The Grant Files: Stranded on Isla Sorna

Chapter 1

The last stop on Grant's fund-raising tour was a public lecture.

It was hosted by some foundation. There were scientists and students there, but also a lot of dino-fans, some even with costumes. Jami sat upon a chair near the symposium leader while her father stood before the lectern. Grant finished his speech to what was a full house -- some attendees were grabbing their coats and sneaking out. This wasn't the exciting guest speaker they were all expecting. A new slide came up. Just black and white, and indecipherable.

"It's through the painstaking study of the interior chamber in multiple specimens that we can determine this exciting correlation between the larynx and the upper plate. That lets us theorize -- theorize, mind you -- that the raptor might have been capable of bird-like vocalizations. Which, as you can imagine, would be a tremendous breakthrough," Grant had finished, no one seemed to notice at first but then, Jami and the symposium leader stood up, leading a smattering round of applause.

"Thank you very much Dr. Grant. Now does anyone have a question?" The symposium leader spoke and nearly every hand went up.

Grant didn't seem surprised, "okay, does anyone have a question that doesn't relate to Jurassic Park?" Quite a few hands went down but there were still quite a few, "or the incident in San Diego, which I'll remind you, my daughter and I did not witness," and just as he suspected, most of the hands had gone down but picking one of the few remaining, "yes, you, sir."

"Your theory on raptors is good and all but isn't all this conjecture kind of moot?" The man asked as his buddy nodded in agreement, "I mean, once the U.N. and Costa Rica and everyone decides how to handle the second island, scientists will just go in and look for themselves."

"Isn't paleontology itself in danger of extinction?" A clever science reporter asked.

Recognizing those as fighting words, the symposium leader was about to step in for a worried Jami but Grant would take this himself, "no, and let me be perfectly clear on this point, dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago. What's left of them is fossilized in stone and rock, and it is in the rocks where real scientists make real discoveries, spending years uncovering real discoveries," Grant paused a moment, "now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park was create genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more and nothing less."

The class clearly disagreed with his assessment which worried Jami even further, thinking that Grant might explode on them. "Daddy, please, don't explode on your students," she said softly where only she and maybe the symposium leader could hear her.

"So, you're saying you wouldn't want to get on to Isla Sorna and study them if you had the chance?" A female student asked.

"No force on this earth or in heaven could get me or my daughter on that island," it was a promise from Grant, one that Jami would hold against him.

A man's hand was carefully scraping the stone away from a dinosaur fossil, a moment later he wiped off his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. This was William Brennen, or Billy, an associate professor and site manager, boy was he a charmer. Cheryl, a junior, one of a dozen college students working at the site, and the one most smitten with her supervisor aside from his mentor's daughter perhaps.

"Billy, I don't think I'm doing this right," she said as he scooted over, lying down beside her, checking her work.

"You need to go slowly," he said, "see, just take it little at a time."

She was not listening, of course and instead was watching his eyelashes. "I can never tell what's rock and what's bone," she said.

"Technically, it's all rock. The calcium in the bones is replaced during fossilization but you can feel the difference. See? Rough, smooth. Rough, smooth," Billy said with a laugh as he ran her bare fingers over the two different patches, showing her.