ASHBRIDGE INHABITANTS PRESENTS…
AN ALIVE EXPERIENCE…
T*A*S*M (TIME AND SPACE MACHINE)
EPISODE 1: XENOMORPHS and XENOPHOBES
It all started way back when. I can't remember how far back exactly. But I remember it like it was yesterday. I'd lived on Earth since I was born, never even left it's surface until I was in my late teens. I was about 18 when I first ventured into the ocean of stars above me, on a recreational visit to a station known as the Sevastapol. Luck hadn't smiled upon me on that trip, though. Or maybe it had, depending on how you look at it.
I remember when the first people began to leave the Sevastapol. Oh, sure, they said they just 'wanted a change of scenery' or that they'd simply 'had enough of station life'. But we all secretly knew the truth. I'd only been there a couple of months and even I'd heard tales that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. More and more people had departed the station week in and week out for several months. Until one day, the station commanders came to us, told us that they had news. Bad news. Then everyone left.
The gentle throbbing of engines rang out through the still air aboard the station. Not a sole was anywhere to be found. Except for me, of course. Everybody else had gone, or at least tried to, when they'd heard the news. That the rumors were true. The disappearances, the noises from below decks, what else could it have been? But alas, this seemingly perpetual state of almost-silence was suddenly interrupted. A sharp, piercing, screeching groan of a sound echoed through the corridor. I recall myself following the direction of the noise to discover it's origin. Little did I know, from that point on, nothing was going to be the same for me again…
Rounding the corner at the end of the corridor, I discovered… nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing that could make a noise, at least. But then I noticed a locker. One which I'd never noticed before. It looked almost identical to every other locker aboard the station, except for the fact that through the grate on the door, a bright light could be seen, beaming out into the corridor. I was surprised that I'd not noticed the light until now, as it was astonishingly luminescent. Reaching out with one hand, I slowly proceeded to open the locker. With my fingers just inches away from the handle, I froze with fear. Not because I was scared to open the locker, but because I was suddenly aware that I was not alone.
A dark shadow was cast over me, and the sound of deep, throaty breathing filled the air. I shuddered, not even daring to turn around, to face what was behind me. But I already knew what it was. It was too late for me now. Swallowing my fear like a bitter pill, I spun around to look at the abomination that was about to end my life. A tall, black alien, shimmering in the light from the locker, it's mouth dripping with saliva, it's silver teeth standing out like a sore thumb in it the dark abyss of it's mouth. It growled, a low and animalistic noise, and opened it's mouth wide. Then, the creature lunged towards me, but before either of us knew what was happening, I'd been dragged back into the light of the locker behind me, the door slamming shut to keep the monstrosity out.
"Well that was a close one, eh?" An enthusiastic voice said from behind me. I turned around to see a short, wrinkled creature with several arms and legs. His head was quite bulbous, his skin was purple, and his teeth were rotten. "You could have ended up that creature's lunch." He said, in a much more stern tone.
Climbing to my feet, I began to babble incoherently: "I was… who was… God, this is a big locker!" The purple creature - well, man I guess – simply watched as I poured out line after line of nonsense. After a while, I felt quite faint, and fell to my knees. The man helped me up and took me over to a chair where I could rest.
"Calm down, my boy," He said as he sat me down in the chair. "It'll all be fine. Now, allow me to introduce myself. I am The Professor, and –"
"You're an alien?" I asked.
"Yes, that's right," The Professor replied. "I'm a Vykker from the planet Oddworld, Constellation Reference: CanM-04. And you are?"
"John," I told The Professor as calmly as possible. "John Smith."
"Wow," he replied. "That is an unbelievably average name. I must use that." He then proceeded to walk over to a vast panel of controls and levers, flipping various switches as he walked around the console.
"What is this place?" I asked, regaining some of my confidence.
"Well, John…" The Professor began, "This is the TASM. That stands for Time and Space Machine. Before you ask anything else, let me clear a few things up. Yes, it looks like a locker, at least for the moment. Yes, it is much larger on the inside. And Yes, it can actually travel through time and space. If you want proof, here you go." With that, he went back to the door of the locker and flung it open.
"No!" I yelled in fear, and cowered behind the chair I was previously sat on. But to my astonishment, there was nothing out there. We weren't even in the same corridor. Even more amazing, I could here voices. Human voices. There were still people on board the ship. I ran out of the locker and greeted everybody I ran into. It had been literally weeks since I'd been in contact with such a huge amount of people. It was almost as if they didn't know yet. About the alien. About the disappearances. It was like… like… we had traveled backwards in time.
I darted back through the crowd to the locker, it's door still wide open. The Professor stood outside it, looking on as I said 'Hello' to every passerby. I pointed straight at him.
"You!" I said, frustrated. "What did you do? What did that thing, that TARZAN do?"
"It's TASM." The Professor chuckled. "And it took us through time." It seemed unbelievable. How could we have traveled through time. And more importantly, what was the point?
"Well," said The Professor, as if he had heard my mental question. "My scanners show that on this very day, two months ago, an unidentified life form appeared on board Sevastapol station. Now John, if I told you that you'd have died if I'd left you for the alien back there, would you believe me?"
"Of course I would, Professor." I answered truthfully. "You saved my life. I'm indebted to you."
"It's very nice of you to say that, John." The Professor smiled, his crooked teeth a pale shade of yellow. "Well, since you're in my debt now, you wouldn't mind returning the favour, would you?"
"That depends," I replied. "What kind of favour?"
"You're not going to like it." He assured me. "We're going to save the alien."
Bolting down the corridor at great speed was harder than you would imagine. There were quite a lot of people in the way, after all. But we were both so caught up in the heat of the moment, we couldn't help but try.
"So what are we going to do?" I shouted to The Professor over the voices of the people around us.
"The important thing to remember is that this alien isn't a killing machine. Ok, technically it is. But it only eats to survive. We just need to stop it eating humans."
"Oh, no problem." I retorted. "We'll just give him a salad, then!"
"This is no time for jokes," The Professor bellowed seriously. "A lot of people could be dead very soon if we don't intervene." I gave him an apologetic look and carried on running.
"Besides," he said, "I was thinking more like a fruit salad!"
Approaching the end of the corridor, The Professor began to slow down, eventually turning down a flight of stairs to the Transit Station. He ran over to a terminal mounted on the wall of the station concourse and typed in some sort of code, then ran back up the stairs. 'Not again,' I thought to myself as we set off back down the corridor. When we reached the opposite end we both bounded back into the TASM and set off.
"Where are we going now?" I asked. "Shouldn't we stay here and stop the alien?"
"No, no." The Professor replied, flipping a couple of switches in the process. "We're going to need help if we want to take this thing down."
"Down? I thought we weren't going to kill it?"
"We aren't," He assured me, "But we're going to need someone who knows what they're doing."
"So you don't know what you're doing?" I gasped.
"Of course not, not a clue! In fact, you're lucky I even found you!"
The TASM slowly grinded to a halt as we landed. The Professor once again swung the door open and stepped out. I was surprised to discover upon stepping out, though, that the TASM now looked like a vending machine, and the door was a maintenance panel on the side.
"Camouflage." The Professor nodded. I simply nodded back. After all, I was in no position to question anything that was going on right now. I realised quickly, though, that we were no longer aboard Sevastapol station. We were in a building, on the ground. We were back on Earth. But I could tell by the look on the Professor's face that we weren't going to be staying for long. He asked me to wait by the TASM whilst he went to get help, so I obeyed, and spent quite a while trying to figure out whether I could use it as a real vending machine or not.
After about ten minutes, The Professor came back, and he brought with him a woman.
"John," The Professor began, "Meet Amanda Ripley. Amanda, meet John Smith."
"John Smith?" The woman inquired. "That's very ordinary, isn't it." I nodded, and The Professor continued.
"Amanda here works for… Let's just say 'The Company'. About 15 years or so ago, her mother went missing. She believes that it has something to do with the 'Xenomorph' that's onboard Sevastapol."
"Xenomorph?" I queried.
"Yes, it can change shape between generations. Depending on the species of the host it hatches from." The Professor informed me, which kind of put me on edge. "Anyway, Amanda here's just aching to get revenge, so let's get to it, shall we?" And with that, he climbed into the vending machine.
"Is he mad?" Amanda asked, puzzled."
"Yes, I believe he is." I informed her.
"What even is he?" She continued.
"No idea." I said. "Vykker, or something." Then the two of us followed The Professor aboard the vending machine. I mean TASM.
The trip back to the Sevastapol was awkward. It was weird not knowing whether we were traveling through time, or space, or both. I looked over at The Professor and gave him a look which said 'Does she know?' He simply stared down at the floor of the TASM.
"Amanda…" I began. The Professor clenched, knowing what I was about to say. "Has The Professor here told you what we're planning to do with this… 'Xenomorph'? Because I doubt it's what you're thinking of."
"Ok, that's quite enough of that." The Professor interjected, stepping between us. He then went over to the doors of the TASM and stepped out once more into the corridors of Sevastapol. Post-everyone leaving, that is.
"Now then." He said, turning to face us. "Here we are!" He gestured to the room behind him. Amanda and I looked, discovering it to be a vast warehouse full of shelf upon shelf of crates.
"What's in them?" I asked.
"Meat, I think." The Professor replied. "Enough to feed every crew member and every passenger onboard Sevastapol for years. It better be anyway, or else my plan won't work?"
"What exactly is the plan, then?" Amanda asked. Surely now The Professor would reveal that we were in fact planning to not kill the Xenomorph. However, he still managed to avoid saying this, preferring to assure Amanda that the meat was purely bait to attract the creature.
About half an hour later, the three of us had managed to lay out a trail of meat stretching right from the storage warehouse to the TASM, which, as it turned out, had it's own highly inescapable prison cell in it. The Professor grinned and later explained that he was excited to use his prison cell for the first time. Anyway, after laying out the trail, it was Amanda's time to shine. She was the expert on Xenomorphs, it seemed. Apparently, after her mother had gone missing she'd begun searching for answers. She'd discovered that The Company already knew of the existence of this new species, and wanted the crew of the Nostromo to capture it for them to use as a biological weapon. Obviously, she hadn't taken this news lightly, hence why she was trying to kill one of the creatures now, or so she thought.
"Ok, John," said The Professor once Amanda was out of earshot. "You remember the plan?"
"Yes, Professor, but-"
"Listen to me, John." He replied solemnly. "I know that you want to tell Amanda we aren't going to kill the alien, but we can't. If she knew, she wouldn't have agreed to it in the first place. We'll tell her when the time is right."
"And what are we going to do with the thing when we've caught it?" I inquired. "You said it changes shape depending on the host it hatches from. Surely that means it needs live prey, not chunks of meat that were intended for people to eat."
"Don't worry about that, John." The Professor assured me. "Just stick to the plan and I'll deal with the alien.
Just then, Amanda came sprinting around the corner at the end of the corridor. She bolted past us and into the TASM, shouting "Found him!" as she passed. That was our cue. The Professor hid behind the TASM door, ready to shut the creature in. I ran into the console room, down a long corridor to the prison cell. Amanda would wait by the control panel, to lead the Xenomorph to it's inmate cell. With everyone in position, we waited. And we didn't have to wait long.
The silence and suspense of the moment was shattered by the roar of the Xenomorph at the end of the corridor. It strode down the corridor as a cheetah after a gazelle would. Then it forced it's way through the tiny locker door and into the TASM. I heard Amanda's rapid footsteps as she came towards the cell with the alien in tow. She ran through the first door of the cell, then out the second door. She was safe. The alien ran through the first door of the cell, I pressed the 'lock' button. She was trapped. Mission accomplished. 'Well done, John,' I said to myself. 'Not too shabby.' But it wasn't quite over yet. Now came probably the hardest part of our mission so far: Convincing Amanda Ripley that we should let the creature go.
I waited with Amanda in complete silence for a couple of minutes. Well, apart from the sounds of the Xenomorph growling as it tried to free itself from it's impenetrable cell. After a while, The Professor came bundling down the corridor towards us, a huge grin across his shriveled face.
"Well done, everyone!" He chuckled. "A hundred percent success, I'd say!"
"What do you mean a hundred percent success?" Amanda queried. Oh, dear. She walked over to the prison cell and looked into it through the feet-thick glass. "That thing's still alive in there, isn't it?"
"Yes!" The Professor replied enthusiastically. "We did it! We kept it perfectly safe!" Amanda's face fell as she turned to look at me for confirmation.
"I'm sorry, Amanda." I said. She turned away and walked back down the corridor to the console room. I followed here, pleading her to listen.
"Amanda…" I attempted.
"What?" She said back through gritted teeth. "What is this? You work for The Company or something? Want to take that thing back to Earth and weaponise it?"
"No, it's… It's complicated." I replied. "That thing in that cell, that Xenomorph. It's just an innocent creature."
"It's a killer!" Amanda yelled, tears beginning to stream down her face. "It killed my mother!"
"It did what it had to for survival, Amanda." I said, trying to remain calm. "It just needs to food, sustenance." But she refused to listen to my explanations.
"It's a cold-blooded killer, John." She repeated.
"And what does that make you?" came a voice from down the corridor to the prison cell. The Professor appeared, a serious look on his face.
"What does that make you, Amanda Ripley?" He repeated. "You humans, what do you eat? Cows, pigs, chickens? You slaughter these innocent creatures because you have to! Because that's how you survive, that's how any species survives." Amanda's solemn look began to soften.
"Now I'm not saying that the human race should all become vegetarians, although if you want to, that's fine by me." The Professor continued, beginning to win Amanda over. "But how do you justify the killing of animals lesser than yourself? Survival." He gestured to the corridor behind him.
"That creature down there, Amanda, is exactly the same as you. It hunts to survive. That's all it knows, that's all it can do to stay alive. Now whether you're with me or against me, I am not allowing you to kill that creature. Do you understand?"
Amanda had fallen silent. She gave a meek nod, and slumped down in the chair next to the console. The Professor glanced over at me, and I nodded back at him. He'd done it. He'd convinced Amanda Ripley that the creature that killed her mother deserved a second chance. I knew then that he was everything but ordinary. His TASM vouched for that, as well. But now was not the time for contemplation. Now was the time to take Amanda home.
"Well, here we are." The Professor said when we landed. "Earth. Now Amanda, you might discover you've been gone for a few hours from the planet's perspective, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Now you need to swear to me that you'll tell no-one of the events that unfolded here today, understand?" Amanda simply nodded. She stepped out of the vending machine-shaped TASM and shut the door behind her. Just as we were about to leave, she poked her head around the door one final time.
"John?" She asked, and gestured towards the prison cell. "Say goodbye to her for me, won't you?" I nodded, to which she gave a quick smile. And with that, Amanda Ripley was gone, back to her workaday life on Earth, as if nothing had ever happened.
Now for the Xenomorph. The TASM took us next to a jungle planet, which according to The Professor was uninhabited by human life. The alien would get plenty of food, and nobody would get hurt. Perfect.
"Now then, John…" The Professor said as we headed back to the TASM. "I suppose you'll want dropping off at home, too."
"Perhaps…" I began. "Or maybe… I could come with you?" The Professor simply smiled, and gestured to the TASM.
"Be my guest." He said happily. "But I must warn you, John. Once you agree to travel with me in this TASM, who knows where it could take us. There's no guarantee we'll always be safe, that I can always bring you back. You understand that, don't you?"
"Professor," I said solemnly, resting a hand upon his shoulder. "I understand." And with that, I followed The Professor into the TASM, shutting the door behind me. Then off we went, through time and space.
YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING T*A*S*M
WRITTEN, EDITED and PRODUCED by THEMANFROMMUDOS
PUBLISHED by FANFICTION
STARRING:
THE PROFESSOR ….. VYKKER © ODDWORLD INHABITANTS
JOHN SMITH as HIMSELF
AMANDA RIPLEY ….. © 20TH CENTURY FOX, SEGA and CREATIVE ASSEMBLEY
A MAN IN A COSTUME as THE XENOMORPH ….. © 20TH CENTURY FOX
PROPS and SETS:
SEVASTAPOL STATION ….. © SEGA and CREATIVE ASSEMBLEY
THE TASM ….. TARDIS © BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION
THE COMPANY HEADQUARTERS ….. © 20TH CENTURY FOX
TITLECARD ARTWORK:
TARDIS IMAGE © BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION
VYKKERS LABS LOGO © ODDWORLD INHABITANTS
M*A*S*H STYLISATION © COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM
