Chapter 5

Synopsis

Case 05, or Chapter 5, is the fifth episode in MINDHACK’s story. It begins with Doctor having a dream about the memory of winning the Kids Mindhacking Championship, first mentioned in Chapters 3 and 4. Marvelling at their commemorative bouquet, Doctor is appraised by FORMAT for their exceptional Mindhacking skills, until her tone suddenly switches—just before their memory ends, FORMAT’s haunting words resonate in Doctor’s mind, ordering them to never leave her side or betray her expectations. Doctor is then awoken by the loud explosion of a rocket ship crashing outside their window.

As they’re escorted down the hallway to a safer place by Captain Rebecca, they’re stopped by Newbie Guard sounding off HOTFIX’s emergency whistle. He appears with the unconscious body of a stranger slung over his shoulder, whom he explains is a virtuous person who saved his life from a falling tree at the crash site. When the stranger awakens, Doctor and company attempt to converse with them until FORMAT pages in, alerting HOTFIX that a scan on the newcomer shows something resembling a BUG, and that they are to be escorted to the Debug Room immediately to remove it.

In the Debug Room, Doctor wastes no time beginning a Mindhack on the mysterious stranger. Once in their mind, they are able to speak in a legible language and introduce themself as one Hugo Patrick, pilot on the Hermes space crew from the planet “Earth”. Hugo then says that he’s only able to recall that much, as his memory is incredibly hazy, and asks Doctor to help him remember who he is. Accessing his memories, Doctor learns of Hugo’s origins; after an excursion in space through a foreign material, Hugo unexpectedly awoke from cryosleep to find everyone else in his crew still unresponsive. He then discovered the ship’s food storage module had been damaged from the journey, leaving him without anything to eat. As starvation and isolation rapidly set in, Hugo began to lose his sanity and his memories became frayed. In an act of desperation, he opened his crew-mates cryogenic pods to find collections of noodle-like organisms in place of their bodies and hurriedly consumed them. These organisms turned out to be a collection of alien parasites which then posed as Hugo after entering his body, basing their mannerisms off of his memories.

As Hugo is entirely composed of a hive-mind of worms and no longer possesses a human mental structure, none of Doctor’s usual Mindhacking methods work on him, which deeply unnerves them. FORMAT encourages them to try every method until proposing that they destroy Hugo’s mental structure completely. The last semblance of humanity in Hugo’s mind is erased, sending him into a primal animalistic frenzy and Doctor is quickly extracted from his mind. Doctor then witnesses the worms they saw in Hugo’s mind explode out of his back and attack the surrounding HOTFIX staff, targeting Newbie to lift in the air. Doctor is ordered to flee, leaving HOTFIX to subdue the alien and bring it to the reformation target’s quarters.

Unable to go back to sleep from the night before, Doctor meets with Captain in the reformation target’s quarters to pass the time. They’re then joined by a curious Unid and a dejected Newbie. Newbie laments that because of his deep trust in Hugo while unaware of his identity, he let himself be tricked by a monster, making him utterly worthless as a guard. Captain and Unid attempt to raise his spirits before they’re interrupted by a newly awoken Hugo having escaped from his isolation chamber. The alien charges at them and tackles into Unid, making Newbie panic until he finds Hugo completely docile in Unid’s lap. Newbie expresses great relief until he falls quiet again, having not moved to protect Unid while he was in danger. FORMAT then orders HOTFIX to restrain the alien once more and report for a scan after the area has been sanitized, leading Newbie to fiercely grip onto his bruising hand in self-loathing as the scene fades to black.