Was Lacy like me? An human trapped in an alien body? Or was she just really smart, and learned to talk and everything? I wasn't sure what to think about her, so I kept quiet.

Lacy tried the door panel, attempting to escape, but the light turned red and a recorded voice said, "Access restricted."

My new acquaintance returned to the window of my cell. "Sorry. I should have known better."

"It's all right," I said. "Why are you called Lacy? Shouldn't you have a weird alien name like Jarjar or something?"

She shrugged. "Someone thought I should take the name of the human I killed. To remind me that she was a person, not just meat for my mouth."

I stared at the stranger in front of me with disappointment. I had been hoping for someone like me, someone who understood being a human in an alien body, but this one wasn't anything special, just a monster with remorse. "Did you figure out the door yet?"

Lacy shook her head. "Sorry."

"Look," I sighed. "I think I saw a Battleship game in the store room. Slide the red one under the door and we can play."

"Play?" she said. "Don't you want to get out of here?"

"Yeah, but you don't know how to open the door, do you?"

"No."

"So what can we really do?"

I was answered by a frustrated growl. "Where is the store room?"

I told her. A minute later, she returned with a pair of plastic cases, one red, one blue. She pushed one through the food slot, and we set up our boards.

"Have you played this game before?" I asked.

Lacy had her chin propped up on one claw, her other claw poking the pieces in. A very human pose. "I'm not sure."

"What do you mean you're not sure? Either you know how to play or you don't."

"Then I guess I don't. B-5."

I laughed. "You rat! How did you know I had a sub there!"

"Your turn."

I paused and thought about my next move. I must have thought a little too long, because I noticed Lacy impatiently tapping her claws on the console.

"Sorry," I muttered. "A-1."

Lacy squinted at her board for a moment, claw still tapping on the console. It seemed more like playing a piano than random twiddling.

I smirked. "You playing a keyboard solo?"

"What?" she said, not getting my little joke.

Her claw struck a button as if holding a whole note on a crescendo.

I heard a muted beep, then my door clicked open.

"How did you do that!" I cried in amazement.

"I don't know," she answered. "Does it really matter? Get out of there!"

I crept into the lab, looking to the left and the right. "I saw a ball in the other room. Want to play ball?"

I couldn't tell if Lacy were rolling her eyes, but her body language was saying `What, are you stupid?' "I don't think that would be the best use of our time."

"We're stuck in the lab. It's not like we're going to get out of here anyway. Might as well have fun."

"There's got to be some way out," she said. "We need to at least try to escape."

I put my claws on my hips. "Says the mouse in the big cheese maze. Look, they've left us alone this long to test us. When we get out, they're just going to zap us with cattleprods anyway. I'll go get the ball."

"Newt!" my new friend cried in a near shriek. "We're trying to rescue you from this place. Don't you want to go someplace where you can be free and do whatever you want?"

For a moment, I thought about feeding the ducks, hiking around in the woods, or maybe playing games at a video arcade.

But then I thought about this new body, and what xenomorphs had done to all the people I cared about.

"It's for everybody's safety," I whimpered. "I could have gotten out lots of times, but I don't trust myself. Not in this body. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but some people in a jail really do need to stay behind bars. It's like how they chain up the Wolf Man or a vampire so they can't bite anyone..."

Lacy rubbed her face with her claws, clearly frustrated with me. "Newt. You're not the only one who gets tempted to eat humans. I have fasted many days on little sustenance, but the great * has always heard my prayers and provided nourishment at the proper time.

"You don't have to live out your days in a cage just to protect human life. We can help each other fight this temptation."

"I won't have to fight temptation at all if I'm in a cage."

"Newt, don't you see? There are * and people out there that love you! They're trying to get you out of here so you can live a happy normal life!"

"My name isn't Newt, it's Becky!" I shouted. "The people that love me are all dead! And this," I rammed a claw into my shell. "This can never be normal!"

Lacy growled in exasperation. "I'll come back for you. Maybe by then you'll remember who loves you, and what you're turning down."

She crawled up the wall, poking at a ventilation register near the ceiling.

"How did you unlock my cell?" I asked.

She answered, "Random button pressing, I guess."

I dug the ball out of the storage room, idly bouncing it as I watched the alien picking at the screws.

She hopped down from the wall. "It can't be that simple," I heard her saying to herself as she approached the door security panel.

Her claws typed a number into the virtual keypad, then opened a menu for adding and modifying palm print scans.

"Authorization code required for registry modifications," said the recorded voice.

Lacy spoke into a small microphone. "Charlie hotel alpha Romeo Lima echo November echo four zero seven seven."

I heard a beep. "Authorization override accepted. Place your hand on the scanner now."

She did.

"Error registering print. Please try again."

She tried again.

"Error registering print. Please try again."

Lacy let out an annoyed growl.

"How do you know how to do that!" I cried. "Are you actually like me? Are you a person in an alien body?"

She didn't answer me. She was too busy trying to figure out the code.

She stared at her right claw. "Oh God," I heard her muttering. "Of course it's not going to read that! How stupid! What was I thinking?"

She clicked a button, opening a secondary menu.

"Handicap accessibility options," said the voice. "Freeform scanning mode. Place identification on scanner and retry."

The machine actually accepted a scan of her claw. After her digital signature had been saved, she typed in a number, placed the claw on the glass, and the pressure door slid open right away.

She turned her head, a backwards glance suggesting I come with, but I only bounced my ball.

When her head turned to face the hallway again, a thickly muscled blonde guy in gray stepped in her path, blasting her with a new sort of taser that fired electrified pellets.

Lacy collapsed writhing on the floor.

I rolled the ball in my claws as I looked down on her. "Told you so."

"Please return to your cell," the man said to me, weapon at the ready.

I bounced my ball, staring at the stranger. His face was square and bony. I suppose you would describe it as Nordic. "I don't know how to open the door," I said.

For a moment, I thought the man looked skeptical, but the scent told me he was a robot, and he seemed to be a rational one at that.

"Don't move." Keeping his weapon aimed at me, he stalked his way over to the console, opening up my room.

I bounced the ball in and sat down next to my stuffed dog.

The door closed again.

Through the window, I could see the robot give Lacy a couple more zaps with his taser, dragging her into the hallway, out of view.

I felt kind of guilty about the whole thing, but then I thought about all the people we were keeping safe, and it made me feel a little better.

Item Twenty Seven: There are aliens as crazy as I am.

You know how Bruce Willis says "Yipee ki yi yay motherfucker" in those Die Hard movies? One time mom caught me saying it when I and Timmy were playing a game with his action figures. She made me stick my nose in a corner for ten minutes.

I kinda felt the same way about letting Lacy get caught. I mean, I shouldn't really, I was protecting human beings, but I couldn't help but feel a little ashamed and foolish.

Of course, by then there wasn't much I could do about it, other than bounce my ball off the wall and cry over metaphorical spilled milk.

Hearing the pressure doors sliding open again, I climbed up the wall, staring out the viewing window.

There was a white guy in a green uniform, with hair and face like a chimp, and he was bringing Ripley in, the woman's hands clamped behind her back in indestructible looking metal restraints, her ankles in retractable, similarly tough looking fetters.

In place of her fatigues, Ripley now wore a leather vest and leather pants. She looked so pretty that I kinda felt jealous, you know, wanting to trade bodies.

The guard made her sit down in a chair by the tanks, and Carolyn came in.

Carolyn isn't the friendliest woman in the whole world. She's wrinkly and gray haired, with a stripe of white running up the center of her head like a Mohawk, hipster fashion, but I doubt she's ever had kids. She's too mean.

When we first met, she tried to teach me to speak English, but I already spoke it fluently, so she gave up and stopped visiting me.

Now she sat in her long labcoat, showing Ripley those same old digital slides on her little tablet computer, coaching her how to say words. She silently mouthed them, trying to see how Ripley would respond.

Glove. Fruit. Bathroom. Food. Water. Girl. Puppy dog. Chinese. Basic ordinary words. Ripley answered just fine, but she seemed reluctant to speak unless spoken to.

I tapped on the window.

Ripley turned, stared at me, but her face showed zero recognition.

"That's Newt," Carolyn said. "She claims to have been your friend once."

"No friend of mine," Ripley muttered.

I felt like I had been slugged in the stomach. I slipped down the wall, sagging against the metal as I clutched Big Blue to my chest, sucking my thumb claw.

Was it an act? Or was this for real?

"You know, Ripley, we'd really like to take those restraints off you," I heard Carolyn saying through the wall. "Maybe give you some felt pens or books, to give you something to do. But the incident with Dr. Sprague makes us a little hesitant. You almost killed him."

"He got too close," she said. "He tried to seduce me. Plus that scar was sensitive and he kept poking it. I felt threatened."

Carolyn sighed through her nose. "Ripley, the next time someone makes you uncomfortable like that, I want you to verbalize your upset. Say, `Doctor Sprague, it makes me uncomfortable when you touch me like that.'"

Ripley didn't respond, at least not verbally. I guess she might have nodded, but I didn't see it.

"That didn't sound like a yes to me," said the man guarding her.

Instead of complying, Ripley only said, "What's for lunch?"

"At least she's communicating," Carolyn said. "When we began this thing, we weren't even sure of that."

The pressure doors opened and closed, and silence fell upon the lab once more.

Little did I know that within the space of a few short days, quiet would be an increasingly scarce commodity.

Some people, when left alone by themselves for long periods of time, become introspective enough to write the Great American Novel or develop some important scientific theory. I only end up thinking about things that make me feel bad about myself.

Mom and dad were wildcatters. They spent a lot of time driving out across the dunes of LV 426, collecting scrap metal from the crashed ships and stuff. But we did have a place to live in at the base. It was basically a trailer, a modular thing like an earth mobile home, but it had bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

One time mom was bending over, cleaning out a stove, and she was in the way when I went to go get a glass of water, so I told her, "Get your fat butt out of the way."

I don't think she ever got over that. Ever since then, she was drinking cans of Slim Fast, not really eating as much as I think she should, acting like she wasn't hungry when she probably was. The weird thing is, wildcatters are often out alone in the middle of nowhere for days at a time, so, I mean, who really cares if you're fat?

I think it was all about me.

I tried to convince her to stop trying to lose weight, but I never could take those words back.

I thought about this incident as I drifted off to sleep with my dog in my arms, thumb claw in my mouth.

DAY 4

I dreamed that this space station was nothing but a big phony construct out in the middle of a desert. I killed Bruno with my mouth claw, broke out of the building, and stole a car, driving through a crowded city. Somehow I didn't get arrested, even when I drove fast and weaved in and out of traffic, but then the cops kept following me everywhere I drove.

Worse, the big queen alien came after me when I lost the cops. She'd jump across the hoods of cars, run beside my window, roar in my face. The driver's side window had only been rolled partway shut, of course. Every time I tried to close it, she'd stick in her claw and make it open again.

A woman was changing her tire on the side of the road, and as I'm driving, she steps into the other lane with her tire, then lays down in my lane so I have to swerve over on the shoulder. I drive on the grass really crazily to emphasize my frustration.

When I get back on the road, I drive over what I think is a plastic bag, but it's actually my grandma.

I go to examine the body, but then it's an Easter basket, wrapped in plastic, with a grandmother doll inside.

That's when a tornado comes after me.

Then I'm back on LV 426, in a kitchen attached to a chapel at one end of the colony. An alien drops down from the ceiling and attacks me, but I haven't had any practice fighting anyone in this new body, so I get beat up. Then the preacher man gets scared and beats up on me too. I try to get back at them later, but I kill the wrong alien, and the wrong person.

I run into a house, and it's like a 3D video game, where I run around and around in a mansion. I catch a glimpse of something in a mirror at the far end of a hallway, and the sight frightens me so much that I wake up, afraid to shut whatever it is I use to make myself sleep.

It was the demon, the devil face in the mirror.

I woke up.

After thinking about it for a minute, I realize I'm terrified of what I might become.

And then, more horrible still, the TV monitor switched on by itself.

I looked up at the observation window, which was still open, but found no one there. I guessed it to be a prank, a malfunction, or some test they were doing remotely. Mom always told me I was being silly when I thought a place was haunted or possessed.

I stared at the monitor.

Bizarrely enough, it was showing Sesame Street, but in place of Big Bird, the opening song featured a large bodied winged xenomorph with a long mosquito nose. It did the same things the yellow bird always did, waving at children, running across a field, hugging them, leading them around a neighborhood of brownstone buildings...and then it cut to a scene of the alien sitting in Big Bird's twig nest, thumbing through James A. Michener's Journey.

"`In gathering darkness we pursue a grail of gold protected by jealous elves who keep it rimmed by jagged mountains,'" she read.

A large brown elephant shaped thing came slowly loping through a maze of painted green boards, old doors no longer fit for use in houses.

Upon seeing this creature approach, the bug monster cowered in the nest. The sight of such a large scary creature trying to make itself small looked so ridiculous that I had to laugh.

"Big Bird!" the elephant thing called.

The bug didn't answer.

"Big Bird!"

"Big Bird isn't here," said the xenomorph. "Go away."

"I see you in there, Big Bird!" Snuffleupagus said in a sing-song voice.

"Shh! Don't tell anyone!" the alien said. "Just leave me alone!"

The elephant thing's muffled voice sounded worried. "Big Bird! Why are you hiding in your nest?"

The monster slowly raised her glistening black head above the framework of twigs. "Snuffy, I'm afraid."

"But everyone likes you! What could you be afraid of?"

Big Bird edged further out of her nest, but still looked silly because she was hunkered down and appeared deadly enough to kill an army. "That's just it, Snuffy! I'm afraid I might make a mistake and accidentally hurt somebody!"

"Big Bird! You can't just hide in your nest forever! What about your friends?"

Big Bird pointed her needle nose at the camera, as if looking at me, then turned her attention back to Snuffy. "I don't have any friends! All the ones I cared about have moved away. I have all my needs taken care of in this nest, so I'm better off just staying here, back in the corner, where I can't possibly hurt anybody!"

I glanced uncomfortably around my cell, wondering who put this TV program together, if it were some kind of trick the scientists were playing on my mind, or if it were merely a dream. The program hadn't changed that drastically over the years, had it?

"Big Bird!" a woman's voice called. "Where are you?"

Big Bird ducked down inside her hiding place.

A mahogany skinned woman with long flowing black hair and a blue blouse and jeans marched into the little alleyway, frowning at the elephant. "Snuffleupagus, have you seen Big Bird?"

"Tell her no!" Big Bird hissed.

Snuffy shook his trunk. "I'm sorry, Maria. I haven't seen her."

"You shouldn't lie, Snuffleupagus." Maria put her hands on her hips, scowling at the massive dark creature. "Big Bird! What are you doing in there!"

"Go away!" Big Bird cried. "I don't want to hurt you!"

Maria sat down on the edge of the nest, putting her hand on the xenomorph's shell. "What makes you think that you'd hurt me?"

Big Bird slowly rose to a sitting position. "Look at me! I'm so big and scary! I could just swing my tail the wrong way and knock you over!"

She stroked the alien's dome. "But you haven't, Big Bird. And even if you did, I'd know you'd never hurt me on purpose, because we're friends."

"But I never want to accidentally hurt you, Maria. If I just stay here, I won't have to."

"But what kind of life is that, Big Bird? Don't you want to travel to different places and have fun?"

Big Bird sat up straighter. "Well, yeah..."

"You're not going to have any fun sitting in this nest all the time!"

"But I'm a dangerous animal!" Big Bird protested. "Like a lion at the zoo, or the Wolf Man! I can't just run around loose!"

"Now you're just being silly! If a lion worried as much as you do about not hurting people, do you think they'd need to keep him in a cage?"

The alien paused in thought. "I guess, now that you mention it, it would be kinda silly..."

She turned her head to face the camera again. "Maybe I should go out and meet my friends. I bet they are wondering how I'm doing...Isn't that right, Becky?"

The door to my cell popped open on its own, as if there had been a poltergeist in the lab with me.

"No no no!" I cried, beating my skull with my fists. "This isn't real! Get out of my head!"

"I'm sorry, Becky," I heard Big Bird saying. "I left my synthetic human body to send this video message to you. I was only trying to help. My methods may have been dishonest, but I only wished to make you understand that you deserve better than this. I have studied your behavior long enough to know that you do not pose a serious threat to human beings. In fact, I have reason to believe that the human beings in this station intend to do something far more unsafe and illegal with their recent biological acquisitions."

I stared at the bug face in the monitor. "I don't understand."

"Becky, your passive response to your own captivity may actually endanger more lives than you think it will save."

Big Bird's face disappeared, and I was looking at a large slimy alien (Ernie?) in a heavy duty reinforced glass and metal stall.

The alien's head bore a broad flat chitinous tiara, her abdomen swollen. She groaned as a translucent sac attached to her tail squeezed out an oozing veiny green egg.

It had its claws folded in prayer. "For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man that I am Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

I thought back to my image of the black lady who crawled through the tunnels with me, protecting me from the aliens. Did I imagine her, or was she real?

Directly in front of this praying thing, behind a bulletproof glass window, a black haired man in a green general's uniform stood with Mr. Gediman and Dr. Sprague, an egg headed scientist that came by my cell from time to time.

I recognized the general as Mr. Perez. He liked me. Said I had a lot of potential. I kinda liked him too. The best thing about him was the crazy way his eyes crossed when he got mad.

What I didn't like was what I heard him saying next. He was talking about

He began by describing Ripley as a "Meat byproduct," telling the other scientists how he'd kill her if she killed the aliens.

Then he looks at (Ernie?) and says, "When will Her Majesty start producing?"

"Any time now," says Sprague. "What we need is cargo."

Read: Human host bodies. I was familiar enough with what the aliens did that I didn't need this explained to me.

Perez says to him, "I'm telling you, it's on its way."

Twenty Nine: Perez isn't as nice as I thought he was.

"Is he talking about what I think he is?" I asked Big Bird.

"You of all people should know," the fictional character replied.

I frowned at the screen. "I admit this doesn't sound good, but you just faked Sesame Street to make me leave my room. Why should I believe you?"

Big Bird nodded to the open door. "Go down to the cargo bay and find out for yourself."

Item Thirty: Even a crazy artificial intelligence wants me out of this cell.