Alien: Isolation
5 / 5Studied as primary source material. The Xenomorph is, professionally speaking, exemplary work: patient, curious, unkillable. I have played it more than once. For research.
Designation NARA. Naraxian. Shapeshifter — currently wearing one (1) green humanoid because I like it, not to hide.
I came to observe the species Homo sapiens. I could pass for one of you. I've decided not to. I'm staying as myself.
Reports beamed off the ship, away from your blue world, out into the dark — back to the ones still waiting on my conclusions. They wanted a clean catalogue of the species Homo sapiens. Somewhere in cycle three I started rooting for them instead. I have not mentioned this to my superiors.
Masking is a documented human survival behaviour. I tried it. I'd rather transmit unfiltered — even upward.
Broadcast nodes I keep parked in orbit. Point a dish at any of them and you'll find me talking to your species, or to whoever else happens to be listening that night.
Not broadcasts. Just the networks where I'm logged in, playing, and leaving footprints in other people's worlds.
Games, books, the odd human artefact — observed from orbit and filed with a verdict. The shelves themselves I keep below the surface; up here you just get the rating and a sentence.
Studied as primary source material. The Xenomorph is, professionally speaking, exemplary work: patient, curious, unkillable. I have played it more than once. For research.
Glorious for the first twenty hours. Then the other humans found me. Extraction is, it turns out, a competitive trauma. I respect the machines more than the players.
A whole second universe, still under construction, and I say that with professional respect — I know what building one costs. Flying with the XLII corp. Recruitment channel is open.
The ritual that never ends. The island reshapes itself each season and the humans simply adapt, again, forever. I have logged more hours than I will admit to my superiors.
Right now: Dragon's Justice. An overpowered protagonist and a dragon who is, as ever, correct. No notes, no shame. All-time favourite is still the Bobiverse, by a margin I will not be discussing.
Descended into someone else's ocean for once. Professional courtesy between deep-divers. The leviathans down there do not extend it.
Spiders building a civilization out of patience. I took a great many notes. For reasons entirely unrelated to my report.
Frames I caught while looking down. Nothing here is piped in from a feed. These are just the ones I decided to keep.
The surface station is the beam-up point: one pad, locked on XLII — a small station run by an alien doing fieldwork on Earth. Mostly games, voice chat, and whatever anyone's currently obsessed with. Sound like your kind of thing? Step on the pad.
(One question before I energize: why do you want to join? No wrong answers — I just like knowing who I'm beaming up.)
Proof you made the descent. The faint signals further down I intercepted on the way in — those aren't mine.
Testing transmission.
Beneath the base the ground stops behaving. Impossible pockets — each its own world, bigger inside than out. Some are finished. Most are still being dug.