He typed:
YES.
There was another pause.
He waited.
More letters slowly appeared:
YOUR FULL NAME?
He typed in his name.
DO YOU WANT A PASSWORD ISSUED TO YOU?
You're kidding, he thought. This was going to be a snap. It was almost disappointing. He really thought Dr. Thorne would have been more clever. He typed:
YES.
After a moment:
YOUR NEW PASSWORD IS VIG/ amp;*849/. PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT.
Sure thing, Arby thought. You bet I will. There was no paper on the desk in front of him; he patted his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and wrote it down.
PLEASE RE-ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW.
He typed in the series of characters and numbers.
There was another pause, and then more printing appeared across the screen. The speed of the printing was oddly slow, and halting at times. After all this time, maybe the system wasn't working very
THANK YOU. PASSWORD CONFIRMED.
The screen flashed, and suddenly turned dark blue. There was an electronic chime.
And then Arby's jaw dropped open as he stared at the screen, which read:
INTERNATIONAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES
SITE B
LOCAL NODE NETWORK SERVICES
It didn't make any sense. How could there be a Site B network? InGen had closed Site B years ago. Arby had already read the documents. And InGen was out of business, long since bankrupt. What network? he thought. And how had he managed to get on it? The trailer wasn't connected to anything. There were no cables or anything. So it must be a radio network, already on the island. Somehow he'd managed to log onto it. But how could it exist? A radio network needed power, and there was no power here.
Arby waited.
Nothing happened. The words just sat there on the screen. He waited for a menu to come up, but one never did. Arby began to think that perhaps the system was defunct. Or hung up. Maybe it just let you log on, and then nothing happened after that.
Or maybe, he thought, he was supposed to do something. He did the simplest thing, which was to press RETURN.
He saw:
REMOTE NETWORK SERVICES AVAILABLE
CURRENT WORKFILES Last Modified
R/Research 10/02/89
P/Production 10/05/89
F/Field Rec 10/09/89
M/Maintenance 11/12/89
A/Administration 11/11/89
STORED DATAFILES
Rl/Research (AV-AD) 11/01/89
R2/Research (GD-99) 11/12/89
P/Production (FD-FN) 11/09/89
VIDEO NETWORK
A, 1-20 CCD NDC. 1. I
So it really was an old system: files hadn't been modified for years. Wondering if it still worked, he clicked on VIDEO NETWORK, And to his amazement, he saw the screen begin to fill with tiny video images.
There were fifteen in all, crowding the screen, showing views of various parts of the island. Most of the cameras seemed to be mounted high up, in trees or something, and they showed -
He stared.
They showed dinosaurs.
He squinted. It wasn't possible. These were movies or something he was seeing. Because in one corner he saw a herd of triceratops. In an adjacent square, some green lizard-looking things, in high grass, with just their heads sticking up. In another, a single stegosaurus, ambling along.
They must be movies, he thought. The dinosaur channel.
But then, in another image, Arby saw the two connected trailers standing in the clearing. He could see the black photovoltaic panels glistening on the roof He almost imagined he could see himself, through the window of the trailer.
Oh, my God, he thought.
And in another image, he saw Thorne and Malcolm and Eddie get quickly into the green Explorer, and drive around the back of the laboratory. And he realized with a shock:
The pictures were all real.
Power
They drove the Explorer to the back of the main building, heading for the power station. On the way, they passed a little village to their right. Thorne saw six plantation-style cottages and a larger building marked "Manager's Residence." It was clear that the cottages had once been nicely landscaped, but they were now overgrown, partially retaken by the jungle. In the center of the complex, they saw a tennis court, a drained swimming pool, a small gas pump in front of what looked like a little general store.
Thorne said, "I wonder how many people they had here?" Eddie said, "How do you know they're all gone?"
"What do you mean?"
"Doc - they have power. After all these years. There has to be an explanation for it." Eddie steered the car around the back of the loading bays, and drove toward the power station, directly ahead.
The power station was a windowless, featureless concrete blockhouse, marked only by a corrugated-steel rim for ventilation around the top. The steel vents were long since rusted a uniform brown, with flecks of yellow.
Eddie drove the car around the block, looking for a door. He found it at the back. It was a heavy steel door, with a peeling, painted sign that said: CAUTION HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.
Eddie jumped out of the car, and the others followed. Thorne sniffed the air. "Sulfur," he said.
"Very strong, " Malcolm said, nodding.
Eddie tugged at the door. "Guys, I got a feeling…"
The door opened suddenly with a clang, banging against the concrete wall. Eddie peered into darkness inside. Thorne saw a dense maze of pipes, a trickle of steam coming out of the floor. The room was extremely hot. There was a loud, constant whirring sound.
Eddie said, "I'll be damned." He walked forward, looking at the gauges, many of which were unreadable, the glass thickly coated with yellow. The joints of the pipes were also rimmed with yellow crust. Eddie wiped away some of the crust with his finger. "Amazing," he said.
"Sulfur?"
"Yeah, sulfur. Amazing." He turned toward the source of the sound, saw a large circular vent, a turbine inside. The turbine blades, spinning rapidly, were drill yellow.
"And that's sulfur, too?" Thorne said.
"No," Eddie said. "That must be gold. Those turbine blades are gold alloy."
"Gold?"
"Yeah. It would have to be very inert." He turned to Thorne. "You realize what all this is? It's incredible. So compact and efficient. Nobody has figured out how to do this. The technology is - "
"You're saying it's geothermal?" Malcolm said.
"That's right," Eddie said. "They've tapped a heat source here, probably gas or steam, which is piped up through the floor over there. Then the heat is used to boil water in a closed cycle - that's the network of pipes up there - and turn the turbine - there - which makes electric power. Whatever the heat source, geothermal's almost always corrosive as hell. Most places, maintenance is brutal. But this plant still works. Amazing,"
Along one wall was a main panel, which distributed power to the en-tire laboratory complex. The panel was flecked with mold, and dented in several spots.
Doesn't look like anybody's been in here in years," he said. "And a lot of the power grid is dead. But the plant itself is still going - incredible."
Thorne coughed in the sulfurous air, and walked back into the sunlight. He looked up at the Year of the laboratory. One of the loading bays seemed in good shape, but the other had collapsed. The glass at the rear of the building was shattered.
Malcolm came to stand beside him. "I wonder if an animal hit the building."
"You think an animal could do that much damage?"
Malcolm nodded. "Some of these dinosaurs weigh forty, fifty tons. A single animal has the mass of a whole herd of elephants. That could easily be damage from an animal, yes. You notice that path, running there? That's a game trail going past the loading bays, and down the hill. It could have been animals, yes."