Shuro Shimizu (shuropedia) wrote in yegods, @ 2012-01-16 09:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, c: lovisa, c: shuro |
WHO Shuro Shimizu and Lovisa Jansen
WHERE Cretaceous Jurassic Park
WHEN Monday, Jan. 16th
RATING PG
SUMMARY Biiiiig lizards.
STATUS Complete
Shuro had been planning his day off, because despite liking their employees to work religious and occasionally federal holidays, the law offices of Hamish, Hamish & Hamlin was closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In an attempt, Shuro always thought, to look understanding and respectful, which in his mind somehow conflicted with their normal ideology of turning the justice system on its head and shaking it until every last cent fell out of its pockets. So Shuro would spend his day off sleeping in, and then make himself lunch and curl up on the couch to watch Mister Ed. Someone on g-net had written about horses recently, Shuro had been wanting to watch the show ever since.
Instead, Shuro had to blink for a moment. Everything was suddenly loud, and there were a few people pressed up against him in the helicopter, and when he looked out the window he saw a lush green and hilly landscape. He thought perhaps he had fallen asleep and was dreaming. The people beside him were talking, but it was too loud and Shuro was too disinterested to try and figure out what they were saying quite yet. He reached into the pocket of his jacket he had never seen before and retrieved his artifact, glad to find it. It had recorded entirely what he had experienced. Shuro had been sleeping in his bed, and now he was in a helicopter over Jurassic Park.
He looked out the window again, eyes wide, a cold shiver of fear running down his spine.
“I’m glad you decided to come, Shuro,” a blond woman he did not know said to him.
Shuro moved his gaze slowly from one person in the helicopter to the next, finally coming to rest on a similarly Asian woman cramped in across from him. He didn’t know any of them. He didn’t like this at all.
Lovisa went to bed knowing that the start of the week would be an easy one. Occupancy at the hotel on Mondays were typically slow to begin with. With the demand for concierge services low, she would spend the morning in her office, making arrangements for guests that planned to arrive later in the week. By lunchtime most of her work would be tied up and she would be put on call and relieved herself from duty. She’d most likely have time to drop by Nectar for a peppermint mocha espresso, but not before stopping by the hotel’s San Rocco for a discount panini.
Lovisa continued to lie in bed between the cusp of alertness and sleep, idly planning out her day until either a dream took over or her alarm forced her out of bed. A sudden wave of dizziness and a loud roar surrounded her, and with a jolt she opened her eyes. Instead of finding herself staring up at her ceiling, she was crammed in an helicopter. Instead of fluffy pillows she was held upright in a sitting position by a safety harness. How much time had passed or how she even arrived in such a place was absent from her mind, and she glanced around her with bewilderment and confusion. She could not hear what people were saying over the wind knocked around by the propellers, but glancing across the cabin she spied a long-legged man that looked as discombobulated as she did. Glancing first outside the window at a massive, tropical island then back to the man, she mouthed. “What is going on?”
There was someone beside her trying to get her attention, an effort that was all for naught until the man finally resorted to nudging the binder into her arm. “You need to read this, Doctor.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Jansen, an overview of the project,” a bespectacled man dressed in a business suit shouted in her ear. Doctor of what? “It’s short notice but Mr. Hammond is very excited to have you on board for this.”
“I’m honestly not sure if-” she started, pausing as she opened the binder and saw the embossed cover. “No, oh no. Is this real?” She had her share of realistic dreams before, but never had they been this detailed.
Shuro needed a moment to get over his own bewilderment before he was able to recognize it in someone else. He answered her mouthed words with as much of a shrug as he could manage in the cramped space. All he could do show her his artifact, assuming she was a demigod and could read it.
Shuro Shimizu is asleep in his apartment in Manhattan.
Shuro Shimizu is riding in a helicopter over Jurassic Park with Lovisa Jansen and Conley Sullivan.
He pulled the artifact back, pointed to his name and then to himself. Then he pointed to the female name and pointed to her with a questioning look on his face. Everyone in the helicopter was a stranger, well, Shuro thought maybe he could recognize who some of them were from having seen the movie once, but that was not reassuring in the least. If she were a demigod, though, at least he would feel less alone. Because he didn’t want to be along through the more than likely event of rampaging dinosaurs.
“We’re about to land!” someone yelled back to them. Shuro almost suggested that they simply not, but that didn’t seem like an option. He frowned at the woman across from him.
Shuro Shimizu is riding in a helicopter over Jurassic Park with Lovisa Jansen.
Lovisa blinked at the text on the artifact, realizing that if that was the case then the man was a demigod like herself. Why they were in Jurassic Park instead of warm in their beds was another mystery to solve, but having read the books and watched the first movie, there were more pressing concerns ahead. She nodded in response to Shuro’s questioning and pointed to her name. It wasn’t the best circumstance to meet a fellow demigod, but it was slightly comforting to know she wasn’t stuck in this alone.
The announcement that the copter was about to land was met with an equally stern frown from her, and she furiously began to skim the text inside the binder passed over to her. Things that should’ve made no sense to her appeared in her mind’s eye as clear as day. Apparently between the time between bedtime and the helicopter ride, Lovisa received a crash course in genetics. She shook her head as she flipped through another page, hoping that by the time they made land she would have some idea what to expect.
The helicopter landed, and Shuro watched at the grass around them flatten and saw a happy older fellow standing off by a few jeeps, also with Jurassic Park written on them. It was not exactly like the movie, but similar enough that Shuro began to wish this were a dream.He did think it had to be real, though. If this were a dream he would have filled it with the movie cast, and he was certain he had not met or heard the name of Lovisa Jansen before. He could not dream something he had not seen before in some context.
The doors opened and despite desperately wanting to go back to the mainland with the helicopter, Shuro seemed to know how to unbuckle himself and step out of the helicopter and walk safely toward the jolly old fellow that was about to almost get them all killed. The jolly old fellow attempted to shake Shuro warmly by the hand but Shuro was able to avoid that and the man went on to happily welcome the entire group.
Shuro carefully made his way toward Ms. Jansen as the others seemed to talk, amazed and interested and completely unaware of the goat eating that was about to take place. “Are you a demigod?” Shuro asked her in a low voice, just to make sure.
She barely would have had time to answer before the jolly old fellow ushered them into the jeeps, and Shuro made sure to be beside Ms. Jansen. He listened only vaguely to the jolly old fellow saying things like ‘the likes you’ve never seen.’
She stepped out of the helicopter and walked to the jeep, exchanging pleasantries as best as she could without losing her cool. The odds that any of these fictional people saw their presence as something amiss was low, so the best thing to do was to do as the Romans do until she could figure out how to get out of there. Preferably with life and limbs intact. Lovisa nodded in reply to Shuro’s question, subconsciously putting a bit of distance between them. Even if he didn’t intend it, towering over her did little to calm her nerves. Shrugging off her reaction, she pulled her auburn hair back into a low ponytail before climbing into the first jeep. “And you?”
Her ears picked up Mr. Hammond’s spiel and after realizing where they would eventually head next, she edged over to a position near the driver’s seat. “Say, could we stop at the center? The flight was running behind and I am running late for my appointment with Dr. Wu.” It was total bull, but any detour after the brontosaurus reveal was an ideal one. Last thing she needed to see was eviscerated goat before dinner. “If Mr. Shizimu does not mind the detour, we can meet up with Hammond at the start of the informational ride.”
He nodded back, wishing things would move a bit slower and more private so this could even be discussed. He sat back slightly when she began talking to the... well, Shuro had trouble thinking of them as people. They weren’t really real were they? They were fictional. All of this was fictional. Except for him. And possibly Ms. Jansen. He felt better telling himself that as the jeeps began to make their way through jungle. Shuro did not like jungles.He especially disliked dinosaur infested jungles. They carried prehistoric diseases.
“Ah, yes,” Shuro agreed with her. “I have no problems with allowing Ms. Jansen to keep her appointment.” Shuro was assuming ‘Ms’ and not ‘Mrs’ or even ‘Doctor,’ which, in this place, was likely. Perhaps even he was supposed to be a doctor. He would feel better if he knew exactly what his role here was so he could play to it. Though he felt like he sort of knew but couldn’t place it? He almost didn’t want to know, that felt like admitting he belonged here in anyway.
The driver seemed to comply to the request, and Shuro leaned back in his seat and looked out the window for a moment, naturally searching the jungle for rampaging dinosaurs. Then he turned to Lovisa and spoke in a quiet voice, because clearly much needed to be said. “I vote we never leave the center. Acquire food and drink and hold up in their clean room until help comes.”
As she predicted, the jeeps slowed to a stop and could see the elongated necks and wide bodies of the brontosaurs grazing in the far distance. While a majority of the characters looked and reacted to live dinosaurs with awe and emotion, she felt nothing but dread. The mathematician with the caustic warning was probably in one of the jeeps somewhere looking as disenchanted by the existence of extinct animals as she did. These things no longer existed for a reason. Listening to Shuro’s plan, she firmly shook her head. In her mind, it was the worst thing they could do. Short of getting him out of his loungewear, they needed to stay close to the plot...or at least the characters that were certain to make it off of the island at the end of the story.
“I would agree with you but,” Lovisa paused, looking around them to insure that everyone was more enamored with their surroundings instead of their conversation. “The majority of the survivors were outside of the center. We’d be sitting ducks for raptors at the center.”
Admittedly... those were dinosaurs. Extinct, fictional, and mind boggling weird... those were dinosaurs. And massive and, Shuro knew, dirty and diseased and long, long dead as they ought to be, but he was impressed. The Thoth part of him was impressed by the possible science of it. It was... well it seemed very real to him, it looked real, the air smelled (unfortunately) real. The blue sky on the other side of the massively large necks and comically small heads of those dinosaurs was as blue as any sky Shuro had seen before. This was as close to real dinosaurs as a real, living person was ever likely to get... and they distracted Shuro for a moment away from what she was saying. But he had heard her and turned away from the dinosaurs to her, eyes a little wide in excitement.
“Ah, well,” he said, because it had been awhile since he’d seen the movie but he supposed she was right. “Then there is one thing you should know and one thing we should figure out. You should know... I don’t do well with jungles.” He had his very serious lawyer face on for that, because it was an unavoidable fact of life and she was going to have to learn and accept that fact. “And we need to figure out how susceptible we are to the narrative. Because we are not main characters, cute, or white. So most narratives would kill us off rather quickly no matter where we are.”
The brontosaurs were a distracting sight to behold, she almost wanted to step out of the car with the paleoscientists to marvel in a sight that could only exist in fiction. Being present in this fictional world was disconcerting to say the least, no shock and awe could do away with the feeling that she and Shuro did not belong there. Holding onto that feeling, however, was helping to keep her grounded and focused. Getting too immersed in whatever role that was given to them let itself to being as expendable to the story as the other man suggested.
“Thanks for the warning,” Lovisa grinned, then smirked at the possible detriments that came with them being inserted into the plot. “On the plus side, neither of us are wearing red.” Leaning back against the seat as the jeep began to roll to its next destination, she calculated her odds. “I would say I was cute, and a woman with a knowledgeable trade. Therefore, if I can become a love interest to the leads, it might work to our advantage. Damsel is too risk adverse...” Though initially spoken in jest, the more she contemplated it the more she took the idea as a valid possibility. If they weren’t main characters in this story, find a way to place themselves in the story that demanded that they make it off of the island.
Shuro likewise leaned back into the seat as the vehicle began to move again. It was very odd, being the only two to know what was coming. Shuro had grown reasonably capable of controlling his fear, but this screamed more ‘immediate death’ than anything anything he had faced for awhile. Shuro did not, obviously, want to be torn apart or sneezed on by dinosaurs, and it only seemed like a absolute certainty at this point.
“I meant cute as in the children,” he explained. “And first we should determine if we have to obey the narrative at all. The fact we are going to the center immediately would suggest possibly not.”
He folded his arms over his chest, thinking, wanting to figure as much out now before they reconnected with the group. “We should also determine if any abilities work here. I don’t know what you can do but my artifact seemed to work. And, possibly, the best way out of this would be to determine how we got into it. How does one enter a movie literally? Or, well, a book given the appearances of the principle characters.”
As a child whose father knew how the world was going to end, knowing the fates of their ‘co-stars’ did not seem too unusual for Lovisa. Not knowing what lay ahead for her in this tale was far more disconcerting, she hoped they had at least some chance of controlling their fate in this universe. “There are probably some limits, I’d imagine if we try to head to the docks while the ship is still there we might end up pulling a Nedry.” Judging by his earlier response she surmised that he was familiar with Jurassic Park, another comforting fact that neither would have to pause to fill each other in on crucial plot points.
“I can connect doorways like portals. I’m not powerful enough that I could open a door for us out of here, it’s only small distances. That is, even if I can use it here.” She had her sword in her bag, condensed into the form of a paperweight. Even if she had the sword in its rightful form, she doubted the blade would cut through a dinosaur. “I’m not sure how or who put us in here, but if it was a god they must have a great sense of humor.”
Shuro wasn’t that familiar with Jurassic Park. He had seen it once years and years ago. It was not his genre, it was not of any interest to him aside from the fact that Jeff Goldblum was in it and who doesn’t love Jeff Goldblum? Nobody. So he was working on that far distant memory which, for Shuro was still pretty good. He did not remember Wayne Knight’s character’s name, but he was also clever and figured that must be the Nedry she was referring to. No, from what he recalled, the movie rewarded the innocent and the well meaning. The frightened and the greedy were punished. He’d have to keep that in mind.
His other ability, aside from the artifact, was that he had perfect balance, which was normally not useful aside from the fact he never fell over. In an attempt to reassure himself he could be useful, he reached into his pocket for his artifact again, but instead found his iPhone. His real one. He sort of stared at it for a moment and then showed it to Lovisa. “This movie came out in 1993, the book before that. My iPhone has a signal...”
”Who could we call?” She asked, thinking that if Shuro could dial out, there weren’t many who would believe people could be trapped in a work of fiction. If they did, what could they do on that side that would help to get them out? “I’m holding out hope that your phone has divine reception. Does it?”
The jeep pulled up to a stop in front of the center, and after receiving quick directions from the driver within the lobby, the pair was left to find Dr. Wu on their own. Sighing as she glanced up at the dinosaur skeleton reconstructed before the staircase, Lovisa waited until the driver was out of view before speaking again. “Should we split up and talk to as many characters as we can before the road tour, or stay together?”
Shuro’s first instinct was to try and call his mother. He pressed the familiar buttons to call her and it didn’t even ring. Taking the phone away from his ear he frowned at it. “I don’t think I can call out,” he said, using his thumb to get around in it. “But I seem to have access to godling-net,” he raised an eyebrow. “That could be incredibly useful.” He almost didn’t feel like he needed to say why. It could, at the very least, help them acquire information. It could also help provide for some sanity. And, if need be, they could get messages to people they needed to before the dinosaurs got to them. That was the declining optimism scale.
He somewhat reluctantly got out of the jeep and walked into the building. It was still clean and orderly and quite perfect. Shuro had seen dinosaur skeletons before, and he thought for moment if it’d been a realistic model, it may have acted like one of those owls people put in yards to scare other predators away. That would have been nice.
“I think we should stick together, it’ll limit the people we interact with, but it’ll allow us to both receive the same information.” Shuro said, looking around at everything as they passed. His mind was doing something odd, strange tactical things. Like noticing fire extinguishers, and security cameras. He began to think about things like ‘reptiles are attracted to heat, set up a controlled fire away from the center, cool the center down.’ His mind did not commonly think like that, but today it was. “I am not sure what the characters can tell us that would be useful, except security. Unless the reason we are here is among them.”
“We should send word out as soon as we can,” she replied, having a slightly connected phone was far better than none at all. “There might be someone who has an idea about what’s going on.”
“In some ways, we might know more than they do,” Lovisa noted with a frown. Having the foresight about the outcome could be a dangerous thing, especially if they attempted to meddle with the plot too much. She walked down the hallways, getting a feel of the layout on the off chance that they may needed to escape. Walking up to a doorway, she first turned the knob to see whether it was locked, then tightened her grip around the knob. Trying to make a connection to Dr. Wu’s office, she could sense that the room behind the closed door no longer belonged to the supply closet, but it didn’t feel exactly where she wanted to be.
Sighing, she stepped away from the door, severing the connection without attempting to open the portal. “A crapshoot,” she concluded. “I can’t pinpoint what’s on the other side.” Lovisa hugged herself as she continued down the hallway, turning at the right juncture that would lead them to Dr. Wu’s office. The man would not have anything worth keeping, but they could hang around in time to see a raptor’s birth.
Shuro nodded, agreeing with her about contacting someone about what was going on. “Looks like I’ll update my journal from Jurassic Park, that’s new,” he said, slightly sad that he didn’t have much time to include much about the marvelous TV show Dinosaurs which aired from 1991 to 1994 and included a line of toys from McDonalds and utilized some of the best puppet work he’d ever seen.
Once he finished updating his journal he slid the iPhone back into his pocket, not wanting any of the characters to see it and wonder what it was. If they were smart enough to wonder something like that. He looked around at everything he could see, taking it in for future reference, noting how detailed everything was, if this was some of illusion it was a damn fine one.
“I wonder if it would be possible to send out a distress call now...” he didn’t remember how the movie actually ended, but he assumed some help arrived and safely removed people off the island. Perhaps they could decrease the time it took for that to happen.
”Posting from Jurassic Park,” she echoed Shuro’s last statement, the incredulity of the statement nearly knocking out the wind from her sails. With a breathless laugh, she pinched the inside of her arm, hoping on the off chance that this insanity was a dream. “There’s a first for everything.”
Waiting for Shuro to finish his update, she turned her eyes to the binder in her hand, opening the cover to examine the information contained within. A genetic sequence that she had only gave a passing glance to stuck to her memory like a catchy tune in her head. The filler DNA that they had used, was it amphibian? What did they use again...?
Shaking her head to keep her mind on the present and not on a piece of science that wasn't real, she squared her shoulders and snapped the binder shut. "Nonetheless, we should get this meeting with Dr. Wu over with. Perhaps it will help clue us in what our purpose is for being here."