you waiting for meat? they don't bring me meat because they know i'm an android. really don't need it. bread's better for you anyway. harder to digest, so it makes you feel fuller than you are.
mmmm. just a little crunchy.
you don't eat, you'll starve to death, girl.
because i'm a synthetic person you don't think i can care?
you told me you had a bad experience and a good one with androids --
you've still gotta eat. you gotta fight the bastards --
he? you make it sound like this alien has a personal score to settle with you. the biology you describe: queen laying eggs, larvae, drone -- that's very insectoid. insects usually don't bear grudges.
medieval monks.
and they've only chose to live the life style, they don't believe they're -- what's that?
hey -- you knocking -- cut it out -- you're going to wake everybody up.
brother john?
made too good for that. what're you doing?
what? you look like you've seen the devil.
you mean he --
it must be able to take on some of the characteristics of the animal it grows in. maybe they are from some sort of aggressive soldier race -- warring parties drop the eggs on opposing planets --
it's a biped. in a sheep or cow, a quadroped.
not for years.
satellite.
the company planted me here.
they built this prison.
prison. they are all political heretics.
a computer virus. a bad program. by this time the corporate structure was transglobal, all the world's data storage systems were linked. it spread through two countries before it was stopped.
this was a threat --
i was placed among them as a sensor. keeps tabs on the movement.
i told them. after the supply ship's stopped coming i saw no point in keeping up the charade. since i was a sort of walking reminder of technology, they cast me down.
in heaven.
this orbiter was patterned after a medieval concept of the universe -- they call the top half "heaven - "
the bottom half is "hell." where we are.
really.
it's smart. first he cuts their escape off, then works his way down through the monastery level by level until there isn't a thing left alive. interesting.
we don't have weapons here.
there is technology.
a room. a technology room. fresh air and water come out.
the heart and lungs of arceon.
one level beneath the underground sea.
on the other side of the orbiter.
balanced precariously on the top of the ladder in the real world as he fights against the demons in his android mind -- he jerks -- pulls his left ankle out of the grasp of the demon sheep -- off the ladder - forty foot drop waiting below him.
sees a horrible bird-demon grasping his hand in its beak -- biting through his wrist. he waves his staff in the air -- he aims for its head: crack -! whacks john's hand with his staff --
no - please. just let me sit. awhile.
damn it.
the reason i'm down here.
dreams.
that's probably what they thought when they built me. but my brain is cyber- organic - patterned after the human brain - it functions the same way a human brain does. it accumulates random images and sensations during waking hours, but unlike the human brain that sloughs them off during sleep --
right. maybe they've fixed this on later models, but i don't. do you know what happens to the human brain when it is deprived of sleep? it starts to run off the dreams while you're awake, as hallucinations. same thing with me. for twenty years i absorbed data on this planetoid. a little after we lost contact with earth the visions started. they thought i was insane. i had to explain that it was because i was an android. they liked that even less.
what i always see. images of monsters. demons.
just images i've absorbed from those old books and have no way to get rid of.
my head is full of them. i try to get them out any way i can.
i know that. i'll settle for rest.
you should've eaten the bread.
enough rest. there's beasties afoot.
we're getting close to the center of the arc -- near the sea.
she's helping us --
the organism.
bringing up the rear, puts his walking stick down -- snapp!!! everybody stops at the sound.
man trap.
in case anyone tried to get in and tamper with the technology.
no i won't. he's a terrible liar.
it's ironic. i guess my visions were prescience after all. how will i ever resolve that with my artifical con- science?
more than that. there are pumps beneath the floor - i can feel their vibration.
the greenhouse effect. it's how the earth almost destroyed itself in the late 20th century.
this planet is the supreme triumph of planned obsolesence. a certain amount of primitive materials with an atmosphere processing system as fragile as a real environment but not replenishable.
i didn't have to see that to know what that means.
i'm confused. before you said it came out of the torso, not the head --
there are several inconsistancies between this and the other aliens you described.
i think this is important. this may help us fight it. the creature that i fought in the hall - when i first saw it, it had camoflaged itself to look like wood.
i don't think it was. i think that this creature, if it is the efficient predator that you say it is, has the ability to adapt to its environment.
or this may be an as yet unseen stage of development -- you saw a queen -- this could be like a king ant -- more highly advanced than the drone, bred for survival -?
don't have second thoughts. blind and crippled i would only slow you down. give him time to figure out what you're doing. just leave me my staff.
ripley, i know. good luck.
now the seer can only see what god wants him to. forty years on a planet of monks and i've finally found religion.
john? ripley?
well come then. i haven't got forever.