PARANOOBIUS part one

 Black. Sound of wailing wind. A vast starscape slowly appears, rising. A huge black shape emerges foreground, the dark silhouette of a dome.        In a smooth walled pit, a bald, wiry human of indeterminate sex struggles, caught in a clear membrane. It attempts to cry out as a hair thin webs grow around it like fungus, penetrating its flesh. But, alas, it has no voice. As the cocoon thickens the fibers entering its body turn red, spreading outward. The cocoon tightens, halting the humans' struggles. It  constricts further. Sound of cracking bones. From several meters above, a suited and helmeted Engineer looks on. Behind it, many more humanoid shapes sheathed in blue light hang from their feet, awaiting their turn. They sway like inverted seaweed.     Down a tunnel, black, headless  larva like things many feet long crawl along the side rib of the passage, each attended by a suited and helmeted Engineer. They bear from their backs dozens of luminous blue spheres. Many more dozens of prismatic, slender cilia emerge from the Larvas back, like pistils on a carnivorous plant. They penetrate the orbs, which dimple at their points of entry.     There are dozens of Larva, all traveling in a line toward an opening ahead, the passage lit with a silver glow from their cargo, their attendant's shadows  curling and shifting up the wall.      Another suited and  helmeted Engineer stands in a blue geometry of light.  Behind it the Larva slide past, burdened with glowing orbs. It observes a web grown over and restraining a recumbent Space Jockey, massive, yellow and skeletal in its chair. Engineers move about the Orrery, manipulating dots in the geometry. The SJ writhes silently, staring at the Engineer. It's right hand is bound to an ergonomic sensor in a mass of web. It is attempting to release its grip, but the web is too strong.       A  tremendous chamber curves out of sight, intersected  by a field of blue light. The last sphere is delivered via a chute that bears it in its glistening folds, penetrated by thin cilia that stretch up and out of sight. It descends through the layer of light, the glowing bubble disappearing at its surface. The cilia disconnect. A spore is revealed, moved into place by ripples in the floor. There it joins many others.     In the Orrery, unburdened Larva slide past. One is parked before the Space Jockey. The SJ glares at the single sphere it bears, larger than the others, dangling from the transparent cilia like a jelly filled balloon. It bulges obscenely as it touches the floor. The Larva moves away as one last engineer manipulates controls on the Phallus, standing on the cocooned SJ. The glistening  cilia stretch out behind the invertebrate as it slides toward the portal.      A cathedral like room of stone. Similar geometries of light dominate the room, an array of plinths festooned with  hoses penetrating several glowing blue spheres at its center. Familiar helical shapes adorn the glowing lattices, manipulated by several suited, helmeted Engineers. Many of the hoses lead to bio industrial bags that slowly contract and expand with hypnotic rhythm. The whole scene heaves and gags.     Engineers attend to the glowing orbs, dimpled inward where their hands penetrate the surface. Inside can be seen oblong vials with hoses entering at the top. One Engineer holds a vial in his left hand while the surface of the orb glows orange, then yellow, then white around the fingers of his right. As the hoses suck shut and withdraw from the vial he pinches it shut with his right hand, melting the crystal and sealing it. He slowly pulls the vial through the surface of the orb, and examines it. Behind him, vials are being placed into urns by hand. Hundreds more are borne away on Larva.      Zero in on a bag. Delicate criss cross weave of musculature writhing beneath its skin. Closer. Hoses emerge from its top, each terminating in a sort of yellow lipped pucker. Closer. One pucker drools an infinitesimal line of black fluid. Closer. Microscopic particles collect in the crevice. They are moving, like ants, emerging from the black  meniscus. Closer. An orifice is being opened in the hose, the particles swarming over its lips like prismatic glass crabs. A bulb of black fluid protrudes from the hole, hundreds more particles suspended within. The bag contracts. A fine plume of particulate matter diffuses into the air. A siren sounds.     A deep ascending moan shakes the Orrery, joined by the siren. The  last Engineer startles and jumps down, dashing past the Larva sliding through the portal. The cilia disconnect from the sphere, whipping back into pores in the invertebrates' body. The bubble winks out and a huge spore is revealed, grey and quivering as the SJ struggles in its web. The spore opens and a Trilobite slides out and stands, tentacles whipping the air. The Sj freezes, and the Trilobite rushes across the Orrery toward the surprised Engineer, attracted to his motion as he rushes to seal the portal. The Trilobite seizes him, and drives its proboscis through his helmet. The portal slams shut, three layers like a cats eye closing off a last glimpse of the SJ, staring at the Engineer and Trilobite locked in embrace on the tunnel side.      Dark silhouette of a Juggernaut rising out of the ground and into the starscape. Many more ships rise in the distance, spiraling into the sky with terrible grace, their collective moan echoing across the mountains.     Aboard, the SJ begins to work itself free. Fibers snap and retract like severed tendons around its hand as it watches the  empty spore slowly disintegrate,  burning through a panel in the turntable.      The ship corkscrews into the sky.     The spent remains of the spore roll into the hold, just penetrating the blue field. It smokes and further breaks down, but is no longer corrosive. The nearest spore opens.      The SJ's left arm breaks free and tears away more web. It reaches for the phallus and frantically manipulates the controls.      In the hold, skeletal legs emerge from the opened spore.      The Juggernaut blasts into space, and vanishes.