Chapter 28: Jurassic Technology

Rex opens up to his wife about his writer's block. 'I sit in front of the computer, and nothing comes to me."

"You wrote really great stories when we were in school," she answers, "I think you're just putting too much pressure on yourself. Let it go for awhile, and it will come to you." Sh could just as easily apply her advice to herself, she's been fretting nonstop over her inability to find a solution to Rory's problem.

Rex decides to give Tamsin's suggestion a try, and the next day instead of sitting in front of his computer waiting for words that don't come, he goes jogging.

As he jogs he picks up stones and gems he finds along the path. He's always collected these kind of things without much thought about doing anything with his growing collection, but now an idea strikes him as he lifts the piece of space rock. His collection could be more than just junk strewn around the house, it could be organized, catalogued and put on public display.

While rex is out jogging and formulating his new plan, Tamsin has been busy experimenting with the captured spirits she's collected with her banshee banisher. She's come up with a new formula that temporarily transform her into a ghost. This is a major breakthrough; she needs only to reverse this process to return Rory back to life, right?

While in her temporary ghostly form, Tamsin has a bit of fun scaring her father.

"Tamsin! No!" Rex shouts in despair when he comes home and finds his wife is a ghost.

"I'm not dead," she soothes him, "It's just the temporary effect of a potion I created."

"You scared me," he sighs, "I thought I had lost you." The effect wears off moments later, and Rex tells Tamsin about his plan to build a museum to house the family's collection of gems, insects, sculptures and other oddities.

Rex converts and old farmhouse to a museum, and adds a modern new gallery to the property to house the high tech collection. He calls it The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Corinne's invention get their own gallery space in the old farmhouse.

And the gems and metals are displayed in the next room.

On the second floor he's displayed a variety of oddities and interesting artifacts, including some spirit jars donated by Tamsin, and an aquarium.

The sculpture garden goes in the space between in the old and new buildings. In the newer building, Rex has filled one gallery with high tech gadgets like the hover bed. The second gallery remains empty, ready for whatever next takes his fancy.

With her mother's help, Tamsin built a spirit scanner to help her detect spirits and ghosts in the area.

With her new device, she is able rouse more communicative ghosts rather than just the howling spirits hat flit about and haunt objects. These ghosts deserve better than just being vacuumed up in her banshee banisher, so Tamsin spends time getting to know them, soothing the worldly concerns that keep them tied to this plane, and convincing them to move on. Sh also questions them about ways to help a ghost trapped between life and death, ideally to push him into the 'life' direction, but if death is Rory's only option, it might preferable to his current state.

"Death Fish," the apparition says, "You need death fish."

Tamsin can't get anything else out of her, and lets her go.

Her next haunting is at the old Goolsby place. Her mother's ex-husband Raymond, born a Goolsby, now lives here, but he wasn't born here. His family had left this place generations earlier and it's currently owned by Lalita Ramaswami, who Raymond Goolsby married after he and Corinne divorced.
Tamsin looks at the empty sprit jars in the haunted work room and wonders if one of her ancestors had been Ghost Hunter.
The ghost she has to deal with here knows nothing about the history of this house or the family that built it, and when asked about Rory's dilemma, he only says, "Life fruit."

Now that he's an elder, Darryl starts freaking out about social security.

Using the essences of her collected spirits with death fish and life fruit, Tamsin has come up with a new potion. She calls Rory and invites him over, planning to try it on him, but it's not enough. Autumn had fished up several death fish, and Corinne had plenty of life fruit leftover from when she created Tomas, so Tamsin asks her father to use his incredible cooking skills to come up with a recipe using those two ingredients.

"It doesn't sound very appetizing," Darryl remarks, "Death fish, bleck."

"You don't have to eat it," Tamsin answers.

Darryl is very confident in his cooking abilities, even when faced with the challenge of making something with such unusual ingredients.

When Rory shows up, Tamsin tells him she's finally done it. 'I haven't tested it, of course," she warns him, "There's no one but you to test it on."

Rory has eaten dirt on a dare many times in his life, so he's not afraid to try some weird fishy fruity dish even if it emits a weird glow.

The dish takes effect immediately. The weird glow that came from it is now coming from Rory.

And then he's alive again. Life rocks!

Then Tamsin tells him to drink the pink stuff in the beaker. Being brought back to life hasn't changed Rory's daredevil nature, and he chugs the potion back.

And he starts to sparkle.

"I'm..young again," he says, realizing what's happened to him, "I never thought you'd actually be able to do anything. And here I am, alive and young."

"I'm glad I could fix my great-great-grandfather's mistake," Tamsin says. And she's also proud of herself, discovering a way to resurrect a ghost and reverse aging. But she'll be keeping her achievement to herself; if MorcuCrop got hold of this research, who knows what kind of self-serving, evil use they'd put it to. She was glad to use it to fix their mistake, but she'll never use this formula again, or ever publish her findings. "Whatever you do, Rory, don't tell the MorcuCrop people what I've done for you."

"Are you kidding? I'm never going into that place again!"

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Challenge Notes:
With The Museum of Jurassic Technology built and purchased, the Awesome requirement is fulfilled.
I'm still adding gems and metals to the collection, and I plan to create a large display of space rocks as well. I'm also going to have Rex muck around with using the display case to make big gems & skull cuts. Chances are he'll never make much money as a collector, as I'm keeping just about everything he collects. But even though the family spent half its wealth on the museum, they are not at all in need of his income.
I'm a bit disappointed you can't put insects on the display cases. I do plan to add an insect collection to the museum. I also need to get more pictures.

There is a real life Museum of Jurassic Technology here in Los Angeles. It is the inspiration for this museum.
The architecture of my museum is inspired by this Colognese Mill Bread Museum.
I loved the way it incorporated an old structure with a more modern one. It seems so appropriate for Riverblossom Hills.

I did have to move Rory into the house temporarily to get him to eat the ambrosia and drink the potion. But he brought nothing to the family & moved back out immediately afterwards. I'd been putting the pieces together for this for some time, getting Autumn to fish for death fish, having Darryl learn the ambrosia recipe, getting the Young Again potion. Now Rory is alive and a YA, and free to live a whole new life. When still a ghost, he adopted another kid recently, so he's got a teenage son right now.