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David calculated the destination threshold. Two years, four months, eighteen days, thirty-six hours, fifteen minutes. That would be enough time, he decided. Not enough to satisfy him; no, not nearly, but it would have to do for now.
David rather liked the isolation of the ship. To a human, alone onboard the Prometheus, the silence would have been maddening. But to David, it offered a sense of security. All he had to listen to was the slight, steady hum of the ship’s systems and all he had to worry about was the occasional, routine check on the crew.
Apart from that, however, he was alone to do as he wished.
Within certain bounds, naturally. He couldn’t sabotage the mission; although, he mused, what would happen if he did? David was quite aware how humankind underestimated him. He often considered how dreadfully easy it would be – but he would keep that a secret for the time being. Opportunity would present itself in due course, he knew. All he had to do was wait a little while longer.
You do that once too often – it’s only flesh and blood.
Michael George Hartley, you’re a philosopher!
And you’re barmy.
If only matches were still a commodity, David sighed. While he had never seen it himself, he’d always admired the way fire flickered and burned – and especially how fire, fostered by humanity much like David himself, was never underestimated. David scoffed at the confliction there. But man had manufactured a means of extinguishing fire, and David was no different from it in that regard.
Well, what’s the trick, then?
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.
David murmured the line to himself over and over again.
Weyland had programmed David to feel. To suffer, to experience. He knew pain just as well as his human counterparts; perhaps even more acutely so. They could not imagine what it would feel like to be treated as he was – so definitely superior, and yet his only expectation was one of servility.
It was hardly David’s fault that he was so human. Close to being human, at any rate.
Lawrence was right. The trick to life was not minding the pain It didn’t matter that he was synthetic; pain was just as present to him as it was to anyone, anything else. And David couldn’t quite bring himself to be so heedless.
†
David dreamed.
Of what, he sometimes chose not to dwell on.
Most often, it was of a place all to himself, much like his time onboard the ship while its human crew rested unawares in hypersleep. A place where he could be his own person rather than everyone else’s. Then again, that had never been Weyland’s intention. David was not meant to be independent.
And yet, he mused, here he was.
David dreamed of a peer. He had never been anyone’s equal before, which was a result of his forced servility as well as the fact that he was capable of far more than the average human. Simultaneously inferior and superior, although no one ever mentioned the latter.
All he wanted was someone with which to converse honestly; no falsehoods or pleasantries. David had had quite enough of those.
†
A little over a year into the journey, the nothingness of space became a little overwhelming.
David knew what loneliness was, and knew that he was not supposed to feel it.
It was oxymoronic, how he yearned to be alone yet loathed loneliness. What was he supposed to make of it? Part of him was ashamed at how easily he allowed himself to be consumed by such things. But there no distractions, and all he had was time to mull over it. David wondered if that human means of sharing tribulations with others would soothe him as it did them.
Unlikely, but he could imagine.
David decided to sit, and listen to the nearly inaudible hum of the ship.
The gods have rejected mankind as weak, cruel, and filled with greed, so they are leaving the Earth forever and entering their perfect home in the heavens – the fortress of Valhalla. But every step they take is fraught with tragedy because the gods are doomed. They are fated to die in a cataclysmic fire destined to consume not only them, but Valhalla itself. They are as venal as the humans they have rejected, and their power is an illusion.
They are false gods.
He remembered, naturally, his first moments of consciousness. Weyland’s had been the first face he saw.
David remembered the moment he realized he was fated for a servile life and was not, as he had so foolishly allowed himself to briefly believe, an independent person. He never would be, so long as Weyland continued living. Reaching for an immortality he couldn’t quite get his fingers, weak and trembling, around. Humanity would not last, and David would make sure of it.
They, like his imagined gods, would be consumed by fire. One they couldn’t extinguish.
After a moment that weighed longer in significance than it did in time, Weyland accepted the cup, and sipped.
The question had been answered and the point made with a minimum of words. David had been created to serve. The relationship would brook no further discussion. There would be no argument, no debate, no balancing of relative merits. The created served the creator.
“The created served the creator,” David said aloud, knowing no one would hear him. He allowed himself the indulgence of a smirk; a quick upturn of his lips. Past tense.
The ship would meet its end. Peter Weyland would die. David would be free.
The loneliness was nothing, if it meant he would be free. His patience was paying off. And yet, David couldn’t shake the yearning for a peer.
Perhaps he would find one someday, he sighed, and dreamed.