Mantah Corporation (S/F)

Mantah Corporation, usually shortened to Mantah Corp, is a parent company with subsidiaries in scientific and engineering fields such as genetic engineering and bionics. It also produces its own lines of products, in addition to the goods and services offered by its subsidiaries.

Sometime from the mid-2000s onward, Mantah Corp has practiced de-extinction, a field of science that was formerly exclusive to its longtime rival International Genetic Technologies (a subsidiary of Masrani Global Corporation). This makes Mantah Corp the second entity known to have succeeded at cloning prehistoric life forms. Unlike InGen, whose history of de-extinction is relatively public, Mantah Corp has yet to disclose any details about the nature and history of its research and instead has remained very clandestine.

History
Pre-1982: Founding of Mantah Corp

At the moment little is known about Mantah Corp’s creation, including its country of origin or the people involved with founding it. Since Mantah is a parent company, not a holding company, it was probably founded first and acquired or founded its subsidiaries at a later date. The company’s name is a play on words, referencing the “manticore,” a fearsome hybrid animal with origins in ancient Persian mythology. Manticores are depicted as having human heads, while the rest of the body resembles a lion’s; it usually has quills like a porcupine or the tail of a scorpion. The word “manticore” literally translates to “man-eater.”

1982-1997: De-extinction tech race

Mantah Corp has made use of corporate spies for much of its history. Through one of these criminal acts, it discovered that a rival company, International Genetic Technologies, was pursuing a seemingly-impossible goal: de-extinction, the act of bringing extinct species back to life. InGen’s goals were astonishingly lofty. Their scientists aimed not only to resurrect extinct species, but to reach farther back in time than experts thought possible. InGen was using Mesozoic-aged amber to obtain fragmentary ancient DNA samples of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. Mantah Corp began pursuing this avenue of research as well, competing with not only InGen but other companies such as BioSyn Genetics to be the first to accomplish, perfect, and profit from de-extinction.

InGen was the first to succeed at the first step, creating a de-extinct life form. An artificial ovum was test-fertilized in 1984, and ancient DNA was first extracted in 1985. Actually collecting enough ancient DNA to build a complete genome was a time-consuming and expensive process, but in 1986, InGen hired geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, who developed creative ways to speed up the process and save money. His secrets were heavily guarded, but they involved the use of modern species as donors to replace decayed segments of ancient genomes. InGen cloned its first dinosaur, a Triceratops, in 1986 as well.

But it was still a long time before de-extinction would turn InGen a profit. Mantah Corp struggled to keep up, as did BioSyn and the other contestants in the tech race. InGen knew that corporate spies were a threat and kept its practices hidden at remote locations. It was building a facility called Jurassic Park in San Diego to house de-extinct animals in the early 1980s, but abandoned it in 1985 as to build on the Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar instead. InGen’s CEO, John Hammond, is said to have relocated because an island location would be grander in scale, but it also meant that corporate spies would have a harder time sneaking in. Research was being conducted elsewhere; the dinosaurs arriving to Isla Nublar by boat were already maturing. It is not known if Mantah Corp, or any of InGen’s rivals, knew where the dinosaurs were being bred.

The first dinosaurs came to Isla Nublar in 1988, by which time Jurassic Park was well under way with plans to open its gates in the early 1990s. InGen, with its head start and the innovative work of Dr. Wu, was winning the tech race. But the Park was experiencing setbacks, some of them quite severe. These included financial, technological, human resources, and biological problems. Finally, an accident occurred in early June 1993 that resulted in the death of a worker, and construction on the Park was halted. A couple weeks later, on June 11, InGen lost contact with Isla Nublar during a tropical storm, and during the power outage an incident occurred resulting in several deaths. Serious damage to the Park meant it would never open. InGen attempted deconstruction, but after numerous injuries to hired workers, this was stopped as well.

Such a blow to InGen was fortuitous for Mantah Corp, but it had been no accident. While InGen’s senior staff were busy attempting to do damage control after the death of the worker, BioSyn had attempted to steal trade secrets by bribing a disgruntled employee. The plan had gone wrong, killing BioSyn’s corporate spy along with the other victims and failing to recover assets that would give BioSyn a jump forward in the tech race. Now, with InGen in chaos and BioSyn having flubbed their efforts to catch up, it seemed as though Mantah Corp had a chance to get ahead.

InGen was down, but not out. Internal struggles slowed it, with Hammond wanting to preserve the dinosaurs’ new habitat and leave them be. Most of the company disagreed, despite their respect for Hammond, since keeping the dinosaurs a protected secret and doing nothing to profit from them was not beneficial to the company. In late 1996, Hammond was fired, with the company’s Chairman of the Board, Peter Ludlow, preparing to take his place. Meanwhile, Dr. Wu continued his research; by May, he had pioneered yet another new field in biotechnology. He and his geneticists successfully combined several genera of flowering plants to create an entirely new genus and species, Karacosis wutansis. No such thing had ever been done before; Wu himself had only just imagined the possibility a couple years ago. This was publicly announced, so even if Mantah Corp had stopped routinely spying on InGen after the 1993 incident, they knew about this for certain.

Ludlow took full control of InGen in late May and enacted a plan to complete and open Jurassic Park’s original San Diego location, but this was sabotaged by Hammond. The result was another disaster for InGen: a male Tyrannosaurus rex was accidentally released into San Diego after being captured, dramatically revealing to the public that de-extinction was more than just rumor and conspiracy theory. The dinosaur was recaptured and returned to the place it had been taken from, an island called Isla Sorna where InGen had originally bred its dinosaurs. That secret was now in the open, too.

1997-2005: Rivalry with Masrani Global begins

After the disaster in San Diego, the United States government placed heavy restrictions on de-extinction through the Gene Guard Act, which was developed by Hammond, several InGen senior staff, and the U.S. House Committee on Science. While the law was primarily meant to restrict InGen from furthering its research, it also applied to other companies such as Mantah Corp. Hammond himself passed away at the end of 1997 after the bill passed, and the United Nations took up patrolling around Isla Sorna to deter trespassers. Shortly thereafter, the struggling InGen was at rock bottom and forced to sell out. Bidding on the company and all the assets that came with it began in 1998. The strongest contestant was Masrani Global Corporation, an India-based multinational conglomerate holding company whose founder Sanjay Masrani had been a close friend of Hammond. Sanjay Masrani’s son, Simon Masrani, was now the corporation’s CEO. Also in the running was Tatsuo Technology. With such powerful companies in the running, Mantah Corp would have had little chance at winning, and ultimately Masrani Global acquired InGen as a subsidiary.

From this point on, Mantah Corp and Masrani Global were bitter rivals. Masrani Global had achieved, simply through having money and connections, what Mantah had attempted for a decade. If Mantah Corp resumed the use of corporate spies at this point, they would have learned that Masrani Global was directing InGen toward building a new park, once more on Isla Nublar; plans were underway as early as 1998, less than four months after the buyout. InGen violated the Gene Guard Act to further its research, though Simon Masrani may not have been aware of this. The new park, called Jurassic World, was publicly announced in 2002 with a planned opening date in 2005. A year after this, a Masrani Global representative convinced the United States Congress to amend the Gene Guard Act, relaxing restrictions on de-extinction research. Mantah Corp, and InGen’s other rivals, could resume their research legally too.

While Masrani Global worked on Jurassic World, Mantah Corp was furthering its own facility. They purchased an uninhabited island east of Isla Nublar, which is now called Mantah Corp Island, and began construction there. The huge offsite facility was outfitted with a laboratory, veterinary clinic, and huge containment areas where animals could be kept. To keep it from view, all the infrastructure was hidden underground or within the island’s extinct caldera; access to the outside was extremely limited. Staff in the facility would also remain limited, ensuring that knowledge of the facility’s existence would be less likely to leak. With the world focused on Isla Nublar, the goings-on at Mantah Corp Island went unnoticed. Engineer Kash Langford was appointed administrator of this facility, supervised directly by Daniel Kon, the president of Mantah Corp. Specimens were obtained in the form of both DNA samples and live animals, including InGen’s only Spinosaurus; these were stolen from Isla Sorna, which was heavily affected by poachers in the early 2000s. Like the facility itself, Mantah Corp spies went unnoticed thanks to the unrelated poaching incidents also happening at the same time.

Jurassic World was heavily guarded, but whereas Jurassic Park had been built in secret, the whole of civilization knew about this second park. Attempts to see the in-construction attraction and learn anything about it at all were too many to count, and it was not just curious members of the public who were trying to sneak in or steal information; corporate spies abounded, despite InGen Security’s efforts to thwart them. At the moment it is unknown if Mantah Corp spies managed to infiltrate the park. Although there were setbacks, Jurassic World’s planned opening date of May 30, 2005 was not to be cancelled, delayed, or otherwise postponed, and every resource the corporation had at its disposal was put in to ensure that deadline was met. Jurassic World opened on schedule to nearly ten thousand visitors in its first month.

Mantah Corp had finally been beaten, with the first-ever de-extinction attraction open to the public. But they had not yet given up, and instead continued work on their island facility. It was planned to be a more immediately profitable endeavor; instead of building expensive attractions and maintaining a massive animal population, Mantah Corp Island would keep a reasonable but manageable number of animals for the entertainment of the extremely wealthy. Jurassic World’s animals were kept under control. Mantah Corp’s animals would be pitted against one another in thrilling combat. To fund this, they would use the dinosaurs as test subjects for new Mantah Corp technologies as well. By doing what Simon Masrani’s moral convictions would never allow, Daniel Kon intended to lead Mantah Corp to the forefront of the technological revolution.

In the meantime, Mantah Corp would continue doing what it had always done: piggybacking off of the successes of its rivals by spying on them and stealing their secrets. To do this, Langford employed corporate spies to infiltrate various aspects of InGen, especially where clandestine research was being done. The work of Dr. Wu was of paramount interest, so Langford bribed one of Wu’s top scientists, a geneticist named Eddie, to act as a spy. Eddie accepted Langford’s offer and began feeding information about Wu’s most secretive research to Langford. However, to spy on Simon Masrani directly, Mantah Corp employed its most insidious spy of all: their president himself, Daniel Kon.

2005-2015: Kon and Masrani

Daniel Kon had never made public his position as Mantah Corp’s president, and this was with good reason. Being known only to a handful of employees and no one else, not even his family, allowed him to rub elbows with the world’s leaders completely undetected. His close personal friends included some of the most powerful businessmen and politicians of the age, and Simon Masrani was among them. Kon appears to have begun as an investor in Jurassic World, but eventually Kon trusted him enough to grant his family a penthouse on Isla Nublar and give them behind-the-scenes tours to see what ordinary tourists never could. Kon learned some of Jurassic World’s secrets directly from Masrani, and had a base of operations on the island from which to keep an eye on things.

As the park grew, so did Mantah Corp’s operation in parallel. New creatures were bred on Mantah Corp Island, studied by scientists who were stationed there on a rotating basis. Masrani Global’s technological advancements in holographs and automation were quickly mimicked by Mantah Corp, and they had a ready-made facility to test them against dinosaur strength in ways Jurassic World would not. Langford phased out most of the employees at the facility, replacing them with automation; in the 2010s, he had developed the world’s most advanced robotic dog, the Bio-Robotic Assistance Droid, or B.R.A.D. This technology was used to patrol the facility on Mantah Corp Island and maintain order, along with a fleet of quadcopter drones. Species on the island were no longer just from Isla Sorna or secondhand DNA samples stolen from the park; they were now being cloned from scratch. De-extinction technology was no longer exclusive to InGen. Some of their species included the stegosaur Kentrosaurus, which was studied by the paleontologist Dr. Mae Turner, and the first de-extinct Cenozoic mammal: the saber-toothed cat Smilodon. Although she was a valuable asset to the company, Dr. Turner was kept in the dark about the facility’s eventual purpose; she was led to believe that it was purely a research operation, and furthermore, that it was legal and that the animal assets were acquired through legitimate means. Her studies focused on dinosaur behavior and cognition. She believed that her studies would improve dinosaur welfare, though Langford and Kon were hoping for ideas on how to manipulate dinosaur behavior.

In the meantime, the spy Eddie became directly involved with Dr. Wu’s research into hybridization. Although Jurassic World was publicly a huge success, it was experiencing financial difficulties behind the scenes. Running the park was extremely expensive, and operating costs were rising faster than the park’s income. This problem had already become apparent by 2008, only three years after the park opened, and Masrani had given Wu carte blanche to come up with a solution using his hybridization techniques. By 2009, Wu had created his first hybrid dinosaur species, called Scorpios rex, but the animal was a failure; it was malformed and ugly, with its perpetual distress causing it to lash out aggressively. It also proved highly dangerous, as Wu had engineered it to be venomous. Masrani ordered it destroyed, and Wu made a second attempt. This time, he succeeded in 2012 with the Indominus rex, a larger and more intelligent species. Mantah Corp scientists studied Dr. Wu’s results, hoping to engineer new types of animals for their arena shows. Eddie supplied his benefactors with data on flash drives delivered by drone to Mantah Corp Island’s operations building, where Langford would make use of the information.

Try as they might, though, Mantah Corp’s best could not replicate the success Wu had with Indominus without more information and biological samples. Eddie was in the right place to obtain them, but he was too close to Dr. Wu; stealing from his supervisor would risk exposing him, and Mantah Corp would be caught. Kon, too, was in the perfect place to steal a sample, but he could not risk it either. Instead, he and Langford looked at other options. They needed a way to sneak an outsider into the park without InGen being suspicious, and get that person up close to a dinosaur with the equipment necessary to obtain DNA.

The answer came unexpectedly in 2015. As yet another way to bring attention to the park, Simon Masrani had come up with a new attraction called Camp Cretaceous. When it was complete, hundreds of young people between the ages of twelve and sixteen would be staying at a campsite in the north of the island, past the security wall where normal tourists were not permitted. These youths would be privileged to see the laboratories and paddocks where research was still ongoing, witnessing in-development technology and assets before they became a part of Jurassic World. It was to be a major source of income for the park, but it was also a major security risk, and Langford determined they should exploit it. The camp was not going to go up and running right away; instead, it would have a trial run, with just six youths and two counselors. Five of the six were chosen for their connections to Masrani Global, while the sixth would be selected via online competition. Daniel Kon’s son Kenji was among the six, but if he were caught, it would not only expose Mantah Corp’s spying but also out Daniel Kon as the corporation’s president.

Instead, Langford looked at other connections. He discovered that the park’s beef suppliers, the Gutierrez cattle ranching family, were experiencing economic hardship, and they had a daughter named Sammy who was the target age for Camp Cretaceous. Langford, using a pseudonym, contacted the Gutierrez family and promised them deliverance if Sammy would act as a corporate spy during Camp Cretaceous. Her parents refused his offer, choosing to face bankruptcy before using their daughter in such a way. Sammy, however, retrieved Langford’s contact information and met with him in secret, agreeing to his terms. She was awarded a spot among the chosen five at Camp Cretaceous thanks to Mantah Corp’s hidden influence, and arrived to the island on December 19.

On the second day of camp, the campers were given a tour of Dr. Wu’s field genetics lab, where he had worked on both the Scorpios and Indominus. Sammy was tasked with stealing a flash drive containing information about the Indominus; at that point in time the dinosaur’s name and identity were known only to certain people, though the general public knew that a new theropod was coming to the park soon. She succeeded, meeting a drone at a drop-off point near the campsite and delivering the flash drive. The data was then brought to Langford, giving him the last bit of information he needed to know how Wu’s hybridization was accomplished. On the third day of camp, the campers were allowed to get up close and personal with some of the dinosaurs, including Langford’s desired species. InGen had cloned the ceratopsian Sinoceratops fairly recently, and he had determined it was a good candidate to hybridize with Spinosaurus, a dinosaur the company already possessed. Sammy succeeded at taking a skin-punch biopsy from a Sinoceratops and delivering it, again via drone, to Langford. Work commenced immediately on hybridizing the two genera, and it was successful. Wu was no longer the only person in the world who could create new species.

Daniel Kon was not on the island during this time, nor was Simon Masrani. Both men were busy with their obligations, traveling far and wide about the world on business. Masrani, however, did arrive to Isla Nublar on December 22, the fourth day of Camp Cretaceous, to see the Indominus for himself; he had been away since 2012 and had not yet witnessed Wu’s new creation. Disaster struck on that day, and just like in 1993, Mantah Corp had nothing to do with it. This time, it was not even a rival company, but InGen itself that caused the damage. Wu, it turned out, was no more immune to bribes than any of his underlings, and had colluded with InGen Security’s Vic Hoskins to bioengineer the Indominus as the ideal military animal. This corruption and secrecy left the park staff unprepared to actually handle the creature, and it escaped, causing damage to the park so severe that it was shut down indefinitely. While the Indominus died, it took with it two of the most useful corporate spies on Isla Nublar: Eddie and, presumably, Sammy Gutierrez.

2015-2016: Continued R&D at Mantah Corp Island

Isla Nublar was put under United Nations quarantine protocols, restricting any ability to get on or off the island. Drones, however, were still able to slip through, recording information and collecting samples. For the most part, though, Mantah Corp had what it needed to push its own operation into the next stage of development. Over the course of the next six months, it continued to develop new animal assets, as well as collecting those from Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna where it could. At this point, four different biomes had been built on Mantah Corp Island; a desert, a tundra, a redwood forest, and a jungle. Langford’s main office was located in the jungle, where he planned to have his battle arena. The biomes were fully enclosed, with holographic LCD screen panels covering their entire interiors to simulate the proper environmental conditions. Langford had also outfitted them with temperature control, wind generators, and water systems to ensure they were as naturalistic as possible, and also to test the creatures’ ability to withstand environmental hardship.

As the habitats had become ever more technologically advanced, so had the security systems. The BRAD units were numerous and featured some of the world’s best artificial intelligence; Langford had even enabled them to build new units to replace damaged ones. The Spinosaurus in particular (designated Asset 87) was notorious for destroying BRADs that came into its habitat to perform maintenance and inspection duties, and was just as aggressive toward any human intrusion. To cope with this, Langford was designing an improved version of the BRAD which would withstand the dinosaur’s attacks. The facility’s drones were also equipped with barrier technology; they could be wirelessly linked together to form chains, acting as posts for an invisible fence. Animals that tried to cross these barriers would be electrocuted via their tracking implants. All of this technology was controlled by a central computer that Langford operated from his office overlooking the arena; by now, there were few employees on the island at all. For a period of several months in 2016, he and Dr. Turner were the only ones there save the regular supply planes.

Mantah Corp was still monitoring Isla Nublar via drone, though they lost one in 2016 due to animal attack. That month would be a complicated and difficult time for the company as the Mantah Corp Island facility was nearly ready for use, with investors planned to come soon. Langford had the BRADs begin drugging certain animals, making them more aggressive and prone to attack. He also had them move some animals, such as Dr. Turner’s Kentrosaurus Pierce, to biomes they were not accustomed to in order to test them in different environments. Soon, Dr. Turner discovered Langford’s actual plans for the facility after her two prized Tyrannosaurus specimens, Big Eatie and Little Eatie, were drugged into fighting each other to near-fatal effect. Langford fired Dr. Turner due to her opposition to company aims, and also attempted to have her killed by releasing a pair of Velociraptors at her.

Despite the firing and attempted murder of Dr. Turner, Langford did obtain useful information in the form of her research into dinosaur cognition. Langford, a skilled engineer and programmer, realized that the dinosaurs’ nervous systems responded to sound in much the way a machine responds to commands. If he could find a way to “hack” the animals, he could possibly control them. His plans were complicated by the discovery of an intruder; a young boy named Darius Bowman had, allegedly, washed up on the island after being stranded on Isla Nublar with his father since the park’s closure. Darius claimed his father was dead, and that he was alone. Langford kept the boy alive but did not permit him to leave, instead using him as an unpaid assistant. In the meantime, he completed the new version of the BRAD, which he called BRAD-X. It took inspiration from dinosaurian anatomy for its form and function, while keeping the usefulness and versatility of the original unit. The fifth biome, a swampland, was also completed and populated by a small group of Dilophosaurus, while Pteranodons were delivered to the redwoods.

Over the course of the next few days, work continued with Darius tagging along. Big Eatie and Peirce were tested in arena combat, both sustaining serious injuries but Pierce coming close to death. Langford also developed an improved V-55 computer chip that could be implanted into the nervous system of an animal. Once there, it could be used to generate nerve impulses based on Dr. Turner’s research, causing the dinosaur’s body to react as though it were willingly responding to a conspecific vocalization. When the nervous systems of adult dinosaurs rejected the chip, Langford moved on to juvenile subjects. A chip implanted into the brainstem of a baby Brachiosaurus showed signs of success, though only the “stop” command appeared to be effective. Still, if this technology could be perfected, Langford could do more than just force dinosaurs to fight one another: he could have them do whatever he pleased.

Kon, however, did not agree with Langford’s radical new company goals and instructed him to just focus on the arena combats. Investors would be coming soon, and Mantah Corp needed their approval. Another issue was Darius and the strange goings-on that seemed to follow him. Langford was suspicious, but before he could learn anything else, he was caught in a trap: Darius had indeed not come to the island alone, and the boy’s accomplices trapped Langford in the research office. When Daniel Kon arrived to the island, he aided Langford and set a trap. The BRAD-X unit assigned to monitor Darius had been compromised, but they used this to their advantage, tricking Darius’s accomplices into thinking he had summoned them to the swamp biome. There, all six teenagers were caught in the trap along with Dr. Turner, who had survived the murder attempt. Darius’s young accomplices were the members of Camp Cretaceous, as he had been the lucky winner of the final position; all of them had survived. This meant that Daniel Kon’s son, Kenji, was not dead after all. It also meant that Kon’s position as president of Mantah Corp was no longer a secret to his family.

Divisions

At the moment little is known about the corporate divisions at Mantah Corporation. It is headed by a President; this position is currently held by Daniel Kon, though he keeps his involvement private. Administrators include Kash D. Langford. The corporation also includes engineers, programmers, construction workers, and transportation workers to carry out operations; it presumably has typical corporate employees such as human resources, public relations, financial managers, and so forth. Mantah Corp often employs scientists for research; until June 2016, paleontologist Dr. Mae E. Turner was a scientist employed at Mantah Corp Island for animal behavior studies.

Mantah Corp also makes extensive use of corporate spies, including a geneticist named Eddie and a ranching family’s young daughter named Sammy Gutierrez. Of the two, Eddie died in December 2015, and Sammy has since rejected any further involvement with Mantah Corp.

Subsidiaries

Mantah Corp is parent company to a number of subsidiaries, though they are not currently known. The parent company intentionally obscures its connections with some of these, using them as shell companies.