Ellipsis to the Gods...
The journey to the Engineer's planet would take thirty-two days. Thirty-two days to study and contemplate: Study the aliens and contemplate the strange events on LV-223.
Why didn't we just run to the side? How did the engineer get from his wreck to ours without having breathable air? Why were we so stupid to take our helmets off so quickly? How did Fyfield get lost? He was the cartographer and geologist. Why did Mr Weyland hide himself from us? Why did Miss Vickers not bring a med pod onboard that was calibrated for females? She said she always wanted a back-up plan. Why was I so much more eager to speak to the Engineer, rather than confront Miss Vickers about murdering my fiancée?
Why didn't we just run to the side?
And the most gnawing question: why didn't we just run to the side?! I fell over and still had time to roll to the side. Things don't make sense. It's like we entered Wonderland.
"We were scared." Her voice surprised her. She didn't intend to say it out loud.
She felt goose bumps rise on her skin as though something horrible had just entered the room and was lurking behind her. "No monsters in here." She reassured herself. "Monsters safe in the cargo hold."
"Elizabeth?"
This time she did jump. It was only David, but trust for that mechanical monstrosity would be hard to achieve anytime soon. Maybe a millennium wouldn't be enough to make up for what he'd done.
"Sorry, Elizabeth. Did I frighten you?" That metallic echo was eerie, no matter how benign were his words.
"What do you want, David?"
"Something interesting in the database. I think you may want to have a look-see. It's quite intriguing, I assure you."
"Send it to my console." Her voice was hard. She didn't care. Fuck him.
Fuck it, she reminded herself. Just a robot. No heart. No soul.
A single bip as the intercom cut off, followed by a slightly higher boop as the display rose above the frosty, green surface.
It was Earth. Again. These people seemed to be obsessed by her home planet.
The globe rotated slowly in mid-air, before the hologram zoomed in on the continent of Africa.
Elizabeth jumped again as David's voice penetrated the room. "I think we may have a clue to help us solve our puzzle."
The contours began rising and falling over the peaks and troughs of the land, aiming down towards a mountainside, until the fractals separated to show a heavily forested carpet.
"It's Africa." Stated Elizabeth.
One word. "Yes."
He may not have a soul, or emotions, but that son-of-bitch sounds excited.
The focus was now in beneath the trees. The green hue of the display mimicking well the chlorophyll rich world.
For a moment, all was still as though buffering. Nothing buffered on this ship. It had taken less than five minutes to teach the computer the English language. After that, everything was more or less instant. The only limiting factor now was the speed you could absorb the information. David's only use.
A ripple through the hologram. A scream... and there was action. It was a primate of some variety. It resembled a chimpanzee facially, though its tail gave it away as something other.
Then they made their entry. The alabaster humanoids she had become so used to seeing. She saw them in her dreams, in her nightmares, and anytime she closed her eyes in order to say a prayer. Whenever she thought of God, her visions were corrupted and all she saw was the face of the Engineer. The giant with the marble skin and black eyes.
And sometimes she would see that terror in this new god's eyes as her baby wrapped its tentacles round his thick neck and grasped hold of his body.
"Die..." she screamed under her breath.
"I beg your pardon, Elizabeth? It sounded like you said 'die'. Should I pause the display? Are you still suffering bad dreams? Should I program you a delicious meal, or a stiff drink?"
"No, David. I'm fine. Just run the display and keep quiet."
"Of course."
The pixels fizzed and the action began again. The giants were chasing after the smaller creatures and seemed to be enjoying the pursuit.
The pack of hunters dispersed in different directions and merged into the undergrowth.
Elizabeth scratched her head in frustration. She had grown used to watching David's discoveries. They were always overly long, as though he enjoyed the foreplay of data transfer.
"Is this going anywhere, David? Cut to what you want me to see. I'm tired, okay?"
"Of course."
The display paused, before reassembling into a container holding a sedated primate.
The green fireflies danced again and became a surface on which lay the primate .
The display jumbled once more and settled on something Elizabeth was already awaiting. The primate lay motionless, its tongue protruding from its lifeless mouth. Its abdomen gaped open from sternum to waist, becoming one large, horrifying vagina, from which an intact, bloody foetus was being birthed.
She wanted to tell David to stop the playback. She knew what she seeing and what she was about to see. There was ambivalence, or rather, a dissonance within her. Her Christian soul couldn't watch any more, but her scientific mind craved the knowledge. This was everything she had searched for in her life. This was the ultimate experiment. This was genesis and she would be surprised if it had taken these Engineers close to seven days to accomplish.
She felt her body sway as she saw the pup- the baby, open its eyes for the first time.
As she heard her voice asking David to stop, the child pushed itself up on two legs and reached out its arms.
Before she fell, before her head hit the floor, and before her eyes closed, she saw the teenage child, its peers in tow, sprinting across the plains, their fur covered skin and out-of-proportion arms, the only real signs of their genetic mother.
A whisper, begging him: "David, stop."
All went dark.
"Of course."
(2)
"Are you sure, Elizabeth?"
"Just do it, David. I have my answers. We have to warn Earth." Responded Elizabeth.
"Something I didn't tell you, Elizabeth." Started David.
Elizabeth snapped her head round at him. His head sat alone on top of the flying controls, like the most expensive and technologically advanced nodding dog ever made. He knew secrets were explicitly against house rules.
"As a low priority, of course." David appeased her.
"Go on." Said Elizabeth.
"They know we're coming."
"What?!" Interspersed within the fury was threaded a thin line of terror. "What do you mean- 'they know we're coming'?"
"Calm down, Elizabeth."
"Don't tell me to calm down, you synthetic bastard. They-"
"No, not us, but the spacecraft. They're expecting the spacecraft. It seems when the coordinates were set in for their home planet, a signal was sent automatically informing them of our arrival. We could change course now, but it may seem suspicious if we have no-"
"David, they want to wipe out the entire human race. Let them be suspicious. It won't make things any worse, will it?" Elizabeth spoke without emotion. "I'm going into stasis till we get home. Wake me when we're within range of Earth communication."
"Yes, Elizabeth." He no longer said of course. She had told him not to.
(3)
The Engineer had received the message from LV-223 shortly before the craft had sent a second message saying it was going down. The operation to restore equilibrium on Earth had never been completed.
It had been more than two thousand years since that mission had deployed to set things straight. And now, now that it was underway again- it had somehow gone awry.
There had been questions about the crew before launch, the log book had stated. The second-in-command had been accused of being: 'Prone to episodes of deityism'. Now a message two millennia later from the same man the mission is back on. And finally, the ship disappeared from all scans.
Maybe it was time the guy was just atomised. Destroy all signs of his DNA.
"I'll Xenomorph the fucker. Let's see what a couple of these acidic badboys can do to an immortal. A whole fucking cargo bay full of the sods." He rubbed his hands together and lay back into the seat, before the flight mask closed over his face.
He relished the thought of effecting justice on a verified terminator. The broad smile may have been concealed, but it was there nonetheless.
Another message read out on his display. 'Ship headed inbound from LV223'.
"We'll see about that, already." He said. "You said you were heading to Earth. Now you send signal you're coming here? Not on my watch."
"And you didn't even register I.D. ... the charges are rising thick and fast, boy."
The ship angled towards the stratosphere and reached cruising speed minutes after escaping the planet's gravity. It headed on an intercept course around ten thousand light years away.
He belched and cursed himself for not going to the toilet before getting comfortable in his seat.
(4)
With Elizabeth safely in stasis the two ships met.
David waited for contact with the alien alone.
(5)
The Engineer stood above David who was still fixed firmly to the main flight deck. On his face was a look like that of contempt. "He pulled your head off?" It wasn't contempt, but bewilderment.
They spoke in the tongue of the Engineer. A sound loaded with clicks and staccato verbiage. "Yes, sir. I had originally thought-"
"And did he know you were a robot?" The Engineer interrupted.
"Synthetic human." David corrected. "No sir. I hadn't mentioned it."
The Engineer considered David's recollection of the events of New Year's Eve. "I see.
"And you've just been flying the ship alone since then, with your decapitated body?"
"No, sir. There's a hybrid on board. Her name is Elizabeth Shaw. She's in stasis."
"A 'human', as they call themselves... yes, this is all rather troubling. Rather troubling indeed."
"Yes, sir. You might say they-"
"Shut up." With that, the engineer, let's call him Rick, left the control room and headed for stasis.
David blinked.
As the door closed behind him, David deactivated Elizabeth's stasis pod remotely, her consciousness returning very quickly.
"David?"
"Elizabeth. I have some rather exciting and very disturbing news." He said excitedly.
"What?" He wasn't usually wont to overstatement. This may be bad.
"There's an Engineer on board, let's call him Rick, and he's heading for stasis. I'm not quite sure of his intentions towards you."
Elizabeth dressed hurriedly and headed for somewhere to hide.
(6)
"A bloody hybrid on board. The fucking paperwork is gonna be a mile long for all this.
"Consciousness, sentience, space travel. People always have to fuck with the wildlife. 'Just leave them be' it says. It's plainly fucking stated in the constitution. Don't fuck with the wildlife. Fuck with the wildlife you get those predatory, Aldebaran freaks that can't stop hunting shit. Fucking faces like something out of a mouth/vagina transplant horror film. And, oh, you can't wipe them out, they say: they've reached sentience. They're travelling in space now. Fuck that. Kill them. Kill them all. Keep the universe pure."
Rick checked his watch. It was twenty past the hour. He'd give the hybrid till half past to state her case on which the future of the human race would hang. "Stop talking to yourself, Rick. Concentrate. Focus."
The door opened and Rick saw a pair of small feet sticking out from behind the curtains.
(7)
"Hold on, now. Let me get this straight. There's two of you stood there looking and the ship is rolling towards you... and why didn't you just run to the side again?"
"We were scared okay? I told you. It's like we were a flock of birds evading a predator flying in the same direction. You've seen Jurassic Park."
"Well, Miss Shaw," Rick exhaled and rubbed his furrowed brow, "this all looks pretty implausible to me." He closed his notebook. "And you say there was a med pod on board? Calibrated only for males of your species? And you say this female was bordering on the schizophrenic? And she was okay with this set-up?"
"Yes-"
"And she killed your mate, you say."
"Ye-"
"These are your words."
"Did I.Q.s suddenly drop on your planet? I know what this sounds like."
"Shhh... shh. It's okay." He spoke to her calmingly. "Look, you wait here, I'll go get the Xenomorphs- I mean face-huggers- I mean giant terrifying eggs. I'll be right back."
He left, leaving Elizabeth slightly more comforted and positive about the future. It's amazing what a reassuring voice can-
"Elizabeth?" It was David again.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "What do you want, David? You're breaking my balls."
"My apologies for that, but I thought I should warn you Rick is headed for the cargo hold."
"Yes? And? He's going to get some eggs."
"I see. And did he elaborate on what laid the eggs, at all?"
"And what would be the point in asking? He could say a Jabberwocky laid them. It would mean very little to me."
"Well, a Jabberwocky wouldn't be far from the truth, in this case."
There was silence.
The silence was an extended silence.
(8)
Earth had changed very little since Elizabeth had left. And why would it? It had only been two years. The conference room where her hearing was taking place was unspectacular, apart from the cathode-ray tube monitor on the wall. It gave the place an Olde Worlde feel. That and the twelve-seater oak table with the chandelier above it. A touch of class.
"So let me get this right," the vice-chairman said, "Mr Weyland was killed using your head-" she pointed at David, who now stood proudly before the panel, his head once more atop his shoulders, "to knock him down. Then you-" she pointed at Elizabeth, "coerced Captain Janek to ram the alien vessel, killing everyone, before the creature came after you and Miss Vickers, who, it says here, got squashed. Why didn't she just run to the side?"
"I told you why. You've seen Jurassic Park, haven't you? And a c-section plays havoc on the turning circle." Elizabeth explained.
"And this 'thing' they took out of you that was the size of a cat, grew to the size of a house within an hour, and destroyed the Engineer."
"And your precious ship." Added Elizabeth.
"What?"
"No, sorry: the Engineer destroyed the ship." She shook her head in confusion. "Well, Captain Janek did after I told him- I mean, the alien that came out of me-" She stumbled for the right words. "Yes! The alien killed the Engineer. I don't know. It grabbed him. I ran off."
"Right, shhh... shh. It's okay."
The vice-chairman's voice was calming to her and she felt better immediately. Elizabeth leant back into her chair and tried to regain her composure while the vice-chairman perused her notes.
The room was quiet and still as they all flicked through the pages along with their new boss. It was only a matter of time before 'vice-chairman', became sole owner. Till then, the sycophants would line up obediently. Birds on a wire.
"Okay. Now. It says here, this other Engineer intercepted you on your way to their planet. I won't ask why you didn't think to just come home to warn us. That would be too obvious. Now, this other Engineer- what's his name-?"
"Let's call him Rick." David offered.
"Right, Rick. He offers you an egg from the cargo hold where they keep the biological weaponry?"
"Yes." Answered Elizabeth.
"And you waited for him to bring it to you?" Asked the vice-chairman.
"Yes."
"A nice meal, perhaps?"
"Hoped so."
"But I warned her what it really was, ma'am." Never more proud had David looked. His head raised. His chest out.
"Thanks, David. Make me look an idiot." Hissed Elizabeth.
"You're welcome, Elizabeth."
The vice-chairman continued: "So he comes back with a big cheery smile on his face, carrying this huge, terrifying looking egg, which just explodes in his face. Then- in quotations now," she nodded towards Elizabeth before reading clearly and deliberately from her notes, "'A sort of large, vomit-yellow, tailed hand with an articulating dick, wrapped itself around his face'- end quotes." She made quotation marks in the air with the index and middle fingers of her right hand. "Your words."
"Right. That's when we got the hell out of there." She looked over at David for support, who merely returned her gaze with a vacant smile. "I didn't want to wait to see if he was going to pull it off."
"So, that's when you headed for Rick's spaceship, right?"
"Correct."
"Without David."
Elizabeth's head dropped a little and her voice fell slightly, "Yes. I was scared. You've seen Jurassic Park."
"And how long did it take you to get the courage to go back for David- the only person within a thousand light years who could fly a spaceship?"
"About two hours." Pouted Elizabeth.
"And you spent those two hours hiding behind a curtain, right?"
"You've seen Jurassic Park!" She was getting desperate. Why couldn't these people just believe her?
"So you went back?"
Firmly. "Yes."
"And what did you see as you were dragging David's body through the hatch into Rick's ship?"
The vice-chairman leant towards her assistant who read from a piece of paper, "'something which has never been reported once from over twenty surveyed worlds.'" She looked further down the page, "A creature that 'looks like a shiny black banana with no eyes', these are your words, 'and has stuff sticking off it in all directions'."
"That's right. Look, I can see where all this is going, especially with all the inconsistency in my story-"
"Okay, Miss Shaw, that'll be all." Said the vice-chairman, jadedly.
Elizabeth looked around the room at the cold faces staring back at her. "What, really? I can go? Just like that?"
"Would you like a cup of tea, Elizabeth?"
"Shut up, David."
"Of course." Replied David, the corner of his mouth upturned ever so slightly.
Elizabeth headed for the door, not believing her luck, until the vice-chairman, let's call her Vanessa, stopped her with one last question: "One last question, Miss Shaw."
Elizabeth turned back towards her, her hand instinctively coming up to the lucky charm that hung round her neck in the shape of a dying man on a torture device. "Yes?"
"The ship- Rick's ship." Began Vanessa.
"Yes?"
"Why didn't you ask David to put it on self-destruct?"
"The ship?" She asked. "Rick's ship? Why didn't I ask David to put it on self-destruct?"
"Yes." Vanessa looked once towards David, then back at Elizabeth.
The truth was, there was no self-destruct option, so she'd asked David to set the ship on a collision course with the nearest star. In her hurry and fear- she'd seen Jurassic Park-, she failed to give David enough time to fully enter the coordinates of the star and disconnected him too quickly from the control panel, causing a surge of electricity to fire through David's neural matrix, erasing his Browsing Data from the previous hour.
The ship had headed off in the wrong direction.
Elizabeth could not take the embarrassment of her incompetence any more. "Well, I got him to set off a warning beacon and guided it off into space."
Vanessa considered her with a look of disdain. "Any coordinates?"
Elizabeth raised her right arm and sort of pointed diagonally up into the air. "It just sort of went off, you know, that way."
The panel looked at the corner of the ceiling where Elizabeth was pointing and then at each other.
Vanessa's voice was emotionless: "Miss Shaw, I can without doubt say that you are the very worst decision-maker I have ever had the misfortune and bad judgment to employ. From the very start, this was a voyage of buffoonery and dimwittery of the very highest order."
"Thank you."
"They know the side-effects of an extended time in hyper-sleep and yet they only give you a small tin to vomit in to when you wake up and only after two years aboard do they tell the rest of the crew why they're there." She shakes her head and raises her eyebrows at the absurdity of it all. "Now, I say you're the worst decision-maker and that is put against some really stiff opposition:" she counts the examples off with her fingers as she goes: "a cartographer who gets lost in a finite space; a biologist who is scared of a headless corpse that's been dead for two thousand years; another scientist who decides the air is safe, just because it has oxygen in it and is supposedly 'cleaner' than Earth's atmosphere- end quotes, then like a bunch of mindless wandering sheep, you just blithely follow suit; a Scottish woman who can't emote believably and also uses the word 'beddy-bies'; my late boss who decides to board an alien ship that is filled with dangerous biological weaponry that's already killed half the crew just to have a little chatteroo with an alien who has no idea you've invited yourselves onto his ship; my late boss's anal daughter who only runs in straight lines and boards a ship on a four year journey with a med pod that isn't calibrated for females; a woman-!"
"I got around that-" Bragged Elizabeth.
More insistent: "- a woman! who was so ugly on the inside that she couldn't stand the thought of continuing living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer- a drug dealing pederast, actually. And let's not forget the disease spreading whore."
"Pederast? Whore?" Elizabeth was confused. "Isn't that the monologue of the serial killer, John Doe, from the 1995 cult classic 'Se7en'- end quotes?"
Vanessa cursed herself under her breath. "Shit."
"Cup of tea, ma'am?"
"Shut up, David." She recomposed herself. "It'll take us a couple of hundred years before we ever find that bloody ship and, ahem," quotation fingers, "'destroy it'- end quotes."
Vanessa's assistant made an awkward gesture to her to stop talking quickly and change the subject with a subtle chopping motion below her throat.
Vanessa cleared her throat. "Miss Shaw, you can consider- stop tickling that bloody pendant, will you?!" She shouted.
Elizabeth dropped her hand to her side without arguing.
"You really don't see the contradiction of having one of those things that's made out of gold, do you?"
Elizabeth didn't know what she meant.
"And you wonder why your brain is so clunky with all that supernatural crap jingling about inside your head. You're an embarrassment to the rest of science."
"But it's my faith. You have to have faith. You have to believe in something. It's just sad if you don't-"
"Silence!" Screamed Vanessa. She felt her temples begin to throb and took a few seconds to allow herself to cool off again.
"I talk to baby Jesus when I get cross." Said Elizabeth.
"Cup of tea?"
"Shut up, David. Miss Shaw, you can consider your career as a scientist, from now on, over."
"Over?" Elizabeth asked shakily. "What do you mean?"
"Finished, put an end to, it is no more, it has ceased to be, it is bereft of life, it rests in peace, it's shuffled of its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible." Reiterated Vanessa. "It. is. ex. tinct."
"Extinct?"
Vanessa looked her square in the eyes, "Yes. Extinct. You've seen Jurassic Park."
The end.