Chapter 180: A Extraterrestrial Parasite
Peter lay in bed, his mind racing with thoughts.
Suddenly, a mocking voice echoed directly inside his head. "Individuals with such pathetically low spirit are the kind our race would have abandoned at birth. Do you really intend to help them? What a fool!"
There was no one else in the room, no communication device, and no hidden speakers. The voice was ringing strictly inside his own skull.
An ordinary person would have been terrified out of their wits. But Peter wasn’t surprised at all. Instead, he simply ignored it and chugged the rest of his beer.
Idiot. You’re not even human, he cursed inwardly, showing zero respect and a whole lot of annoyance.
He reached for another bottle but stopped himself. If I get too drunk, this damn thing might hijack my body, and who knows what it’ll do...
"In my civilization, the magnitude of one’s spirit is paramount..." The annoying voice just kept droning on like an endless chatterbox, recounting its past and its glorious history as if it could talk about itself for a century straight.
Peter had just wanted to take a nap, but the mental noise was unbearable. He finally snapped. "Damn it! Will you shut up?! Could you stop talking about your ’race’ and your ’civilization’ for five minutes? You’ve said it a hundred times already! You’ve been yapping from dawn to dusk, and you’re still going?! Do you ever run out of breath, or are you just a broken record?!"
"Insolent savage!" the voice spat back one last time before finally falling into a sullen silence.
"Screw you, you parasitic freak," Peter retorted out loud. Basking in his minor victory, he smiled smugly, though it quickly faded into lingering anxiety.
The entity in his head wasn’t some imaginary friend, a hallucination, or a side effect of a faulty neural implant. It was a genuine, bona fide alien.
How it had inexplicably crawled into his brain, Peter still wasn’t entirely sure. It all started almost a year ago...
Back then, because of his background in IT, he had managed to land a job as a low-level researcher at the Light Lake Supercomputing Center. Sure, it was the bottom rung of the ladder, but it paid a salary and gave him access to some fascinating data. Of his trio of slacker friends, Peter had arguably been the most ambitious.
One day, he was staring through the reinforced glass at the strange metal sphere Jason had brought back from a mission. The senior scientists speculated it was a black box or a data storage drive, but its complex quantum lock had kept them from accessing it. Peter knew it had to contain a wealth of crucial knowledge. He used to daydream about cracking the code himself, becoming a legendary scientist and humanity’s greatest hero. He just wished he had that kind of luck.
Coincidentally, right around the time the Federation was locked in a tense standoff with the Viridian Civilization, the military launched a nuclear strike on the crashed Martian spacecraft, completely incinerating the bizarre, fleshy sphere hidden inside it.
And at that exact moment... Peter fainted!
A colossal surge of alien data forcefully hijacked his mind. He experienced a terrifying, hyper-realistic nightmare where a pitch-black sphere of light was slowly devouring his consciousness and his soul.
Is this a body possession? his rational mind panicked, recalling the plots of old horror movies. It felt completely unscientific, but every hair on his physical body stood on end. He knew that if the black sphere consumed him, "Peter" would cease to exist.
He fought back desperately in his mental landscape, engaging in a fierce battle of wills with the mysterious invader. But he was utterly and hopelessly outmatched. He couldn’t stop the creeping darkness.
Just as Peter was on the verge of total erasure, a radiant, sun-like energy suddenly flared in his heart. The moment this blazing presence appeared, the black sphere was violently repelled, granting Peter a miraculous, inexplicable victory.
It was all incredibly bizarre. But ever since that day, the alien loser, whom Peter bluntly dubbed "Black" had taken up permanent residence in his head.
To put it simply, Peter retained 80% control over his own body, while the extraterrestrial parasite, Black, held the remaining 20%.
"Son of a bitch," Peter muttered in the dark dorm room. He absolutely hated this arrangement. It wasn’t a blessing; it was a curse.
If I ever get a girlfriend, am I going to be a third wheel in my own body?
No one wanted a bizarre alien lifeform piggybacking in their skull, sharing the steering wheel of their physical form.
Peter remained extremely wary of Black, terrified that the parasite might attempt another full takeover. Because the sun-like energy that had saved him was somehow linked to the captain, Peter desperately wanted to stay close to Jason. The closer he was to that "sun," the safer he felt.
God, I’m not a stalker, Peter thought, amused but exasperated by his own behavior. He just valued his life and wanted to purge the evil entity from his brain.
But how could he ever explain it? If he walked into the medical bay and announced he had a live alien in his head, he’d be strapped to a table and vivisected in a heartbeat. So, he kept his mouth shut, feeling he could at least keep the parasite in check for now.
Sometimes, the pressure of this life-or-death secret was too much for a former computer nerd, and he’d almost impulsively run to Jason to confess everything. This erratic behavior had actually made Peter intensely paranoid for a few days, especially since the captain was already stressed from dealing with the Viridians.
Eventually, Black issued a severe warning regarding Peter’s actions. *"You want to kill me? Let me make this clear: if I die, you die with me! You won’t survive the process!"*
"Screw you, you lying sack of—! @%...??1%" Peter had cursed wildly, his veins popping, refusing to believe a single word the damn thing said. Over the months, his profanity had evolved into an absolute art form. Even a highly advanced alien lifeform couldn’t compete with the sheer creativity of human insults.
"If I die, twenty percent of your brain matter dies with me. If you believe you can survive that, then by all means, ignore my warning,"Black had replied, utterly exhausted by the verbal abuse.
That had shut Peter up. He was truly stuck.
According to Black, if they both wanted to survive, rule number one was to avoid Jason. Rule number two was to avoid the quiet girl, Lily. Her spirit levels were incredibly high, and she might possess latent telepathic abilities that could detect Peter’s ’abnormality.’
Peter was miserable. He took out his frustration by constantly unleashing mental torrents of abuse at the monster in his head. His swearing skills grew more sophisticated by the day, rarely repeating the same insult twice.
Black was genuinely stunned. It couldn’t fathom how such a foul-mouthed, creatively vulgar species existed. Its initial anger had turned into helplessness, and eventually into a desperate desire to just curl up and cry. It couldn’t win a physical takeover, and it couldn’t win a battle of words. What kind of nightmare was this?
...
"Alright, I have helped you achieve your goal. What about our agreement?"
Black’s voice echoed in his mind again, pulling him back to the present.
Ultimately, the alien had been forced to compromise just to prove its existence wasn’t completely parasitic. It simply couldn’t handle Peter’s relentless mental bullying. Black had offered a deal: it would help Peter achieve massive scientific breakthroughs and win over women, hoping that success would distract Peter from his constant cursing.
Of course, Black had its own hidden agenda, namely, freedom.
In the Federation, intellect was the new supreme currency. Women looked for brilliant minds when choosing a partner. Being handsome was useless if you were an idiot, you’d just be a pretty face. And Peter wasn’t particularly handsome anyway; he was nowhere near Jason’s league.
The terms of their truce were simple: Black would use its alien knowledge to turn Peter into a renowned scientific genius. In return, while Peter maintained complete control of his body for 80% of the day, he would willingly surrender the remaining 20% entirely to Black, without any mental interference or verbal abuse.
Peter had agreed to the deal.
And that... was the true origin of the groundbreaking room-temperature superconductor!