Chapter III

            He awoke the next morning, executed his usual morning routine with the usual indifference, and walked outside into the Montana sunshine. The waking air was perfect, the ideal mix between the driving cold of night and the unrelenting heat of midday.

            The bed of the pick-up was just as chaotic as his trailer had been the day previous and for a moment Grant regretted not having cleaned it out as well. He rummaged through the shovels and hitches and picks until he pulled from the heap a fold-up chair which seemed to have been showing signs of age during the Reagan administration.

            He unfolded the chair and set it in the shade of the old trailer. He went back inside, threw all the beers in the fridge into his small blue cooler and dumped the entire tray of ice from the freezer into the cooler.

            Grant had done this little ritual on his most depressing of days. Most of his time, he simply went into town for supplies or to grab a newspaper, or took a long, soothing jog across the countryside to keep in shape or vent his frustration.

            It was on days like today, when pain was the only river that flowed to his heart, that he watched the shadows lengthen and shorten, only to lengthen again until they had consumed the whole day and the sun sank beneath the mountains. There was only himself and his thoughts, and the cold beer in his hand.

            He brought the cooler down the rickety steps and set it next to the chair, where he sat down heavily, like he always did.

            “She’ll be coming,” he said to the rock face in front of him.

            The rock stared back at him, but said nothing.

            “She’ll have to find me, first, though, right?” He laughed. “Yeah, she can’t find me. I just told her I lived near Snakewater,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t tell her which direction or anything. It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack!”

            The rock was silent, expectant.

            “What? You think she will find me?”

            Nothing.

            “Oh, come on, you gotta be kidding me, right? There’s no way! Ask the people in town? They don’t know where I live! I don’t have an address out here or anything! Oh, Grant? He lives out at the corner of No Where Lane and Secluded Avenue.” He burst into hysterical laughter.  “Jeez.”

            It was still waiting.

            “I guess I haven’t convinced you yet, huh?” Grant said, downcast. “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to convince myself first, huh?”

            The canyon face seemed to agree.

            “Yeah, but I don’t feel like it. I just feel like sitting here and drinking this here beer and breathing.”

            No response. It was just as well.

            Grant took another sip and watched the distant hills. He fell so far into himself during these days that the sun would have to fall from the sky and the air grow cold before he realized he was still there, thinking.

            Well, not really thinking. Just being. Things ran through his head but his laxity and his nirvana didn’t let him have any control of what these things were. He supposed it was his subconscious though he couldn’t be sure. He’d ask Dr. Terrence, his psychologist, but Grant hadn’t been to see that nitwit in years.

            And so it was in this state that Alan Grant wasted his day away, accomplishing nothing, as had become a regularity for him, thinking but not thinking. Tucked away in his unmoving body was a heart that was beating for attention but it was hidden behind a fortress of solid steel, whose construction had begun with the death of his father and completed when he returned from Isla Sorna.

            Twelve years ago, Alan Grant had been invited by his benefactor, John Hammond, to visit a “biological preserve” the old man had set up on a Costa Rican island. Joined by Ellie, who had at the time been his lover, Ian Malcolm, an eccentric and charismatic mathematician, and an investment representative by the name of Donald Gennaro, Grant made the trip to Isla Nublar, a once volcanic island which now existed within a perpetual layer of fog and cloud. Once on the island, the group discovered that Hammond had managed to recreate dinosaurs through the miracle of genetics. It was explained to them that dinosaur DNA had been isolated from mosquito sacs which had been preserved within hardened tree sap, or amber. Of the group, only Malcolm was fully cognizant of the consequences of handling the power which Hammond wielded. “Life finds a way,” he had once said. Indeed it did. Through the greed of a disgruntled employee, the creatures of Jurassic Park, the name given to the wonderland, were let loose. Those who survived barely escaped with their lives. In the wake of the incident, three employees were killed, as was Gennaro, and Malcolm and Tim (who, along with his sister, Lex, had rendezvoused with the group on the island) both needed immediate medical attention. The island was promptly destroyed under both government and InGen supervision.

            Four years later, Hammond revealed to Ian Malcolm his best kept secret: Site B. Secluded on Isla Sorna, an island near Nublar, Site B was where the ground-breaking advances had been made. The dinosaur embryos were incubated there for a few weeks before shipment to the laboratories on Jurassic Park where they would be hatched and then placed into captivity. A hurricane forced them to abandon the project soon after the incident on Nublar and the animals had been thriving there ever since. But Hammond had lost control of InGen to his ambitious nephew, Peter Ludlow, who wanted to exploit the island’s inhabitants for gain for the struggling company. Ludlow’s plan backfired when a bull tyrannosaur, which he had shipped to San Diego for display at an amphitheater, rampaged across the city, killing four people, including Ludlow himself. The island itself was turned into a nature preserve: it was restricted to everyone, including government of any nation.

            Another four years passed before fate brought Jurassic Park and Grant into reunion. A rich couple, the Kirbys, came to him, asking for a narrated tour of Site B, promising to help fund Grant’s dig. The plan was to fly low over the island while Grant pointed out the sights. Accompanied by his best pupil and friend, Billy Brennan, Grant flew with the couple over Sorna. Against Grant’s advisement, they landed…and were promptly attacked. It wasn’t long before Grant learned the true purpose for the journey. Apparently, the Kirbys’ young son, Eric, had been lost in the jungles of Sorna for eight weeks and they were holding out a ray of hope for his survival. As it turned out, the boy was indeed still alive and they were all eventually rescued by a well-timed arrival by the Navy and the Marines, who had been sent by Ellie Degler.

            Grant sat there watching the skies, realizing that another four years had passed since he had seen the pteranodons float past their helicopters and into the great blue. He later heard that the Navy had them rounded up but there was no telling how many of them escaped. No reports came in of any flying menaces so it could be reasonably deduced that no more of the reptiles had found a way out.

            But it had been four years. It seemed that fate needed four years to elapse before another person could lay eyes on the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. Grant had an uneasy feeling that this time would be no different. Fate could not be interrupted. The folly he made by believing he could disrupt destiny had been shattered and now he looked to his future, any future, with nothing but grim acceptance.

            He didn’t have a choice.