"Isn't it strange?" I asked, extending my legs from the chair I was sitting on towards the spaceship's control screen. My stomach rumbled, but I didn't care. I could feel my assistant's strange glances, but I would continue to ignore them. I'd given up on eating so I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom. I wasn't going to consider eating until I was curled up from hunger, just to avoid that iron pipe going up my backside, and this bothered Jose, my drone assistant.
"What is, sir?" Jose said, floating behind my chair. The fact that his name was so easy to pronounce was great. It suited me better than saying 'drone assistant.'
"I wake up and I'm immediately burdened with a job. If the organization could have done this themselves, wouldn't they have done it before waking me up? Or wouldn't they have fired me?"
"Perhaps you created this yourself, sir. The organization had to wait for a suitable job for you, but you developed a system to create three suitable jobs for yourself because you would want to retire on the date you were scheduled to wake up. Couldn't that be it?"
"So you're saying I committed fraud… How interesting… If I'm that smart, why don't I feel that smart?"
"Because you have lost your memory."
"That could be it… So where are we going?"
"We're going to e-YG718. The old name is the World."
"Ahhh… How lovely… I've missed my home."
"Well… The World might not be what you expect."
***
Looking at the World from a distance, I likened it to a toxic planet with thick, yellow clouds, and I was speechless. When we entered the atmosphere, we had to force our way through it as if we were trying to punch a hole through a cardboard sheet with a pen. After passing through the atmosphere, we struggled for a long time among lightning-filled clouds, finally managing to emerge. The moment we got rid of the clouds, we found ourselves above a never-ending ocean. We were moving between the sea and the clouds in a gap not much wider than two spaceships, dodging constant flashes of lightning. The drone assistant was dodging the lightning one after another, while watching the path impassively, which made me even more annoyed. I was holding myself back from gnawing on my chair when we finally managed to see something other than water.
There was a metal platform floating on the water. Waves were constantly hitting the metal structure, and water was perpetually flowing over it. As the drone landed the ship on the platform, it waited for lightning to strike the lightning rod that stretched up to the clouds. As soon as the lightning struck, it throttled the spaceship's engine, and we landed on the platform with full force. I could swear that if I hadn't buckled my seatbelt, my head would have gone through the ceiling.
I got out of my seat, out of breath. For the last two minutes of the trip, I felt like a child trapped on a rollercoaster. Nausea had taken over my whole body, and I had to hold back from screaming "Mom!"
"We've arrived, sir…"
"I noticed, Jose."
I stood up on shaky legs. "What do we do now?"
I gazed through the spaceship's window at the iron platform struggling with the fierce waves. There was a metal hatch on the floor of the platform that opened in two. As the hatch opened, stairs appeared, and water poured off them. "It looks like we're going there, sir. Now, I need to tell you about the procedures. With the communication device you have in your ear, you can contact me at any time. The Telcam on your temple allows you to record everything you see. If you see anything out of line, it will help you record it."
"I might not be able to use this. Can you record things for me?"
"How will I know what to record, sir?"
"I don't know, just film anything that seems interesting."
"Understood, sir. I will try to record as much as I can. Now, I would like you to turn on the phone in your pocket."
When I turned on the phone, a simple interface opened with applications on a white background. The first app was the camera, the second was contacts, internet, etc. There was one app that said Bioethics Oversight (BAO) and had a pen icon on it.
"The Bioethics Oversight application will be your form, sir. At the end of your time here, you need to fill out the report in that app. There are two states. Approval or rejection… If you approve, nothing happens. If you reject it, the Bioethics Oversight Institution is called and takes action, that's all."
"How do we reject it?"
"You must have evidence. You can't just reject it as you wish."
"What kind of evidence…"
"With your consent, my eyes are now your eyes. If you notice any wrongdoing, I will see it, and I will record it, don't worry. I will also pull the evidence from the Telcam with your consent and upload it to the system for you. Even if you have evidence, approval or rejection is up to you. You are the Bioethics Oversight Inspector."
"Well, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty cool."
After all that talk, I got out of the ship and walked confidently toward the stairs. Raindrops were hitting my face so frequently that I felt like I was drowning in the midst of the most powerful waves. I tried to quicken my steps to reach the stairs as soon as possible, but the wind was so strong that it felt like I was walking in slow motion. The atmospheric pressure when the spaceship took off hadn't felt this intense.
I had barely managed to reach the stairs when a person appeared in front of me. I don't know if it's because I've been sleeping for so long, but I could swear that the people I knew didn't look like the man in front of me.
Wearing a gray, metal-colored lab coat, the man coming up the stairs had leather gloves. The left side of his body was metal. The chest part of his suit was transparent, and his beating heart was visible inside the glass. His heart was attached to the surroundings with metal tubes and illuminated by a faint red light. With every heartbeat, the tubes attached to the heart vibrated; the faint red light filtering through the glass would dim and glow. It wouldn't be wrong to say the man had a thin, bony face like a university professor. The metal part of his skull was fastened to the skin with a bunch of bolts. Where his left eye should have been, there was a lens just like a camera lens. The tall man with his metal hands clasped together approached me and extended his metal hand.
"A Bioethics Oversight Inspector? I haven't seen one of you in a long time. What brings you here… I am Ukar…" His lens eyes shrunk and grew.
"My name is Mehmet. We received a signal from this planet."
"It's a very strange situation that you received a signal. I'm the only advanced organism living on this planet, after all… But it's not important, please." he said and showed me the stairs with his hands. "My organization is always open to inspection. Please… Come inside, we don't want the waves to swallow you. We are in the hours when the waters are unstable."
As we went down the stairs, the metal footsteps of the man named Ukar hit the ground one after another, which sent a shiver down my spine as we walked along the narrow corridor. Human instinct commanded me to fear what I didn't understand, and the man beside me was truly something I couldn't understand. I wondered what had changed in the 400 years I'd been asleep.
"Your name… Your manners… I assume you are 100% human. There aren't many like you left."
"What do you mean?"
"In this age where immortality is achieved through mechanization. It is almost impossible to find people who remain human and accept death."
"Has immortality been found?"
Ukar took two more steps and stopped. He first looked at me, then at Jose floating behind me. His lens eyes shrunk and grew. "Has immortality been found? What a strange question. You must either be testing me or you must have been living in a cave."
"Don't even ask. I thought I'd take a nap in a cave until a job came in, and I ended up sleeping for 400 years."
"Unbelievable!" he said, and as soon as he said those words, I saw a human expression for the first time on the metal mass in front of me. Ukar grabbed my shoulders tightly with his hands and squeezed me.
"So you must be one of those who remember the old World. I've always loved collecting memories of the old World. I even have a reality computer at home that can simulate the old World with 98.91% accuracy. But I really wonder what it felt like to live in the real old World."
I had lost my memory, yes, but I could still remember a few things about the old World. I remembered playing with my robot dog on the lawn in our garden when I was a young boy. I also remembered shielding my eyes with my hand from the sun, and watching the spaceship being prepared to go to Mars with awe. My dog loved to search for things in the garden. Once, he found something… He came to me excitedly and tried to show me what he had found. I was scared, but I don't remember what he was trying to show me.
"We were hopeful… Eager…"
"Ah… Is that so? There's not much left of those things you mentioned. With the colonization of space and the defeat of known death, people no longer have much desire to live. We've become so mechanized that what's the point of desire when we can achieve the greatest pleasures on Earth with a single button... Did you know that the last person officially born and officially a Supreme World Republic citizen has been living for 230 years now?"
"230 years old?"
"Yes… You can understand that having been alive for 230 years means they are too deformed to be considered human anymore."
"So why aren't people reproducing?"
"What would they do by reproducing? Humanity has reached its maximum potential. When even death has been defeated, why would you exist? You are the only 100% flesh and blood person I know. Most people are highly mechanized…"
"What about accidental babies?"
"What?" said Ukar, stopping again and moving his lens to look at me.
"In our time, children were born by mistake."
"Yes… I once read somewhere that primitive people accidentally made children, but I didn't believe it." Ukar chuckled. "I laughed it off because it didn't make sense to me that they could accidentally make a child even though they knew that making a child was a very simple ritual, but… But you're serious."
"Nah, man… I'm just messing with you," I said with a drawl.
After a few seconds of silence, Ukar chuckled and put his hand on my shoulder, saying, "I like your sense of humor, Mr. Mehmet."
"So what happened to the World?"
"What happened? The usual stuff… Too much radiation, too much chemical waste, a few wars… I can say I'm sorry to see your home like this."
"It makes my heart sink, I won't lie."
"A sinking heart? I'm not very familiar with that feeling. If you allow me, I'd like to study you for a while. I last studied a few human clones, but I've never studied a human from 400 years ago."
"We had cloning in our time too, by the way… I know what they are, yes…" I said. Yet, I had made no indication that I knew about cloning. "I just can't understand why a human hasn't been born in 230 years."
"There are not many 100% humans left. Yes, sperm and an egg can be fertilized to create a child, but… But the children who are born cannot be used as test subjects. The Supreme World Republic has forbidden it. If we're not giving birth to test subjects, what's the point of a child? Who would want such an expense? It doesn't make any sense. In a place where there is so much mechanization, who needs flesh?"
"So that's why we haven't been getting many jobs lately," I said, turning to Jose. "It all makes sense now."
"Yes… Biological experiments were a trend of a time and have now passed. Ever since people got rid of their flesh, flesh has no importance anymore."
We passed through the metal corridors and arrived at a library. On the shelves where books should have been, there was nothing but white tablets. In the middle of the all-white room was a chair, and next to the chair, a table. The room really felt soulless.
"But you're doing biological experiments here."
"Ah… Yes… I guess I'm still old-fashioned. Look, I even have a library. Yes… I didn't want to clutter the library with books, but I always wanted a special room for work, just like the old humans. I sit in my chair and save my data one by one to the tablets here. You could call it the repetition of a primitive ritual."
On the library shelves, where books should have been, there were rows of jet-black boxes.
"So why are you doing these experiments?"
"A good question… If you like, let's go to the experiment area, and I can continue to explain. There was a short silence. During this time, the lenses in his eyes shrunk and grew. What do you know about the Incompatibles?"
"I know they are an alien race. They were even around in my childhood," I had said. Some of my memories from before I fell asleep were still intact, which I liked.
"Yes… They were an alien race that first appeared about 400 years ago. Of course, as the universe was explored, other alien races were discovered, but they were the most advanced of those discovered. You and the people who lived in your time were the first humans to meet the Incompatibles."
"I guess humanity discovered them when I was a young boy. At least, that's what I remember."
"There was a reason that alien race was called the Incompatibles. When the human brain first came into contact with them, when they saw their spaceships orbiting, they couldn't make sense of them. Yes… They understood that the flying object was a spaceship, but their knowledge of physics wasn't enough to comprehend the structure of the spaceships. Later, humans began to strive for first contact with this race, but… The Incompatibles had no desire to make contact with humans. They had come to our galaxy from another, and they began to spread in our galaxy as if humans didn't exist at all.
They began to spread, but they weren't invaders. They would land on planets, regardless of humans or human threats; they would collect what they needed and disappear. A bunch of ships appeared and disappeared that the physics of many humans couldn't comprehend."
"These were things that happened in my time. I remember some of it."
"Do you remember how it felt?"
"It feels like it was yesterday, first contact. I remember some things…" I really did remember. I remembered the threats made by the president of the Supreme World Republic (SWR), the panic of the countries, the space fleets being prepared, the messages sent by the colonists on Mars in fear, the threats sent to the aliens' ships. But all I said to Ukar was: "I remember people being scared."
"Yes, they were scared because they couldn't understand anything. They couldn't understand why they came to our galaxy, what they were collecting, or why they didn't respond to any messages. Later, some people tried to see the Incompatibles with their own eyes, having gotten off their ships, but… The human brain was insufficient to perceive them. The bullets fired didn't even reach them. It was as if they lived by different rules of physics. We couldn't even make sense of their body shapes. Their skin, their flesh… The human brain was insufficient to perceive them. Isn't that strange?"
"You still haven't solved it after 400 years?"
"We tried… Science tried to produce things to understand the Incompatibles."
"You built all these computers; you must have gotten a result."
"No!"
"What do you mean?"
"That's the real problem! As a scientist, what I have realized is this… We humans are creatures whose evolution is insufficient next to the alien race called the Incompatibles. The world we know and the physical rules of the world were a part of our perceptual evolution. Later, we tried to understand the universe with the computers we produced with our evolution. Yes, human computers were far, far more advanced than humans, but… But the evolution of the Incompatibles was different. It was as if they were in a different plane. They were struggling with different physical theories within different mathematical theories on a different plane. The computers they created would also be in a superior theory like them. It was as if we were in a different dimension from the Incompatibles. Neither could they truly understand us, nor could we truly perceive them."
"What you're saying is very interesting, Mr. Ukar," I said, but I hadn't understood a single thing from what he was saying.
"If you'd like, I have a book called 'The Vile Computers of the Vile Humans.' I can transfer it to you as data."
"It would be better as a book. I love to read."
"Or you can transfer it to me," Jose said from behind.
"Understood, then, assistant Jose. Please connect to the computer tonight. I would be delighted to transfer that book to you. Seeing someone hungry for knowledge is the only thing that really motivates me. Especially when they're a human made entirely of flesh. Anyway… Where was I… Yes… Humans were limited by their existential reasons. They strived to be superhuman and became superhuman. They defeated death, they could make forward temporal leaps, and a lot of other things… But being superhuman was also a limited thing. Just as human existence has a capacity, being superhuman also has a capacity.
But something happened. 20 years ago, a few explorers of the Supreme World Republic were able to find the planet the Incompatibles came from."
"How wonderful."
"A discovery that can mean a lot to humanity, I definitely agree with you. I'd like to ask you a question. What is necessary for life to begin, Mr. Mehmet?"
"Water?" Seeing that the only thing around was water, I felt I had to say that.
"What would you say if I told you that as a result of the research conducted on the planet where the Incompatibles' life began, no indication of the existence of water was found? An answer to a question that science has not been able to solve for centuries. Life that exists without water! Yet until two years ago, we thought science had proved the exact opposite."
"What a fuss you're making, man!" I thought to myself, but I didn't say anything and just continued to listen, "I would say that is very interesting."
"None of our computers could create life without water. This was something that even our millions of years old computers could not perceive. This means that even if human computers were trillions of times smarter than humans, the thing they were smarter than was humans themselves."
"Yeah, you've got that right!" I thought to myself, but I just mumbled as if I had heard something interesting.
"When it comes to what I'm doing here. Humanity has always tried to advance. It tried to create better computers, more flawless biological creatures. I'm trying to create a new life form here."
"Oh, wow… Look at that! I wonder if that's why I'm here?" I thought to myself, raising my eyebrows and puckering my lips as if I was very surprised.
When we reached the end of the metal corridors, we were greeted by glass corridors. On the other side of the glass corridors, the green sea of the World was visible. When I looked at the greenish seawater, the only thing I could think of was a sea destroyed by pollution. A sea where life could in no way exist.
"With the discovery of the Incompatibles' planet, I think I realized something. I began to think that human progress would never be enough. We had the chance to observe that creatures created under better conditions than humans are also insufficient, just like humans. But what would happen if we could create creatures that evolved under more difficult conditions? If the Incompatibles are creatures that could exist with billions of years of evolution on a planet where even water does not exist; if the Incompatibles are creatures that have held on to life by forcing the limits of evolution, shouldn't the creatures that can compete with them also have evolved under conditions at least as difficult as theirs? It seems certain now that creatures that evolved with a "coddled" start, as you would understand it, like us, cannot compete with the Incompatibles… We had our water, our soil, our atmosphere, in short, all our great riches. These riches made our living conditions easier, and the evolution necessary for us to exist in these living conditions was very weak compared to the evolution of the Incompatibles.
Yes… We humans think that life cannot exist where there is no water. Our mathematics and physics say this. If we could create a more evolved creature under worse conditions than us, what would it say? It would probably say what we say. It would be wiser, more evolved, but it wouldn't have much else to say. But what if there was an even more evolved creature created by that creature? And by that one… And by that one… If we don't start this cycle from somewhere, how can we answer our question?"
At that moment, I turned and looked at my drone assistant. I wondered if all this was in accordance with the Bioethics Oversight Curriculum.
"So you're trying to create a creature here that has evolved to live in difficult conditions. You will enable them to create monsters in even worse conditions in the future, and you will create such a cycle."
"Yes, and the World is a perfect fit for the beginning. We are creating life using water once again, but on a planet with such radioactive, polluted, and difficult conditions… What would happen if a creature without even a land structure to get out of, evolved with a slight push from the outside? I'm looking for the answer to that question here. I wonder if the soft-living humans' soft-living computers can achieve the things they couldn't. I have tried to carry out this evolutionary cycle with a computer many times before.
But there we inevitably fall into a dilemma. If I think that these creatures, which have managed to exist by evolving through these difficulties, will derive some physical and mathematical theories different from humans; if I think they can create some theories that human intelligence cannot even touch, whether they are right or wrong, how can a human computer understand this? That's why, Mr. Inspector… That's why such an experiment is essential! I hope you understand me. Also, simulation usually works on a scenario basis. However, evolution itself contains random errors and miracles. Am I making sense, inspector?"
"Are you going to wait millions, billions of years for this creature to evolve?"
"Don't we have an infinite amount of time anyway? It's a long way until the end of the universe… Are you aware of how many more evolutions could occur in that time?"
"Don't you ever get bored of waiting for so long?"
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind…"
At that moment, the scientist stopped me with his hand and pointed to the glass wall. I could see nothing but the green liquid covering everything. Ukar smiled. "Look… They are at the first steps of evolution. I'm forcing them to evolve. After about 1.5 million failed attempts, I was able to get them to the point of being a single-celled organism."
"In 2 years?"
"I definitely got help from computers and some accelerators until they reached a single-celled state… After they become a single-celled organism, they will be on their own." His lens eye grew and shrunk. "I'm only trying to act as a catalyst until the first step of evolution begins because we have no other known beginning for life. Until this point, I have tried to help as little as possible. From now on, I will not help under any circumstances. Please follow me…"
He turned from one of the glass corridors and brought us to a white room. In the middle of the white room was a metal bell jar. As the metal bell jar slowly opened with Ukar's entry, I found a glass bell jar inside that metal one, and inside that, a nauseating creature in front of me.
The creature was about 1.40 cm tall. Tubes similar to octopus suckers stretched back from the back of its head like hair. Its mouth was like a hose, and there were some teeth inside the hose. Its brain was visible inside its transparent head. Where we would expect legs to be, it had fish fins. On its back, there was a dorsal fin the size of a backpack.
"The interesting part is… It looks like it's going to have hands." Ukar said.
Yes… It had hands similar to human hands, but with 4 fingers. There were also fins between its fingers, but these fins were perforated. "They don't have lungs… They can't breathe oxygen because there's very little of it. Their brain development seems to be a few notches below a human's. All of this, when simulated with a computer, predicts the creature in front of you."
"So the computers say it will be a failed experiment? If it's going to be a being with less intelligence than a human, how will it make computers? How will it create another creature with its more advanced science?"
"This brings me back to what I said before. What if the computers that came out of human evolutionary science are wrong? Just as they couldn't give an answer to the existence of the Incompatibles… After all, no computer has ever solved the existence of the Incompatibles… It's a universe full of computers that keep saying the Incompatibles shouldn't exist."
"So you're saying it's a very long-term gamble…"
"Isn't science itself a gamble?"
"So did you give them a name?"
"Are you curious about its scientific name?"
"No… I'm curious about the name you sincerely gave it."
"I thought of giving it a name from Lovecraft's works. I prefer to call them Cthulhu because of their octopus-like structure."
"A very beautiful name… So what will this Cthulhu eat in this radioactive sea?"
"I've created some creatures that can live on radioactivity, designed for this planet by the computer. You can't see them right now because they are also in a single-celled state. I would like you to visit here again when they all evolve together. I plan to create an incredible habitat."
"That is, if I live long enough…"
"Do you have any other questions?"
"You've already explained most things without me asking any questions."
"So what do you think? The thoughts of a Bioethics Oversight Inspector are very important to me."
"First of all, it looks like a really good study, but before I make a decision, I need to talk to my assistant."
"I can arrange a private room for you if you'd like."
"Please, do."