"Umm," spoke a slight man near the back of the group. His features were dominated by a pair of round, wire rim glasses that seemed a bit too large for his narrow face. Pushing the bridge of the glasses farther up his nose, he continued. "I have a theory."
"By all means, let's hear it, Mr. . ." encouraged Weaver, looking over the lanky young man.
"Thatch," replied the man, pushing his glasses up again. "Milo Thatch. I'm with the magic research division."
This elicited a collection of groans and snide remarks from the assembled scientists and officers. Nobody took the underfunded MRD seriously, figuring it to be just another office that the general accounting office had yet to shut down.
Casting a withering glance to his fellows, Milo stepped forward. "I believe what we're seeing is a situation where reality has somehow become distorted and combined with aspects of a fictional universe. In this case, the Aliens series of movies."
"That would explain why one of H.R. Giger's wet dreams is rampaging across the planet," observed Weaver, perhaps the only person in the group to give Thatch any credibility.
"Quite. Because of that, the Aliens can be altered by altering the fiction of their universe. Who has creative control of the franchise at the moment?"
"I do," announced director Ridley Scott, stepping forward for the first time. "I'd signed on to write and direct the fifth movie."
"Perfect!" exclaimed a random general. "If what Mr. Thatch is saying is correct, all you have to do is write in somewhere that these freaks only live for a couple hours."
"I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way, General," replied Thatch, pushing his glasses up again. "There's already so much canonical fiction surrounding these creatures that there's little that can be done to them directly."
"Meaning?" grated the general.
"Meaning that we can't change them. However, there shouldn't be anything stopping us from rewriting other aspects of the universe."
"Like?" asked Scott, absently sketching an Alien hybrid design he'd been working on for the next movie.
"Well, for one," listed Thatch, "Ms. Weaver could actually become Ripley. Or the U.S. military could be turned into the precursor to the Colonial Marines, or any of a number of things. I don't pretend to know exactly what to do. I mean, I'm no writer. And since you're the one with creative control, Mr. Scott, it's entirely up to you.