Gratituya by, Ashley

  

Charlie Bimby is a 35 year old stranded on the island of Gratituya. How did he end up on this island alone? Well rewinding, Charlie has always been a thrill seeker and a somewhat curious man. Charlie, originally from Australia, moved to Costa Rica at the age of 25 to live with his uncle who’s a scientist. His Uncle Richard was working on a top secret experiment the public couldn’t know about. Of course, this bothered Charlie because not even he could know about this experiment. All Charlie knew was this experiment was taking place on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. Uncle Richard had told Charlie that he and a group of scientists were paying a visit to this island for two weeks to do “research” but they never returned! Charlie was then determined to find the location of this island and see what was going on.

  It is 10:00am, Sunday, April 3^rd; Charlie gets out of bed and eats breakfast which consists of two waffles with some fresh fruit. He then showers and gets dressed in his usual fitting, denim jeans, a pair of vans, and a solid color shirt, which is blue today. He messes with his ultra-dark hair that falls just above his dark brown eyes. Charlie grabs a light jacket and heads to his missing uncle’s laboratory located in the mountains of Costa Rica. Rummaging through the lab Charlie finds test tubes, as he swipes his hair out of his face; he reads the tube labeled “Dino DNA”. In confusion Charlie continues searching for clues to where his uncle may be and why. He finds a folder that reads “Gratituya”. Reading through this folder Charlie realizes Gratituya is the name of the island that his uncle and other scientists ventured off to. His uncle and these scientists were actually trying to unlock a cure for cancer which, he hypothesized, may be found in dinosaur genes. This was possible because the scientists got a hold of a mosquito found in tree sap from over 100 million years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Huge advancements in scientific technology have allowed scientists to extract blood from the mosquito that contained dinosaur DNA in which they added some DNA from frogs to fill in the missing sequences and create dinosaur embryos, which were put into ostrich eggs to hatch. By now Charlie figured these renewed dinosaurs inhabited Gratituya. Now that Charlie knows what could be happening on this island he calls up his close friend, Victor who can get a helicopter to go to the island. He and Victor meet up at a local coffee shop:

  “Can I trust you?” Charlie says hesitantly to Victor.

    Responding fast, Victor says “Yeah, of course what’s up?”

   Looking around the room to be sure no one is listening Charlie tells Victor, “You know how my uncle’s left for a trip about three weeks ago now... well he was only supposed to be gone two weeks and now I feel he may be in trouble”.

Shocked Victor responds, “Whatever you need brother I’m here for you”.

“I need a helicopter”, Charlie demands in a serious tone.

   Victor agrees to help get Charlie to Gratituya and so they fly in his helicopter Monday afternoon. As they approached the island, turbulence began to pick up. It was cloudy out and it seemed that a storm might’ve been forming. As violent winds picked up, Victor yelled to Charlie “Hold on! This chopper is going down”. The helicopter spun out of control and Victor was flung out. The helicopter crash landed and Charlie and Victor were separated. Once Charlie awoke he thought he was all alone. As Charlie got up to look for Charlie he realized the entire island was a jungle. He found himself surrounded by deep green leaves of all different shapes and sizes. The sound of waterfalls echoed throughout the island. Charlie then heard a crunch like the sound of someone munching on dry cereal. He turned around and saw a huge dinosaur. “Shwoop, crackle, crunch”, the leaves went as the dinosaur picked up a pile and ate them with its long mouth. The dinosaur was very wide and a lime green color. Its neck was as long as a deep rollercoaster drop. Charlie stared at the dinosaur in disbelief, his eyes widened and mouth ajar, he whispered to himself, “unbelievable”. Charlie was lucky that the first dinosaur he had encountered was a herbivore. Charlie, strangely enough was not afraid of this creature, but found beauty in it. After acknowledging the dinosaur, Charlie brushed himself off and went on his way to explore the island. It was 2:00 by then and he needed to find a stable place to sleep especially since he had no idea how long he would be there.

   A month passed and during that month Charlie had still not found Victor or his uncle. He did have to battle a T-rex and deal with anything the dinosaur inhabited island threw at him. One day when walking through the island Charlie came across a building structure. It looked like an abandoned lab. Charlie grew curious and excited. This could be where his uncle and the other scientists had gone to! He wanders into the building to find them all crowded in the basement! Charlie’s uncle’s face lit up with glee. They gave each other a huge hug. Charlie’s uncle explained to Charlie that the experiment had gone wrong. All of the dinosaurs on Gratituya were supposed to be female so that there was no way that they could reproduce. It turned out that the frog DNA used to create these dinosaurs came from a type of frog that can reproduce on its own, making it possible for the dinosaurs to reproduce without a mate. Unfortunately, the scientists were unable to get the cure for cancer. Although, Charlie was fascinated by this information all of them were still trapped and were eager to go back home. Charlie then ran back out and found an emergency shelter hidden by tree branches nearby. In there was a telephone which Charlie had to rewire in order to contact help. Just as a rescue helicopter landed on the beach of the island and Charlie, his uncle, and the rest of the scientists were getting ready for takeoff Charlie was saddened that he never found Victor. He had to assume that he might’ve been killed. Once back home Charlie’s uncle did not give up on researching the cure for cancer with his fellow scientists. Charlie was glad to be back home with his uncle and started helping him out in the lab.