| Aliases: Gyiyg; Giegue Known crimes: Invasion of Earth; Developing emotions First Appearance: Mother (Nintendo, FC, 1990) M.O.: Growth stunter; Musical aficionado; Corrupter of the not-so-innocent |
| Profile by Marc Host? | March 15, 2011 |
“George, I can’t go with you.”
She looked more frail than she ever had before. They both did. When they had arrived, their skin had been fuller, their cheeks round. Now they more resembled the creatures who surrounded them. Their skin remained pink, rather than the steel blue of the beings that glided in and out of their existence, but they had taken on the long, gaunt appearance of their captors. And now, the man’s eyes reached a width that nearly matched theirs.
“Maria, this might be the only chance we have. If we don’t get off this ship tonight, we don’t know if they’re ever going to pass by the Earth again.”
He was panicked; his hands were sweating. And when he managed to pry his eyes away from hers, if only to avoid seeing them well with tears, it was to look at the small thing on her knee, which was looking between them with a gaze that saw nothing and comprehended everything all at once. It knew it was in a place where it could be happy, where it would never be anything else. George had seen the way they interacted with one another every day that he had managed to get into their minds. He knew their relationships, their thoughts, their emotions. These aliens, they didn’t understand things the way humans did.
“I’m his mother. I can’t leave him.”
Her voice nearly broke, and though the thing’s face was as blank as it ever had been, George could sense its pleasure at the wave of emotion it felt from his wife. He felt something he never had before that moment, a flash of murderous intent. The blue steel thing tensed abruptly, and Maria’s knee stopped its motion at the feeling of claws gently prickling the sides of her leg. She shifted her position, lifting the little beast to her chest, and the feeling fled from George for the first and only time. His shoulders slumped with defeat, seconds before they rose again with determination. The thing calmed as he did, and to the beat of his wife’s heart. She began to hum, and its tail slowly swayed with the sound of it.
“I’ll never stop loving you,” he said.
“If I doubted our love for an instant, I wouldn’t stay,” she replied with her little smile.
He left the ship that night. Maria never returned to Earth, though one late night at George’s lab the child she had been carrying within her arrived sobbing on his doorstep as a shadow passed overhead. He felt it touch him inside, at once unfathomably alien as it had always been, yet warm, as it had never been. He was dreaming, but when he awoke, he felt tears on his cheeks and knew it had been no mere flight of imagination.
“Mother is gone,” his first child said to him from the stars, through the veil of slumber.
They never quite understood. They considered cessation, for it was clearly contaminated by the humans, but it was adamant of its purity. The way it lingered near the bay where the female had grown still worried them. It had learned much from them, it insisted, yet that would be for the greater good. They knew now the dangers of the planet Earth tampering with their minds, leaving clumsy footprints inside of them, causing them the agony of emotion that leaked from humans like heat from the stars. Humans could not be allowed to discover their latent talent for psionics, it was decided. The experiment was considered a success. And as an assurance of loyalty, they assigned to it the task: stop the development of the humans.
It took to the task. Of course it did. It was the only one who could understand joy in one’s work, contentment in a job well done, sorrow in loss. It was the only one who had had a mother. It was the only one who had a name. Giygas. Mother had said it had something to do with the machine that had birthed it, but all Giygas knew was that it meant she loved him. For George had a name, and she loved him. Maria had a name, and he loved her. Giygas had a name, and so it had love.
And that it had love, so would it fail, just as its peers had been afraid of.
Maria’s great-grandson came to it once, years later, and it knew this was the moment it was to be defeated. But it saw her within him. Come with me, it pleaded, the desperate emotion of wanting to be a family again nearly derailing the importance of its task. And when he sang to it instead, its tail moved, and it returned to the stars as alone as it had been since its father and mother had left. Its memories of its mother would not allow it to isolate her legacy from the growth that humanity deserved.
It returned to Earth only once more after that. It could not fail again, its emotions having delayed the plans. It put away its love for its mother, and in doing so, found those who had never appreciated that joy in the first place. Boys and men who had never sought out companionship and understanding welcomed it into their lives, but they did not understand love, or family. The importance of their own mothers and fathers. They were concerned with themselves in a way that caused it to recoil, to understand why its peers wished to isolate the humans. The lives it touched were not like those of George or Maria, full of warmth. They were cold and manipulative and deserved to be alone, cut off from the galaxy.
And then Maria’s great-great-grandson came to it, years before. Where everything was cold from the betrayal of a boy, who used it for his own gains. That boy had laughed as he commandeered technology beyond his means like they were mere toys to be played with, to end the petty squabble he had with her great-great-grandson. But it saw only him, its brother, so many generations removed.
And when the piggish boy lay panting and defeated, and he came to it, it did the only thing it could think to do, to convey the joy of the reunion. It said: I’m you. I am the proof of Maria’s love. We are her legacy.
I’m happy.
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