At the end of another busy day on the planetary survey ship, Ethan only had one more analysis to run before he could finally get some shut-eye. Late in his shift, Aaron had burst in and put a rush order for a full workup of some weird eroded crystals he had come across in a cave. Ethan had protested that the analysis could wait until the morning, but since he was the junior member of the five-man crew, Aaron outranked him (barely) and insisted the work be done that night.

Aaron seemed to delight in having someone to boss around and Ethan muttered a few unkind and physically implausible descriptions of him as he wearily prepared the lab's equipment for the first round of tests. As the first scanner warmed up and began emitting its characteristic high-pitched whine, Ethan opened the sample locker and retrieved the mineral sample case Aaron had delivered... and immediately noticed that the latch for the case had been damaged. He wasn't sure if he should blame the greed of the Space Agency's contractors or Aaron's gross incompetence for the damage ("Why not both?" he concluded).

Aaron's low standing with Ethan took a further dip when Ethan opened the loose lid of the case and only found one smoothly-worn crystal inside. "Dammit Aaron, you thoughtless jerk!" he thought. "How am I supposed to avoid test cross-contamination on a single frickin' sample?" Ethan paused to contemplate various high-pain, low-evidence methods of extracting revenge on Aaron, but redirected his energy to figuring out whether it would be possible to cleanly divide the mineral into uncontaminated segments so he could still run all the tests.

Ethan concluded the answer was unfortunately no, again cursed Aaron's incompetence, and was trying to figure out which of the tests could be salvaged when he remembered something: When Aaron had rushed to drop off the sample box into the locker, he had dropped it and then picked it up again. Maybe some of the samples had fallen on the floor and Aaron had just been too inconsiderate and thoughtless to pick them up himself (which sounded 100% like Aaron, actually).

Ethan carried the sample case over to the locker and began searching its dimly-lit floor. To his disappointment, he couldn't see any of the samples next to where the case had been stored. Ethan then optimistically speculated that maybe the samples had bounced or rolled further back into the locker. The cases stored at the back of the locker filled up most of the floor and the lighting was especially poor back there, but Ethan wedged his shoulder into the gap between the case and locker wall and felt around gingerly, hoping he could locate the samples by feel alone.

To his surprise, he almost immediately felt the distinctive edge of a worn crystal and with a little more maneuvering, was able to fish it out. "That was surprisingly easy!" he thought to himself as he opened the sample case to deposit the crystal inside. "Ugh...Spoke too soon," he thought to himself as he realized he had misplaced the other crystal. Had he left it by the test equipment? Or maybe by the plasma cutter? Or maybe he was just as much of an idiot as Aaron and had accidentally dumped it into the locker.

As he got down on his hands and knees and searched the locker floor near the broken sample case, a faint creaking sound caught his attention. By now, he was very familiar with the sounds the test equipment made, and given the elemental forces they deployed to work their Science stuff, if they started emitting any unusual noises it was almost certain a Bad Thing... especially since they were about 3 light years from the nearest repair depot.

As Ethan tried to isolate the source of the sound, he was frustrated by how the acoustics of the locker were so poor: Now that he had frozen his movement, it seemed like creaking and scratching noises were echoing all around its interior, making it impossible to trace from which direction the original sound was coming. As he silently stewed in his frustration and mentally cursed Aaron's inconsiderate incompetence for about the 50th time in his very long day, his line of thinking was suddenly derailed as his eyes locked onto the sample case. In disbelief, he saw that the creaking sound was coming from the case's lid, which was slowly opening.

Ethan quickly exhausted any reasonable explanation for why the sample case seemed to be opening itself, leaving his increasingly panicked mind to revel in wildly implausible ones. He had decided that an explanation that combined "Aaron" with "incompetence" or "malice" or "stupid prank" was probably most likely, but all of his analysis went out the window when what looked like the tip of a transparent TENTACLE extended out the edge of the sample box and curled purposefully around the edge of the broken lid.

Ethan gasped and leaped reflexively away from the case, putting as much distance as he could between it and his body. Unfortunately, he was still inside the locker and saw stars when his head made violent contact the locker's metal walls. He lurched backward into the door of the locker and struggled to regain his wits.

As his vision began clearing and his ears stopped ringing, he was horrified to see that the worn crystal sample had flowed outward at each end to form long, clear tentacles... tentacles that were now waving with surprising vigor. However, the real shock for Ethan was when a circular section of the crystal suddenly snapped open to reveal what Ethan could only conclude was an ACTUAL FREAKIN' EYEBALL!

"NOPENopeNopeNopeNopenopenopenope" Ethan thought as his blood ran cold and he scrambled to his feet, keeping his eyes locked on the squirming crystalline creature. To his horror, it became clear that the the creature's newly-revealed eyeball was tracking his movements as it braced its tentacles into the corners of the case and then suddenly LAUNCHED ITSELF AT ETHAN'S CHEST.

As the youngest and least experienced crew member, Ethan had always tried his best to project strength and maturity beyond his years... but all of that was abandoned as he screeched and lurched around the lab in complete and utter panic. In a desperate attempt to remove the creature from his chest, he clutched the two spindly tentacles and yanked them away from his body with all his strength. But even though his forceful movements stretched the tendrils to the thinness of a wire extending a full arm's-length away from his chest, he was shocked to see the creature still firmly in place. Looking more carefully, he could see that the creature was now encircled by a dense array of tiny crystalline hairs that were extending downward and weaving themselves tightly into the fabric of his uniform.

As he struggled to work his fingers under the creature and wedge it free from his uniform, two simultaneous developments chilled him to his core. The first was that the realization that creature's tiny crystalline hairs had not stopped their movement when they penetrated his uniform; instead, he could feel them break his skin and start spreading into his chest. That was shocking enough, but what sent Ethan's panic to new heights was the realization that he was feeling exactly the same sensations in several places on his back. Ethan caught his own reflection in the shiny protective case of the plasma cutter, and to his horror he could see several more tentacles waving over his shoulders.

In desperation, Ethan lurched toward the plasma cutter, trying to figure out how he could bypass its control systems and safety overrides and burn the creatures off his chest and back. Ethan's panic made clear thinking nearly impossible, but even in his agitated state he soon realized that even if he could jury-rig an override, it would basically be impossible for him to target the high-powered beam with any precision from inside the cutting chamber.

Suddenly, the solution became clear to Ethan. Obviously he would never be able to fix this himself... but everything would be OK if he could get some help. Now that he could finally envision a path forward Ethan began to feel calmer and more focused. He scooted across the lab to where he'd left his comm unit and immediately hit redial. Despite the bizarre chaos of the last few minutes, when he realized Aaron was the last person to whom he had talked, his continued annoyance at his idiot co-worker actually soothed him with its familiarity. Despite that, Ethan snapped back into crisis mode when Aaron answered and immediately shouted "AaronyouidiotyoursamplefreakinattackedmecomehereIneedyou" unintelligibly into the device before realizing he should calm down and speak more clearly. Ethan tried to push down his panic enough to communicate clearly, but was surprised and staggered as a massive soothing wave of calm spread throughout his body. Ethan had a momentary spike of panic as his hand relaxed so much that the comm unit slipped from his grasp and bounced across the floor, but another massive wave of calm immediately washed away his concerns.

"I need Aaron's help," he thought quietly to himself. "Aaron will help me." For a brief moment, Ethan could hear a faint voice in his head screaming that Aaron was an idiot and so was Ethan if he didn't pick up the comm unit and call the Captain or Juliet, the ship's medic... but that voice soon took on a quieter, more confused tone as an ocean of white noise seemed to hiss Ethan's thoughts into sleepy lassitude.

When Aaron opened the hatch to the lab and poked his head in, Ethan's thoughts were almost completely quiet, calm, and subdued. Aaron asked, "Is everything OK in here?" and looked around the room with concern as Ethan stood limply staring at the wall.

The awkward silence continued for a beat as both Ethan and Aaron stood without saying a word, but then Ethan felt his head swivel toward Aaron and his eyes flashed a blinding burst of blue light. He felt a rising panic as a mouth he no longer seemed to control answered Aaron: "Although slivers of the mind still resist, the body is ours."

Aaron's eyes flashed the same blue burst and he stepped into the lab and closed the door. "Excellent. We had been concerned that your host had noticed this unit's unusual behavior or the holes in this unit's environment suit, or had possibly damaged your structure in some manner. Fortunately, your host's inexperience and lack of skill worked in our favor."

As the last shards of Ethan's consciousness were being isolated and locked away, he concentrated all of his remaining strength in an attempt to push through the crystalline cage around his thoughts. With mighty effort, Ethan managed to mutter quietly, "Aaron you thoughtless jerk" and then the last part of Ethan that was still Ethan became thoughtless, too.