Prometheus: Wheel of Fire

[b]PROMETHEUS – WHEEL OF FIRE[/b] We open with a slow crawl through space over LV-223 but soon the tranquility is broken from the appearance of the engines of a heavily armed space cruiser making its decent. Stellar Mercenary Craft ‘The Heracles’ Crew: 20. Destination: LV-223. Year: 2095. We’re looking up from the surface of LV-223 as the Heracles lands on the surface of LV-223. Steam and mist escape from the hatch as the ramp opens with a hiss. [b]Fade Transition.[/b] The grinding crunch of the rocky surface is heard under boot. We’re closed up on the legs of one soldier in particular but in the background we can see the paced march of others. [b]Fade Transition.[/b] The camera pulls back as it fades in, shaking and almost haphazard, this in conjunction with the HUD and the date giving the impression that the event is being recorded at behest of the Wayland Corporation. From his point of view we can see the debris of the Prometheus and the shattered remains of the alien vessel. All the while the mercenary marines sweep the parameter. The entire scene is dominated by a sense of urgency and professionalism. Whoever these guys are, they’re not here to make friends… [b]End Scene.[/b] [b]Plot Synopsis[/b] The Heracles is staffed by a mercenary company hired by Wayland to arrive and secure LV-223 one year after their arrival. Throughout the course of the film we will discover that Wayland, a man with an unwavering faith, had further long-term plans for LV-223 and, as hinted by the discovery of several crashed F.T.L. (Faster than Light) drones, may have known more than he initially revealed to the crew of the Prometheus. This brings into question specific aspects of the first voyage with certain members of the crew of the Heracles but as they are mercenaries and soldiers. So overall this plays a very minor role in the story but to inform the audience that there may be more going on than it first appeared. As the story progresses, the mercenary company investigate the wreckage of the Engineer’s craft but find very little. However, tensions remain high, with the impression that there is something(s) on the ship with them just beyond the periphery of their senses. During their investigation, there are several instances where members of the mercenary company are spooked and believe there is something in the walls. However, despite blasting holes in the alien space hulk they find no evidence of life. Their investigation of the alien craft ends with the discovery of the canisters that once contained the A0-3959x.91 – 15 pathogen but the canisters appear strewn around from the crash and are empty. There are no sign of the alien worms that first appeared in the first Prometheus film and it should be apparent that this is the brunt-out remains of the a cargo bay from the first film and NOT the chamber with the Head; the fate of which will be revealed later in this synopsis. By this stage in the story there is some growing paranoia and hostility between several members of the company and the dog of the lead character (a low ranking mechanic by the name of Remy Wilk) spots something and make chase. Concerned for the welfare of his beloved pet and companion Remy makes a hasty pursuit and after some cussing is reluctantly joined by the rest of his company. What follows is a rather jostled chase scene through a series of dilapidated tunnels in the alien craft that eventually leads everyone into the chamber with the head. Here too the canisters appear empty and strewn about. The head is cracked and wreathed in shadows and lays half buried in the earth, giving it a far less majestic and far more ominous appearance. The dog is barking at something in the darkness behind the head. Remy goes to investigate but is stopped by the unit’s commander; who roughs him up a little for being careless. The commander and a couple of the other mercenaries stride forward to investigate what the dog is barking at. However, before they can make it out they are stopped dead in their tracks when a couple of their friends find the decaying body of Millburn; significant because his ribs appear to have been burst out of his chest from the inside out! Angry and unwilling to remain with him and his men in an uncomfortable position, the unit’s commander settles the momentary hesitation and quibbling among the mercenaries and orders them to take the body back to the surface so they can get a good look at it in the light and then seizes Punx by the collar and drags him back as he shines the light into the shadows. Revealed in the darkness appears to be a small blonde human girl, curled up and frightened. She is filthy and she appears to have been eating the alien pathogen as some can be seen on her lips and lower face. Of course the crew of the Heracles are at this time unaware of the presence of any pathogen. Cursing and frustrated at the situation (“None of this makes any goddamn sense!”), the commanding officer follows his orders (Secure the population on LV-223) and rescues the young girl. Who is then relocated back to the Heracles where she is clothed and cared for. The young girl appears to be mute and there is no evidence of her records on the Prometheus but she is noted as having an uncanny resemblance to a young Meredith Vickers who it is revealed was sleeping with one of the mercenaries (Jones) in an effort to make her father angry. The two forms a sort of unspoken bond, but it becomes quickly apparent that there is [i]something strange[/i] about the young girl; who is ironically nicknamed “Sunny” after her bleak demeanor. Remy, the most-friendly of the crew tries to befriend her but she hides behind her protector Jones and make it clear (all without ever speaking!) that she wants nothing to do with him. This is only further reinforced by the fact that Punx barks and growls at Sunny constantly. The story then follows Remy as he is stuck doing maintenance on the ship for his carelessness in the alien craft. In this scene we learn that Remy has a bionic hand and arm, after nearly being killed in an industrial accident several years ago. This comes up in casual conversation with an acquaintance below deck and should seem relatively insignificant but will become important later in the story. Meanwhile, Team II lead by the Commander, uncover the wreckage of the downed escape pod and the emergency craft from the end of Prometheus. While investigating they find a number of books scattered about that look like they’ve recently been read, and then find the corpse of the Space Jockey and the Squid Baby. Startled one of the mercenaries torches the scene preventing them from recovering the evidence. While he is being rebuked, another of the mercenaries notice a lot of tiny black (from the pathogen) finger prints have been turning the pages of some of the books and then accidentally stumbles upon the Proto-Xenomorph from the end of the first film. However, after shooting at it we discover that the creature is nothing more than a shell or a husk. Shortly thereafter, they recover the black box and discover that the ship had been set to transmit a message but it appears to have been disabled; the electronics corroded by some sort of acidic substance. Using a little hacking technology, some new wires, and movie magic Team II’s Tech-head is able to replay the message (“Final Report of the vessel Prometheus. The ship and her entire crew are gone. If you are receiving this transmission make no attempt to come to its point of origin. There’s only death here now and I am leaving it behind. It is New Years Day, year of our Lord 2094. My name is Elisabeth Shaw, last survivor of the Prometheus and I am still searching.”). During this transmission the commander notices the fingerprints of what is very likely “Sunny” on the pages of the book and then the shell-like carapace of the Alien and puts the one-and-two together. Then orders Team II back to the Heracles. Outside we see the familiar black hands of the Xenomorph’s scaling the mountainous walls looking down at Team II’s position inside the craft. One perches on the eroded Engineer Head calved into the mountain (as viewed in the first film). Its chitinous tail thrashes around wildly as others of its kind lurk up and cluster around the top of the cliff looking down. Then, like a general barking a silent order its lips peel back revealing its metallic teeth and the creatures swarm down the mountainside. Meanwhile back at the Heracles Jones is having a lucid sex-dream about Meredith Vickers, during which it is expressed that she is thankful that they could be reunited after so long and that her father is dead. Jones is into it at first, but is awakened when he feels Sunny’s hand upon his abdomen. Realizing the young girl is making sexual advanced towards him, Jones kicks back and pushes her away, explaining to her that she can’t do that and is obviously quite unsettled by the experience. Sunny—silent as always—just looks at Jones and cocks her head to one side like a puzzled animal. The scene is broken when alarms go off. Jones grabs his rifle and tells Sunny to stay where it’s safe but does not have a time to get into uniform and quickly makes his way to command station at the head of the Heracles, meeting Remy and a couple of the other soldiers from Team I on the way. When they arrive on the bridge, they look down in horror as the Xenomophs swarm Team II. Several members of Team I insist on going to help but it is obvious there is nothing they could do. It is agreed that they’re going to try route the enemy forces using the ships weapons and try to recover the commander and anyone else they can from Team II. Back at the downed ship, the mercenaries are busy dealing with their Xenomorph attackers. They’re doing considerably well all thing considered but men are dropping left and right. It is a battle that appears hopeless, a plasma grenade might clear out 10 at a time but where one falls two more take their place. It is also here during this battle that they learn about the Xenomorph’s acidic blood—a discovery that costs more than one of the men their lives early in the fray. The battle appears lost, though during the course it is apparent that these mercenaries were no slouches; with more than one taking their attacker(s) with them. By the time the Heracles is powered up and joins the battle nearly everyone is dead and the commander has been overpowered by one of the creatures and is currently impaled by one of the alien's smaller mouth. Seeing the arrival of his crew he drops his firearm, seizes the alien’s ridged crown and delivers a swift kick to the face. The kick impacts with enough force to tear the second mouth out of the creatures head (though it remains imbedded and bleeds acid onto him) and to jump up and grab onto the landing gear of the Heracles. He appears safe at first, but the acid splatter from the creature is eating away at his body in places and he can do nothing but watch the rest of Team II are overrun and devoured by the swarming beasts. As we pull higher we see that there are great rents in the Earth behind the mountains from which these creatures are swarming like ants. What secrets has LV-223 yet to disclose? Aboard the Heracles, Team I are all shocked and bitter, all except the ever doll-like Sunny who just watches the events unfold with cold and calculating eyes. Remy and a couple of the crews survivors (7 in total now) help the commander back aboard the ship (which is somewhat difficult considering it is inflight). He brings with him the Prometheus’s black box but he has sustained massive damage and is on the brink of death. They take him to recovery where the doctor explains that he is fighting but the acid is unlike anything he has encountered before and he cannot save him. We watch the Commander continue to slowly deteriorate as politics aboard the ship and leadership build tension. Until at last, weak and unable to speak, the commander’s struggles to scribble his final words onto a notepad (it simply reads “LILITH.”) before passing away. With the rest of the crew unwilling to assist him, Remy alone searches the computer’s database for any reference of Lilith in the hopes it might be a nearby settlement, space station, or colony. However, he turns up nothing. During his research Sunny and Punx has several more altercations but nothing easily perceived as malicious. The girl merely comes and stands at a distance and watches the dog, which will in turn growl or bark at her until Remy notices her and she runs off. This does however cause Remy and Jones to come to blows, with Remy being beaten rather severely for “not keeping his mutt on a tighter leash.” Feeling isolated and misunderstood as the Heracles drifts in orbit above LV-223 while the crew fights over where to go from here, Remy goes and sits in the commander’s quarters. There he finds a copy of the Judaica Bible by the commander’s bed. Feeling nostalgic over the loss of his friend and mentor, Remy begins flipping through it and accidentally happens upon the name Lilith. His interest piqued, he begins reading feverishly and then going through the commander’s library for anything else he can dig up. During the course of his research he discovers that Lilith was the first wife of Adamu (Adam) who refused to lay with him and instead chose to lay with the serpent (Lucifer). A woman that was like men, but not of men. However, when he tries explaining this to his peers he quickly reminded that it would be wise if he shut his mouth and kept his non-sense dogma to himself. Meanwhile, Jones’ dreams of Meredith Vickers have continued and he his affection for Sunny has started to move from friendly and brotherly to something [i]uncomfortable[/i]. He has not engaged in any acts of pedophilia but his closeness to the young girl is strange to say the least, and may be tied to the strange black substance he has found on his lips a couple of times upon waking. Elsewhere, while Remy was “off in crazy down” chasing ghosts the crew have decided that they’re going to track down the Paradise mentioned by Elizabeth Shaw in data recovered from the Black Box. The location is nearer than a return trip to Earth and (to be perfectly frank) no one is in their right state of mind at this point. Though, few are as far gone as Jones who has started to experience waking dreams of Charlie Holloway who does his best to compel Jones to kill himself and insists “No man should know the mind of god” and warns him of “The Wheel of Fire.” Though obviously deteriorating mentally to the audience, Jones does a good job of keeping it under wraps and is unsuspected by the crew. All the while, he begins spending more and more time with Sunny and has even begun waiting on her where once he expected her to fend for herself and make her own meals like the rest of the crew. The crews charts their course for Paradise and enter stasis. All except Sunny, who emerges from her cryo-pod after the others have entered the sleep; revealing that her some of the circuitry of her pod has suffered the same corrosion encountered earlier by Team II back on LV-223. Sunny roams the cryo-chamber ominously, her fingers tracing along each of the cryo-beds like a curious child until she gets to Punx. She stands before the dog’s cryo-chamber, and the black pathogen begins trickling out of her mouth and down her face. We do not see what happens next, but a considerable amount of time passes because by the time everyone wakes up Sunny has aged and now looks exactly like Meredith Vickers. The crew are somewhat taken aback by Sunny’s new appearance, but she explains that there was a mistake with the cryo-pod and did not know how to awaken the rest of the crew. At which point, they are more taken back by the fact she speaks. She goes on to explain to them that they are nearing Paradise. At which point Remy, while waking up Punx, notices that Jones’ pod is open and he is nowhere to be found. He refrains from inquiring, but notices that Sunny—as a beautiful and emotionally available young women—has the rest of the crew wrapped around her finger. However, his train of thought is quickly broken when Punx (in a completely out of character moment) bites his hand and then recoils and cowers from him. Scolding Punx, he wraps up his hand and then approaches the dog again. It appears frightened and confused, but he cradles it in his arms and holds him until he stops trembling and calms down. Remy loves Punx and Punx loves his master, and each recognizes the other as family so whatever momentarily enmity that was between them quickly melts away and the story pushes forward. On the bridge the crew looks on in wonder at a rift in time and space, a cascading plethora of lights somewhat like the aurora borealis. Sunny explains that what we are seeing are “the gates of heaven; the source from which all life in the cosmos sprang” and comments on its beauty. Entranced, the crew (at least those on the bridge) is awestruck but to make a brief passing commentary. However, when inquired if they will be entering it Sunny chortles and explains that the ship would be destroyed ("Only organic matter can enter or escape the anomaly"). Their destination is a nearby world in the same system which she brings up on the hologram table and shows the crew. “There,” she explains “Our long voyage will come to an end and things will have finally come full circle.” Meanwhile back below decks in the engine room Remy and a couple of his buddies heads have cleared and they are second guessing the plan to resupply on Paradise and are reviewing some of the data recovered from the wreckage of the Prometheus. Remy draws a parallel to the religious symbolism of the Xenomorph mural (as per 38:20 in the Prometheus film) likening it to the Crucifixion. However, his friend says that he thinks that he is just seeing what he wants to see and points to the image behind the creature. Then goes on to explain that it looks more like a puppet for “Whatever the hell that thing is…” The scene is cut-short when Punx senses something in the darkness moving through between the winding tubes and rafters of the engine room. Shutting down the computers and turning their attention up, the repair crew see the bladed tail of a Xenomorph. Punx barks and the men stumble back over their stools in terror as the creature lowers itself into position. The alien-form glistens in the darkness as the dim lights refract of its moist body. Its broad crown resembles that of a queen, but it is flat and taller, and the creature itself is considerably smaller. Before anyone can scream, they are taken over by fear and silence rings out through the chamber. Only to be suddenly broken by a ringing sound as the spur of the Xenomorph’s tail strikes an empty tube. The mens breathing increases as the creature sits perched before them, their eyes wide in terror as with a bristling pop and crack the front of the crown splits and parts with a sickly-wet sound like peeling a lobster. Behind the faceplate is an image somewhat reminiscent of the Newborn Xenomorph from Alien Resurrection. If it is impossible to make the creature's hideous visage resembles Jones, than it should, otherwise it should still bare some form mark or feature distinguishing it as such. A sudden pressure manifests in the heads of the men and causes their noses to bleed and their bodies twist and contort from the pain. Remy begins seeing disjointed images that come to him in sharp flashes. Images of Jones’ transformation at various stages. He screams for mercy and begs for it to stop as the lumbering creature approaches scratching like some sort of alien velociraptor, but the visions continue bombarding him. He tries crawling away and makes some distance while his friends are killed. Punx scurries away from him when he draws near a wall and vanishes into one of the ground level ventilation shafts. Looking back as the creature that was once Jones kills his friends Remy screams “Why?!” The Xenomorph’s long sleek body moves almost cat-like as it tosses away the corpse and slinks closer. Its verbal response is incomprehensible. However, another image invades Remy’s mind forcing him to clutch at his head and rock back against the wall. In this flash sequence we see a number of Xenomorphs huddled over friends (and family as seen in pictures earlier in Jones’ room) devouring their corpses, their chests burst open, their eyes lifeless. As Remy stands there within the nightmare one of the corpses in the pile (a mutual friend) tells him to run as his entrails are scooped out of his carcass. However, before he does that he Remy notices that there is the sound of a music box playing in the distance and notices that same tune has been playing in each of these visions. Snapping back to reality as the monstrous Xenomorph brings its claws down towards him, Remy kicks backwards into the ventilation shaft and keeps crawling backwards on his hands as it thrusts its massive arm down the shaft and tries to grab him (only narrowly missing him!). Thrusting its savage head into the shaft the monster manages to do some damage to the ship and buckle some of the shaft but thankfully for Remy it still cannot get close enough to get a hold of him. Terrified, desperate, and confused the young mechanic crawls hand-over-hand deeper into the ship, trusting Punx to steer him away from the monster and to safety. Back on deck the rest of the crew are manning battle stations under Sunny’s command as an Engineer ship leaves the orbit of the planet and moves to intercept them. Throughout the maneuvers Sunny becomes increasingly agitated, wild, and her teeth have taken on a metal consistency. However, this does not seem to concern the crew many of whom can be seen with biological contamination in their eyes and other unnatural physical blemishes. The Engineer’s ship does not fire, but stations itself in the path of the Heracles and it is soon joined by several others. They hail the crew of the Heracles but Sunny insists it is an Annunaki deception and shuts down the communications. By this point the crew is starting to tremble and shake and take on appearances resembling that of Charlie Holloway when he requested his destruction (their heads mildly elongating, skin consistency changing, etc.). Meanwhile Remy does his best to get to the surface while trying to find a way to kill the Jones Monster. He devises a plan wherein he will rig a power-coil to overload in the atmospheric engines and bombard the Jones Monster with a lethal dose of radiation followed by a blast of plasma from the engine breach just for good measure. However, a careless mishap nearly gets him killed and he only lives because he is saved by Punx last minute. During the battle between the dog and the Jones Monster, the dog is injured “loses control” degenerating into a chimeric monstrosity shown to have the same acidic blood as the Xenomorphs. Although at first there seems to be a kinship between the two creatures and the Jones Monster even pets the creature, when Jones’ turns to dispatch Remy the chimera springs to its former master’s defense and is able to wound it and temporarily drive it off. Unfortunately, during the battle it is mortally wounded. Emotionally devastated, Remy goes to cradle his dying pup but sees what the acid is doing to the floor of the engine room and so, broken-hearted, he reluctantly incinerates Punx by throwing a switch and hitting it with the trap laid for the Jones Monster. Exhausted and emotionally defeated Remy falls back against the wall and sits there waiting to die. Meanwhile back in the control center of the ship there are a number of brownouts and Sunny continues to make passing commentary about manifest destiny and how “you cannot put God in a box.” The Space Jockey ships seem to be taking up a position with what might be misconceived as an occult significance in space around the vessel. The corrupted crew is beginning to shed their skin and mutate, but they still retain a [i]mostly[/i] human shape. Looking down at the dog collar of his old friend with tears in his eyes, Remy notices the kindly face of one of the Engineers speaking in the reflections of the dog tags (but it is silent). Fearing he is staring to lose his mind too, Remy decides that if he is going to die, that he might as well die fighting and makes his way to the war room; a journey that would be significantly easier if he didn’t keep getting nose bleeds and strange psychic flashes of biological landscapes and Sunny. Arriving at the war room, Remy arms himself with a high-power energy rifle, a sling of grenades, and a rather modest suit of high-tech body armor. Locked and loaded, the young mechanic makes his way to the command center but is intercepted again by the Jones Monster. The battle takes place on a large metal bridge in an open room with a number of levels and platforms for shipping and relocating cargo throughout various levels of the ship. Here, the Jones Monster has plenty of places to hide, at one point even crawling directly beneath Remy’s feet, and shows a remarkable amount of cunning by using hit and run tactics to keep Remy off his guard. However, in the end Remy thrusts his bionic arm into the creature’s mouth and takes hold of [i]something in there[/i] so it cannot flee. Immediately after-which, he fills the Jones Monster’s body with hard-point uranium rounds and tosses/drops its broken corpse 30 feet to the floor below. With his bionic arm completely eroded from the acidic residue, Remy, battered and barely clinging to life makes his way to bridge unmolested where he encounters his crew them. He asks them (somewhat rhetorically) what they are and what they are doing. To which Sunny responds that they have become more than human. They are the new genesis. The Annunaki believed that they could create life that was free of the one mother (“God”) while still possessing her strength. They believed foolishly that they could control the wayward children (“Humanity”) but Susan has bought them back to the fold so they can be reunited. Furthermore, she explains that The Mother (“God”) is on that world, awaiting to be released to that she can spread her message of unity across the universe but the Engineers (who she calls Annunaki) have built a cage around her. She explains that it is their responsibility as [i]her children[/i] to free her and to prove humanity has what it takes to survive and will do anything it takes to survive. Remy (at this point knowing Susan's origins as a recombinant DNA being/clone "hatched" from the Annunaki Xenomorph) decides that her explanation of the universe is bunk, and explains that living just to survive is to live without meaning. He explains that it is not weakness to love lesser people(s) or things. That it is not the nature of evolution or god to choose the strongest and that anyone who believes that to be true is lying you. He says, even if the “Mother” is “God” that he rejects her and substitutes his own personal god in per place. He chooses his own path, his own reality, and he must believe in something more (even if he cannot see it or hold it in his hands!). To his credit, he is able to kill most of the mutated crew before he is finally overpowered by Susan. Pinned beneath her against the control panel for the ship, he looks up into her empty black eyes, and tells her simply “I choose MORE” and then runs his hand back across the dashboard. Interestingly, on his way to the self-destruct button he accidentally triggers the radio, which plays a brief music tune from the Voyager Golden Record, before the self-destruct is triggered and the craft explodes. The remaining mutants and Susan gnash their teeth in defiance and have hatred, fear, and terror in their eyes as they are engulfed in flames... but Remy, well, he dies smiling. Maybe in that final moment he actually does see something [i]more[/i] but we will never know. The final scene in the film is Elisabeth Shaw standing side by side with a number of Engineers looking out of their craft as vessel explodes. She turns her eyes down for a moment and then closes her hand around the cross on her neck. [b]The End?[/b] [b]A Note from the Author[/b] To surmise, the story attempts to show the value of life is in living and experiencing it, that there is more to being alive than being the biggest, or the strongest, or having the sharpest teeth. It is an attempt to show that in accepting something greater than ourselves we can break the cycle of savagery and be more than animals. We have free will and we can choose our fate and ultimately, mankind is the master of its own destiny. In this film, Remy (a builder himself) does his best to make a life for himself out of a bad situation. He loses people, finds himself an outsider, and struggles to understand how the mercenary company who he works for can have such a bleak and inhuman view on life and death; and he almost gives up a couple of times but in the end he makes it through and does what he needs to do. It shows that humanity, a construct of the Engineers, contains their potential to be more than atavistic predators. In it we reveal that the Engineers did not create the Xenomorphs but were attempting to create a way of taming them. Creating the pathogen was never a weapon, it was a means of creating hybrids that could be free from the diabolic hive-mind of the Alien Intelligence who guides the Xenomorphs species. In this scenario, I propose the Engineers were not spreading the alien virus to a new world in the prelude of the original film, but giving life to a new world of hybrids that combined the killer instincts of the Xenomorphs with their own genetic makeup. The long-term goal of which was producing a host that would possess wisdom of the Engineers and the strength and keen instincts of the Xenomorphs. A new ally in their war against a vast and alien evil. Furthermore, though originally, mankind was nothing more than an experiment and the Engineers were simply, seeing if there was [i]some way[/i] that they could [i]infect[/i] the Xenomorph with culture, civility, and a sense of ethics or morality divergent from the hives survival instinct. Upon returning to Earth they found that they had already developed music and culture; and not just music and culture, but music and culture that rivaled their own in its elegance; something almost unique in the universe. To make a comparison, this would be akin to sending your dog to learn how to sit and it returning having written the complete works of Shakespeare. Frankly, they were wowed by humanities potential and so chose to spare them. Instead turning their attention towards containing the source (be it a rift, dimensional phenomena, or living planet) so that the Xenomorph “God” cannot further infect our universe. In essence, the Xenormoph species is like an intelligent virus, each of its drones working like a white blood cell allowing it to spread and creep across our universe until it is all that remains. The pathogen (black goo) is harvested from the source of the Xenomorph phenomena and was modified on a generic level. Its intended purpose was to be drank/ingested like we see in the opening film. However, how it affects humans is different to how it affects the Engineers (who have no genetic link to the Xenomorph Intelligence). This is why Charlie Holloway begged to be killed, for in one terrible instant he had seen into the mind of God and could not allow it to take a hold of the crew of the Prometheus and spread itself amidst the stars once more. Ironically, the virus is more effective using humanity as hosts than infecting them directly. This is because by infecting the host, the Alien Intelligence's control is polluted and lessened by the portion of the Engineer’s “humanity” (perhaps a poor choice of words) that remains dormant within the human genome. While simply using them as incubators allows the Xenomorph Intelligence to create mindless puppets that it direct with much more ease. [b]Wheel of Fire[/b] refers to the chain within the human genetic structure that links humanity to the Alien Intelligence. Without which, we wouldn't have a story! It is also a reference to the Prometheus Mythology, you know, because I am a nerd, and I like double meanings. ;) Of course, nothing written here is canon and all of what I mentioned is merely [b]one[/b] possibility. Anyway about it, I hope that you have enjoyed reading! [b]Sincerely,[/b] Liam Gray