I threw myself onto the chair and yelled. "Holy hell, what a mind-numbingly boring job this is!"
The assistant floated through the air and came up to me.
"Sir, I've noticed you haven't eaten anything for a very long time. An XY chromosome individual needs to consume an average of 2,200 - 3,000 calories per day, but so far you have consumed close to zero. I strongly recommend that you eat."
"Food?"
"Yes…" He reached into his body and took out a can of tuna in a technological container. "…please, have some. You used to love tuna."
"After all this, you must be being ironic, right?"
"Ironic? How so, sir?"
At that moment, I was starving, and tuna was something I genuinely liked. I was afraid of the pipe in case I ate and had to go to the bathroom, and after the fish-like creature I had just seen, I didn't feel like eating fish.
"No, I won't have any for now. I prefer not to eat while I'm on the job."
Ukar had taken us to a white room with an aquarium along the wall. As I sank into the chair that stretched along the side of the room, I wiped the sweat from my brow. Staying this far below the sea for so long seemed to make the body involuntarily uncomfortable. And the occasional fish smell that reached my nose was unbearable.
After leaning back in the chair and stretching a bit more, I could tell Jose, who heard my stomach rumbling, was staring at me, even though he didn't have a face.
"So... what are we doing?" I asked. "Do we approve or reject?"
"Would you like me to show you the images I took during our walk?"
"Please…"
The assistant floated for a while, then shut off his motors and sat on my lap. I instinctively thought I should pet his head. From a hole in the middle of his black sphere, Jose began to project three-dimensional holograms. All the photos were from my point of view.
There was a close-up image of Ukar's strange head. Yes, it could be said that I had been studying the man's head for a long time. My view of the glass, chemical-filled sea, my view of the strange boxes in the library, and finally, my view of the creature named Cthulhu.
"Is that it?"
"There's also this photo."
In the hologram, I was looking out the window with Ukar. Ukar was trying to show me the creatures outside the glass, while I was trying to understand what was in the water with a strange expression on my face. My drone assistant Jose, who took the photo, was holding a phone in one hand and giving a thumbs-up with the other, taking a selfie.
"What is this, Jose?"
"I wanted it to be a memory. You always used to want memories."
"Hey… Wait a second… Is there a folder where these memories are saved?"
"I don't remember, sir."
"Jose…" I said and threw the robot off my lap. "…where do you save these photos you take?"
"This is the first photo I've taken, sir."
"Yes… I'm aware that you've lost your memory. I'm just asking you, if you wanted to save these hologram photos right now, where would you save them? Where would your instincts take you?"
"But I don't have instincts, sir."
"Just answer my question."
"I was planning to save them to the black box in the cave."
"Okay, then remind me when we get to the cave so we can take a look, will you?"
"Of course, sir."
"Now… Can you go through the holograms quickly one more time?"
The holograms passed in front of me at a tenth of a second, and I jumped up in anger. Realizing my anger, Jose this time opened and closed the holograms more slowly.
"I don't see a problem," I said. "The old man's experiment seems very reasonable to me."
"Then you'll press the approval button."
"Does this mission end when I approve?"
"Yes, sir…"
I took the phone out of my pocket and opened the app. At that moment, I heard a camera move. The sound of lightly rusted metal... I didn't know my ears were this sharp. As I looked around the room, I noticed the camera in the corner was looking at me.
'This camera is clearly watching us… Ukar? It looks like he's up to something. I didn't like the feeling.' I thought to myself, then said to Jose: "I think we should look around a little more before we give our approval."
Ukar's five floating ball robots, like pearls, were circling around us. Two were in front of us, showing us the way, and two were behind us, which made me uneasy. Already hungry and weak, I was getting angry at those little sphere robots. Especially the last one… It was circling around us like a mosquito, constantly watching us.
"What the hell is this?! I'm going to backhand it and splat it on the wall like snot!"
We toured a lot of rooms. Jose kept going into computers and downloading data. We took photos all the time. We examined a room full of test tubes. Tubes filled with strange liquids, huge cauldrons with some body organs connected to each other by pipes…
Behind the experiment room, there was another room, which, I don't know if you'll be surprised, was another Subject Room. But unlike the other one, this room had an artificial forest habitat. Throughout that habitat, various creatures that were half-metal and half-flesh seemed to be wandering around aimlessly. Around each creature were Ukar's spheres, which probably meant Ukar was controlling these creatures with the help of those blue spheres in some way. There could be no other explanation for these creatures, which looked like monsters, standing so docilely.
Yes… This habitat was a forest habitat. It was a habitat with huge, vine-covered trees and a huge pond in the middle, but it was as if none of the laws of nature applied in this habitat.
To explain this, I might have to talk about some of the creatures in the habitat. For example, there was a creature with the upper body of a lion and the lower body of a snake that crawled around. On top of this creature's head was a huge hole covered with glass, and its brain was visible through this hole. With the constant electricity supplied to its brain from the outside, this creature seemed to be in constant pain.
There were also some creatures the size of shoes, which I could describe as having legs coming out of their butts, with pointed ears, faces that looked like human faces, and huge bellies. These were in a herd, separate from the other creature, and were wandering around. A piece of glass, just like a spectacle lens, was attached to the hearts of the creatures, and some tubes coming out of their hearts went into their pointed ears. The only reason these strange dwarf creatures and the half-lion creature were in the same place and not tearing each other apart was that these creatures were being controlled by Ukar. At least my knowledge of nature told me that in nature, the big one always eats the small one.
One of the blue spheres approached me and suddenly spoke: "This place seems to have caught your interest, Mr. Mehmet."
"Ukar, is that you?"
"Yes…"
"What is this place?"
"I display the creatures I created when I first started genetic engineering here. They remind me of my mistakes."
"Mistakes?"
"There are 15 different species of creatures here. The genetics of each creature were coded by me, almost from scratch. In the beginning, most of the creatures I created to test my genetic knowledge were so existentially flawed that they couldn't live without machine assistance."
"So that's what the machine parts are for…"
"To keep them alive…"
While my stomach was rumbling, I was also watching Jose wandering through the habitat. He took a photo of a long-necked, zebra-striped, feathered creature that was half-mechanical. Then he came and took a photo of a fish with four wings, one of which was mechanical, that was constantly flying around. After wandering throughout the room and taking photos of everything, he looked at me for a long time.
"Sir…" he whispered next to my ear. "…I'm an assistant, and you're the real inspector, after all. I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at…"
"Just look at everything…"
"That could take us a few days."
"Just look for suspicious things…"
"I don't understand what you mean by 'suspicious.' If you'd like, you can explain the suspicion to me in a detailed form, and I'll process it onto my card as data."
"Fine, Jose. Quit whining… I'm looking…"
I put my hand on my hip and went out into the corridor. The moment I stepped into the corridor, my eyes, which had gotten used to the green of the forest, were once again submerged in whiteness. After walking with the spheres turning around me, I pointed to a random room. "What is this room?" I asked Jose.
"It says 'planning room' on it, sir."
"How interesting, can we go in?" I glanced at the blue spheres circling around me and they didn't react at all.
"It looks like we can, sir."
The room called the planning room was pitch-dark. I put my hand to the side of the wall and tried to turn on the light, but it was useless. The only light in the room was a shimmering red light in the middle of the room. As a simple human would do when seeing a red light, I pressed it, and rays of light from the red dot began to draw diagrams all over the room.
The first point, Cthulhu… Cthulhu will evolve and create a new creature. Increasingly difficult conditions. Yes… Ukar had told me all this. I couldn't see anything different. "What do you think, Jose… Is there a problem with this plan?"
"I can analyze what Ukar said. Yes… There doesn't seem to be a difference between what he told us and what we see in this plan. His technology is sufficient to carry out this plan, but whether it will be successful is a mystery. What you need to look at here is the ethics…"
"Ethics, is that it? I don't see anything unethical. Even if I did, I don't know if I would understand it."
"Do you think it's ethical to create a life form that will live in very bad conditions and in torment? To prove a scientific theory."
"This…" I said, letting out a deep breath. "…that is a really difficult question. But if a creature isn't going to be created to fulfill scientific purposes, what else could it be created for? After all, is there anything more important than science? Can it provide a greater benefit than this?"
"You will have to answer those questions."
I examined the diagrams drawn with white rays a little more. Then I turned to Jose and pointed to the text that I couldn't read because it was right above my head. "Look, what does it say there?"
"Creatures that can realize physical theories different from humans."
I thought for a while. "Jose, Ukar said he had a book called 'The Vile Computers of the Vile Humans,' right? Did you download it?"
"Yes, sir…"
"Did you read it?"
"Shall I read it?"
"Read it…"
"I have read it."
"Then I'm going to ask you a question. But I want you to answer from the book. Human computers seem inadequate, don't they?"
"Yes… In the book, since human computers are inadequate at seeing the Incompatibles, both humans and the computers created by humans are seen as inadequate."
"What about the Incompatibles… Can their computers perceive us?"
"It is thought that they can."
"We are trying to create a superior race that can create computers just to perceive the Incompatibles. So we're creating a bunch of alien races, is that right? Or rather, a creation chain… Every creature created will exist in more difficult conditions."
"Yes, sir, but I don't understand where these questions are going."
I thought for a while, racking my brain. It was as if an idea was about to appear as a light in my head. But that was as far as it went. Since there was no idea in my head, I said: "It doesn't seem to be going anywhere… I don't think I'm smart enough to draw a conclusion. Let's go."
Just as I was about to leave the room, I noticed that the arrows coming from the diagrams above the door were pointing at a name. "John Crowrift"
"John Crowrift… Do you know this name?"
"The name John Crowrift?"
"Yes, this name…"
"Scanning the internet. Yes… Oh… Yes… Yes baby right there… I found it…"
"What did you find?"
"Nothing…"
"Very interesting…"
I started to follow the arrow diagrams. One of the three arrows around the name John was going to the word 'security,' another to 'system,' and the other to 'time.' The word 'security' was going to 'isolation,' and 'system' was going back to 'security.' "What the hell is happening, my head is spinning!" 'Time' was going to 'cost,' and 'isolation' to something called 'tube inspection.' Every word was going to every other word.
"Are you alright, Mr. Mehmet… I don't understand what's happening to you," one of Ukar's small spheres said, approaching me.
"Ukar, is that you?"
"Yes, it's me, Mr. Inspector…"
"What's with this name?"
The blue sphere floated around the room for a bit and stopped next to the name. No answer seemed to be coming from the blue sphere. Could the communication have been cut off? I didn't know. I planned to ask Ukar this name face to face later.
It wasn't long before we found ourselves back in that temporary room. Since my head was spinning from hunger, I couldn't hold out any longer and devoured the tuna with relish. Even if my lower digestive system wasn't working, my upper one was doing quite well. After I devoured the food, I burped loudly.
"Let's just say John Crowrift is a scientist and move on. Very good… That way we can give the approval."
"You were easily convinced that he's a pioneering scientist. You asked me my theory, and I answered with the data we have. I would like to say that the reliability of this answer is 8%."
"If he was a problematic guy, wouldn't he have deleted his name from that room? We didn't come here to analyze data and solve a case like a detective, we came to decide whether it's ethical or not, aren't I right? Is this research ethical? In my opinion, yes!"
"He couldn't have changed the data because I would have noticed the change."
"How?"
"We are assistants created from the best software of the Supreme World Republic. The scientist in front of us is, in terms you would understand, a genetics specialist. I doubt he knows enough software to hide data from the eyes of the World Republic."
"Maybe Ukar doesn't know, but we don't know about John. After all, all the work in this facility requires incredible software knowledge, doesn't it?"
"Yes…"
"So who made all this software?"
"There is no information…"
"Could he have made a deal with an outside company?"
"No company would approve of such a dead investment. Only humans would give approval."
"So a company run by a human must have given it, right?"
"Yes… I predict that a human who is more than 60% human could make such an illogical investment."
"Could John Crowrift be this man?"
"The investor?"
"Yes… The investor who would cover the software costs."
"It's possible, sir."
"Then why isn't he here? Why didn't we hear his name while Ukar was talking about his research?"
As I was asking these questions, I understood why a human was needed for a job like this. I was pulling things out of my... well, I was making them up on the fly. I was asking strange questions that computers wouldn't ask. I could feel in my gut that something was wrong here. I was being ironic, you understand… Because I couldn't feel my guts anymore…
"Very suspicious…" I said with a drawl.
At that moment, I noticed the camera on the side of the room had turned to me. "Ukar!" I yelled toward the camera. "We need to talk about John Crowrift! Don't just stare at my face all weirdly from that camera, come out and talk to me!"
At that moment, no sound came from the camera. I was involuntarily tensing up while silently staring at the camera for a while.
"Answer me, man! I know you're watching me from over there."
After staring at the camera for a while longer, an unexpected voice came from the camera.
"My name is John Crowrift!"
"Holy hell!" I then turned to Jose and said: "I wasn't expecting that at all, you know? The hairs on my arms just stood up."
"This camera cannot be seen by Ukar's assistant robots. And Ukar cannot enter this room." As the voice from the camera continued to rise, I was getting more and more creeped out.
"How can Ukar not enter this room?"
"You're a man who's been sleeping for 400 years. Your memory is betraying you, so I'm going to explain some things to you slowly. You cannot approve Ukar, and Ukar will not let you leave here! To reject, ask about Leviathan!"