The Hacker: A Jurassic Park Story

The Hacker

By: J. Dill

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Most people will remember Dear Dr. Malcolm’s words to my grandfather: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” However, the sentiment that Dr. Malcolm related shortly after that seemed to be of much greater significance, yet few recall these words today: “What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.”

Although most forgot, I am grateful that my grandfather remembered. He reflected on much of what was said to him throughout his life and shared it with me, albeit somewhat incoherently as he aged. I don’t know if the warnings ever sunk in truly for him, but from the moment he told me about them, they were all I could think about.

Although I share Dr. Malcolm’s concerns, I also disagree entirely. In fact, there was nothing unnatural at all about what happened to my brother, me, or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. For billions of years, this planet has run on the notion of “survival of the fittest.” And humans, for all their intelligence, have yet to collectively rise above misguided survival instincts. The only difference, perhaps, between us and animals is that we create simply for the purposes of control, and then when we inevitably fail, slip back into the same game this planet has always played, try to survive again, no matter who we step on along the way.

Man vs. Beast, Predator vs. Prey, this has always been the way, and now that I am forty-five years old, these primitive and worn patterns are clearer to me than ever. But I suppose that I am ahead of myself. The last you probably heard, I was recovering from an impossible, yet very real trauma of surviving attacks from multiple dinosaurs inside a park designed by someone who was supposed to protect me. Lost in assumptions that I had probably, “lost my mind.”

Those who imagine people who are on the “post” side of trauma indeed often only think of what was lost. So if you believe that my mind has evaded me, aren’t you also curious about the other things I found while searching for it?