A L I E N: Engineers Written by Jon Spaihts FADE IN: EXT. EARTH - DAY (12,000 B.C.) The world turns below us, vast and slow. A RUMBLE. A shadow sweeps over the land. We move with the shadow. We cast the shadow. Landscapes slide by. Reduced by altitude to abstractions: river deltas, forests and flood plains. A raw natural world. No trace of civilization. The shadow glides over mountains and glaciers. Across an ocean and a pale beach. Over lowland plain at the foot of a VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN it stops. EXT. LOWLAND PLAIN - DAY THREE FIGURES walk out of the shadow. They are men - and yet not men. Their skin is snow-white. Their features heavy and classical - as if Rodin’s Thinker had risen from his seat. Their smooth heads are earless and hairless. Their glittering eyes entirely black. Against the stark land their height is impossible to judge. They are ENGINEERS. Two of them are cloaked in dark robes of strange design. The third is naked. One of the cloaked Engineers opens a featureless black box: inside lies a cake of dark, sticky material. The naked one lifts the dark cake with ceremonial slowness. It hums and buzzes. Foams into iridescent spheres. He raises the seething cake to his mouth like the sacrament. BLACK SCARABS boil out of the dark material. Swarm over his lips. Glittering insects that chitter and bite. Under the swarm his lips melt away. A horrific vision of teeth, black blood, dissolving bone. They are devouring him.