Nightmare Fuel / Space Boy

• An in-universe example: Oliver is shunned by the other students who believe that interacting with him will give them nightmares. Sure enough, Amy gets a weird dream or two after talking to him (and the dreams themselves can definitely count on surrealness alone).
• The full truth of Oliver's situation is an absolutely haunting case. As a child, he was the Sole Survivor of an accident aboard the space station heading towards the Monolith. The alien who'd been secretly guiding the mission the entire time then attempts to erase his personality and use him as a Puppeteer Parasite. Fortunately, the traumatized Oliver is able to fight off it's influence due to emotionally cutting himself off entirely. Now, the FCP convince him to continue the mission but he is incredibly lonely and unmotivated, drifting in space on what is shaping up to look like a suicide mission. So they build him a robotic body he can remotely walk around on Earth in whilst travelling to space. Unfortunately, anyone who gets too close to Oliver in his new life could get Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
  • Making matters even worse? The alien in question is the one behind an Ancient Conspiracy to ensure humanity someday reaches the Monolith. It's intentions are unknown due to its Blue-and-Orange Morality, but it has used it's emotion-manipulating powers to slowly brainwash the entire staff of the FCP so they'll be easy to manipulate so it can achieve it's goals.
  • And an added piece of creep factor to the part above? The one person in FCP we know isn't being controlled by the alien is James Silber because Amy's ability doesn't detect the flavor of copper and iodine that poisons the flavor of everybody else she meets at FCP, which makes her think maybe she can trust him. Something the reader knows isn't a good idea. However, when you really think about the implications, this means that that Silber is Not Brainwashed. Which means he was the one and only human already messed up enough to go along with the alien's plan!
• EVERYTHING about the Wanderer.