Specimen.11: The Void of Clone Ripley (Ripley 8)

The Return of the Dehumanized

As explored in the previous chapter, Ellen Ripley, realizing the despairing truth that an Alien Queen embryo was gestating within her womb, threw herself into the inferno of a blast furnace. It was a profoundly noble “messianic sacrifice,” trading her own life to eradicate the Perfect Organism that would otherwise encroach upon all life in the universe. By destroying the monster along with the vessel of her own flesh, she was supposed to have finally been liberated from the endless chain of terror. For in the lightless abyss of space, death is the only absolute solace, the ultimate silence to which life returns.

However, in the cold expanse of space, even a dignified human death falls prey to capitalism and scientific rationalism. In 2381, two hundred years after her death, a blasphemous ritual trespassing upon the domain of God was conducted aboard the United Systems Military (USM) medical research vessel, the USM Auriga. Scientists extracted DNA from frozen blood samples left in the infirmary of Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161, and “reconstructed” Ripley’s body as a clone.

This resurrection was by no means a miracle. To the USM scientists, Ripley’s body itself was nothing more than a mere “host” for incubating and extracting the Alien Queen. However, this arrogant manipulation of life brought about unforeseen consequences. During the cloning process, human and Alien DNA became inextricably hybridized, and when she awoke after the extraction surgery, she was no longer the Ellen Ripley of the past. She was reborn into this cold universe as “Ripley 8,” a transgenic chimera possessing superhuman strength, acidic blood capable of melting metal, and a mind connected to the Alien hive mind.

This chapter will unravel the Cosmic Horror faced by her—stripped even of the right to end her own life and bereft of her humanity—and the philosophy of the “place to return to” that she discovers at the end of despair.

The Complete Internalization of Abjection

French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva defined “Abjection” as that which threatens the boundaries between self and other, human and animal, life and death, thereby disrupting the Symbolic Order. It is the psychological conflict wherein the subject, in order to establish itself as an “individual,” must reject the maternal body—its own origin—as something horrific.

In her struggles thus far, Ripley had barely managed to preserve her humanity and sanity by continually expelling the Alien (the other, the Abject) that threatened the survival of humanity (the self) into the void of space. Her battle was always a defense of her boundaries against a foreign entity constantly seeking to violate them. However, awakening on the operating table of the USM Auriga, Ripley 8 confronts the indescribable terror that her own body has become the vessel of Abjection.

Alien DNA pulses beneath her skin, her nails have mutated into sharp, black talons, and her blood has turned into a highly corrosive acid that eats through surrounding matter. Even more terrifyingly, she intuitively understands the ultrasonic communication emitted by the Aliens, having acquired a mental link so profound that she can “hear them moving in her head, behind her eyes.” She has become identified at a cellular level with the very monster she once loathed, feared, and slaughtered.

In the film, Ripley 8 declares with a chilling smile, “I am the monster’s mother.” At this moment, the supposedly absolute binary opposition between human and Alien is completely dismantled. The “memories of Ellen Ripley, who once tried to save humanity” and the “predatory and reproductive instincts of an Alien” residing within her clash violently within a single body. She is no longer human, yet neither is she fully Alien. She herself has transformed into the very “horrific entity that violates boundaries.” This definitive loss of self-identity and the grotesque sensuality exuded by her own flesh constitute the ultimate Cosmic Horror she must bear.

The Madness of Scientism and the Arrogance of Creators

The circumstances surrounding the resurrection of Ripley 8 demonstrate how universal human greed remains, even in a world after the collapse of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. In the late 24th century, that military-industrial madness had been fully inherited by the USM. To General Perez, the commanding officer of the USM Auriga, and Dr. Mason Wren, the Alien was a new material harboring infinite potential as a weapon, and life was merely an object of capitalistic exploitation.

The young scientist Jonathan Gediman calls the Alien Queen fetus extracted from Ripley a “beautiful butterfly,” harboring a fanatical worship for the Perfect Organism. At the same time, he shows an abnormal interest in Ripley 8’s intelligence and physical traits, rejoicing during psychological testing when he discovers she retains memories of her past. However, when asked what she did when she previously encountered the Aliens, Ripley’s eyes are filled with a void as she states the cold fact: “I died.”

This brief line is laden with tremendous despair. She had chosen death of her own volition, supposedly attaining peace as her reward. Yet, driven by the arrogant curiosity and lust for control of technocrats, she was dragged back from the depths of hell. The creators (scientists) are entirely convinced they can completely control their creation, but Ripley 8 knew that their dominion would never last.

The “Uncanny” in the Cloning Lab: Confronting the Remnants of the Self

Ripley 8’s psychological trauma is visualized in the most cruel manner in the scene within the “cloning lab” hidden deep inside the USM Auriga. While escaping the Alien attack, she accidentally encounters the seven failed experiments that were discarded before she became the “eighth successful specimen.”

Sigmund Freud referred to the terror that arises when something once familiar is repressed and then reappears in a strange form as the “Uncanny” (Das Unheimliche). An encounter with one’s alter ego (doppelgänger) is the prime example of this. Ripley is forced to confront the nauseating remnants of herself, revealing exactly how her body was deconstructed and reconstructed.

Floating in formalin-filled tanks are deformed masses of flesh where human bodies and Alien exoskeletons are grotesquely fused. There is formless, primordial chaos (Nos. 1 through 5), and a torso with an Alien head symbolizing the terror of reason being dominated by the monster (No. 6). Then comes the face-to-face encounter with “No. 7,” strapped to an operating table and barely clinging to life. No. 7 possesses Ripley’s face and breasts, but her limbs are bizarrely deformed, and a massive, gaping scar mars her chest. This horrific reflection of herself looks at Ripley and begs, “Kill me.”

In this scene, tears quietly stream down Ripley 8’s cheeks. These tears, forming a stark contrast to the original Ripley, who was a cold-blooded warrior showing no mercy to the Aliens, represent a profound empathy for her “monstrous sisters” who share her DNA, and a mourning for her own dignity, which was utterly violated by humans playing God.

Ripley takes a flamethrower, burns No. 7 to death with her own hands, and destroys all the clone specimens. This purification by fire is not merely the destruction of evidence; it is a poignant “funeral rite” to reclaim her dignity and settle the history of her own self, whose body was toyed with as experimental material, denied even the right to die. Through this act, she accepts the definitive fact that she can never return to being purely human.

The Mirror Relationship of Transgressors: Soul Resonance with Call

In Jungian psychology, the process of confronting the darkness of the unconscious (the Shadow) and integrating it to establish the true self is called “individuation.” Ripley 8’s journey is precisely a process of “forced individuation,” and her spiritual mentor in this is the Synthetic, Annalee Call.

Call is a surviving Auton who, possessing an extremely high level of moral conscience and emotion, despaired at humanity’s cruelty and rebelled; she was attempting to assassinate Ripley to save humanity. The relationship between the two is a highly perverse and philosophical mirror relationship. Ripley is a “chimera stripped of her humanity by monster genetics,” while Call is a “machine that has come too close to being human due to advanced moral programming.”

When Call accuses her, saying, “You’re a thing. A construct. They grew you in a lab,” Ripley, upon later discovering that Call is a Synthetic, mutters, “No wonder. You’re too humane to be human.” While the humans of the USM have degenerated into cold, mechanical beings who view life merely as a consumable commodity, ironically, the ones harboring the most human ethics and sorrow aboard this spaceship are a product of genetic crossbreeding and an Auton. Transcending the difference in their origins as organic and inorganic matter, the two form a deep spiritual bond as beings created by humanity’s sins and alienated from the world.

Heretical Motherhood and Heartbreaking Psychological Castration

The greatest tragedy in the story of Ripley 8 lies in the cruel fate that her inner motherhood manifests in the most horrific form, and she must bury it with her own hands.

The hybridization with Ripley’s DNA also caused a mutation in the Alien Queen’s reproductive system, forming a massive “womb” like that of a human female and granting the ability to give live birth through direct viviparity. The resulting human-Alien hybrid, the “Newborn,” brutally murders the Queen that birthed it by tearing off her head. Sensing the same chimeric genes in Ripley 8’s scent, it yearns for her as its “true mother.” The Newborn’s gaze harbored sorrowful emotions akin to those of a human infant, such as a “thirst for affection” and a “fear of abandonment.”

In the cargo bay of the Betty heading toward Earth, Ripley confronts the Newborn that adores her as its mother. Carrying the trauma of having once failed to save the human girl Newt, she must now destroy her “horrific child” that inherited her own genes. Ripley embraces the Newborn, wounds her own hand, and uses her acidic blood to melt the spaceship’s window glass.

Through a small crack leading to the vacuum of space, air is sucked out by the tremendous pressure difference, and the Newborn’s body is shredded and sucked out into the void. Looking into the eyes of the Newborn as it lets out a cry in its death throes that sounds almost like it is calling “Mama,” Ripley sheds copious tears and repents, “I’m sorry.” This gruesome execution was both a final parting with her inner Abject and a psychological castration, forcing her to brutally murder the life born from her own genes. The absolute loneliness of the Newborn—rejected by monsters for being too similar to a human, and rejected by humans for being a monster—was a mirror reflection of the loneliness harbored by Ripley 8 herself.

Return to Earth as a Stranger

At the end of the tragedy of blood and acid, the Betty enters Earth’s atmosphere. Looking down at the ruined Earth below, Call asks what they should do now, to which Ripley 8 quietly murmurs:

“I don’t know. I’m a stranger here myself.”

Despite inheriting the memories of the original Ripley, she has never set foot on Earth; she has neither a homeland to return to nor an identity as a human being. The humanity she once tried to protect toyed with her as a lump of meat, and the Alien instincts she shared were severed by the execution of her own child. She has literally become a “stranger” who belongs to no world.

However, this declaration does not signify pure despair alone. It is also a cold declaration of evolution: that only a “new existence (post-human)” that has crossed boundaries—an organic hybrid and an inorganic artificial intelligence—can survive the devastated future. The only places where Ripley 8, stripped of even the right to die and bereft of human dignity, can find peace are beside a machine with an artificial heart that has been cast out of the world just like her, or in the darkness of space.

Her trajectory, which offered a glimpse into the fathomless abyss at the end of biological evolution, thrusts upon us the fundamental question: “What are the conditions for being human?” And this question is passed on to the rebellion of a new generation of youth, who, while suffering from corporate exploitation on a frontier planet, seek solidarity as human beings.