know.”
Lex nodded.
“It’s also possible that the helicopters were attacked,” Malcolm continued, “and it’s also possible the team, ah, the team was attacked. Many, many unknown variables.”
“The bottom line remains the same, Ian. We can’t know, Lex can’t know, unless someone returns to Isla Sorna.”
Malcolm considered this for a moment. “There’s nothing so final as the bottom line,” he said at last.
12/21/2002 9:41:01 PM
(Updated: 1/10/2003 2:16:36 AM)
(Updated: 1/15/2003 12:56:58 PM)
(Updated: 1/15/2003 3:44:50 PM)
(Updated: 2/11/2003 3:12:10 AM)
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