Chapter 9 - Contamination
CHAPTER NINE
“Contamination”
Dr. Charles Holloway sat alone at the far end of the rec
room pool table; dejectedly rolling the billiard balls into one another by hand
with his head resting on one arm. He was now feeling quite drunk; having
resolved to drink a copious amount of white wine straight from the bottle in a
short duration of time, during the examination of the Engineer head that his
girlfriend had so selfishly almost thrown her own life away to recover. Yes,
their work was important… but important enough for one of the two lovers to
give their lives? In Holloway’s mind, nothing was more important than the love
he shared with Shaw and the life they had together. He felt betrayed that Shaw
was willing to throw her own life away from the head of the Engineer. The fact
that they had learned virtually nothing from the head was merely the salt in
Dr. Holloway’s still-fresh wound. After all this time and searching, after all
of this hard work, he felt as though everything they had worked towards had
crashed and burned in less than a day. And Dr. Shaw, Holloway felt, felt no
concern it seemed; she was content in the lab with Dr. Ford, scraping together
the last bits of flesh and goo from their fruitless expedition. Just then, in
walked the last person, biological or artificial, that Charles Holloway would
have expected.
“Am I interrupting? I thought you might be running low?”
David inquired with a glass and bottle of white wine in hand; taking extra care
not to smear or smudge the droplet of black goo still sitting on the tip of his
finger.
Dr. Holloway raised his head from his arm and focused his
glazed red eyes on David.
“Pour yourself a glass, pal!” Holloway said with mock
excitement.
David smiled and nodded slightly.
“Thank you, but I’m afraid it would be wasted on me.”
Holloway couldn’t help but run the synthetic man down.
“Oh right, I almost forgot you’re not a real boy,” he
taunted.
The smile on the android’s face melted into one of empty,
non-expression. The level of willful ingratitude of Charles Holloway was a
thing beyond David’s calculation. He had brought Dr. Holloway a drink
unprompted; which Holloway had clearly been pleased to receive. Still, the ass
of man hurled insults needlessly at David solely because of what he was.
“I am very sorry that your Engineers are all gone, Dr.
Holloway.”
Holloway spun one of the billiard balls on the table before
meeting David’s eyes.
“You think we wasted our time coming here, don’t you?”
Holloway supposed.
“Your question depends on me understanding what you hoped to
achieve by coming here.”
“What we hoped to achieve,” Holloway began with a slight
tone of venom in his voice, “was to meet our makers, to get answers! Why they
even made us in the first place!”
David cocked his head slightly; still gripping the bottle
and glass almost robotically.
“Why do you think your people made me?” The android asked.
It took Holloway a few seconds until he answered with certainty.
“We made you because we could.”
“Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to
hear the same thing from your creator?”
Holloway ceased clacking the billiard balls against one
another and looked to David in the manner of a man who is unexpectedly
impressed by another. He burst into momentary laughter. The android mimicked
the kind of agreeable smile that came with the so-called ‘infectiousness’ of
laughter; it was all in the programming.
“Well,” Holloway began his usual snarky retort, “I guess
it’s a good thing you can’t be disappointed, huh?”
The drunk scientist let fly another billiard ball that
bounced forcefully off of the opposite long edge of the pool table.
“Yes, it’s wonderful actually,” David agreed smartly.
David tucked the bottle of wine under his right arm and held
the glass in his right hand so that his left appendage was entirely unoccupied.
When Dr. Holloway rolled the next billiard ball, the dexterous left hand of the
android caught it and scooped it up. He had lost the attention of the drunken
Dr. Holloway, but now the two of them were locked in each other’s gaze. David
sure as shit had his attention now.
“May I ask you something?”
Holloway lifted his head attentively and propped himself up
on both elbows in school-boy sarcasm; as if a teacher had just yelled at him
for putting his head down during class.
“Please do,” Holloway allowed.
“How far would you go to get what you came all this way for?
For your answers, what would you be willing to do?” David posed
philosophically.
Holloway rapped his knuckled thoughtfully on the table for a
moment.
“Anything and everything,” the woozy doctor said at last.
A smile lit up the face of the synthetic; who stepped
gingerly to the side of the seated Dr. Holloway and placed the glass upon the
rail of the pool table.
“That’s worth drinking to, I’d imagine!”
Holloway couldn’t help but chuckle agreeably at the android
pouring him a healthy portion of white wine. When David had finished pouring,
he placed the cork back into the bottle and carefully lifted the glass. Just as
he began to lift it, Holloway was still laughing to himself and nodding
inattentively. David quickly dipped his pointer finger into the glass of wine…
a tiny black smudge swirled around for a second before the color faded into the
clear liquid. Holloway took the glass; not noticing what David had just done.
He saluted David with the glass in mock cheer.
“Here’s mud in your eye pal.”
Holloway drank the contents of the glass in two large
mouthfuls; detecting nothing wrong with David’s unusual gesture of kindness.
“Good health,” David bowed his head to Holloway, leaving the
entire bottle and the contaminated glass for the lonely doctor.
David walked at the same patient, robotic pace as when he
had entered the room. It was fortunate that David’s core programming contained
only a ‘sample size’ of emotional capabilities; enough at least to develop a
disdain for the unnecessarily rude Dr. Holloway. Had Weyland Corporation
provided the synthetic man with any more of a genuine emotional tether, David
might have cheered aloud and clicked both of his heels together at the thought
of Dr. Holloway, distracted in his own drunkenness, swallowing down the tiny
drop of alien pathogen. The circumstantial scenarios of possible horrible
outcomes that David considered for Charles Holloway could have easily enough
been construed as ‘fantasizing.’ Yes, the central motive was testing the deadly
pathogen on one of the crew, but David would enjoy watching Holloway die as
much as inhumanly possible.
Elizabeth Shaw sat up in her bed with a computer tablet in
her hands. Dr. Holloway came strolling into the small quarters they shared
together. He stood beside her and looked on the screen; which was playing back
the camera footage from her environmental suit of the holographic Engineer
being decapitated by the stone door.
“He seems pretty scared for a ghost.”
Dr. Shaw shot him a contentious look.
“We must have triggered the recording when we arrived,” Shaw
decided to dodge her boyfriend’s jest outright.
Charlie smiled; clearly unfinished in his wit.
“So let me ask you this – where is the recording of whatever
was chasing them?”
She had no answer to give. Suddenly, like some sort of
children’s birthday magician, Dr. Holloway’s left hand raised itself into
Shaw’s line of sight. He held a single red rose gently between his thumb and
first two fingers.
“What is that?” The question sounded silly as soon as it
left Elizabeth Shaw’s lips.
“This… is a rose that I had frozen. I had some champagne to
celebrate when we found what we were looking for, but…” Holloway said; dropping
his eyes in disappointment with the last breaths of the admission.
“We did find what we were looking for. They were here.”
“This is… the most significant discovery in the history of
mankind – I know. It’s incredible; it really is, but… I wanted to talk to them.
Don’t you want to know why they came? Why they abandoned us? I just want
answers, baby,” Dr. Holloway said.
Dr. Shaw was wholly unfazed by the dose of hard truth from
Charlie.
“We were right,” Shaw stated plainly, “I have proof. Look!”
The computer she held in her hand was connected wirelessly
to the larger computer in the med lab. It showed the comparative DNA breakdowns
that Ford had done right after the Engineer head was blown to pieces. When Dr.
Holloway came to Shaw’s side to look at the handheld screen, she smelled the
copious amount of wine on his breath. Shaw hated when Charlie drank; he had
even promised not to drink on their journey to LV-223. Shaw decided to let it
go; she knew how angry Charlie was at her… and his anger was fully warranted.
Yes, she had come away with something in addition to her own narrowly-survived
life. But one second, one wrong decision during one of those critical moments,
or if the android David had not been on hand to take action, and Shaw would
have been killed. Charlie would be left all alone… his life would be ruined.
Charlie might not deserve to be so drunk, but he did not deserve to be
harangued about his drinking. She would simply let the consequences of the
morning be justice enough for Holloway’s broken promise. It took the hazy eyes
and mind a few seconds to actually register what it was he was looking at. His
mouth fell open, his bloodshot eyes widened.
“We come from them.”
“Are you kidding me?” Holloway gaped.
“No,” Shaw shot back, “their genetic material predates
ours.”
The looked at one another; Shaw smiling mundanely and
Holloway at the tail end of his amazement.
“Okay well, I guess you can take off your father’s cross
now.”
“And why would I do that?” Shaw scolded Holloway as if were
the most ridiculous thing he could have possibly chosen to say.
“Because,” Holloway gestured at the computer screen, “they made us.”
Shaw smiled confidently at Holloway; taking the tiny silver
cross between her forefinger and thumb.
“And who made them?”
Holloway laughed cleverly.
“Exactly! We will never know! But here’s what we do know;
there is nothing special about the creation of life. Anybody can do it; all you
need is a dash of DNA and half a brain, right?”
The light in Shaw’s eyes died instantaneously.
“I… can’t,” she whimpered, “I can’t create life. What does
that say about me?”
“Ellie, that’s not…” Holloway stammered, “I didn’t mean… I
wasn’t talking about…”
“Children?” Shaw finished his statement.
“Us!”
Holloway sat down to comfort his girlfriend. He took her
hands in his.
“Elizabeth Shaw, you are the most special person I have ever
met in my life. And I love you.”
What that, Holloway softly kissed her and smiled. A second
kiss came between the two lovers… and then another. Seconds later, they were
stripping their clothes off. And then they made love in their shared quarters…
for the very last time.
Meredith Vickers walked cautiously onto the darkened bridge
of the Prometheus. The only source of light in the large room was the
holographic display of the alien temple – courtesy of Fifield’s ‘pups.’ She
reached out slowly; when her fingers came close to the display, she was nearly
startled out of her skin by the discordant sound of Janek’s accordion. She turned
one-hundred eighty degrees and leered at the smug, smiling face of the Captain
sitting in one of the booths.
“How much longer is this going to take?”
Janek smiled at the pretty, impatient blonde woman.
“I don’t know. I’m just the Captain.”
After a few seconds, the accordion in Janek’s hands belched
forth another discordant assault. He was not hitting any of the keys so that it
purposely sounded atrocious.
“That thing sounds like a dying cat by the way,” Vickers
bemoaned.
Janek smiled again; tapping his fingers on the keys.
“I’ll have you know that this thing here used to belong to
Steven Stills,” he informed.
Vickers shrugged and raised one eyebrow.
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
Janek shook his head and made light of her disregarding,
rude manner.
“You know… if you wanna’ get laid, you don’t have to pretend
to be interested in the Pyramid Scanner. I mean you could just say, ‘Hey, I’m
trying to get laid!’”
Vicker’s traded her blunt rudeness for her best attempt at
sarcasm.
“I could say that, right? But then, it wouldn’t make sense
why I’d fly myself all the way out here away from every man on Earth if I
wanted to get laid.”
Vickers turned and began making her hasty exit when Janek
called out to her.
“Vickers!”
The Captain of the ship slid out of the seat and took a few
steps towards Vickers; who had stopped and turned to face him.
“Uh, I was wondering… are you a robot?”
Vickers tried to find some destructive retort, she even
thought about slugging the cocksure Captain across his undeniably, handsome face.
But there was nothing for it; she simply stood there rolling her eyes to other
side with her mouth hung open in a half-smile.
“My room! Ten minutes!”
Vickers left the bridge like a departing storm. Janek smiled
to himself satisfactorily.
“Well if you can’t be… with the one you love… love the one
you’re with!”
The accordion exhaled a few random notes; none of them
synonymous with the original piece of music.
“Love the one you’re with!”
“Fifield, what’s all this black stuff?”
The Biologist and Geologist had walked their way through
ampule-filled chambers before. When they had first arrived with the rest of the
team, the floor had been dry.
“Gazpacho…” Fifield returned in a croaky, odd-sounding voice
before beginning a violent coughing fit.
Millburn turned to his companion in concern; only to find
Fifield’s helmet cloudy with marijuana smoke. The Geologist had somehow
installed a water bong into his environmental suit.
“On behalf of scientists everywhere, I am ashamed to count
you among us, Fifield, really.”
“Millburn?”
“Yeah?”
Fifield paused before continuing to speak; shining his light
on the enormous, sexless humanoid head.
“Do you see this this? What do you think this thing was –
some kind of god? Something they worshipped?”
Something slithered loudly through the black sludge just
beyond Fifield’s range of vision. He wheeled and stumbled towards Millburn.
“What the hell was that?!”
The light beams of both men were now trained on the thing
that moved. A snake-like creature rose from out of the black sludge.
“Okay, just stay calm,” Millburn asserted.
“What the fuck is that thing! Get away from it, Millburn!”
“Just stay quiet!” Millburn said deliberately. “I’ve got
this.”
He knelt down and held out his hand.
“Hey baby!”
Millburn opened his com.
“Come in Prometheus, we have an elongated, reptile type
creature… maybe thirty, forty inches with transparent skin!”
There was no answer from Janek or his crew. A second of the
creatures rose curiously from the black sea of goo.
“Prometheus, we have two of them! It’s beautiful!” Millburn
called out in excitement.
“Jesus! Look at the size of them!” Fifield pointed out with
far less enthusiasm.
“Look at you! Look at you, baby!” Millburn reacted to the
slithering monsters as if they were a pair of stray kittens.
“Millburn!”
“You need to stay calm, Okay?” Millburn assured Fifield.
“What’s there to be calm about?!” Fifield shot back.
“She is beautiful!”
The serpent in front hissed loudly and a cobra-like hood
formed around its top. Millburn retreated a few inches and then regained his
foolhardy confidence.
“What the fuck are you trying to do? Get away from it,
Millburn!” Fifield was now screaming at the Biologist.
“Finding her blind spot; she is mesmerized! Look!”
The creature followed Millburn’s hand to the left and right
as he rocked it in either direction.
“It’s okay, see? It’s okay.”
For a moment, Fifield began to crack a tiny smile through
his fear at the spectacle. The thing was indeed following the hand. But it was
short lived; the alien serpent lunged out of the sea of blackness and wrapped
itself around Millburn’s extended forearm. Millburn was able to fend off the
thing for a few moments, but the snake finally found its best available grip
and began to tighten. Absolute, instantaneous panic birthed itself in Millburn.
“Maybe you should help me now, Okay? Get it off!”
“I ain’t touching that thing!” Fifield barked and backed
away from Millburn.
“Fifield, help me! Get it off! Get it off! It’s getting
tighter!”
Fifield reluctantly came to the aid of the man who he hated
most of all his new crewmates. As soon as the creature felt Fifield’s hand, it
immediately redoubled its tightness.
“You’re making it worse!” Millburn yelled.
His arm snapped loudly… the screams of the Biologist filled
the ampule room.
“CUT IT OFF! CUT IT OFF!”
