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A. K. A. The Alien
Lindsay Tomlinson
Copyright 2014 Lindsay Tomlinson
License Notes
The right of Lindsay Tomlinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
cover copyright: ermess - Fotolia.com
DIAMOND FLOOR
13
Table of Contents
1.1. Only slightly dead
1.2. Blah-blah-blah
1.3. How to get into a hive
1.4. This is harder than it looks
1.5. The good fortune ship
1.6. Sitting at the Captain’s table
1.7. You may call me God
1.8. Agreeing to the Agreement
1.9. The playing of bumpikins
1.10. You do not play hide-and-seek with dead people
1.11. In search of a bed
1.12. Weary-boned
1.13. Eyes are not as easy to you would think
1.14. The John of Dublin
1.15. How to tell the Captain you’ve injured the alien
1.16. The coloured crayon masterpiece
1.17. The colour of names
1.18. The new Shue
1.19. The need for rivets
1.20. The sound of movement
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1.1. Only slightly dead
So it turns out the things in the thingy were organics. I was playing with the leftovers of a broken asteroid, knocking pieces together to watch them shatter, when I spotted it: a non-natural object, a thingy, fat and smooth and small. Only by the time I noticed it one of the rocks had crashed into it and ripped it open down one side, and the organics had spilled out. They looked to be different shapes, rod-like or X-shaped or bent, but when I had a closer look they were really all the same, some form of bipedal mammal, in different poses. Presumably intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to have made a mobile hive. I tried pushing one or two back into the hive but they just drifted out again.
Other members of the Fellowship have had dealings with organics, I knew, but so far I had never bothered. I looked again at the organics and their hive, and as far as I could tell they did not have the look of any of the organics belonging to the other Fellows, so it appeared I had been given the chance to have some organics all of my own to investigate. It was therefore a bit of a shame they were all slightly dead.
And then I saw the second artificial hive drawing close to the wreck of the first.
1.2. Blah-blah-blah
I wanted to have a closer look at the organics. The live ones. I entered the new hive, picked one of the first organics I spotted and made a copy of her from the dust of the broken rocks around the ship, from every individual strand of the brown fluff on her head to the small tumour on one of her internal organs. It was a perfect copy. Even I was impressed. I picked a spot further down the passage and slipped back into the hive, and after only a few attempts perfected walking the organic correctly. And then I set off. I was on my way to their data-source, but I was going to have a little look round as I went.
All went well. At first. An organic had to help me when I stumbled slightly while I was trying to get the one leg/other leg thing right, and she tried to communicate with me after she did so. I left her behind, but others tried to communicate with me instead. Then a different organic stopped me and also started blah-blah-blahing. This one pointed to a strap on his wrist while he talked and did not seem happy. When he started pointing back the way I had come I walked away from him, but this one followed me. Other organics stopped to watch, and there was yet more talking, both between them and directed towards me. I waited a while to see if they would all just go away, but then they produced the woman I had copied and stood her in front of me.
The blahing got worse. The woman kept peering at me closely, and the chemicals coming off her suggested astonishment and unease, so I had a quick look at all the other organics gathered round us. They all looked pretty much the same to me, but it seemed there were no two exact duplicates, and this was what was exciting them. They didn’t like the fact that I looked exactly the same as the woman.
The blahing was boring, so I brushed past two of the on-lookers, rounded the corner into a secondary passage and left the ship before any of the others could react.
Exact duplicates, it appeared, were out.
1.3. How to get into a hive
For my second attempt to explore the hive, I picked one of the dead organics from the wrecked hive. I chose one of the outer ones, away from the baby-hive the organics had sent out to look over the damaged hive, and nudged the body out of sight behind a large piece of rock in the debris field well away from the others, where it would not be found for a while. There was going to be no chance of coming face to face with a duplicate this time.
This organic was a male, and by the time I had checked that it really should have two hands, and I had created one that imitated the surviving hand, only in mirror, I was even more pleased with it than with my first attempt at making an organic. Even better, when I started walking, I found I had mastered walking and breathing at the same time. This time I chose a different part of the hive for my visit, a passageway with far fewer organics walking up and down it.
And again it all started well. And again it went downhill fast. I had walked most successfully down two separate passageways and was contemplating looking into some of the boxes that lined the passageways when a female organic came out of one of them and stopped short on seeing me.
Her mouth made a perfect O, and a noise came out of it unlike any of the blah-blahing of my previous encounters. The chemicals coming off her suggested very strong disbelief and very intense pleasure so I tried to move on past her, but once again all the blah-blah-blahing started up. These organics were rather tediously keen on communicating with each other. The female held out first one hand towards me and then the other, and finally wrapped both arms around me. The chemicals suggested happiness, but just in case I was reading them wrong and she was planning to attack me, I pushed her away.
I had only intended to move her out of the way, but I misjudged things and she ended up on the floor. Her mouth went O again, only this time the chemicals were fear and pain, and the noise she made was a new sound altogether. It was enough to make more of the organics come running, and after a while there was a high-pitched wailing that filled the whole hive. I did wonder briefly if this could possibly be some form of greeting ritual, but had to conclude it was more likely to be a warning. It certainly got the organics all stirred up. I could see where this was leading.
I left the hive. Again.
1.4. This is harder than it looks
For my third attempt I decided I would make a composite organic. I kept the framework of the male organic I had already made, but I carried out a survey of all the other organics in the hive and copied elements from fifteen of them. I analysed the acceptable ranges of size, shape and colour of every element of their bodies, and created an organic that could not be confused with any of the organics, dead or alive, from either of the two hives, but which still had features that were within acceptable parameters of the set. The resulting organic needed a bit of squishing around and prodding into a final shape, but eventually I had a usable body.
I checked one last time to make sure I had not made any beginner’s mistakes like different coloured eyes or three lungs or six digits on the feet. It had one head, two arms, two legs, a hole in one of its teeth, and a line of damaged skin on one knee. It had a perfectly average skin tone, the most common shade of hair and the most neutral shade of brown irises. I was going to blend in perfectly.
I picked yet another part of the hive fo
r my entry point. This time I was confident of success. I was just another unique organic going about its business in the hive.
I did not even get half way down the first corridor.
It seemed that the organics were actively looking out for me. The ones I saw were all looking much more closely at their fellow organics than they had before, and it did not take long before one of them looked at me and then called out a warning to the others. The hive-wide wailing started up again, and soon there were thirteen other organics in the corridor with me, blah-blah-blahing and pointing black artefacts at me.
This time I decided to stay around. I gathered, eventually, they wanted me to move off down the corridor with them, and I happily obliged. They did not take me to their data-source, as I had hoped, but instead they put me into one of the little boxes, and left me there.
I waited for a while to see what would happen next, but although at least this time the blah-blah-blah business was going on outside the box, it was still all remarkably boring. The
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