873: Jurassic Park: The RH Project – One Shot

Title: Jurassic Park: The RH Project
Author: aryn-vernier
Media: Movies
Topic: Jurassic Park
Genre: Horror/Adventure
URL:  Jurassic Park: The RH Project
Critiqued by TacoMagic

*HACK COUGH*

Happy Wednesday, patrons.

*COUGH COUGH WHEEZE*

Feeling a bit under the weather today, so it’ll be a short-

*Swenia comes barging into the Snark Control Room*

“He’s in here, Eliza!  I should have known he’d try to snark.  Taco, your doctor specifically told you to avoid exposure to horrible fiction until you’re better!”

Goeth is NOT my doctor!

*WHEEZE COUGH HACK*

“Whatever; you’re in no condition to do this today.  You’re going to get back in that bed and eat the damn soup, even if we have to kill you to get you to do it!”

*Swenia grabs Taco by the scruff of his shirt and starts to drag him out of the room*

“ELIZA!  Get the darkwraiths to load the soup cannon and meet me in the infirmary!”

HELP!

*Taco is dragged bodily from the room.*  

*A few minutes later, Crunchy slinks in*

Greetings, gentle patrons.  It is I, your emperor!  Let us first take care of that woefully inaccurate “Critiqued by” field.

Critiqued by TacoMagic Supreme Darth Overlord Crunchy

There, it is now quite sufficient.

Let me see, this week we have a Jurassic Park fic featuring raptors!  For a whole three sentences.

*Crunchy Squints*

I do believe I was set up.

The summary should paint the scene very nicely so that we know what we are in for.

What if, dinosaurs wern’t the only thing InGen did created?

*Crunchy snags the comma and sets it aside*

We almost never get spare commas, but I have a sneaking suspicion that putting it in the spare punctuation box would be premature.

An AWOL scientist, a deadly secret, and more raptors than you can shake a stick at.

If any of you patrons happen to find the rest of that sentence, please let the management know.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Is this a work of fiction, or a term paper?

Isla Nublar, Jurassic Park:

Ahh, yes.  Scene tags.  I am certain Ghostcat will be overjoyed to see these.

John Hammond’s attempt at civilizing the prehistoric world; destroyed by the government.

Not really.  More accurately it was his attempt to cage the prehistoric world and put it on display.  It was destroyed primarily through poor background checking procedures, lack of adequate redundancy systems, and a healthy dollop contrived writing.  The government was just kind enough to bomb the island flat after the whole fiasco blew up in Hammond’s face.

Isla Sorna, Site B: the breeding ground of the dinosaurs.

Once again, not really.  Isla Sorna was the main research laboratory and cloning facility for InGen.  They were not breeding dinosaurs there per se, but rather growing them in vitro.

It was a mess.

That would be the first accurate thing the author has written.  Good job.

The chair holders had lost faith, and the company was in ruins.

*Crunchy Squints*

I cannot honestly say that the disillusionment of the chair holders would really be of much concern to me.  It really seems like you would have more pressing matters to attend to than the chair holders feeling alienated from their theology.

They wanted the island destroyed and the dinosaurs to be exterminated.

Why are we letting the chair holders call the shots?  Although, that does explain the long string of predominantly stupid business choices InGen makes throughout the series.

Hammond refused however, saying that there was still a chance.

Aha, so this would be the movie series.  It is not entirely clear what there is still a chance for, but I shall just take Hammond’s word. He is nothing if not an impeccable source of wisdom.

What the chair holders didn’t realize was that there was something of importance on the island to Hammond, but there was also something that shouldn’t exist on the island.

Please form an orderly queue in the foreshadowing line and the Darkwraiths will be happy to hit you in the face with the foreshadowing gong for a nominal fee.

The dinosaurs, by all means shouldn’t exist, but this…This thing that had been created was unnatural to the highest degree.

*Crunchy snags another comma*

I am reasonably sure this excess will only exist until the dialogue starts.

For the next ten minutes we will be giving away free foreshadowing in the gong line!  Tell your friends.

It was one man’s attempt to play God.

Only if you forget about the massive laboratory filled with scientist, the international company providing the funding and business direction, and the chair holders.  One man, aside from all that.

The doctor succeeded, in a sense.

Thrill as vague happens!

His creation was intelligent; it could think and plan ahead.

Holy sweet Raptor Jesus, a correctly used semicolon.

It was more advanced than the dinosaurs; it was faster, stronger, and more deadly.

The Darkwraiths are taking bets now if you would like to place a wager on this creation being either an Awesome McEvil or a Super-Soldier-Sue or Stu.

However, the worst possible scenario happened: it escaped the laboratory, and it was free.

Spare us the hyperbole, author.  It takes very little imagination to produce a near infinite number of scenarios worse than that.

Weeks later, reports of a strange creature on the island started appearing on the news, along with amateur films and photographs.

There sure are a lot of people on this privately owned secret research island that was later declared a restricted zone by the US and Costa Rican authorities.  Apparently an island filled with deadly predators which is behind a US blockade is not nearly as big of a deterrent to tourism as you would expect it to be.

Some said it was a human, some said it was a dinosaur, the chair holders decided that it had to be a humanoid dinosaur, created by the AWOL scientist.

Human-dinosaur hybrids are really an end to themselves.   Most biologists are a pipette and an amber-encased mosquito away from making one.

The betting on Awesome McEvil vs. Super-Soldier-Sue is now closed.  I think most of you know where this is going, anyway.

They sent small groups of military in to exterminate it. The reports that came back were…Unsettling.

“It made us watch its stand-up routine!  The jokes were horribly dated and extremely racist!”

Very few of the soldiers came back.

This is why you should have sent bombs instead of soldiers.

Most were simply killed by an unknown creature.   A tape was recovered; on it were the last few minutes of the Delta team.

Oh good, an action scene from the viewpoint of a recording that is provided to us with text.  I cannot see this failing to deliver high-impact tension!

A small clock flashed in the upper left hand side of the screen; judging from the time, it was probably about mid-day.

Even with a clock showing the exact time, we still only get a general idea of when during the day this is?  I am not convinced the author knows how clocks work.

There were about six men in front of the person, so it was safe to assume that the man recording the tape was either in the middle or in the back of the group.

When in doubt, go with vagueness.  It adds so much mystery to your scenes.  You use enough of it, and your scenes will be so mysterious that the audience will not know what is going on.  Add a little more, and you can get them to cease caring about what is going on.

The birds and insects that had been almost deafening suddenly ceased.

Scene building is one of those things you can do after the fact.

The camera stopped in it’s bouncing as the leader signaled for the group to stop.  The one with the camera suddenly let out a strangled gurgle then fell to the jungle floor.

Which the audience should not be able to see as he is holding the camera.  Maybe I am old fashioned, being one-hundred-twenty-five million or so years old, but I think it would have been better to show us this scene, rather than telling us about it.

There was a mild bit of static as the camera hit the jungle floor, but it quickly cleared.

Mild static is so much easier to get along with than aggressive static.

Then chaos erupted, and the camera captured it all.

It is important to tell the audience about that kind of thing.  Predominantly because showing it is so much harder.

“Kill the fucker!” One man yelled as the rest of the team-opened fire into the treetops.

Firing weapons blindly upwards into the trees.  I cannot see that ending poorly at all.

It was impossible to see thanks to the smoke from the guns.

This is why Taco never purchases rifles that operate by burning crude oil.

One by one, they fell, an unseen menace picking them off.

I will say that the narrative style really has captured the essence of not being able to see anything.

Yells filled the clearing along with curses and screams. Then there was the dreaded clicking sound of an empty rifle.

It occurs to me that several completely filled rifles did not really do any of these soldiers much good, so I remain unconvinced that an empty rifle would degrade the situation any further.

The smoke slowly settled revealing the team leader as the only one standing.

Excuse me, Super-Weapon?  You missed one.  Might want to take care of that real quick.

The clearing was ripped to shreds from the bullets.

A clearing, which is an area in a forest that is cleared of trees or significant plant life, was ripped to shreds because they were firing at the tree-tops?

Authors who want to avoid these little gaffs tend to build some kind of setting so that they know what is going on.

Then the attacked revealed itself.

Proof reading takes slightly more effort than right clicking on all the squiggly red lines, author.

It dropped down from the treetops, landing in front of the man.

How, exactly, did super-weapon kill all those other men if it was up in the trees?  Or did it hang out up there while they shot each other by firing wildly into a cloud of smoke?

The creature was about seven feet tall and it vaguely resembled a humanoid Velociraptor.

“Vaguely” is the buzzword for this fic as a whole.

The base coloration was a dark brown, with dark green stripes.

Aha!  Finally something is nearly described!  Well, there is no indication what kinds of highlights or secondary colors there are, but we know this human-velociraptor has dark brown as the base!  And some green stripes somewhere.

“Jesus Christ…” The man cursed softly, before bending over in pain as the beast sliced his stomach open.

I think this is what is termed as a “dick move,” whatever that might be.

Entrails spilled onto the jungle floor, he barely managed to look up in time to see the creature deliver a second blow to his neck. The leader quickly crumpled. Then the tape went to static.

I hate it when my tape recorder dies at the appropriate melodramatic moment!  I would get one of those models that continues recording until an actual mechanical or power failure, but the PCC does not appear to stock those.

While the chair holders sat back and pondered, Hammond sent his own group in.

Author, I do not think time works like that.

Not to kill, or to destroy, but to recover.

Hope he sent somebody competent.  The mooks did not do such a stellar job with the much simpler “kill it” order.

Hammond was anxious, until he received a short message: There was a survivor.

A survivor from what exactly?  From the Delta group?  From the whole first expedition to kill the thing?  From the original science facility?  You really need to reign in your vague there, author.

At this point the introduction chapter ends and we move into the second chapter titled: “In the beginning.”  An odd title to give the second chapter of the fic.  Especially after the first chapter was titled “Introduction.”

This chapter starts off in poor form with an author’s note.  I can at least give credit that it is separate from the fic body by a page break.

Do expect the chapters to go through fine tuning/get edited.

With the last edit on this fic having been posed a full nine years ago, and given the sorry state of the first chapter, I think my expectations to the contrary are rather well founded.

When I finally finish the story, it’d probably be best to read it entirely over.

Funny.  We appear to be doing just that.  Sorry to say, it is not the positive experience you probably hoped to provide.

Tinksy: Ah, thank you, thank you. This has been rolling around in my head for a while and yes, I do indeed plan to continue it.

Author, please do not fib to the audience.  We are quite a bit brighter than you give us credit for.

July 2002

It was supposed to be a peaceful vacation, the whole family going down to Porto Rico for the summer.

Porto Rico, huh?

Ahh,the “crashing onto the island from hell” story angle.  Always good to go with the classics.

The pilot was a middle-aged man, quite gruff and rarely spoke.

Which is not terribly important since he would be busy flying the plane anyway.

The Vernier family was from Los Angeles.   The father was a wealthy businessman; he sold priceless artifacts, and made quite a lot of money doing it.

So, the father has become quite wealthy by trafficking stolen cultural artifacts.  Cannot say I saw that coming.  Though I suppose making this family mostly evil will help the audience root for the murderous sauroid.

The mother was a housewife; she was the girl next-door type.

The wife is both vague AND generic.  I can see much thought went into this family.

*Sigh*

Let me guess, the parents die and the child(ren) have to carry on without them.

She flirted with any man that came her way.

I am not terribly certain that actually fits the archetype you just provided.  Maybe you should double-check your characters with the Almanac of Cliché Writing.

Their adopted daughter was quiet and almost shy at times.

Adopted daughter, huh?  Well, I seem to be correct, those parents are not long for this world.  If they survive the crash, they will be among the first eaten.  That should provide plenty of forced tragedy to help the melodrama develop.

I am also sure that it will provide plenty of mutual angst so that she can get together with Super-Weapon for many gripping scenes of whining.

The flight was halfway over, much to Davis’ relief.

GAH!  Davis, do not sneak up on me like that!

Mike, the pilot, glanced towards an island that was up ahead.

Sorry for the late introduction; the author almost forgot you had names.

The flight plan was taking them over Isla Sorna.

Indeed.  The US is generally just fine with letting people fly over restricted zones.

He honestly didn’t believe the stories about the dinosaurs on it; he thought it was a bunch of bullshit.  Chuckling to himself, he turned on the com.

Which is why his flight plan included a 1,200 mile detour just so they could fly over that Isla Sorna on their way to Puerto Rico.

Show of hands, who here thinks the author does not realize that Puerto Rico and Costa Rica are different places?

“If ya’ll look to the right of the plane, we’ll be passing over the fabled Isla Sorna, home to dinosaurs of all kinds.”

“Wow! Um, sir?  You do know we wanted to go to Puerto Rico, right?”

*Swaps a period for one of the spare commas*

I knew it was not going to last.

He flipped off the com and chuckled again.  The plane was so small that he really only needed to turn around and yell into the back.

This is why you should not fly budget chartered flights.  Not only do you end up with an unhinged pilot, but you may not even end up in the right country.

He was still chuckling when the plane gave a small buck.

Notice: Plane does not carry more than twenty dollars in change.

“Easy girl, no need to get excited.” He said as he gave the plane an affectionate pat.

*Swaps the period out for the last of the spare commas*

So much for those.

Then the plane bucked again, this time harder. He rolled his eyes at a small high-pitched yelp from the passenger area.

“Moooooom! The passengers are yelping again!”

He turned and yelled behind him.

“It’s just some turbulence ya’ll, but on yer seatbelts. We’ll be through it shortly.”

I think it is important to reiterate that when chartering a flight you take the time to pick an actual professional company, rather than the first malcontent with a biplane and an expired aviation license.

With a yawn, Mike flicked a few switches, but the turbulence only got worse.

I always end up accidentally flipping the turbulence switches when I mean to trim up the smoothing knob.

Then one of the engines stalled.

One of those switches must have been to cut the fuel supply.  Live and learn.

He scowled and tried to restart it. The engine sputtered to life for a few seconds and then died again.

Now he really wishes he would have paid attention in that remedial aviation class.

“Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick!” He bellowed out.

Nothing quite defeats the tension like a misplaced silly explicative.

That is not entirely true.  The tension was defeated much earlier when the author only half introduced the cast of generic characters that nobody cares about.

Then he muttered to himself, “Should have gotten that engine serviced.”

I simply cannot overstate the importance of not going with the cheapest option when chartering a flight.

He glanced down at the island, wad that a runway?

*Crunchy clears his throat*

I dunno, wud it?

…

I feel dirty.

Sure enough it was!

It just so happens!  Actually, it is canon that there is a runway on the island, so it is a fair point.

“Praise God.” He muttered as he circled the plane around.  The plane was barely limping along with its remaining engine, and that one was threatening to go out as well.

Honestly, people, when a pilot agrees to fly you to Puerto Rico in his 2 prop plane in exchange for a bottle of whiskey and ten dollars for gas, you have to expect that the plane will be crashing at some point during the flight.  At that point, you have to wonder if it would not have just been better to book four first-class seats on a commercial flight from LAX to San Juan.  Even with the best seats available, I think the father’s illicit artifact smuggling business would make him able to easily afford the $5,000 for one-way tickets.  And if he was as cheap as Taco is, they could all fly for under $1300 round trip.

Seems a small price to pay to not take a ride in a death-trap with wings.

This was going to be a bumpy landing. Carefully, he coaxed the plane down.

I doubt it required much coaxing.  Really, it seems more than willing to come down at the slightest request.

“Come on baby, do it for daddy…” He whispered to the plane.

Seems as though if he was that close to the plane, he would have sprung for the engine maintenance.

While the pilot was having a religious revival in the cockpit, the family was trying to stay calm.

I am uncertain what kind of religion has you calling a plane “baby,” but I am certain I would not want to attend the sermons.

Davis was clutching the armrests of his seat, his normal tanned complexion replaced with a sickly gray color.

This is a strange time to whip out the chameleonic powers, Davis.  Maybe you should wait until the plane is on the runway.

Marie was hold Aryn close to her, and for once, the red haired girl wasn’t complaining.

Oh look, a self-insert.  I wonder if she will tame the murderous beast on the island.

I kid, I am not wondering at all.

The touch down was rough and bumpy, but they made it.

What a tense scene.  Just when they might not have made it, they did.

The plane came to a stop and the pilot sighed and then resumed his curses.  He stopped long enough to try and get a mayday out, but he froze in mid sentence.

The Darkwraiths will be taking bets on which of these people is the first to die.

“The…Hell…?” He whispered to himself as a roar echoed from the surrounding jungle.

I can understand his confusion.  There were rumors of dinosaurs, and now he can hear roaring.  Those are some hard dots to connect.

Nothing could make that loud of a roar.

With a big amplifier and a pair of appropriately sized speakers, you can make a roar as loud as you want, moron.

Which reminds me, Gumdrop invited me to karaoke this evening.

Did this mean that the dinosaurs were real?

Or were they fantasy?  Caught on an island.

*BZZT*

Hmm, apparently these chairs have been recalibrate to detect Queen rehashes.

He narrowed his eyes and his marines training took over.

It is time to load up the characters with some informed attributes!

*Grabs a shovel*

Who wants a scoop of “secretly descended from ancient Jedi?”  We have some left over from Jedi’s Destiny.

He flung the belt off and marched into the back of the plane.

And immediately trips over his pants as they drop to his ankles.

“Everyone, git out! Now!” He barked out, mildly surprised that the three people scrambled to do as told, “Forget your luggage. Out! Now!” Mike snarled at Marie who instantly dropped the bag she had been holding.

Indeed, it is important when in a survival situation to leave all your belongings behind rather than search through them for important, life-saving items like cordage, food, medicine, knives, guns, shelter items, phones, radios, etc. Best to leave it all behind and run out into the forest!

Well, I suppose this IS a horror fic, so a certain amount of mind-boggling stupidity should be expected.

The four hustled out of the plane and sprinted for the tree line.

Now I understand why Taco is so depressed when he gets these things right.

There was whistles and chirps nearby, nervously, Aryn climbed a tree and headed up.

*ALARM BLARES*

We were so close.

*Presses the intercom button*

Darkwraiths, turn on the speakers in the hallway and play Brown Note Sonata #3, in D minor.

[Scene redacted because… Ew.]

Remind me never to do that again.  It is truly a force too powerful for this universe.

Marie was next, unfortunately for everyone still on the ground, a pack of raptors attacked.

All right, betting is off!  Who did you pick?

Davis was the first one to go down, Marie was next. Mike went down fighting; he took down one of the raptors with a flare gun. Aryn was the only one left.

And it was DAVIS!  Those who placed bets on Davis can take their tickets to the claim booth on level 47, right next to the uranium enrichment chambers.  Better luck next time for all of you who bet on somebody else.  And anyone who bet on Aryn: nice try, but wishful thinking will only get you so far.  Still, I suppose those trillion to one odds were pretty enticing.

There’s something about watching a person’s loved ones die in front of them that changes a person.

Not to mention there appears to be something about that situation that makes it impossible to describe.

Either they are unable to cope and simply shut down, or they become cold and callous.

I do hate to break it to you, author, but there are other possible reactions.

The young girl that survived changed that day.

Luckily, it is not really important.  And since she had absolutely no characterization before this “change” you might as well not bother trying to track the differences.  Just trust the author that they are real and not at all token or forced.

No longer was she a frightened child.

Which is not surprising as she was never described as a frightened child in the first place.

She was a survivor.

In the literal sense, I guess that yes she was the only one of those four to survive.  However, it is unlikely that it will last too terribly long.  She has to come down that tree at some point, and raptors are very patient hunters.

Present Day; Isla Sorna

Can you narrow that down for us, Author?

The wet season on Isla Sorna had just ended, much to the red head’s delight.

Your characters are flat, void of characterization, and quite meaningless, author.  It makes no difference if you use their names or vague it up for us, so just go ahead and use names.

Nothing was more miserable than trekking through the rain to find food.

I can think of many things more miserable than that.  Trekking through mosquito-infested swampland on a sunny day, for instance.

Food was especially scarce when all the damned dinosaurs ate it.

This would be the same Generic Co. Food brand food that they ate in Raptor and I, right?

It was the early morning hours and the dinosaurs had already done their shift change.

The dinosaurs have shifts?  InGen was not messing around when they did the DNA sequencing for these dinosaurs.

Yawning softly, the red head was pleased to learn that she had survived another night.

It is pretty bad when the characters find their own survival trivial and boring.

Quietly, she climbed down from the tree she had been in and walked to the nearby stream.

The author really is overestimating the amount of protection a tree affords you in this situation. One raptor with even the most basic grasp of the force and you are dinosaur food.

How long had she been on this island?

The audience was never given that information and, frankly, it does not actually matter.

It seemed like decades.

It certainly feels like we have been reading this fic for that long.

For all she knew it could only have been a few months.  Somehow, she doubted that.

Ah yes, the thrilling scene where the heroine ponders the inexorable progression of time and the subjective nature of one’s perception of that progression.

One day merged into another, each day was a struggle to survive. Somehow though, she had managed to stay alive.

Frankly, I find it rather amazing that not only can the author make the premise of surviving alone on an island full of hostile dinosaurs so completely uninteresting, but that she can skip over everything that might be interesting and instead focus on the author-insert pondering the nature of time.

Her clothes, once high dollar clothing, was now tattered.

I suppose that means she never bothered to try to raid any of the facilities or worker villages on the island for replacement clothes.

A slight grin formed on her face as she thought about her adoptive parents.

I see that her brain is entirely broken.  Not really all that surprising.  Honestly, I am more surprised that the author was able to appropriately damage her self-insert.

She was her adoptive mother’s personal dress up toy.  Ugh.

Ech.  Never mind.  It is just going to be wangsting about how hard her life was before her parents died and how they did not actually love her.  That places our author firmly in the twelve to seventeen age range, though fourteen is the most likely.

Hmm, let us sneak a quick peek at the author’s profile.

Looks like her profile was last updated in late 2005, around the same time she published this fic.  At that time, she claimed to be seventeen, putting her at the high-end of the range I quoted.

*Sighs*

It really is depressing being right about these things.

Warily, she looked around as she crouched down to get a drink, but then she paused. Helicopters? Again? She quickly got her drink and headed towards and old tree that served as her look out point.

There were a first set of helicopters?  Shame that this was never shown to the audience.

Quickly, she climbed it and perched on a limb, frowning as she watched the ‘choppers circling.

What were they doing…?

Circling, of course.

And that is where the fic ends.  Sixteen-hundred words of absolutely nothing.  Astounding.  True, it was never finished, but the setup was so obvious that I think anyone here could accurately summarize the rest of the story as it would have been written.

This has been Supreme Darth Overlord Crunchy.  Taco should be back next week to cover yet another rank one shot for all you delicious patrons.  Until then!

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