We were having a meeting. Our station was almost entirely compromised. Mind controlling aliens had been taking over crew members left and right, and they were spreading like wildfire. Once again, the representative from Earth urged us to sign over control of the station to him so that if the rest of us were compromised the station would not be lost.
The captain refused. He was going to continue arguing, but we were interrupted by someone entering, the screen he was calling from went blank as a lanky young crew member walked in nervously, quickly the captain grabbed him by the collar and pushed his face close to the fireplace. We found that those infected had a slight change in their body chemistry and had an unusual skin reaction when too close to heat.
We watched as the young crew member remained frozen in fear, moments passed, and the captain didn’t move, finally I spoke up “Captain, if his face was going to react it would have by now”
finally she let go of him “You’re clean” she said “what did you want”
“I was sent to deliver these papers” he replied, handing her an envelope and quickly leaving.
the captain sighed “I forgot to get his name.. we don’t know if he’ll be infected next time or not”
“Its a bit scary; every time we leave this room we risk being infected” I said. Everybody nodded and we began to disperse to head to our bed chambers.
Later that night, I heard a scream from the captain’s chambers. I rushed there as quickly as I could, my father arriving at about the same time. We saw the captain in her room with some sort of snake like creature, lacking a head but instead having four long fangs fly at her, she ducked under it and ran towards us, and the snake flew back at us again. Dodging again we hit the button to close the door now that it had lept outside the room.
I sensed something wrong, and noticed a hole under the door and pointed it out to the captain, the snake would likely come right through it in a moment. we waited half a moment, then opened the door, just in time for the snake to enter. We ran out then closed the door again. The captain looked at us and shoved the envelope in my father’s hands “you have to take this down to the ground level. I’ll stay here and act like we still haven’t acted yet, you get the ownership rights transferred before I am compromised” she ordered.
The two of us turned and quickly walked down the halls, we had no idea who to trust. it felt like everybody was giving us looks, and when we stopped at one elevator upon it’s opening, we saw 2 people already in it, and decided out of concern not to enter.
We took the stairs eventually; something began to nag at me, like a sudden feeling of familiarity, that there was something wrong and I should have known what it was. we got to the bottom of the stairs, and we needed to get to the airport of the hub to reach the offices we could file the paperwork in. As we started into the hub the feeling came over me again.
I looked to my father and said “If the problem is mind control; how do we know we’re not the ones being manipulated?” he looked back to me doubtfully
“If it was us, they would already control the captain and the station” he replied, trying to hurry along, but I could tell he also was starting to have doubts. As we continued I suddenly had a vague recollection from prior to the start of the dream, there was an office here, if we went there, the automated scanners would tell us right away if something was wrong. plus we could declare the station temporarily out of commission until the situation was fixed without transferring ownership.
I ran ahead, my father noticing me and running to catch up with me, suddenly I saw the man from earlier walking to intercept us, my father immediately veered off from my path to talk to him. I figured he was going to complete the transaction, I had to get to that office. I ran into the office and immediately saw thousands of strange shapes, glowing different colors, as I looked at them an understanding came over me that I was under the effects of an illusion and exactly who put it over me.
It was the scanner in the entrance that did it; the scanner also broke the illusion over me and when I looked back out, the man’s face was different; he was still human, he just wasn’t the person he said he was. I ran back out and grabbed my father by the arm and told him.
“Wait. This man was the problem the whole time. He implanted illusions to make us think we were being attacked by mind controlling parasites so he could trick us into giving him the station.” immediately the man began to back away as he looked for a place to run, but there was no chance of that, my father grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him into the ground then put his knee on him to hold him there while he used his emergency communicator to call security.
And that was when I woke.