Chapter 1: First Contact

Comic-Con - a dreamland for comic book, manga, sci-fi and fantasy fans. A place where people from all walks of nerd-dom unite to celebrate their favorite fictional worlds. Costumed attendees fill the halls, bringing beloved characters to life. Panels of celebrities, creators, and enthusiasts foster lively discussions. The deafening hum of chatter and laughter provides the soundtrack to this mecca of pop culture.

Robert could barely contain his excitement as he and his best friend Raj explored the comic con floor. This was their first time attending the famous convention. Artists' alley was a blur of vibrant artwork as they raced from booth to booth, marveling at the talent on display. Their senses were overloaded with the sights and sounds of fandom in all its creative glory.

Eventually their attention turned to the main stage, where actors from Star Trek were being introduced. Robert felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see an elaborately costumed demoness. "Isn't that the actress who plays Seven of Nine?" she asked excitedly, pointing towards the stage.

Robert followed her gesture and saw Jeri Ryan was being introduced. The demoness let out an enthusiastic "Hoo hoo, Seven of Nine, yeah!" captivated by the Star Trek actress.

As Robert turned back around, he accidentally collided with the distracted demoness, bumping into her.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" Robert quickly said.

"No worries!" she replied with a smile. Introducing herself as Lara, she explained her costume was based on a fantasy novel character. As they chatted, Robert was struck by the intricate details of her outfit and makeup.

Robert was still floating on a high when he returned to his hotel room that night. As he drifted off to sleep, memories of incredible panels and meeting fellow fans spun through his head. He smiled thinking about the demoness Lara and her intricate hand-made costume. To think he'd worried about only him and Raj attending the con at first. Now he couldn't wait to exchange phone numbers with Lara and chat more about her fantasy novels.

In the early hours of the morning, Robert was jolted from sleep by an unsettling feeling that something was amiss. Gazing upward, an ominous violet tear had emerged in the dark expanse of the room. Though his mind screamed at his body to move, he remained paralyzed, like a helpless observer within his own frozen vessel. Then, scaly hands reached out from the tear, followed by a reptilian face that, despite humanoid features, resembled an ancient beast. The creature inspected Robert curiously before clutching his shoulders and dragging him into the blinding purple void.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Robert pleaded for this to be just a twisted nightmare. But when his eyelids tentatively cracked open, the scene before him was no ethereal illusion. He found himself unable to move, strapped down in a cold metallic room under the examining gaze of the reptile and a pointy-eared humanoid reminiscent of a Vulcan. Robert wondered if the scaly one was a Gorn, though its features differed from those he knew from Star Trek lore.

After their initial shock, the two creatures began conversing aloud with each other. They seemed to disagree and argue about something. Suddenly in his field of vision Robert saw an image of an hourglass pop into view. Robert looked at the hourglass which reminded him of the operating system hourglass icon on his father's old computer at home when the system was performing a task.

After a few more moments, a message appeared before Robert's eyes: "Welcome to SYSTEM version 597350.2."

Then a message appeared saying "The system is adapting itself to the user, this will take a few moments."

Then the message appeared "Welcome to the SYSTEM"

"The system has identified that your language list includes English. Updating language system. Processing. Processing. Processing.

The system has installed the latest language package."

"The system has identified an ongoing conversation in the user's audio range, the language is Common. Enabling automatic translation. If you would like to disable this feature, please access the personal menu and disable this option. Continuing user interface adaptation process..."

And so, the menu continued to display more and more messages.

Suddenly, Robert realized he now could understand the two creatures with him in the room.

"It's not him!" the Vulcan yelled, "I can see it's not him!" the creature Robert thought looked like a Gorn replied.

"But those are the coordinates we received," said the Vulcan. "I know," the Gorn replied, "Why are you yelling at me? I just did my job." the Gorn shouted. "Because your job was to bring the Demon Lord, not some random innocent passerby," the Vulcan shouted back.

After another moment they turned their heads to Robert.

"Didn't you sedate him?" asked the Vulcan.

"I froze his body, sedating him was your job," the Gorn replied.

The two creatures smiled a fake smile at Robert.

The Vulcan said "Don't worry, this is just a dream, just a dream… yes " as he pulled a wand out of his pocket and tapped the orb at the end of the wand on Robert's head.

Robert woke up in a panic. He was in the hotel room; Raj was snoring in the other bed. And sunlight shone in through the window.

What a strange nightmare, Robert thought to himself as he got out of bed on his way to the bathroom. He relieved himself, went to the sink and washed his hands and face, applied toothpaste to his toothbrush and began brushing his teeth, only then did he look closely in the mirror while brushing.

At the edge of the mirror was a blinking green light.

Robert looked at the point and wondered why there would be a blinking light bulb in the mirror.

He looked at the wall behind him and also saw the blinking point there. Robert reasoned that the blinking light must be a reflection in the mirror from a light bulb in the tiled wall behind him. But then he thought to himself why there would be a blinking light bulb inside a shower tile. And he slowly turned his head and noticed that the green point moved with the motion of his head. The point was not related to the mirror or the wall. Suddenly, a text box popped into Robert's field of vision, startling him. He threw his toothbrush at the mirror and it fell into the sink.

In the text box, text began to appear saying "Memory restoration complete. Your deleted one hour of memory was restored successfully"

After that, strange text appeared:

"Unable to connect to SYSTEM server. Trying again.

Attempt number 1."

Then the number of attempts began to run quickly in the text box up to "Attempt 999999999."

"Connection attempt unsuccessful. Switching to alternate mode. Switching to local server mode, no local server found. Installing local server in hosts brain. The process will take a few hours. Please wait."

The screen disappeared from Robert's field of vision but in the top right corner of his field of vision he could still see a blinking green dot.

The panicked Robert tried to speak to the screen or the SYSTEM which seemed to be in installation mode. "Hello," Robert said, "Are you there?" he tried, "what do you mean install?" he asked hysterically. But there was no response.

Robert closed his eyes and tried to calm down. He opened them again but the blinking light was still there.

"It started in the dream and is continuing now. Am I having a waking dream?" he said to himself.

He went to the sink and decided to simply ignore what was happening. Maybe the strange light would just disappear on its own and everything would go back to normal. He picked up the toothbrush, looked at it, rinsed it thoroughly, reapplied toothpaste, and resumed brushing his teeth.

When he finished and no window had popped into his field of vision, he chose to continue ignoring the blinking light.

He exited the bathroom and met Raj who was on his way to the bathroom. "You okay?" Raj asked. "It's a good question," Robert replied. "I'm still wondering about that," he said.

Robert sat on his bed, staring at the green dot. He pinched himself but the sensation made him realize it wasn't adream.

"Maybe I'm like Aunt Jackie?" he said aloud. Aunt Jackie, his father's sister, had suffered a mental break when she visited the holy city of Jerusalem. She had experienced a very profound spiritual event and started thinking she was the messiah. The phenomenon called Jerusalem syndrome affected her severely . Robert thought that maybe the experience of visiting the holy land of comic con and meeting the Star Trek heroes he idolized had triggered something similar in him?

Aunt Jackie had returned to normal after a few months. If this was a similar episode, Robert reassured himself that he would surely be fine soon too… probably.