A full stomach and idle mind brought egg lust upon me again. For once I felt immensely grateful for my imprisonment. I had no one to tempt me.
Still, fearful I would not be able to control my body once free, I (no pun intended) earnestly prayed for the Lord to subdue my exoskeleton's fleshly interior.
I believe He answered my prayer, for I then had a most wonderful dream, one from which I did not want to awaken:
I had somehow entered into a romantic relationship with a human female, and we somehow produced larva without harm to her internal organs.
Being a dream figure, she did not bear any resemblance to humans I have known, but it felt like we'd known each other forever. We shared a deep emotional connection, one that ran far deeper than any reproductive urge of the body. I loved her, she loved me, and our larva. We embraced in a platonic but tender fashion that bespoke emotional belonging. It felt so real!
When I awoke, I lay moaning on the floor in disappointment.
Still, that emotion, that love, I yearned for it more than anything I ever physically craved before. To consider lesser things made me feel sick to my stomach. If this thing were possible...!
The door to my cell appeared, reminding me of recordings I'd seen of plant respiration under a microscope. A large pore opening on an otherwise seamless surface. In stepped two muscular creatures in scaly blue-green armor. Saw-like ridges glinted from the sides of their gauntlets, wrist guards and shoulder plates.
Spike studded tabi boots softly padded on the concrete floor. It takes a lot to unnerve a Ss'sik'chtokiwij, but these creatures, with their stealth...
Dreadlocked creatures with featureless silver masks concealing their faces. Not much for conversation, they mainly clicked and gurgled to each other.
The two growled, motioning me to the door.
Were they releasing me? Wagging my tail at the thought, I joined them.
Through the door lay a hallway, largely gray and featureless as my cell. I say `largely' because walls had demarcations, perhaps indicating the various cells, and mechanical devices, possibly locks for the doors, intercoms, or something of a more sophisticated alien purpose. I couldn't see through the concrete. I only presumed them to be cells. For all I knew, I could be looking at a solid wall with interesting decoration.
Speaking of unnerving stealth...My guards had a third companion, one which did not appear in the visible spectrum. I detected his presence only by smell, the slight sound of his boots, his breathing, and the blob I discerned through my infrared. When I smiled and said hello to him, he churred something and made himself visible.
"Where are we going? Somewhere nice, I hope?"
The gurgling clicks I got back could have meant anything.
My tail drooped. "You're not taking me away to be executed, are you?"
Their noises could have meant yes, I just didn't know.
I shivered, making the sign of the cross over my chitinous chest. "Ummm..."
Having listened to these creatures speaking from time to time, I thought that maybe I'd picked up a few phrases. I attempted hello and thank you. The punch I received to the face plate indicated I'd used the incorrect words.
I shakily raised my claws in surrender, pantomiming that I didn't know their language.
The companion of the one that struck me forced my arms behind my back, clamping my wrists together with a glowing orange device.
"Why didn't you fight back?" you say? Melt them, stab them, lay an egg and escape somehow? I didn't think that very civil or Christian. For starters, I believe I inadvertently spouted an obscenity. Besides, I had hopes of finding some common ground with these strange Rastafarian monsters, and leading them to faith in Jesus.
Also, let's not forget about Newt. You know how I consider her my daughter. Plus, it had been ten degrees below zero outside, with a wind chill that brought it lower. I let the creatures take me where they will.
The hallway had a faint lingering scent that I could only describe as `zoological.' Manure, perhaps. The flatulence of some large vegetarian beast. I'd never been to a genuine farm with real livestock, but I'd smelled a goat pen once. This aroma vaguely reminded me of that.
Symbols had been painted on the walls. A numbering system, I guessed. Still unsure if I faced other cells or just walls. I could not see the contents of any of the cell...areas around me. I could only assume them to be cells because I had been in one, and it had features that repeated elsewhere.
It seemed, despite having been imprisoned in a cell large enough to house a buffalo, not a big jail overall. They only had two other cells the size of mine, and four the size of bathrooms, if I gauged the exterior measurements correctly.
The cell block terminated in a blank wall. If the `door pore' system failed for some reason, I don't know how anyone could avoid becoming entombed, but I guess that's the point. My captors opened it up, herding me into a rotunda.
Cleaner scents in this area, a touch of unidentifiable meat (can't compare it to any earthly meat), blended with plant matter...and...savory melted plastic?
Something very odd about the geometry in that room, too. I suppose it didn't look right in the jail either, but here it became more pronounced. Although similar to a rotunda a human would build (for the sake of stability) it didn't resemble anything that human limbs could have built. I gazed at the gray-green pillars in fascination, imagining myself as a member of its construction crew.
The room featured two sculptures. Nonhuman creatures, not any like me: One resembled my jailers, but without armor. Muscular, dreadlock wearing, beady eyed, with a crab-like fanged mouth. The second: A bird-spider creature, similar to the one I'd devoured a few days ago, bearing a beaded sash and a computer device.
So...cute (at least I thought so.I also find slimy, sharp toothed Ss'sik'chtokiwij larva adorable). I instantly regretted my earlier meal (well, as much as you regret eating a bacon sandwich when you watch Babe afterwards).
It turned out my captors did use regular doors from time to time, they just liked their jails extra secure. The guards brought me through one resembling a sideways lion mouth. (Okay, so not one hundred percent `regular,' but it functioned like an automatic door.)
I got the sense that the owner of the room carried a fair bit of importance. Exquisite tapestries depicting space and nonhuman beings waging wars and doing official sorts of things, fine sculptures, jeweled, silver encrusted wall decorations, and all manner of little electronic devices, a beautiful rug...
I would have described it as an office, but the furniture...
Nothing I'd consider a chair. An ostrich bodied creature sat on a pommel horse thing with a back, monkey feet propped up on a table standing five or six inches above the floor. Its tiny set of upper arms typed something on a little computer device while it read...beaded wampum with its toes.
I thought the creature looked delicious, but thought it best not to say so aloud.
Newt sat on the floor next to the table. Her seat bore similarities to a dog bed and a back rest pillow. Someone had fastened a blinking dog collar thing to her neck, which made her look miserable (of course, with all that PTSD, she always looked miserable. The fact that she'd been forced to wear a leash before, in an abuse situation, didn't help matters).
The girl played with some holographic toy, one where you...constructed things like the rotunda outside...snacking on crispy fried, rainbow colored cockroaches. She watched the device like a zombie, paying me no attention.
Upon seeing me enter, the bird creature straightened its long neck, scrutinizing me with a diamond of four fish eyes.
Perhaps I misread its body language, but the waving of fuzzy mandibles around its spider mouth seemed like a friendly greeting to me. I smiled, and probably would have waved, had my arms not been bound behind my back. "Hello! Are you the warden of this place?"
The creature responded by stretching its broad feathery wings and chirping at me like a budgie...and a squirrel...with a lot of bullfrog noises and gurgling peppered throughout.
Newt at last looked up. She only rolled her eyes, like, `You again!'
"I'm sorry, sir. I don't understand your language...Do you still have that floating jellyfish with Bishop's head?"
The Amberjack colored creature only barked like a dog. Its neck fins wiggled.
Newt blew a raspberry at me and played with her digital construction set.
The fried insects had the scent of curry. Sauce dribbled over the edges of the ornate brass dish they occupied. The girl reached in for another roach.
"Newt, dear, I don't think you should be eating—" Crunch. Her teeth pulverized the insect's carapace. "...That."
Newt rebelliously savored a mouthful and swallowed.
"Those could make you sick. We don't know what alien microbes can do to the human—"
The girl polished off the rest of the fried insect, slowly drove her incisors through the shell of a second. Crunch.
"I...suppose you've eaten worse...How many of those have you eaten today?"
She only shrugged.
The gold-green bird thing preened itself for a moment, then made a crocodile noise.
Bird Thing transferred its computer device to its feet, spreading its dainty upper arms and its wings. The fish fins around its head stretched and glowed.
When its wings flapped, I became disoriented, drifting into...a waking dream.
My brain got assaulted by wave after wave of unfamiliar images and symbols. An alphabet? Traffic signs? Something to tell pedestrians about wet floors and restrooms? I didn't know, but all those visuals didn't work.
Consciousness returned to me, and the creature's body language bore a curious resemblance to Beethoven furiously conducting an orchestra of preschoolers.
The psychedelic pinball cartoon from Sesame Street flashed into my mind, only with all the numbers replaced by alien symbols. I saw it twice. On the second round, the singing got replaced by growls and animal noises.
I received something similar in regards to an alphabet, but it functioned like Chinese. Even at the `base syllable' level, they used thirty characters, so Big Bird and Cookie Monster would introduce the various alien letters, then suddenly freeze like a statue, with their mouths open, to teach me letters twenty six through thirty. To me, it seemed fairly straightforward.
A haze settled around me, and I found myself standing in a trailer-classroom.
Human construction. Modular. Hadley's Hope had buildings of this kind. Lightweight particle board, plastic and aluminum desks. Computerized whiteboards and writing pads. A charging station for spare batteries to run the pads. Fresh, clean carpeting, reeking with cleaning chemicals. Two wide windows overlooking a rocky, moon-like landscape.
I spotted the `W' Weyland Yutani logo everywhere. On school materials, desks, the weirdly incorrect clock... "I owe my soul to the company sto'," I mused.
I'd seen the classroom before, I realized, but at that point, someone had caved in the ceiling with explosives, rain poured in from the hole, the walls rusting, black mold eating away at the carpet.
A familiar elderly gentleman in a red cardigan sweater sat behind the teacher's desk, Newt in a chair beside him, playing with real versions of her digital building block program.
The man stood up, and I recognized him instantly. "Fred...Rogers?"
He spread his arms. "Welcome to my neighborhood."
Perfect English, the quote identical to what I'd heard in recordings. Of course, the pinball clip came from recordings.
"Wait, didn't you die more than a hundred years ago?"
At this point, Mister Rogers appeared to become demon possessed, speaking in the budgie chirps and alligator snarls of the spider-bird creature. Simultaneously, a low, zombie-like voice seemed to whisper behind my head.
Like the persons in any dream, the zombie voice did not actually speak in English words and sentences, but rather thought them out: I needed to present myself as an authority figure that you both respected and admired. Earlier I appeared to Newt as Jesus, but it took half the day to undo the psychological trauma.
My tail drooped at the thought. "I..would also find that very traumatizing."
Fred Rogers growled, barked, made churring noises, and the zombie voice translated. At first, I thought she just had an abusive owner...
Lightning flashed outside the window, and rain came down. A second later, no clouds, the rocky moon surface turning dry as a bone.
"Owner? What do you mean, `owner?'"
From time to time, his English translation sounded like The-Man-From-Another-Place from Twin Peaks had spoken them. Weirdly distorted, as if spoken backwards and played forwards by some mechanical means. You know what I mean, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, I can tell by the emotion in your words.
I gave a reluctant nod. "I...have been property once myself."
I had to admit, this dream illusion did make the bird creature seem less tasty. Again, reluctant to voice this aloud. I'd already gotten in enough trouble.
Mister Rogers leaned on the teacher's desk. I know this environment isn't quite to your taste, but I aimed to create a shared middle environment that both you and Newt could feel comfortable in, without it being too unbelievable.
He opened his hand, made a football sized socmavaj egg appear in his palm. Strange looking egg. In addition to being smaller than average, it had a flowery mouth at the top. I found it `cute,' but Newt immediately shrank back, hiding behind the desk until he made the egg disappear.
I started in surprise. "You're familiar with my kind?"
There's a planet where Yautja, like your jailers, hunt them for sport.
I swallowed. "That's...disconcerting. What did we ever do to them?"
It's complicated. Suffice to say, you are the most civilized Ss'sik'chtokiwij I've ever seen. If you truly wish, you can go there to reunite with distant relatives sometime, but it may take a few months for us to find a transport going that way.
"I fear I would have no place there. I know next to nothing of their language and culture. Others already complain that I act too human."
Yes, well, to thine own self be true.
"I...also don't think I'd enjoy being hunted for sport."
They don't either.
I picked up a computer notebook. Someone (one of Newt's classmates, more than likely) had performed a `jail break' on the educational software so that it played Bard's Tale 4. It probably would have proved a distraction, had the sound been on, and I understood the menus and other things on the screen. I set the device back on its desk. "Did you give me that dream about the woman?"
Mister Rogers' arms briefly changed into a pair of ostrich wings, flapped once, then folded back into the shape of human arms. What are you talking about? I do not understand. Did you dream about the Ripley woman?
An analog style clock hung on the wall above the whiteboard, its hands moving forward and backward at odd, spastic moments. Since it never stayed still, impossible for it to be right twice a day. "...No...Perhaps this is a sign from my Lord. He is a greater telepath than you are."
His eyes changed to fish eyes. That's fair. Never did I claim to be a god, or your god, and neither did you. You did just recently devour the remains of Risraq and Isirkib, so there's no point in arguing the contrary. Neither one of us is immortal.
I smiled. "We can be! You see, Mister Rogers, with Jesus..."
The man rolled his eyes. It's Hupbucu, actually. I'm merely taking this form so that you don't keep admiring my `drumsticks.' And please, spare me the lecture on your mythology. For the moment, let's converse on matters that are real.
The lack of sound (such as air conditioning equipment) when he fell silent reminded me that we stood in a dream place. "But he is real. He is my friend, my king, my everything."
As we spoke, he performed...background processes. Language lessons appeared on the digital whiteboard. I also sensed him...probing around in my memories, bringing forward geographic details from my past. The experience reminded me of the `Learning Town' virtual simulation, that one androids used to surgically remove Newt's memories.
Excuse me, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. I did not mean to `tread on your tail' by offending your religious sensibilities. Mister Rogers folded his arms behind his back, gazing out the window at the lunar landscape. You worship a human god, a god who is human, in fact. Why?
"Because he is Lord of all."
Mister Rogers glanced back at me with an expression like I were mentally deficient. I...see.
"No, I do not think you do, or else you too would seek him."
For a moment, I popped back into the bird creature's quarters, staring into its fish eyes, but then its ear fins glowed blue, and it was Mister Rogers again. You are aware of the contradiction: Attempting to bring me into your faith while at the same time wondering if my legs are gamey or tender?
"Apologies, sir, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
At least you're honest enough to admit there's a problem...I suppose this explains your friend's sheer terror and blind submissiveness...No one has instructed me on the details of your mythology.
He spun around, arms still behind his back. His ears glowed blue and waved like fins. Again he probed around in my thoughts, shifting stars around according to what information he discovered...simply based on my views of the sky on LV 426, I guess. I had no scientific background for him to extract.
"`Christianity is the only mythology that is actually true.'" I quoted C.S. Lewis. "The Lord rebuke you if you wear Christ's face again."
The floor creaked hollowly as he paced the carpet. Your usage of the noun `face' carries your doubts regarding authentic visual representation.
"Well...Christ technically should have a Middle Eastern appearance, rather than white Anglo Saxon..." I examined posters depicting various historical figures: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Ellen DeGeneres, Sacajawea, King T'Challa...I'm pretty sure the sidekick from Doctor Strange didn't belong there (did he?). I guess this had something to do with Newt's memories. "But I've seen some amazing paintings..."
Newt ate another alien roach. Not sure if it were real, or a dream roach. Mister...Hupbucu put a hand on her shoulder. "Did you surgically remove a section of this human hatchling's brain?"
"No sir. That was not my doing." A frosted lemon cake dripped on a desk with Newt's nametag on it. Question mark shaped candles. I stared at these and other Riddler-esque cake decorations in worriment.
The lemon cake floated into the air, hovering over Newt's desk. The Ripley woman then? Hicks?
"No. Sometimes a human will sacrifice another human's life for the same of concealing information. Newt knew too much about an organization's unethical business practices, so they punished her with brain surgery."
`Ghosts' of students flickered in and out of existence at the desks. Newt's memories of classmates.
Hupbucu stuck his finger into the cake, tasted the icing. Interesting fix, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik.
"It was the best I could do at the time." I picked up another tablet computer. Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. Did these students do any actual homework?
It's barbaric. They've robbed the hatchling of vital connective tissue, disrupted the firing of important neurons, risked infection with the breach of brain casing, and for what, to keep a secret?
"No disagreement there. If it's any consolation, the man responsible breached his own brain casing with a handgun."
Hand...gun...a projectile weapon...Ah...
"They say it is a coward's way out..."
The ghostly apparition of a girl in pigtails ran past me. Another dream memory.
I shivered when I recognized the face: She'd been attacked by Ss'sik'chtokiwij. We'd buried her body in Hydroponics. "...Thank you for letting me out of that cell, by the way. I was lonely."
Don't you have Jesus?
"Well, yes, but..."
This is not a social call. I need more information: What kinds of habitats Ripley, Newt and Hicks can safely inhabit. The location of a planet or planets they can be safely exiled to, provided another delivery shuttle arrives in the nearest rotation. A guarantee that if we choose to release your friends into the wilds, they will not kill and eat our citizens...What planet did they derive from? I'm not used to seeing this much culture and civilization from a species of domestic pet.
"It's called `earth,' sir...They had a colony at Hadley's Hope, uh, Planet LV 426, if that means anything to you...You keep humans as pets?"
She's wearing a collar, isn't she? Hupbucu stabbed a window pane with his finger. I've been examining this hatchling's mind for the last six hours, and have yet to find a single familiar constellation. Care to enlighten me, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik?
"My grandmother hitched a ride on a spaceship. You'd have to ask her where she came from. We Ss'sik'chtokiwij are not good at cartography...What happens if we can't find their home planet?"
Mister Rogers frowned at the diagram of earth's solar system. The chart indicated a few celestial bodies between earth and LV 426, but I guess he didn't recognize anything. They could be deposited on any planet The Court deems appropriate, which could possibly spell a death sentence, or a lifetime of what you might describe as `dog obedience school'...which...He spread his arms, indicating the room. Judging by all this, they would find extremely unappealing. That is, if The Court doesn't decide to just send them all out into the Wilderness of Ziph, which, in this current weather, could also mean a death sentence.
"Surely you have better options."
These are the better options. In cases of wild animals mauling one of our citizens, the general policy has been to have the animal destroyed, or killed and sent through a sterilization process for use as food. In the event of that being the Court's decision, I promise we will euthanize them all as humanely as possible...That being said, I for one would prefer not to resort to such barbarism if not completely necessary.