Twilight Sparkle found herself in a trailer, attempting to unwind after yesterday’s solid study and research. The morning sun in Snakewater, Montana had arrived on a new day. She didn’t feel uncomfortable or out of place due to her being the only pony here. Yesterday her friend Fluttershy left to continue her own research, leaving Twilight with two of her new human friends: Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler.
She obviously knows what to make of Alan, he grew up with an interest in dinosaurs and has always been fascinated with the extinct species. His intelligence and passion for knowledge are admirable and paleontology is something he's passionate about. He was no reclusive academic—he’s traveled all over the world in search of prehistoric fossils and has even made a few important scientific discoveries along the way.
Ellie was a paleobotanist, an expert on prehistoric plants. Twilight also learned while spending her time with them that Ellie was in a relationship with her partner, Dr. Alan Grant, a world-renowned paleontologist. She too was intelligent and loved to work outdoors and get a bit of exercise. She’s down to earth, and humble despite it all. Both were good company and Twilight thought they were good additions to her small circle of friends.
Twilight giggled at the memory not long after she arrived at Snakewater yesterday that a child shrieked excitedly while pointing at her: “Is that a pony?!” That brought forth a bout of laughter from Allan, Ellie, and their team.
Ponies on Earth were, of course, still a reasonably rare sight. But through these few years, more and more numbers were crossed over to visit the human realm. Twilight and her friends were one of the first to have made the journey after having been tasked by Princess Celestia to visit Earth for extended periods.
Acting as official ambassadors of Equestria and to conduct research and relation-building exercises. After having received the title of ‘Equestria’s ambassador’, Twilight was given some special perks and privileges, such as having access to books while living in the human world.
As well as some extra allowance for traveling around. She had naturally opted to focus her efforts into understanding the world of human academia. She was amazed that Humankind possessed a wide knowledge, much of their ideas and technology completely alien to ponykind – and as Twilight saw it, the libraries of Earth would be the places to begin on her quest to understand humanity.
She had learned much during her research missions. The Human World’s technology was so much different compared to her home of Equestria. Their technology was much simpler. They had many types of communication devices, but they did not possess the magic that ponies had. They used electricity. Most of their weapons were projectile based weapons similar to bows and arrows.
And they seemed to have much less advanced tech. However, despite their lack of technology, they had managed to achieve far more than what their ancestors had. If only in terms of sheer willpower. If it weren’t for that will of theirs, things in the Human realm would not exist anymore.
It didn’t take her long to establish herself as an excellent scholar during her first extended stay, and through various means Twilight now found herself studying extensively among the Human World’s library. In the Human World, she had discovered the wonders of history and culture, as well as how humans came to know and use their knowledge. From that discovery came the concept of History, the story of how people come into existence.
She began to learn the history of humans and their interactions with each other throughout history; the origins of their culture, their beliefs, their politics, their religions. She learned what kind of life they led before the advent of technology and when she looked beyond the current day, she found the past. A time before history was written in stone, before the creation of man’s first tools. Before the invention of writing…
“Visitor!”
Twilight blinked and turned towards the source of the call. She sets her book down on the table, hopping off the chair and starts towards the door. Exiting out of the trailer Twilight turned to her left and saw just in time a cloud of dust, and blue Ford sedan bouncing over the rutted road toward them. Children looked up with interest. They didn’t get many visitors in Snakewater, from what Twilight was told.
Twilight saw Alan Grant starting past her down the hill to meet the car. She subconsciously follows him with her eyes darting back to the blue ford.
The visitor coughed in the white dust as he slammed the car door. “Bob Morris, EPA,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m with the San Francisco office.”
Grant took the hand and shook it firmly. “You look hot. Want a beer?”
“Jesus, yeah.” Morris was in his late twenties, wearing a tie, and pants from a business suit. He carried a briefcase. His wing-tip shoes crunched on the rocks as they walked toward the trailer.
“When I first came over the hill, I thought this was an Indian reservation,” Morris said, pointing to the tipis.
“No,” Grant said. “Just the best way to live out here. The first year of the excavations, we had come out in North Slope octahedral tents, the most advanced available. And that was back in 1978. But the tents always blew over in the wind. We tried other kinds of tents, with the same result. Finally we started putting up tipis, which were larger inside, more comfortable, and more stable in the wind. These’re Blackfoot tipis, built around four poles. Sioux tipis are built around three. But this used to be Blackfoot territory, so we thought…” Grant explained.
“Uh-huh,” Morris said. “Very fitting.” He squinted at the desolate landscape and glanced around. At which point his eyes met Twilight’s own.
Morris furrowed his brow. “Huh…have I seen you before?” He continued to stare.
Twilight tilted her head. “Well that depends, sir. Are you familiar with my name?”
“Hmm…” Morris paused for a moment to consider what he knew of Twilight. “Ah! Yes, I do know who you are. You’re Twilight Sparkle, right?”
Twilight smiled. “Yes, that’s me. Nice to meet you!” She stuck her hoof out for a handshake, Morris got down to one knee and returned the gesture.
Morris chuckled as he shook her hoof. “That’s quite an honor. I’ve heard so much about you since arriving here on Earth.” He smiled brightly at her. “But really it’s an honor to meet you, Mrs. Sparkle.”
“It’s nice to meet you too sir.” Twilight said warmly.
Morris stood back up, rubbing his right hand over his nape. “I must admit, I didn’t think Snakewater would be the last place I find an equestrian.”
Twilight blinked. “Really? What brings you here today?”
“Oh, errr…” Morris paused to collect his thoughts. “Just some business matters.”
Morris turned to Grant.
“How long you been out here?” Morris asked.
“About sixty cases,” Grant replied. When Morris looked surprised, he explained, “We measure time in beer. We start in June with a hundred cases. We’ve gone through about sixty so far.”
“Sixty-three, to be exact,” Ellie Sattler chimed in as they reached the trailer. Grant was amused to see Morris gaping at her while Twilight tilted her head in confusion.
“Ellie keeps us going,” Grant said, introducing her. “She’s very good at what she does.”
“What does she do?” Morris asked.
“Paleobotany,” Ellie said. “And I also do the standard field preps.” She opened the door and they went inside. Followed by Twilight as she walked behind them.
The air conditioning in the trailer only brought the temperature down to eighty-five degrees, but it seemed cool after the midday heat. The trailer had a series of long wooden tables, with tiny bone specimens neatly laid out, tagged and labeled. Farther along were ceramic dishes and crocks. There was a strong odor of vinegar.
Morris glanced at the bones. “I thought dinosaurs were big,” he said.
“They were,” Ellie said. “But everything you see here comes from babies. Snakewater is important primarily because of the number of dinosaur nesting sites here. Until we started this work, there were hardly any infant dinosaurs known. Only one nest had ever been found, in the Gobi Desert. We’ve discovered a dozen different hadrosaur nests, complete with eggs and bones of infants.”
While Grant went to the refrigerator, she showed Morris the acetic acid baths, which were used to dissolve away the limestone from the delicate bones. Twilight hops back to her chair and reads her book.
“They look like chicken bones.” Morris commented, peering into the ceramic dishes.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re very bird-like.”
“And what about those?” Morris asked, pointing through the trailer window to piles of large bones outside, wrapped in heavy plastic.
“Rejects,” Ellie said. “Bones too fragmentary when we took them out of the ground. In the old days we’d just discard them, but nowadays we send them for genetic testing.”
“Genetic testing?” Morris asked.
“Here you go,” Grant said, thrusting a beer into his hand. He gave another to Ellie. She chugged hers, throwing her long neck back. Morris stared.
“We’re pretty informal here,” Grant said. “Want to step into my office?”
“Sure,” Morris said. He stopped mid step, turning his gaze at Twilight and motioned his finger toward Grant’s office. “Uh, Mrs. Sparkle. You should come in as well. I actually have some questions to ask you if you don’t mind?”
Twilight looked to her left at Grant, who shrugged his shoulders in return. Twilight nodded before following the path down the beat up carpet to join Grant in his office. Grant led them to the end of the trailer, where there was a torn couch, a sagging chair, and a battered end table. Grant dropped onto the couch, which creaked and exhaled a cloud of chalky dust. He leaned back, thumped his boots up on the end table, and gestured for Morris to sit in the chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Twilight watched as Morris primly brushed off the seat of the chair before he sat down. Morris opened his briefcase, rummaged through his papers, and glanced back at Ellie, who was lifting bones with tweezers from the acid bath at the other end of the trailer, paying no attention to them.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.” Morris asked, leaning forward slightly.
Grant nodded. “It’s a long way to come, Mr. Morris.”
“Well,” Morris said, “to get right to the point, the EPA is concerned about the activities of the Hammond Foundation. You receive some funding from them.”
“Thirty thousand dollars a year,” Grant said, nodding. “For the last five years.”
“What do you know about the foundation?” Morris said.
Grant shrugged. “The Hammond Foundation is a respected source of academic grants. They fund research all over the world, including several dinosaur researchers. I know they support Bob Kerry out of the Tyrrell in Alberta, and John Weller in Alaska. Probably more.”
“Do you know why the Hammond Foundation supports so much dinosaur research?” Morris asked.
“Of course. It’s because old John Hammond is a dinosaur nut.”
A brow arched on Twilight’s forehead, which caused Grant to glance at her.
“Who’s John Hammond?” Twilight asked, cocking her head to the side.
“He’s the CEO of InGen and founder of both InGen and the Hammond Foundation.” Grant answered.
“You’ve met Hammond?” Morris raised an eyebrow.
Grant shrugged. “Once or twice. He comes here for brief visits. He’s quite elderly, you know. And eccentric, the way rich people sometimes are. But always very enthusiastic. Why?”
“Well,” Morris said, “the Hammond Foundation is actually a rather mysterious organization.” He pulled out a Xeroxed world map, marked with red dots, and passed it to Grant. “These are the digs the foundation financed last year. Notice anything odd about them? Montana, Alaska, Canada, Sweden … They’re all sites in the north. There’s nothing below the forty-fifth parallel.” Morris pulled out more maps. “It’s the same, year after year. Dinosaur projects to the south, in Utah or Colorado or Mexico, never get funded. The Hammond Foundation only supports cold-weather digs. We’d like to know why.”
Grant shuffled through the maps quickly. If it was true that the foundation only supported cold-weather digs, then it was strange behavior, because some of the best dinosaur researchers were working in hot climates, and—
“And there are other puzzles,” Morris said. “For example, what is the relationship of dinosaurs to amber?”
“Amber?”
“Yes. It’s the hard yellow resin of dried tree sap—”
“I know what it is.” Grant interjected with a raise of his hand. “But why are you asking?”
“Because,” Morris said, “over the last five years, Hammond has purchased enormous quantities of amber in America, Europe, and Asia, including many pieces of museum-quality jewelry. The foundation has spent seventeen million dollars on amber. They now possess the largest privately held stock of this material in the world.”
“I don’t get it.” Grant said slowly.
Twilight nodded in agreement. “Neither do I.”
“Neither does anybody else,” Morris said. “As far as we can tell, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Amber is easily synthesized. It has no commercial or defense value. There’s no reason to stockpile it. But Hammond has done just that, over many years.”
“Amber,” Grant said, shaking his head.
“And what about his island in Costa Rica?”
Morris continued. “Ten years ago, the Hammond Foundation leased an island from the government of Costa Rica. Supposedly to set up a biological preserve.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Grant said, frowning.
“I haven’t been able to find out much,” Morris said. “The island is a hundred miles off the west coast. It’s very rugged, and it’s in an area of ocean where the combinations of wind and current make it almost perpetually covered in fog. They used to call it Cloud Island. Isla Nublar. Apparently the Costa Ricans were amazed that anybody would want it.” Morris searched in his briefcase. “The reason I mention it,” he said, “is that, according to the records, you were paid a consultant’s fee in connection with this island.”
“I was?” Grant asked, looking confused.
Twilight watched the two men closely. Right hoof tapping her chin with a thought. Isla Nublar. She’s never heard of it. She’s familiar of some islands but not of this one.
Morris passed a sheet of paper to Grant. It was the Xerox of a check issued in March 1984 from InGen Inc., Farallon Road, Palo Alto, California. Made out to Alan Grant in the amount of twelve thousand dollars. At the lower corner, the check was marked:
CONSULTANT SERVICES/COSTA RICA/JUVENILE HYPERSPACE.
“Oh, sure,” Grant said. “I remember that. It was weird as hell, but I remember it. And it didn’t have anything to do with an island.”
“Had you heard of InGen before?” Morris asked.
“No.”
“How did they contact you?”
“Telephone call. It was a man named Gennaro or Gennino, something like that.”
Morris nodded. “Donald Gennaro,” he said. “He’s the legal counsel for InGen.”
Twilight had remained quiet during the exchange. All the while scribbling notes into her notepad, she kept an eye on Grant while listening.
“Anyway, he wanted to know about eating habits of dinosaurs. And he offered me a fee to draw up a paper for him.” Grant drank his beer, set the can on the floor. “Gennaro was particularly interested in young dinosaurs. Infants and juveniles. What they ate. I guess he thought I would know about that.”
“Did you?” Morris asked.
“Not really, no. I told him that. We had found lots of skeletal material, but we had very little dietary data. But Gennaro said he knew we hadn’t published everything, and he wanted whatever we had. And he offered a very large fee. Fifty thousand dollars.”
Morris took out a tape recorder and set it on the endtable. “You mind?”
“No, go ahead.”
“So Gennaro telephoned you in 1984. What happened then?”
“Well,” Grant said. “You see our operation here. Fifty thousand would support two full summers of digging. I told him I’d do what I could.”
“So you agreed to prepare a paper for him.”
“Yes.”
“On the dietary habits of juvenile dinosaurs?”
“Yes.”
“You met Gennaro?”
“No. Just on the phone.”
“Did Gennaro say why he wanted this information?”
“Yes,” Grant said. “He was planning a museum for children, and he wanted to feature baby dinosaurs. He said he was hiring a number of academic consultants, and named them. There were paleontologists like me, and a mathematician from Texas named Ian Malcolm, and a couple of ecologists. A systems analyst. Good group.”
Morris nodded, making notes. “So you accepted the consultancy?”
“Yes. I agreed to send him a summary of our work: what we knew about the habits of the duckbilled hadrosaurs we’d found.”
“What kind of information did you send?” Morris asked.
“Everything: nesting behavior, territorial ranges, feeding behavior, social behavior. Everything.”
“And how did Gennaro respond?”
“He kept calling and calling. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Would the dinosaurs eat this? Would they eat that? Should the exhibit include this? I could never understand why he was so worked up. I mean, I think dinosaurs are important, too, but not that important. They’ve been dead sixty-five million years. You’d think his calls could wait until morning.”
“I see,” Morris said. “And the fifty thousand dollars?”
Grant shook his head. “I got tired of Gennaro and called the whole thing off. We settled up for twelve thousand. That must have been about the middle of ’85.”
Morris made a note. “And InGen? Any other contact with them?”
“Not since 1985.”
“And when did the Hammond Foundation begin to fund your research?”
Twilight continued to scribble down her notepad. Pondering, she added to the line of inquiry that was forming inside her mind. What could Hammond be doing? What was he after? Why does he need that many Information of said dinosaur’s needs? Why? Had Hammond made some serious investments in the past few years—perhaps some of which resulted in the development of whatever is in the island—or did he simply wish to establish an outpost on the coast?
“I’d have to look,” Grant said. “But it was around then. Mid-eighties.”
“And you know Hammond as just a rich dinosaur enthusiast.”
“Yes.”
Morris made another note.
“Look,” Grant said. “If the EPA is so concerned about John Hammond and what he’s doing—the dinosaur sites in the north, the amber purchases, the island in Costa Rica—why don’t you just ask him about it?”
“At the moment, we can’t,” Morris said.
“Why not?” Grant said.
“Because we don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing,” Morris said. “But personally, I think it’s clear John Hammond is evading the law.”
Twilight immediately froze, abandoning her notes. She looked up at the two men in shock.
Evading the law?
No longer was she to remain an observer in this exchange. Twilight spoke up. “Evading the law? What law could he be evading?”
Morris turns to Twilight.
“I was first contacted,” Morris explained, “by the Office of Technology Transfer. The OTT monitors shipments of American technology which might have military significance. They called to say that InGen had two areas of possible illegal technology transfer. First, InGen shipped three Cray XMPs to Costa Rica. InGen characterized it as a transfer within corporate divisions, and said they weren’t for resale. But OTT couldn’t imagine why the hell somebody’d need that power in Costa Rica.”
“Three Crays,” Grant said. “Is that a kind of computer?”
Morris nodded. “Very powerful supercomputers. To put it in perspective, three Crays represent more computing power than any other privately held company in America. And InGen sent the machines to Costa Rica. You have to wonder why.”
“I give up. Why?” Grant said.
“Nobody knows. And the Hoods are even more worrisome,” Morris continued. “Hoods are automated gene sequencers—machines that work out the genetic code by themselves. They’re so new that they haven’t been put on the restricted lists yet. But any genetic engineering lab is likely to have one, if it can afford the half-million-dollar price tag.” He flipped through his notes. “Well, it seems InGen shipped twenty-four Hood sequencers to their island in Costa Rica. Again, they said it was a transfer within divisions and not an export,” Morris said.
Twilight listened as Morris further explained that there wasn’t much that OTT could do. They’re not officially concerned with use. But InGen was obviously setting up one of the most powerful genetic engineering facilities in the world in an obscure Central American country. A country with no regulations. That kind of thing has happened before. There had already been cases of American bioengineering companies moving to another country so they would not be hampered by regulations and rules. The most flagrant, Morris explained, was the Biosyn rabies case. Genetic Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, back in 1986. Tested a bioengineered rabies vaccine on a farm in Chile. They didn’t inform the government of Chile, or the farm workers involved.
They simply released the vaccine. Twilight raised her hoof up and quietly gasped. She was shocked when Morris also explained that the vaccine consisted of a live rabies virus. Genetically modified to be nonvirulent. But the virulence hadn’t been tested; Biosyn didn’t know whether the virus could still cause rabies or not. Even worse, the virus had been modified. Ordinarily if one couldn’t contract rabies unless any human or pony were bitten by an animal. But Biosyn modified the rabies virus to cross the pulmonary alveoli; you could get an infection just inhaling it. Biosyn staffers brought this live rabies virus down to Chile in a carry-on bag on a commercial airline flight. Morris often wondered what would have happened if the capsule had broken open during the flight. Everybody on the plane might have been infected with rabies.
That’s outrageous, Twilight thought. It's so irresponsible, and criminally negligent.
Twilight was disappointed when she learned that no action was taken against Biosyn. The Chilean farmers who unwittingly risked their lives were ignorant peasants; the government of Chile had an economic crisis to worry about; and the American authorities had no jurisdiction. A man named Lewis Dodgson, the geneticist responsible for the test, was still working at Biosyn. Biosyn was still as reckless as ever. And other American companies were hurrying to set up facilities in foreign countries that lacked sophistication about“genetic research. Countries that perceived genetic engineering to be like any other high-tech development, and thus welcomed it to their lands, unaware of the dangers posed.
“So that’s why we began our investigation of InGen,” Morris said. “About three weeks ago.”
“And what have you actually found?” Twilight asked.
“Not much,” Morris admitted. “When I go back to San Francisco, we’ll probably have to close the investigation. And I think I’m about finished here.” He turned to face Twilight. “Alright, Ms. Sparkle, if you're ready I wish to ask you a few questions now.”
She smiled and sat up straighter in her chair. “Okay. And you can just call me Twilight.”
“All right, Twilight,” he said, rolling the name around on his tongue as if trying to get the feel of it. “Have you ever heard of Biosyn?”
“Only by name since you mentioned it,” she replied. “Why?”
“The reason I asked is because ever since the day that both Earth and Equestria made contact and ponies were officially allowed to travel to said Earth, was that I heard rumors that Biosyn had been…spying on some of the new ponies. At least, that’s what my sources told me.”
“Spying?” Twilight frowned, puzzled. “Why?”
Morris rubbed the back of his nape. “Honestly, I don’t know. Even though my sources insist that they are just rumors. I still feel as though something else is going on there,” he said. “And those rumors are not exactly common knowledge. As far as I know, nobody knows the true purpose behind Biosyn Corporation.”
“But you believe there is something going on?”
“In my professional opinion, yes. I admit that I have no proof if these rumors are true or not. But when I get back to San Francisco my team and I will investigate this in greater depth. And if I find anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” Twilight said.
“Moving on,” Morris went on, “has Biosyn ever contacted you?”
“To discuss anything official? No. They never have,” she shook her head. Morris nodded knowingly.
“I see,” he said. “Last question: bringing back the subject about the rumors in regards to Biosyn, have you ever been watched by someone or may have the feeling that you were being watched?”
“No,” Twilight said with an honest shake of her head. “Nothing like that.”
Morris hummed. “Well, thank you. It was good seeing you Twilight,” he said.
Twilight nodded with a smile.
Morris started packing up his briefcase. He turns his head to Grant. “By the way, what does ‘juvenile hyperspace’ mean?”
“That’s just a fancy label for my report,” Grant said. “ ‘Hyperspace’ is a term for multidimensional space—like three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. If you were to take all the behaviors of an animal, its eating and movement and sleeping, you could plot the animal within the multidimensional space. Some paleontologists refer to the behavior of an animal as occurring in an ecological hyperspace. ‘Juvenile hyperspace’ would just refer to the behavior of juvenile dinosaurs—if you wanted to be as pretentious as possible.”
A phone rang at the far end of the trailer. Ellie answered it. She said, “He’s in a meeting right now. Can he call you back?”
Morris snapped his briefcase shut and stood. “Thanks for your help you two and the beer,” he said.
“No problem,” Grant and Twilight said in unison.
Grant and Twilight walked with Morris down the trailer to the door at the far end.
Morris turned to Grant as they walked. “Did Hammond ever ask for any physical materials from your site? Bones, or eggs, or anything like that?”
“No,” Grant responded.
“Dr. Sattler mentioned you do some genetic work here.…”
“Well, not exactly,” Grant said. “When we remove fossils that are broken or for some other reason not suitable for museum preservation, we send the bones out to a lab that grinds them up and tries to extract proteins for us. The proteins are then identified and the report is sent back to us.”
“Which lab is that?” Morris asked.
“Medical Biologic Services in Salt Lake.”
“How’d you choose them?”
“Competitive bids.”
“The lab has nothing to do with InGen?” Morris asked.
“Not that I know,” Grant said.
They came to the door of the trailer. Grant opened it, and felt the rush of hot air from outside. Morris paused to put on his sunglasses.
“One last thing,” Morris said. “Suppose InGen wasn’t really making a museum exhibit. Is there anything else they could have done with the information in the report you gave them?”
Grant laughed. “Sure. They could feed a baby hadrosaur.”
Morris laughed, too. “A baby hadrosaur. That’d be something to see. How big were they?”
“About so,” Grant said, holding his hands six inches apart. “Squirrel-size.”
“And how long before they become full-grown?”
“Three years,” Grant said. “Give or take.”
Morris held out his hand. “Well, thanks again for your help.”
“Take it easy driving back,” Grant said. He and Twilight watched for a moment as Morris walked back toward his car, and then closed the trailer door.