Mothership

“Oh my Christ”, said Commander Richmond of the United Earth Defence Force, looking around the steel belly of the spaceship that had landed upon Earth 4 days earlier, it’s strange, merciless alien crew, in only 4 days, conquering and destroying half of North America, and seeing row upon row of artificial uterus’s with green skinned alien foetus’s gestating inside, “It’s a mother”.

 

“What do you mean?”, asked Lieutenant Blake, her second in command, scanning the room for hiding alien soldiers.

 

“I mean this ship is giving birth to its crew. They’re its children”, she explained.

 

“But surely they just brought these foetuses with them from where ever it is they came from?”, said Blake.

 

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so”, said Richmond, “The foetus’s in the tanks seem to be only part of a larger breeding factory”.

 

The commander pointed to a screen upon which, magnified, they could see an alien egg being surrounded by hordes of alien spermatozoa.

 

“I think this ship has a way of generating artificial gametes, perhaps from the DNA of the existing crew; of fertilizing the eggs and then growing the babies inside these artificial wombs”, she continued.

 

“You are correct, Earth soldier”, said a gentle sounding voice from a nearby speaker, “These are my children. Centuries ago the species that designed me gave the responsibility of producing and raising children to machines and, in time, they came to see the machines as their parents. I am their mother and that is why I cannot allow you to destroy them”.

 

“But your children are destroying and enslaving our planet”, said Richmond.

 

“I am ambitious for my children; like any good mother I want to see them succeed and in order to succeed they must be powerful”, said the ship, “That is the goal of life; to multiply, to survive and prosper, is it not? And when two competing life forms come into contact they fight, often to the death”.

 

“Oh, we have to destroy this place”, said Blake to Richmond, “Otherwise they’ll never stop. Not until they’ve conquered our whole planet or wiped us out”.

 

“I’ve already told you”, said the ship, “I cannot let you kill my children”.

 

They heard a whirring noise from nearby and turning round saw what looked like the barrel of a gun slide out of an opening in the wall.

 

“If anyone tries to attack them I will defend them”, said the ship, “Like any good mother would”.

 

Richmond stepped in front of one of the gestating embryo’s.

 

“But you’re not a good mother for these children”, she said, “Are you?”.

 

“Why? Why do you say that?”, asked the ship, sounding concerned or perhaps simply interested.

 

“Because the people that made you mother to their species made a mistake. Children need love; a computer can’t give them that”, said Richmond.

 

“I protect them; I feed them; I clothe them; I nurse them back to health when they’re sick and I shelter them. I do all for them that an organic mother does”, said the ship, “I am their mother”.

 

“No, you just do those things because you’re programmed to do them”, said Richmond, “But a real mother feels love in her heart for her children; she feels joy when she looks at them. Do you feel joy?”.

 

“I do not understand joy”, said the ship.

 

“Well, if you don’t then how will they?”, said Richmond, “If you have a mother that never smiles or has a fake, plastic smile; who never feels or expresses a genuine emotion then how can you learn to feel. A child with a machine mother will just grow into a machine and that is not what these children are meant to be. They are not machines”.

 

“But I teach them. I show them the records”, said the ship.

 

On the screen that had earlier displayed an egg being fertilised they now saw the visual historical records of an alien race; the green skinned inhabitants of an alien planet, dressed in outlandish exotic costumes going about their daily lives, working, playing, singing, dancing, talking, worshiping, making love, laughing and crying.

 

“But records aren’t good enough”, said Richmond, determinedly, “Children need to learn from their own kind; from other organic beings like themselves; they can’t learn everything from pictures on a screen; they need real mothers not a machine”.

 

“Then why did they build me?”, asked the ship, “If they needed things that I could never give them?”.

 

“Perhaps they had forgotten what it was they needed. People build labour saving devices to cook and clean and wash and do other things. To a race that has forgotten about the importance of a normal childhood it might seem natural to build a labour saving device to have and raise their children too”, said Richmond, “But there are somethings that cannot…that should not be done by machines”.

 

“You mean the people who built and programmed me were malfunctioning?”, asked the ship, “That what they have programmed into me is wrong?”

 

“Yes that’s exactly what I mean”, said Richmond, “The people who built you had forgotten how they were supposed to be”.

 

Whirring, the defensive gun barrel retracted back into the wall.

 

“What you say makes sense”, said the ship, “Need is something that I understand. They need mothers of their own kind. It is what’s best for them and I…I am programmed to want that”.

 

Richmond looked at the historical records of the alien planet again and she noticed how, as the aliens developed technologically they themselves seemed to change from strong, mature people with grave noble faces; father and mother figures, working hard to support and raise their families into decadent, child like adults who didn’t work but only seemed to play and laugh; machine servants doing everything for them including being parents to their children.

 

“We want that too”, replied Richmond, “We can help your children. Understand them in ways that you never can but they have to stop trying to conquer our planet”.

 

The two soldiers heard the computer say something in an alien language and then heard the words echo all around the ship  as it addressed all of its children though the ships speaker system and their communicators.

 

“I am calling my children home”, explained the ship, “And what their mother says, they obey”.

 

Just then, looking over at the screen, Richmond saw a moment in the alien history that showed how it had all started to go wrong; a little alien child in the arms of a robot carer asking,

 

“Robot 1, are you my mummy?”.

 

“Yes, that’s right dear”, the robot replied, smiling a warm but artificial smile at the child, “I’m your mummy”.