I Found This and Must Share
Jun. 13th, 2010 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breezeshadowThe main character shares too many details with me than is comfortable, but there is still something oddly brilliant about this. I wrote this in January, during winter break.
Edit - I only just noticed my icon is a dinosaur, and this is a dinosaur story. FAIL.
Also, this story has a pretty sad ending, if I ever finish. I came up with it while playing a Jurassic Park theme park game. In said game, when a tornado comes and you activate the emergency mode, customers go to safety, but your cleaners do not, leaving them vulnerable. That's all I'll give you as a hint (though now, I'm not sure if she experiences or just witnesses death).
Jurassic Dairies
May 19 2030
My name is Mirabelle Zimmermann. I will soon be in my last year at Princeton studying molecular biology; I'm hoping Yale will spare my GPA and let me go to medical school there, but I won't get ahead of myself. My GPA's about average despite all of my allnighters and my coffee addiction, but at least I haven't failed a single course. Not even organic chemistry.
You can bet when Jurassic Park accepted my internship application, I was pretty fucking excited. Even though I knew most of it was going to be dealing with customers, but hey, Six Flags had trained me well for that. My parents freaked at the idea of me going to some random island accessible only by helicoptor to frolic among dinosaurs and overly rich tourists, but hey, all expenses paid.
So here I am, in a small cottage a few miles outside of the park, doing some required writing about my experiences for the work place and my anal-retentive academic advisor. The first few days are just learning about the park, but if I last a week I get to go on a tour inside the genetics hatchery and get to see the new spinosaurus being grown. They hope she'll make her debut by the end of the month. For now, we're stuck with Fence, the neurotic T-rex who attacks the fences.
I'm not in New York City anymore.
May 28 2030
Today was my first day actually working. The first week or so was just training; here's a Parasaurolophus, here's a Corythosaurus, what's the difference? How about an Ouranosaurus? Or Torosaurus? I can now identify each little guy in the herbivore enclosure, and some even by name. The carnivores are easier, seeing as they're by themselves; Fence II, since Fence died after a seizure; and Foodbitch, the young Spinosaurus.
The day started with a tour of the genetics lab, which was more than a little awesome. They had finally sequenced enough base pairs to try and grow an Acrocanthosaurus, and so the lab was buzzing with activity. If they managed to get a juvenile out of it, they told me, she would be transferred to the T-rex hatchery -- a dangerous operation, but they would have the helicoptors on stand by to sedate the Ancrocanthosaurus and move her out before Fence noticed.
Unfortunately I couldn't stay there forever and soon I was back out into the heat of the day. And it was fucking hot. But my job is to walk around the park, in a glaringly-obvious uniform, prime target for customers to ask questions.
And while most of the questions today were rather tame, some even letting me stretch my biological knowledge, one was not.
I had just heard over the walkie-talkie that Old Mamma had collapsed and was pronounced dead -- one month over her life expectancy. Her companions had long passed away, and the three new Parasaurolophus were upset and calling out, mourning their companion. I was trying to figure out how that fit in with anything we knew about dinosaurs when a woman with a tearstreaked girl came up.
"Miss! One of those dinosaurs just died! I demand a refund!"
I stared. "Ma'am, I'm very sorry, but I cannot give you a refund for the dinosaur's death; it was of natural causes."
"Don't get snappy with me! My daughter is traumatized after seeing her dinosaur die! You owe a refund for my daughter's health!"
I stared at the woman, then looked down at the daughter. She wasn't even sniffling anymore, and I suspected she didn't want money but rather Old Mamma back. I lifted my eyebrows at the mother.
"Ma'am, the Parasaurolophus died a natural and peaceful death. It is a part of life." I then looked in the direction of Fence, where I could hear a goat's pained cries even from a distance. Above me on the viewing platform, I also heard a guy rooting for Fence. As if she needed any help. "If you did not want to see goats or other animals dying, you should have gone to a Disney movie."
"This is an outrage! Your park upset my daughter, and you won't even give me a refund?"
"Miss Mirabelle." The little girl tugged at my pants leg, and I smiled weakly down at her. "Miss, can't you bring Old Mamma back? Daddy says livestock don't have any souls. But can't you bring Old Mamma back?"
And so that's what I learned today. I learned that while dinosaurs grown in a test tube have souls, apparently goats and cows born naturally do not.
Edit - I only just noticed my icon is a dinosaur, and this is a dinosaur story. FAIL.
Also, this story has a pretty sad ending, if I ever finish. I came up with it while playing a Jurassic Park theme park game. In said game, when a tornado comes and you activate the emergency mode, customers go to safety, but your cleaners do not, leaving them vulnerable. That's all I'll give you as a hint (though now, I'm not sure if she experiences or just witnesses death).
Jurassic Dairies
May 19 2030
My name is Mirabelle Zimmermann. I will soon be in my last year at Princeton studying molecular biology; I'm hoping Yale will spare my GPA and let me go to medical school there, but I won't get ahead of myself. My GPA's about average despite all of my allnighters and my coffee addiction, but at least I haven't failed a single course. Not even organic chemistry.
You can bet when Jurassic Park accepted my internship application, I was pretty fucking excited. Even though I knew most of it was going to be dealing with customers, but hey, Six Flags had trained me well for that. My parents freaked at the idea of me going to some random island accessible only by helicoptor to frolic among dinosaurs and overly rich tourists, but hey, all expenses paid.
So here I am, in a small cottage a few miles outside of the park, doing some required writing about my experiences for the work place and my anal-retentive academic advisor. The first few days are just learning about the park, but if I last a week I get to go on a tour inside the genetics hatchery and get to see the new spinosaurus being grown. They hope she'll make her debut by the end of the month. For now, we're stuck with Fence, the neurotic T-rex who attacks the fences.
I'm not in New York City anymore.
May 28 2030
Today was my first day actually working. The first week or so was just training; here's a Parasaurolophus, here's a Corythosaurus, what's the difference? How about an Ouranosaurus? Or Torosaurus? I can now identify each little guy in the herbivore enclosure, and some even by name. The carnivores are easier, seeing as they're by themselves; Fence II, since Fence died after a seizure; and Foodbitch, the young Spinosaurus.
The day started with a tour of the genetics lab, which was more than a little awesome. They had finally sequenced enough base pairs to try and grow an Acrocanthosaurus, and so the lab was buzzing with activity. If they managed to get a juvenile out of it, they told me, she would be transferred to the T-rex hatchery -- a dangerous operation, but they would have the helicoptors on stand by to sedate the Ancrocanthosaurus and move her out before Fence noticed.
Unfortunately I couldn't stay there forever and soon I was back out into the heat of the day. And it was fucking hot. But my job is to walk around the park, in a glaringly-obvious uniform, prime target for customers to ask questions.
And while most of the questions today were rather tame, some even letting me stretch my biological knowledge, one was not.
I had just heard over the walkie-talkie that Old Mamma had collapsed and was pronounced dead -- one month over her life expectancy. Her companions had long passed away, and the three new Parasaurolophus were upset and calling out, mourning their companion. I was trying to figure out how that fit in with anything we knew about dinosaurs when a woman with a tearstreaked girl came up.
"Miss! One of those dinosaurs just died! I demand a refund!"
I stared. "Ma'am, I'm very sorry, but I cannot give you a refund for the dinosaur's death; it was of natural causes."
"Don't get snappy with me! My daughter is traumatized after seeing her dinosaur die! You owe a refund for my daughter's health!"
I stared at the woman, then looked down at the daughter. She wasn't even sniffling anymore, and I suspected she didn't want money but rather Old Mamma back. I lifted my eyebrows at the mother.
"Ma'am, the Parasaurolophus died a natural and peaceful death. It is a part of life." I then looked in the direction of Fence, where I could hear a goat's pained cries even from a distance. Above me on the viewing platform, I also heard a guy rooting for Fence. As if she needed any help. "If you did not want to see goats or other animals dying, you should have gone to a Disney movie."
"This is an outrage! Your park upset my daughter, and you won't even give me a refund?"
"Miss Mirabelle." The little girl tugged at my pants leg, and I smiled weakly down at her. "Miss, can't you bring Old Mamma back? Daddy says livestock don't have any souls. But can't you bring Old Mamma back?"
And so that's what I learned today. I learned that while dinosaurs grown in a test tube have souls, apparently goats and cows born naturally do not.
