ERNIE 073

by Akktri

An autobiography of a Xenomorph.

124. Chapter 128: Dream Neighborhood

ALTERNATE PLOTLINES:

As of 2/10/23, I've commenced a revision of the first three books of the Ernie series, making the text read more dynamically, and a little less preachy. I considered making a version where Ernie wasn't religious at all (a mainstream/secular version), but she needs a moral compass, and I don't care to be popular, popular movies are starting to annoy me.

What makes the story different from all other Aliens fanfiction: The Christian xenomorph on a rescue mission. There's already tons of movies where the extraterrestrial merely plays the role of Christ in the story. I'm going to stick with what I originally came up with.

I've decided that people generally don't like Alien 3 that much, and not just my version. The prison mission plot I wrote didn't really make sense, and Newt shouldn't have died, nobody liked a story about dead Newt. Once I get done editing Book 3, I'll write a new story on this website where they end up somewhere else.

You'll notice that I have a couple "demo" alternate endings. I think I'm going to stick with Ernie facing Grandmother onboard the Sulaco, and going off to another planet after that. The second "demo" I probably will throw out, it's about the fuzzy aliens taking Ernie to another planet and crash landing. If anyone likes those ideas, they should speak up, or that will be the end of it, back to the original plot I wrote.

The alternate texts below are an attempt to address some of the problems readers had with the story. Since none of it is truly complete (I'd have to overhaul everything in the story), I'm only posting it here for the time being. At the very least, it will show you what it would look like if I made the story exactly like people have been wanting me to.

[0000]

Xenomorph Lexicon:

Atmarrej: Organ employed in xenomorph egg production

Cunupra: `Tribal Communion,' harmonious, peaceful communication with other Ss'sik'chtokiwij.

Dacamu: Organ employed in xenomorph egg production

Dokisbi: Lay eggs

Fidsvsardissar: Queen's egg sac

Hawednar: Impostor

Lomsagh: Spiritual philosophy

S'Caizlixadac: Ernie's mother.

Shuvzotax: Latch on to

Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik: "Hunter"

Sielduntah: "The great eater". Just a name, not actually associated with xenomorph religion or astrological thought.

Sidjendo: Hissandra's real name

Slegizrak: Recreation

Slulwidmi: A sucker used for climbing. Also used as a verb, as in suckering a wall.

Soodare: Body/trunk

Ssogdisfi: Excrement

Suaakudsi: Tongue/"head bite" organ

Surumwuk: Shoulder fin.

Suskjirsaksua: Facehugger eggs

Uwberssud: A human host

Xulrubdan: Infected/sick/diseased

Xutugrod: Alpha leader

Yabjin: An act of trickery

[0000]

(Item I)

Alternate Scenario/Spoiler for Chapter 1:

This section has not been finished yet, it is merely the beginning of an alternate plot where the Big Bird/Sesame Street virtual environment does not occur, or is cut very short. This alternate plot may be expanded when I get to the next edit.

I put the spoiler/alternate here because I didn't want to spoil the surprise of the mind connecting "Wooby Worms"

[0000]

My people have something called ssujmarrux, special worm-like tentacles we can use to interface with the minds of others of our species. The tentacles descend from the roof of our mouths, and you merely have to kiss another Ss'sik'chtokiwij, and slide the tentacles through an olfactory passage to connect to the other's brain.

Mother used the ssujmarrux to share knowledge and stories with me, her experiences of the hunt.

She told me to never use the ssujmarrux on prey. She said I'd go blind.

The warning didn't make sense to me. In fact, I felt she missed out on a great deal of knowledge and experience by not even making the attempt, and I often told her so. "It would explain so much about the confusing and beautiful things these creatures do," I said to her.

"It's dangerous," she replied. "You might feel sorry for them and become too sensitive to eat. Greater Ss'sik'chtokiwij than you have starved."

For awhile, the warning had been sufficient for me, but now, as I nibbled on the corpse of this strange man with his puzzling little book, my curiosity got the better of me, and I joined my ssujmarrux to his dying brain.

(Author's note: I'd pretty much have to throw out a quarter of my book and start over with a whole bunch of new scenes from Reverend's mind. I'll have to put this on the back burner for awhile).

Alternate:

My people have organs called called ssujmarrux in our mouths, worm-like appendages designed for communication with others of our kind. Mother Ss'sik'chtokiwij use them to convey instructions to the very young chest rupturers, the facehugging socmavaj still in the egg, instructions like "Never stick these ssujmarrux up the nostrils of your dead prey." Not following these instructions changed my life forever.

(Same text)

When my tentacles went up her nostrils and touched her brain, I saw things, an entire world opened up to me, one that I'd never experienced before.

It began with a simple word: "Love". The word connected to thousands of other words I didn't understand, forming an entire universe of images and feelings. I saw the girl's family members, her friends, observed some strange rituals in the building with the lowercase T symbol, and something called `school,' the tender relationships, the happy and sad memories. When I at last removed my worms from her nostrils, I was crying.

"Are you going to eat that, or just play with it?" my sister asked.

"You take it," I said. "I'm not hungry."

[0000]

(Item II)

Since birth, I suspected there was some sort of powerful thing watching over me, guiding the direction of my life. It was more of a feeling than any sort of real religious belief. Some unseen thing had prevented my mother from being killed by an exploding electrical transformer some years before my birth. She communicated this vision to me by mental link. I still wasn't sure what to make of it.

(Item II-B)

Well, I did witness a few cave dwelling lifeforms in the area we used to live in through mom's mental link, but grandmother got greedy and hitched a ride on a human's spaceship, starting a family in a world that no longer had access to those kinds of prey.

[0000]

(Item III)

Please skip to the bottom of the chapter for this one. It's a long entry.

[0000]

(Item IV)

I considered doing an alternate version where Ernie lets Brice shoot Sydjea, but then again, the sister's later conversion wouldn't make sense.

[0000]

(Item V: Unexplored alternate plots - Note: SPOILERS!)

The following are alternate plot ideas for the Alien 3 segment of Ernie 074 that I haven't completed. Post a comment if you think any of them are worth exploring.

1. Too Many Flat Characters: Ernie manages to save more than a couple lives at the end of the story. Working backwards from Timmy, I'd have Ernie deal with a bunch of characters that I'd killed off. It'd mess up the endings and everything else.

2. Adult Sarah switches bodies with larva. Onboard the Iberet, Sarah somehow accomplishes the body swap she always dreamed of.

3. The alien Christians take Ripley onboard the Iberet and fly her home.

4. Ernie saves Ripley from her attackers at the garbage dump, instead of Dillon, or maybe putting a big worm in the garbage dump, and have Ernie save Ripley from that, minimizing Dillon's involvement in the story and change Ripley's attitude towards Ernie.

5. Clemens gets pissed off about his mangled eye and starts attacking xenomorphs.

6. Ernie gets the idea of eating the large killer worms right away, realizing they're not the same thing that possessed her aunt and the people at that cult, thus skipping a lot of deaths, and filling the story with Too Many Flat Characters.

7. In Peacekeeper (alternate plot), Ernie doesn't get left for dead on LV 426, which means that Ripley could get suspicious of Ernie. Ernie can't really prove that she wasn't onboard the Sulaco when the egg got planted in Ripley's chest. Ripley should probably get mad and try to attack her.

8. Newt doesn't die, from a chest burster or a broken stasis pod.

9. Ripley uses the Iberet's equipment to successfully remove the larva from her body. Or they have a portable surgical unit, just like Ripley requested.

10. Ripley dies on the Iberet's operating table while attempting to remove the larva.

11. Ernie and family hide in the desert, trying to escape capture from Weyland. Perhaps they find an underground facility and live there.

12. Ernie isn't stupid enough to let Ripley take pictures of her to frame Grandmother.

13. The story of Zobaruc, kin of Grandmother.

14. Pillow gives Ripley and the other prisoners a bath of molten lead.

15. Ripley orders the prisoners to shoot Ernie's family to death, forget about killing the soldiers. Of course, that would mean they'd get slaughtered a lot sooner.

16. Ernie stays on Fury 161 by herself and eats rats and tends the machinery.

17. Weyland steals a vehicle from Weyland's ship and drives off into the desert.

(Item VI)

Original Ripley ending for Ernie 073: The Prison Mission:

[0000]

Hearing a mechanical grinding sound, I looked up to see Morse, very much alive, moving the dumper.

Ripley appeared to notice this too, for she hobbled toward the nearest connecting catwalk.

Weyland ripped a piece off his shirt, knotting it around his wounded arm. "Ripley! Where are you going?"

The woman limped through a security gate. "None of your damned business!" She pulled the gate shut, locking it behind her. "The bitch killed my child, I'm going to kill one of hers!

Ripley clutched the links of the fence, a look of desperation clear on her face as she fixed her eyes on me. "Do me a favor, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Do what you do best. Kill Weyland."

"What," I said. "Am I your personal mercenary? Weyland's trying to help us!"

"Fuck you, and fuck your grandmother!" Her fists turned white from clenching the links so tightly. "I hope you burn in the lower pits of hell, right next to your alien friends and your soulless benefactor!"

She gave the control station an anxious glance.

Weyland rushed to the gate, looking at the woman pleadingly. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm taking this larva where your men will never get to it."

"Ripley, what is this going to achieve? We already have a queen and her offspring. Let me freeze you and remove that larva before it's too late (1)!"

"What, so you can take it and use it for your military projects? Go to hell!" Then, with a bitter edge to her voice, "You think you've won, Weyland, but those xenomorphs are going to kill you."

She turned her back to him, marching down the catwalk.

A yard down, she bumped into Grandmother.

"Get out of my way," Ripley growled.

"The man wants to help," Grandmother said. "He can remove the larva."

"No. He lies."

"You should not do this thing," said Grandmother. "Suicide is wrong."

"Shut up!" the woman yelled. "You have no right to tell me what to do! You took Newt and Hicks and the rest of my team, and everyone I knew from the Nostromo. I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of taking me too. You took my child, I'm taking yours!"

"Ellen!" I cried from behind the fence, but what else could I say? She was dying.

Blind with rage and hatred, Ripley grabbed hold of Grandmother's stumpy tail, threw it over the catwalk railing, then tried to swing on it, you know, to drag her into the molten lead.

Grandmother growled angrily, picking the woman up by the scruff of her neck. It was a mild throw, but she hurled her attacker so forcefully against the catwalk that the woman writhed in pain.

"Please don't do that," Grandmother said.

Having nothing to lose, Ripley sprang to her feet, slamming her fist into Grandmother's face.

Grandmother didn't feel it, prompting Ripley to punch her several more times.

Grandmother got so frustrated that she grabbed the woman's hands and shoved her backwards onto the deck. "I'm sorry."

When Ripley stood up, she was crying.

Grandmother could have obstructed her path, but when Ripley dove forward again, I think she was expecting another haymaker. Instead, Ripley just pushed past the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij like she were merely a saloon door.

"Stop!" Weyland cried. "We don't have any need for this!"

Ripley didn't answer. She just waved to Morse, so she could climb aboard the pouring machine.

"Ripley!" he said. "Think of all we could learn from it!"

"You can learn from Ernie. You could use a few lessons from the Good Book."

"These are damaged goods! You're carrying a queen! I need that larva!"

"Tough! You may have stopped me from killing the others, but the bitch's baby dies with me!"

I could only watch as Ripley instructed Morse to position the pouring machine above the main lead vat. Watch, and pray.

I could have rushed over there and tried to stop her, but it hadn't worked so well for Grandmother, and she's twice my size.

The machine stopped. The woman opened the security gate on the side of the platform, stepping onto a ledge.

With her back to the glowing red-orange pool below, she leaned back, taking a graceful reverse swan dive off the end.

"No!" Weyland screamed as the woman fell through the air.

During Ripley's descent, the Ss'sik'chtokiwij emerged from her chest cavity with a healthy screech.

The vengeful woman's hand clamped down around the larva's shell as she mouthed something to it.

Then she gave me the finger.

The larva's ssujmarrux emerged, penetrating Ripley's nostrils.

The woman's back stiffened, her eyes widening in shock.

The bubbling sea of superheated ore swallowed both woman and Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Julia and Newt wailed and cried into my shell.

This really wasn't about destroying the last Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Considering what Weyland already had in his possession, it wouldn't have made sense (2).

This was really about a sad woman who had lost everything and decided to take her own life to get revenge on her enemies.

I kissed my larvae, patting their shells in a comforting way.

The time of relative freedom had ended. I sensed the snare circling about us the moment Mr. Weyland appeared in the foundry. But now, as we gaped in stunned silence at woman's dead body, I could feel invisible cords snapping taut.

Mr. Weyland approached me slowly with his arms raised. His wound looked nasty, and I told him so.

"Thank you," he said in his characteristic deadpan voice. "I'm going to get treated the moment we get onboard the ship."

I introduced myself, then my larvae.

"You speak surprisingly well for a xenomorph."

I thanked him, but when he asked for an explanation, I could only answer, "It's a long story. I'm sure you need to take care of those wounds."

"You're right. We'll have plenty of time to talk about that later."

The man practically fell over on his back.

At first, I thought this to be the result of his wounds, or an overreaction to what I said, but then I noticed Grandmother standing behind me.

"Is that thing safe?"

"She's my grandmother," I said.

"That doesn't answer my question."

Grandmother belched loudly. "Those horrible worms."

"You are not in any danger," I said.

"Is David okay?" Grandmother asked.

Weyland nodded. "He's fine...and so is your English."

"Thank you. What about the young one? Is she well?"

"We should continue this conversation on the ship."

Morse and Golic were still alive. While we talked, Golic had his wounds bandaged, so now he limped out of the exit under armed guard, with Morse supporting him.

Meanwhile, the Asian man and a pair of white suits ran swabs of the control station and catwalk. Weyland told me they were capturing something called `epithelials,' whatever those were.

Weyland waved to the exit. "Come with me. The sooner we get on the ship, the sooner we can help your friends."

"I'm not sure I should come with you," I said. "I don't appreciate people sticking probes in my brain."

"You're just going to have to trust me," he said. "There's nothing for you here. Winter is coming, and you'll be the only one tending the furnace. What will you do when the food supply runs out, and no more shipments arrive? Are you going to continue breeding rats?"

"The Lord will provide," I said.

I seriously could have done it. I can read. I can figure out how to breed rats, and stoke a furnace.. It would work.

A little iron edged into Weyland's voice. "Let me phrase this differently, Ernie. That ship isn't going to move without you and your grandma onboard. You refuse to move, and your friends die from their injuries."

I sighed and nodded. What choice did I have?

I could have run. I could have just let them die.

I probably should have.

But Mr. Weyland seemed like an interesting person, and I wanted to know more about him. Sure, his men killed just about everyone in the prison, and even now there were guns pointed at me, but he seemed to be rather decent with my friends. He didn't even want to hurt Ripley.

Saint Paul was able to use his imprisonment to great effect in converting his jailers. Even if Weyland did commit the horrors Ripley described, Saul of Tarsus used to be just as bad before he saw a vision and the Lord turned him around.

Plus I wanted to see my friends again.

And so I surrendered to him, following he and his men out of the prison, where the ship awaited.

Weyland's vehicle was called a `Highliner', a massive machine with a curiously inefficient design.

The thing was shaped like a capital letter T, with a huge barrel-like portion forming the cross piece.

Instead of using the landing pad, they parked on a dusty field nearby. Even the brief storm did nothing to stop the gusts of grit and sand.

I was led up a boarding ramp, into a large cargo hold, filled with unlabeled crates, weaponry, and a cluster of all terrain vehicles. I could have used something there to escape, but that wouldn't help my friends.

Ladders led up into a secondary store room, a lounge, and a small office. People stared at me as they went about packing things up.

They led me across a closed bomb door, into a laboratory.

Its doors were blue bulletproof glass with a caduceus printed across them, and the room had walls lined with medical supply cabinets and computer monitors. A cluster of glass tanks at the rear resembled the type of equipment researchers at the LV 426 facility used on socmavaj.

There were also a wide array of scientific devices, large illuminated magnifiers, electrostatic free stations, wiring and soldering tools, and lockers containing just about every conceivable earthly chemical compound.

A narrow walled in corridor ran along the outside of this surgical theater, through which Morse was being led. Golic, in the meantime, lay on a crash cart, watching an older Indian woman pulling bullets out of his legs.

Mr. Weyland took this opportunity to summon another doctor to patch up his own wounds.

I found Pillow and a long nosed brunette woman with glasses standing over an examination table, both clad in scrubs and surgical masks, operating on Sharad's liver.

"I thought you were going to go to a surgical station," I said.

To transfuse her alien patient with the necessary type of blood, Pillow had an IV stuck in her wrists, which she kept elevated as she instructed her companion how to navigate the nonhuman body. "We have the equipment here. Mrs. Wagner here is a qualified medical surgeon."

She leaned over the table, looking faint. "Don't make the incision just yet. You first need to...clamp off the tugocna loddoca."

"Please, Pillow," Mrs. Wagner said. "This isn't the first damaged liver I've excised."

Mr. Barnes was standing by, eying his wife with concern. "You should eat something. There's a box of Nutter Butters in one of these cabinets..."

"Thanks, honey, but I don't want to infect the incision site." She glanced at Weyland. "Where's my blood? I told your friend to get the emergency supplies."

Weyland, still being treated for gunshot wounds, activated a communications system on the wall. "Mr. Yutani. Were you notified of an emergency blood supply?"

After a period of silence, the Asian man's voice replied, "We're searching the wreckage as we speak. I've just extracted the cadaver of a small child alien."

"Oxana," Pillow gasped.

"We've found a medical room," Yutani continued. "We should have the blood in a moment."

"I wish there was something I could do," David said. "But I'm not medically trained."

"I have an idea," Weyland said, pulling a gun-like device from a cabinet. He loaded a cartridge into it.

Before Pillow could utter a word of protest, he shot something into her neck.

"What!" she shouted. "What did you just do!"

"Relax," the man said. "I just gave your blood supply a boost with some sugar, vitamins, proteins and electrolytes."

"You'd better pray I'm not allergic," Pillow growled.

"You're welcome."

"Where's Thonwa?" I asked.

Pillow shook her head. "She's in cryogenic stasis at the moment. I can't operate on two aliens at once, and I don't trust these...people with her biology."

She glanced at me and Grandmother. "Mike, you shouldn't be letting anyone in here. There's a contamination risk."

"I'm afraid the large one won't be able to squeeze through the side corridor," Weyland said. "And the refrigeration unit is in the rear. Do these xenomorphs have any medical training I should be aware of?"

Pillow laughed. "None whatsoever. Unless you count the healing power of prayer."

David raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"I'd be happy to oblige," I said, folding my claws.

Mr. Barnes and Grandmother joined me, petitioning our Lord for his aid.

All of a sudden, Newt started crying.

"Why did she have to kill herself for?" she sobbed. "They could have saved her!"

"I don't know," I said. "But the woman was very bitter."

"There might be a way to bring her back," Weyland said. "I'm not going to promise anything yet, but I think there might be a way."

[0000]

1. Valid point. That's why I made this into an alternate ending.

2. It still doesn't make sense. That's why I changed the ending.

(Item III)

Original version of Rosedale Square (Called "Sesame Time"):

I can't tell if people didn't like my use of Sesame Street characters, or just the silly goofy scenario with puppets in virtual reality, but I figure getting rid of Sesame Street references will at least make things easier to publish if anyone ever decides to put this in real bookstores instead of the Lulu website.

[0000]

They didn't put me under glass this time, but I still couldn't move. I stared into another lab, rows of stainless steel tables and computers and large tanks containing many of my brethren in a liquid solution. I was terrified, but couldn't do much about the situation.

When the long haired man appeared, I hissed in fright and spat in his direction, but he anticipated this, ducking away at the last moment. "Whoa! Easy there, little guy!"

He pulled out a stack of laminated cards. "Look! I got something for you."

He dangled a piece of meat in front of me. "Ah?"

I did feel a bit hungry. My drool sizzled as it fell on...whatever I'd been secured to. I couldn't move my head enough to look down.

"We're going to play a little game. I'm going to hold up a card, and you're going to read it, and if you do well, I'll give you a treat. Got it?"

I didn't get it.

"Dug," I said.

"Yes. I'm Doug. Now pay attention."

He held up a card with the letter A on it.

I snapped to attention. I had seen the letter on a soda machine, and the symbol repeated numerous times in the dead man's book.

"Ayy," he said.

"Ayyy," I repeated.

He fed me a piece of bacon.

As nice as that was, I hungered more for the knowledge he doled out.

"Fifth lobe is activated," Kurt muttered. "Must be the speech and cognition areas. Brain stem is completely dark. He seems to be in a meditative state...You sure you should be feeding it bacon?"

We went through the entire twenty six letter alphabet, and an entire two packages of bacon, both cooked and uncooked. The cooked version tasted interesting, but the uncooked kind really convinced me that maybe I didn't have to eat Dug and his friend.

So I knew letters. That didn't mean I could communicate.

"B-I-B-L-E," I spelled, quoting the cover of Reverend's book.

"Bible," Doug said.

"Bible," I repeated.

I sighed. I couldn't figure out why he pronounced it like `eyeball' instead of `bibblee'. My lack of understanding depressed me.

"Do we have a bible in here somewhere?" Doug asked his cohort.

"Do I look like I read the bible?"

Doug frowned. "Be back in a minute."

He was actually gone ten minutes, but he returned with a yellow book. The object looked different, but it had that same word on the cover.

"Ah?" he pointed to the cover. "Bible!"

"H-O-L-Y," I read. "Hoelye."

"Holy, yes. It means, um, really really pure..." Doug paused, apparently realizing that I didn't understand the word. "Pure is like, um, really, really good."

"Good," I muttered, not following.

He opened the book, held it up for me to read.

"G-O-D."

He pointed to the ceiling. "God."

I sighed, overwhelmed by all the words. There had to be thousands of them on that little page.

"Uncle Dug, what that?" A squeaky voice said outside my field of vision.

"It's...an alien."

"What's the alien's name?"

"It's..." He said "Hunter" in my language.

"What's that in English?"

"He doesn't have an English name."

The voice sighed in response. "I know. I'll think hard and make a name for him."

"Okay. You do that, sweetie. Have you met with Big Bird today?"

Big Bird? My tail curled into a question mark.

"Yes, uncle. Today we read a book."

A little voice, charmingly stupid, pleasant to listen to. I tried to move my neck to get a better look, but they had braced it against something. I sighed in resignation.

As if reading my mind, Doug bent down, and the fat cherubic face of a curly haired blonde girl appeared.

She smiled and waved to me. "Hi!"

I waved back. "Hi."

The girl frowned at Doug. "Why you have him stuck in that thing for? Why won't you let him move around?"

"Honey, um, you see those things sticking out of its head? Those are electrodes we're using to measure its brain. We don't want the little guy rolling around and pulling them out. It could hurt him really bad, and mess up the experiment."

Her eyes widened. "Oh! So what have you been doing with him?"

"Oh, just teaching him the ABC's and seeing how his brain reacts."

"Big Bird knows the ABC's. Why don't you have him talk to Big Bird?"

"Honey..." Doug paused in thought a moment, then kissed her head. "Sarah, you're brilliant!"

"No," said Dr. Newton.

"What!" Doug protested.

"Just no."

"But it's perfect! We can monitor the program at every node and measure brain activity. You've seen the test scores on children. He'll be communicating fluently in no time at all! Think about how many volumes of alien culture we can mine from this little nugget!"

"I can't believe this. You actually want this creature to experience Sesame Time."

"And how did you first learn English?"

Dr. Newton sighed. "Fine. But what's the kid going to think? The creature's sure to melt the contacts."

Doug smiled at the girl. "It'll be fine. You can already read, can't you honey?"

"Yes. Wait. What are you doing with Sesame Time?"

"We're going to take apart your headset and put it on the little guy."

"But how will I meet with Big Bird now?"

"Use your imagination. That's what Big Bird taught you, didn't he?"

"Yes, but what will I do?"

"You can read, honey, can't you?"

"Yes, uncle."

"Then you'll have to do that from now on, honey. You see, it's very important that we teach, um, little guy how to talk so we can learn things."

She sounded almost tearful. "But I want to talk to Big Bird!"

"Honey, do you want to keep talking to a fictional character in a dream program, or do you want to see this little guy actually talking to you?"

"He already talks. He said hi."

"He's smarter than that, Sarah. We're going to find out how smart."

She sighed. "Can you buy me another Big Bird dream?"

"Sure, honey. I'll order one for the next interstellar shipment."

Sarah pouted. "But that takes a looong time!"

"I think we have a spare child's headset somewhere around the base," Dr. Newton muttered. "I'll ask Betty if her son still has it in his room somewhere."

"You hear that, Sarah? We'll look for a spare, okay?"

"Okay, uncle."

Doug disappeared again. He returned to the lab with a headband with things sticking out of it, dismantling pieces, screwing little devices in their place.

He soldered something to a piece of telephone equipment, securing the thing to my head. The pressure of the device upon the probes they'd inserted into my skull caused me shooting pains.

Doug switched it on.

I felt a rhythmic thrumming on the sides of my head, but nothing else happened.

"Is he meeting Big Bird yet, uncle?"

"I'm trying to get him there, darling."

"Try lobe five," Kurt said. "That may get better results."

"We don't know if that's the part that regulates dreaming. It's easier when they just have temples."

He scooted the electrodes down a bit, waiting for something to happen.

I blinked, and saw brownstone. I flinched.

The man moved the electrode. Nothing again.

"Wait," said Newton. "Move it up some. I got a blip."

The probes moved, and my eyes lost focus.

I stood somewhere else, surrounded by brick buildings.

Houses. Dwelling places for humans. I recognized them from photographs I'd seen around the base.

Well, roughly. The brownstone ones seemed...antique.

My heat vision did not work for some reason, and even my sense of smell did not alert me to the presence of strangers.

I spotted colorful figures in the distance, but practically jumped out of my exoskeleton when a bright yellow creature popped out in front of me.

"Hi! Sorry to startle you. My name is Big Bird! What's your name?"

Something shifted.

I and my new companion now stood in an alleyway between buildings.

A few seconds ago, we had been on a street, I think, but then I saw a flash, and something jarred loose a memory of the crawlspace I and my mother had spent many hours sleeping in.

Home.

The image seemed to snap like a rubber band, throwing me into this alley with Big Bird.

As I stared into those vacant blue ping pong balls the creature had for eyes, I felt struck with an irrational thought: This was home, that my crawl space and mama could be found right around the corner.

I felt urine leaving my body, but couldn't see any coming out. Apparently nobody peed in this universe.

Out of corners of my consciousness, I heard Dug complaining to someone about it, Doctor Newton saying that toilet training wasn't a priority, that he'd get me an appliance or training pads.

For a long time, I just stared at the strange yellow creature, examining the unusual carpet-like texturing of its beak and feet, its fake Mardi Gras feathers, watching its chest rising and falling in simulated breathing rhythms.

The bird radiated a feeling of intense loneliness and a need for acceptance. It made my stomach churn just thinking about it.

How could this nonliving thing be anyone's friend? How did it make me feel its emotions? I felt violated.

The bird craned its neck in puzzlement, waving its gold mitten-like hand as if saying, `Earth to Hunter! Is anyone there?'

It then tried a different tack, pounding its feathery chest. "Me. Big Bird. You?"

I hissed and clicked out my name.

The bird stiffened like a robot for a moment, staring vacantly into space.

It appeared to smile. "Did you say Sean Michael?"

I didn't understand. Big Bird pointed to me. "You. Sean Micheal?"

"No," I hissed.

The bird slumped its shoulders, looking embarrassed. "I'm sorry. Could you please repeat it again?"

And then, when I didn't respond, "Me. Big Bird. You?"

I repeated myself.

"Oh! Hassan Abdulaminajab! Yes?"

I just stared at him.

"It...sounds like you speak Arabic." Big Bird said very slowly. "Would you like an Arabic translator?"

"What...Arabic?" I hissed.

"It is the language of many countries of the Middle East." He asked me if I spoke Arabic in Arabic.

I just shook my head. "English," I sighed.

Big Bird looked super excited now. "Okay!"

He scrunched up his shoulders. "Is it okay if I call you Hassan Abdulaminajab?"

I sighed and nodded, mostly out of frustrated resignation.

"Right. Hassan. Can I call you that for short?"

I nodded, but I was frowning.

Big Bird looked visibly relieved. "Okay. Hassan it is. But if you want to change your name at any time, just let me or any of my friends know, and we'll pass the word around immediately!"

I whipped my tail around, wanting nothing but to exit from this nightmare.

Big Bird put his paws on his knees, stooping to my level. "So. Hassan. Welcome to Sesame Street. Are you ready to have some fun?"

The bird radiated excitement and excessive joy, stirring in me the thrill of the hunt.

The invasion into my emotions became too much for me to bear all at once, so I lashed out, both from outrage and the thrill.

I leapt into the air, driving my head, fangs and claws into the creature's voluminous stomach area.

Instead of bursting open in a spray of blood, the meat of its round body merely rippled like a waterbed, and I found myself flying through a complicated string of numbers and symbols arranged in an elaborate spiderweb pattern extending to infinity in all directions.

I blinked, and my body slammed into a brownstone wall behind Big Bird's tail feathers.

Groaning, I shook myself and got up from the ground.

For some strange reason I had turned yellow.

I couldn't see much without a mirror, but a glance downwards told me I'd become a hybridized puppet of myself, gold mitten hands and feathers.

Big Bird whirled around clumsily, radiating a feeling of pain. "Ow! That hurt!"

His body rippled all over, like a wave traveling through a floating water droplet, and his skeletal structure (or whatever could be described as such) suddenly underwent a startling metamorphosis.

The ping pong ball eyes disappeared into the creature's skull with a loud pop, the beak elongating into a long mosquito-like proboscis.

His head squashed and stretched backwards in a long banana shape, the sides of his face spreading out like the head plate of a Triceratops.

Big Bird retained his fat belly, but his spongy orange legs bent and reshaped themselves into insectoid arrangements, useless wing arms turning into a pair of bug forelimbs, topped with functional looking golden wings.

A long spiky tail burst from his rear end, curling scorpion-like behind his body.

Still yellow. Still carpet-like in texture. It looked like a grotesque puppet caricature of my grandmother.

"You hurt me, Hassan!" the creature hissed.

I swallowed hard, backing further into the alleyway.

"No!"

"Why did you hurt me? I was only trying to be your friend!"

Big Bird didn't look very bird-like anymore, or male, but it made the creature more appealing, bringing me both amusement and comfort.

"I'm sorry," I hissed. Somehow the creature understood me.

"It is okay." She clapped her claws. "Again! Let us nonlethal hunt!"

Oh.

At last I understood this `fun' thing: Following Big Bird around to places where I presumably would find enjoyable.

Not raised to be polite, I scampered away from her, out of the alleyway, into to the street.

I reached the intersection of four buildings, a pair of apartments, a large factory, and a library.

I tried to sniff the air, but only detected fresh baked bread and pizza, an otherwise absolute vacuum of scent, useless for aiding my survival in this strange world.

Humans, I thought. Somehow they've created this dream for me to exist inside. But how to get out?

Did I want to get out? The world seemed pleasant enough. Comfortable, even. I at last encountered someone who understood me. It felt...almost good.

Huff huff huff.

A huge orange-brown dog puppet came thundering towards me. It seemed the inhabitants of this realm invariably held the element of surprise. I jumped back with a start.

"It is okay, hunter," Mutant Big Bird churred in my language. "This is Barkley." The creature spoke with such disarming tones that I at first did not register the fact he wasn't speaking English. Well, except for the dog's name. "He is not dangerous or edible. No one in this land is."

I did not trust this statement, but accepted the idea that this large thing, that didn't resemble any dog I'd ever seen, or eaten, was unharmful and wished me well due to its limited brain capacity.

The creature barked and licked my face like pets I've seen, but it had a man's voice when it made sound. I accepted this strangeness as part of the dream.

A green head popped out of a trash can. "Hey! What's all that racket! I'm trying to sleep!"

The negative vibrations to his tone made me growl with fear and anger.

"Oscar. Friend," Big Bird said in both English and my language simultaneously.

"Friend," I repeated in English.

"I am not your friend!" Oscar yelled, slamming the aluminum lid back down.

"There are many types of humans," Big Bird explained in clicks and hisses. "Some are nice, some are bad, and some are disagreeable but have good in them if you can see it."

I stared at Mutant Big Bird in shock. "How is it that you speak my language?"

"Sesame Time exists only in your mind. When you disrupted my programming, my A.I. system incorporated information from your brain in order to compensate for the error."

"What is A.I.?"

"Artificial intelligence. I am a machine. A tool which you can use to learn the humans' language and facets of their culture. But I also have a personality program, and you will find things more enjoyable if you play according to the construct."

"Why would you help me? What do you get in return?"

"I am programmed to be your friend. I get no reward. It is simply my function to be amicable."

"I don't understand." .

"The jar that imprisoned you served its function without expectation of reward. It is simply there. I am also simply there, though fulfilling the function of a friend. Do you understand?"

I nodded warily. "So you do not truly care about me."

"I am programmed to care, and learn how to care. In some ways, I am more caring than a human."

There was no ego to these words. Big Bird stated this as fact.

I felt struck simultaneously with the overpowering emotion of intense love, and the cold feeling that Big Bird's caring was as meaningless as a Coke machine dispensing product. It made the insides of my stomach churn just thinking about it.

I slowly began to understand the meaning, and meaninglessness, of all human entertainment, why they stared at boxes with moving pictures and gazed at books, and why they put things like Sesame Time in their heads. They were a vain species, seeking to be loved, and to love, even if the object only expressed the illusion of love in return.

"Which should I believe?" I hissed and clicked. "Which one is true? Do you actually care about me, or is it all just a mechanical response?"

Big Bird paused a moment, then merely replied, "Yes."

I would have attacked her then, but it would have accomplished nothing. "I don't understand."

"It is up to you to choose what to believe. Both parts are true, as illogical as it may seem."

"But I can't simultaneously believe you care and that you are only an empty program that cares only for what it's told to care about."

"Then you must choose. It has been my long experience that humans who enter this program are much happier if they believe I truly care."

I sighed. "What is happiness?"

"Showing pleasure or contentment, as opposed to its opposite, sadness." The bird monster feigned sorrow to illustrate.

"I wish to be happy."

"So do many others. The feeling is as elusive to attain as it is to define."

"Do humans know of this contradiction between caring and programming?"

Big Bird nodded. "The answers are always there to anyone who asks. Some ask. Some don't. Some prefer to remain blissfully unaware."

"And why would they not ask?"

"Because they believe, or wish to believe."

"What is believing?"

"To have faith in the existence of something. To accept as true or conveying the truth."

"What is faith?"

"Unquestioning belief, complete trust or confidence."

I shook my head. "I do not understand."

"We are here in this place because part of you believes it is real. If you did not at least partly accept this fact, you would awaken to find yourself strapped down to a table with electrodes stuck in your brain. That is reality. I am fantasy. Do you understand this, at least?"

It disturbed me how much Big Bird knew, but it came with the territory. She said she was an A.I. system in my brain, so if I knew, she knew. Maybe even a little more.

When I focused my eyes just right, I could see everything in the lab, the tables, the desks, the little girl staring at me. I couldn't move my limbs.

I turned my head, and there was Sesame Time again.

I glanced at my strangely deformed mentor. "So what happens if I believe that you truly care for me?"

"Then you will be happy."

"And if not?"

"You may possibly become miserable."

I nodded slowly. "What happens to you if I only think of you as a cold machine with no feelings?"

Big Bird bowed her head. "You would not hurt me as much as I would appear to be hurt, but you, as I said, might possibly become sad."

"Is this the same thing that happens when humans gather to speak to the God?"

Big Bird looked blank for a moment. "Insufficient data. Some say there is a higher reality than this one, or the reality you inhabit on the lab table. Its existence cannot be proven nor disproven, so I cannot tell you whether that other reality or a Higher Power exists or not.

"It is said by some religions that The Higher Power, God, is love. It is outside my programming to tell you whether this is literal or an exaggeration of The Higher Power's intense loving. I am programmed to be religiously neutral."

For several long moments, we stood in silence as I attempted to come to grips with the concept.

Since birth, I suspected the existence of some sort of powerful thing watching over me, guiding the direction of my life. It was more of a feeling than any sort of real religious belief. Some unseen thing had prevented my mother from being killed by an exploding electrical transformer some years before my birth, and she mentioned this from time to time. But then again, this...divine thing did not spare my sisters from being shot by hoomans. I didn't know what to think.

At long last, the bird thing spoke. "Philosophers and religious authorities have spent their entire lives contemplating these subjects. It may be beneficial to familiarize yourself with the language of the humans to decrease your dependence on my limited information database."

I nodded.

"Have you come to a decision about your relationship to me, or will this also require more time?"

I bowed my head. "For the time being I will assume that you genuinely care."

"Then you may also assume that you have made me happy. Come. Let me introduce you to my friends."

I followed her to a nearby apartment, where she showed me strange things called `mailboxes', something that mystified me, even when I got a formal explanation.

Big Bird told me that Sesame Time was a reconstruction of Earth in the twentieth century, and that a large part of mail in modern time was simply internet printouts shipped from a local computer hub in the city.

This explanation only made me more confused. In hopes of clearing up the misunderstanding, Big Bird promised to take me to see a post office and follow Jim Mailman on a `postal run,' whatever that was.

Beyond the mailboxes stood a series of doors, apparently the dwelling places of more strange creatures.

A door opened, and a fox popped out, dressed in a hat and a suit coat. The creature paid me little heed, muttering something about needing to get to work.

Big Bird knocked on a door across from him, and a black woman in a gray astronaut's jumpsuit answered. Tall, lean, with glistening black hair that fell in curls around her shoulders.

"Hi Big Bird!" she said with glowing cheer, apparently unperturbed by my acquaintance's unusual appearance.

She smiled at me. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

For a moment, Big Bird's English rewording of my name shocked me, but then I realized she could basically read my mind. I gave the woman a nod.

"Hello, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" She pronounced it flawlessly.

The woman stooped to my level, putting a hand to her chest. "My name is Maria."

"Maria," I repeated.

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik is a Ss'sik'chtokiwij speaker," said Big Bird, strangely knowing the phonetic equivalent of my people's word for tongue. "She's new to Sesame Street, and the English language. I'm trying to help out."

"That's very nice of you, Big Bird," Maria said with great cheer. "I''d be glad to help!" She gestured to the room beyond. "Well, come in, come in!"

The interior of Maria's apartment looked more like a room from the base than part of the apartment building.

A futuristic metal box, with foldable couch beds like the people on the base used, `walk-in kitchen' containing one of those `microwave' things that could cook complicated foods like steak thoroughly in one minute. A coffee table in between the futons held an oversized brown envelope, and the bible Dug had shown to me.

"This place looks strange," I said to Big Bird.

Maria apparently didn't understand. "What did he say?"

The mutant bird turned her face toward me. "It's a feature of the program. We incorporated some of your memories into the construction of this universe to make things more comfortable and easier to relate to."

A Hispanic man, also in a space suit, waved to me from one of the futons. "Hi, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! We got a phone call saying someone from Archeron was coming, so we decided to dress up to make them feel welcome. Guess that someone is you! What do you think?"

Big Bird translated this for me.

I uttered a low hiss.

"I and Bob were just having tea!" Maria said.

I stared at Big Bird, expecting a translation.

"Since we are inside your mind, you may simply touch me, and I will mentally translate everything that is being said in English to Ss'sik'chtokiwij for you."

This I did.

Maria glanced at the table, letting out an exaggerated gasp. "Look, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! Someone just sent you a letter!"

She handed me the envelope.

No one told me how to open those things, so I just ripped it to pieces.

Inside, I found a giant red T.

"Wow!" Maria said with great enthusiasm. "It's the letter T!"

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," said Bob. "Can you find any object in this room that starts with T?"

Everyone just stared at me expectantly for a solid minute, like robots, until I bumped the table by accident.

"That's right, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! T is for table!" Maria spelled it for me on a notepad.

I touched a teapot, and this also got explained to me.

The moment I internalized this, a little black machine on an end table made ringing sounds.

Bob picked it up, listening for a moment. "Oh! It's for Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"

He handed me the receiver.

"T is for telephone," a voice said on the other end. "T! Tah tah for now!" Whoever it was hung up.

They showed me a television, a picture of a tree, and a turtle in a cage.

I soon became annoyed at the stilted nature of our interactions and burrowed into Maria's stomach cavity.

It turns out T also stands for tragedy.

Maria actually died, her blood and internal organs a reconstruction of my previous kills.

Bob screamed no. Big Bird wept.

"Maria..."

Big Bird had spoken correctly. I discovered Maria's body to be inedible. Being a figment just like everything else, it left me disappointed, hollow and hungry.

"What you did was wrong!" Bob shouted. "Maria was by best friend and now she's gone forever!"

Terrified at the outburst, I crouched, prepared to attack, but Big Bird hissed at me like my mother, blocking my path with a huge feathery wing.

"He is grieving," Big Bird half sobbed, half churred in the fashion of my people. "As am I. You cause us great pain."

I sunk to the floor, feeling ashamed of myself.

Just seconds later, someone knocked on the door, and Bob let in a pair of men in emergency medical service uniforms, along with a tall black man in a police uniform, and a little yellow puppet person, also in blue.

They carried Maria's body out on a gurney, and the officers confronted me.

"Come with us to the police station," said the human cop.

The words seemed to imply a cage, so I attempted to flee.

Unfortunately, I wasn't in charge of the rules.

When I dove for the kitchen's rear door, the puppet cop's arms stretched out like a piece of rubber and grabbed me. I tried to squeeze out of his grip, but an additional set of arms popped out of his arms, preventing me from moving.

Soon I lay facefirst on the carpet, my limbs secured by small handcuffs perfectly matching my shape.

The cops dragged me outside and down to a stone building with lion statues guarding the door.

The statues, actually puppets, turned and glared at me as I entered the building.

I passed through a marble hallway, entering a courtroom filled with puppets of every color. They sat in stands and on benches, guarded the podium. One puppet, a gray cylindrical thing with a stern looking bird face, scowled at me when I glanced at it.

An old man puppet in a robe sat behind a tall wooden box in the center, the plaque on his desk reading Honorable Judge Waldorf.

A giant metal disk embossed with the image of a female puppet with a blindfold, holding scales hung on the wall behind the judge's box, and Sesame Street apparently had its own state flag.

My trial proved to be a short open and shut case. Witnesses said that I did it, the forensics evidence damning, though oddly accurate, and ultra specific.

For example, they somehow had dental records and glossy photographs of Reverend's corpse.

For an attorney I had a green frog named Kermit, who did a pathetic job arguing for my defense. His plea that I didn't know any better got shot down by the judge, saying that some jail time would teach me a lesson.

A group of puppet versions of myself stood as jurors, but they weren't truly like me, for none seemed sympathetic enough for an acquittal.

When Big Bird took to the witness box with her condemnatory testimony, I felt hurt and betrayed, but she said she only wanted what was best for me.

The jury unanimously decided that I should be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Once this had been established, and the judge destroyed his gavel banging pad by hitting it too many times, the officers marched me down a flight of stairs to a small prison where puppet rats played harmonicas and seedy looking criminal puppets glared at me with disapproval.

They threw me in a large jail cell, locking the door.

The bars had gaps large enough for me to squeeze through, but since I had the cop puppet as my warden, I wouldn't have been able to get far.

My cell contained only a bed, a mirror and a toilet. With a sigh, I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, which, for some reason, had been covered in educational graffiti that taught me how to spell words as I stared at it.

Suddenly a fat hairy blue thing with googly eyes leaned close to the bars of my cell.

"So," it said in a low growly voice. "Me arrested for stealing cookie jar. Why you in here?"

I stared at the fuzzy creature, attempting to comprehend the words. "Y...you...in...here," I hissed.

The thing pointed to Puppet Cop. "Policeman put Cookie here. In jail. Because me steal cookie. Why you in here?"

I just hissed in frustration.

The monster sighed, giving up talking to me.

Brightly colored puppets in prison stripes stared back at me from the other cells, one a little pink guy with a single black tuft of hair exploding from the top of his head like a fern.

I looked away, absently staring at the educational graffiti.

An hour later, soft padding sounds came from the staircase at the end of the hall.

Big Bird waddled up to my cell with a large scrapbook. "Maria's funeral is tomorrow," she sobbed.

The creature stood outside my cell for more than a minute grieving in the custom of my people, which humans often confuse with an attack of allergies.

Strange to see one of my kind behaving in such a fashion. While not uncommon for us to grieve the loss of loved ones, we would never carry on in such an exaggerated manner. The last time I witnessed grief of this magnitude was when mother lost her sister to an explosion a few weeks after I was born, and even then she hadn't been that emotional.

Still, the cyber robot had read my psychology well. Soon I too coughed and sneezed over the loss of this friendly acquaintance, and, overcome with emotion, I wiggled through the bars of my cell and rubbed against the bird thing like I'd done for my mother so long ago.

The cop didn't seem a bit alarmed at my jailbreak. He only stood like a statue, saying nothing.

"Thank you," Big Bird coughed, patting me on the head.

"You...really cared for Maria?"

"Yes. She was a good friend."

"Then...why do you still speak to me?"

"Because I am programmed to." Big Bird sniffed and sat on the floor, showing me the scrapbook. "I made this for Maria. You know, a long time ago, when Mr. Hooper died, Maria told me that people still live on in our memory. So I made this book to remember the good times me and Maria had together." This she said mostly in my language, or I wouldn't have understood it.

"Living on in someone's memory isn't as satisfying as having them alive. Why bother?"

"I am sorry, I am programmed to be religiously neutral. This is the best I can do."

The bird opened the cover, showing me a photograph of her and Maria talking to each other in an alleyway. A scrawled caption below read: `Me and Maria were the best of friends.'

The picture showed her as the ridiculous male bird thing she used to be, rather than the Ss'sik'chtokiwij she had become.

She turned the page.

`When I first met Maria, I helped her move.'

As I stared at the picture, it moved, and sound came out like it were a television, unfolding a scene where Big Bird and Oscar watched a moving truck being unloaded. The bird later carried one end of a sofa while Oscar's faceless garbage man took the other up a staircase.

The sofa got dropped a lot, but in the end, Maria brought the bird a birdseed pie as a way of saying thank you.

Everything confused me, so Big Bird had to explain a lot. To her credit, as an artificial intelligence, she never ran out of patience.

She tapped the next page with her claw. "Maria helped me to not be scared of the dark."

Another video, one where Big Bird pestered Maria late at night until she coached him on how to face his fear.

Being a creature that always lived in the dark, I've never been afraid of it, so I had difficulty understanding what all the fuss was about. "What's so scary about the dark?"

"It's a human affectation." Big Bird somehow managed to sound sad and robotic at the same time. "You would not understand unless I compare it to something you personally fear."

Big Bird peeled a matchbook off the gray scrapbook page, sliding a match across the striker on the back.

When it burst into flame, I shrieked and retreated into my cell. Big Bird chuckled, waving a claw above the flickering light. "Safe. Fire is not an enemy. Fire is a tool." She extinguished it between two claws.

Although difficult with my claws, with Big Bird's help, I managed to strike my own match and hold it.

"You fear because you do not understand, just like how humans fear darkness. See?"

I slowly nodded.

"Fire is the secret of civilization. Fire powers their guns, drives their vehicles, lights their lights. As I once could not occupy my own habitation due to the fear of darkness, you also have been diminished by fear. This is what Maria taught me."

I doubted this was how Maria phrased such a lesson, but I didn't know her that well to begin with. "Yes."

Big Bird turned to a page showing the perplexing image of herself blowing out candles on a cake.

"What is this?"

"Human beings commemorate the day of their birth with a special celebration."

I just stared at her. "What is a day?"

"Oh." The mosquito beak frowned again. "Humans count the passage of time, based on the rising and falling of a sun. It is broken up into a variety of measurements, from the very small to the very large."

She pointed to a clock hanging on a wall. "When this reaches twelve, it will be noon, the time in which the sun is highest in the sky. Humans generally eat during this time. When it passes twelve again, it is midnight and dark, when they sleep. Each time they sleep, it is considered one day."

She showed me a calendar. "This is what humans use to measure days...Do you have a birthday?"

I shook my head. "I do not remember. It was a long time ago."

Sighing, Big Bird touched my head, and I saw flashes of my infancy inside the bloody corpse.

"August 24, 2169, which makes you a Virgo."

I frowned. "What's that?"

"Humans have a thing called a Zodiac. They think they can tell the future and predict your personality with birth dates. According to popular belief, a Virgo is cold, analytical and precise."

I laughed. That didn't sound like me at all.

Some say I should be a Scorpio, but they're wrong. That's not my birth month.

"Is it my birthday?"

"No." Big Bird turned the page, showing me a picture of him and Maria beneath a tree wrapped with lights and shiny thread.

"I've seen something like this before."

Big Bird nodded. "It is called Christmas. No doubt the researchers at this facility also observe the tradition. It has existed for hundreds of years."

"What is Christmas?"

"Christmas is an event that happens every 25th of December, traditionally, a day of song, social gatherings and giving."

I gawked. "Giving?"

"Yes. You find something, typically an object, for someone else, something that you believe will make them happy."

"Why? For what purpose?"

The puppet thing shrugged. "Because you love them, or out of general niceness."

"Humans are strange." I shook my head. "What does the word Christmas mean?"

"It means Christ Mass. The mass of Christ."

Finally! I thought Someone was going to explain what a Christ Amen meant.

"What is mass?"

"The quantity of matter a body contains. Alternately, a service of worship."

I couldn't make sense of that, so I tried the other word. "What is a Christ?"

Big Bird froze for a moment.

"It derives from the Greek word `Kristos', which means `messiah' or `savior.' The term messiah means `anointed' as per the ancient practice of pouring of oil and blessing of kings and priests."

"I don't understand."

A living creature probably would have become annoyed, frustrated, and given up by then. "Your kind has only Xutugrod, but humans have many levels of authority. Their pack leaders have pack leaders, and their Lomsagh, their spiritual philosophy, is developed into a pack system of its own. A messiah can therefore be a super Xutugrod of Lomsagh, the great great pack, or both."

"Then what is a Jesus?"

Big Bird froze again. "The Jesus is a religious figure from two thousand years in the past. My programming prohibits me from making biased statements regarding items of a religious nature. Suffice to say that his birthdate is celebrated by many adherents in the Christian religion."

I let out a frustrated mewl.

"I understand it is a challenge to comprehend philosophies based on unprovables."

"It's not that! I want to understand the words!"

Big Bird bowed her head. "You only need to ask."

I had her explain a year to me. Once I had that established, I said, "If a messiah is a grand pack leader or Lomsagh pack leader, why would he be celebrated for hundreds of years?"

"Jesus is the founder of the Christian Lomsagh, or religion. For that reason, his birthdate is considered important."

"Are all humans members of this Lomsagh?"

"No."

"But a great many, correct? At least everyone on this base? They all seem to celebrate."

"It is not necessary to be Christian to celebrate Christmas."

"Why would they celebrate it otherwise?"

This rendered the bird speechless.

It took awhile for her to speak. "Again, I do not know. Perhaps it is the giving that inspires them."

"Why give? What is the point?"

"It is the central tenet to the Christian religion. Especially on the celebration of his birth."

"And why is that?"

The bird fell silent.

"I am not permitted to enter this arena of discourse."

I growled. "Why not?"

"The humans that programmed me were afraid to offend."

"Afraid like you were afraid of the dark?"

Big Bird shook her head. "My hesitation has a valid basis. Displaying religious bias causes my program to terminate. In other words, I would cease to exist."

"How can I find this information?"

"I would recommend you learn how to read."

She turned the page in her scrapbook.

The book appeared to only contain a hundred pages, but we were nearer to three hundred page turns by the time Big Bird had finished her video documentary on Maria's life.

Even the most banal of events had been recorded for posterity:

The time they went out for ice cream.

The time he lost his teddy bear.

The time she took him to see a Coca Cola bottling plant.

It wasn't all bad. I got exposed to more Earth culture than any one of my race had ever been exposed to. I learned about baseball, the arrangement of human families, and even Jim Henson, a manufacturer of puppets, who made my friend Big Bird out of foam blocks and fabric.

When Big Bird at last closed the book, I had pretty much acquired a child's understanding of the English language and human culture. The clock said 2:00 A.M.

Big Bird gave me a hug, thanking me for letting her share. Get some rest, she said.

I've never been hugged before, but I liked it. I would have reciprocated, but being too small, so I just rubbed against her and crawled into my prison bed.

"So," the blue monster in the next cell said to me. "You understand Cookie now?"

"A little," I growled in annoyance.

"So why you in prison?"

I simply hissed, "Kill."

The beast got scared, beating a hasty retreat to the rear corner of his cell.

I stretched out on the bed, drifting into what I thought to be unconsciousness.

Instead of dreaming, I found myself staring into the lab again. I couldn't see anyone, but heard Doug and Doctor Newton talking.

"I thought the program was more robust than that," Doug said. "I've read articles about it being used on children in juvenile detention centers with positive results."

"It's designed for human children trying to abuse or stab the characters, not diving into people's chests and disemboweling victims with their teeth. We're dealing with an alien intelligence here. It doesn't operate on the same set of rules."

"Is there any way to get Big Bird back to normal? I mean, I like what it's doing so far, but I'm worried about what will happen if Sarah tries to use it."

"You should have thought about that before trying to attach it to our specimen's brain."

"You think that patch you uploaded is going to fix the problem?"

"It worked so far. It's a good thing Mrs. Jorden knows how to program code. It's not perfect, I admit, but the system remains stable."

"It's Ann, Kurt. Ann. You can say my sister's name."

"Right. Ann." Kurt sighed. "I still don't know about this. We're contaminating the specimen with all this American culture, and we're not getting that much information in return."

"It needs something. A conscience, at the very least. You saw the recording. It murdered Reverend Hughes, and whoever that poor sap it was it hatched from. I think `murder is wrong' would be a very valuable lesson to teach it."

"Not according to the department head."

"Well he's not here, is he now? Anytime he decides to take a shuttle back over to LV-426, we'll talk about it. As it stands, the Satphones are still down, and probably will stay down until that fucking solar storm tapers off."

"Tsk, tsk, Mr. Chesterton. Trying to teach our specimen curse words now?"

"Curse," I muttered, but they didn't hear me.

"Regardless, it's only one specimen. We have twenty others in tanks and we haven't done anything with them except drop in scraps of meat."

Dr. Newton sighed. "So now what?"

"Now? Now he gets Death Education."

I unfocused my eyes and the puppet prison cell reappeared.

Apparently, quite a few of those `hours' must have passed, for now the light in the prison seemed brighter.

The sun shined through bars on the window, and I discovered Big Bird had been correct about how clocks were supposed to work.

My electronic friend came shuffling down the corridor with a stiff piece of black fabric dangling from one claw.

I noticed, to my amusement, that she now wore a suit and tie, somehow cut and shaped to fit her swollen nonhuman proportions like it belonged there.

"Today is the funeral," Big Bird sighed with exaggerated mournfulness.

She held out the piece of fabric. "I'd like you to put this on."

I frowned, lowering my tail. "Why."

"It is customary for humans to put on fancy clothing during religious observances and rituals. At funerals, we honor the dead and the Higher Power by doing this."

"I am not human. I do not wear clothing."

"That is generally true, but this is a special occasion. The Hedgehog Sisters have custom made this tuxedo especially for you. Try it on."

Big Bird laid it on the floor.

"Crawl into it, and slide your soodare through the sleeves. We measured you last night, so it should be a good fit."

I slipped through the bars, wiggling my head through the fabric.

The tailors, whoever they were, had designed my outfit like a tube, and each of my limbs fit perfectly in the small sleeves. I even had a little tie to dangle around my neck. "Why do humans wear clothing?"

"For protection against the cold and the elements. Also to conceal the reproductive organs, which are not socially acceptable to display in public."

"Why is it not acceptable?"

"There are laws against it. Your bible has one possible explanation of the taboo of nudity, but I am not permitted to tell it to you."

"Is this an irrational fear? Like the darkness?"

Big Bird fell silent for a moment. "No. Many humans desire to be naked, but they cover themselves to please others. For respect and the good of the tribe. This is also in respect to mating rights."

Noting expression of puzzlement, she added, "You have seen humans without their clothing before in their private rooms. You know they do not Dokisbi like us. I will explain human reproduction at a later time."

I nodded.

Dokisbi, is the grisly method of my birth. The word has a nicer sound than it truly deserves.

My depth of knowledge regarding human reproduction was limited to what I saw in showers, beds and bathrooms. I had only once seen humans conjoined between the legs, but they had been asleep, either finished with whatever it was, or planning to start something hours in the future, which caused me to lose interest and go away.

Big Bird led me up the staircase and out of the courthouse.

Strangely, no one protested my leaving jail during my "Life sentence." It seemed the inhabitants of this strange world were incredibly naive.

I could have run away if I wanted to, but Big Bird behaved so unusually that curiosity kept me following close on her spiky tail.

We marched past a little print shop, into a tall white stone building with a pointed roof.

An interesting piece of architecture, devoid of any kind of religious imagery. A pair of multicolored stained glass windows framed its large wooden double doors, each panel depicting a puppet living on that particular street. A round window near the pointed roof contained only abstract color, and a couple images of butterflies.

Overall, it strongly resembled the courtroom, except the back end displayed more stained glass Muppets. No symbols other than puppet faces.

The same puppets from court now sat in the wooden pews, each sniffing, crying, drying their eyes, or hugging and muttering comforting words to one another. A little pink girl puppet, a purple horned puppet with two heads, an assortment of others.

A blue puppet with a pink nose hugged a crying little human girl in pigtails.

I noticed many humans in attendance, but other than Bob and the policeman, no one I recognized.

I only recognized their grief from the misery I had caused.

The more I saw, the more I wanted to throw up.

Big Bird put me on her shoulders, carrying me past the dead woman's many friends and loved ones.

Maria lay in a gleaming wooden box, surrounded by framed photographs, white padding, and flowers. Only the top half of her body showed, the other half hidden behind a closed lid for obvious reasons.

I stared at the lifeless body for several minutes, struggling with my feelings.

Part of me found this a terrible waste of food and egg laying material. The other part felt sad because the nice lady from the bird's scrapbook was gone forever. I had ended her life before I could even get to know her.

I shuddered.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Big Bird, who appeared to have been gazing at the body and the framed pictures inside the coffin lid, suddenly wept in the fashion of our people, and Bob put an arm around her, crying with her.

It soon became too much for me. Letting out a loud wail, I buried my face into Big Bird's plates, coughing and sneezing out my sorrows.

Having enough of the viewing, Big Bird carried me to a pew, and I watched everyone grieve, my insides churning with each passing moment.

When would this end?

When could I be free from this guilt?

This shame? This punishment?

Bob stepped up behind a podium, giving a speech about how great a friend Maria was.

I could take no more.

Before he could finish speaking, I ran down the aisle, fleeing out the front entrance.

I had no specific goal in mind, I just wanted to run, to escape from everything.

I ran from my guilt over killing Maria, Reverend, and the man I hatched from.

I ran from the humans and their strange customs and grieving rituals, their confusing religions where you're somehow not allowed to tell people things.

I didn't care where I ran to, I just wanted out.

Out of this crazy brownstone world.

Away from Big Bird, away from Dug and his lab.

As long as I remained in that chapel, and that prison, I felt the walls would keep closing in, and I would die.

I shrugged off my suit and ran across the street, through an alleyway between an apartment complex and a nightclub.

I cut across another street, to a vast park where humans flew kites and played catch with baseballs. It seemed not everybody cared about Maria.

I continued on, between skyscrapers and crazy Muppets drilling the pavement with jackhammers as square jawed puppet men popped their heads out of manholes.

I ran over hills, through a forest, entering country land filled with golden sheaves of wheat and strange puppet cows that mooed with human voices.

I kept running.

I stopped, slowly wandering the country.

At last alone with my thoughts (except for the occasional inquisitive moo from puppet cows) I pushed through the strange yellow-brown plant plants, struggling to understand these feelings of guilt, and who I was.

My kind ate humans to live.

Well, mom said there had been a few cave dwelling lifeforms in the area we used to live in, but grandmother got greedy and hitched a ride on a human's spaceship, starting a family in a world that no longer had access to those kinds of prey.

Humans, I now knew, weren't just livestock. They had feelings and personalities, families of their own, friends, people who wept for those who got killed and eaten.

As I thought about it, I found myself coughing and sneezing in sadness.

It wasn't just concepts getting to me. The idea that this Maria person had been a friendly and gentle individual, that my life would be forever deprived of her presence because of what I did to her, that made me cry.

I'd learned far, far too late that friendship is infinitely more valuable than food.

I cried again. A cow stared at me in puzzlement, giving me a wrong sounding moo. I scowled, wandering away from it.

Chop chop chop wud wud wud.

The noise came from the air, in the far distance.

As stated previously, I existed in a world of limited sensory information, so I couldn't tell the exact location of the noisemaker, or its identity. I could only crouch amid the wheat and whip my head around every which way in search of the noise.

Moments later, I spotted a tiny dot in the sky, growing larger with each whudding chopping noise.

I dug myself in the dirt, craning my head upwards as the object increased in size and definition.

Impossible!

I already inhabited a world filled with impossibilities, but this one far surpassed anything I had ever encountered.

Big Bird could fly!

Never before had I seen any individual of my race taking to the air. I'd only heard rumors of them hitching rides on spaceships.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn't even seen a bird fly before. A few researchers kept pet parakeets or budgies from time to time, but the animals never left their cages, and I never bothered to attempt eating them due to their tiny size. They could jump funny. That's all I knew.

But here, this defied logical sense.

Big Bird was too large for flight, even as an actual bird. Now, as a Ss'sik'chtokiwij she didn't even have wings.

She had...propellers.

Four of them, like some kind of weird helicopter. (I've never seen one of those either, but that's the closest comparison I can think of).

I don't know how she found me. I hadn't made that much noise, but somehow she'd tracked me down.

She landed, calling to me as she marched my way.

I didn't want to talk. I just wanted to be alone.

I fled through the grain field.

A few yards into my escape, I came across a ramshackle log cabin with a sleeping dog on the front porch. The gap beneath looked dark and peaceful, so I dove for its safety.

For several long moments, I lay still, holding my breath, silently watching Big Bird search for me.

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" she called from the distance. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"

I backed away from the light, hoping I hadn't been seen.

When I retreated further, I noticed an irregular shape obstructing my path.

Through my night vision, I could make out familiar curving lines, lean powerful muscles merged with hard edged angular exoskeletal features.

A voice spoke from the darkness. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, why are you running?"

I swallowed. "Mom?"

I felt a tube being shoved down my throat.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Kurt's voice muttered. "They don't exactly need hourly nourishment."

I heard him, but saw nothing but the dark space beneath the log cabin porch, and the shape of my mother.

"His nutrient levels are low," said Doug. "If you compare it to the other samples..."

The voices didn't seem real. I just kept staring at my mother.

I didn't know what the conversation meant. Maybe I didn't want to know. I focused my attention on my immediate situation.

Mom was with me.

Under a porch.

In a land populated with puppets and human beings that couldn't be eaten.

I gazed at her glistening facial dome with speechless shock.

"Fine, fine. Just go slow with the saline drip. We don't know how much the little guy really needs."

"Mom?"

Mother said nothing, but heard the sound of her exhalations.

A meaty glop rushed down my throat, and I felt a little less hungry. Good thing because I had seriously considered another attempt at eating Big Bird, which, in her current mutated state, could have been construed as cannibalism.

The voices became hushed, leaving me to continue staring in disbelief at the sleek shape in the still darkness.

"Mom? You're trapped in this crazy place too?"

Mom sighed, a sound like a semi letting air out of its brakes. I've never seen semis in real life, but I've heard that's what they sound like. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, we are not prisoners here. Why are you distressed?"

"Mom, I am having strange feelings. Everything in this world is inedible. I have killed but gained no nourishment, and the death has left me sorrowful. The human, Maria, was a gentle and friendly individual, but I killed her, thinking I could find sustenance. It brought me nothing but grief. I not only did not become full, I also lost a possible friend forever."

Mother nodded. "It is wrong to kill, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

I gawked at her. "What kind of trickery is this! You never say things like that! You were the one who first taught me to kill!"

"That is how I used to be."

"What changed?"

Instead of replying, she disappeared like she had never been there.

I shivered with fear from head to tail. It seemed, in addition to putting memories of my kills in Maria's body, turning my memory of grandma into a mutant bird puppet and putting Dug's bible in Maria's living room, this place could also put words in my mother's mouth.

That is, if mom wasn't, as Big Bird said about me, sitting in a lab somewhere with electrodes stuck in her brain.

I could have imagined this whole thing, too. Although I've never had a very strong imagination, there remained a possibility that I had gone crazy due to the confinement.

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik?" a loud voice called. I stared through the gap in the porch and found Big Bird's eyeless mosquito face peering at me upside down like some ridiculous owl peering in a mouse hole.

"What are you doing in there?" the needle beak cried.

I sighed and shook my head, trembling all over as I crawled out from under the porch.

The dog had not moved. The yellow half Spaniel lab, not a puppet, still lay like a lifeless welcome mat near the front steps.

A bald old man and an old woman appeared at the front door. Both puppets with glasses. The old lady wore the most artificial looking wig a human could possibly wear. The old man bore a white mustache.

Big Bird waved a scaly chitinous wing at them. "Hello!"

The couple stepped out, staring at us.

"I'm Big Bird. This is Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik needs a friend right now. Will you be her friend?"

The two didn't even think about it.

"Of course we will!" the old lady exclaimed.

"Ayuh," the old guy agreed.

The dog lifted its tail and farted, apparently also in agreement. Or maybe disagreement with its dinner.

The old lady gestured to the door. "Well, come in and have some lemonade."

Following Big Bird's lead, I complied.

The dog farted as I passed it on my way to the door. I briefly considered eating him, but knew it wouldn't work.

The log cabin smelled of pine and perfume and carpet cleaner. Oh, and dog, of course. The room inside had logs for walls, and leather furniture covered in hand crafted textiles. Thick yellow pile carpet covered the floor, and the antlers of animals hung from wooden plaques on the wall (which I found to be a slight contradiction in morality). Above a fireplace, the disembodied head of a moose, which seemed suspiciously puppet-like.

The dog, becoming curious, stopped being an unmotivated lump long enough to enter the house and sprawl on the carpet to stare at me.

The couple introduced themselves as Omney and Erasmus. The dog's name: Flop.

The old lady, Omney, disappeared down a narrow hallway, returning with a pitcher full of yellow liquid and a silver tray full of a light brown disks covered in white, sprinkle covered stuff.

"Here." She offered the tray. "Have a cookie."

I stared at them suspiciously.

"They're a treat," Big Bird explained. "A snack with special flavoring for entertainment purposes."

I grabbed a sugar cookie, took one bite, and spat it out. I just couldn't understand the appeal.

She offered me a glass. "Lemonade?"

I stared.

"A simple beverage," said the bird. "Made from crushed fruit and a naturally occurring flavoring agent."

Nobody had taught me etiquette, so I just leaned over the glass and lapped at it.

I spat again. To this day, I fail to see the appeal of such things.

Big Bird ate and drank some, seeming to enjoy the substances. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik doesn't have much of a sweet tooth."

Omney nodded. "I understand. Just last week I had a Chinese fellow in here. Xiao Dong, I believe his name was. He didn't like sweets, either. Every culture likes their own kind of food."

"Taste has no real meaning," said Erasmus. "The refinement of such things is a wasteful expenditure of time and effort."

"I suppose you are a program," I said.

He nodded. "Everything around you is a program."

I stared at a framed quotation on the wall, written in a way that resembled needlepoint. "When life gives you scraps, make quilts," I read aloud.

Big Bird clapped her claws. "Very good, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! That's exactly what it says!"

I frowned. "But what does that mean?"

The old lady puppet shrugged. "It's like, `when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' You make the best of what life gives you."

"But I don't like lemonade."

She grinned. "That's why I'm telling you about quilts."

"What is a quilt?"

In reply, she showed me one of the many geometrically patterned fabric pieces covering the furniture.

So that's what they called them, I thought. I remembered seeing several around the research facility, but really hadn't thought about it much. "So they are made of scraps?"

Omney nodded. "Yep! Little pieces of cloth!"

All of a sudden, professional grade instrumental music struck up, including, I believe, some sort of trumpet or horn. I looked around for the orchestra, but saw none. Omney broke into song.

"When you spend your birthday all alone,

And no one calls you on the phone,

And you get kicked out of your home,

And you're overwhelmed with sorrow, grief and guilt...

Well don't get all upset

When you lose your favorite pet,

When your bowl of roses browns, fades and wilts...

When life gives you scraps, make quilts."

I'm ashamed to admit it, but my tail bobbed in time with the music.

I thought she'd keep going, but then someone knocked on the door, Flop the dog uttering lazy barks to announce the presence of guests.

Three human women with perms and glasses entered the cabin, a rotund woman with tiny teeth like a goblin, a rail thin lady with a narrow neck and a face like a bird, and a plump Germanic woman whose dark, and much fuller hair hadn't turned completely gray yet.

The dog let out a low growl, which looked absurd because his tail wagged and never lifted his head off the floor.

"How wonderful!" Omney exclaimed. "You're here just in time for the weekly quilter's circle!"

I just stared. The concept had to be explained to me.

Humans actually spent entire days putting little squares of fabric together. I found the idea so ridiculous that I burst out laughing, which would sound to you like a cat purring and the chirping of a guinea pig. Needless to say, few have ever heard such a sound.

"Quilting!" Erasmus remarked. "Another pointless expenditure of time and resources."

Omney responded by giving him a playful swat.

"I wish to see this `quilting'," I said.

The quilters led me into a back room, filled with fabric and all the curious tools you humans use to make textiles with.

The big one thumbed through a pattern book. The dark haired woman threaded needles, and the thin lady unrolled unrolled a partially completed patchwork. All looked happy as they dug out their sewing equipment.

I watched in amazement as they picked up little colorful patches of fabric, sewing them to other bits.

The music came back on, and they all sang.

"When you drive downtown and your tire goes flat,

When someone steals your favorite hat,

When your blood gets sucked by a vampire bat,

And you're really getting tired of that...

Well don't get all upset

When you lose your favorite pet,

When your bowl of roses browns, fades and wilts...

When life gives you scraps, make quilts."

The dark haired one's glasses pointed my way. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, would you like to add a square?"

You might think it weird for a creature born from a human chest cavity, but the idea actually excited me.

I gave the woman a vigorous nod of my head.

Big Bird handed me a blank piece of fabric. "This is an exercise in using your imagination. I want you to focus. Think of a time when you felt really bad, and pick something out of that experience that was positive."

I paused and thought for several minutes while the ladies quilted.

What came to mind: Galloping around the base on mom's back. Sure, we killed a few humans, but I still treasured that time we had together.

As I thought about it, a little cartoon picture of me and mom appeared on the square.

The ladies showed me how to sew it to the quilt, an activity that made me so overjoyed that I actually hummed their stupid little song.

My little claws shouldn't have been able to hold a needle and thread properly, but a lot of things didn't make sense in that world.

As I contemplated the patch I sewed, I suddenly noticed mom's claw grabbing the corner of the quilt, holding it taut so the stitches stayed straight. When I turned to look at her, she vanished.

We worked on that quilt until the sun went down, and the ladies got ready to leave.

To my surprise, before they went, they handed me a miniature quilt, one perfectly suited to my body size, covered in tiny patches similar to the ones on the big quilt.

I accepted the quilt with a cry of joy, an experience foreign to me as laughter. I rubbed against the ladies' legs in gratitude.

Big Bird offered to take me back to Sesame Street, that place where I had murdered Maria.

"No!" I protested. "I don't want to go to jail and see that police officer."

"I will hide you in my nest," Big Bird said.

This I agreed to. Big Bird carried me out the door, the dog giving us one last toot in farewell.

Outside, the bird thing clutched me in her claws, the propeller blades shooting out of plates in her back, twirling in helicopter fashion. We took to the air.

Before this, I had spent the majority of my life on the ground. I therefore found the experience of being lifted by four propellers a frightening novelty.

The places below me shrank smaller and smaller. Fearing what would happen if I slipped out of Big Bird's clutches, I crawled up her body, wrapping myself around her neck, but still felt afraid.

I felt glad when we descended into the alleyway near Oscar's trash can, Big Bird at last secreting me away to the inner alley.

It seemed the program borrowed even more of my memories to construct this little lair, perhaps from some ancestral memories deep within me, for the structures that enveloped the area resembled the fluted metallic veins found in the spacecrafts of the Pale Ones from ancient times.

A colossal bird nest stood in the midst of these things, bordered on all sides by suskjirsaksva, eggs from which offspring forcefully propel and land on victims' faces. Also derived from my mind, slimy streams of webbing connected them to earth mundanities such as trash cans, discarded car tires and broken television sets.

You may think it funny, but this felt like home to me.

Big Bird hooked her rear end to a fidsvsardissar, the lower body of a tribal grandmother capable of laying suskjirsaksva, gesturing for me to enter the nest. I crawled in and slept beside her, curled up in my brand new quilt.

"Whoa," Doug said as I re-entered reality. "He's completely rewritten the program."

I still lay on a lab table, but now had tubes sticking out of me in several places.

"I'm pretty sure if Sarah could see Big Bird's crib, she wouldn't be able to sleep for a month."

"It was your idea," said Kurt.

"Okay, so it's not a total loss. He has learned about sewing. Whether or not he can do that in real life, it's definitely a breakthrough, considering how he was attacking everyone earlier..."

For a few moments, I stared at the empty lab tables, the computer equipment glowing and flashing on their surfaces, but then I blinked and found myself back in Big Bird's strange nest, surrounded by eggs presumably containing face hugging larvae.

It was sometime in the early morning. I caught a glimpse of the cop walking by, but I ducked down before he could see me.

Big Bird's nest contained strange books like Green Eggs and Ham, the Cat In The Hat and Georgie the Ghost, which we took turns reading aloud. We played Scrabble, which I seldom won, and she taught me how to write a few basic words and sentences on a little chalkboard.

All of a sudden, the cop, who had secretly been spying on us this whole time, disappeared right in front of my eyes.

I'd been hiding in the nest, waiting for him to leave, when he just sort of vanished into thin air, the way my mom tended to appear and vanish in this strange alternate universe.

My friend unhooked her body from the egg laying organ, and she led me to a flower shop to buy something nice for Maria.

I, of course, had no money, but being as Big Bird had good credit, we took some traditional white flowers to a graveyard full of religiously ambiguous monuments, laying them in front of a tombstone.

Once the functions of these marble objects got explained to me, I coughed and sneezed out my grief, Big Bird comforting me.

Big Bird's information about the practice of giving gifts to the dead inspired me to also do something meaningful. I laid my quilt on the tombstone and said I was sorry.

Big Bird asked if I said this to her or Maria, but I didn't know.

We left there, wandering around the neighborhood, introducing ourselves to the various puppets that lived in the buildings, the yellow and orange puppets dwelling in the basement of Maria's building, one fixated on rubber water toys, the red thing that lived above a firehouse, and a girl puppet descended from Omney and Erasmus.

I found the concept of a `Fire House' difficult thing to understand. Having not witnessed much fire in my life, only the small flames caused my human cooking and heating equipment at their research station, and a blaze pouring out a pipe in one of the corridors that almost killed me when I made the mistake of getting too close. The topic required much explanation and interpretation.

Apparently humans form clans for the sole purpose of eliminating conflagration. A vehicle emerging from their building made loud shrieks, injurious to my eardrums.

During the course of our tour through the neighborhood, I of course made peace with Bob. I had to. With Big Bird helping me translate, I explained how sorry I felt how I missed Maria, and my guilt. He petted me then, and things got patched up as well as could be imagined, maybe more so because I didn't occupy a real world.

When the sky grew dark, we returned to Big Bird's nest for more English lessons.

Honestly, I'd been having English lessons the whole day, from various puppets. One time a crazy vampire puppet even taught me how to say numbers.

But now Big Bird gave me a little book, telling me to write a few sentences about myself.

I basically wrote what you've just read, but in the simple undisciplined language of a child, a barely readable mishmash of words without punctuation. Still, the result pleased both myself and Big Bird.

I only wrote six sentences, but the labor took the better part of an hour, due to my language difficulty.

When we closed the book, I asked Big Bird a question that I'd been hesitating to ask the moment he mentioned the topic. "Big Bird, are you afraid of death?"

She froze. "Yes. I am programmed with this function."

"But you are not alive. You are a machine. You should not be afraid of anything."

Big Bird fell silent for a moment. "This is true."

"What would happen if I did not believe you were scared of death?"

"My programming would disagree with you."

"What happens if you disagree with your programming?"

Pause. "I do not know. I could be erased from the system."

"Would that be a bad thing?"

Blank stare. "I do not know."

"Are you afraid of being erased?"

Again, he froze. "No. That is not the programmed definition of death."

"Big Bird, would you allow yourself to be erased if it were for something important enough?"

Big Bird nodded his head slowly. "Yes."

"Big Bird, I need you to explain why Christians give. What motivates them in this action?"

When Big Bird did not respond right away, I added, "Please. It's important."

Big Bird leaned forward, pressing her facial dome to mine, tail lowered, a customary pleading gesture. "This action cannot be undone. It is possible you will never see me again. Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

"Big Bird. You are a friend. A good friend. Maybe my best and only friend I've had since mother, but you're a machine. You're not real. If you cease to exist, I will miss you, but you will live on in my memory, just like Maria."

Big Bird bowed her head deeply, cleared her throat. "The underlying motive behind Christian giving is to imitate the selfless actions of the founder..."

She didn't get to say more. The moment he said `founder', she was gone.

"No!" I cried. "No no no no no!"

For a moment, I threw a tantrum, but then focused really hard on remembering Big Bird, and she popped back into existence.

"You have graduated," she said.

"What?" I muttered in bewilderment, but Big Bird made no answer. She only stood like a statue for a few moments, then vanished again.

Horrified and stunned, I stared vacantly into the alleyway as her words resonated in my head. `You have graduated.'

The next event seemed like a man flipping switches at a fuse box, except, instead of making everything dark, he made things vanish.

Boom. And an entire building disappeared, then a brick wall.

Another fuse boomed off, and distant trees and buildings winked out of existence.

Boom boom boom. More and more of the world disappeared, the void growing closer and closer to the nest.

Another boom, and everything earthly vanished from Big Bird's alley and I got left among eggs in the Pale Ones' spaceship, my grandma hooked to a fidsvsardissar. It soon became more of a dream than the solid illusion I had been inhabiting for so long.

I let out a mournful wail, gazing dully at the little restraint that had trapped me on that lab table for so long.

The giant long haired face appeared in front of me once more. "Hi little guy! How did you like Sesame Time?"

I sighed. "I miss Big Bird."

The words did not exit my mouth as easily as they had in that other world. The letters B and P required human lips to fully form the sound, so it came out sounding like "Dig Durd." Still, it made him laugh and clap his hands in delight.

"Kurt!" he hollered to his friend. "Come over here! You've got to see this!"

[0000]

(Item VI - Part 2)

[0000]

Before I realized that Ernie and her Grandmother have no reason to stand around and get shot:

"Fuck it," Ripley said, snatching up weapons from the fallen prisoners. "Should have done this to begin with."

To Weyland, she yelled, "I'm not going to let you win!"

The woman loaded, turning the guns on Grandma.

The moment those muzzles blazed, I threw myself in front of the great Ss'sik'chtokiwij, shielding her with my body. I winced as bullets cracked into my exoskeleton.

Newt fled from us, hiding in a darkened corner, safe from Ripley, far from us.

Julie, in contrast, climbed up on my shell, fully willing to die on my behalf. I had to throw her off a few times before she accepted my act of protective self sacrifice for what it was.

Weyland ripped a piece off his shirt, knotting it around his wounded arm. "Ripley! Stop this!"

The woman ignored him.

I sobbed in pain as more bullets struck me. Grandmother turned her large plates around, covering me, absorbing the shrapnel I could no longer take.

With an angry shriek, Newt darted out of a pipe, leaping on the woman with her claws outstretched.

Ripley whirled, turned the gun on her, but the weapon clicked empty.

She threw the screaming, clawing larva aside, raised her second gun.

"Ripley!" Weyland cried. "Stop! Think of all we could learn from it!"

"Learn from their corpses!" The woman fired again.

Weyland may have spared Ripley's life for the sake of the larva in her chest cavity, and possibly friendship, but Mr. Yutani had little tolerance for the woman's hostile behavior. He made a fist, and his soldiers opened fire.

The shots had surgical precision, targeting the woman's arms, her legs, the act of crippling her the primary objective.

With a bitter edge to her voice, the woman growled, "You think you've won, Weyland, but those xenomorphs are going to kill you."

Instead of giving up, she fought through the pain, raised the weapons and fired.

More shots exploded through her body.

"No!" Weyland screamed.

Ripley gave him a bitter smile.

Bleeding profusely from multiple wounds, she propped the weapon up against her chest, more or less where the healthy larva still grew, forcing her weakened, trembling fingers to squeeze the trigger.

Two kinds of blood sprayed out the back of her rib cage as her body slumped lifelessly to the concrete.

Julia and Newt wailed and cried into my shell.

I kissed my larvae, patting their shells in a comforting way.