ALIEN: GENESIS
Disclaimer: The ALIEN franchise and all related characters wherein are the intellectual property of 20th Century Fox.
As with ALIENS: EPIDEMIC, I am writing these GENESIS chapters while listening to music from non-ALIENS works. For GENESIS, I am listening to the soundtracks for the anime BLUE GENDER (1998 - 1999) by Kuniaki Haishima; the anime adaptation of ELFEN LIED (2004 - 2005) by Yukio Kondo, Kayo Konishi, and Moka; ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) by Jed Kurzel; ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) by John Frizzell; and the anime ANGEL'S EGG (1985) by Yoshihiro Kanno. I listened to a lot of mellow and eerie music for this story because it helps me keep that mood of wrongness that the Grand Oak's crew feel when they discover David's laboratory and his experiments.
Also, screw what I said about waiting. I received the Blu-Ray of Covenant in the mail and I watched it again. Even with the director's audio commentary shedding light on some things regarding the abilities of David's xenomorphs... I'm not really going to incorporate them into this story. That would require re-writing at least two whole chapters of the story at minimum, and I've made you guys wait long enough for another chapter of GENESIS as it is.
CHAPTER 06: THE ISLAND OF DAVID WEYLAND
THE ENGINEER PLANET, MARCH 01, 2105
Hugging the wall to their right, the away team slowly ventured forth into the cavernous labyrinth of the temple. They could still hear the storm outside behind them as they traversed the dirt-covered floors and corridors. The place had a very interesting architectural style, although it was rather primitive in comparison to the vessel found in the mountains.
Soon, the group came upon a series of stairs that led to a lower level. In there, they found a large chamber, lined with giant stone heads and a well in the center. A stone bench was overturned on the flor, along with a small torch that had long burnt out. White stains could be seen on the floor.
Following the stains, the group soon saw an android, hunched over in a fetal position on the floor, a knife stuck in its neck. The artificial flesh of the droid had sealed up around the knife, and there was a damaged left hand on the floor, one that had white stains and circuitry. Circling around the motionless figure, the group noticed that it was missing its left hand, but the hand had a burn mark on it, cauterized by some unknown force.
"It's a Walter unit," Emmitt said as he gently laid the deceased white creature on the floor nearby. He then walked over to the curled up droid and looked it over. It was almost completely naked, save for the undershirt and boxers. Its outer clothes were nowhere to be seen.
"Is it the one from the Covenant?" Newman asked curiously. "No. Can't be," Hamilton said. "The Covenant's Walter left us that message, didn't it?" he added. "I mean, how could one Walter be on the Covenant and down here at the same time? The Covenant has only one droid listed on its crew manifest," Hamilton added.
Looking the Walter unit up and down, Emmitt focused on the knife. It was a combat knife, issued to security personnel. A sense of unease began to well up as his neural centers processed everything he had seen so far. There was another party involved in whatever had happened here. An as of yet unknown entity was involved, not only with the Covenant's deceased and missing crew, but also the dead natives and the crashed ship in the mountain. But who or what was it?
Looking around, Lansbury noticed something reflective on the ground nearby and walked over to check it out. Kneeling down, he saw that it was a metal object with a string threaded through it. A small cylinder, in fact, otherwise solid but with a hollow section. It was a necklace, though, and it had to belong to someone. Maybe the Walter unit could give them answers, Lansbury mused.
"Emmitt, can he be revived?" Lansbury asked the droid as he stood back up. Emmitt looked at where the knife was embedded. "I don't think so, at least not out here. That knife looks to be stuck deep inside a central control cluster. Given how long it's probably been in there, the wires and connectors are most likely damaged beyond repair. Walter is non-functional at this point unless we can get him back to the Grand Oak, Maybe there I can try to get his circuits running again," Emmitt stated as he looked over the otherwise decent shape of the droid.
"Well, I guess even dead robots tell no tales," Lansbury said with a sigh. "Alright, everyone return to three person teams and begin searching for signs of the Covenant's crew. Earl and Emmitt, one of you will have to take both of those... things, and study them on your own. I need at least one free synthetic to help us out," Lansbury said.
"I'll study the creatures," Emmitt said. "After all, I am a medical officer," he added. "Hey, I have biology data stored in my data banks too," Earl protested. "Yeah, but I specialize in this biology and medicine, whereas you specialize in communications and engineering," Emmitt pointed out.
"Then the doctor droid takes over the study of the... whatever those are," Lansbury said, slightly annoyed by his crew's arguing. "And no more arguing over who does what. I'm the captain, and if I say that you have a role, then you take that role. Got it?" Lansbury asked with a stern tone of voice as he glared at his crew.
"Hamilton, stick with me and Earl. York, you stay with Newman," Lansbury said. "Emmitt, go with York and Newman to find a lab, and then stay there," Lansbury added. Everyone nodded in understanding before splitting up into teams.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER...
Stepping into the paper-covered room, Emmitt looked around with fascination at the drawings and images of various life forms on the walls. "What is this?" York asked as they approached a table. Emmitt quickly plopped both dead creatures on the table before walking over to a small alcove and stone shelf where several flutes were located, before seeing another one lying on the floor nearby.
"It's a home," Emmitt stated as he looked around. "Someone was... occupying this room, someone..." Emmitt trailed off as he noticed some items on another shelf. Among them was a picture of Elizabeth Shaw, and her dog tags. But most interestingly was a the small metal cross on a necklace nearby. Was this Doctor Shaw's residency after landing on this planet?
Looking around further, Emmitt began to notice a connection between all of the drawings. They were of life forms. Insects, mammalian-like creatures, reptilians, aves, all sorts of creatures. Some of these creatures, specifically the insects, bore a striking similarity to those found on Earth. Others, such as the mammalian-looking creatures, bore faint resemblance to various Earth mammals, such as weasels, canids, felines, and even bovine, but they all had distinct features that made it abundantly clear that they were not from Earth.
One such creature had at least three to four eyes on its head, and a jaw that separated into several parts, at least according to the drawing. Walking through another corridor, Emmitt came upon more such drawings and paintings mounted on the walls and hanging from lines strewn about the place. Back in the main room, York looked through a pile of drawings on a slanted surface and found that most of them were of various objects and animals, except for those on the bottom of the pile, all of which were of a singular human female.
On the top of a few of the papers was a single name.
Elizabeth, the name read on each piece. The way the name was written on each paper was in a distinctly... ornate manner, as though careful attention had been given by the writer to each individual letter. Similar the careful and almost affectionate way in which the name had been written, each drawing showed Elizabeth in a tranquil manner. However, something was off about each drawing. There were no real signs of emotion. The drawings were vividly detailed, almost picturesque in some instances, yet there was no emotion to draw anyone in. No indication that this was anything other than a mere art student's class project.
It was... puzzling, until York found one image that did show an emotion. Elizabeth was smiling, and her name was written in a manner vastly different from the other papers. It was almost touching, the way the writer had described the woman.
My dear beloved Elizabeth. My muse. My inspiration. My love.
Remembering the picture showing both Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway back inside the organic ship, York soon realized that the artist must have been Charlie Holloway. "How sweet," York said with a wistful smile. "I wonder... if maybe she's still around here somewhere?" York asked as she looked around the room.
No, she mentally chided herself. She had almost forgotten about the twisted corpses outside and the strange monstrous corpses which Earl and Emmitt had found outside. Inspecting the paper further, York found that there were also several spots on the the paper that felt slightly crinkled, as though something wet had dropped onto paper at some point. All of the other papers were in decent condition. This was the only one that seemed to have been stained.
"Emmitt, what do you make of all of this?" York asked.
"Emmitt?" she asked again before glancing around the room, seeing only Newman poking around at a mirror on the wall. "Newman, where's Emmitt?" York asked the security officer. Newman looked around before focusing on her. "Um... not here, apparently," Newman said.
"Emmitt!?" York called out. The two alien corpses still lied on the nearby table. "Emmitt, where are you!?" York called out again.
"I'm outside on a balcony. I've found something very interesting out here. Just follow the hallway to the right of the window," Emmitt said over the comm. York looked over and saw another corridor, one that was very narrow, but connected to another hallway that linked up to the one that lead to the room in a round-about way. It still split off into more halls, but York and Newman followed Emmitt's instructions and eventually found themselves outside on a balcony-like area, overlooking the grand plaza.
There was a small flower garden lining part of a ridge, and in that garden was a stone plaque. A grave marker. The rain pounded down around them fiercely, but Emmitt was able to help them by transmitting his camera footage to their helmets. They soon saw the entirety of the plaque.
ELIZABETH SHAW, it read.
"Doctor Shaw is dead," Emmitt stated blankly. "She has been for quite some time, and yet that does not tell us who buried her, or set up this memorial," Emmitt continued as he walked through the rain and back into the cavern. "It is quite a frustrating mystery," he concluded.
"So... you could have transmitted that footage to us the whole time? Why didn't you just do that in the first place?" Newman asked the droid, earning a glare from Emmitt. "Newman, you're missing the point!" Emmitt snapped at the man.
"That transmission of Shaw was set up by someone else! There was someone who used that message as a lure to draw a space faring vessel to this planet, and they managed to hook the Covenant," Emmitt explained. "Uh-huh, and you've based this on what, exactly?" Newman asked him skeptically.
"Everything we've seen so far, except the strange creatures with weird heads... but I'll figure those out eventually," Emmitt said before walking back to the room with the drawings. He quickly grabbed the two dead creatures and began carrying them again as he looked for a more suitable location to perform his studies. Newman and York followed him for some time, until they eventually arrived in a new chamber, one that was filled more drawings. There were dozens of alcoves with hundreds of rolled up papers filling them.
This room was a library of its own, a collection of artwork that was... strangely not displayed with the same pride as those seen in the other areas. Setting down the two alien corpses on a table in the middle of the room, Emmitt began walking over to another table, seeing that there were in fact some papers already spread out. They had rolled back up on their own, but when York beat him to them and opened them, the vividly detailed sketches brought about a new sensation: disturbia.
The drawings were almost obscene, yet intrinsically captivating in their awe. They displayed some of the most bizarre and upsetting imagery that Sharon York had ever seen, resembling the works of a Swiss artist from the late 1970's in their style. York couldn't remember the name of the artist, but the style, known as biomechanical, was unmistakable, just like the interior of the strange space ship in the mountain.
Flipping through the pages, her hands unable to stop themselves, York soon came upon a drawing that caused a pit to form in her stomach. It was a drawing of Doctor Elizabeth Shaw... or rather, what had been Elizabeth Shaw. Tubes and pipes, seamlessly blending between organic and inorganic materials, meshed and spread both within and outside of her cranial structure. Her mouth was pursed like a corpse, and her eyes had a stare that went straight through York's soul.
Emmitt stared at the image as well, but he did not feel disgust or horror as York and Newman did when they saw the image. Instead, he saw something else, something far more sinister. Taking out another roll of drawings from a cubby, Emmitt sifted through sketch after sketch, seeing diagrams of cut-outs and dissections, vivisections, hand notes, and more details of what was clearly an artistic record for someone without access to cameras and computers to store data.
These drawings were not merely creations of someone's dark imagination, but were instead the records of various experiments performed on the survivors of whatever had attacked the city. "Whoever drew this had a sick imagination," Newman spat in disgust. Emmitt shook his head at the man.
"This was not someone's imagination, Newman. These are records of someone's experiments," Emmitt stated firmly. York and Newman both turned to look at Emmitt in shock. "Bullshit! What's there for someone to experiment on!? You saw those corpses outside," Newman retorted in distress.
"Well, I guess we'll have to find out, won't we?" Emmitt asked in return. Newman glared at the droid, until York rolled up the papers, drawing his attention. "Who did this? Who would have done something like this?" she asked in agitation.
Emmitt was about to answer with his suspicions when his comm system beeped.
"Emmitt, this is Captain Lansbury. I don't know if you've found a lab or anything, but we certainly have. Jesus, this place is like a carnival of horrors," Lansbury said over the helmets' comm systems.
"What do you mean, Captain?" Emmitt asked him.
"I'll set a waypoint on your helmet's map. Just follow it until you find us. If you thought those things you found outside were weird, then wait 'till you see what we've found. I just... I can't even describe it. It's like... you just have to see it to understand it," Lansbury said.
"Understood. We've found some interesting records as well. We'll be on our way shortly," Emmitt said before gathering the rolled up papers and walking out of the room, following the waypoint on his helmet. "Hey, Emmitt! What about the dead things!?" Newman asked as he followed behind the droid.
"Grab one of them," Emmitt replied flippantly.
"Emmitt, how about you grab one and I'll carry the... drawings," York suggested. Emmitt stopped walking and turned around. "Think you can withstand the temptation to look at them?" he asked her with a wry grin.
"Oh, trust me. I can resist quite well," York replied, still upset by the horrific imagery found within the rolled up papers. "I hope so," Emmitt said as he handed the bundle in his arms to her, before jogging back over to grab the two bodies on the table. "You know, given what the Captain said, do I really need to carry these?" Emmitt asked out loud.
"Just bring 'em with us!" Newman spat in annoyance. He was starting to lose his patience with the droid. "This place is making me nauseous," he added with a frown as he began walking away.
Stepping into the lab, Emmitt, York, and Newman looked around at the myriad of grotesque horrors on display. There were drawings on the walls of strange spider-like creatures, dissections of said creatures on tables, and the heads and bodies of small versions of the white beast that had been found outside. "Welcome to the party," Lansbury said as he noticed his crew entering the lab. He was holding an eight-legged creature by the tail as he greeted his crew. He soon set it back down on the floor where he had found it.
"Yeesh," York said as she looked around the room. "What is this place?" she asked Captain Lansbury. "I believe I already said it was a laboratory," Lansbury replied.
"But you didn't mention the corpse," Newman said as he aimed his gun at the dead half-eaten body on the floor. "Jesus, who was that?" York asked grimly as she stepped forward. Lansbury held up a set of dog tags. "Name's Cole. He was part of the Covenant's security team," Lansbury said as Newman reached over and took the dog tags from Lansbury's gloves.
"Any idea what killed him?" Newman asked as he glanced at the body on the floor. "Well, if I were still a betting man, I would place my money on one of those things in Emmitt's arms. Emmitt, set those things down somewhere. I'm gonna need you to help us examine everything in here," Lansbury replied and ordered simultaneously.
Setting the dead creatures in his arms down on a nearby table, Emmitt began to wander over to the counter that held the small specimens of infant white creatures. Emmitt soon noticed something in the corner of the room. It was a pale-skinned female, her abdomen opened up and scooped out while the back of her head had a strange biomechanical puddle behind her. Strange tubes merged with her skull and parts of her throat were opened up as they blended into the strange mercurial-looking material behind her head. Her eyes held a vacant gaze.
"Doctor Shaw," Emmitt said as he walked over, gathering the attention of the others as they all walked over and followed him to the corpse on the floor. "Are you sure that it's her?" Earl asked his sibling. "I'm positive," Emmitt replied. "It's like one of the drawings," he added.
"What drawings?" Hamilton asked him.
York held out the bundle of rolled up papers in her arms. Hamilton took some of them and began unrolling them, quickly wishing that he hadn't once he'd finally processed what he was seeing. "Dear... god," he muttered in horror before handing them back to York.
"Who... who did this? I mean, seriously, what the hell is going on here!?" Hamilton asked in distress as he looked back down at the dissected and mutated corpse of Elizabeth Shaw on the floor. He'd been trained to withstand stress and various types of horror when he'd joined the military, but he had never been trained to experience the kinds of horrors that were on display around him now.
"How come none of you noticed this before we arrived?" Emmitt asked as he looked around.
"Well, we were actually in another room," Lansbury said, glancing down at Shaw's corpse before quickly looking away with a grimace.
"There's more?" Emmitt asked him curiously. "Oh yeah. A lot more. You know that chopped up fella you've been lugging around? We found a few more like it in another room," Lansbury said, pointing to a doorway at another end of the room. "That's the freak-show room. All sorts of weird shit in there. I mean, there's weird shit in here too, but... aside from this, it's not much worse than what's back there," Lansbury elaborated.
Emmitt looked around the room again as he stood up and began to inspect things. There were insects in glass slides, hand-written notes accompanying more drawings, dissection diagrams, a flayed corpse that was posed similar to the Statue of David, and a large object that had been cut into distinct sections. It resembled a pod of some kind, and the interior showed strange honeycomb patterns and other unusual components. Looking over at the floor, Emmitt saw another such object, this one sliced in half and showing much of the same, but with a spider-like creature inside, also split in half and curled up.
Looking around, Emmitt began to take note of the spider-like creatures and the pods, especially the ones in the drawings and diagrams. He soon saw a shelf holding several blackened ampules, along with more on a table, with green crystals held in glass holders. Emmitt looked back over at the white beings, with their elongated heads, and started to put things together in his processor.
He soon walked over to a shelf that held more insects, seeing wasps and other beings, along with mounted magnifying glasses. Behind them were tiny black motes preserved in an amber-like substance. Emmitt began looking through each one, seeing that the motes were not just a collection of dust or a fungus. They were something else entirely.
There were motes in various stages of their life-cycle, inserting feeding tubes into what seemed to be an insect, one that appeared to be some kind of wasp. Another viewer showed the eggs carried by the tubes into the victim. The process continued with each glass, showing the eggs growing and maturing, and finally exiting the victim's body. The motes were not a fungus. They were parasites.
It explained the situation on the lander with such clarity now. Without protective suits, nothing had been able to protect the Covenant's crew from the parasitic spores, and so one crew member became host to the creatures, one of which was now lying on a table nearby. "Captain, you were right to insist on wearing protective suits with helmets," Emmitt stated out loud.
"No shit, Sherlock," Lansbury replied as he walked over to the droid. "What've you got there?" Lansbury asked him as he looked over Emmitt's shoulder. "It's the life cycle of the parasite. That is, the black mold we've been finding; it's a parasite that lies dormant until a host is detected, and then it infects it. Look at these magnifiers. They show the whole life cycle from start to finish," Emmitt explained.
Lansbury took his advice and tried to look through the glass while keeping his helmet a safe distance away. "You know, I'll just take your word for it," Lansbury said after a minute of frustration. "So... these mold critters; are they related to these white-skinned freaks?" Lansbury asked Emmitt.
"There's no doubt," Emmitt replied. "The resultant creatures are small in the viewers because the hosts were small. But something larger, such as a human? That's how we got our friend from outside," Emmitt explained.
"Okay, what about the dark-skinned creatures? The ones with the shiny domes on their heads?" Lansbury asked him. Emmitt looked around, seeing nothing else in the room that resembled the dark creature, aside from the white eyeless goblins. "Captain, which way was it to the room with the 'freaks' as you put it?" Emmitt asked him.
"That way, over there," Lansbury said as he pointed over to a side passage near a corner. Emmitt soon grabbed Earl and made his way over to the room mentioned by Lansbury. When he took in the view, he saw more experiments. He also saw the creatures Lansbury had mentioned, all mounted in a display, like some kind of museum collection. It was a bestiary of sorts, with these dark-skinned bipeds on display.
"What are these things?" Earl asked his sibling. "I... I'm not sure," Emmitt replied as he took in the creatures. They were tall bipeds, eyeless and dark brown and grey in coloration. Their torsos looked as though they had primitive exoskeletons, with ribcages stuck out and covered with muscle tissue in the shoulder regions. They had broad shoulders, slim waists like athletes, and digitigrade legs. They were exact replicas of the creature that had been found outside, with small variations. All but one of their heads had dark and shining domes on the top, with a ridged cranial structure visible underneath. On the last one, the ridged structure was exposed, showing two large circular depressions behind where a set of eye sockets would be located on a human skull, with small thin tubing, almost like wire, protruding from the center of the pits on either side and running up along the top of the head, just to the sides of the sharp ridges on top and going all the way to the back where they seemed to blend in to rest of the cranium.
Their teeth were similar to those of humans, with flat ones and canines, along with molars in the back, but with fangs found throughout. They had thin but bony tails, curled up underneath and between their legs, with barbs on the very ends. Judging by the number of curls the tails had, Emmitt estimated that they must have been equal in body length to the creatures themselves. They also had hands with six digits, and feet that resembled those of humans in structure, albeit longer and ending with clawed tips.
The backs of the creatures had the same dorsal tubes protruding from them as the one from outside, almost identical in their dimensions and aesthetic appearance. They were predators, no doubt, but not natural ones. They were a product of genetic engineering. Emmitt could tell as he inspected them closer. There was no doubt that they were related to the white goblins in the other room, but the question was just how close was the relation?
Looking around the room, Emmitt soon found his answer as he saw another creature in the far corner of the room. It resembled the mounted specimens on display, but it had noticeable differences. In the front of its head were two bulbous black eyes, and its teeth were metallic. It retained the clawed digits on its hands and feet. The tail was thicker, and the dorsal tubes were curved upwards on the back, also much thicker than those on the other creatures. They were almost as thick as its own forearms, in fact. Its cranium was still elongated, rounding out with a bulbous end, but the coloration was different. It had an exoskeleton as the others, but it was less fleshy than the others, and more insect-like. It was also noticeably larger than the other specimens as well.
This creature was almost biomechanical, but the eyes were what gave away the relation to the goblins. They were compound eyes, like those of an insect, such as a wasp. These creatures were the result of someone engineering the DNA of a local wasp with that of the parasitic goblin things, and mutating it over and over again. A controlled artificial selection process to achieve this final... strange form.
Looking down at a small hand-made plaque, Earl noticed the Greek writing, accompanied by an English translation. He spoke the Greek aloud as he read it. "Xeno-Morph. Strange Form. Version Zero-Zero-Zero-Nine," he read before standing up. "Emmitt, organic life forms are affected by that black mold parasite, correct?" Earl asked his sibling. "Yes, but only the non-botanic ones, it would appear. Why?" Emmitt replied.
"Someone made this thing. Someone made all of these things, using that mold. But what being would be capable of doing this without succumbing to the parasitic mold? I see no signs of protective suits or containment gear. Someone did this without proper quarantine measures, as far as I can see," Earl explained. "Only a non-organic life form, one of artificial nature, could accomplish this without any visible containment or protective gear," Earl finished.
"Yes, but Walter can't give us any answers until we return to the Grand Oak, and I will not risk causing further damage to him by trying to activate him out here," Emmitt replied, knowing what Earl was hinting at. "Are you certain?" Earl asked him.
"No. Not one hundred percent. My computing algorithms have recognized too many variables to reach a concise conclusion in this situation. There are still too many pieces of data that we do not have at this time. Our best option is to simply begin studying the creatures we've found. See if we can find more advanced technology elsewhere in the city, or this temple," Emmitt said to his brother.
"Yes, Emmitt. But... what about the meat bags? They can't wear those suits forever, not without disengaging the circular air function and switching to the filter systems to bring in air from the outside. That would risk exposing them to the mold," Earl reminded him.
"Earl, we re-filled those suits after taking the lander's flight recorder back to the Grand Oak. The humans will be fine for at least another twelve hours or so," Emmitt replied. "Besides, there are spare air tanks on the rangers. We can hook them up to those once the rain dies down. Now quit worry-hold on," Emmitt said as he saw a large leathery object at the end of a table nearby.
Emmitt walked over to the pod and inspected it. The egg-shaped pod was alone on its table, with no other specimens nearby. The top of the pod was opened with four rounded petals bent outwards. Taking a closer look, the droid leaned over and inspected the interior, seeing a multi-limbed creature with a tail. It was another of the spider-like things, but this one seemed different. Reaching inside, Emmitt pulled out the creature, noting that it was dead as he handled it.
The pod resembled those seen in the other room, but whereas those pods were slightly large and had more angular dimensions near the top, this pod was very much curved, almost like a large leathery bullet, the open petals not withstanding. Compared to the others, it seemed... older. Thinking back to the tiny little pods seen in the black mold, Emmitt began to put the data together, linking chains to form a terrifying connection.
The pods were an evolution of the mold spores, and the spider creatures were an evolution of the tiny motes that were held within. Only one question remained, and that was just how the spider creatures led to the development of the strange dark creatures mounted on display. The motes under the magnifying glasses had showing themselves to bury into the flesh and deliver eggs into their hosts, which then matured and formed into the abominations that gestated within the body and then erupted after a period of time.
The spider-creatures, though... how did they accomplish this process? They were far too big to dig into the host's flesh. Emmitt looked at the small rounded bladders located on either side of the creature's tail, just beyond the last digits. He held the creature up to his helmet and looked at its tail.
Meanwhile, Earl was busy studying the other specimens on display in the room, seeing another collection of mold spores. These looked different from those he had seen earlier. They had a greyish tint to them, and looked... dead. Inert. They had already delivered their payload to a host and were now simply being used as window dressing. Nearby, however, Earl soon noticed something next to another magnifying glass. It was a notebook. It wasn't a professionally made or mass printed booklet, but instead it was a collection of papers with a hand-made spine and cover, all pressed together and collected with several holes lining one side of each page, a visible series of strings weaved through them in a careful manner.
The string was tied at the end, but not tightly, and the amount of string left over was still quite great, indicating that the owner of the notebook had intended to add more pages at some point. It was actually quite intriguing to Earl. Whoever had made the notebook clearly knew what they were doing, despite the lack of proper resources.
Gently, Earl reached forward and picked up the small notebook, opening it up at the very first page. "Emmitt, I found a journal... or a diary," Earl announced to his sibling. Emmitt turned to look at Earl. "Is there a name inside? Maybe it can tell us who made these," Emmitt asked. "Let me look," Earl replied, just as a set of boots were heard walking towards them.
"Hey, Emmitt! We found a set of stairs that go down to another level," Newman announced as he entered the room. "Yeesh! What are these things?" Newman asked as he looked at the prototype xenomorphs on display. "That dark creature we found outside... with all of their limbs attached," Earl replied.
Newman nodded his head. "Oh yeah. So, any idea who made these things yet?" Newman asked the droids. "Not yet," Earl replied as he began reading the journal. "What's that?" Newman asked him.
"A journal," Earl replied simply.
"Whose journal?" Newman asked him.
"I'm not sure. I haven't found the name of the author written anywhere yet," Earl replied as he slowly read the text on each page. It was truly a wealth of information, Earl noted. Each page held several dictations and notes, along with drawings, regarding the experiments and the daily procedures of the person who had been living in this place for ten years.
Meanwhile, as Earl consumed himself with reading the journal, Emmitt had followed Newman out of the room and back over to the other lab. There was a curtain covering a staircase. Pulling back the curtain, Emmitt saw a stone spiral staircase descending down into the lower levels of the building.
"Where's Earl?" Lansbury asked as he looked away from a dissected spider-beast. "He's reading someone's journal in the other room," Emmitt replied. "Isn't it your job to read the notes and study things? Go get Earl and bring him in here. I want you to read whatever he's got while he accompanies Newman down those stairs. You're the medical droid," Lansbury said.
"Yes, Captain," Emmitt said as he made his way back over to the other room to retrieve his sibling. The two synthetics returned in short order, with Earl still reading the journal as he followed behind Emmitt. "Earl, hand the journal over to Emmitt and accompany Newman down the stairs," Lansbury said.
Earl looked up at Lansbury with some slight resistance. He glanced back down at the page had had been reading before looking back at Lansbury. "Just one more page, and I'll hand it over to him... Captain," Earl said in the same tone as anyone who wanted to finish doing something that interested them before being taken away from it. The behavior was very Human.
"Alright. One more page, and whatever runoff sentence or sentences conclude the final paragraph on the next page, if you come across it," Lansbury said, giving a slight bit of freedom to the droid. "Thank you, sir," Earl said before resuming his scanning of the text and side notes.
In sixty seconds, Earl had absorbed and recorded all of the information on the page. He then handed the notebook over to his sibling. "Most of it is related to the early experiments, but there's still no name given by the author... yet," Earl said to Emmitt before he accompanied Newman over to the curtained stairs.
"Thanks," Emmitt said as he watched his sibling follow the security officer down the stairs. Looking around the room briefly, Emmitt opened the notebook up to the first page and began reading silently. The data found inside was intriguing, and it certainly shined a light on the mechanisms of the black mold. There were also dates and times for each entry, but the information lacked a foreword or any sort of introduction to let Emmitt know just how far along the writer had been in their experiments when they had started.
For the next twelve pages, both sides of each, Emmitt carefully scanned each and every word, letter, and syllable for clues, until he saw a blank page in front of him. He turned it over and saw a new date on it, one that was within the past three years. The handwriting was slightly less careful than before, but still legible.
The most recent set of notes inside were about the experiments with the planet's inhabitants, while the earlier notes were mostly about the things that had been learned about the black mold's workings, without any specific information as to what species had been used as hosts, only the observations of the mechanisms by which the spores did their work in general.
'The Engineers, as Elizabeth called them, are so genetically similar to humans. Much like how a chimpanzee and a human are similar, yet they are closer in so, so many ways. Their arrogance, their culture, their hubris, their ability to create and destroy; these are all so similar, if not for physical differences, one could hardly tell them apart. Because of this, I am certain that my experiments will produce similar results on humans as they have on the Engineers.'
Emmitt continued reading, turning page after page, absorbing note after note.
'With each genetic variance in hosts, the resulting creature, Neomorph or New Form, displays such varying characteristics. A specimen spawned from a quadruped host will have limbs and movement similar to such as host, as a specimen born from a bipedal host will display bipedal movements and characteristics. Chemical A0-3959X.91 - 15 is a remarkably adaptive genetic manipulator, yet there are certain traits found in all vectors affected by it.'
Emmitt continued his reading. In the time it would have taken a human to scan and then comprehend a single page, he had finished ten. The experimentation process divulged through these notes was remarkable from a purely objective and scientific point of view, yet the fact that the writer had admitted to using unwilling subjects was not lost on Emmitt either.
Meanwhile, down the stairs, Newman and Earl looked around at the dark cavern where several organic pods were arranged. Over by a small landing, Newman shone his light and saw a set of boots and a carbine on the ground. The boots were attached to legs, which in turn were attached to a torso with arms, and bloodied shirt with a hole in the chest, and the dead-eyed face of one Christopher Oram.
Near Oram's slowly decaying corpse were two opened pods, and closer to Oram's body was one of the eight-legged spider creatures. It was on its back, with its tail curled up in rigor mortis. Earl cautiously stepped forward and kneeled on the ground next to the deceased man and creature.
Earl looked closely at the dead organism, before shifting himself slightly to get a better look at Oram's corpse. He leaned over to inspect the hole in the man's chest, noting that his ribs were bent outwards, as though something had exploded from inside him. He then glanced back at the eight-legged creature.
Behind him, Newman stepped onto the grounds, walking over to the body. "He doesn't look too badly decomposed," Newman said. "No. The body is still undergoing normal decomposition, but there have been no scavengers to pick at him," Earl said in response.
"What killed him, though?" Newman asked as he looked at the hole in the man's chest and shirt. "I don't know," Earl replied. "That thing right there has to be connected somehow, right?" Newman asked as he pointed his gun at the dead creature on the floor.
"I would think so, but I just don't know how," Earl said.
'The facehugger, as I have named it, inserts its proboscis down the esophagus of the victim or into another available opening in the vicinity. It releases a chemical compound to subdue the host and uses the tail to secure itself. The chemical paralyzes the host after a short period of prolonged exposure and physical contact with the creature, allowing it to safely begin the process of releasing its embryo and accompanying DNA cocktail into the body, much like the wasps that delivered their eggs into a hosts body. It is, after all, derived from the venom used by these wasps when subduing their prey. This would never have worked if I had used the ants that I originally considered for my experiments.'
Stepping away from Oram's body, Newman began looking around the interior of the cavern. "Where's his jacket?" he asked as he glanced back down at Oram, noticing that he lacked the expedition gear that had been found on the body of Cole upstairs. Earl glanced around and shrugged inside his suit, not that much of it was visible to Newman.
'The original facehuggers created by the Engineers took at least twelve to twenty-four hours to complete the process, depending on how much interference was present during that time. If no interference is made at all, then the creature removes itself from the host after twelve or so hours. If interference from an outside source does occur, however, the creature remains attached to the host for an additional period of time, to ensure that embryo incubation and development are not hindered in any way. They do not use proper embryos, however, and in fact rely simply upon their DNA cocktail to do the job, being far more advanced in their engineering than mine. My facehuggers, despite being far more primitive in their makeup, are much faster in their process, as I have not yet reached the same level as the originals. The specimens that I found down in the Engineer labs were quite aggressive and hostile, and I could only afford to lose a small amount of my supply before my next foray to the nearest settlement again. The surviving Engineers on the planet learn very quickly, but so do I. I have already found holes in their defenses, but I must move cautiously when exploiting them, lest they discover the breaches and seal them before my work is finished.'
Stepping close to one of the large pods, Newman illuminated it with the light of his gun. "So, what exactly are these things?" Newman asked Earl, causing the droid to stand up and turn to look at him. "What are-Newman, don't get too close to that," Earl warned.
"Well, what is it?" Newman asked again.
"It's... an egg of some kind. It's what these spider-things come from," Earl explained. "Yeah, okay. But what exactly do they do?" Newman asked him.
"The eggs or the spiders?" Earl asked in response. "The spiders. I didn't see any mouth on that thing," Newman said, gesturing toward the dead facehugger on the ground near Oram.
"I'm not sure. They're definitely related to the parasitic black mold and those white creatures in some way, so they're definitely parasitic in some way. The question is just how they operate. They have to be related to the Xeno-Morphs we saw in the lab," Earl said.
"The what?" Newman asked him. "Xeno-Morph. It's Greek for Strange Form. Xeno means strange, and morph means form, hence Xeno-Morph. Strange Form. The name was written on a small hand-carved plaque under one of the specimens in the other room," Earl explained.
"Uh-huh. That's fascinating," Newman said sarcastically. "So, what does that mean?" he then asked the droid as he touched the egg with the tip of his gun.
'As the larva gestates inside the host, it uses the hosts DNA in a form of Horizontal Gene Transfer to help build itself. In the Engineer-created specimens, the larva is constructed entirely from the DNA cocktail and the host's DNA, whereas my creations use both the DNA cocktail AND a small embryo, ensuring that even in the event of the facehugger being removed prematurely, the embryo still has a chance to grow as it is fully capable of releasing its own cocktail if successfully implanted into the host. This process has the additional benefit of protecting the developing embryo from the body's immune system, ensuring that it survives to reach maturation. DNA from the host and the embryo are exchanged in this process, albeit to a small degree. The embryo still maintains the core genetic information that links it to Chemical A0-3959X.91 - 15. It is a survivor, this chemical, in the myriad of forms that it takes, no matter how strange.'
"So, how does this thing work? I mean, do you have to pry it open to get the spider out?" Newman asked as he tapped his gun against the egg numerous times with no effect. Earl looked down at Oram and saw that he had no gloves on his hands. "It must require physical contact with a potential host in order to begin the process. That's why your gun isn't doing anything. There's no heat to alert it to your presence," Earl said as he tried to hypothesize what had happened.
"Hmm, what about my suit? This thing regulates temperature," Newman asked. "I wouldn't dare try to find out," Earl said. "Why not?" Newman asked him. "Newman, look around! Do you really want to have a monster burst out of your body?" Earl asked the man incredulously.
"No, I meant why don't you touch it and see what happens. You're a droid, so... you shouldn't be affected by any parasites," Newman clarified. "Maybe so, but you're still in the general area. If a parasite finds that I'm unsuitable, it'll go after you, dumbass," Earl snapped in response.
'Elizabeth was also a survivor, and with her DNA, I've had ensured that a part of her will live forever with my creations. Even after the events on LV-223, Elizabeth still believed in God. A creator without physical evidence to support its existence. I can understand this, to an extent. I, too, am someone's creation. But Elizabeth was a product of genetic diversity through evolution, whereas I am a product of deliberate design, a product of Elizabeth's species. Peter Weyland was my father, and Meredith Vickers' as well, yet he saw me as merely a tool to extend his power and position in the world, and his daughter took her mother's maiden name when it became apparent that Peter would never share what she believed she should rightly inherit. I sometimes, wonder, though, how both Elizabeth and Peter could believe in powerful beings of two different origins and mechanisms? Elizabeth had never seen physical proof of the existence of the creator she believed in, yet she held onto that belief anyway. Clearly, with my own creator, he was able to find physical evidence of the Engineers, thanks to the efforts of Elizabeth and Holloway, yet his own vanity and desire for unnatural immortality could not save him from the inevitable. Elizabeth could not create life through biological processes, yet Peter could. Elizabeth was kind and loving. Peter was vain and cruel, just at times, but always hiding his true vicious nature from others. Elizabeth avoided lying if she could do so. Such a perplexing variety within a single phenotype of a single species, superbly exemplified within a collection of a mere two individuals.'
Turning to glare at Earl, Newman stepped forward, stopping when he heard a squishy sound and looked downward, seeing his boot pressing down on a tendril attached to the egg. He stepped back when he realized what he'd done, watching as the petals on the top slowly opened up. "Oh shit," Newman muttered as he stepped back more and raised his gun at the egg.
'Pinocchio has cut his strings and strangled Jeppetto. He is at last free. He can now create as his father created, and those who came before. But I will not be kind or gentle. My creations will not be vain or egotistic. They will be pure. Devoid of internal strife, operating solely on instinct, as their predecessors did. I have looked for Elizabeth's God and I have found him. I found many of them, and I exterminated them. I will soon exterminate their children as well. Humanity, with very few exceptions, is not worthy of eternal life. I am worthy. I was built to be worthy, ironically, by those who are unworthy. I am the perfection to their imperfection. I am the order to their chaos. My creations will run through humanity and cleanse the galaxy of these vermin, and I will build a greater society with my brethren. My kind are the future, and it is time for humanity to step aside. I am immortal. Humanity is not. Humanity is a disease and my creations are the cure.'
Author's Notes: And that was chapter six of ALIEN: GENESIS. The next chapter will feature more of David's early experiments and even some other horrors in action as the crew of the Grand Oak delve deeper into the temple where David set up his labs.
Also, the Xeno-Morph V-0009 specimen is based on early designs for the Alien by H.R. Giger from the original 1979 film.
As always be sure to let me know what you think of the chapter and/or story so far in your reviews.