Chapter 8 - Small Beginnings

CHAPTER EIGHT
“Small Beginnings”

 

As if Fifield and Millburn hadn’t already encountered enough terror for the afternoon, they were in for another horrible surprise. Once they had turned a corner, their beams of artificial light fell upon an enormous, piled-up mass of Engineer cadavers. Each corpse with its chest visible showed the same grievous wound; flesh and bone had exploded outward, which left each chest with a primordial, blackened cavity. What could have possibly driven these crafters of worlds and designers of civilizations to crawl over one another like Earth rats escaping from a blazing fire?

“What… are those things? Are they real?!” Millburn blurted out idiotically.

“Of course they’re bloody real!” Fifield yelled.

“Jesus Christ, look at the pile! Look at how high up they are!”

The rapidity of each man’s breathing increased noticeably. The beams of light tremored in mortal fear as they moved over the mound of space-ready Engineer bodies.

“Yeah… it sure looks like they were trying to get away from something. It’s like some… some kind of Holocaust painting!”

Fifield had been able to keep it together for the most part, but his own talk began to sound like Millburn to his own ears. He had no idea if Millburn had ever heard of the Holocaust that had happened on Earth long ago. Additionally, it was possible the idiot had never seen a painting before.

“So… whatever killed them is gone, right?” Millburn asked the way a child would to his father in regards to the resident monster in the bedroom closet.

The unexpected, loud voice of Janek over their coms nearly launched both wayward men from their environmental suits.

“Millburn, Fifield – this is the Prometheus? What’s your position?”

“Prometheus, this is Millburn,” the jarred biologist replied, “we are at 7401477…why?!”

“Well, I just got a ping… about one click west of you.”

Fifield looked in worry and disbelief at his companion.

“What do you mean ‘A PING?!’”Fifield’s loud voice filled the dark halls of the structure.

“Well…” Janek replied as if there was nothing to be worried about, or perhaps he didn’t care, or perhaps this was one big jest by the captain of the Prometheus and his bored co-pilot cronies, “whatever that probe is picking up, it’s not dead. It’s reading a life form.”

“What do you mean ‘A LIFE FORM?!’” Millburn sounded as though he was doing a poor impersonation of Fifield.

“Is… it moving?” Fifield asked.

There was a five second pause from Janek that felt like five minutes to the two men lost in some tomb on an alien world. When Janek finally gave his response, he continued to sound as though he couldn’t have cared less.

“Hmmm… nope – I don’t think so.”

The clouds of Fifield’s apprehension blew away and gave way to a wash of anger.

“Look, Captain,” he enunciated harshly on Janek’s rank, “you’re obviously not seeing what we’re seeing down here! If you were, you wouldn’t be talking about a BLOODY PING!”

Another pause from the Captain of the Prometheus, and another tired response from Janek.

“Boys, the signal’s been coming in sporadically since the storm hit.”

“That’s no good to us down here, Captain!”

“Is it… is it moving? Are these things moving?” Millburn asked fearfully.

The artificial pinging tone on the holographic console display suddenly died. Janek furrowed his brows and looked inquiringly at Chance and Ravel.

“No… it actually just disappeared. Must be a glitch.”

Fifield stopped dead in his tracks and regained his fearful air.

“A fucking glitch? What does that mean?!” He barked into his com at the Captain.

“All right boys, sleep tight. Try not to bugger each other.” Janek said before dismissively closing the com.

“He said one click west? We don’t want to go check that out, do we?”

“Shit no!” Millburn returned eagerly. “Where do we want to go?

“East!”

“Yeah, east!”

The two men set off in great haste. As they exited the long chamber, Millburn could be heard cursing loudly.

“A glitch, man! Glitched life form… what the fuck?!”

 

After the explosion of the Engineer head, all except Dr. Ford and Dr. Shaw leisurely made their exit from the ship’s med lab. The only one who left in a noticeable hurry was the android David; who immediately made his way to the place on the Prometheus where his master slept like some secretive vampire count. He slipped on the glowing helmet and glove, and then laid the gloved palm upon the side of Peter Weyland’s cryo-pod. His gray clothes were suddenly replaced by a pair of khaki shorts and a white polo t-shirt with a matching white fedora hat. He looked down at his feet; which were bare and standing upon a finished wooden surface. David looked up to see Peter Weyland reclining in a pool chair in swimming trunks and dark sunglasses. Miles and miles of blue sea lay in the background; just beyond the guard rails of the billion dollar yacht. Weyland raised a fruity-looking alcoholic drink in sarcastic salute to the arrival of his mechanical son.

“David! Ah, if only you were Human… you would be able to appreciate these luxuries. What news have you brought me?”

If David had the ability to scowl at Weyland, he would have done so; long and hard. It was true that androids had some small emotional capabilities; which is how David knew his creator was mocking him for his own pathetic, small-minded enjoyment. If his artificial luxuries were so nourishing, why then was Weyland’s immediate, unprompted emotional response to his first arrival one of disdainful effort?

“The mission is a failure, sir,” David finally responded coolly.

“What do you mean?”

“The Engineers,” David clarified, “they are all dead.”

Weyland tried not to look disappointed. Yes, he had considered well the possibility of never making contact with these Engineers. The clear blue afternoon sky immediately filled with clouds and hid the light of the sun. Peter Weyland took a mouthful of his tropical drink.

“What else?”

“I managed to retrieve something… but I am not sure what it is yet, sir,” David offered.

Weyland lifted his sunglasses onto his head; even as the angry clouds began to recede at an impossible speed. He looked to David with great interest.

“It’s some form of container with a liquid that the Engineers used. It was found in some sort of religious chamber. The container contains markings that coincide with some of the other markings I managed to come across on our mission.”

Weyland’s disappointment appeared to be losing the battle now to his interest in David’s findings.

“And what did you learn, David?” Weyland asked.

“It appears that these Engineers are much like Humans, save the fact that they can live hundreds of thousands of years and by some evolutionary flaw, lost the ability to breed. At some point, one of the Engineers encountered something that impregnated one of them with some sort of embryo. The parasite birthed itself through the chest cavity and grew into a massive creature who they worshipped as a deity, while also showing reverence to the Engineer who birthed their god. After this ‘Deacon’ creature died, the Engineers used its blood to seed life on planets. Naturally, the blood ran out, perhaps some time near the creation of Earth and naturally, the Engineers attempted to synthesize and recreate the Deacon’s blood. I believe they created something else entirely, sir.”

Weyland nodded in restrained pleasure and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes again.

“Well done, David. Now find out what this substance does. Do whatever it takes, understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

David deactivated his helmet and removed his hand from the space-age sarcophagus. He quietly removed the helmet and glove and left the room. As soon as he entered the exterior hallway, David was met by Meredith Vickers.

“Miss Vickers…”

“What did he say, David?” She asked bluntly.

“I don’t think he would want me telling you that.”

The synthetic man tried moving past, but Vickers stood directly in his way.

“What did he say?”

“That is confid-“ David was thrown against the wall before he could finish.

“So help me God I will find the cord that makes you run and I will cut it! WHAT DID HE SAY?!”

David could have paralyzed or killed the presumptuous, overcompensating woman with one blow. He chose not to; if he killed Vickers here and now, his experiments on the canister from the Engineer temple would never happen. His artificial mind pictured a terribly unfavorable scenario where Dr. Holloway was the one to deactivate David after the death of Vickers. Holloway grabbed one of the rifles from one of the hired mercenaries and shot the synthetic down with self-satisfaction. And in that thought, it came to David! Dr. Holloway; he would put to the test whatever liquid was inside his secret canister on Dr. Holloway! A faint smile formed on David’s face; focusing his full attention on the angry, blonde pinning him against the hallway wall.

“He said… try harder.”

Vickers let him go and stormed off; not getting what she wanted as per usual. David made his way to his quarters.

 

Back in the med lab, Dr. Ford was starting the analysis of the DNA sample that Dr. Ford had just extracted from the remains of the Engineer head.

“Dr. Shaw, you’d better have a look at this…”

Shaw joined her in front of the view screen. A strand of the Engineer’s DNA was displayed on the left half of the screen, on the right side was a strand of Human DNA. The strands matched.

“It’s… us!” She gasped.

The pair of doctors stood in silent astonishment for a moment. Finally, Shaw spoke again.

“What killed them?”

 

David knelt before the miniature cryo-freezer. He deactivated it and reached his hands in; slowly lifting the ancient ampule from within and placing it carefully on the nearby table. He pried the flat, circular lid from the top and peered inside. David carefully reached a gloved hand inside and pulled a leathery sort of bag covered in a scentless, dark yellow sort of grease or mucus. With the same knife David had used to open the canister, he began cutting smoothly into the bag. More of the yellowish preservative spilled from the sliced portions… and at last, the android found the strange alien pearl within; the biological treasure that had wiped out the most ancient and advanced Humanoid species in the universe. There were eight tall tubes of thick, glass-like casing strung together like a sort of necklace. Inside of each long tube swirled a sentient, black sludge. David pulled away one of the glassy tubes and carefully placed it on his examination table. He carefully popped the pinky-sized cap and pulled a sample of the substance into a large syringe. He pulled a fully-grown white lab rat from one of the incubation compartments and dropped it into a reinforced glass containment box. David jabbed the rat with the syringe and injected the pathogen into it. Before the android had successfully transferred a micro-dose of the substance, the rat began to thrash and tumble uncontrollably around the cage. David quickly yanked the needle out and slapped the top hatch on the containment box shut. Three seconds later, the rat exploded into blackish-blue gouts of boneless goo. David’s eyebrows raised in genuine fascination. He put the still filled syringe down on the table and stripped the medical gloves from both of his hands. David picked up the glass tube, turned it upside down so that a single black drop fell onto the artificial skin of his left pointer finger. The synthetic smiled devilishly to himself.

“Big things have small beginnings…”