Francesco Mazzotta - Cellular Activity

The fireball and shock wave caused by the explosion of the incendiary mixture hits the creature, wrapping and throwing it to the ground a few meters away. At the same moment the tentacle that has almost reached Macready’s face retracts, pulled away by the rapid movement of the creature on whose foot it is attached.

Macready keeps watching the thing that for a few moments had taken on the appearance of his brother, writhing in the flames. The monster lets out a terrifying roar that seems to resonate in a cavity of the earth, while the Major moves away running.

Other tentacles burst out from the sand, leaning in his direction, but they are short-lived. Another burst of Ironside hits the canister abandoned by Macready few moments before. The explosion forms a second burning cloud, which expands quickly reaching the first. The sand is burning, seething, while other tentacles struggle in the flames, whipping the air.

The horrendous groans issued by the flaming creature slowly become silent.

It stops squirming, almost simultaneously.

Slender black smoke plumes mark the places where the creatures are burning.

Macready, Moore and Ironside are under an open hangar. The massive roof of the structure protects them from the sun nearing the zenith.

The three people take stock of the situation, preparing for the arrival of rescue teams.

Macready thanks the other two for saving his life. Ironside barely nods.

“Why did you hesitate?”, Moore asks. The woman watched from a distance the last transformation of the creature. She could not see the details, but the imitation seemed to resemble the older man in the picture she had found in the Major’s room.

Macready’s gaze moves back, as if to look at his own memories with his mind’s eye. “I had a brother. He was a very tough guy. One of the few to come back in one piece from Vietnam, at least physically. He raised me, and I must thank his stubbornness if I wear this uniform now. He was on duty at that damn American outpost in Antarctica, 1982.”

The man remains silent for a moment, then he goes on: “It was right before my eyes, I saw it forming, I knew it was one of those monsters, and yet… When he opened his eyes and looked at me… His look, the way he spoke and smiled… It was him, he was my brother. I felt his presence, it was not a simple imitation.”

“Ivanov said something about…”, Ironside intervenes after a few moments of silence.

“Yes”, Moore goes on. “He said that despite years and years of studies, they had not been able to determine whether the imitations were completely unaware of being so, or it was just a perfect acting by the creature.”

“I’m afraid we’ll never know”, Ironside adds.

“Not necessarily”, Moore.

The two men raise their eyes, watching her uncertain.

“The test with the electricity has failed…”, she continues the scientist, “…and the three of us have not been in sight of each other for all the time. We can’t be entirely sure that all the three of us are humans.”

The woman waits, allowing time for the two to assimilate her words. The two men take one step backwards.

“We know that the creature is treacherous and clever at hiding. It has withstood the test with fire and with electricity and it has proved its capacity to sacrifice a part of itself to survive. The three of us fought to destroy it, but we can’t rule out that one of us is pretending.”

“If we were all three of the creatures we wouldn’t cooperate to eliminate it, and if two of us were of those beings, they would have already attacked the third. This means that one thing is certain: two of us are definitely human”, Ironside exclaims.

“We can’t be sure of anything”, replies the woman. “Not until I can do sure testing of our blood in a proper laboratory.”

“We could use battery acid, as you said before”, proposes Macready.

“The creature has learned to resist fire and electricity, it can’t be ruled out for certain whether it has learned to resist the attack of acids or not”, she says.

“Wait”, Macready intervenes. “If you were one of those monsters, you could have infected me earlier when I’ve practiced artificial respiration, but I am sure of being human, so you have to be too.”

“And if you two were replicas, you would have attacked me”, Ironside’s conclusion. “I think we can rule out the possibility that one of us is playing, right?”

“Unfortunately it isn’t so simple”, Moore adds. “If imitations aren’t aware of being such, none of us can be certain to be human, no matter how sure about that. The only thing we can do is to stay in sight of each other and tell the truth to the rescue team. Hopefully they will handle the situation better than we did.”

The three stay silent for long moments, each lost in their own thoughts. Moore speaks first, giving voice to their thoughts. “There are things of which Ivanov spoke to me. At first I thought he had invented it all, but you have also seen that in the end he was not lying when he talked about the metamorphic organism. We must think about it, work on it, but right now I wouldn’t rule out that the rest of his story might be true.”

“Why? What else did he say?”, Ironside asks curiously. Macready just contracts his lips in a grimace.

“He talked about expeditions to Antarctica, the discovery of vestiges of civilization so remote that make you dizzy. Maybe we’ll talk about this. What now matters is another aspect. According to him the creature was not from outer space, or at least not from the extraterrestrial aircraft mentioned in the story of the woman who was found frozen to death. Ivanov was convinced that these beings dwelled deep underground in Antarctica, under the blanket of ice.”

“Are you saying that there may be other creatures like that?”, Macready asks.

“It’s a possibility”, she replies. “According to Ivanov, the genesis of these beings dates back to very distant times, when our planet was young and today’s Antarctica was a continent with a mild and lush climate. If that were the case – and I speak in the conditional because everything is yet to be proven – if they wanted to, they could infect the entire planet and any animal species would no longer exist.”

“Why didn’t they do this then?”, Ironside asks.

“Who knows. Ivanov was convinced that these creatures had developed intelligence and knowledge far superior than those of humans. Maybe they realized that the total destruction of all forms of animal life could also mark their end. You know… if you eat everything you just remain with nothing, and eventually you die of starvation. However, now that I think about it, when I was studying at the university I read of an inexplicable phenomenon. At different times and in different parts of the world there are stories or other types of recordings – also relatively recent – of mysterious mass disappearances. In some cases entire villages have disappeared, or the human and animal populations of remote islands vanished without leaving traces. Sometimes the fish suddenly disappeared in a large area of ocean. Some pre-Columbian civilizations disappeared suddenly without a trace.”

“Are you suggesting that all these disappearances might have been caused by occasional visits on the surface by those beings?”, says Macready.

“I’m saying that what we know about this creature could be the tip of a much larger iceberg than what we imagine. It’s impossible to understand what goes through the mind of something that has existed for hundreds of millions of years. The questions of the Norwegian and American camp in Antarctica and what happened here in the desert, for us are shocking tragedies but for those creatures could only be the equivalent of an old woman looking out of the window to see what happens in the street, and then going back to sleep by the fireplace. We don’t know if they have a mind or common intelligence. We know they can communicate in ways that we can’t even imagine. Ivanov believed that they are telepathic and can share information between them about the genetic makeup of similar species, along with memories and experiences of their preys.”