Video
[Several hours after watching The Lost World with Martha.
The video switches on to show a desk covered with notes, balled up paper, a few DVDs, and a thick, hard-cover novel. Sarah sits down in front of the camera, looking absolutely livid, and brings her hand to her mouth. She pulls it away after a moment and gestures in a half shrug, inhaling as though to start speaking. It takes her a moment to say anything.]
I uh…
I had the opportunity to watch The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which is apparently about something that happened to me. I guess it was pretty popular when it came out, being a sequel to Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and all that that dubious honor entails, and that probably means a lot of you have seen it.
I want to set the record straight about all of this. I took a few notes.
[She pauses and holds up her field journal, giving it a shake]
I don’t know about all of the first part with the little girl and the compys, so I’m just going to skip ahead and talk about Ian Malcolm, because I’d really like to clear some things up there. First, Ian did not break the non-disclosure agreement regarding the InGen incident at Jurassic Park. Ian is ethical and he’s not...he’s just not an idiot. He didn’t even tell us about it until we were on Isla Sorna and the dinosaurs were right in front of us. He let Richard believe Site B was an actual lost world. Second, Ian doesn’t have children. To my knowledge, he has never married. I could be wrong, but I think I'd know better than most.
That little girl in the movie is probably an amalgamation of Kelly and Arby, who did stow away in the trailers, but neither of whom were gymnasts. Kelly did not kick a velociraptor in the head. She did shoot one in the mouth, however, while sitting on a moving motorbike. I guess doing the uneven bars and kicking it in the head has more cinematic oomph or something, but trivializing what those kids went through is low, even for Hollywood.
Eddie Carr. He was a nice kid; young, good-looking. He was killed by raptors, so...that was a shame. Eddie worked for Jack Thorne. Jack’s a good man. Smart man. He wasn’t in the movie, so I guess he lucked out.
Richard Levine wasn’t in the movie at all, and I don’t know how that pain in the ass got out of it. He was the first one on the island, it was his idea to go there in the first place, he funded the project from start to finish.
…Jesus, I hope Julianne Moore was not an amalgamation of the two of us.
[She looks horrified at that thought for a moment, but waves it off.]
Anyway. I’ve never met anyone named Nick Van Owen, so I have no idea what Vince Vaughn was doing in our group aside from being the sex appeal and eco-friendly conscience of the movie. Speaking of which. The whole idea of a hunting party trapping animals on the island to bring back to California is just asinine. There were ten people on that island. Ten. Dodgson was trying to steal some eggs with two other men - King and Baselton - but no one in their right mind would trap an adult tyrannosaur. And that rampage on the city with me and Ian in the car with the infant rex?
Never happened.
[She makes a disgusted noise and shakes her head.]
After that? I really hate Godzilla movies.
Back on track. Now we come to me, and the main reason I want to talk about this: I was presented in the sort of light that could absolutely ruin my professional reputation.
I did not go to Site B on my own. That would be stupid and dangerous. I arranged passage on a boat after everyone else had already arrived. As for touching that baby stegosaurus, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know how a stegosaurus behaves. I would never approach a wild animal’s offspring and try to touch it if no one has ever studied them before. Certainly not if the whole herd is standing around me!
[She points at the camera.]
And I did not bring that baby tyrannosaur to the trailer. I told Eddie to shoot it. Ian told Eddie to shoot it. He ignored us and took it to the trailers, and look how that turned out. Oh, that incident with the god damned trailer was real. Just about the only thing in that movie that was even remotely accurate, though they even managed to skew that, too.
Next, my relationship with Ian was completely misrepresented. I am not involved with Ian. I stopped seeing Ian long before any of this happened, and I certainly didn’t go looking for him while he was recovering in Costa Rica in 1989. I didn’t seek him out because I’d heard rumors. To suggest that I would do something like that to further my career in any way is just insulting. I was in Costa Rica because my father was also in the hospital there - because he, too, was involved in the InGen incident.
I am not a behavioral paleontologist. I don’t specialize in dinosaurs. I’m an ethologist. I’ve been studying carnivores in African grassland ecosystems for ten years. I studied at Berkley. I’m an assistant professor at Princeton, and I have worked very hard to get where I am. I’m one of the top scientists in my field of study and…that movie made me out to be some kind of irresponsible, vapid idiot.
[She stops and rests her forehead on her palm, trying to calm down. After a moment, she looks up again and sighs. She reaches for the thick novel on the desk and holds it up, showing that it’s a copy of Michael Crichton’s The Lost World.]
I found this in the library. I...don’t want to get in to the whole weirdness of seeing everything I said written line-for-line, or how I’m going to have an existential crisis as soon as I’m done raving at you all, but this is how it happened. It’s all true.
When I first got here, I was pretty concerned about people finding out about Lewis Dodgson, but at this point, privacy doesn’t seem like much of an issue.
I’d rather have people question my morals than drag my professional reputation through the mud.
The video switches on to show a desk covered with notes, balled up paper, a few DVDs, and a thick, hard-cover novel. Sarah sits down in front of the camera, looking absolutely livid, and brings her hand to her mouth. She pulls it away after a moment and gestures in a half shrug, inhaling as though to start speaking. It takes her a moment to say anything.]
I uh…
I had the opportunity to watch The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which is apparently about something that happened to me. I guess it was pretty popular when it came out, being a sequel to Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and all that that dubious honor entails, and that probably means a lot of you have seen it.
I want to set the record straight about all of this. I took a few notes.
[She pauses and holds up her field journal, giving it a shake]
I don’t know about all of the first part with the little girl and the compys, so I’m just going to skip ahead and talk about Ian Malcolm, because I’d really like to clear some things up there. First, Ian did not break the non-disclosure agreement regarding the InGen incident at Jurassic Park. Ian is ethical and he’s not...he’s just not an idiot. He didn’t even tell us about it until we were on Isla Sorna and the dinosaurs were right in front of us. He let Richard believe Site B was an actual lost world. Second, Ian doesn’t have children. To my knowledge, he has never married. I could be wrong, but I think I'd know better than most.
That little girl in the movie is probably an amalgamation of Kelly and Arby, who did stow away in the trailers, but neither of whom were gymnasts. Kelly did not kick a velociraptor in the head. She did shoot one in the mouth, however, while sitting on a moving motorbike. I guess doing the uneven bars and kicking it in the head has more cinematic oomph or something, but trivializing what those kids went through is low, even for Hollywood.
Eddie Carr. He was a nice kid; young, good-looking. He was killed by raptors, so...that was a shame. Eddie worked for Jack Thorne. Jack’s a good man. Smart man. He wasn’t in the movie, so I guess he lucked out.
Richard Levine wasn’t in the movie at all, and I don’t know how that pain in the ass got out of it. He was the first one on the island, it was his idea to go there in the first place, he funded the project from start to finish.
…Jesus, I hope Julianne Moore was not an amalgamation of the two of us.
[She looks horrified at that thought for a moment, but waves it off.]
Anyway. I’ve never met anyone named Nick Van Owen, so I have no idea what Vince Vaughn was doing in our group aside from being the sex appeal and eco-friendly conscience of the movie. Speaking of which. The whole idea of a hunting party trapping animals on the island to bring back to California is just asinine. There were ten people on that island. Ten. Dodgson was trying to steal some eggs with two other men - King and Baselton - but no one in their right mind would trap an adult tyrannosaur. And that rampage on the city with me and Ian in the car with the infant rex?
Never happened.
[She makes a disgusted noise and shakes her head.]
After that? I really hate Godzilla movies.
Back on track. Now we come to me, and the main reason I want to talk about this: I was presented in the sort of light that could absolutely ruin my professional reputation.
I did not go to Site B on my own. That would be stupid and dangerous. I arranged passage on a boat after everyone else had already arrived. As for touching that baby stegosaurus, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know how a stegosaurus behaves. I would never approach a wild animal’s offspring and try to touch it if no one has ever studied them before. Certainly not if the whole herd is standing around me!
[She points at the camera.]
And I did not bring that baby tyrannosaur to the trailer. I told Eddie to shoot it. Ian told Eddie to shoot it. He ignored us and took it to the trailers, and look how that turned out. Oh, that incident with the god damned trailer was real. Just about the only thing in that movie that was even remotely accurate, though they even managed to skew that, too.
Next, my relationship with Ian was completely misrepresented. I am not involved with Ian. I stopped seeing Ian long before any of this happened, and I certainly didn’t go looking for him while he was recovering in Costa Rica in 1989. I didn’t seek him out because I’d heard rumors. To suggest that I would do something like that to further my career in any way is just insulting. I was in Costa Rica because my father was also in the hospital there - because he, too, was involved in the InGen incident.
I am not a behavioral paleontologist. I don’t specialize in dinosaurs. I’m an ethologist. I’ve been studying carnivores in African grassland ecosystems for ten years. I studied at Berkley. I’m an assistant professor at Princeton, and I have worked very hard to get where I am. I’m one of the top scientists in my field of study and…that movie made me out to be some kind of irresponsible, vapid idiot.
[She stops and rests her forehead on her palm, trying to calm down. After a moment, she looks up again and sighs. She reaches for the thick novel on the desk and holds it up, showing that it’s a copy of Michael Crichton’s The Lost World.]
I found this in the library. I...don’t want to get in to the whole weirdness of seeing everything I said written line-for-line, or how I’m going to have an existential crisis as soon as I’m done raving at you all, but this is how it happened. It’s all true.
When I first got here, I was pretty concerned about people finding out about Lewis Dodgson, but at this point, privacy doesn’t seem like much of an issue.
I’d rather have people question my morals than drag my professional reputation through the mud.