I’m usually very solid in my support for the concept that Alien 3 canonically doesn’t exist.
However. Without Alien 3, Australian speculative fiction writer T.R. Napper would not have had the opportunity to write his Bishop novel exactly the way it is.
* * *
“Do me a favor. Disconnect me. I could be reworked, but I’ll never be top of the line again. I’d rather be nothing.”
Ellen Ripley sat nearby. Her shaved head gleamed in the harsh light of the lamp. A thin film of sweat coated her face, but she was still, watchful. She looked away, thinking. His vision was blurred from the damage, and it was hard to focus. But her decision didn’t take long.
“Sure.” She smiled at him, just briefly. First time since she reactivated him.
“Do it for me, Ripley.”
She looked at him for a few moments longer. He tried to read that final look, cherish it, but he couldn’t focus—
There was a flash of light, then a moment, a singular moment, held in the air, and finally he could see that single frame, that unmoving image, clearly. Ripley. She wasn’t much for sentiment, as far as humans went, but he was sure he could read a softness in her eyes. She was a friend, he hoped, and she was the last. All the others, gone.
And she, too, was going to die.
He was not used to lying, and so was bad at it, but lie to Ripley he did, so she would do it. So she would end his torment. A strange sensation came over him in those last moments, a quiet pain in his core. He had felt it when his squad had been wiped out, and later, after the crash, when even Newt and Hicks were gone. What was this ache? Was this—”
Aliens: Bishop (2023) T.R. Napper
* * *
Yes, I am reading it again. And yes, I am leaking from my eyeballs. Again.
