Hammond leads our group up the stairs, talking as he goes, two ladies open the doors to the visitor center.
The lobby of the still-unfinished visitor's center is a high-ceilinged place, and just like the movie its central feature, is the full skeleton of a large tyrannosaur, that is in a hunched posture, with its mouth open as if it were roaring, other skeletons are being assembled by workers.
"Once finished Jurassic Park will be the most advanced amusement park in the world, combining all the latest technologies. I'm not talking about rides, you know. Everybody has rides, we made living biological attractions so astonishing they'll capture the imagination of the entire planet!"
Dad stares up at the Trex skeleton before looking around at the other partially completed dinosaur skeletons and just shakes his head.
Ellie, catching his reaction, moves a little closer to Dad, "Alan, what are you thinking?"
"We're out of a job." Dad mutters and there's a small amount of defeat in his tone, that makes me worry about him, Malcolm sticks himself in between them.
'This dude is kinda sleazy…'
"Don't you mean "extinct"?" Malcolm jokes and Ellie giggles and
walks on ahead with the man leaving dad behind.
'Wow, she's kinda about that hoe life…ain't she?' My earlier liking of Ellie is diminishing by the second.
Moving to walk beside my dad, "You all right you dusty old fossil?" I playfully ask my old man, getting a small laugh out of him, before he pushes my shoulder.
"Yes, I'm fine Alec…just wondering what I'll do once the desire for fossilized dinosaur bones comes to an end."
"You're worried no one will pay you for playing in the dirt anymore?" I joke and get an amused huff from the oldman.
"When did I raise such a smartass?"
"I'm a teenager, it's my responsibility to test your patience and push your buttons." I joke and can tell I've successfully cheered dad up, he suddenly slings his arm over my shoulder and pulls me into a kind of walking hug, but then he tries to pull me over, I can tell that I can easily resist him, but not wanting to embarrass or hurt the man's pride, I lean over in an exaggerated manner like I might fall, and Dad kisses the top of my head.
"Dad, I'm not some little kid anymore." I find myself grumbling like a teenager even though experiencing a good father-son relationship and some fatherly love is a nice change of pace for me.
"Even though you're taller than me now, you'll always be little to me, son." Dad chuckles with a paternal love and fondness I never received from my father in my last life, I feel myself smiling as I right myself.
Ellie looks over her left shoulder at us, a tender expression in her eyes and face, at our antics.
'This woman is all over the place, I get that she's in her early twenties and still trying to figure out what she wants besides kids but damn…'
We follow the group into what appears to be an imax movie theater, there are only three rows of seats currently available to sit in out of fifty because the rest are covered with thick industrial plastic and foam.
"Why don't you all sit down, and we can begin the presentation that will answer most of the questions you all have on the "how" we have brought Dinosaurs to life." Hammond says cheerfully while clasping his hands together with a pimp cane tucked underneath his left arm.
Dad, Ellie, Me and Malcolm take their seats in the front row with me in between Ellie and Malcolm, a strategic move by Ellie if there ever was one.
'Is she really just flirting with Ian to get the old man fired up, for later on in the sack?' I wonder and feel that it is both a bit of that and that she likes the attention of older successful men.
Even though there are plenty of seats Gennaro sits behind us while Hammond walks over to the giant screen in front of us.
Behind Hammond, a huge image of himself appears on screen and beams down at him from the wall dominating screen, after what looks like him slotting his cane into something on the floor.
The Hammond on screen greets John,
"Hello, John!" The real Hammond who is standing on the stage points to our group, "Not me Say hello, to the group!" Before he begins fumbling with study cards, he pulls from an inner breast pocket of his suit jacket.
"Can't remember my lines." Hammond scans them, looking for his place, the screen Hammond nust being a pre-recorded video without automated prompts continues on without him.
"Fine, I guess! But how did I get here?!" The recording of Hammond asks.
The real John groans in confusion "Uh…" while trying to still find his place in this presentation.
'Either Hammond is a really good actor or he needs to practice a lot more…to get this right.'
The recording of John takes the reins out of the real John's hands, metaphorically of course, "Here, let me show you, but first, I'll need a drop of blood…your blood preferably!" The recording of Hammond says and extends his finger to the real Hammond, Hammond reaches out miming his recording but makes as if he's pricking his recording with a needle.
'Oh, he's got this down, probably just nerves or he wants people to think he's not as sharp as he is.c
"Ouch, John! That hurt!" the recording of Hammond on screen shouts and brings his finger to his mount and sucks on it.
"Relax, John. It's all part of the miracle of cloning!" Hammond says to his recording, and while the two Hammonds prattle back and forth on, screen, the recording of Hammond splits into two more two Hammonds, this stars a cascade, the jumps the number up from two to four, then four to eight, and so on, until the entire screen is covered with John Hammonds.
Dad, Ellie, and Malcolm huddle together excitedly in the audience, and I feel like a very awkward fourth wheel, Dad asks "Cloning from What?! Loy extraction has never recreated an intact DNA strand!"
Malcolm continues for Dad, "Yeah, not without massive sequence gaps!"
Stunned Ellie asks, "Paleo-DNA? From what source? Where do you get 100 million year old dinosaur blood?!
'Okay I can't help myself…I have to troll at least a little bit.'
"Well, they could have theoretically harvested it from preserved bloodsucking insects, remember that fly you found perfectly preserved in amber dad, couldn't you potentially harvest said DNA from that? Though I guess that wouldn't really work either because the DNA would be all mixed together isolating different strains with nothing for context seems impossible to me."
Gennaro venomously hisses a "Shhhhh!" From behind us..
"Actually you are quite right, young man, are you sure you don't want to become a scientist?" John asks me and I shrug while Dad and Ellie look at me like I've grown a third head and Malcolm he's starting to look at me like I'm more interesting than Ellie.
Luckily I'm saved by a new character joining the recording of Hammond on screen, "Hi, everyone I'm Mr.DNA." This character waves to us in a happy go lucky way, this one: a cartoon representation of a double-helix strand of recombinant DNA with eyeballs, a mouth and hands. Mr. DNA jumps down onto the recorded Hammond's head and slides down his nose.
"Well, hello Mr. DNA! Where'd you come from?" John asks the animated character.
"Why From your blood John! Just one drop of your blood contains
billions of strands of DNA, the building blocks of life!" Mr. DNA replies to John and takes over the show by speaking directly to us, "Hello again everyone, now a DNA strand like me is a blueprint for building a living thing! And sometimes animals that went extinct
millions of years ago, like dinosaurs, left their blueprints behind for us to find, we just had to know where to look!" Me.DNA says and the screen's image changes from animated to a nature-photography scene that looks maybe like it was recorded in Africa before it zooms in on a mosquito, its fangs sunk deep
into some animal's grayish white rough flesh…maybe a rhino or an elephant, the mosquito's body pulsing as its stomach engorges with the blood it's drinking.
Mr. DNA continues to explain as the screen shifts again but this time it's animated with dinosaurs, "A hundred million years ago, there were mosquitoes, just like today. And, just like today, they fed on the blood of animals. Even dinosaurs!"
The image races moves to show a mosquito that is perched on top of
a giant animated brachiosaur.
The screen then changes, to another close-up, this one of a tree
branch, its bark glistening with golden sap. Mr. DNA leaps on the sap, "Sometimes, after biting a dinosaur, the mosquito would land on a branch of a tree to rest and digest its meal, but then it'd get stuck in the sap!" The screen shows an animated engorged mosquito landing in the tree sap, and getting stuck.
Mr. DNA tries to fly away from the sap that he stood on but when he tugs on his own legs, they stay stuck, "Oh no I'm stuck now too." Mr.DNA says in worry and it's definitely one of those traps to make kids go ooo, as the tree sap flows over both Mr. DNA and the mosquito completely. Mr. DNA shouts from inside the tree sap.
"After a long time, the tree sap would get hard and become fossilized, just like a dinosaur bones, preserving the mosquito inside!" You can hear Mr.DNA struggling to break free of the fossilized amber.
'This animation might be a little traumatic for real little kids…'
The scene changes into that of a very modern and sterile looking laboratory, the place is a buzz with activity.
Everywhere, there are piles of amber, tagged and labeled with dozens of scientists in white coats examining the specimens of amber under microscopes.
One scientist uses a drill and stabilizer apparatus to bore into a chunk of amber that contains a mosquito, which allows Mr. DNA to escape through said bored hole as the Scientist moves the amber onto another stand and uses a microscope to peer through the bore he has just drilled into it.
Mr. DNA, "Ahh, it's good to be back folks, now this fossilized tree sap, which we call amber, has
waited for millions of years, with this mosquito inside of it until Jurassic Park's scientists came along!"
Our view changes a bit so now we see the greatly enlarged image of the mosquito encased in amber with the bore hole drilled into it, "Using sophisticated techniques, the scientists of Jurassic Park extract the preserved blood from the mosquito." Mr.DNA explains how a long needle is inserted into the bored out core and into the thorax of the mosquito, we get to see a fluid being extracted from the thorax and flow up into the extractor device.
"And Bingo! That's how we get Dino DNA!" Mr.DNA cheers as the screen changes to that of a white screen with black lettering flying by,
Mr. DNA jumps down in front of the DNA data as it races by at headache or seizure inducing speeds, and brings his hands up to hold his head, his eyes spin cartoonishly to show that he is dizzied by this.
'This is a bit dry…and boring when it's in real life…and tediously long winded…most people aren't going to want to watch this…they're just going to want to see Dinosaurs.' I think and feel that even nostalgia isn't saving this presentation for me at all, but then again I was never really one to be able to sit still and listen. I'd rather learn on my feet while actively engaging with something.
~ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — ~
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