xp_logs | This Savage Land - Part One: Arrival

Friday afternoon, our tour group arrives at the Mesozoic Biofloral Conservatory, and prepares for their tour into the prehistoric jungle.

Sooraya stepped off the bus and onto the hard-packed ground, her wide-eyed gaze immediately going to the looming wall in front of her. It followed the gentle slope all the way to the top, noticing the few fronds and branches that stuck up above it and then dropping back to the ground. Oh my. It was very big.

Turning back to her fellow classmates, the Afghan girl waited for them to finish filing off the bus, hiding her hands in her sleeves as she did so. While she was excited about this new adventure, she was also a bit apprehensive, and it helped to have familiar faces there.

Angel jumped off the bus behind Sooraya and grinned, scooting over to make room for everyone else. The last time she'd gone backpacking, it had involved a group of girl scouts, lots of marshmallows and the guides scaring them so badly they hadn't been able to sleep all night. So, this trip could only be that much better than the last one.

Turning, she giggled and took a quick group picture, looking innocent at some of blinks to clear the flash from their eyes.

Crystal exited the bus on foot. It was time for another field trip. It was a field trip, after all, even if people wanted to avoid using that particular phrasing. People seemed excited; perhaps this one could be exciting without invoking the dreaded Field Trip Curse. Lots of different and unusual plants… she would have to take notes for her mother.

Mondo was almost visibly vibrating he was so excited. Dinosaurs and all things dino had been a major focus of his early years and now he was gonna go check out their environment! Way cool. He climbed off the bus, straightened out his signal-flare-orange with neon-blue and arctic-white tropical flowers on it shirt, and meandered over towards Sooraya and Angel. "Way cool, dudes!" he told the girls with a double thumbs-up.

"At least he's stopped singing Madonna." Kane grumbled, leaving what had been the longest short bus trip of his life. Mondo was a pretty decent kid, but sometimes his overly enthusiastic cheerfulness made you want to stuff him into the trunk for a few weeks. He could only hope that there were not going to be an snack huts filled with sugar and caffeine during the tour. "Tell me everyone knows the buddy system, right?"

"I know!" Angel grinned. "That's where we stick with someone or else we get strung up by our ankles in the forest, right?" She held her hands up, trying not to laugh. "And I promise to not give my chaperones any more heart attacks for the next month or so. Cross my heart, hope to not get eaten by a man-eating...or is that girl-eating? What about fire-eating?...plant."

"No fire. We talked about this." Kane said to her, just knowing that today was bound to end with either a fire extinguisher or a flaming marshmallow involved. He noticed that they were all finally around, and tapped their guide on the shoulder. "I think, and dearly hope, that's everyone. You ready to get started?"

The portly bearded man turned, pushing his sunglasses up onto his forehead to look at Kane and the students. "A-yep!" he announced after a moment's pause, then extended his hand.

"I'm Phil MacDuff, chief botanical engineer here at the Meso. That's the Mesozoic Biofloral Conservatory, but we just call it the Meso. Well, I do. What you're all about to see is twenty-plus years of our work, but almost billions of years of Mother Nature's. We've been privileged enough to give over thirteen thousand extinct species of plant life another shot. Any questions before we get going?"

Angel automatically shook the guides hand before waving her camera at him. "Is photography allowed?" she asked, looking very much that, yes, she wanted it to be allowed. "It's all new and special, yeah, but pictures would be awesome."

Phil nodded, his exuberant smile not leaving his face. "Oh yeah, pictures are cool. You'll have lots of opportunities on the tour and during the campout, I'd imagine. I gotta tell you, I've set up camp a few times out there, and it's like nothing you've ever seen. Nothing anyone's ever seen, really. You kids are in for a real treat. Anyway, shall we get going?"

Mondo bounced excitedly. "Aw man!" he said, lapsed firmly back into SoCal Surfer-speak. Giant ferns! Tree-things! Dino-chow! He couldn't wait to get going, to see all of these new and fascinating things. It would be like a childhood dream come true for him. "Let's GO!"

*****

Kyle stretched his arms over his head, and cracked his neck. "Hello outside of the bus. Why yes, I'm very happy to see you. My legs are totally happy, since the left one was, you know, dead asleep for the last half an hour." He snickered at himself, and popped his shoulders and elbows in rapid succession. "What?"

Jennie shook her head and rolled her eyes. "That is kinda gross, just so you know." She smothered a yawn. She'd been semi-comatose for the last half of the trip. "Yes. Fun times. Let's see the really really big plants. I am looking forward to the variety of ferns."

Marie's eyes were wide as she glanced around. Unlike Jennie, she was fascinated by the immense wildlife surrounding them. "Ah dunno, it's kinda neat. Isn't like anything Ah've ever seen before." She glanced at her charges and felt a moment of anxiety about being responsible for a field trip, though it quickly passed. The curse was just a joke and besides, what could go wrong in the middle of nowhere surrounded by plants?

"It isn't like anything that anyone alive has ever seen before," came a voice from behind the group, British accent sharpening the words. The speaker's smile, however, softened his tone as he walked up and indicated the large doors with a wave of his hand. "I'm Dr. Wyndham, though feel free to call me Eddie. I'd like to be the first to welcome you to the Conservatory. The result of over a decade of genetic and botanical engineering, we have not only brought the flora of a forgotten age to our own time, we have made it flourish. You should be proud to be the first guests to witness the final result - or as final a result as a living creation can be. Is this your entire group?" Eddie asked, peering over to take in the last of the students exiting the bus.

"Alas, no," Marius said, shaking his head with great sorrow. "Powers far greater than ours have deemed forcible separation the only manner in which control may be assured an' that." Privately he had some speculation this had something to do with an administrative decision, previous field trips, and a decision that all potential losses should be kept contained. He would have been irked at the constraints of discretion, but in this case he was reasonably sure similar thoughts had already occurred to every other member of the group. Lifting one hand to stroke his chin, Marius studied the doors with an appraising eye. "So this would be one such structure beyond even a name of its own, relying entirely on the grace of a single capitalized letter to denote its importance. Drawing from surprisingly abundant experience, I cannot help but notice a curious lack of the normal geometrically arranged glass. Should the remnants of forgotten ages be allowed exposure to open air?"

Wyndham's brow furrowed slightly at Marius' little speech, glancing at the other students of the little group and wondering if the dark haired student was putting on a show for the girl's attention or if this was how he always acted. He hoped it was the former, but something about the boy's effortless attitude suggested to him it was the latter. Marie just shrugged at him and smiled apologetically.

"To address your first concern, what you see before you is the Mesozoic Biofloral Conservatory. A long name, and also somewhat of a misnomer, as we have plants from multiple eras, including the Paleozoic, Triassic, and pre-Cambrian periods. And as to the second, you are quite correct young man. This is an open-air sanctuary. The designers felt it allowed for more aesthetic look, and I have to admit I agree." Eddie paused to smile at the group. "But you're concerns for the plant life aren't unjustified. In a normal open-air environment, even a minute particle of dust could result in the death of some of our carefully recreated species. One of the things you'll see on our tour is the revolutionary mass air cleaners that we have designed - completely solar-powered and self-sustaining. Our only paean to the modern era amidst our prehistoric paradise, but a necessary spoiler to the illusion to maintain the health of the vegetation."

"So... basically, tons of plants around as the same time as dinosaurs?" Kyle asked. "And even though there's no roof, you guys have air filters everywhere?" He looked around at the plants. It smelled... funny.. here, but he figured that was the plants. Prehistoric plants would have different smells, that just made sense. And probably needed some kind of strange fertilizers, since it wasn't like they were likely to find dino poop anywhere. "If I make Jurassic Park jokes, I'm getting things thrown at me, right?" he asked, looking at Jennie and Marius. "Cause if not, I've got a couple I thought of already."

"By all means, feel free. But know that any an' all shall lead to speculation your primary interest in such would be a chance encounter with one of those strategically positioned feeder-goats the park so thoughtfully provided for its fauna." Marius laced his hands behind his head and cocked a thick eyebrow at the guide. "Are there no animals at all in this self-sustaining ecosystem, then?"

Jennie kept silent, looking over the walls at the place where their camping trip of fun was going to begin. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something felt off. She squinted and tilted her head, checking to see if there was anything that looked wrong. There was slightly more red than normal, but unfortunately once a month her powers would do that anyway. She turned to their guide. "Yeah, one would think that with it being open air birds could get in or something. I mean, there's just no way there wouldn't be any animals at all."

Eddie smiled and shook his head. "An astute observation. We do the best we can to discourage the outside animal life from settling here, as it disrupts the delicate balance of the ecosystem, but there is a small animal population within the conservatory." Gesturing at a path, he waited for Marie and the students to begin walking before he resumed the tour, pointing out several of the more unusual plants.

"Small animals?" Kyle said. "So, bugs and birds and stuff? Rabbits and all?" He didn't smell rabbits, but the air cleaners might have had something to do with that, he figured. "How do you keep them from eating the plants?" He bent to peer at an odd-looking plant, with a large white cone-shaped pod in the middle of the fern-like leaves. "And if they are eating the plants, how do you keep the birds from, you know, spreading seeds?" He'd paid -some- attention to Ororo in the greenhouse.

Marie smiled at Kyle, proud to see him asking questions that meant he'd obviously been paying attention. She turned to their guide as he paused to look at the plant that had caught Kyle's attention.

"The larger the animal, the more control we have over it," Eddie explained. "So don't expect to see any of those animals, except for the occasional bird. Also, these plants require a special soil and much care to get to the state they're in now, so even if somehow a bird was able to eat and transport some of the seeds, they wouldn't be able to survive outside of the Conservatory." Reaching out to caress the plant Kyle was bending to look at, Eddie's voice took on a somewhat reverent tone. "I see the Cycad has caught your attention young man. We have high hopes for this little fellow - experimental cures for Parkinson's and ALS are currently being developed in our labs."

The guide's handling of the plant conveyed respect, even tenderness. Because he was aware some of the mansion's younger and more easily scandalized residents were present Marius tried hard to limit his thoughts to the more generous end of the understatement 'Well, he seems quite passionate about his work.'

"I feel a bit of unease at the thought of bumbling through a potential cure for cancer, though I expect if they could survive the dinosaurs this particular selection shan't find much hardship from the likes of a campfire sing-along." Marius gave Jennie a sidelong glance. "Break no trees."

The girl raised a sardonic eyebrow in reply. "I shall try my very hardest," she said dryly. Jennie wasn't sure what exactly was so special about this place. Big giant prehistoric plants, along with an overnight camping trip among the fern, yippee. "So, how did you get these things to grow? Find a prehistoric magnolia trapped in amber and clone it?" she asked their guide.

Marie cast a warning glance at Marius. "Ah think if we all treat the plants with the respect they deserve, they'll be fine. Right?" she said turning to their guide, who she realized was probably wondering what short straw he'd drawn to end up with this particular group.

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, the smile on his face wavering for an instant. "Just stay on the preapproved paths and everything should be fine. Now as to your question young lady," he said, turning to Jennie. "It wasn't anything as simple as that. We spliced the genes of currently existing plants, learning how to regress them to their status in prehistoric times."

"So, there's no giant man-eating plants?" Kyle asked, grinning widely. "Because I dunno, that could be awesome. Unless they ate me. That would be the suck." He looked around mock-nervously. "I don't want to be eaten by a plant..."

"Let's save the unlikely musings for the substance of the actual tour," Marius said as he reached out to smack Kyle casually upside the head. Physical violence had little meaning for a flatmate with a healing factor, but it was the thought that counted. He wondered idly if it had been any coincidence the Conservatory had intentionally assigned the publicly acknowledged all-mutant tour group to a mutant guide. Not that it made terribly much difference. Friendly atmosphere or not, genetic status seemed a crass thing to point out in public --particularly since there was always that tricky question whether the mutant himself was aware of it. The guide's power didn't feel very expressive to him, whatever it was. And anyway, a living was a living. Marius shrugged to himself. It probably wasn't important.

"Right," Marius said, clapping his hands together with finality, "Let's be onto the thrilling outdoorsmanship, then."

*****

Forge rolled his shoulders as he unloaded the last of the packs of camping gear off the tour bus and onto the motorized carts that the Conservatory's guides had driven up to meet them. The afternoon was scheduled to be taken up with a nature hike deep into this bioengineered prehistoric park, followed by a campout at a pre-arranged site, and then departure the next day.

While he didn't personally care a whit for the botanical aspect of the park, the engineering feats it must have taken to organize something of this magnitude intrigued Forge, and he didn't mind being drafted as a chaperone if it meant he got to come along. Pulling the folded list out of his pocket, he checked the names of the students he would be responsible for.

Gulping slightly, he put on his best "responsible grownup" expression and walked over to where the three of them were still standing by the bus.

Yvette was peering around curiously from her position behind Tommy and Laurie, and her eyes brightened at the sight of Forge coming over. "We are to be going to be seeing the park now, yes?" she asked eagerly, the whole idea of spending the weekend camping out something she had been looking forward to. As much as she loved the school, Yvette enjoyed being outside, and places where there weren't many people meant she could relax and not worry.

Raising an eyebrow at the expression on Forge's face, Tommy tried not to laugh, though he did give a small smirk. He still couldn't believe this guy was their chaperone, even if they were probably the three least likely to run off and get into trouble. He had rejoined the girls after also helping with the gear under the bus and looked to Forge expectantly at Yvette's question. "I believe that is what we are here for right?"

Laurie smiled shyly at Forge, before blushing and looking at the others. She hadn't yet had a chance to really talk to him since he'd returned from his trip to Muir and she still wasn't sure exactly where they stood with each other. Maybe she'd get a chance to talk to him during this trip? She pulled herself out of her own inner world in order to listen to his answer to Tommy and Yvette's questions.

Forge nodded to the three, pointing over to where the rest of their peers were gathered by the slowly opening gates to the park. "Right," he agreed, checking the brochure he'd been given. "Through genetic engineering and botanical cloning, the Mesozoic Biofloral Conservatory has recreated a pan-historical... - what in the heck does 'pan-historical' mean? - a pan-historical recreation of a time long past, before the dawn of man..." He tucked the brochure in his pocket and shrugged. "Goes on to mention the thousands of types of plant life that used to exist but are extinct now, standard protect-your-environment speech, etc. So, who's up for taking a walk through time, eh?"

"Me!" Yvette exclaimed, excitedly, and then ducked her head a little shyly as she realized she was being perhaps a little too... hyper, she believed the word was, according to Angel. But perhaps she was entitled - a weekend outside, three of her 'safe' people for company, Tommy out of the school grounds and Laurie not hiding away from Mr. Forge, for whatever reason... "Please, yes?" she added a little less exuberantly, but not by much.

Forge chuckled, patting Yvette on the head with his metal hand, barely feeling the tiny pinpricks of her razor-sharp hair. "Well, at least someone else is excited about the miracles of science. And I think we're all mature enough to not need the holding-hands buddy system, right?"

Tommy rolled his eyes at Forge but still couldn't help smile at Yvette's enthusiasm. He wanted to make a quip about no roll call, but he was still kinda of nervous being off mansion grounds which hindered his retorts. Also, he was sensing something going on with Laurie and Forge. This would be interesting. "Come on Yvette. Let's go see what prehistoric apples look like." Figuring someone better start, he took a few steps towards the gardens.

Yvette caught Tommy's glance at Forge and then Laurie's blush, and barely restrained her own amused expression. All this boy and girl stuff was contagious, it seemed. "It is being a pity that there are being no animals to be eating the apples, yes?" she asked Tommy, scampering to join him. Perhaps there was no need to hold hands, but she took his any way; she was so glad to have him here. "Come on, Laurie!" she called over her shoulder to her roommate.

"Okay, okay. I'm coming. Although, if some big bearded guy tells you to stay away from the apples, I'd suggest listening to him." Laurie replied with a grin, following behind Yvette with only a brief glance at Forge. "Come on, Oh Captain our captain."

"...oh Captain?" Forge stammered momentarily, then composed himself. "Right. Okay, they're starting to open the gates. Who's up for some science?"