Star Trek Hunter
Episode 7: The Great Mushroom
Scene 9: Mushroom Dreams
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Mushroom Dreams
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Dr. Sarekson Carrera rolled over, wanting more sleep only to find himself at Commander David Pepper's enormous feet. Carrera looked up in wonder at the giant - each horribly mangled leg was several times the size of Carrera's body. Way up in the sky was Pep's beatific head - the sun forming a golden halo behind his head - making it too bright to see his face.

"Pep?" he asked.

The giant's eyes remained closed, the golden halo of blood behind his head dimming enough now that Carrera could now see his features - beatific, ecstatic, at peace. Pep's chest and belly had been ripped open from his neck to his waist, his chest cavity cracked, ribs splayed open. His organs had been sliced and shoved aside, but there was a massive hole where his heart should have been.

Although the gigantic mouth did not move, Carrera could hear Commander Pepper's voice, low, rich, soothing: "It's okay, Doctor C. My heart isn't misplaced. It's right where it has always been. Right where it belongs."

Pep easily scooped Carrera up in one enormous hand and shoved him into the massive, bloody, oozing cavity where the gigantic heart should have been.

For the first time in his life, Carrera woke up screaming. Buttans Ngumbo, who had been sleeping next to him, woke up and in an instant caught Carrera in his arms. Carrera struggled briefly, then leaned back and started to seriously shake.

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Justice Minerva Irons was dreaming of the Red Queen. Again. She was more or less aware she was in a dream. The Red Queen was a bit of a nightmare figure, but Irons was not afraid of her.

"Fear…" the Red Queen said.. "Do fear… Do ont fear…" The Mad Hatter was clearly frustrated. "Do ont fear… words." The Hatter said this last with a sense of finality, as though he had run through his entire vocabulary. "Do ont fear words," the hookah smoking caterpillar concluded.

Irons had been dreaming about these characters since her first night on Pillo, but for the first time it occurred to her in her dream logic that they might actually be trying to communicate with her. "Don't fear words?" she asked the caterpillar. The caterpillar responded with a delighted (or perhaps frustrated) squeal and clapped its hands - all six of them.

"Taste," said the Cheshire Cat, somewhat incoherently. The justice's dream faded to darkness. The cat's odd smile became Mlady's smile. Which was very disconcerting - few people other than Irons were aware that Mlady's smile was not a sign of pleasure, but a sign of fear or aggression. A broad smile, such as this one, was a serious danger sign as she was displaying her fangs. She tended not to open her mouth while smiling until the moment of her attack.

But Mlady looked different. The differences were subtle, but her mouth was larger and something of the light of intelligence was gone from her eyes. There was no hint of her uniform - or any clothing. Her body had changed as well, her arms longer, making it easier for her to move either bipedally or quadrapedally. Her long bushels of hair were woven about her carefully, keeping her hair out of her way and forming it into a garment. She was hunting.

She watched in frustration as her prey vanished in something that appeared to be a transporter beam. But Irons was no longer with Mlady - she had followed her 2nd officer's prey onboard some sort of space vessel. In every direction, the viewscreens displayed only inky darkness, but there was a target. The vessel arrived at a dying brown dwarf star almost immediately and with technology Irons could not even imagine, sliced out a large section of the star's corona and returned it to 110 Piscium (abbreviated Pi 110 - the star around which Pillo orbited) and fed the now cold corona gasses into a large mechanism in orbit of the star which, in turn, gradually fed the material into the star.

The scene changed to the initial landing of the first colonists on Pillo near the north pole. This was footage Irons had seen many times. The colonists stepped out, clad in EVA suits, only to see a path light up in the forest of mushroom stalks they had landed close to. The bioluminescent trail eventually led the explorers nearly 1,000 miles south to the location that would become Porte Abello. As they approached, they found increasing signs of a breathable atmosphere under the giant mushrooms and a large, open area under the unbroken canopy that eventually became the central courtyard of Porte Abello.

Irons awoke from her dream, mystified, trying to digest what her dream had shown her. She had the distinct impression it was a deliberate communication from another intelligence.

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