Chapter 5 - A Scream In The Dark
Fifield was the last person to set foot into the black
abyss, muttering some sort of incoherent displeasure to himself. Even from
within a thickly-layered environmental suit, the unease of his person was as
plain to see. The beam of his flashlight moved somewhat erratically. His
breathing was louder and slightly more rapid in its pace than everyone else
present. Fifield looked like a man who was suddenly going through some manner
of physical drug withdrawal; which, gathered by what many had come to know
already in Fifield’s record of previous employment, would not be so far from
the believable truth of things. At one point, Millburn appeared to make some
sort of nonchalant gesture of empathy toward the nervous geologist, but Fifield
nervously shoved the hand away and stumbled a few steps away from the insistent,
annoying biologist. “Could Millburn not take a fucking hint?” Fifield thought
angrily. “Why won’t he just leave me the fuck alone?!”
The mouth of the cave became a long, damp tunnel of indefinite
blackness. The consistency of the interior atmosphere was thicker and more
humid, but oddly devoid of any optical obstruction. At several points in their
forward trek, the group stopped and collectively illuminated the walls and
ceiling surrounding them with their lamps. Initially, the surface held the
appearance of the typical interior of a cave; which was uneven with rocks
jutting out from every angle. Upon further examination, the group withdrew in
surprise and disgust at the skeletal-looking network that clung to the interior
as far as the eye could see. The only one undisturbed by the jet black,
biological encasing was, as one would suspect, the android David. Sometime
before the initial rushed expedition came to a close, David would find a way to
take a sample of the walls if they were indeed suspect of being biological in
nature; provided that none of the other team members noticed. Perhaps if merely
Dr. Ford was looking on, that would have been acceptable enough. Fifield and
Millburn were two of the hirelings of Vickers; brought on to intentionally
sabotage the entire mission to LV-223. Despite his growing fondness of Dr.
Shaw, and the fact that she was not hired on by Vickers, David did not trust
Elizabeth Shaw. There were elements of David’s confidential commands that Dr.
Shaw would not merely complicate, but stand in the way of entirely as a result
of her immovable personal beliefs. When it came down to it, it was clear from
the first time David had seen Elizabeth Shaw and heard her speak that she was
more concerned with testing and affirming her own faith than discovering new
worlds that humanity might one day inhabit. And as far as Dr. Holloway was
concerned, well… trust was never in the realm of consideration for him. Charles
Holloway was a disdainful person, despite his level of intelligence and
accomplishment. Holloway was not so very unlike David’s arrogant creator; a
ceaseless, tyrannical ambitionist who David considered undeserving of his great
gifts. And much as it was for David’s disposition towards Weyland, Charles
Holloway too was someone who the synthetic disliked entirely. The android did
not dwell on his thoughts of the warm-blooded companions he shared company
with, he walked over to one of the bone-like protrusions and quickly ran his
gloved forefinger along the damp, slimy surface. He quietly smeared the
mucus-like substance upon one of the packs on his hip - he would take another sample of larger size on his way out. After another ten minutes of
careful forward progress, the group finally came to an area where several more
corridors intersected with the long tunnel they had been traversing.
“Mr. Fifield, let’s get a grid of the structure,” Dr. Holloway’s
voice shattered the near-silence, “I want the whole interior scanned.”
Fifield was busy pulling something from his pack that
occupied both of his hands.
“If there’s anything in here worth looking at, these pups
will find them.”
“Pups?” Millburn asked.
“Yeah, pups…” Fifield responded, “my pups.”
The geologist tossed the trio of black balls into the air.
Once they rose to about ten feet above the heads of the group, the balls took
instantaneous flight; each emitting a crimson scanning matrix that ran quickly
along the walls, ceilings and floors as the unusual devices made their way
in three different directions. Each ‘pup’ whirred and spun and even seemed to
emit a sort of lupine panting sound. Fifield let out a loud, unexpected howl as
his devices scurried into the blackness of the alien structure. The group
smiled; it was the first time Fifield was met with the appreciation of his
current colleagues.
“Prometheus, we are now mapping,” the geologist said
confidently.
“Copy that,” Janek responded from back on the ship.
The captain of the Prometheus turned from the cluster of
video feeds and walked over to a sizeable black table which lit up and began
rendering a holographic display, which branched out in several directions as
the group of ‘pups’ each made their respective way. A green webway of
artificial light illuminated its four onlookers.
“Well I’ll be damned,” said the captain.
As it seemed at the moment, the overall utilization of the temple’s structural
interior was illogical to a degree of technological wastefulness. The potential
for a many-floored structure was wholly tossed aside in lieu of a few long
running corridors. Given sufficient time, Fifield’s little mechanical pets
would no doubt reveal more of what lay within the ancient alien temple. One
could only hope that those revelations would enlighten, and not simply give way
to yet another mystery. As the group moved on, the buoyancy of Fifield waned
noticeably as he began to fidget angrily with the red-screened device in his
hand that served as the eyes of his pack; the master’s eyes deciphering the
findings of his pups. One of the pups had already stopped dead in its tracks,
though it was left mechanically intact. He breathed in comfortless,
slightly-rapid breaths, pointing the handheld device here and there as if it
would help its functionality.
“Fifield, you got a reading?” Millburn inquired as if he
hadn’t noticed the apprehension of the geologist.
“Uh… yeah. Pups are saying… this way,” Fifield responded
without lifting his eyes from the readout on the red screen.
“Look!” The Scottish-accented voice of Ford came in the
darkness. “There’s a door.”
Ford stepped through the doorway on her right side. The rest
of the team followed closely. Once Holloway had entered the room, his eyes moved
busily from the room all around him and back to the localized atmospheric
readings displayed in small green text on a tiny screen upon the left forearm
of his environmental suit.
“Look at this!” Holloway said practically in a gasp.
“Jesus! The sunlight is heating the water! Check out the
humidity!” Ford said in her own shade of amazement.
“Yeah, look at the Co2 levels. Outside it’s completely toxic
and in here there’s… nothing. It’s breathable.”
Holloway’s words hung in the air for a few seconds before he
turned to his beloved Elizabeth and a knot formed in her stomach as she saw the
asshole grin upon Holloway’s face. He reached for the pressurized clasps on his
helmet.
“What are you doing? Charlie, don’t be an idiot!”
Holloway’s hands froze at Dr. Shaw’s exclamation.
“Don’t be a skeptic!” Holloway shot back. “There’s something
generating an atmosphere… David?”
All eyes fell upon the droll, expressionless synthetic man.
“Dr. Holloway is correct.”
“Cleaner than Earth’s actually…” Ford added with amazement.
The eyes that had all fastened themselves upon David were
now roaming all about the massive corridor.
“They were terraforming here!” As Holloway gave his
assurances, his hands completed their journey to the exterior clasps on his
helmet.
“Charlie! Please don’t!” Shaw knew her boyfriend had long
strayed from the path of caution, but she did her best to convince him
otherwise anyway.
“I’m not wearing this thing anymore. Wish me luck, babe!”
“Do you copy? Do NOT
remove your helmet!” A voice crackled through the com angrily from back on
the deck of the Prometheus as Holloway’s helmet slipped from its mount with a
hiss of released pressure.
Holloway closed his eyes and drew in a smooth, deliberate
breath and then exhaled it. He opened his eyes and stared forward with a
satisfied look on his face.
“WOOOO!” He called triumphantly into the alien darkness and
followed with a buoyant laugh.
“You crazy bastard!” Shaw said, more turned on by Holloway’s
arrogance than angered by it in truth.
The air that filled Dr. Holloway’s chest with pure and cool
in his lungs; it was almost a shame to profane the untainted environment with
their exhalations. For Holloway, the feeling of sustaining himself on such
untainted oxygen was not merely its own reward as a result of the implications
of the terraformed environment. The great god-men, the Engineers, that had
built this place thrived in the same atmospheric conditions as not just
mankind, but most sentient life on planet Earth. The temperature within the
temple was slightly colder than the Human body would have preferred on a
long-term scale, but that too was palatable enough for a man to endure in short-term.
Holloway thought back to cracking his jokes at David’s expense; making fun of
the android for striving to learn some abstract, dead form of communication.
The knowledge that these beings were so similar to us made the prospect of
communicating with them far more foreseeable in Holloway’s mind. He was ready
and willing to accept the mantle of being the one on the unfortunate end of a
contest of wits and shit talk in exchange for communion with the gods via
David’s nonsensical grunts and clucks.
“Prometheus, we are taking out helmets off,” Fifield said,
emphasizing the final word, “Connect to our chest cams if you’d like to
continue watching this freak show.”
“Copy that, switching feeds” Ravel said over the com.
With a few taps on the console in front of where he sat,
Ravel switched each of the overhead helmet video feeds to the more compact,
obscured cameras located just above the hip of each team member. To his side,
Chance was smiling as if he had just been vindicated somehow.
“Well, come on – pay up!”
“Pay what?!”
“What do you mean ‘pay what?” Chance exclaimed humorously.
“Something is manufacturing breathable air down there! That means it’s
terraforming!”
“No, no… the bet is why
we came here,” Ravel tried, “if you said the old man wanted to talk to
martians, then I’d pay.
“Oh come on! A hundred credits! Put towards a lap dance with
Miss Vickers, how about that?”
Back in the temple, the team makes their way through the
black corridor in front of them. The beams of their flashlights were the only
thing penetrating the darkness.
“It’s minus twelve in here,” Ford spoke up.
“So why is this water not frozen?” Millburn supposed aloud.
“Maybe it ain’t water!” Fifield spurned, still trying to
make heads or tails of his geological readout.
“Maybe it’s martian piss.”
Fifield did not find the jest of the biologist amusing.
“That you scientific theory is it, Mr. Biology?”
“Well whatever it is, it sure is clean,” Millburn said
matter-of-factly now that his attempt at humor had dive-bombed.
As the group trekked on, David quietly stepped away from the
group. His eyes were far keener than those of any organic man. Among the endless
blackness of the structure that surrounded the group, he deciphered the small
outline of a metallic panel on one of the walls. A sluggish sentience barely
noticeable to even his eyes appeared to be stretched across the exterior
surface of the panel. The subtlety of the movement of the biological matter was
akin to than of an Earth flower leaning towards the direction of the sun’s
rays. As David’s footsteps brought him closer to the panel, the pitch-black
sludge shimmered a dark green. He reached out his arm and dipped the
forefinger of his right gloved hand into the substance. As he pulled his hand
away and stretched the matter between his fore and thumb fingers apart, it
glowed ever so slightly. David’s eyes could see microscopic glyphs and unknown
figures pulsing with living energy…
responding to the touch of something foreign and unexpected. David drew the
fingers under his nose and smelled the slight pungency of the alien slime.
“Interesting…”
David wanted to immediately take a sample of whatever was on
his glove back to the ship, yet another priority was inherently tugging at his
artificial mind – opening the panel. The metal cover slid aside with little
effort, revealing a panel covered in square, black buttons with the same
strange symbols upon them that glimmered almost imperceptibly within the goo as
David stretched it thin. With the substance still coating his fingers, the
synthetic began touching several of the buttons. They were stuck, perhaps with
the passing of centuries or perhaps the buttons responded only to the touch of
its true masters… or merely something biological in nature, which David was
certainly not. Yet one of the buttons managed to sink into its metallic
recesses. Far off in the blackness, a green light illuminated. A horrible,
inhuman screech filled the entire temple – a scream in the darkness. It began
in the proximity of the artificial light, but managed to travel right through
the group without losing any of its painful, voluminous potency. It was not the
scream of a mortal man or woman, nor was it quite like any beast that any of
the Earth denizens knew of. It was, in point of fact, an actual wail from
beyond the grave; an unfamiliar grave millions of miles from anything of mortal
origin.
“What was that?!” A fearful Millburn said; his breath
quickening as he spoke.
One side of the tunnel lit up exclusively; the illumination
would have been met with thankfulness following a trek through flash-lit
blackness were in not preceded by such a menacing sound.
“David?”
Elizabeth Shaw called in kneejerk desperation to the
synthetic man still standing in front of the once obscure and now activated
panel upon the ancient surface of the wall. By this time, the entire group was
turned in the direction from which the horrible scream had come from. Suddenly,
at the end of the tunnel, that is, where the corridor effectively curved ahead out of
sight, a towering, elephantine-looking behemoth came into sight; rounding the
corner with a lumbering, determined run. The green and white holograph was
followed by another giant… then another… and another. Another deafening scream
filled the corridor. The colossal humanoids ran full speed in the direction of
the exploration party. Fifield and Millburn were the first to huddle against
the wall in hopes that the versions of the alien beings recorded in time would
pass them by.
“Ellie!” Dr. Holloway yelled, breaking the horrified curiosity
of his girlfriend just in time to pull her out of the path of the running
giants.
Everyone moved to the side and gaped in horror as the monstrous,
holographic renditions passed them without reacting to their presence in any
way… everyone that is except the android David. A rumbling sound filled the
tunnel that sounded like some clamorous piece of Weyland machinery gyrating
beneath water.
“David!” Shaw called out to him.
“DAVID!”
The first hologram crashed into David; pixels shattered as
they encountered the form of the synthetic and for a few moments, the
encroached portions of the image partially dispersed into a greenish void.
Finally, the pixels reformed upon the recorded image just as the ones that
circled around David began to dissipate. The next two ran through David with
the exact same result before he finally moved aside and looked behind him to
see the leader of the running god-men continue his desperate sprint in the
opposite directly from whence they came. A half dozen… and then half dozen more
funneled through the dark, powerless corridor; continuing to pass the team by
unobstructed. When the initial sense of trepidation began to somewhat wear off,
the inquisitive-mindedness of the students of various scientific denominations
began taking hold. The fearful sets of eyes were given lease to examine the
traits of the gargantuan passersby. Each form was easily eleven feet in
stature. Most of the surface of their exterior was obviously derived from the
same strange, biological-looking encasing found on the walls and ceilings of
the temple’s interior. If this was indeed what passed as the ‘flesh’ of their
bodies, one could only wonder what it was that caused desperation enough in
such durable beings to flee altogether in such a way – likely the unspeakable
thing that the scream in the darkness had originated from. What was it that a
dozen or more creatures double the size of a man with stone-like skin (or was
it more akin to metal?) feared enough to collectively sprint from the way
people did a burning building? The question went unanswered as the procession
of holographic giants came to an end, nothing followed; no hulking, shambling
terror followed in the wake of the running giants, no horror from beyond the
grave dragged its form or slithered as it gave chase to its terrified prey. The
last of the alien men broke from the followed suit of those who sprinted ahead
of it, clumsily craning its head around to catch a desperate glimpse to its
rear – something was indeed driving the gigantic beings from the temple. It
stumbled, suddenly looking more Human than any of the bystanders of Earth would
have liked to admit, falling like a felled tree onto one knee before climbing
to its feet again and focusing on making an escape. Whatever was chasing them
all was either too far out of range to worry about or so hopelessly upon them
that such consideration was of no consequential worth.
“What the hell were those things, man?!” Millburn blurted
nervously.
“I’m sure glad we didn’t bring any WEAPONS! Whose idea was
that?!” Fifield yelled as he turned towards Shaw and Holloway still huddled
against the wall of the corridor.
“Come on! Keep up!”
It was as if Elizabeth Shaw had taken leave of rational fear
once again. She broke away from Dr. Holloway’s embrace and began running after
the procession of fleeing god-men. They ran through the familiar tunnels they
had come through and into new, unfamiliar corridors of blackness. It was
suddenly as if the notion of terror had been supplanted by something altogether
inconsistent to any sort of logic as the group broke into a run - actually
chasing down the giant aliens they had just clutched the walls in fear of moments ago. Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway rounded the final curve first, seeing
the glowing god-men shuffling desperately into a large doorway. The last of the
gargantuan beings, which might have actually been injured in some way, clutched
his abdomen and lurched forward into another hopeless, face-first stumble. The
giant sprawled onto all fours and after a few seconds of pitiful crawling, it
became clear that his own kind had abandoned him. Right as the crawling giant
crossed the threshold of the hidden chamber, a holographic door slid down,
unforgivingly separating head from body. With that, the recording ceased,
the green and white pixels fizzled out. The interior of the ancient alien
temple was returned to the ageless blackness it had lay in so familiarly.
“Where did he go?”
“There it is!”
The five people and one android approached in a mixture of
fear and amazement, the long-dead remains of the decapitated giant. All six
flashlight beams fell upon the corpse, overly-illuminating the decomposed,
black and gray surface. There it was. Everyone who had rolled their eyes and japed at the
excited Shaw and Holloway during their presentation following the crew’s first
breakfast, even Meredith Vickers herself, they were all eating their own words
in silent humiliation. ‘So we are all here because of a map you two kids found
in a cave? Is that right?’ Those were the words Fifield had chosen to openly
mock them, with Millburn not far in the antagonizing wake of the geologist.
Yes, those cave drawings, the silly theory of ‘Engineers,’ deducing actual
planetary coordinates from a handful of ancient slabs of stone… Shaw and
Holloway were batting a thousand. Not only had they come to the world in their
cave drawings, but there they stood before the proof of their tall, god-men;
dead as they looked to be. They were right about LV-223. They were right about
the Engineers.
“Look at the size of it!” Ford’s familiar Scottish-accented
voice filled the void.
“Oh my God, Charlie… we found them!” Elizabeth Shaw gasped
as she timidly stepped toward the corpse.
“Them?” Fifield began losing his cool yet again. “What do
you mean THEM?!”
“It is them, Ellie…”
Holloway gaped at the sight of the dead Engineer. He immediately
stumbled to find something more intelligent or appropriate to say.
“It looks like a door and… he’s been decapitated by it.”
He had not done so well. Fortunately, the weight of
astonishment held the group in check enough not to care how dumb Holloway
suddenly sounded. Back on the Prometheus, the four faces of Janek, Vickers,
Ravel and Chance stared in almost equal astonishment at their monitors in spite
of their lack of formal scientific education. Janek and his two stooges were
flyboys; they flew the ship and didn’t ask questions. And Vickers; she was a
run of the mill Weyland Corporation cutthroat born into favorable
silver-spoonery. That wasn’t to say that
they spat entirely in the face of science or academia in general, those sorts
of things were merely secondary to the size of their paychecks. Janek began
cackling and shaking his head.
“Son of a bitch…” Vickers muttered in disbelief. “They were
right.”
“You wanted ‘em to be wrong?”
The android David approached the door, avoiding the headless
giant as best as he could. It didn’t take the eyes of a synthetic person to see
the writing this time – etched conspicuously upon the ancient surface. The series
of otherworldly glyphs meant nothing to the warm-blooded members of the exploration
party. But David had seen them; not only in his studies of obscure languages,
but also within the nearly-microscopic glyphs that glowed from within the slimy
substance he had stretched thin with examination just before he had
unintentionally triggered the nightmarish holographic recording.
“David… please tell me you can read that.”
David almost turned to Dr. Holloway in expressive confusion;
the man must have become feverish and delusional. Had the ever-mocking man just
used the word ‘please’ when talking to the synthetic?
“Perhaps,” David settled for in its simplicity.
The truth was that David could indeed read the Engineer
language – he could read, perfectly and fully, the glyphs upon the door. Every
symbol, every nuance of the alien dialect… everything.
Only the chosen may
pass through
This is sacred ground and must be kept sacred
This is the birth place of our lord
Those who come to him unbidden will be punished
The android had no plans on sharing this translation with
Shaw and Holloway.
“Yeah… I’m out of here.”
Fifield did not wait for permission to leave; he began
walking off immediately, finally losing the last of his nerve.
“Hey, Fifield! Where are you going?” Dr. Shaw called out to
him.
“What?!” Fifield wheeled and stepped angrily towards Dr.
Shaw. “Look, I’m just a geologist. I like rocks… I LOVE rocks. It’s clear you
two don’t give a shit about rocks… but what you DO seem to care about is
gigantic dead bodies! And since I don’t have anything to offer in THE DEAD BODY
ARENA… I’m gonna’ go back to the ship if you don’t mind.”
Fifield was inches from Dr. Shaw’s face at the conclusion of
his panicked raving. He looked as if he was shaking slightly.
“Anyone want to join me?” Fifield turned almost instantly to
Millburn. “You staying?”
“Uhh… no, ship is good.”
“Yeah, ship very good,” Fifield mocked with nervous
agreement.
Fifield regained a few ounces of his composure as he turned
back to face Dr. Shaw. Even so, his words dripped with seething sarcasm.
“Congratulations on your discovery.”
“Thank you.”
