Star Trek. I'm Captain Picard. We're ordered to drop by a small research station in deep space.

We dock normally, but when the seal opens, we see... familiar people.

People who shouldn't be all out here on some obscure station.

I'm the first to recognize that we're not even seeing the same familiar people. Illusions! I try to fight, and can just retain my awareness that it's an illusion... but I can't crack the mask.

The beings, whatever they are, hijack the ship and take us lightyears out...

And then, as we're agonizing over the only option left to us, to sabotage the ship somehow, and blow it and us and our hijackers into flaming oblivion...

...only then do they drop the illusion. They're a research team finishing a weapon Starfleet's been working on for years. We were the final test. If it could defeat a crack Starfleet crew, they'd know they a success.

Our defeat, our suicidal despair, our failure... is proof of a triumph.

And as I wake, I wonder what other failures in my life, what despairs and miseries, are just testing a new thing--are exactly as they should be.

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