Dr Henry Wu, geneticist, strolled into the InGen labs. He was fashionably late and everyone in the lab resented him for it.
“Hey team,” he called. “We’re going to make miracles today!” The small crowd of lab-coated scientists barely glanced up from their work. They made miracles every day. Last week they had hatched a stegosaurus from an egg made of genetically-reworked human bone. Not because they should, but because they could. Wu glanced at the noticeboard, with its unofficial lab slogan IF WE CAN, WE SHOULD. He nodded, satisfied.
“Sir,” a young lab technician appeared by his side. Were they just quiet or had Mechanics perfected teleporting. He made a note to send a memo. “We’ve been looking at your request from last night…” Wu had sent an email from his BlackBerry late last night. Maybe ten, ten thirty. Science didn’t sleep.
“And? Can we?”
“Sir, we can but…”
“Then we should,” Wu said, decisively. “Don’t give me buts, boy.”
“I’m a girl.” Wu peered at the lab technician.
“Were you a boy yesterday? These things happen,” Wu licked his lips nervously. It had been twenty two years, but he never forgot. The damn frogs.
“I’ve always been a girl,” said the lab technician. “Although I prefer ‘woman’ to be…” Wu cut her off with a powerful glance. He marched to his office and closed the blinds.
In the darkness, lit only by his computer screen, Wu reflected on the day’s project. A new kind of dinosaur! They had finally brought all the dinosaurs that had ever lived back to life and now they were aiming to spit right in the very eye of God himself! This was a good day to be alive. He flicked through his emails, ignoring the ones detailing Alan Grant’s current expedition to the Mongolian Desert to “find new fossils”. Wu didn’t care. He was making new fossils. A mail from Ian Malcolm popped up and he deleted it without even looking. ‘Murder Park’ indeed.
A knock at the door brought him back to the moment.
“Come.”
“Sir, we think you should take a look at this. We’ve… we’ve created something.”
Henry Wu strode across the laboratory to the incubator. An egg was hatching. Fast work, he thought, or had they been planning this all along? Without his guiding hand? What were they thinking? The consequences could be tragic, horrific or worse, unprofitable. The idea of unsanctioned dinosaur breeding made his blood boil. At least when the dinosaurs did it themselves he knew no one was to blame. Maybe the frogs. Those damn frogs. Dr Wu bit his finger nervously. Frogs.
The egg was now fully open. The creature inside looked out. Most hatchlings flopped pathetically from their shells. They looked scrawny and helpless. This one stared from the opening it had created with a malevolence Wu had only seen once before. It placed its foreclaws at either side of the hole and pushed the shell apart with a muscular menace. Its eyes glowed red. It fixed Dr Henry Wu with a look of pure hatred. Wu returned its stare implacably.
“What have we created?” Dr Wu breathed, in awe of his own idea.
“It’s… an evil dinosaur, sir.”
“Is there any possibility that this could… backfire on us in any way?”
“Sir, we have no idea how this dinosaur will behave in the real world.”
“We have no idea how any of our dinosaurs will behave in the real world,” Wu snapped. The dinosaur, that he had christened in his head ‘Henrysaurus’, was slowly and deliberately eating the other eggs in the incubator, never breaking eye contact with its creator. “That’s not the issue. What could go wrong with the henrysau-with this dinosaur?”
“W-well, it could theoretically kill and eat people,” stammered one of the older scientists. Wu peered at him. His name may have been Malone. “Or spontaneously-“
“Change sex?” Wu interrupted Molloy. “Could it change sex? Did we use f-f-f-”
“Frog DNA?” Mallory finished for him. It was bad form, finishing the sentence for a stutterer, but everyone knew Dr Wu only stuttered on one word. “No sir.” More emphatic. “Never, sir.”
“Then what could it spontaneously do?” demanded the agitated senior genetic dinoscience technician. “WHAT COULD IT DO, MARLEY?”
The man’s idiot eyes blinked at the sudden bellowing from Dr Henry Wu. “I th-I think it could spontaneously fly, sir. Look,” he pointed a trembling hand at the Henrysaurus, which was now lying on its front, idly preening its curled horns. “And my name, please, is Malcolm.”
“My god,” breathed Henry, ignoring the name ‘Malcolm’ and resolving to have the man fired without settlement. There was little a disgruntled employee could do to interfere with InGen’s plans. “It has wings. What animals did we cross breed? Find out! I’ll be in my office, thinking about how to create the ultimate aquatic predator and what sort of pen you’d need to hold that in to keep it from escaping to the open oceans.” He turned on his heel and retreated boldly to the welcoming dark of his office.
What fools we have been! thought Dr Henry Wu. To play God in such a way! What have we created out there? He pinched the blinds aside to peer out at the incubator, upraised on a pedestal in the middle of the lab floor. The Henrysaurus was surely too dangerous to let loose in a theme park frequented by stupid children and their equally soft-brained mothers! Even the swarthy working-class men would be relatively helpless if unarmed. And yet, and yet. What potential in that glowing red gaze! How delightful it would be to see a megapredator take majestic flight across the offshore Puerto Rican landscape!
Could anything go wrong? Dr Wu wasn’t sure. Things had gone wrong before, but that was all down to the selfishness of a computer programmer! And the frogs. But damn everything, if Dennis Nedry’s comically fat hands hadn’t set in motion a sequence of entirely avoidable catastrophes nothing would have gone wrong! Jurassic Park would have opened back then, in 1993 when Henry Wu was young and vibrant. He would have been at the forefront of a genetic revolution!
Well it could happen now. The Henrysaurus would have his name literally built in to its DNA. Everyone who gazed in awed terror upon it would know HE, Dr Henry Wu, was the master and creator of this most fearsome of ersatz dinosaurs! Was this evil? Was this wrong? No! Nothing he had done to this point had been wrong – everything was someone else’s fault! Nedry! That bald homosexual who captured a live tyrannosaur! That meddling kid! THE FROGS! While he, Henry Wu, shouldered the blame and had his funding cut! Finally he was back in a position to recreate ancient life, to create new life, to bring to the world wonders the like of which it had never seen, and he hesitated? He stayed his hand, wondering if he should? He could! He could do it and so it shall be done! He will breed the Henrysaurus, but more than that he will patent it, he will package it and he will slap its beautiful, evil face on a plastic lunch box and he will sell it, he will SELL IT.