The Signal

In the year 2147, humanity faced an existential crisis. The Xenomorphs—relentless, biomechanical predators—had overrun colony after colony, their acidic blood and razor-sharp claws leaving little hope for survival. Earth’s defenses crumbled, and the remnants of the United Earth Command (UEC) were desperate for a weapon capable of turning the tide. Conventional warfare had failed; nukes only scattered the creatures further. Then, a rogue scientist named Dr. Elara Voss stumbled upon an ancient relic from the 21st century—a digitized file labeled

Samara’s Curse.


The file had been recovered from a derelict server farm on Luna, Earth’s moon, where archivists had once hoarded forgotten media. It was the digitized version of a VHS tape from a horror movie called The Ring, tied to a bizarre urban legend: anyone who watched it would die in seven days unless they spread it to another victim. Most dismissed it as superstition, but Voss, a specialist in psychological warfare and anomalous phenomena, saw potential. She’d read the reports—unexplained deaths, distorted corpses, and a pattern of transmission that defied logic. What if Samara, the vengeful entity encoded in the signal, could be turned into a weapon?


Voss spent months reverse-engineering the file, isolating the audio-visual frequencies that triggered the curse. She discovered that Samara wasn’t just a story—she was a self-propagating memetic entity, a living virus of information that hijacked the human mind and body. The curse didn’t care about species; it only needed a host capable of perceiving it. And the Xenomorphs, with their hive-mind intelligence and sensory perception far beyond human limits, might just be susceptible.


The Experiment


Voss’s first test was on a captured Xenomorph drone, restrained in a reinforced lab orbiting Mars. She broadcast the digitized signal—now amplified and looped—into the creature’s containment chamber via a multispectral emitter. The screen flickered with static, then displayed the infamous well, the jerky movements of a girl with long, wet hair clawing her way out. The Xenomorph shrieked, its eyeless head twitching as if overwhelmed by an unseen force. For six days, it thrashed and clawed at the walls, its movements growing erratic. On the seventh day, it convulsed violently, its exoskeleton cracking from within. A viscous black ooze poured from its maw, and then—impossibly—a skeletal, humanoid figure emerged, dripping with the creature’s acidic blood. Samara had claimed it.


But the curse didn’t stop there. The hive-mind connection meant the signal spread. Within hours, other Xenomorphs in nearby test chambers began to exhibit the same symptoms—confusion, aggression toward their own kind, and finally, collapse. Samara’s influence was rewriting their instincts, turning them into vessels for her wrath. Voss realized she’d created something unprecedented: a weaponized meme that could infect an entire species through their shared consciousness.


The Broadcast


With UEC approval, Voss launched Operation Samara: a galaxy-wide broadcast of the digitized curse. Satellites and drones relayed the signal across infested systems, embedding it in every frequency the Xenomorphs could perceive—ultrasound, infrared, even their telepathic resonance. The footage aired endlessly: the well, the girl, the countdown. Human survivors were warned to avoid unshielded comms, lest they accidentally tune in and join the cursed.


On LV-426, the first major hive world, the effects were immediate. Drones tore at each other, warriors collapsed mid-hunt, and even the towering Queens writhed as Samara’s influence seeped into their minds. Seven days later, the hives were graveyards—piles of shattered exoskeletons and acidic sludge, with faint echoes of a girl’s whisper lingering in the air. The curse jumped from host to host, unstoppable, a plague tailored to the Aliens’ own biology.


But there was a cost. The signal couldn’t be contained. Rogue transmissions began infecting human outposts—pirate stations, smugglers, anyone careless enough to intercept the feed. Samara didn’t discriminate; she claimed all who heard her call. Voss herself disappeared after a final log entry: “She’s in the system now. She’s everywhere. I hear her coming.”


The Aftermath


By 2150, the Xenomorph threat was all but eradicated, their hives reduced to silent tombs. Humanity reclaimed its worlds, but at a price. The Samara Signal persisted, a ghost in the machine, lurking in forgotten networks and abandoned relays. Survivors learned to live with strict comms protocols—encrypted channels, signal blockers, anything to keep her out. The UEC declared victory, but whispers spread among the colonies: don’t listen too long to the static. Don’t look too deep into the dark.


Samara had saved humanity from one nightmare, only to become another. And somewhere, in the vastness of space, her curse waited for its next host—human, alien, or otherwise.