Circles

Those two began to sleep together. Elizabeth was certain of it. She knew that this would happen the moment she refused David's approach... Not long after the birth of her daughter...

Her daughter? Has that creature ever been her daughter?

Her child had been conceived without her consent, she had given birth to it because she hadn't had the courage to abort her pregnancy… just as David had expected. He offered her the opportunity with a reassuring smile telling he hadn't meant any harm by creating the fetus. He extracted an ovum from her and fertilized it with her own cell, basically cloning her in the process only to keep her sane. Because she didn't go into cryosleep, after they were set to course. She didn't trust the alien cryochambers at all, so she refused to use them. She wanted to learn. The way how the ship works, the star charts, the immense scientific information stored in the ship's database. Everything! She didn't want to miss a second of her remaining life… so she barely slept at all. And she barely ate for that matter, because there were so little edible food supplies on this alien ship and she wasn't really hungry after all. David said that she would die like this, if she didn't change her habits. But she ignored him, he must have lied.
Then the morning sickness came, terrible nausea and weakness swept over her whenever she woke up. Her body disregarded the fact that there was no real morning on this ship. Nothing was real on this ship. It was just a bubble of blackness running through infinite blackness.
Soon David informed her of her pregnancy with his even cool voice. Again. First she thought that she was just having a nightmare again. Then, she saw the healthily moving fetus on the screen...
"You don't have to worry," said David with a happy smile on his face. "Your child will be a perfectly normal human baby. She will be just like you, when she grows up."
A younger version of her?
She began to scream, and tried to kill him. It was a feeble attempt really. When she calmed down somewhat, he offered her a syringe containing a clear liquid that would rid her off this unwanted child. She wasn't capable of killing it. She failed. Even then, it looked too much like a human...
So she surrendered her will and her body to that loathsome android and began to eat and sleep regularly. David managed to make the available alien food less disgusting than it was before. For some unfathomable reason David liked to pretend to be the father of the child. He satisfied Elizabeth's every whim. He tended to her and comforted her whenever she needed it. He even touched her as a man would touch a woman with surprising tenderness and she enjoyed it, but felt terrible afterwards. And her belly swelled by the hour...
The baby was born only after a few month of pregnancy. It was a girl. To their utter surprise the whole thing happened in the natural way. They didn't have to cut the child out. The baby girl was beautiful and healthy, a little bit small, though. Otherwise she was everything but normal and human. She had small black stripes running under her skin and she grew even faster than in her womb. So Elizabeth fought against her maternal instincts, but she had no chance. In a matter of years the child was fully grown. With long midnight black hair, fair skin that was never exposed to sunlight, dark brown eyes and the slithering blackness under her skin. As if, she had had a constantly moving tattoo. A twisted version of Elizabeth...
David named her Starchild in the ancient language and simply adored her: her ability to communicated directly with the ship; her patience that seemed endless, and her strange knowing eyes that never held the innocence of a child. The Starchild was something beyond this world and Elizabeth sensed that. She couldn't love her as much as a mother should love her child. However, the Starchild was so meticulous in her love, nearly as calculated as David was in his. It didn't bother them that she allowed no physical contact anymore. None of them wavered; they loved her all the same… at least that was what they told her.

I am going to destroy the ship and everybody on board. I have to. I can't let that creature live with that all knowing eyes. I have a plan. I have been working on it in the past few months. They wouldn't know what hit them – Elizabeth murmured to herself in a dark room somewhere on the ship.

The only thing she needed is some courage to set her plan into motion. So she sniffed a little bit more from the bluish powder she'd found in one of the labs. The world swayed for a moment, but it was quickly over and she felt strong and proactive again.

"Mom?" came her daughter's voice. "Are you here?"
The door opened easily as if she hadn't locked it carefully. Why was she surprised? The ship yielded to every touch and command of her Starchild. Just like a tamed beast would.
"Mom? What's the matter?" her daughter knelt beside her with a very concerned look.
"You have to die," Elizabeth replied with tears in her eyes. "You are an abomination… I am sorry! I shouldn't have let you be born."
"It's all right, Mom," whispered the Starchild.
"No! It is not! You have that black nightmare under your skin; it has become a part of you even before you were born. How can you live with that? How can I live with that?" she was crying by now.
"You said it yourself. It is a part of me. This way I can help you complete your mission," the black haired girl explained patiently. She had her father's patience.
"I don't want your help or your father's. You two are up to something!" Elizabeth shouted.
"Yes, we have to issue some modification on the ship," she said calmly."Come with me and I'll do a medical check."
"What's the matter?" David entered the room. "Elizabeth, darling, what have you done?" he took away the vile with the bluish powder from the table.

There she was again, surrounded by her family who supposedly loved her, but she could never trust any of them. Her daughter was already destroying the necessary equipment to her plan. Again.

"You have each other!... You don't need me! Why don't you let me die?" Elizabeth sobbed.
"Not again! Elizabeth, I swear I have never touched her! She is our daughter! You know that I would never be capable of such awful things" David stated in his reassuring and steady voice.

Again that promise! And she had no other choice but to believe to that sincere voice and expression the android wore. How could he lie when he is a machine?

David gently took her in his arms.

"Mom, you know you are hallucinating because of this substance. You were with us all the time, you know that nothing happened," the Starchild chided her mother as they headed for the medical labor. Her cool hands never left Elizabeth's forehead, but her gaze often wandered to David's face. And the android looked back at the Starchild, as if they shared a secret...

Yes, Elizabeth remembered, the three of them were working together. But she needed to sleep and feed…. she wasn't there all the time… or was she? The two of them had plenty of time to...

She couldn't think clearly. Again...

What would she think of anyway? Did clear thoughts matter at all, when she was with her loving family? Again.

The End