Jurassic Park (Norminah)

Chp. 4: Voiced Concerns

After spending a little more time by the raptor den, Mark finally managed to lead everyone to the visitor center's presentation room for lunch. Waiting for them was a large buffet table and two waiters waiting to serve them. While everyone settled into their seats, Mark dimmed the lights and began showing them various scenes from a slide show. He went through the process of describing current and future features of the park.

"None of these attractions have been finished yet," he explained. "The park will open with the basic tour you're about to take, and then other rides will come online after six to twelve months. Absolutely spectacular designs! We spared no expense."

"We can charge anything we want," Michael added, becoming giddy at all the possibilities this park had to offer. "Two-thousand a day, ten-thousand a day – people will pay it! And then there's the merchandising..."

"Michael," Mark said, "this park wasn't built to cater to the super rich only. Everyone has a right to enjoy these animals."

"Sure," Michael said in a condescending tone. "We'll have a...a coupon day or something."

As the lawyer chuckled, Mark continued with his explanation of the park.

"From combined revenue streams for all three parks, we should reach eight to nine billion dollars a year. But that's conservative, of course. There's no reason to speculate wildly."

"You know," Michael said, "I've never been a rich man. I hear it's nice. Is that true?"

Victoria snorted humorlessly at the exchange happening before her.

"The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed right now is so mind-numbingly painful," she commented.

Michael eyed her.

"Thank you for your concern, Dr. Monét," he said, "but I think we can all agree that things are a little different than we feared."

"Oh, I know," Victoria responded sarcastically. "They're a lot worse."

"Oh, give me a break," Michael retorted. "We haven't even seen the park yet. Let's just hold out on voicing our concerns until-"

"Hold on," Mark interjected. "Let's hear Dr. Monét out. I want to hear all viewpoints."

"Do you not see how dangerous all of this is?" Victoria asked the Korean-American. "Having the power to manipulate genetics is the single most awesome power to possess on this earth, and you use it like a little kid who found his dad's gun."

"Hey, whoa!" Michael said. "Have a little more re-"

"Let her finish, Michael," Mark said.

"The problem here is that you used this power without being required to have any discipline to attain it! You read what others did in the past, and you took the next step. You didn't really earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don't take the responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you knew what you even had...you patented it, packaged it, slapped it on a plastic lunch box, and now you want to sell it!"

"You don't give us our due credit," Mark replied calmly. "Our scientists have done things no one could ever do before."

"Yeah," Victoria agreed, "that's true. But in doing so, ya'll were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, that you didn't stop to think about whether or not you should."

"Condors..." Mark said after a beat of silence, "...condors are another species on the verge of extinction. If I created a flock of them on the island, you wouldn't be saying any of this."