Jurassic World: I Am Simon Masrani

Science Center - Jurassic World Genetics Lab, 6:48 a.m.

The morning light barely reached through the frosted glass of the genetics wing.

The glow from the sequencing terminal lit the room more than the sun did here.

Dr. Kamal Ghaddar stood at the console, both his hands still, his face quiet, and eyes locked on the data cascading down the main display. 

Across the lab, a tray of nutrient substrate cooled slowly in its gestation capsule.

The silence here was Peaceful, until the comms screen blinked to life.

Dr. Henry Wu appeared, crisp as always, wearing a sharp blazer, his voice smoother than it had any right to be this early.

"Dr Kamal are we still running preliminary simulations?" he asked, without looking up.

Kamal didn't flinch. "No, we are at final phase now. The Codon harmonization phase just finished."

He tapped a few keys, and the model shifted, the three-dimensional rendering of a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus, rotating slowly, its data points flickering green.

Wu gave a soft, measured nod. "So the integration of genes held."

"It did," Kamal said. "All three genome layers, and all done with clean insertion."

Wu finally looked at the feed directly. "Ok, so Walk me through it."

Kamal spoke plainly, "We used the same bighorn sheep gene marker from the Parasaurolophus trial. The drought tolerance gene in it, bonded very cleanly with almost no rejection patterns observed. The Protein folding remained stable during the simultation, especially around hydration-related metabolic pathways."

"Did we use the same delivery method?" Wu asked.

"Modified viral vector, yes. We have no signs of aggression-linked side effects yet. The Secondary insertion came from the green sea turtle, which has the identical marker to the Gallimimus batch. We isolated the cellular repair segment and anchored it upstream of the aging regulator sequence."

Wu nodded faintly, intrigued now. "So in short this animal should now withstand heat stress and age at roughly half the usual degenerative rate."

"Correct," Kamal said. "Assuming the embryo follows the model."

Wu leaned back slightly. "And any potential behavioral concerns?"

Kamal hesitated only for a second. "Unknown, We haven't introduced hybrid expression patterns from two donor species before. That carries risk, not in body, but in the brain. We're reinforcing hydration and longevity, but the skull cavity is already dense, so their behavior may trend more toward repetitive impacts."

Wu's voice was calm. "And if they don't stop once they start?"

Kamal turned toward him, serious. "Then we might have to redesign the fence."

I stepped into the lab as Wu processed that.

"Good morning, gentlemen," I said, eyeing the floating Pachycephalosaurus model on the screen. "Looks like a tank with legs."

Wu nodded toward me through the screen. "I assume you're here to sign off on this?"

"I am," I said. "But I want a longer observation period on this one. Lets just make one embryo only, for now. No group gestations yet, I want behavior logs before we even think about a second one."

Kamal responded immediately. "We've already isolated the embryo. It's going into incubation by noon."

Wu's expression flickered, neither pleased nor displeased. "You're proceeding faster than usual."

I stepped beside Kamal. "We're being efficient, the deadlines are closing in."

Wu didn't argue. Instead, he tilted his head. "If the cellular integration holds through hatching, this could serve as a base model for other herbivores. We will have a species that is Stronger, longer-lived, and less dependent on artificial irrigation."

"Exactly," I said. "We're building something sustainable here."

Wu was quiet for a moment, then said, "Ok, looks like we are done here for now, keep me in the loop."

Then feed cut out.

Incubation Wing – Later That Morning

Kamal stood at the glass incubation shell.

Inside, the embryo was barely visible, a cluster of cells suspended in soft blue light, pulsing faintly with life.

I watched as the robotic syringe delivered the final protein synthesis mix into the nutrient fluid, with a smooth motion.

Kamal spoke without turning. "This animal, if it hatches, will have advantages the original Pachycephalosaurus never did, It'll take longer to tire and survive longer drought cycles, it will also Live longer."

"Its almost like we're correcting nature here," I said quietly.

He looked at me now and said. "No, We're adapting to what nature would have thrown at them if they'd survived another fifty million years."

I nodded, then stepped back.

Western Sector, Construction Zone - 9:24 a.m.

The hum of machinery echoed through the trees, broken occasionally by the thud of something metal settling into place.

From a distance, it could've passed for another day of grading terrain, until you noticed the reinforced cabling being threaded into steel fence posts, the new grid towers going up and the floodlights being aligned along a curved trench.

Carlos stood ankle-deep in loose gravel, hands on his hips, squinting at a survey drone drifting overhead.

"This part of the island's got more slope than we thought," he said, almost to himself. "So we reinforced the base layer, and added higher voltage lines, we also doubled the fence tension along the ridge."

I glanced at the perimeter line taking shape behind him, with heavy-duty cabling, taller mesh, and foundation anchors sunk deep into bedrock.

"You beefed up the whole design." I said.

Carlos gave me a sideways grin. "Well, yeah, we've got something new coming in, don't we?"

I raised a brow. "We haven't exactly announced anything yet."

He shrugged. "You didn't have to. You don't pour this much concrete unless you're expecting trouble with horns."

We walked along the trench edge while his team worked behind us, laying down the curved outer wall of what would soon be the second herbivore enclosure.

This one was bigger, tougher, and backed by the kind of redundancy we didn't bother with when we first started building.

Carlos continued, "Is this the enclosure? where the tanks will go."

"You mean the Pachycephalosaurus," I said.

He nodded. "Yup, I call it the skull-first, attitude-later dino."

Just Up the Ridge – A New Building Under Construction

We followed a gravel path up to a new squat facility being finished near the treeline. It had Gray walls, wide sliding bays, and ventilation ducts, all built for scale.

Though It had no signage yet, but the layout said everything.

Marisol was already there, checking something off on a rugged tablet.

"Good timing," he said, not looking up. "You're about to see where your insurance policy is being born."

I stepped inside. The air was cool and sterile, the lights humming quietly.

A dozen workstations ringed a wide open bay filled with medical beds, soft-floor containment pens, robotic scanners, and rows of sealed cabinets marked Sterile Instruments – Class IV.

It felt less like a park and more like an ER for giants.

Carlos whistled low behind me. "Fancy, did we raid a veterinary school or a spaceship?"

Marisol kept typing. "Its the Paleo-medical center. Its for Triage, diagnostics and trauma response. If anything goes down, like infection, broken leg, failed hatch, all of it comes here."

"Is it Ready to go?" I asked.

"Will need Three more days," he said.

"Everything's hooked up, just waiting on the backup oxygen pumps and the fluid sterilizer. Oh, and the tranquilizer vault needs some final lock checks."

"Don't skip that part, Im just saying," Carlos muttered.

Later New Hatchery (Connected to Herbivore Enclosure 2)

The new hatchery was built directly into the second enclosure's lower edge, it was smaller than the original, but it was upgraded with more precise climate control and improved nutrient bath systems.

It had one job: to incubate and release animals into the adjacent environment without long-distance transfer or delay.

Today, it was fairly quiet.

There was a single bioshell rested in the center of the observation chamber, its interior glowing a soft amber.

Inside was: the first Pachycephalosaurus egg.

Kamal stood beside the diagnostics array, arms crossed, watching the heartbeat monitor blip steadily on the wall.

The egg itself looked calm, its surface matte, speckled, almost leathery in texture. 

He didn't speak until I stepped beside him.

"The Drought tolerance markers have stabilized now just like in the simulation, there's no fluid retention spikes, also the longevity sequence from Green Sea Turtle is holding through the secondary tissue cluster with No rejection patterns."

"That's two donor species mixed into one animal," I said. "No matter how many times we do it, it still feels like we're tempting fate."

Kamal didn't take his eyes off the screen. "Science is only ever precise in hindsight."

I leaned forward slightly, looking at the egg itself, it had no cracks yet. Just a faint twitch now and then, a little shift under the amber light.

"And about this one?" I asked quietly. "Do you think it'll survive?"

He didn't answer right away. His gaze lingered on the embryonic vitals as they climbed incrementally.

Finally, he said nervously, "If it hatches clean… yes. Not only will it survive. It'll thrive, with Strong bones, good heat resistance and slower cell breakdown, Biologically speaking, this is a superior animal."

I glanced over. "You look nervous, what's the concern?"

He hesitated, then turned slightly, his voice lower.

"Historically, Pachycephalosaurs weren't aggressive all the time. They'd bash heads in short bursts, during mating displays, territory and to show dominance, but they wore themselves out fairly quickly.

Nature put limits on their behavior. They'd overheat, burn energy fast and then had to stop."

He gestured to the screen. "But this one? This animal doesn't have those natural throttles anymore. We've reinforced its hydration cycles, it won't dry out.

Its muscles now recover fairly faster, it may not even feel fatigue the same way."

I frowned. "So if it gets into a headbutting match—"

"It might not stop," Kamal said simply. "Not just because it's aggressive, but because nothing in its system is forcing it to stop."

He nodded at the embryo.

"The question isn't whether it'll live, That part's solved. The question is whether it'll know when to stop. Whether it can self-regulate. Or whether we've built something that just keeps going until something....or someone.....breaks."

I watched the steady blip of the vitals on the screen. 

"Which," I said slowly, "is exactly why we only made one."

Kamal glanced at me, silent.

I continued. "Right now its going to be just One animal, No herd behavior to mask outliers and No others for it to challenge, lets just observe it first, before coming to any conclusions."

I turned toward the glass wall, where beyond it, the new enclosure slowly stretched out under the sky.

' You might think the new reinforced fence was just about handling size or voltage, but no it was all about control.

It was built for the scenario where the animal doesn't tire, doesn't slow down, and just keeps pushing. We had built a margin wide enough to stop something that doesn't know when to quit.'

Kamal folded his arms. "Its Still risky."

"Everything is," I said. "But this time, we're not improvising with storm fences and guesswork, plus that compound is triple-redundant.

It has elevated emergency platforms, Double gates with lockout sync, along with Fiber optic strain detection. Even the soil's been compacted to reduce vibration transfer, we don't want them (the future Dinos) riling up each other just by stomping around."

He nodded slightly.

"And the habitat?" I added. "Built with isolated cooling zones. Installed with Shaded cover and multiple shallow water sources. Everything it might seek out instinctively... its already there."

Kamal was still watching me, cautious and calculating. "So this isn't just a better fence."

"No," I said. "This is a home, and a cage, if it needs to be."

I paused, then looked back toward the egg.

"You asked me if it would behave. I'm asking whether we've given it every chance to, and built enough safeguards if it doesn't."

Kamal was quiet for a long beat, then finally nodded.

"It's way more than what they had in Jurassic Park."

I gave a small smile. "That's the whole point."

The lights dimmed slightly as the chamber's incubation cycle ticked forward.