IT BEGINS
Everything looks ready to go. Devour thought, making a routine double check of the whole station with the help of S.C.A.R.E.C.R.O.W. The man spoke freely, and he knew that the AI could hear him from anywhere in the ship. As long as the cameras were working, at least. “One last time, and then we can finally get things running. You up for it, Scarecrow?”
“Don’t bother asking. I might as well.” Scarecrow sighed. “I’ll do the same checks as last time.”
“Of course. And just to be sure, you wouldn’t mind stating your A.I laws one last time, would you? Just to make sure no geniuses tried to change them up before we left Earth.”
If a nonphysical A.I could have glared at Devour, it would be happening now. Without waiting he replied, “One; I may not harm a human being. Two; I must protect my existence, as well as the ship’s safety, as long as it does not violate law one. Three; I must obey all orders given by humans, as long as it doesn’t violate law one or two. The captain’s orders go above all others.”
“Glad to hear it.” Devour replied, satisfied. “Now, to give the final announcement.”
“Whatever.”
“This is SCARECROW. Please take a good look around you one last time, to make sure you have all the supplies you need. I have ensured that there are no electrical failures. Engineers, you will be needed to set up the singularity as soon as possible, to keep the ship running. Quartermaster, you will need to order some metals and glass for the Robitics station to use. Everyone else knows their jobs. Have a good stay at the Stickpage Space Station. A hundred and eighty days remain until we head home. All you can do is hope your loved ones haven’t forgotten about you by then.”
Every room in the station heard the announcement, but Bubbles ignored it. He had much more important things to do.
“At last! A place I can truly use my skills!” He crowed, dancing with glee. “All the supplies I need! A whole host of test subjects!” He threw open a sliding door, which revealed two large rows that were filled to the brim with alive, healthy monkeys. He opened one of the metal cages, and pulled a monkey out, which gave Bubbles a bored look that could only mean, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
But the doctor paid no attention. He didn’t give many things at all his undivided attention. He danced back to his side of the room, opened the door to the DNA modifying computer, and threw the monkey inside. He slammed the door shut in a fit of maniacal laughter, and booted up the computer.
A few moments later, two injectors plunked out of the computer, labelled “Hangover Cure.”
“Bubbles, explain to me what use the structural enzymes of a monkey are to you. And why have you created syringes that contain them?” Scarecrow spoke through the speakers of the Genetics room. It caused Bubbles to jump, screeching and turning around to cover the screen with his back.
“These aren’t the SE’s of a monkey, it’s a hangover cure. What are you talking about? What are you doing here?!”
“Lie detected. Throw those things away. If somebody was to be injected with those enzymes, it would turn them into a primate in an instant.”
“Ah, whatever. I’ll throw them away later.”
“Lie detected.”
“Oh, shut up and go pester somebody else. Maybe I need some self defense.” Bubbles sighed haughtily, and proceeded to ignore that nosy A.I. He had a lot of testing to do, and the four acclaimed ‘super powers’ hidden inside of human DNA weren’t going to find themselves.
“Have a good stay at the Stickpage Station.” Cell muttered, mocking the voice of Core. “Like hell I will. This place is bloody huge. I’ll never keep it all clean.” He walked down the hallways lazily. The janitor’s closet was probably in this general direction, but he wasn’t sure. He’d find it when he found it, he guessed.
Fortunately or not, the janitor’s closet was right where he thought it was. With a quick slip of his ID card, the metal doors slid open, and his supplies were revealed behind it.
Cell was amazed, and he went through the supplies slowly. “Foam bombs...? Good for cleaning entire rooms in a jiffy. May leave the floor extremely slippery for a few minutes.” He read, and he smiled as he considered a room full of crowded people, slipping all over each other.
The thing he saw next really did blow him away. It looked something like a cloning tube, but the glass was green and a single pipe stuck out from the bottom. “A brute force stomach pump… Use this to clean out someone’s stomach if they’ve eaten something poisonous… Warning: Do not keep an occupant in here for more than ten seconds, or he will be anally expunged to the point of death.” Cell shook his head in bewilderment, before wondering who would have thought up such a machine. “Heh, they really do have everything in here. And hey, look. Special shoes that let me walk over slippery places without, well, slipping.” Cell shrugged. The station was clean right now, and to be honest, it wouldn’t be getting much dirtier. Maybe the bar would need cleaning every once in a while, but that would be it.
Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.
These are the things that were going on, all throughout the station. People were gathering up their equipment, setting up their stations, and beginning the first day at work out of six months on an outpost way out in the middle of nowhere. However, inside of the maintenance hallways where nobody ever went, things were much less peaceful.
“Oh, God. What kind of a monster are you?!” Cried the voice of a man who knew he was about to die. Just a few moments ago, an old friend of his had told him to go into these dark, empty halls with him to talk about something important. He claimed to have received a message from Stickpage Headquarters, and they were warning him that something threatened the whole ship. Only a few people could know about it, but he was going to tell him anyways.
Obviously, that had all been a lie. His old friend’s skin had melted away, and he’d transformed into a drooling, snarling humanoid with massive jaws and wild eyes. With scrawny, grey legs it stalked closer to this poor man as he was backed against a wall, and he squeezed his eyes shut in a vain attempt to make his death any less horrible. There was nothing he could do about it.
The monster pounced, grabbing the human’s head and slamming it against the wall viciously, again and again. Each impact was harder and harder, until a sickening crack sounded throughout the empty hallways, and the monster knew that this man was dead.
And so a straw-like spear extended from the monster’s mouth, and he stabbed it into the neck of the now-dead man. His blood, his DNA, and his very identity was stolen from him, and it was all transferred into the monster’s reservoirs of power.
When the process was finally complete, the poor human was an unidentifiable husk. Nobody could have identified him, without the help of his ID card.
As for the monster, he now looked exactly like the man had. To complete the ruse, he stripped the husk of his clothes, and took his ID card. He placed the old, fake ID card that read, “Alexander Bell” into the husk’s pocket for someone to find.
“That’s one human down.” It said slowly, testing his new voice. He flexed his new arms and blinked his eyes. “Now to get the rest of them. It will only get better from here.”
And so the story of our small, hopelessly lost Stickpage members began. Most people were completely oblivious to the fact that a Changeling was among them, but how much longer would that last?
Not for long. That much was for sure.
“Hey, Cell! What are you doing in this side of the ship?” A miner named DiPi asked, raising a hand in greeting. He and Crankuba were heading to the dry docks, to put on their suits and do a bit of casual mining on the asteroid the station was parked on.
“Wandering the ship.” Cell replied testily. “There’s not many messes to clean up yet. I’m learning my way around the place… What about you guys? Not many people come out to the maintenance bays.” He gestured to the area around him.
“It’s a shortcut!” Crankuba chimed in. “A good one, too. You can go straight from the bar to the dry docks, and get there before the beer gets to you. Then you can be drunk, and more importantly, not bored, while you start mining.”
“And why do they call it a dry dock anyways? Do we have a wet dock on this station? I don’t think so.” DiPi grumbled. “The big guys that run SSS should really think that one through.”
“I know, right? It makes me wonder how they managed to build a space station like this one.”
“Actually, they can be as stupid as they want. It’s the engineers and mathematicians who—”
Cell had completely lost interest in this conversation already. He was uncomfortable, and he looked around desperately for an excuse to leave.
The reason he found was one that he immediately wished he hadn’t.
Crammed into a corner was a naked, charred husk of what might have been a man, at some point. Its skin was deathly black, and it blended into the shadows of the badly-lit hall so well, that he almost hadn’t noticed it. The thing’s throat was a bloody crater in the center, and the eyes were completely gone. There was no way that he could have recognized who the body had once belonged to.
“Oh, shit.” Cell turned away quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. The image was burned into his mind, and it didn’t go away no matter how hard he closed them.
“Hey, mate. What’s wrong?” Crankuba asked, concerned.
“There’s a fucking… ugh, just look!” Cell snapped. His own eyes drifted back to the corpse ten feet away, and he immediately cringed.
“Oh, Jesus... It looks like the shit I took this morning.” DiPi breathed, looking around to see if he had gathered any smiles. His eyes fell when he saw that there were none.
Crankuba ignored him. “How long was that fucker here? It looks like it’s been dead for years… except it doesn’t smell.”
There was a series of beeps, before S.C.A.R.E.C.R.O.W’s voice came to life from one of the nearest cameras, causing all three men to jump in surprise. “The tones of your voices indicate there’s an emergency going on.” The A.I’s voice was completely uncaring. “What’s wrong?”
After a few seconds of startled complaints, all three of them pointed to the corpse.
“A dead body... I see. Well, I can’t see it clearly enough to make any judgments. One of you three need to drag it into the light.”
“What? Why? Is your camera a potato or something?” The thought of touching that horrific thing scared the shit out of Cell, but the two miners next to him were staring at him. He was the janitor, after all.
“Bring it closer.” The A.I repeated, less patiently than before. “I’ll explain later.”
So he quieted his rolling stomach, and dragged the corpse until it was a couple feet away from Scarecrow’s camera. The body was rock solid, but it weighed as light as a feather. He nearly fell over backwards as he overcompensated for the weight, and that terrifying figure almost fell on top of him.
“You are a bastard. I know you could see this thing from over there.” Cell swore when he was done, and he wiped his shaking hands on his pants.
“And you are a pansy.” Scarecrow replied. “Ah, yes, now I can see clearly.”
“And?” DiPi asked impatiently. “What caused that big hole in its throat? Did some alien rape him there or something?”
“I guess that this wasn’t obvious to you because you’re a couple of miners and a janitor.” Scarecrow began. “But anyone who knows anything about space would know that we have a serious problem.”
“And what would that problem be?” The miner yelled at the camera.
“The problem, you uneducated boy, is that we have a Changeling among us.
“A changeling is something that you should learn to be afraid of. They are things that can eat a person’s DNA and identity, and kick more ass than anyone on this station can, one on one. From far away, they can spit acid that can put you to sleep, and you’d be eaten by them before you even came close to waking up again.
“They’re smart, too. They have to be. The biggest weapon a Changeling can have is surprise, and that’s what keeps it alive. It can’t let the station know who it is, or who it’s pretending to be, because our combined strength could easily take him down. This body here is probably the husk of a man who he ate, and he’s probably not too far away from here. Pretending to be one of us.”
“Well, shit.” Cell breathed. “How do we find out who the Changeling is before he kills us?”
“Lucky for you, I’ve seen many of these situations before.” Scarecrow replied, losing interest quickly, now that he couldn’t scare the three flesh-and-blood humans in front of his view-screen out of their wits. “Outsmart the Changeling.” He said simply. “You’re going to either force this thing to reveal his true self, or you’re going to make him accidentally tell you that he isn’t human. His lies can’t be perfect forever, and hopefully he will slip up before he kills all of you. And don’t forget; he can also change his form into anyone who he has eaten before.”
“It’s like a really, really bad game of Rabbit Doubt then.” Crankuba said. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do. And if we can even trust each other.”
“Hey, man. I was with you ever since we got here.” DiPi raised his hands in a show of innocence. “Now, I’m not pointing any fingers. But you were ‘wandering the halls’ around here, right?” He asked the wide-eyed Cell. “You didn’t have any good reason to be here.”
Cell snapped out of his trance. “Wait, what? I’m not the Changeling!” He protested. “I really did have nothing to do. It’s just terrible luck that I was in this general area.”
“This kind of logic solves nothing.” Scarecrow interrupted. “What you need to be doing is bringing up all the facts you know, and you need to put them together like a puzzle. I did it, and now I already have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”
“Do you?” Cell asked quickly. “Well, tell us!”
You could almost hear an evil smile behind Scarecrow’s words. “Well, that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? I’m immortal, and I’m bored out of my mind. I’m going to watch.
“If the station appears to be in danger of being taken over by the Changeling, I will step in and save your already-short lives. But until then, I will observe, and hopefully find the Changeling quickly. Now if you will excuse me, I need to report this to the Head of Security.”
And the camera’s light flicked off, leaving DiPi, Crankuba and Cell alone in their wide-eyed terror.
