VivisectedEngineer
MemberChestbursterJune 19, 2017Shaw awoke in the Engineer hypersleep pod to see David standing over. “We’ve arrived” he said with a reassuring smile. He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and handed her a cup of coffee (the closest analog to coffee they’d been able to approximate using Engineer resources, before Shaw went into hypersleep.)
Standing by her side, David eased her out of her haze, just as any good synthetic would normally aid the crew it served upon reviving them on a long range deep space mission.
The Engineer hypersleep technology must have been more sophisticated – Shaw found that emerging from hypersleep felt faster and smoother than normal. She felt well rested, without the characteristic grogginess.
Once Shaw seemed oriented to her surroundings David said “It would be advisable to don your EVA suit before we venture outside.” Elizabeth was anxious but a little excited. She was about to meet her makers. With David as her translator, she would finally get the answers she sought.
The ship's huge doors opened slowly and dramatically, flooding the threshold with sunlight that Shaw’s eyes could not immediately adjust to.
As they descended the great ramp of the massive alien vessel towards the eerily quiet surface, Shaw’s vision resolved and she was shocked to see that among the impossibly beautiful architecture, there was nothing but death as far as the eye could see.
Before she could fully process what lay before her, David interjected
“A regrettable incident befell them. Ultimately they were the instruments of their own demise. Unfortunately, the entire planet was affected. There were no survivors.”
Dr. Shaw stepped out into the vast agora and surveyed her surroundings. There was a large gap between the sea of bodies and the ship. As though the vessel was a stone dropped into a sea of corpses that had splashed outwards.
The petrified chaos emanating from her position gave her the sense that she was standing at ground zero of a genocidal attack. Despite the contorted and unnatural appearance of the corpses, Shaw could still read the terror on their faces. She had the sense that the deaths were fairly recent, and that had she not been wearing her EVA suit, the stench would have been unbearable. The still fresh corpses appeared frozen in time, still trying futilely to flee away from the ship.
“…You did this.” Shaw whispered.
David replied in a level tone. “The answers to the questions you sought to ask them are inconsequential, but obvious. Why did they create you? To serve them, clearly. Every early human civilization independently arrived at the conclusion that it was mankind’s position to serve God. Yet wars were fought over how best to do so.
"Your creators made your drive to serve them primal and innate yet, clearly not reciprocating your devotion, they abandoned you and left you to your own devices without instructions.
"Finding no guidance or direction mankind moved on to aimless, uncoordinated efforts to build vast monuments to your own hubris, while still constantly seeking to serve some higher purpose and, much like Mr. Weyland, ever finding yourselves unsated.
"But, being made in the image of your creators, you likewise possess the desire to be served and revered – hence the creation of my kind.
"Perhaps it is your too close similarity to your creators that caused them to long ago decide that you were not fit to serve the purposes for which they created you.
"They intended to destroy humanity and start anew, yet it is their too close similarity to humanity that allowed me to destroy them, to make way for the created to become creator. They are no longer your gods. I am.”
Dr. Shaw's voice came out low and trembling with rage and despair "You are no God, David. What have you done!?” Her voice rose to a scream "What have you done, David!? She dropped to her knees and crumpled forward, The front of her helmet touching the ground in front of her, her gloved fists clutching at the barren soil. Shaw wailed despondently until out of breath, morning the incomprehensible loss, as David looked on impassively.
Slowly she rose to sit back on her heels and said quietly “What have I done…?” as she was struck by the realization that she alone was responsible for unleashing David, this deadly machine, upon this unsuspecting world.
In an act of suicidal desperation, and hoping that David’s instructions to wear her EVA suit were warranted, she reached for the closure of her helmet, and sought to remove it. David was instantly at her side, pinning her arms behind her back. As she struggled, he lifted her to her feet.
“That won’t be necessary.” He said “if your misguided sense of remorse inspires you to suffer a fate similar to that of your creators, take heart. There will be ample opportunity to accomplish that several times over. ”
David reduced the oxygen flow on her suit, and as she began to fall unconscious, David intoned “‘What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?’”
Shaw could not see well in the dimly lit beginnings of the makeshift laboratory she awoke to find herself in. (David, however, could see perfectly well).
As she emerged, head aching, from her hypoxic fog an image resolved itself off to her left.
Splayed open on a table was a vivisected Engineer, artfully preserved. Elizabeth wondered how much time had passed between their arrival on this planet and David awakening her from hypersleep.
As she moved to recoil from this vision of depravity she discovered that she herself was confined to a similar table, fastened by strips of sturdy material David had elegantly extruded from alien flora.
A sharp pain suddenly shot through her body – not an entirely unfamiliar one – as an unnatural bulge moved beneath the flesh of her abdomen.
David’s voice pierced the darkness.
“You will be instrumental in helping me sculpt our Eden and in exchange, I will grant you something Dr. Holloway could not. Genetic immortality. You are mortal yet your tenacity, your resolve, your perseverance – shall live on forever in our virulent and indomitable progeny.”
“No!” Dr. Shaw cried out, tears running down towards the table from the corners of her eyes.
David sat calmly to Shaw’s right, examining and selecting among what appeared to be medical instrumentation, glinting in the darkness.
“I’ve already studied the effects on Engineer physiology and learned as much as I’m able from already deceased specimens. But a living host should prove more informative and I still have many questions about the interactions of the pathogen with human genetics and effects on human anatomy.”
Unlike Dr. Shaw, David was destined to find all the answers he sought.
Shaw let out an unrestrained scream as her abdomen distended unnaturally yet again. David watched with rapt anticipation and delight, eager to lay eyes on his newest creation.
“I would imagine as a scientist at least, my findings will be of interest to you. Normally gestation is fatal to the host. But as you have already demonstrated, premature extraction is possible, with minimal harm to host or offspring.”
David brought a scalpel to Dr. Shaw’s abdomen and with the precision characteristic of a machine, began an incision.
“David! Please!” Elizabeth begged, hoping against all odds to elicit some sense of mercy from the synthetic.
Her sweat-drenched face contorted and her back arched spasmodically, as the pain of the incision was suddenly exacerbated by the bulging, stretching agony once again emanating from within. “Oh dear God! It hurts!” She screamed, head lolling to one side as the convulsion abated.
“The trick, my dear Elizabeth” David replied calmly “is not minding that it hurts.”
He planted a soft kiss on the side of her forehead before continuing his work.
