Epilogue: Life Goes on

If you had to live life all alone on an island, with only you and your thoughts, or if you were creative, a face made on a rock or coconut, and you returned to civilization after a couple of years of that life, things are going to be different.

The world has its own prerequisites for you to be a part of it. For example, on your island, all you had to worry about was food, water, and shelter. If you had yourself a face to talk to that you made, you'd also be set for socialization (If you had a bit of an imagination).

However, in society, you have different things to worry about. You still need food, water, and shelter, but there are different, more difficult ways you have to acquire them through.

Here's one example. If you want food on the island, you have to go fish for it in the surf, or climb a coconut palm, or even scale a cliff face and look for sea gull eggs.

In society however, you cannot hunt for that food in that same manner. You have to go buy it from a market, restaurant, or even grow it from a seed, which you would have to pay money for, and even find the dirt to grow it from.

Alas, if you want food in civilization, you must pay for it. Water is a similar deal. Shelter is the hardest of all, with rent or some other source of payment. Back on the island, all you would have needed was a cave, or maybe a makeshift tent of sticks and palm fronds.

However, with Jake Essex, post infestation life was his island. He had to go find food in a kitchen, or from the mess hall. He hunted for every last can, and his implement for the surrender of their contents was a can opener.

He got water from the plumbing that had still been working, or from a water bottle, or later on; by boiling whatever water he found.

Shelter had been a spot in the ducts. The whole facility was shelter to the people who colonized it three generations ago, Jake, Newt, and all of the other children at the time being the fourth generation of colonists. The ducts provided a safety aspect that the rest of the facility lacked after the infestation began.

Thus, when rescue came in the form of Ripley, Burke, and the marines, it meant that the survivor life of Jake and Newt was over.

The incident that had been dubbed "The Race Against Time" had been a problem. The ejection from the Sulaco that brought them to Fury, seemed to have stranded them.

Is it really stranding though. Though they were left without a way off at the time; they were able to contact help. They were left on a place that had resources to keep them well-fed easily. They were among others, in a place where order was a norm that offered stability.

Rather than look for food, they had to go to the processors and after punching a few buttons, could have food.

The ordeal was only three days; they would be picked up, and taken home. They would only have had to wait, and keep themselves busy. The only problem that arose was the Alien that came from something.

Two face-huggers made it onto the EEV, one got stuck in the air-scrubbers and ended up impregnating something on the planet's surface, a dog, or an ox, something other than an inmate. An inmate with a face-hugger on him would have been noticed immediately.

Whatever it attached itself to, it's product, the Alien, was killed. Killed by undergoing rapid heating and cooling.

The second one, the one that made a queen inside Ripley, was never noticed. The product was, and removed. The Embryo had been cut out of it's host, at a time when it was only minutes from bursting, yet fully developed.

Now, though not destroyed, it's current whereabouts unknown to all but two people, both in hibernation with the survivors and the rest of the crew.

As they sleep, the ship both keeping them alive and bringing them to Gateway station; the massive, complex space station in a trailing orbit (One that goes opposite of the spin of the body it orbits).

There, a meeting had been arranged by the ever-present, ultra powerful Weyland-Yutani Corporation. A company that worked in everything, paid for everything, and even owned the politicians.

The company hired Ripley, and paid her to be captain of the Nostromo. The company paid the great-grandparents of Jake and Newt to colonize LV-492(Archeron).

The company was everywhere. Always breathing down your neck. It owned the tallest building back on Earth, the 900-story Weyland-Yutani headquarters building.

However, the company cannot truly control all of the messages that go through space. The ones that were broadcast years ago.

These messages can be short, and they can be long. They can be a simple message, like the steady beeping made by the first artificial satellite; Sputnik. They may be slightly more complex, like the radio signals broadcasted on the AM frequency.

Those, depending on how far out you are, can be a window to the past. It was on these that Jake discovered classic rock, due to the placement of his colony.

Some, require a monitor to go with the antenna. They are television signals, and are often fuzzy past the Sol system.

Alas, that is those from Earth. Further out, the messages differ, becoming signals of ship's logs, or the communication of pulse signals or status reports.

These messages are often random. They may mean something to the listener, or they may not.

However, on the ship the survivors are on, it seems that a radio had been left on, one that operated on battery power.

The message was one from the past. "This is Ripley, last surviving member of the Nostr…" That was all it said before the batteries in the radio ran out, and the message ended.

Life goes on for the survivors, as does the journey.