What I wrote last night | Isla Nublar #30

With another sigh, Loki slowed a bit more and turned to follow her lead in the other direction away from the boardwalk.  Thor and Jane walked a distance behind them, but never rushed to catch up as they found their way to the raised monorail platform.  Even as they stopped to look out over the river below, the other two kept their distance, and the hopes of the four of them having fun together instantly evaporated.  Looking for anything to do, Darcy pulled the park brochure out of her handbag and flipped through the pages until she found something relevant.

“Huh,” she said as she read over the page.  “The river’s man-made.  It’s all pumps and expensive water filters and stuff.”

She tried wrap her head around the information, but it was written in a way that made her think it had been dumbed down, and in the process all of the actual information got taken out.

“I don’t understand this,” she said.  “It’s talking about reverse osmosis and ions, and what?”

“Huh?”  Loki leaned over to read the page.  “This is crazy aquarium people stuff.”

She watched him struggling to figure out what information was trying to be conveyed, but it seemed like the park was just as dodgy about their fish as they were their dinosaurs.

“Right,” Loki said finally.  “I don’t do fish, but I think it’s a needlessly expensive RO/DI system.  They take water from the ocean, take the salt out, filter it, and then distil it again.  What?  Why?”

He flipped over to another page, before belligerently flipping back, sneering at the page the entire time.

“Just to put it all onto the ground and get it dirty again?” Darcy asked.

She looked back out at the river, trying to figure out why it needed to be filtered at all.

“It does seem really wide for such a small island though,” she said.

From their perch on the monorail platform, they had a clear view of the river as it forked, one branch forming a small lake before draining into the sea.

“Do you think there’s anything natural on this island?” Loki asked.

Darcy laughed, both agreeing with him, and glad he’d found something a little less frustrating to be annoyed at.  She left him to sneer at the pamphlet and looked around for Thor and Jane, finding them on the other end of the platform.  Part of her wanted to drag Loki over so they could actually stay together as a group, but she’d finally got him into a marginally better mood.  Keeping them apart was the only way she’d avoid having to witness a flat-out brawl by the end of the day.  But Loki had promised to be nice, and Darcy was sick of spending her vacation separate.  Against everything that told her it was a bad idea, she took a deep breath and pulled Loki along the platform.  Surprisingly he didn’t protest as she led him straight to Thor and Jane, continuing to flip through the pamphlet even as Thor stepped away.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jane asked, looking out over the sloping landscape.

“I know,” Darcy said.

She wanted to tell Jane that the river was fake, but decided not to spoil her immersion.  Even if it was man-made, it was still pretty, and the lake still sparkled brightly under the late-morning sun like a real like would.

“There’s dinosaurs swimming in the river,” Darcy said, looking back over at Loki while he shook his head at the pamphlet.  “Swimming like the ones in the tank, but a lot smaller.”

“How do they keep them from getting into the ocean?” asked Jane, looking at Loki as well.  “Do they say anything about that in there?”

Loki continued to shake his head.  “It’s all lies and deceit,” he said, slapping it shut and finally handing it back.