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Description

Trigger/Content Warning: The follow story contains images of murder and imagery relating to tightly squeezing the human body, as well as a heavily implied narrative of paranoia. Please stay safe and take care of yourself.

Also, please note the story section to this one is on the longer side. I'm sorry in advance for the trouble!

_____

In the crowning year of XX87, space travel technology was abundant and booming. Retrofuturism, like many aesthetics of decades, centuries past had made a comeback; partially out of love for the look, a fondness toward simpler times, and to market the financial benefits of sending the uninformed for hostile exploration to line the pockets of the wealthy. In the house of Gregory and Bobby Hill, two identical twins in a long family line of those sent out into the world beyond the stars, interest in space came naturally as knowing how to read and write.

Good luck struck when they were both accepted in tandem for the 84Fable-2-B.in shuttle, with Bobby as mechanic and Gregory as co-pilot. The 84th or 84 as they'd named was a missionary craft designed to house six astronauts with the intent of spending around 90 days studying and mining several minerals on a newly mapped dwarf planet. Many crystals, if deemed fit for human biology, were often sold as trendy accessories and jewelry to help sweeten the appeal of the Earth's intergalatic romance.

The other four members on the crew included Lisa, Andy, Paulina and Joseph. All relatively newer cadets in terms of tenure with Joseph, of course, having the most experience but only with five years in the stars as opposed to the remainder's three, two, and one — the latter being for Paulina, Joseph's wife, and Gregory and Bobby— first-timers.

Mining for materials was considered elementary level fieldwork, and not to mention, easy money. Taking on such a long-standing offer meant that their wallets would be plentiful by the time they returned home, making way for them to blow the money easily and find themselves boarding their next flight soon as possible.

With such advanced technology, crew members could afford to walk around the shuttle without spacesuits a majority of the time. This, of course, barring an enclosed changing room into suits for boarding off the ship. However, they were all equipped with a Body Identification , Digital Chart & Stabilizer (BIDCS, or beads, among the crewmates) that helped not only track everyone's location, and important vitals, but also stabilize said vitals quicker after outdoor trips (as more recently discovered planets had the potential to chill and heat some crew members even when inside their spacesuits. This made the near 24/7 wearing of the BIDCS non-negotiable for safety purposes, minus a short reprieve for cleaning and baths.

The first thirty days of the fieldwork go by without a hitch. Gregory, equipped with a brand new visor Bobby had bought him before the flight to wear indoors, truly was beginning to feel like the star pilot of his childhood, even if he was only second rate to Joseph's masterful leadership. Joseph was, upon first glance, meticulous and level-headed. He fanned himself with all the cards and the die only rolled for his enjoyment. He was, to Gregory, an idol he'd only ever seen on TV.

Of course, with such a drive for perfection in everything, Joseph could only go into overdrive when he perceived an error.

"Please...Don't take this as an insult to her, guys, but...Paulina doesn't look the same after we left 84 the last time, does she? It's like I don't even recognize her face."

With all the sparks and stars and shining eyes, it became very easy to forget mysteries of the extraterrestrial had long since been proven and common knowledge.

Gregory tried to suggest alerting ground control, only to be dismissed with remarks about how he shouldn't tell him how to do his job. Joseph even took it upon himself to password lock everything himself. Only he could communicate with Grounds, only he could access confidential information, view the beads monitors, take inventory for crystals, etc. etc. And with both he and Gregory being required to give updates at least thrice per day, Gregory could only worry his job was already on the line.

Of course, this arose concern in the others. Andy had boarded several crews missions with Joseph in the past with Paulina and rarely had he ever seen him this worn thin. He questioned his train of thought, but as the man put it himself, he had more experience. Better safe than sorry.

This heightens in the form of an off-hand comment Lisa makes after a nice bath.

"That was really refreshing...I needed all that after hearing some rocks scrape against the shuttle all night."

Joseph immediately referenced the outer cameras of the ship. All around, all night, not a single asteroid even grazed the ship's orbiter. The rooms were divided by gender.

The procedures for an alien on-board were an in-depth and expansive living document, unfortunately. And yet all procedures were ignored as Joseph began to expand his theories through hushed instructions peers. Rally the effort before preparing to strike. Plotting out possible move and option.

"It's not Paulina, it's just...Taking the form of her. I say we just make it painless either way. Raise no suspicion...And I'll perform an emergency beads shutdown tonight."

Out all of the crew left aghast, Bobby was the only one to speak up. He insisted to Joseph in private not to cause a scene that to jump to such extreme measures was inhumane — especially with so little foundation and grounds control being left completely unaware. He, like Gregory, was ignored.

Joseph couldn't even bring himself to toss the corpse off the ship. Andy was instructed to do the deed and clean all the remnants of blood. Lisa was forbidden from forgoing missions, sickened by the fact a friend of hers was dead and thus shouldering the guilt and blame based on an offhand comment. All, while dire, seemed to return to status quo. Paulina's cause of death was only informed to grounds control after the fact. After being met with scalding anger by the flight controller for not following protocol, their mission is cancelled immediately as they're ordered to return home. This is a blow to Joseph's ego he could not handle.

Gregory is awoken in the middle of the night by a restless captain.

"There's...'rocks' scraping the ship again, Gregory." He mumbles. "And I think it's coming from Andy."

Joseph starts to unravel, leaving Gregory in charge of piloting the ship for unhealthy stretches of time in order to peddle more theories to Lisa and Bobby about how the blood of Paulina's corpse transmitted alien DNA to Andy, and now he, by some sense of blood transfusion, was no longer Andy. He was an alien, and if slowly shutting down the beads didn't help him, then they needed to get more personal. Someone had to kill Andy with their head on.

Lisa is appalled by Joseph's behavior and demands that he fork over the password to grounds control. The situation is quick to escalate when Lisa retrieves an emergency weapon from cargo, pointing it and Joseph to intimidate him into compliance. When Andy arrives, however, the diversion is long enough to help Joseph divert the weapon in her hand to shoot Andy on spot. With enough force to definitely kill a small alien, Andy is eviscerated on spot. Gregory, who had briefly left the pilots chair in fear of what was happening, had the force of shot falter his balance and leave break his visor as he collapsed to the floor. Retreating back to the pilot's chair, he stops commanding the ship with the sole purpose of cracking the code to ground control, the screams and chaos ensuing behind him doing little to soothe his brain.

It's at this point Bobby's own rationale had faltered considerably since Joseph had first started taking his shapeshifting paranoia to heart. With everyone coated to some degree in blood, even more-so with the knockback with close proximity of the gun, he felt terrible at the brief sense of relief he felt when Joseph seized the gun and aimed at Lisa. She had gotten real sick all of a sudden, after all; nevermind the excruciating grief. Perhaps he was thankful he hadn't been next. There were only three men left now. And with two bodies accompanying them, Joseph and Bobby couldn't help but notice there was only loud scraping instead of a deafening silence.

Joseph took the scraping as not even the advanced weaponry having worked. He runs toward cargo to find another weapon, but Bobby is not only able to outrun him, but disarm him of the gun, accidentally shooting him in the process with his bloodied, slippery fingers when he threw him to the ground.

Gregory's hands flew across the keys. He tried everything he could think of. Joseph was a proud man. A confident man. He came from the same vein the Hills' had in the sense that his family lived and breathed space travel. He had married a woman like Paulina, or "Paulie" as she was a rich childhood sweetheart who always wanted to dive headfirst into the action instead of just wear the end result. The 84Fable-2-B.in was a three year long project, a sequel to the original 84-Fable meant to mine the same and similar planets, with this one being the first spacecraft carriers to include the BIDCs in its system. Before their takeoff, he prattled on and on about he had boarded the original Fable as a mere cadet. And look at him now.

He rattled across the board: Joseph_Paulie84

The entire terminal unlocked. Gregory could barely articulate his happiness. He contacts grounds immediately, but they can barely hear him over the sounds of the scraping. Gregory can barely hear himself over Bobby crying.

He listed the numbers. One — three gunshots. Unless he was actively dying, it was only him and Bobby now. The BIDCS squeezed his body like a human tourniquet. He navigates to the BIDCs monitor. Crying his eyes out, he panics. He can barely see, even out of the broken part of his visor. But the push of the echo of someone— something trudging down the halls pushes him over to preforming an emergency shutdown on his brothers vitals. Too riddled with cowardice to face the squelches and cries behind him. Bobby is dead within minutes.

"Yes...Yes this is the 84-Fable-2-B.in, Gregory Hall, copilot and I'm...Uh...Oh my God, there's an emergency — there was an emergency here. Everyone's dead."

"...Mr. Hall, what happened?"

"An alien. Th-the commander, Joseph, h-he told us aliens were all shapeshifting, taking the forms of everyone else. There have been at least two emergency bea—BIDCs shutdowns—"

"I'm reviewing the data from the Fable now Mr. Hall, there isn't a thing on there."

"...What?"

"Not a single foreign dot on the grid. Well, unless you want to count those crystals. There's so damn many of them not stashed away to protocol at all. Didn't anyone tell your captain how loud of a racket those things make when they haven't been polished or sterilized?"

"...This isn't right."

"How many are dead, Mr. Hall. Now, I see five bodies but the briefing says six boarded the ship."

"This isn't right."

The mic is wrestled from the controller's hands right as he begins to spout curses at Gregory's incompetence. Before a metered, calm voice of a woman takes the reigns however, Gregory cut the signal. He was left staring at a vivid screen. The same he always wanted to be in front of, up close, watching sci-fi shows and flicks with his brother.

Gregory felt a pit in his stomach. Something was missing here. A piece of him; an entire half, ripped straight from the bone.

His dry eyes stung behind the visor, despite the dim lighting. The light green colors no longer felt 'cool' to him.

Gregory collapsed to the tiled floor. He didn't feel like himself anymore.

Laid bare, isolated and alone, he felt like at the end of it all, only he felt like he truly wasn't himself anymore.

_____

I wanted to tackle Sci-Fi Horror, okay. I did not even think about Among Us until I was midway through and it was way too late for me to go back on it, lmao. I'm so sorry

I really wanted to try writing a story where a group of people begin to experience some form of Capgras delusion. I hope it makes sense at least, haha.

I think both the art and especially the story portion was super fun to do! While I admit I kinda, pulled most of the space shuttle travel and all just outta my ass because I didn't want to like, beat myself over the head over the notion of "I didn't research this enough!" and then not finish it, ack. I can understand how that would be a turn-off for a lot of people, so I hope it's not like, super deterring for anyone who knows how space travel actually works, lmao. I hope me setting it far enough into the future hopefully helps, but I dunno, haha. In the end though, this was super fun to write! I can't believe we're nearing the end of October already... :0c

Description

Trigger/Content Warning: The follow story contains images of murder and imagery relating to tightly squeezing the human body, as well as a heavily implied narrative of paranoia. Please stay safe and take care of yourself.

Also, please note the story section to this one is on the longer side. I'm sorry in advance for the trouble!

_____

In the crowning year of XX87, space travel technology was abundant and booming. Retrofuturism, like many aesthetics of decades, centuries past had made a comeback; partially out of love for the look, a fondness toward simpler times, and to market the financial benefits of sending the uninformed for hostile exploration to line the pockets of the wealthy. In the house of Gregory and Bobby Hill, two identical twins in a long family line of those sent out into the world beyond the stars, interest in space came naturally as knowing how to read and write.

Good luck struck when they were both accepted in tandem for the 84Fable-2-B.in shuttle, with Bobby as mechanic and Gregory as co-pilot. The 84th or 84 as they'd named was a missionary craft designed to house six astronauts with the intent of spending around 90 days studying and mining several minerals on a newly mapped dwarf planet. Many crystals, if deemed fit for human biology, were often sold as trendy accessories and jewelry to help sweeten the appeal of the Earth's intergalatic romance.

The other four members on the crew included Lisa, Andy, Paulina and Joseph. All relatively newer cadets in terms of tenure with Joseph, of course, having the most experience but only with five years in the stars as opposed to the remainder's three, two, and one — the latter being for Paulina, Joseph's wife, and Gregory and Bobby— first-timers.

Mining for materials was considered elementary level fieldwork, and not to mention, easy money. Taking on such a long-standing offer meant that their wallets would be plentiful by the time they returned home, making way for them to blow the money easily and find themselves boarding their next flight soon as possible.

With such advanced technology, crew members could afford to walk around the shuttle without spacesuits a majority of the time. This, of course, barring an enclosed changing room into suits for boarding off the ship. However, they were all equipped with a Body Identification , Digital Chart & Stabilizer (BIDCS, or beads, among the crewmates) that helped not only track everyone's location, and important vitals, but also stabilize said vitals quicker after outdoor trips (as more recently discovered planets had the potential to chill and heat some crew members even when inside their spacesuits. This made the near 24/7 wearing of the BIDCS non-negotiable for safety purposes, minus a short reprieve for cleaning and baths.

The first thirty days of the fieldwork go by without a hitch. Gregory, equipped with a brand new visor Bobby had bought him before the flight to wear indoors, truly was beginning to feel like the star pilot of his childhood, even if he was only second rate to Joseph's masterful leadership. Joseph was, upon first glance, meticulous and level-headed. He fanned himself with all the cards and the die only rolled for his enjoyment. He was, to Gregory, an idol he'd only ever seen on TV.

Of course, with such a drive for perfection in everything, Joseph could only go into overdrive when he perceived an error.

"Please...Don't take this as an insult to her, guys, but...Paulina doesn't look the same after we left 84 the last time, does she? It's like I don't even recognize her face."

With all the sparks and stars and shining eyes, it became very easy to forget mysteries of the extraterrestrial had long since been proven and common knowledge.

Gregory tried to suggest alerting ground control, only to be dismissed with remarks about how he shouldn't tell him how to do his job. Joseph even took it upon himself to password lock everything himself. Only he could communicate with Grounds, only he could access confidential information, view the beads monitors, take inventory for crystals, etc. etc. And with both he and Gregory being required to give updates at least thrice per day, Gregory could only worry his job was already on the line.

Of course, this arose concern in the others. Andy had boarded several crews missions with Joseph in the past with Paulina and rarely had he ever seen him this worn thin. He questioned his train of thought, but as the man put it himself, he had more experience. Better safe than sorry.

This heightens in the form of an off-hand comment Lisa makes after a nice bath.

"That was really refreshing...I needed all that after hearing some rocks scrape against the shuttle all night."

Joseph immediately referenced the outer cameras of the ship. All around, all night, not a single asteroid even grazed the ship's orbiter. The rooms were divided by gender.

The procedures for an alien on-board were an in-depth and expansive living document, unfortunately. And yet all procedures were ignored as Joseph began to expand his theories through hushed instructions peers. Rally the effort before preparing to strike. Plotting out possible move and option.

"It's not Paulina, it's just...Taking the form of her. I say we just make it painless either way. Raise no suspicion...And I'll perform an emergency beads shutdown tonight."

Out all of the crew left aghast, Bobby was the only one to speak up. He insisted to Joseph in private not to cause a scene that to jump to such extreme measures was inhumane — especially with so little foundation and grounds control being left completely unaware. He, like Gregory, was ignored.

Joseph couldn't even bring himself to toss the corpse off the ship. Andy was instructed to do the deed and clean all the remnants of blood. Lisa was forbidden from forgoing missions, sickened by the fact a friend of hers was dead and thus shouldering the guilt and blame based on an offhand comment. All, while dire, seemed to return to status quo. Paulina's cause of death was only informed to grounds control after the fact. After being met with scalding anger by the flight controller for not following protocol, their mission is cancelled immediately as they're ordered to return home. This is a blow to Joseph's ego he could not handle.

Gregory is awoken in the middle of the night by a restless captain.

"There's...'rocks' scraping the ship again, Gregory." He mumbles. "And I think it's coming from Andy."

Joseph starts to unravel, leaving Gregory in charge of piloting the ship for unhealthy stretches of time in order to peddle more theories to Lisa and Bobby about how the blood of Paulina's corpse transmitted alien DNA to Andy, and now he, by some sense of blood transfusion, was no longer Andy. He was an alien, and if slowly shutting down the beads didn't help him, then they needed to get more personal. Someone had to kill Andy with their head on.

Lisa is appalled by Joseph's behavior and demands that he fork over the password to grounds control. The situation is quick to escalate when Lisa retrieves an emergency weapon from cargo, pointing it and Joseph to intimidate him into compliance. When Andy arrives, however, the diversion is long enough to help Joseph divert the weapon in her hand to shoot Andy on spot. With enough force to definitely kill a small alien, Andy is eviscerated on spot. Gregory, who had briefly left the pilots chair in fear of what was happening, had the force of shot falter his balance and leave break his visor as he collapsed to the floor. Retreating back to the pilot's chair, he stops commanding the ship with the sole purpose of cracking the code to ground control, the screams and chaos ensuing behind him doing little to soothe his brain.

It's at this point Bobby's own rationale had faltered considerably since Joseph had first started taking his shapeshifting paranoia to heart. With everyone coated to some degree in blood, even more-so with the knockback with close proximity of the gun, he felt terrible at the brief sense of relief he felt when Joseph seized the gun and aimed at Lisa. She had gotten real sick all of a sudden, after all; nevermind the excruciating grief. Perhaps he was thankful he hadn't been next. There were only three men left now. And with two bodies accompanying them, Joseph and Bobby couldn't help but notice there was only loud scraping instead of a deafening silence.

Joseph took the scraping as not even the advanced weaponry having worked. He runs toward cargo to find another weapon, but Bobby is not only able to outrun him, but disarm him of the gun, accidentally shooting him in the process with his bloodied, slippery fingers when he threw him to the ground.

Gregory's hands flew across the keys. He tried everything he could think of. Joseph was a proud man. A confident man. He came from the same vein the Hills' had in the sense that his family lived and breathed space travel. He had married a woman like Paulina, or "Paulie" as she was a rich childhood sweetheart who always wanted to dive headfirst into the action instead of just wear the end result. The 84Fable-2-B.in was a three year long project, a sequel to the original 84-Fable meant to mine the same and similar planets, with this one being the first spacecraft carriers to include the BIDCs in its system. Before their takeoff, he prattled on and on about he had boarded the original Fable as a mere cadet. And look at him now.

He rattled across the board: Joseph_Paulie84

The entire terminal unlocked. Gregory could barely articulate his happiness. He contacts grounds immediately, but they can barely hear him over the sounds of the scraping. Gregory can barely hear himself over Bobby crying.

He listed the numbers. One — three gunshots. Unless he was actively dying, it was only him and Bobby now. The BIDCS squeezed his body like a human tourniquet. He navigates to the BIDCs monitor. Crying his eyes out, he panics. He can barely see, even out of the broken part of his visor. But the push of the echo of someone— something trudging down the halls pushes him over to preforming an emergency shutdown on his brothers vitals. Too riddled with cowardice to face the squelches and cries behind him. Bobby is dead within minutes.

"Yes...Yes this is the 84-Fable-2-B.in, Gregory Hall, copilot and I'm...Uh...Oh my God, there's an emergency — there was an emergency here. Everyone's dead."

"...Mr. Hall, what happened?"

"An alien. Th-the commander, Joseph, h-he told us aliens were all shapeshifting, taking the forms of everyone else. There have been at least two emergency bea—BIDCs shutdowns—"

"I'm reviewing the data from the Fable now Mr. Hall, there isn't a thing on there."

"...What?"

"Not a single foreign dot on the grid. Well, unless you want to count those crystals. There's so damn many of them not stashed away to protocol at all. Didn't anyone tell your captain how loud of a racket those things make when they haven't been polished or sterilized?"

"...This isn't right."

"How many are dead, Mr. Hall. Now, I see five bodies but the briefing says six boarded the ship."

"This isn't right."

The mic is wrestled from the controller's hands right as he begins to spout curses at Gregory's incompetence. Before a metered, calm voice of a woman takes the reigns however, Gregory cut the signal. He was left staring at a vivid screen. The same he always wanted to be in front of, up close, watching sci-fi shows and flicks with his brother.

Gregory felt a pit in his stomach. Something was missing here. A piece of him; an entire half, ripped straight from the bone.

His dry eyes stung behind the visor, despite the dim lighting. The light green colors no longer felt 'cool' to him.

Gregory collapsed to the tiled floor. He didn't feel like himself anymore.

Laid bare, isolated and alone, he felt like at the end of it all, only he felt like he truly wasn't himself anymore.

_____

I wanted to tackle Sci-Fi Horror, okay. I did not even think about Among Us until I was midway through and it was way too late for me to go back on it, lmao. I'm so sorry

I really wanted to try writing a story where a group of people begin to experience some form of Capgras delusion. I hope it makes sense at least, haha.

I think both the art and especially the story portion was super fun to do! While I admit I kinda, pulled most of the space shuttle travel and all just outta my ass because I didn't want to like, beat myself over the head over the notion of "I didn't research this enough!" and then not finish it, ack. I can understand how that would be a turn-off for a lot of people, so I hope it's not like, super deterring for anyone who knows how space travel actually works, lmao. I hope me setting it far enough into the future hopefully helps, but I dunno, haha. In the end though, this was super fun to write! I can't believe we're nearing the end of October already... :0c