Imposter System

Matt checked on the remaining researchers and saw some value in their proposals, but the rock mining was on his mind the whole time. After seeing what the other researchers had to offer, Matt had a general understanding of their project and was ready to poke holes in their proposals. After finishing with their dreams, Matt patrolled around the ship to see if there were any interesting secrets being revealed.

With the increase to his power, he was able to see something like a preview of the dream happening when he focused on the white lights. He would occasionally send his thoughts and whispers into random crewman to include himself in their happy dreams as a friend, and in their nightmares as a hero. This was part of his long-term plan to make everyone his puppet. He didn't forget to include his followers into the dreams as well.

The selection wasn't random either, he would mainly focus on those who were likely to encounter any one of Matt's people. If some random person in engineering started dreaming of Alexis, he might feel nervous instead of pleased. On his rounds, he saw a familiar person. She was Ren Yamamoto. He had never seen her have any dream except for a repeat of the incident that caused her to lose an eye.

Although he didn't check her every day, this was the first time he'd seen anything else from her dreamscape. As he floated over and inspected the dream, he realized it was a sex fantasy. The target of her desires was none other than Alexis! Matt rubbed his chin in thought and chuckled. He didn't bother doing anything to the dream and floated toward Martha.

Since she was awake now, Matt could utilize Dream Eater in her. When he slipped into her mind, she wasn't dreaming. However, this was an easy solution. He used his powers to stimulate the dreaming state and Martha began to naturally form a dream. The content was the primordial forest of her home world.

Matt spent the rest of the night exploring the beautiful forest before returning to his body. The gains were much higher than when he squatted in Alexis's dreams. He could feel himself on the verge of increasing his limit on Dark Mind Blast. Seeing the obvious progress, Matt was excited to explore that dream forest more in the future.

In the morning, Alexis was awake before Matt and had been taking care of and feeding Alex. When Matt came out of the bathroom from doing his morning routine, he discovered that Alexandria wasn't there. Matt stuck part of his astral body into the Dark World and took a peek. She seemed to be doing her task diligently. He decided not to bother her and walked over to his wife.

Matt wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear. "Lexi, I have a task for you." Alex looked up with a nipple in his mouth and gave him a glare. He seemed to be saying 'Hands off.' However, Matt just glared back at him and influenced him to fall asleep with his hypnosis. Alex fought against the drowsiness but with Matt's intervention, he could only go into a blissful food coma.

After Alexis put him down, she finally responded. "What do I need to do?" Her tone was very clear. She would follow his orders no matter what. He nodded and began explaining the situation.

"In order to gather more data, I need you to take your suit out of storage and test Martha's abilities. Spend as much time inside her time dilation and see if there are any notable changes. While you're at it, it has been a while since you passed off the position of acting leader to Lieutenant Yamamoto, catch up with her. Depending on her attitude, bring her around so we can have a good… talk."

Alexis nodded her head and went to change into her military fatigues. She was still technically on leave, but it had been a long time since she interacted with the First Strike Squad. It would be good to put them in their place, in case any of them were having wandering thoughts. Matt trusted Alexis to take care of any issues.

{Will she be the next target?} Alexis asked over telepathy while changing. Matt continued reviewing the proposals and replied to her curtly.

{Perhaps.}

Alexis wasn't offended, instead she seemed to understand that she would be the one to determine whether Ren Yamamoto was worthy of being in the first wave of followers. During her pregnancy, she was mostly hands off with the leadership of the First Strike Squad, so this surprise inspection would be very important to her impression of Ren's ability.

Matt was reading the background of Dr. Roxana Madatyan with a frustrated expression. Her files were sealed behind an intricate firewall. There were only a few people that had such a secure background. The captain, the admiral, Willard, and of course, himself, were a few examples. Because of the security protecting her, Matt could only discover a few surface details about her.

The interesting thing about her is that they shared the same alma mater. Although this wasn't too unique, since the school Matthew O'Connely went to was popular, they were actually in the same class. She was five years older than him because she was already working on her second PhD at the time. Matt tried to muster up his memories of her, but there was nothing of note.

Matt opened the drawer under his desk and took out a small case. Inside the case was a cleaning solution and two seemingly normal contact lenses. These were the ones Willard gifted to him before the truth was revealed. Matt didn't reminisce for long and put them in his eyes. He tried to access the restricted information again and the program in the lenses activated.

'This is what you consider simple hacking program? Hah…' He couldn't help but sigh. In his vision a light screen was projected over his tablet. The contacts had connected to the system remotely and was actively breaking down the complex series of firewalls. After twenty minutes, the program deactivated and the files began to open on his screen.

Hundreds of reports populated his screen and Matt skimmed through each of them. It turned out that Roxana was a huge troublemaker. She had created four different organizations in different parts of the world in order to extort money at the age of eight. When she was finally caught, they couldn't do anything to her because there was no evidence. Everything that was collected by the detectives disappeared overnight.

It was later discovered that she had already planted several of her own people in the law enforcers group. On her twelfth birthday, she caused various markets around the world to crash by influencing billions of citizens with an email chain. She also almost caused the Moon Colony to begin a cold war with Earth by pretending to be an Earth Ambassador at the age of sixteen.

When she turned eighteen, she suddenly disappeared from the world and several law and monitoring agencies, including the federation watched closely for any activity from her. However, she only resurfaced after getting her first PhD in Astrogeology at twenty-three. In the school she had already converted several powerful professors to her side and convinced them to seal her records from when she was younger.

Ever since then, her shaky past had disappeared into a sealed file on someone's desk. Five years later she got her PhD in Astrophysics and applied for the Odyssey Program. Naturally, her connections got her in without a hitch. Matt suddenly became very excited to meet her. This was the kind of charismatic influencer that he sought after. No wonder she could convince the military to do as she pleased.

Matt didn't see anything suspicious in her profile. He specifically searched for any connections to Willard or Willard's father. Then, he checked on any relationship with Matthew O'Connely, Alexis, and Alexandria and there were no results. Finally, he watched a few videos of her interviews for the program and he was satisfied with her performance.

One thing of note that he noticed at the end was that she specifically requested not to be matched with anyone. He wondered if she had issues with other people. It would be ironic for such a charismatic character to have difficulty dealing with interpersonal relationships. Well, it isn't so much of a surprise for a genius.

The door buzzed and broke his train of thought. Matt got up and invited the nervous doctor into his study. The first person he was interviewing was the person who wanted to destroy all life on the ship. His dark matter research had a lot of holes in it, and when Matt began to ask targeted questions, the man broke down crying, unable to handle the stress and Matt's piercing gaze. Matt could only shake his head and send him away.

'Am I really that frightening?' He wondered.

"Oh my, what a heart breaker you are, Matthew." A woman with long flaming red hair and an emerald-green dress stepped forward. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and her body shape was obscured slightly by the pristine white lab coat. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she looked at Matt with an indiscernible expression.

"Doctor Madatyan, you're early." Matt said in a monotone voice.