CHAPTER 4: PARADISE.
December 12th , 2094. Earth Central Time. Unknown Engineer planet.
The ship emerged into the cloud layer with a thunderous sound. David didn't think it was possible to drop directly out of hyperspace inside a planet's atmosphere, but De'va technology was far more advanced than human.
The biomechanical suit that held him in the pilot's chair retracted and David was able to stand up. He climbed down from the telescope-shaped device onto the circular platform on the bridge.
At one end of the dais, a cryogenic chamber glowed in a yellowish light. David walked over and admired its occupant. Elizabeth Shaw slept peacefully, wrapped in a brown robe inside the glass coffin.
"We have arrived, Elizabeth." He said, gently stroking the sarcophagus.
Through one of the ship's portholes, David admired the landscape. A pristine world, with forests and mountains bathed by a mirror-like lake which reflected sunlight. He thought of the biblical image of the Garden of Eden.
As the craft hovered for a moment over the large water body, David saw flashes of gold on its shores. Wheat fields! he whispered, widening his eyes. The U-shaped behemoth veered east, and flew over a steep, narrow valley. The android admired the myriads of birds that fled from the presence of the airborne juggernaut. For a moment, David forgot why they had come there, he smiled at the thought that perhaps it was indeed a paradise, untainted by sin.
The forest gave way to a walled city. The tall limestone and sandstone buildings shimmered white against the green surface of the forest. High walls with iron gates surrounded the city and a huge esplanade. At the very center of the city sprawl, a circular temple stood out from the rest of the edifications.
That temple was of a simpler design than the pyramids they had found back on that sinister moon. David compared the differences between the two architectural styles. While the LV-223 was a gothic cathedral, this one was akin to a Roman pantheon.
Hovering over the city was an object. A curved, black and ominous spacecraft. Like the one that carried David and Shaw, it was utilitarian in design. Almost twice the size and shaped like a scorpion's tail, including the stinger. The ship automatically headed for the floating structure, which in turn turned to meet it. David correctly deduced that it was some kind of docking port.
In the vast plaza beneath him, David watched a great crowd of humanoid figures come out of the houses and the main temple, admiring his arrival as if it was a divine event.
Immediately, the horns resounded throughout the valley. Watching, he saw that they wore simple robes like the one that covered Shaw's naked body. These aren't the same kind of individual we've encountered on LV-223, David thought.
Down in the square a huge iris opened, giving way to a gigantic underground hangar. From above, David identified two or three of the Juggernauts stored down there.
The juggernaut smoothly docked with the ring. Below him, the city erupted in cheers and chants, totally ecstatic. For them, a long-awaited moment had finally arrived.
David watched silently and a sinister sneer spread across his face. He headed toward the ship's cargo bay.
In the huge circular space in the center of the vehicle were hundreds, thousands of steatite urns that David had secretly brought from LV-223. A deadly cargo of death and destruction that Elizabeth Shaw wanted so badly to leave behind.
The android pressed some hieroglyphs on the wall and the cargo door opened. The ampules slid towards the central part of the vault, just above the iris.
The city's denizens looked at the ship confused. A few raised a hand over their eyes to shield themselves from the sun and see what was happening.
Poor little creatures, David thought, looking down at them condescendingly.
Suddenly, the urns fell to the ground in a spiral of death. A hundred meters from the surface, they exploded into a black cloud that spread throughout the city's airspace, falling to the ground like a putrid rain.
The chants and prayers turned into screams of terror. The townspeople rushed to the gates, tripping and stepping on those who fell to the ground.
The deadly and oily slick engulfed them and introduced into their cavities: eyes, mouths, ears... Those invaded by the pathogen fell to the ground, writhing in an inhuman way. The luckier ones died instantly, their skin and flesh dissolving in a puddle of blackened organic matter.
Others fell to the ground squirming, black veins drawn on his whitish skin. The liquid invaded them from the inside, changing them. Their heads had become bulbous, their teeth sharpened, their arms and fingers elongated. They stood up and walked in a semi-crouched position.
Soon, these individuals would enter a state of wild frenzy, attacking anything that moved.
Terrified inhabitants banged on the barred gates of the city, trying to get out. But their refuge had become their prison. Corpses quickly piled up at each of the entrances to the city of the dead.
As the cloud reached ground level, it dispersed among streets and entered homes through doors and windows. A group of these inhabitants was cornered in a dead end. The black motes defiled the poor souls via their nose and mouth.
-"In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. " David recited, quoting Pliny the Younger. "Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness." In truth, the scene reminded him of what the people of Pompeii experienced during the last seconds of their lives.
The Strange shapes were the last to appear. Infernal creatures sprang from the mouths, chests, and anuses of those who did not immediately die or weren't turned into abominations.
There was a certain beauty to them, in the same way that one appreciates the deadly beauty of a dart frog or a lionfish. Humanoid creatures with claws and long tails ending in stingers. As night fell, these horrors slipped into the shadows, hunting and killing the few survivors. When they had finished with these, they turned against the fauna in that now rotten paradise. By the dawn of the second day, the world was completely silent.
- o -
Two days later.
The Juggernaut decoupled from the mother ship and slowly descended toward the necropolis, settling only a few inches above the ground. The center hatch opened like a flower petal and David climbed out.
Around him were the charred bodies of the engineers, twisted in a rictus of pain and suffering. The remaining abominations lay dying. David deduced that having fulfilled their function of eradicating all forms of life, the monstrosities suffered some kind of apoptosis, a state of programmed cell death.
Their bodies decomposed rapidly after death. David approached one of the corpses. The cellular matter was reduced to a blackish gelatinous mass. With his enhanced vision, David could see small particles rearranging themselves. In some of the puddles, small fungus-like globules were forming.
-"Sometimes to build," said David to himself, "you have to destroy." These were the words he had said to Shaw back on the moon.
Eventually, this would have happened to Dr. Holloway, he thought, if he hadn't prematurely ended the process.
It was not so with the strange forms, they retreated to the dark corners of the world and lay dormant until new life awakened them or dried up like macabre statues. A feeling of self-fulfillment washed over the android for a moment. And then, suddenly, David danced. He took a few steps a la Gene Kelly, swinging one leg at a time with his arms outstretched to her sides, smiling brightly.
-"I, being free from fear," David recited as he danced, "let go the weapon. And, O lord of men, as soon as it had been hurled, there appeared on the scene by thousands." He paused to contemplate a dead abomination. "And on that weapon being hurled all the universe became filled with these as well as many others wearing various shapes. And again and again wounded by beings, the Danavas met with destruction."
The poem he recited was part of the ancient epic Mahabharata. It told the story of a city inhabited by Asuras, a kind of demigods or titans. The parallelism between the mythical weapon and the one he had just used was astounding.
David headed towards the main temple. The circular structure that he had seen from the air. On the steps, he observed the bodies of those who were heading to the sacrosanct place, thinking that there they would be safe from the Angel of Death. He stopped to contemplate a body.
It was a female, lying face down on the steps. Her face looked up in a cry of pain as her back had burst open, and her bloody viscera stained the whitish rock. Her right arm extended towards the doors of the temple. But what caught David's attention was that in her left arm she was holding the small body of her baby, who had died instantly.
-"And when the Danavas also had been slain, their wives, uttering cries of distress, like unto Kurari birds, came out of the city." David continued, this time with a quiet tone. "And bewailing for their sons and brothers and fathers, they fell on the ground and cried with distressful accents."
David walked between the huge semi-spherical doors of the temple. Inside it was dark. The only light came from the circular opening in the vault ceiling. Pale blue light illuminated seven colossal heads carved in limestone.
During the journey, the android had learned more about the engineers. The Effigie, who represented the seven ancient sages, faced the center of the room. There, a body lay face down, wrapped in a white robe. Others were scattered around the place.
David crouched down next to the corpse and turned it over. The engineer's black veins showed on his pale -almost white -skin. The Elder was one of those who had died immediately due to the pathogen. "Mortal, after all." David said to himself.
For the next few days, David investigated the silent necropolis.
At the back of the temple, he found a magnificent garden of white roses. David stopped, cut one of the flowers, and breathed in the fragrance. The petals detached from the flower and fell to the ground.
Without his caretakers, the plants began to die. "The Garden of Eden was not meant to be empty.*" He told himself, and went back inside. In one of the rooms he had discovered a sink that collected water from a spring. He took a clay pot and scooped up some of the vital liquid, then came back and poured it over the plants.
A screeching sound behind him drew his attention. The android turned surprised by the intrusion, thinking that perhaps one of the inhabitants could still be alive.
It was one of the strange shapes, a small monstrosity with a mouthful of teeth and six jointed legs. David frowned and looked at her curiously, the beast stopped and moved from side to side, mirroring the synthetic's head's own movements.
The hideous creature shrieked furiously, but hesitant. David realized with amazement that it was because the beast knew he wasn't technically alive.
Very slowly, he backed away until he reached a shelf of thick glass containers. He took a transparent urn and approached the creature lifting it with the intention of catching it. The strange shape backed away slowly, screeching.
With a quick movement, he lunged forward and sealed the monster inside the container. The monstrous insect lunged at the walls furiously, but the crystal held. Smiling, David led the specimen back to a room in the lower levels. It had once been a library, multiple scrolls of papyrus lay arranged on shelves and others on tables of wood and stone.
For a long time he contemplated his capture, studying their reactions. Abominations were extremely vicious and hostile, attacking almost instinctively. The next day, David found the creature dead, with its eight bony limbs curled toward its belly.
Like insects, he thought. Highly specialized and programmed to perform a task, nothing more. Like the Earth mayflies, once their primary purpose was fulfilled, they simply died.
Evolution is nothing more than the successful result of chaotic mutations, David reasoned, not order emerging from chaos, but chaos trying to perpetuate itself.
Creation, on the other hand, was the ability to master the control and manipulation of evolution to instill order. His own creator, Peter Weyland, believed that control of everything was the main feature of the gods: to control fire, electricity, the atom, life... and death. To become a god, David had to dominate creation.
He decided to do an experiment: He returned to the juggernaut and retrieved the synapse re-initiator they had recovered from the Prometheus and one of the few intact urns from the ship's cargo hold.
Very carefully, he placed the dead creature on the table, pinning it up with needles like an entomologist would a butterfly. Later, he used the synaptic re-initiator to "revive" the creature for a few minutes.
One of the legs twitched, followed by others. David poured a drop -just a drop -of the black goo onto the organism... and waited.
The reaction was immediate. As had happened with the engineers, the tiny beast's body changed, the exoskeleton hardened, and it developed a longer, sharper proboscis. The organism tried to free itself from the pin that held it. David wrote down his observations on a piece of papyrus, until the creature died again.
David repeated the experiment in another of the strange forms, this time a medium-sized beast with a humanoid body and a long tail. This time, the bulbous head of the specimen developed a chitinous shell. After death, David sectioned the creature's head to observe internal changes: the oblong gland, which controlled aggressiveness - and survival - had doubled in size.
-"Would it have the same result in a human brain?" David whispered to the severed head, rhetorically. He wondered if he could enhance the test subject's cognitive abilities without sacrificing the sense of self-preservation and aggressiveness.
Judging from what he'd seen with Charlie Holloway, the experiment hadn't been successful, but maybe under other conditions the result would be different.
Unfortunately, the only human being in that desolate paradise was Elizabeth, and he would not waste such a magnificent specimen in proving a theory. David decided that he would have to learn the secrets of the black liquid before moving on to the next step.
- o -
A/N: Welcome back, readers. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. For those who remember the events of Alien: Covenant, this chapter is a recreation of the scene where David confesses the truth of what happened on Planet 4 to Walter.
However, as David is an unreliable narrator, the scene contains many gaps. I based this chapter on two additional things: a piece of concept art showing David dancing among the corpses and a cloud of black goo, and some of the pieces dissected in the lab.
David has started to show his god complex, and he must have experimented with the creatures first before going to the next level. With Shaw being the last human on the planet, David would first have to master the technique rather than spoil his perfect specimen.
*The phrase refers to Genesis 2:15. "The Lord god took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
In the final chapter we learn about David's motivations and Shaw's ultimate fate. For now, leave his comments below.
