A Note From the Author:
XENOMORPH (noun): Latin-derived phrase meaning, "alien shape" or "foreign body."
I love science fiction but have very little patience with the question, "is there anyone out there?" Since we've yet to establish any proof that extraterrestrials exist most people seem to fall into one of three camps. The first are the fence sitters, folks like physicist Enrico Fermi who talk about the "Great Silence of the Cosmos," or, as he puts it: "[Since] the apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations should exist why is it that there is no observational evidence to support this theory?" Call it, "I want to believe but show me proof first." Then there are folks like the Greek thinker, Aristotle, or the religious philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, who assert that human beings are alone in all of this wild, hairy existence, fulfilling some sort of vague, "divine programme"-thingy that requires God to be a carbon-based, bipedal life form. Finally, you have Art Bell, but out of respect the less we talk of him, so much the better. None of these groups are very sexy, which might be why astrobiologists and theology students so rarely get laid.
For me a much more interesting question is: "Who was the first person who saw Ridley Scott's 1979 movie 'Alien' and thought, 'I want to have sex with that star creature'?" Because you know somebody did, it's why freaks of the universe rule, "gonna wave my freak flag high." Or, to be more exact, since everything in that film was bloated, Freudian symbolism for cocks and cunts, who was the first person who saw the xenomorph's little mouth ("I wants to play, tooo!") and thought that it would work marvelously as a bio-mechanical dildo? It would take tongue-fucking to a whole new level. I reference Scott's movie simply because I use the term xenomorph to describe the extraterrestrial in my story and would like the reader to know I'm using the broader term here, that this is simply an unknown creature, rather than bastardizing H. R. Giger, in the same way that using the term "E.T." doesn't necessarily mean we're talking about something that looks like a scrotum and flies.
I set the story in 1961 Communist China because most alien invasion stories take place in either NYC or Los Angeles and nothing in-between. You never hear of aliens attempting to conquer the world in places like Finland or Saskatchewan, which I think just shows a lack of imagination on the part of the aliens. Plus, after listening to a CD of modern Chinese folk music, "Ode to the Communist Party: 1921 - 2001" (Dang de Song Ge Te Ji: Yi Jiu Er Yi - Er Lin Lin Yi), it's my firm belief Dr. Funkenstein and the P-Funk Mothership could have landed in Beijing and most locals would have just shrugged their shoulders and said, "ah, more Western decadence."
Hurrah for Western decadence! Cheers!
* * *
I.
Even after Su's first encounter with the xenomorph the family's shop continued to smell like an abattoir, since that was exactly what it was.
For over ten years Su's mother had spent her waking days amongst butchered meat from every animal that could be chopped, cut or diced upon the island of Taiwan: Sika deer, Chinese pangolin, clouded leopard, mountain dog, flying squirrel and even the tiny lesser horseshoe bat, at one time or another, all had hung, suspended from their haunches, in her display window. When her mother would come home at night Su's little world would become saturated with the aromatic stench of primeval blood. The older woman would leave streaks of crimson slime everywhere she went; on the bathroom walls, in the rice bowl, even on the front page of the
People's Daily
featuring the picture of that decadent wastrel, J. F. Kennedy, getting inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. To Su's mother, all that blood and butchery was simply part of the natural way of life. Indeed, 1961 was the best of all years to be alive and to be a Communist Party member, her mother would often say, always adding, unless you are a peasant living on the mainland, then you're probably just dying from the Great Famine.
It was true that Taiwan had many advantages over mainland China at that time; for example, a lack of famine was always considered a good thing; as well as not having any of those feisty re-education camps where villagers would beat college students with sticks until they forgot everything they had learned. Rote memorization, indeed. In comparison, Su and her family were relatively affluent. They lived above their own shop -- her mother and her sister Jia -- in three small rooms that were perpetually saturated with the odor of their livelihood.
When Su was little she had been apprenticed to the trade of butchery and slaughter. She had become a professional meat handler at the age of sixteen and by eighteen knew everything there was to know about cutting short loins and sirloins, fingering flanks and shanks. The day the first spaceship appeared, a burning derelict that, spiraling down out of a gray cloud bank, crashed into Taipei's famous Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, destroying everything in its path, Su was up to her elbows in macaque's viscera, grasping after choice monkey bits. Jia had just returned to the shop, a little out of breath, holding a smoldering, honeycombed clod of metal in her hands, wrapped up in a steaming cloth.
"And what do you have there?" her mother asked, putting down her hack-saw.
"I don't know, it fell out of the sky."
"Out of the sky?"
"Yes, the crash has set the buildings in the Zhongzheng District on fire," Jia explained, mentioning the neighborhood that was once home to all the city's governmental ministries.
"On fire?"
"Yes, didn't you hear that great explosion followed by all those people screaming?"
"Screaming?"
"Yes, um, why did you think I ran out into the street just now?"
