Midnight Station

A Shriek tore through the serene darkness and in the depths of her terror the woman sat bolt upright, sheets clutched to her busom for the safety, and security the offered as sweat drenched every inch of her skin, forcing the fabric to cling and stick to the silhouette of her body as she looked about herself.

Darkness, but the glow of the clock built into the steel wall beside her offered a small fragment of much needed comfort she was still in her room, "Illuminate" As she spoke the word in a trembling, soft voice the overhead artificial lights began to slowly brighten chasing away the shadows, and the nightmares, pale feet dropped to the floor and she hauled herself from her bed making her way towards the small autodoor that separated her bedroom from the bathroom attached so she could look herself in the mirror as she stood within the sonic shower, rhythmic pulses of ultrasonic sound that broke up the grime that clung to her skin, dropping it to the floor where it was marshaled to a disposal chute and disposed of.

Her pale green eyes stared back from the glass and she looked herself over, the same pale skin, unblemished, unbroken by scars the long white hair a mark of her station as much as it was a result of too much time spent in the base's artificial lighting carefully she ran her hands over her own skin, feeling every curve and bump beneath her fingers as if she was checking for anything out of the ordinary, but no...Nothing... As she had known it would be.

She had been dreaming dreams of terror and fear for so long now though that it had come to the point she always dreaded, "Schedule, This afternoon, Doctor Alek, four fifteen" She shivered faintly as she looked to the glowing screen that had materialized in the empty space before her, making her notation, her addition to her schedule before dissolving into little specks of light, She would need to be checked, perhaps she had caught something and it would not do to put the other workers in danger.

The soft click came from the cubicle about her signaling the end of her sonic shower and the woman stepped out to look at herself more closely, something...Something had to be different, she felt different. But once more she shook the feeling off making hr way back into the bedroom and over to the large window that occupied one entire wall, looking out to the glittering stars... And the softly glowing Earth...

"Are the Nightmares standard Doctor?"

Sadly yes in all four of our test subjects there is occasional bleedthrough Sadly it seems the more sensitive the subject, the more often the Bleedthrough occurs"

"If you cannot find a way to suppress the nightmares..."

"I know Administrator, you will be forced to terminate the experiment, and the subjects..."

The glow of the monitors before the two figures illuminated their features softly as the watched a young white haired girl shower after screaming, it seemed... Someone had fans...

It had been a fairly uneventful night after she had managed to get to sleep once again but the Whitehaired woman still felt something wrong within the back of her mind, a dull ache in the front of her skull putting her on edge as she sat within her cubicle entering the numbers on her screen into the S.E.T.I. Telescopes that had been recently upgraded on the cratered surface of the moon, while they could be monitored remotely it greatly increased efficiency if the Earth based organization kept their new Scopes array on the surface of the satellite monitored by someone closer than they to the Array, and maintained by the mining base where the whitehaired woman stayed.

"Hey Aya, care for lunch?"

She perked up for a moment as the telescopes swept but a single nanometer down from their old configuration, her eyes glued to the monitor to check the operation of the automated shape recognition software as she addressed her friend,

"Eugh, Would love to Marie, sadly they got me here till three, then I've got to head to Alek's labs"

A small face was made showing Marie just what Aya thought of the Doctor... Well...it wasn't the Doctors fault she was a little creepy right? Doctors were all creepy, still, Marie clucked her tongue gently and grinned at Aya,

"Lunch it is, I'll pick you up the usual from the Cafe?"

"You're a lifesaver"

Marie made her way from the observatory with a small smile upon her face as she wandered through the halls of the Station toward the small Cafe that served all base staff leaving Aya all alone within the Observatory, or, was she, as Aya smiled faintly at the thought of coming food her eyes turned back to the Array monitors, her sharp eyes catching a faint flash from a world so far away from the earth that it made her head spin to think about the distances involved a soft chuckle spilled from her lips probably some damn tourist on tour of the Array with a flash camera, but she could not help but picture some alien, seated at a console much like hers and peering back at her, looking for any signs of life. Did they Really stand a chance? Could they really find life on another world this way? Some times it made her despair, still, her vigilance was unwav....unwaver...unwavering... As her nose touched the keyboard of the array a soft bleeping sounded over the speakers, and the array shifted once again, the Scopes rotating under the direction of a command that was never supposed to have been given.

A blinking warning light came on next to the monitor, unseen, unnoticed, unrecorded, a soft bleeping and then it was past, as Marie's fingers gently pressed the 'disconnect' button, returning the Scopes to their quadrant of the night sky, and erasing the signal quickly...

"Such a pity"

Aya awoke again, stretching her limbs and wriggling her spine as she felt life return after a short sleep without the nightmares that plagued her so, she blinked though, surprised by the harsh white light overhead her eyes narrowing to compensate for the harsh light and dim shapes began to slowly emerge the chair beside her, the bed on which she lay, someone had taken her to the med bay and looking down the length of her naked body she knew who had done so she smiled at the co worker who had fallen asleep in the chair beside the bed, the womans head upon her stomach, Aya reached down to tousle Maries hair gently rousing her and smiling upon her, “Sorry Marie... Sleepy, Nightmares recently” Marie simply smiled as she awoke to Aya's hand upon her soft hair, “Mmmf, no sweat sweety, you're light as a leaf, you were easy to carry, although you really shouldn't fall asleep on the keyboards, you always swallow keys when that happens, remember last time... the shift key?”