I’m sorry,
Amanda, I’m sorry, I did my very best.
Amanda, you know Mommy loves you, however far away I am.
Ripley woke for a time, watching the floor pass by, seeing Hoop’s boots, knowing she was being carried. But even back on the
Even when she closed her eyes.
Amanda, staring forever at the mother who had left her behind.
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
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
Yet there was nothing humane in their incorporation of the pod.
It was insurance.
