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SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION VESSEL: PROMETHEUS
CREW: 17
DATE: DECEMBER 21, 2093
DISTANCE FROM EARTH: 3.27 X 10¹⁴ KM
DESTINATION: UNDISCLOSED
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My eyes snapped open as I gasped for air, my chest rising and falling rapidly, like I was choking. The muscles in my abdomen tensed as I blinked the cryostatic fluid out of my eyes, I sat up so I wouldn't choke on my own vomit.
I barely noticed someone draping a blanket around my shoulders until they spoke.
"Try to relax, Doctor Bishop, my name's David. Your mind and body are in a state of shock as a result of the statis."
I barely understood what 'David' was saying. I wasn't sure if that's because it felt like my brain had turned into jello or because of his silly english accent. The way he pronounced stasis made it sound like he had a lisp. If he hadn't pronounced every other word perfectly I would've thought he did. It was a very nice voice to wake up to.
I tried to speak, ask what the hell was going on, say hello, anything. But all that came out was a sort of groan as I tried not to puke again.
"It's alright, it's perfectly normal." David continued to reassure me.
I looked up at David through my brow, not wanting to make my nausea worse by moving my head, then down at the hand resting on my shoulder.
He was a very pretty man, blonde and striking blue eyes. The name David suited him, the glow from the cryodeck reflected off his skin like one of Michelangelo's marble statues.
Not exactly sure what I was doing but letting myself do it anyway, I slowly turned his hand over in mine so his palm faced me.
I smiled at his fingerprints, he had the Weyland corporation logo printed into his skin.
I looked up to meet his eyes, finally able to produce the words "Hello, David."
-
"Drink plenty of water."
"Drink plenty of fluids."
"Hydration aids muscle mass."
The ship's computer quickly became background noise, blending in with the sounds of shuffled feet standing in line for food. I added a cup of white liquid to my food tray before finding a table to sit down at. I didn't have much of an appetite despite not eating in two years. Regardless, I shoveled soup into my mouth, it was warm and comforting like the clothes David brought me back in cryodeck.
My hair was still slightly damp from the cryofluid, it felt like I had just gotten out of the shower which, surprisingly, none of us needed to take. The cryofluid was meant to keep us sterile for as long as we needed to be in hypersleep.
I was surprised to see someone sit down on the chair across from me, he wore a jacket with the Weyland corporation logo on it, no nametag.
"Doctor Bishop?"
"Sorry?" I looked back at him, still having no clue who this guy is. It felt like I should, like running into a childhood friend whose name you never bothered to memorize.
"Charlie Holloway, I'm one of the lead scientists on this mission." He offered me his hand.
I shook it. "Oh, right. They didn't give us any information on who we'd be working with, sorry." I attempted a smile as I put my hand back on the table, wrapping it around my glass to give it something to do.
"Yeah- You're the best in the synthetic engineering field- Well, almost the best." He emphasized the end of his sentence by tilting his head.
"That's…because 'the best' use their time to make models of themselves." I paused, furrowing my brow. "Ms. Vickers wanted someone who hadn't put their face on an android. I work on neural nets and biomechanics, not my own ego." I rubbed my eyes to wake myself up, running my hand over my face.
"Right, so you're just a handyman."
I raised my glass as if to say cheers before taking a drink from it. It was sweet.
Holloway laughed, leaning back in his seat. There was a short pause as he sighed, looking around briefly before he put his hands down on the table, using them to push himself up from his chair. "Well, it was nice to meet you."
"Yeah, you too-" He had already turned around by the time I looked back up. I reached for my glass as he walked away, taking another sip of God knows what. It looked a little like a synthetic's diagnostic fluid.
By the time I finished eating everyone had started cleaning off their trays to head to the gym for mission briefing. I followed suit, thankful that I was much more lucid than I was before breakfast as I trailed behind my crewmates.
David led us down a series of three hallways, after a while we entered a large room with treadmills and other workout equipment lined up against the nearest wall. Yellow paint outlined a basketball court along the gym floor.
David moved to stand at the further side of the gym next to a crowd of chairs lined up in two small isles. He was looking at a handheld screen in his hands as he ushered people to their seats.
"David!" I sprinted to catch up to him, I planned on asking him about the ship's engineering as I slowed to a walk. I really wanted to talk to him about his own mechanics but it seemed too intrusive for a first conversation, too personal.
"Hello, Doctor Bishop." He smiled at me before motioning at one of the chairs.
"I- Thank you." I smiled back at him before sitting behind a man wearing a pair of clear framed glasses. Wrong time, I'll have to talk to him when he's not busy.
Once everyone had found their seats the woman I knew to be Meredith Vickers walked in front of the crowd of chairs. I recognized her from three years ago when she hired me, although it seemed much sooner than that.
"Good morning. For those of you I hired personally," She paused, looking at Doctors Holloway and Shaw, only briefly glancing towards me. "It's nice to see you again. For the rest of you, I am Meredith Vickers and it's my job to make sure you do yours…Okay then, on with the show."
A small series of beeps and boops came from the screen David was holding before a hologram of the Weyland corporation logo appeared in the middle of the room, lighting up the gym. A disembodied voice announced: "Weyland Corporation, building better worlds." The logo disappeared, replaced by an image of an old man with a cane, standing in front of a wall entirely made up of glass. An earth construction site in the background.
The man walked forward, speaking as he moved. A small dog ran alongside him.
"Hello friends, my name is Peter Weyland. I am your employer. I am recording this 22, June, 2091. If you're watching it, you have reached your destination. And I am long dead. May I rest in peace.-
He paused like a bad comedian awkwardly waiting for the crowd to laugh.
"-There's a man sitting with you today, his name is David-"
Surely enough there was, David was sitting slightly ahead of me to my right. The hologram lit up his face to where I could see his expression.
"-He is the closest thing to a son I will ever have."
I could barely see David smile.
"Unfortunately he is not human, he will never grow old, and he will never die. Yet he is unable to appreciate these remarkable gifts, for that would require the one thing that David will never have-"
Pause for dramatic effect.
"-A soul."
For as long as I kept David in the corner of my eye, he didn't seem to stop smiling until then. As soon as Weyland brought up something he lacked it seemed to bother him, not his humanity but his soul. As if he was inferior because of it.
'Unfortunately'. What an odd choice of words.
"I have spent my entire lifetime contemplating these questions-
'Where do we come from?'
'What is our purpose?'
'What happens when we die?'
-And I have finally found two people who have convinced me they are on the verge of answering them. Doctors Holloway and Shaw, if you would please stand."
Two doctors infront of me stood. I recognized Holloway from the cafeteria, he was standing next to a shorter, red headed woman who I assumed was Doctor Shaw. I was vaguely familiar with her work on ancient civilizations but I had never seen her face before.
"As far as you're concerned they're both in charge- The Titan, Prometheus, wanted to give mankind equal footing with the gods, for that he was cast from Olympus. Well, my friends, the time has finally come for his return. Doctors, please." Weyland's hologram motioned for them to come forward.
"The floor is yours." Weyland disappeared along with the rest of the hologram, leaving Holloway and Shaw standing by themselves in the center of the gymnasium.
Holloway looked in between the fading hologram and Shaw, looking a bit awkward. "Okay…Uh, wow, alright never had to follow a ghost before…Okay, let me show why you guys are here. "
Holloway turned around, crouching down to place a small metal object on the floor, tapping in a sequence before stepping back, letting it illuminate the room once again with another hologram.
"These are images of archaeological digs, from all over the Earth. That's Egyptian, Mayan, Sumerian, Babylonian, that's Hawaiian there at the end, and Mesopotamian." He pointed at a series of different painted rocks projected into the air, some looked like cave paintings, others looked like stone tablets, the all bore a similar image.
"This one here is our most recent discovery." He pointed towards the one in the middle. "It's a 35,000 year old cave painting from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. These are ancient civilizations that were separated by centuries, they shared no contact with one another, and yet…"
He tapped the hologram with both hands, bringing them together as the images piled on top of each other.
"The same pictogram showing men worshiping giant beings pointing to the stars was discovered at every last one of them."
I glanced back at David out of curiosity, he hadn't moved, hands still balanced on his knees, his feet resting on the bar that supported his chair. The light from the hologram bounced off his face, highlighting his cheekbones.
A galaxy of stars floating around the room brought my attention back to the display.
"The only galactic system that matched" Holloway continued. "was so far from earth that there's no way that these primitive ancient civilizations could have possibly known about it. But it just so happens that, that system-" Holloway tapped the hologram again, making it zoom in on a singular star. "-Has a sun. A lot like ours. And based on our long range scans, there seems to be a planet." He tapped it once more as the hologram zoomed out to show a small solar system "Just one planet with a moon capable of sustaining life- And we arrived there this morning."
After a short pause a guy to my right spoke, I think I heard someone call him Fifield in the cafeteria, although I wasn't sure.
"So, you're saying we're here because of a map, you two kids found in a cave, is that right?"
"No-"
"-Yeah…Um." Doctor Shaw and Holloway tried to reply at the same time.
"-No, not a map, an invitation."
"From whom?"
Doctor Shaw looked around the room before smiling slightly. "We call them engineers."
"Engineers? Do you mind, um, tellin' us what they engineered?" Fifield asked.
"...They engineered us."