The greatest error I ever made was in believing the children who tormented me would suddenly accept me simply because we had seen the same movie. They laughed at me for even making the attempt. They called me “freak” and “nerd” and “loser,” and other words I won’t write down, not even here, in the chronicle of why I have done what I have done, why I have set in motion what I have set in motion. They can’t take back those words, almost thirty years in the past; those words are forever. So are my actions. It pleases me to know that, soon enough, only my actions will be remembered. They’ll overshadow everything else. Even the casual cruelty of children.
So I was spurned and I was shunned and I was more alone than ever, because I had dared to attempt to be something else. Children are like bees. They have an inherent knowledge of social structure and caste systems within the hive, and the drone who deviates will be stung back into position. They forced me to the fringes. I took refuge in the library. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about dinosaurs, evolutionary biology, and the science of genetic engineering. Surely there would be answers there.
Surely one of the books would have a map, sketched in pencil and visible only to the worthy, telling me how to reach Jurassic Park, which must exist somewhere in the world, hidden in the deepest jungle, overseen by the kindly Dr. Wu, who was already hard at work on a newer, better generation of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs that would understand that humans do not tolerate deviation. Dinosaurs that would know to behave themselves until the Park was open, until they would be standing in a target-rich environment and could better make their wishes understood. Dr. Wu was smart. He could make dinosaurs that were smarter. Children are so often smarter than their parents.
The average person reads at a rate of 200 to 250 words per minute. Please keep this in mind.
There was no second Park, of course: there is no Dr. Wu. If I wanted dinosaurs in this world, I needed to find a way to make them myself. I deduced this somewhere between the ages of fourteen and fifteen, during the summer I spent in a coma after a couple of the clever neighborhood boys decided to escalate their assaults, taking them from simple teasing and petty theft to outright assault.
You may know who I am now. The situation made the papers. My mother saved them all while I was hospitalized. Local girl attacked. Unknown assailants still at large. But they weren’t unknown, were they? Not really. I told their names to anyone who would listen as soon as I woke up. I gave descriptions, addresses, everything. And it didn’t matter. They may have beaten me hard enough with a baseball bat that for a time, the doctors didn’t think I was ever going to wake up; they may have done their best to murder me for the crime of being slightly different from them; but they didn’t kill me. They didn’t do anything that couldn’t be written off as “youthful hijinks gotten out of hand” or excused with a calm “they have their whole lives in front of them.”
They tried to take my life away from me. They tried to make me stop. They did everything they could to remove me from the world, and why? Because I liked to talk about dinosaurs? Because I wasn’t exactly the way they wanted me to be? But somehow their futures were more important than my present, and they got away with it again. One big thing in a lifetime defined by little things, and one very important lesson. Humans will always defend the offspring of the privileged, if allowed to do so.
(Sometimes I’ll admit I’ve wondered whether the attack might not have had a more sinister cause: whether my attackers might have been overcome by consciousnesses from the future, disembodied and sent back to prevent me from achieving my life’s work. Tempting as it is to turn a defeat into a validation, doing so would be admitting defeat all over again. If there are time travelers in the future of this world, I am about to fail. And I refuse to fail.)
You have been reading for approximately 1,600 words now. If your reading speed matches the average, it has been eight minutes since you opened this file and beheld my salutation. At this moment, you should be experiencing shortness of breath, tinnitus, and a dull ache in your joints. Perhaps you were unaware of these things until I pointed them out. People are remarkably good at ignoring small discomforts.
I recovered from my injuries, obviously. I never got my day in court, but I got something that was arguably better: I got blood money. Payments, anonymous donations to my care and education, totaling more than a million dollars. It’s amazing what guilt and the desire to avoid a scandal will do. I ran the numbers, did the math, made a few casual comments about how affording college would still be so difficult, and wouldn’t it be a shame if I had to stay in town forever, talking to people about what had happened to me. I was offered three scholarships inside of the week.
Even people like me can learn to play the game, if you insist on teaching us. If you won’t leave us alone.
Protecting the money from my mother was surprisingly easy; the numbers were too large to make sense to her, and so she left me alone. I kept my head down, wore a back brace through most of high school, made few friends, never dated. I understood that I was not part of the herd. I understood that I was not welcome in this particular primeval world. I attracted as little attention to myself as possible, and I endured, keeping my eyes on the bright speck of light approaching in my own secret sky. My comet. My beautiful comet.
College was almost enough to change my mind. There’s no shame in admitting that I was tempted. Humanity is not entirely bad, after all, and for a mind like mine, the halls of academia were uniquely designed to provide temptation. I closed my eyes at night and saw my instructors, my fellow students, my future, instead of the kindly smiling face of Dr. Wu. Surely he would understand if I changed my course. Surely he would see that sometimes there are options apart from mass extinction.
There were many small extinctions before the mass die-off which ended the first age of dinosaurs. There were many second chances. Humanity could be afforded one as well.
But humanity was not fully confined within my college campus, was it? And even if it had been, I only had to look around to see that things weren’t getting better the way I needed them to. People were dying in the streets, not because they’d fallen afoul of some mad genius, but because they’d run afoul of their own kind. Children went hungry. Adults continued to say “but he has his whole life ahead of him” like it somehow absolved their boys of their crimes against their girls. His whole life seemed to matter a great deal. Her whole life didn’t seem to matter at all. It was too much. It was too much. It had to stop. The temptation, which had only ever been momentary, passed.
Eleven minutes now. Your heart rate is elevated. Your vision is beginning to blur. The ache in your joints is more pronounced. Have you heard the first screams in the streets, or are you reading this in an isolated location? If you cannot hear the screams, I suggest you leave the room you are currently in and proceed until you can hear them. It will elevate your heart rate further; it will make your joints ache like fire, and pump needles into your stomach. It may even cost you a few hundred words. You may not make it to the end of this message. But then, there was never any guarantee that you would, and you will do better if you finish the progression of your symptoms in a place you can escape.
I have run enough tests with this program, with this letter, to know the expression on your face. You may call the authorities if you like. It’s not as if I could stop you; I’m not there, after all. You can tell them you’ve received a…is this letter threatening? I don’t think it’s threatening yet. It’s expository. Tell them you’ve received an expository letter that seems to be predicting relatively minor medical symptoms which most people experience daily. Perhaps you’ll be fortunate. Perhaps the person who takes your call will have noticed their own symptoms before picking up the phone. Perhaps they will not tell you that it is psychosomatic. Perhaps they’ll realize.
It won’t change anything. You understand that, don’t you? It won’t change anything, and you will have wasted some portion of an increasingly scarce resource. I can’t control
what you choose to do, but if I were you, I would elect to keep reading. At least then you might have a few moments of comprehension before comprehension goes away forever. Isn’t it better to understand?
We have always lived in a world of miracles. We have harnessed the atom, learned to power an entire world with lightning, and plunged our needles into the bowels of the planet to extract the liquefied skeletons of dinosaurs. Isn’t that amazing? Since the Industrial Revolution, we have fueled a global civilization with dino-power, and we have treated it as if it were commonplace.
Scary movies like to talk about how bad it is to build a home on top of a cemetery. They say the unquiet dead will rise and take their revenge. We’ve spent more than a century building everything we have on the graveyards of the dinosaurs, wrenching them from the earth to display in our museums and pump into our cars. Don’t you think it’s time for them to have their revenge?
I’m sorry. I digress. Where was I?
College.
Dr. Wu returned, and with every disaster, every catastrophe, his smile faded. He knew humanity was not deserving of his bright and perfect Park. Even if it could be made real, we would all have been Dennis Nedry, the man who betrayed Jurassic Park for personal gain, who didn’t think they had made anything worth making. We would try not to be—we would swear we loved the dinosaurs, even as we exploited them. All of us. Even me. Humanity has no place in Jurassic Park. You understand that, don’t you? We were the flaw in the grand design. Not the fences, not the raptors. Us.
A few of the girls in my dorm teased me for essentially worshipping a junk science thriller about dinosaurs, but most of them left me alone. College was where you were supposed to have weird beliefs, right? I believed in the fossil record, in the inevitability of the extinction event, and I went to class, and I studied, and I remembered the children who teased me, and I remembered the adults who looked away. I remembered everything. I never let anything go.
Four years and bang! A degree in Biology, with a specialization in Genetic Engineering, and a minor in Paleontology. Three more years and pow! A PhD in Genetic Engineering, and job offers from around the country, from around the world. For the first time in my life, everyone wanted me. It was nice, being wanted for a change. It might have turned my head, if college hadn’t already tempted me and lost. Every comet must experience the gravitational force of some second body if it’s going to build up sufficient speed to make an impact.
You probably saw the papers when I came home. “Local genius returns to give back to the community.” I passed up million-dollar salaries and private jets to work for a tiny con-agra company working on creating a softer, gentler, less-inflammatory form of gluten. They swore they were going to make celiac-safe wheat within the decade, and I was their magic bullet.
We did it, of course. Last year. You’ve probably enjoyed our delicious NuWheat™ products at home and in restaurants. I really did an amazing job. I’m proud of myself, and I’m glad my last piece of ethically clean research was devoted to making life better for people who didn’t deserve to be in pain. I improved lives. I am proud of that. I will remain proud of that through everything that follows. There’s a reason some people have chosen to invest in ethical family farms: they still eat meat, but at least they know the chicken on their plate lived a happy life before it was harvested.
Have you lived a happy life? Have you made good choices about your time and energy, and how you spent them? I hope so. I hope you look back on everything and smile and smile and know you did as well as you could with what you had. I hope you will rejoice. It would be better that way.
The papers should have said “local genius returns to take revenge on small-minded fools who laughed at her while she was vulnerable, kicked her while she was down, and left her incapable of forming meaningful human relationships.” Or “local genius smart enough to understand that no one ever gets over high school; is finally intending to be prom queen.” Or “local genius comes home to show you, show you all.” I’ve always liked that phrase. “Show you all.” Show you what, exactly? It’s so flexible. It could apply to virtually anything.
Local genius returns to begin final refinements on the project she started in her freshman year of college, holed up in her dorm and reading about the genetic links between species, the commonalities that tie us all together.
Local genius returns because what’s the fun in breaking the natural laws of the universe if no one who sees you do it understands how impressive you’re being.
Local genius returns because if you’re going to do something, you should be standing as close to ground zero as possible. You should understand the consequences. You can’t do good by standing on a mountaintop and telling people they deserve this. It’s not fair. It’s not right. I needed to be among people who would judge me—and you’ve always been very, very good at judging me, haven’t you? I may have a gift for science, but the people in this town are Olympians of pain.
It’s been a little over fifteen minutes, no matter how quickly you read. The aching in your joints is probably keeping you from standing up straight now. That metallic taste in your mouth is getting more severe; the pain in your teeth may be making your eyes cross. Or maybe they’re just doing that on their own. Are you gluten intolerant? That’s about to make a difference.
The fields will take years to reset to a pre-domestic makeup, if they ever fully do. Our cities will fall before the marching armies of wind and weather, our seeds will scatter, but the changes we’ve made to the plants we chose to cultivate will last for centuries. There will always be high quantities of gluten in the wheat. I couldn’t condemn the people suffering from a nasty immune disorder to short, painful lives, where their inability to digest gluten would collide with a sudden inability to digest animal proteins and leave them dead before their time. So I put markers in the NuWheat™. I told it what to say when the rest of my tools showed up and started giving instructions—especially if those instructions were given in a system which contained no gluten.
The percentage of people who either have a gluten intolerance, live with someone with a gluten intolerance, or choose to eat gluten free because they think it’s somehow “healthier” is approximately equal to the number of carnivores in a balanced population.
It’s like nature was getting things ready for me.
I am sorry. I hope you’ll understand that. I know it’s hard to look at the things I’ve done, the things I’m describing, and see my side of things, but I am sorry. I tried to find other ways of achieving my goals, but sadly, humanity was too good at being human. We are the single largest mammalian population. We’ve killed or domesticated everything else. My estimates say that only one in three subjects will survive the first stage of the transition, and that as many as one-half of the offspring of the first generation will be born resembling their grandparents. Throwbacks. Non-viable. So you see, if I wanted to recreate Dr. Wu’s dream, it had to be humans, and it had to be everyone.
Equilibrium will be reached. There will be no more wars, no more assaults…no more Nedrys. From now on, when we attack each other, it will be out of hunger, and we will kill what we claim.
I know that Jurassic Park was written by a man named Michael Crichton, who wanted to entertain. I know that some people think he was inspired by—or stealing from—a man named Harry Knight, who wrote a book called Carnosaur. I am inspired by them both. I am stealing from them both. I am following Dr. Wu. I trust him to tell me what comes next.
At twenty minutes, you will likely lose consciousness. If you are a slow enough reader, this may have already happened. I am sorry.
At thirty minutes, you will be grateful to be unconscious, as your body will begin rewriting itself according to my templates. I estimate forty percent of fatalities will occur during this phase.
At three hours, you will no longer be human.
At eight hours, the first subjects will awaken. If I have timed things correctly, the herbivores will wake first. Their instincts will dri
ve them to flee the cities, to clump together, to begin looking for safe ground.
At twelve hours, the remaining subjects will awaken.
The dinosaurs were innocent. They did not bully. They did not taunt. They did not kill for fun. They deserved this planet more than we did. More than we ever could. So I am giving it back to them, and I am using us to do it. I am truly sorry that it has come to this…but again, you started it. Maybe now that we are all dinosaurs together, you can finally accept me.
Welcome to Jurassic Park.
Yours,
Dr. Constance O’Malley, Ph.D.
A Word from Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire thinks it's been really lovely working with The Future Chronicles.
She is a native Californian, which has resulted in her being exceedingly laid-back about venomous wildlife, and terrified of weather. When not writing urban fantasy (as herself) and science fiction thrillers (as Mira Grant), she likes to watch way too many horror movies, wander around in swamps, record albums of original music, and harass her cats.
Seanan is the author of the October Daye, InCryptid, and Indexing series of urban fantasies; the Newsflesh trilogy; the Parasitology duology; and the "Velveteen vs." superhero shorts.
Her cats, Lilly, Alice, and Thomas, are plotting world domination even as we speak, but are easily distracted by feathers on sticks, so mankind is probably safe. For now.
Seanan's favorite things include the X-Men, folklore, and the Black Death. No, seriously.
She writes all biographies in the third person, because it's easier that way.
www.seananmcguire.com
www.miragrant.com
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 29