A Human Parasite
by Laramie W. S. Graber
part 1
Whenever he was in space, Rocan had the same nightmare. The ship became transparent, and the vastness of space was unavoidable. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids became transparent, too, as his vision expanded ever outwards with the universe itself. Lives and planets and stars were dwarfed by so much nothing. Too much to comprehend. Still, Rocan couldn’t stop trying even as his mind fell away into the void. Because the universe was trying to talk.
There was a pulsing just beneath the incomprehensible, some being struggling to break through a dimensional barrier. The emptiness heaved. Murmurings of sound broke through.
“What does it all mean?” Rocan asked.
The being went to answer, he was sure it did, but then the nothing was just nothing again. A stillbirth.
Rocan should not have been able to have the nightmare in cryogenic sleep. A vision, the whisper came unbidden. He dismissed it. Normal sleep must have taken hold while the ship revived him.
Now, they were mere minutes from docking with the space station. Seven of them in the ship’s main hold, four women and three men in the various brown shades of people-kind. Rocan remembered only two of their names. Ziggy because they were longtime friends from repairing ships together and Tomsin because he was the medic and didn’t have to go into the space station. It was hard to tell, anyway, because everybody was merely bulky silhouettes with eye-slits in their all-condition suits. The leader had a red sun on hers. She and another were armed.
We got this, Rocan told himself. His foot tapped nervously in betrayal.
“It’ll be fine.” Ziggy playfully bumped Rocan’s elbow, laughing as he scrambled to grab a handhold to avoid floating away. “Just routine and boring.”
Ten stations had gone quiet one by one in this part of the universe. Their mission, along with ships sent to the other nine stations, was to find out why. Everyone assumed it was a problem with the long-distance communication equipment. It had failed after nine years because of a glitch. A lot of people lost their jobs even as they scrambled to fix things in the Inner Systems. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that, out here, they lacked the ability to fix things. However, on approach their ship had reached out to the station and heard nothing back. There was no good reason for communication this close not to work.
“Where’s this sudden pessimism from?” Rocan asked. Ziggy wanted excitement. Rocan simply hoped that a livable, universal income would be passed twenty years from now when he finally got back to the Inner Systems. He could focus on doing something he liked, maybe something that mattered. Robots could do his job better than he could. Most ship repair was subsidized by the Inner System’s job guarantee because people couldn’t quite let old ideas of productivity go. You had to work to live.
“I’m just being a good friend.”
“So, you actually don’t think everything will be fine?”
“Why do you have to ruin everything with logic?” Ziggy laughed.
“What else is there?”
“Okay, okay. But since we’re using logic, this isn’t going to turn into one of your horror immersives, okay?”
An abandoned space station taken over by some mysterious alien presence. Some had thought the horror stories would lessen once humanity left Earth and nothing like this would happen. They only increased in popularity. The new haunted house. An atavistic fear we can never escape, Rocan thought.
“It’s the perfect set-up.”
“But see the very idea of this doesn’t make sense, probability-wise.”
“You’ve done the math?”
“No, I just studied the sentence ‘this could turn into one of your horror immersives’. The key part being horror immersives are fiction.”
“Something isn’t right though.”
“You may actually be right there.”
They lapsed into silence along with everyone else. Rocan wondered if, besides Ziggy, they were all as afraid as he was and doing their best not to show it. Rocan was on this mission only because it hadn’t been popular. He hadn’t scored well on what was colloquially called “the sanity test” taken by everyone that wanted to go into deep space. He had yelled at the committee, which, admittedly, made their case even stronger. He’d told himself it was his last outburst.
“And it couldn’t even be aliens,” Ziggy said. “They’re all too busy not caring about us.”
There had been one significant incident fifty years before Rocan was born: The Glimpse. A vast, kaleidoscopic, glowing something had appeared in the middle of a city. Millions died. Mere minutes later, the thing was gone and the city was back, along with everyone inside it. No inhabitants had memories of dying. Most people outside the city hadn’t even been aware anyone had died until they weren’t dead anymore. Nevertheless, people-kind obsessively searched the stars or dutifully armed themselves. Rocan had a wall-holo of The Glimpse up through college. There had been nothing since.
“That’s the perfect set-up for a horror immersive.”
“Oh, my god!” Ziggy groaned theatrically.
“Commencing docking,” the ship announced. There was a slight shudder through the ship. “Gravity one eighth of Earth Standard. Oxygen level breathable. No life-threatening contaminants.” Which was somewhat reassuring, but no one was going to be taking off their suits anytime soon.
“Ready?” the leader asked.
“Yes ma’am!” everyone chorused back.
The ship’s doors irised open.
* * *
They split up into two groups of three, each with a crew member trained for combat. Rocan went with Ziggy. The plan was to circle slowly to the station’s hub, which, if all else failed, would hopefully have records on what had happened.
Everything was in perfect working order. The lights switched on where the three walked. Doors slid open before them. The walls were polished to the point of gleaming. Samples taken from them revealed the recent DNA of fingerprints.
“Something’s not right,” said combat-trained. “This station has people everywhere. They’re just hiding.”
“And watching.” Ziggy waved at a camera.
“Maybe they’ll just stay hidden,” combat-trained scoffed nervously.
Rocan tensed. This was the perfect time for the enemy to attack. A moment of arrogance, a futile hope that it would stay hidden. Nothing happened.
They kept walking. The only change was Rocan’s neck discomfort, his body unused to the level of gravity. The other group reported the same findings over coms. Everybody had expected a routine trip or immediate disaster. Not... this. What did it mean? What should it mean for them? No one knew and so they kept walking towards the hub.
When the enemy came, there was no warning. A door slid open to the side and a horde of people rushed out. Combat-trained turned, but as she went to pull the trigger a flung wrench hit her hand. She cried out and the shot struck the ceiling. Then the horde was on them. Rocan tried to punch, kick wildly. There were too many hands, pinning his legs, his arms. An electric jolt on his helmet and it was loose and hands were ripping it off. He stopped writhing briefly, knowing it was futile, until he saw the black mass of writhing goo carried towards him.
Rocan screamed and screamed, vaguely aware of Ziggy doing the same. He bit out at the hands grabbing his mouth, forcing it open. Even as he caught them, as his face was splattered with blood, they didn’t waver. The goo was forced into his mouth. Hands kept it shut so Rocan couldn’t spit it out. Tears leaked down his face as whatever the creature was slid slowly down his throat. Rocan gagged, acidic bile rushing into his mouth, but still the hands held firm. Finally, mercifully, a hard object struck his head. Blackness.
* * *
“I’ve been infected by an alien parasite. I can feel it... I can feel it everywhere. My thoughts. They... It whispers. Oh no, I don’t. They said we’ll be one soon. I don’t even... What? Who am I?
“Oh no, no, no...”
* * *
“It’s... Well, I’m not sure what day it is, how long I’ve been here. The All-One don’t seem to light the station according to any regular sort of time frame. These sorts of things normally begin with the time, but I guess I’ll have to skip that.
“Sorry about that last time, Tomsin. It did not go well. I’ve decided to continue, though. Definitely always helps in the immersives, right? It helps me to say my thoughts out loud. I can be sure it’s not the parasite. At least for now.
“I can’t communicate with you. The All-One disabled that. As far as I can tell though, the ship is still receiving video and sound from my headset. The video might go soon, but the sound should stay. Maybe they want people to know what’s going on, I don’t know. And I know you’re supposed to stay and wait on the ship. It’s protocol. So why not have your very own tv show like from back in the past. Live! Perhaps I should shake the camera arbitrarily to make things scarier. Haha...
“Sorry... The All-One have me sealed in this room with nothing in it, not even a bed. They feed me slop at irregular intervals. They say it’s necessary. This is what me and the parasite — they call it a piece of the All-One — need for us to be as one. They say it’s a dangerous process.
I asked if they meant the parasite hadn’t fully taken hold in my body and if it failed that meant I could die. No, they assured me. The piece of the All-One and I were already fully one being. We just had to learn to cooperate with each other, to realize that we were one, so we wouldn’t drive ourself insane. They said I could think of the parasite as my subconscious. If you’re not aware of what your subconscious wants, you’ll do all sorts that you don’t intend. Your actions will be at odds with each other.
“It’s funny, but the All-One don’t sound crazy. They sound like well-reasoned scientists even if a lot of what they say doesn’t make sense. Maybe they aren’t crazy; maybe the parasites are intelligent. They don’t realize that they’ve told me my worst nightmare though. I would much rather be aware of the parasite strangling my self, dying away into blackness or not being able to control my body as it moves. I would at least have control over what I was feeling then. With this I could cease to exist and be glad of it.
“I don’t feel any different. I can’t feel the parasite doing anything. But even as I say these words, I think I might be wrong. Something tells me that I want to lose control. That I don’t value the truth. That I just want to belong. This is what I’ve always wanted. That this is all that anyone really wants.
It doesn’t feel like the parasite. It just feels like my self-doubt. But this is exactly how the All-One said the parasite would manifest itself. And this time there is something different. I feel an inkling to be able to accept the thoughts. That could be the work of the parasite.
“I don’t know what to do. I passed Ziggy in a hall when we were being taken to our respective prisons. She whispered to me that I should play along. I don’t think I have much choice. I have a fear, though, one I cannot shake. Was it really Ziggy that spoke to me? The memory is foggy. Perhaps the parasite implanted it into my mind. Perhaps my playing along is exactly what it needs to win.”
* * *
“It’s time for your not-quite-daily-at-all show! On tonight’s episode... Oh, this isn’t working at all. Just makes me feel crazy.
“I hear whispers everywhere, waking, in my dreams... They tell me that if I join the All-One, I can finally have the peace I’ve always wanted. I can finally find my place in the universe. I think it’s just the All-One speaking outside my cell, but have you ever heard the same thing repeated over and over with such conviction? Even without the parasite, I think I might start to believe it. With the parasite, I can’t help loving it.”
* * *
“The All-One are singing again, in beautiful, perfect harmony. It echoes throughout the station, somehow just as it was intended to. The song seems to have accounted for every angle, every material, every facet of the station. Somehow the All-One are that in tune with their environment.
“I don’t know why, but it takes me back to an opposite feeling memory. I am a child, playing hide and seek with my mother. I’m so proud of myself, I’ve found the perfect hiding place: underneath the kitchen sink. My mom counts down and then announces, ‘Ready or not!’
I wait, my pride growing as she doesn’t find me. Then longer. My pride shifts to concern. My mom enters the kitchen, speaking to someone right above me. Yes, she says, she has time. Rocan is busy, he thinks we’re playing hide-and-seek. He’ll probably be hiding in a closet or something for an hour or more.
“I don’t come out. I don’t want to. I want my mom to change her mind. I want her to have been lying to whomever she was talking to. She loves me more than anything. That’s what she says. I wait for her to realize the mistake she’s making.
“My mom does, but only hours later, much too late. And when she does she’s angry. It took her a long time to find me. What did I think I was doing? I scared her. I shake my head, give the expected apology. But I don’t mean it. She’s the one that scared me.”
* * *
“It’s so... so cold... I think I’m going to die... they turned off the heat. Say, said it’s what... what the parasite needs.
“I had something, something to say if I die. I had it... But it’s gone, I can’t remember. It’s too cold...
“I think I’m going to die...”
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Laramie W. S. Graber
