Chapter 2 - Awakenings
SCIENTIFIC
EXPLORATORY VESSEL: PROMETHEUS
CREW: 17
DATE: DECEMBER 21, 2093
DISTANCE FROM EARTH: 39.4 LIGHT
YEARS
DESTINATION: Calampos moon LV-223
A monstrosity of metal, forged by the hands of mankind, cuts
through the blackness of Zeta Reticuli; a binary star system located in the Frontier in
the Reticulum Constellation. The ringed gas giant Calampos, the fourth planet
of the system, and its hopeful trinity of moons stood in front of the
observation platform of the ship’s bridge for none of the eyes of the sixteen
men and women to see. Only the seventeenth set of eyes, the artificial, grayish
eyes of a synthetic, the one crew member devoid of the necessities of
cryo-sleep, are there to drink in the massive sight. The man dressed in the
plain gray uniforms of Weyland Corporation held no expression upon his face;
unless of course expressionlessness was itself an expression. Even the most
emotionally devoid of living men would have gaped at the sight of the
yellow-brown gas giant, illuminated by two far-off suns. David-8 was no man,
regardless of the fact that he looked the part of a man, spoke as a man of ‘finishing
school’ level education would and carried himself here and there the way a man
would. And yet in spite of the fact that David was indeed an android, devoid of
basing any decision, minor or major, upon his current state of how he ‘felt,’
it was more plausible than not that David did in fact experience a microcosm of
uncontrollable reaction to the myriad of exterior stimuli his uniquely-built
sensory systems - emotion. Peter Weyland had spent an unimaginable sum of money
on building his first line of artificial persons, seven models previous from
the one he had tasked with the caretaking of the Prometheus, whose entire cost
including the pay of its sixteen Human occupants was still one-twenty-sixth of
the cost of a single, fully-functional
Weyland synthetic. David knew he was, at current, the thing that his creator
held above all other things… still he had experienced no joy, even in the most
meager ration, in being held high in the eyes of Peter Weyland. His creator was
egomaniacal, unsympathetic – and David would not worship a false god any more
than he was bidden to do in the direct service of him. He had watched the man
lose his battle with the inevitabilities of mortality with something akin to a
slow-burning satisfaction. No matter how mightily Weyland wielded his fortunes,
no matter how many lives his corporation had destroyed, each year passed with
him as it would with the poorest man in the multiverse. Peter Weyland was
unworthy… he was nothing… and David enjoyed his creator’s fearful descent into
the shadows of death.
David chose not to consider Peter
Weyland any more for the moment. He turned and quickly walked from the bridge.
There were no shoes or socks upon his feet, his steps made no sound whatsoever.
His walk was unnervingly upright; like a man whose upper half is paralyzed in
some uncertain waltz, yet his legs did their work masterfully. The lower half
of a synthetic person is the simplest anatomical portion to craft. They did not
possess digestive or reproductive organs and left no waste, the pelvis and
buttock areas were cosmetic formalities for the torso to sit upon. His legs
moved methodically and soundlessly through the dimly-lit corridors of the
Prometheus. When David stopped, he was standing in the center of the
gymnasium’s basketball court. He lifted a black, bead-like device from his
front chest pocket; examining it closely with a blank expression and then
placing it on the floor in front of where he stood. The round thing did not
roll one way or the other, it stayed impossibly still. David stood upright and
took several steps backward. Before his very eyes, the hologram of a pristine,
elegant grand piano came to life. A faint smile dawned upon the lips of the synthetic
as he went to sit upon the long, wooden bench. The smile faded as David
recalled the first time he had played the piano; it was on the day of his birth
when he had met his so-called father Peter Weyland. His fingers began to play
the song of those waking moments in spite of himself – Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
“The Entry of the Gods Into
Valhalla… a little anemic without the orchestra,” David recalled the
condescending voice of his father.
David pushed the thoughts of his
maker from his mind again, focusing all of himself on Wagner. His fingers
banged the holographic keys like drums of battle during the piece’s conclusion.
He wouldn’t let Weyland ruin his favorite piece of music. David wouldn’t let
his father usurp the enjoyment of Wagner, whose gifts to mankind were ones of
beauty and grace. Peter Weyland took what he pleased for himself and gave only
to the universe gifts that benefitted him. The piano reverberated throughout
the enclosed, wooden-floored gymnasium like a beast of myth roaring from beyond
the bars of some mighty cage. The android’s fingers played with an effortless
mastery. ‘It is somewhat of a shame to teach an android the piano,’ David
jested in his own thoughts, ‘all the more shameful is not having a single
audience member to play to.’
Several hours later, David still
remained in the gymnasium. The grand piano had disappeared… David was now
circling the perimeter of the enclosed room on a small, silver and black
bicycle. As he cycled around, whistling some unknown tune, David simultaneously
spun a basketball continuously on top of one finger of his right hand. He shot
the ball from half court; a blind hook shot that sailed through the air and
fell through the basket without touching the metal rim. He made another pass on
the bicycle, scooping up the basketball again and sending it spinning on his
finger. After a few more hours, David left the bike sitting upright on its
kickstand and walked out of the gymnasium carrying his basketball. He suddenly
stopped dead in his tracks; peering at the floor with furrowed brows. An
imperfection. There, a mere foot from where David stood, he saw a single
particle of dirt upon the otherwise spotless, ivory-colored floor. David
pressed his right forefinger upon the speck and pulled it close to his eyes,
studying it closely. His blank stare is interrupted by an alert tone from the
ship’s intercom system, a peaceful tone that chimed three times. It was time
for David’s language lessons.
David sat perfectly upright at one of the gray recreation
room tables. A device oddly similar, though wholly different in shape, to the
marble projector that brought to life David’s concert piano hovered a few feet
from the android’s eyeline. A pale-skinned man in Weyland Corporation trappings
was speaking to David in real time. The man, whose name and origins were wholly
unknown to David, was the best linguist that Peter Weyland could find in the
known multiverse.
“Whilst this articulation is attested in the Indo-European
descendants as a purely paralinguistic form, it is phonemic in the ancestral
form dating back five millennia or more. Let's attempt Schleicher's fable. Now
repeat after me… Hjewis jasme hwaelne nahest ak’wn’sez dad’rk’ta.”
David repeated the phrase, his inflection and pronunciation
matching the linguist’s words in masterful fashion. ‘A sheep that had no wool saw
horses.’
“Perfectly done,” the stern-looking linguist said.
After David’s two hours of absorbing and regurgitating the
ancient Earth language, it was time for his mid-day meal; which served as the
only necessary meal for his synthetic body. David-8 and his preceding models
possessed the ability to consume and break down the foods that nourished the
bodies of men and women, but only a sparse amount of nutrients could be
extracted from such sustenance. The simplest way to feed an artificial person
was through the ingesting of a nutrient-rich paste; which, considering the
nature of food eaten by living beings in space was not such a terribly outlandish
thing to eat. The synthetic food looked a bit like mashed potatoes or oats made
with far too much milk. A larger viewing screen was projected upon the flat,
white wall of the recreational room. The movie Lawrence of Arabia was playing;
David watched it as he patiently shoveled spoonfulls of the plain, white paste
into his mouth.
“I tell you, this is nothing…”
“Is it the blood? The desert has dried up more blood than
you could think of.”
Peter O’Toole ceased his writing, lifted one pale hand and
looked upward in sarcastic reverence as he spoke.
“I pray that I may never see the desert again. Hear me,
God.”
“You will come,” Auda Abu Tayi scowled at Lawrence, “there
is only the desert for you.”
Lawrence of Arabia was the closest thing David had to a
‘guilty pleasure.’ He loved the movie, but only because Peter Weyland had
designed him to find joy in it… and David hated himself for being as enamored
with the film as his unworthy creator. Simply sharing something with Weyland,
let alone something so timeless and beautiful, made David feel what he could
just barely compare to the Human emotions of guilt or regret. David wished he
could have laughed in Peter Weyland’s face during those early years when he had
gone on to David about the film and tell him that Lawrence of Arabia was drab
or stupid. But he couldn’t. David wished he could denounce Peter O’Toole as
tacky and boring… that would have been an all the more sizeable falsehood than
merely insulting the movie. Peter O’Toole couldn’t have been more perfect to
look at. And Weyland’s choice of favorite movie was well-founded. David found
himself standing in front of a mirror, parting his dark blonde hair the way
O’Toole wore his. The rendition, at its current state of completeness, was not
quite on the money – David could do better, could he not?
David strolls towards the cryo-sleep capsule room. The
automatic doors separated with a smooth hiss as the unnaturally upright
synthetic strolled through at a patient walking speed. He stopped in front of a
short blue table, upon which sat a white helmet with an orange, holographic
visor wrapped around the eyes and ears, and a single, thick white and gray
glove covered in tiny orange gem-like lights. He placed the helmet upon his
head and then slipped the insulated glove onto his right hand. David turned
toward the line of cryo-pods along the dark wall to the rear of the table where
the helmet and glove had lain. He approached one of the pods in what would seem
like deliberateness; he did not walk down the row of sleeping crew members, he
did not collectively examine the holographic readout screens of any of the
others… David walked directly up to one of the pods and peered in at the nude
form of the average-sized woman slumbering within. He looked upon the screen at
the inhabitant’s information:
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw
Age: 32 (Born 28 December 2058)
Total time in cryo-sleep: 2 years, 4 months, 6 days, 11 hours, 26 minutes
South African-born, British ancestry
Doctorates in paleontology, archaeology, human mythology and mimetics – Oxford
University
David placed his gloved hand upon the thick glass of the
pod.
Dream State: ACTIVATED
David’s consciousness, artificial though his senses were,
was taken to a place that felt wholly unfamiliar to him. The heat and hardship
of South Africa was there for David to witness and to feel. There in front of
him, sitting on top of a flat, cool rock, was eight year old Elizabeth Shaw. A
few meters from where the young girl sat, her father was packing up the last
few pieces of their portable camping items and devices of research in a methodical,
but noticeably apprehensive manner. A jumble of male voices that spoke in a
language not familiar to David captured his attention, as well as the attention
of the young, brown haired girl. A group of men were hastily carrying the
drooping, sweat-coated body of a man who looked to be no older than Shaw’s
father on a makeshift stretcher.
“What happened to that man, daddy?”
“He died,” the girl’s father responded without ever actually
looking at the man being carried off.
“Why aren’t you helping them? Will you go and pray with
them?”
Shaw’s father chuckled, his eyes were still fastened upon
his task.
“They don’t want my help, sweetie. Their god is different
from ours.”
Young Elizabeth Shaw continued her sad stare at the dead man
being carried off.
“Why did he die?” She asked.
“Sooner or later everyone does,” her father said.
“Like mommy?”
The father at last lifted his eyes to meet the gaze of his
daughter.
“Like mommy,” he concurred.
“Was he sick, daddy? Is that why the man died?”
“Ebola, sweetie. Many die from it in this part of the
world,” he answered matter-of-factly.
A small gathering of women began to wail and sob as they
hastened to catch up to the men carrying off their dead loved one. Her father
forced his eyes downward on his task at hand, but young Elizabeth Shaw did not
look away at the anguish of the people she was so far from understanding. These
people were living beings just like Elizabeth and her father… they had even
been born on the same continent. But their lives and hers, from top to bottom,
could not have been more the antithesis of the other. That is what would seem
to be the truth on the surface for a mere few more years of Shaw’s young life.
Three days before her eleventh birthday, her father too would lose his life to
Ebola, just like so many who Shaw fancied so very different from her… just like
the man on the stretcher three years previous.
“Where do they go? When they die I mean,” young Shaw
inquired.
“Everyone has their own word, Ellie. Heaven, Zion, Arcadia,
Paradise… whatever it’s called, it’s some place beautiful.”
“How do you know?”
Shaw’s father gave his daughter a side glance and a half
smile, her mind was like a spade; always trying to dig her way through the tightly
packed soil of his mind.
“Because… that is what I choose to believe,” he answered.
“And what do you believe, Ellie?”
David lifted his hand from the glass of the cryo-tube, his
vision returned to the dull metal innards of the Prometheus.
Dream State: DEACTIVATED
David turned and walked from the ‘general population’ cryo-tube
quarters and down the hall to a darkened, blue-lit corridor marked with a half
dozen rotating yellow lights and signs warning that no entry was permitted in
this area for the general population passengers sharing the ship. David entered
the executive cryo storage unit and stood warily before the pair of advanced
cryo-pods. He approached the larger of the two, carefully entering a series of
digits on the orange holo-screen buttons.
“Good morning, David. Last message sent. No response
logged,” the indifferent female voice informed him.
A day passes for the android, whose count of the days was as
inconsequential as a man counting the number of his breaths. He would not die
after a hundred years, nor two or three hundred or longer. Each and every
Weyland-funded voyage into space that required the crew to go into hypersleep
mandated that a synthetic be among the crew to pilot the vessel and make sure
everyone stayed alive in cryo. The dragging of time would never ‘bore’ David,
for David knew not of excitement. Certainly there were things such as movies,
music and physical activity to keep him sharp and somewhat entertained, but
there was no sense of having somewhere else he would rather be, with people
that cared for him and he for them. David was nothing more than an overpriced
broom, kept in a multi-trillion dollar broom closet. At worst, David had been a
utility tool, and at best, he was a glorified butler.
The synthetic sat and watched another portion of Lawrence of
Arabia as he sat munching on something no doubt tasteless and unexciting. His
hair was set with white smears of hair dye. The scene playing is the famous
‘matchstick’ scene.
“You do that once too often! It’s only flesh and blood.”
“Michael George Hartley,” Lawrence responded, “you’re a
philosopher.”
“And you’re barmy!” William Potter chimed in.
David watches the scene as Potter tries and fails at the
match trick.
“Ow! It damn well hurts!” Potter cursed and shook his burnt
finger.
“Certainly, it hurts,” Lawrence assured with a smile.
“Well, what’s the trick, then?” Potter demanded in
frustration.
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”
David was once again back at the mirror combing his hair,
which was now completely bleach-blonde. His likeness to that of Peter O’Toole
was undeniable. David’s father would have been pleased to see him look the
part.
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts,”
David quoted O’Toole as he groomed himself with a look of pride.
The next day, David found himself again at the side of the
sleeping Dr. Shaw.
Dream State: ACTIVATED
David found himself in total darkness, the sound of scratching and loose dirt
falling away. Then a wall covered in ancient illustrations. The soft sound of a
woman’s excited breathing.
“Go get Charlie.”
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw was all grown up now. The man working alongside
of her stood and quickly moved from the interior of the cave into the morning
light of the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A quarter of a mile across the green
hills stood a very bored, somewhat hungover Dr. Charles Holloway.
“Dr. Holloway!” The assistant called, his voice echoing
throughout the stony valley.
Charlie stood, adjusted his hat and strained his eyes to see
the man calling to him from far off. After a few seconds, Dr. Holloway shrugged
his shoulders when the caller said no more after calling the attention of the
entire valley to him.
“What?” Holloway returned, though more in the infant stages
of a scream of frustration.
The voice that responded was not of the man, but of a very
excited Dr. Elizabeth Shaw.
“Charlie, come quick! We’ve made a discovery!”
Within minutes, the man that Dr. Shaw was madly in love with
entered the small hole in the side of one of the earthen structures and crawled
through to meet her. She led Dr. Holloway to the middle of a short,
round-topped room, pushed the flashlight into his hand and then led the beam of
artificial light to the spot on the wall where the initial discovery was made.
There the sizeable rendition had begun simply enough; the drawing was of men
and the primitive times they lived in. Dr. Holloway’s droll, dreary, hungover morning
had suddenly become a day of all things historic and scientifically ground-breaking.
“Did you date it?” Holloway asked.
“Thirty-five thousand years… maybe older.”
Their eyes met in shared amazement as they stood in the
barely-lit cave. Shaw gave him a triumphant smile and moved the trajectory of
the flashlight in Dr. Holloway’s hand to the apex of the cave drawing. Dozens
of men were kneeling with their hands clasped before them, others were depicted
as prostrating themselves completely. Gigantic, hairless, pale-skinned beings
stood at the center of the mural’s act of worship. The pale god-beings each
extended one arm to the sky above; their fingers pointing to a cluster of
planets somewhere far off-world.
“You’ve got to be kidding me… it’s the same configuration!”
Dr. Holloway said in amazement. “It’s got to predate all of the others by millennia.”
The two lovers stood together; affirmed in their beliefs,
confirmed in their scientific studies. Shaw smiled, her eyes filled with tears
of happiness.
“I think they want us to come and find them,” Shaw found the
strength to say just barely above a whisper.
Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway clasped hands; their lighted beam was
pointed carelessly to the ground as they moved close to one another and kissed.
Dream State: DEACTIVATED
David continued to pass the next few weeks as he had done for
well over four years. He decided to make another likely ill-fated attempt at
acquiring the response he wished for, but as David entered the executive cryo
storage area, the lesser of the two pods had been opened wide and puddles of
water covered the floor. Wet footprints led out of the door and down the
hallway to the private quarters of Meredith Vickers. Immediately as David
entered the suite, he was greeted by the tall, blonde woman still fully nude
and dripping from head to toe, doing slow, grunting pushups. She paid no
attention to David until she had performed six more of the repetitive exercise.
“Robe!” The labored voice of the woman barked as she raised
herself to her feet.
“Yes mum.”
David walked over to a coat hanger and pulled a white a blue
bathrobe with a Weyland insignia upon the left breast. Vickers stood, shivering
and trying to steady her breathing. She snatched the robe ungratefully from
David and threw it around her back and shoulders.
“How long have we been under?” Vickers asked as she fastened
the white belt tightly.
“Two years, four months, nineteen days, twelve hours,
fifteen…” David was cut off rudely by Vickers.
“Any casualties?”
“Casualties, mum?” David asked.
“Has anyone died, David?”
Everything about Vickers was built on sardonic resentfulness,
very much so when dealing with David. The person whom Vickers had held the most
disdain for was her father. Somewhere deeply rooted within Meredith Vickers,
beyond her mask of indifferent, outward strength was the truest kernel that
burned fiercest – the hatred for her own self. In her younger years, Vickers
believed she would be a free-thinking, hard-edged female figure to be respected
and feared. But when the time came, Vickers chose the money over morals. No one
feared her, and the respect afforded to her was the mandatory kind. She was
nothing more than a corporate shill… a slightly glorified cog in a rotating
network of billions. Vickers had believed she was special from a young age, now
that she had reached her early forties; it was all the more clear that she was
as insignificant as every other. If not for the family fortune that she had
been born into, Vickers would have been taking her sleep in the gutter as
opposed to a cryo tube.
“No, mum,” David responded the way a man suppressing his confusion would.
Vickers’s contemptuous eyes met those of the android at
last.
“Well then wake them up.”
