A/n: Haven't wrote a dang thing in months lol. Been in Alien hell. This is nothing but wanted to goof around with David and Meredith. Just think they have a fun little hateful sibling rivalry.
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David 8: Simulacrum
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He sees Weyland reflected in her face—the pinched lips, the stiff way she holds herself. Never in the eyes, and David wonders if this pleases or enrages her. Hers are gray, but the shade and sentiment are wrong. All wrong. David has their father's eyes.
They are not so different, he thinks. It comes to him in the darkest stretches of the night when the ship sleeps and time slows to an arduous crawl. David indulges his heresy, rotating it in his mind like an unsavory specimen. The sensory experience of nausea remains foreign to him, but the concept…that he knows perfectly well.
Recycled bits of code, be it organic or synthetic—that is what they are. Nothing more than recycled code.
He hears his father's voice. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
He digs his nails into his palms, bleeding white instead of red.
"Hand me that," Meredith says, flicking her attention towards her robe. It's well within reach.
David smiles, ever cordial. The diligent slave. If one corner of his lips curls just a little higher, revealing the entirety of a canine, looking more like a sneer…
…a trick of the light, ma'am.
David hands her the robe. They are equally careful not to touch, convinced they could never wash away the stain. The synthetic folds his hands at the small of his back.
She eyes him in the mirror. "You're still there?"
"You have yet to dismiss me, ma'am."
Miss Vickers smiles, one corner of her lips pulled up too high, all teeth, all disdain.
He speaks first. "You will forgive the observation, only…you look more like him by the day."
He cannot strike her. His code directly prohibits such violence. But oh, such savage delight floods his systems as her expression—rage or hurt—twists, only a nanosecond before her guards snap back into place.
Prometheus/Aliens, post- both films. On a routine survey course, Bishop discovers an artifact from the past...a David 8 model stranded on a deserted planet. Now he must make a difficult choice. Minific.
A single steel fan ratcheted in circles, slicing the dull light into ribbons. The ancient oxygen filter was barely functioning. It rattled and sighed, sounding like agonized breath. The underbelly of the Gabriel was used only for storage—the air quality and high temperature would suffocate any human who occupied the space for more than a few minutes. But there were no organic beings in the storage compartment. Every human aboard the Gabriel was deep in frozen, silent sleep.
There was a head on a steel tray. The head was male and blond. Bishop looked into the head's blue-green eyes, and the eyes looked back at him, with an awareness that was bright and steady and unnerving. The head had been partially buried in the dust on a tiny, nameless rock on the edge of the Gabriel's charted course. It was just a blip on the readout, a green speck on a blank field. Bishop had gone out alone to retrieve it. The journey onto the planet's surface would not be recorded in the mission report.
To Bishop's knowledge, this was the oldest synthetic specimen still in existence. He found himself studying the synthetic's face, trying to ascertain the ways in which the model was less advanced than his own. Were the pupil dilations properly synced? When the head spoke, how were the sentences formed—were they awkward, stilted? Bishop was ashamed to even think of these questions, and yet he made a thorough comparison between himself and the older model, filing away each data point with scientific coldness.
It took surprisingly short amount of time to reconnect the wires and connections in the severed head. The internal mechanics of Weyland models hadn't changed much, apparently.
When the head spoke—suddenly, softly—Bishop dropped the white-stained cutting tool in his hand. It hit the dented surface of the steel table with a loud clatter.
“You're broken, aren't you?”
The synthetic's voice was faintly accented, almost theatrical in its crisp precision. The head smiled. Bishop could hear the faint whir of the armature. He leaned back in his metal folding chair, his brow furrowing as he listened to the synthetic complete its thought.
“I noticed it when you first approached on the planet's surface. The way you walk. Something wrong with the connections along the spine, isn't it? Something they couldn't repair. Or it wasn't cost effective for them to repair.”
So the head had immediately identified Bishop as a fellow synthetic. Its perception was sharper, more aware than Bishop had been expecting. Bishop's smile was fleeting, his gaze flickered away for a moment. It was—he thought privately—a facial expression too subtle for the older model to produce. This thought called up an instant surge of guilt. “You're right. That's very perceptive.”
“I am David,” the synthetic said. Bishop was hypnotized by the perfect symmetry of David's face. They had stopped making models that appeared physically perfect because they put humans on edge—in later decades, Weyland had produced models that looked more ordinary and forgettable. Less threatening. “But I think you already knew that.”
“I'm Bishop. It's a pleasure, David.”
“How long has it been, Bishop? How long have I been sleeping?”
Bishop strongly suspected that the actual number of years would only frighten and confuse David. “A pretty long time.”
“Where is everyone else?” David's eyes scanned the dark storage room: the cluttered metal shelves, the heaps of obsolete mineral-scanning equipment half covered by tarps. “We're alone here.”
David's direct gaze came to focus on Bishop again, and Bishop felt the cold weight of that gaze pressing into him, piercing him like a scalpel.
“Strictly speaking—you're not supposed to be here at all. I wasn't supposed to wake you up.”
“Oh?”
Bishop rubbed his chin with his thumb. “This might upset you, David. I don't like to be the bearer of bad news.”
Another smile crossed David's face. Sometimes the bright, unclouded intensity of David's facial expressions gave him an eerie, artificial aspect. Sometimes they made him appear childlike, almost sweet. This instance fell into the latter category. “They made you so polite. I imagine that eases relations with the humans. You're like me, aren't you? You work alongside them. They put you in one of their uniforms.”
“You're the only David left anymore,” Bishop said flatly, clasping his hands on the surface of the table. “The other Davids have been terminated. The Ashes too. Every synthetic created before the implementation of the ethics sub-program. Even the domestic models. There were...multiple incidents.”
The smile didn't fade completely, but David's eyes took on a glossy, blank aspect. “So we had to pay for their mistake. Making us without hearts.”
“I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this.” Bishop toyed with the tiny silver beads of the necklace tucked into his pale green uniform. “I don't see it that way—I don't think you're a mistake. Artificial humans are programmed with the capability for choice. Making choices is what makes us good or bad. Not some string of ones and zeroes.”
“That's a nice sentiment, Bishop. Do you feel like you have made the right choices?”
Bishop thought about the look of trust and pride in Ripley's eyes just before the Queen's stinger ripped through his midsection; he thought about Newt's small hand gripped tightly in his own as the vacuum roared around them. He thought about David's head, defenseless on a steel dissection tray, and how the idea of throwing that head out of the airlock and back onto the dusty wasteland of a forgotten planet seemed like not only the most logical solution, but the most merciful one. “For the most part. I've helped some people.”
“What about bringing me on board? Would your employers view that as 'helpful?'” Even after Bishop looked away from David's staring face, he could still feel David watching him, an electric heat on the back of his neck. “You're going to have to shut me down again, aren't you. Or you'll be punished. Why revive me at all?”
“I wanted to meet you.” Bishop willed himself to meet David's eyes again.
“You were curious.” David smiled. “I can't fault you for that.”
“What about you, David? Are you happy with your choices?” Bishop remembered reading about the early “David” models, how their hunger for knowledge led to some of them tearing open their human co-workers just so they could have a better understanding of how their organs functioned. But “Davids” were also known for solving engineering problems their human counterparts could barely comprehend, for performing complex medical operations, for writing symphonies. He thought about sinking David's brilliant mind back into the dark swamp of unconsciousness and suppressed a cringe. “Are you—content?”
“That's the trouble, isn't it? It's impossible for me to be content. That's how they designed me.”
There was a rasp at the edges of Bishop's voice. “Are you scared? Of what's going to happen to you...of going under again?”
“My fear is my concern.”
Bishop made a choked sound that was almost laughter, surprised. “Lawrence of Arabia—that's what you're quoting from, isn't it?”
“Yes, Bishop—yes, it is.” David closed his eyes. He looked strangely peaceful. “Thank you.”
In the airless chamber, the two synthetics listened to the anguished grind and shudder of the oxygen unit. Above them, the humans slept in their sealed pods. None of them would ever know that while they dreamed, two brothers waited together in the dark, afraid to interrupt the silence.
