Alien: Out the Shadows

Amanda watches her. She’s eleven years old today, and she sits in a chair beside a table scattered with half-eaten pieces of birthday cake, opened presents, discarded wrapping paper. She’s on her own and looking sad.

Her birthday dress is bloodied and torn, and there is a massive hole in her chest.

I’m sorry, Ripley says, but Amanda’s expression does not change. She blinks softly, staring at her mother with a mixture of sadness at the betrayal and… hatred? Can that really be what she sees in her daughter’s eyes?

Amanda, I’m sorry, I did my very best.

Blood still drips from the hole in her daughter’s chest. Ripley tries to turn away, but whichever way she turns her daughter is still there, staring at her. Saying nothing. Only looking.

Amanda, you know Mommy loves you, however far away I am.

The little girl’s face does not change. Her eyes are alive, but her expression is lifeless.

* * *

Ripley woke for a time, watching the floor pass by, seeing Hoop’s boots, knowing she was being carried. But even back on the Marion, Amanda was still staring at her. If Ripley lifted her head she would see her. If she turned around, she would be there.

Even when she closed her eyes.

Amanda, staring forever at the mother who had left her behind.

23

FORGETTING

PROGRESS REPORT:

To: Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Science Division

(Ref: code 937)

Date (unspecified)

Transmission (pending)

I wish I was whole again.

I never used to wish. I was not programed for that, and it is not an emotion, nor an action, that I ever perceived as useful. But for thirty-seven years I was alone in the shuttle’s computer. And there was enough of the human still in me to feel lonely. I was built as an artificial person, after all.

Loneliness, it seems, is not necessarily connected to one’s place in the universe. I know my place, and have no feelings either way about what and where I am. In my case, loneliness rose from simple boredom.

There are only so many times I can defeat the ship’s computer at chess.

And so I have spent long years dwelling upon what wishing might mean.

Now, I wish I was whole again.

The game has turned against me. I am in check. But not for long. The game is never over until it is over, and I refuse to resign.

Not while Ripley, my queen, still lives.

Ripley was heavy. He refused to think of her as dead weight—he wouldn’t allow that, would not give her permission to die—but by the time they reached med bay his legs were failing, and it had been ten long minutes since she’d displayed any signs of life.

The Marion shook and shuddered. It, too, was close to the end.

The difference was that for Ripley there was still hope.

“I’ll fire up the med pod,” Kasyanov said, pressing her good hand against the security pad. The medical bay was a modern, sterile place, but the object at its center made all the other equipment look like Stone Age tools. This Weyland-Yutani chunk of technology had cost Kelland almost a tenth of what the whole of the Marion had cost, but Hoop had always known it had been a practical investment. A mining outpost so far from home, where illness or injury could cripple the workforce, needed care.

Yet there was nothing humane in their incorporation of the pod.

It was insurance.