The camera's voice suddenly cut off. It seemed to have returned to its old state, now observing the other side of the room.
"What was that? Did you record that, Jose?"
"Yes, sir."
"When that guy John said Ukar wouldn't let me leave, was he talking about this room, this scientific facility, or the planet itself?"
"I don't know, sir."
"That guy, John, really spooked me with his voice. Should we quietly and secretly slip away from here?"
"But what about the inspection?"
"We'll just reject it and leave."
"We don't have any evidence."
"Does it matter?"
"We can't do it without evidence."
"We can secretly escape, then come back later with guns and collect evidence. Please, let's just get out of here…"
"But you have a gun, sir."
"Where?"
"Right here!" Jose said, pulling his hands from under his boxy body and making flexing motions. The black sphere even turned into a face and planted a kiss on one of his metal muscles.
"I have never seen another robot that talks so much nonsense. Are you sad? Are you making a sad face now? Maybe you should!"
I truly didn't know what I was doing. If there was one thing I knew, it was that as a person who had woken up from a death-like sleep, I didn't want to die. Even though the cameras were watching me along the corridors, I didn't pay them much mind. I just kept walking. I passed the glass corridors. I passed the library. With rhythmic steps, I kept walking toward the exit door without looking back. Finally, I had reached the stairs that led to the exit and the hatch at the top of the stairs. There was a handle on the side of the door that said, "turn to open manually."
As soon as I turned the handle, I went up the stairs one after another. What did I see when I reached the top? Our spaceship wasn't on the platform where it was supposed to be.
"Ah… Now we're screwed! Where's the spaceship?"
Turning around and looking at the corridors of the facility, I could hear Ukar walking toward me with fast steps, accompanied by dozens of his small flying spheres.
"Mr. Mehmet! Were you leaving?" he said in an angry tone.
"No… I just wanted to get some air. By the dust and soil of Earth, how I've missed it!" I took a deep breath, but the poisonous air that entered my lungs burned them. So I started coughing one after another: "It truly has priceless air!"
The outside of the facility had the same gray sky. Raindrops continued to fall one after another; the flashing lightning found a chaotic harmony with the waves that suddenly hit the platform. The wind was hitting so hard that I could barely stand. Shielding my eyes with my hand to keep the water from getting in, I could see the half-metallic man climbing the stairs out of the corner of my eye.
"You seem to be getting wet."
"You could say I wanted to get not just air, but also some water. Especially the ones with lots of chemicals. I haven't been soaked in the rain for a long time. I'm a romantic person. It felt really good."
"I don't understand! Why did you do something like this?"
"Do something like what?"
The spheres around Ukar quickly climbed the stairs and began to circle around me. Occasionally, a few of the blue spheres would approach my body and give me small electric shocks. As these electric shocks stung me like needles, I was on the verge of losing my temper. While these blue spheres were circling around me, I could neither walk nor move comfortably. As I pushed them away with my hand, I saw Jose looking at me stupidly.
"Jose! Do something!"
"Of course, sir."
Jose suddenly floated up, and he pulled out his fists and started swinging them wildly, making karate moves. As the spheres flew around, trying to escape from Jose's karate moves, Ukar shouted:
"What kind of an inspector are you?"
"We're the same kind of inspectors as you are a scientist."
Just then, Jose was shattering the blue spheres one by one with his karate moves, and Ukar, trembling with anger, had shouted:
"Goliath! Wake up!"
At that moment, we heard a metallic, scream-like sound. As the platform trembled one after another, a gigantic, metal, demon-like creature with huge wings shot out of the sea toward the platform. As the creature climbed the platform, if I had guts, I might have soiled myself right then.
Jose was still busy beating the small spheres, but at that moment, the gigantic winged metal creature named Goliath had opened its wings and was standing in front of me. I just stood there and watched that magnificent, 7-meter-tall metal thing. As it roared with its gigantic mouth attached to its jaw with metal nails, the sound of the metallic scream hurt my ears. Its skin was barely visible under the metal here and there, and it could be said that its skin looked like that of a lizard. While the clouds with lightning flashing behind it were being blown by the wind, Goliath continued to roar. As Goliath was putting on his magnificent show, Ukar had come up to me.
"I can't understand why you would run away from my home like a thief, Mr. Mehmet. Please, let's go inside."
At that moment, Jose hit one of the spheres on the ground, jumped on it, and crushed it with his whole body. He was still wrestling with the spheres with his weird karate moves.
"Jose! You're useless!"
At that moment, Ukar was holding out his hand to me. "Let's go inside, Mr. Mehmet," he said, but I wasn't even listening to him.
"I don't understand what you want, sir," Jose said, hitting another blue sphere and shattering it into pieces.
"You can't even kill the small blue flying sphere things, Jose! How did we come here unarmed when you're this helpless! Why didn't you warn me!"
"Helpless? Tell me what you want to kill!"
"That huge metal thing!" he said, pointing at Goliath. As the gigantic creature took a step, the entire platform shook.
"Are you talking about this, sir?" Jose asked me, and I heard a strange sound. A sound that resembled a whistle…
I turned around and saw Jose holding his finger like a gun. Smoke was coming out of the hole at the tip of his finger. The creature named Goliath was falling backward with a huge hole in its head.
"Way to go, you!" I shouted and jumped up and down. Then I ran and hugged him tightly. I was shaking him from side to side in my lap. "I knew you were a truly perfect robot."
"You're welcome, sir… Please don't shake me, my radars are going crazy."
At that moment, I saw a few small blue spheres hovering above my head. The blue spheres became charged with electricity for a while. Then they suddenly touched me, causing a gigantic shock. "Oh, crap!"
***
When I opened my eyes, I was in a disgusting, fish-smelling cage with iron bars. When I tried to move, I noticed there were painful burns on many parts of my body. The smell of burnt flesh was also reaching my nose. I was in a strange room with a gigantic wall full of computers, but with overlapping screens everywhere. Jose was lying unconscious in another corner of the room.
Ukar was constantly pressing some buttons on the computer screen with his leather gloves. The faint red lights coming from the glass of his chest heart would occasionally hit the white screens, leaving short red stains. The sound of metal creaking was heard as he stroked his head. I couldn't understand if he was humming a song or clearing his throat. The sound was so strange.
"You're awake, aren't you, Mehmet?"
My hands and feet weren't tied, but even if they were, it would have been useless. I could only spit out of the iron bars, which didn't seem like a bad idea at all. Was it too late for me to pretend to be asleep? Because I didn't look ready for what was coming next.
"I can't say I had a very comfortable sleep. I didn't feel this uncomfortable even when I woke up from a sleep where I lost my lower body."
"I'm sorry." I couldn't say I heard much besides the sounds of the screen being pressed one after another, the sounds of a few computer fans, and the sound of a strange beam traveling along the cables. There was a disturbing silence.
"What did you do to Jose?"
"He short-circuited and fell asleep from the electric shock." Was it that simple, for crying out loud! "It's very strange for a simple drone assistant to carry a molecular explosive beam. Did you make these modifications?"
"Maybe. I don't really remember."
At that moment, two half-metal creatures opened the door and came inside. The bodies of these metal creatures resembled those of humans. If their skin didn't look so much like rotting fish and if they weren't half the height of a human, they could have been called humans. Besides the gigantic fins on their backs, they had metal jaws just like Goliath's. Their hands were human hands, while tubes coming out of their arms were connected to the holes in their backs. One of their legs seemed to be longer than the other, and they were breathing with difficulty as they walked.
When they came up to Ukar, Ukar whispered things I couldn't hear and sent them back. I had the opportunity to look at their faces as they went outside. No… They couldn't be said to resemble the creature called Cthulhu much. Their eyes and mouths were just like human ones.
"You're looking at them with a lot of curiosity. They are my loyal slaves. I've named them Jaws. Before specializing in genetics, I had to get help from technology in the beginning. It was a must for me to make such test specimens before I started achieving things with my genetic knowledge alone. Now, I can add any limb to a creature with just genetic coding."
"You've mentioned this before. It's truly a great success…"
"Yes… I've progressed a lot after experimenting for centuries. My creatures no longer exist with incomplete body organs like they used to. When I don't need to compensate for those shortcomings with technology, I don't need technology that much."
"Is that why you and John Crowrift parted ways?"
As Ukar's body slowly turned with the sound of rusted metal, I could see his still-human eye was bloodshot and his teeth were clenched tightly.
"How do you know that name?" he said, taking two steps toward me.
"I saw it in the planning room."
"The planning room? I didn't know such a room existed," he said and scratched the metal part of his jaw with his metal hand.
"Doesn't a person know his own scientific facility?"
"This scientific facility isn't mine, it was John's. He was a very big investor. Don't bother scanning that name on the data networks…"
"I can't connect to data networks anyway. I'm a human."
"He was known by many different names. He founded this facility. All the technological systems you see at the door, the small blue drones flying around my head, the camera systems… He built them all. All the security procedures, the hardware of the R&D computers… Everything technological you can see here was made by him and his company."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I never had the chance to meet him. When I was a young researcher, he noticed my hunger for research and invited me here. He was providing me with almost unlimited resources."
"What did he want in return?"
"For me to continue my research. Nothing else." I could observe Ukar's entire body trembling with nervousness and stress. How much of him was human? 10%, 20%… I didn't know how much of him was human, but that human part seemed to be taking control with emotions.
"Very interesting… Could John still be controlling this facility?"
"Why do you think so?"
"Because he talked to me today using a camera."
"How? Where?"
"In the rest room…"
"There's a rest room too?"
"Oh… Just get lost! Don't drive me crazy! You can't not know the facility that much."
Ukar took two steps back and threw himself onto a metal chair. This metal repair chair loosened some screws in his back, opened a hatch in his back, and reached the place where the heart was from behind. While the heart's fluid was being replaced, Ukar seemed to be getting out of his state of panic a little, but he was still out of breath. The fluid was being constantly replaced, and maybe his stress was reduced this way. Seeing a heart whose fluid was being constantly replaced in front of my eyes was a bit stomach-churning.
"In a facility with only three rooms, where could those rooms be? I don't understand."
"Dude, are you crazy? Look at my face… Your little blue spheres accompanied us through a door at the end of the corridor. I was constantly talking to you through those blue spheres."
"Yes, we were talking, but…"
At that moment, the half-metal part of the man's head caught my eye. Pointing at his head with my hand: "Wait a second, is half of your brain a computer?"
"Yes…"
"Did John also provide that?"
"Yes…"
"Now some things are making sense. John must be controlling your brain as well."
"Why would he do something like that?"
"He wanted me to ask you about Leviathan. Could it have something to do with that?"
Ukar suddenly got up, disregarding the chair he was connected to. "Leviathan procedure begins!" he said. As he got up from the chair, a large part of his body opened, and the nails that kept him connected to the chair fell to the ground. At the same time, the fluid of his heart was pouring onto the floor. As the heart lost fluid, both the heart's rhythm was disturbed and the human part of his body was losing its color.
"The information I need to give you is as follows:" Ukar began to speak again, breathing with difficulty:
"If a race, referred to as Cthulhu, becomes a superior race than humans, humans may oppose it, and this situation is a danger to humanity."
I manually tapped my temple twice to open Telkam. I tapped it three times. I did a few things in two seconds, and finally, I was able to record it on video. Ukar was still talking at that moment. As the fluid from his heart flowed, he was talking like a robot. But like a robot whose battery was about to run out.
"In the event of a human-like race being formed during a creation chain, and in the event of this human-like race being a barbaric, occupying race; they could occupy human settlements and pollute the human race with the new mixed races born from the humans they raped, and this could create a situation that violates the Bioethics Oversight Agency's (BOA) Religious Transformation Ethical Article 01:53, which states; 'It is possible for the human race to be changed only by humans.'"
'Who gives a crap about a situation like that,' I thought to myself, but I continued without paying attention. Maybe the Bioethics Oversight Agency wasn't a very important institution after all. I continued to record Ukar.
"It is not an obligation for the creatures created with genetic engineering and whose evolution is awaited in difficult conditions to take the articles of the BOA Statute seriously at any stage of evolution. Because each new creature created will be governed by its own laws. In this case, since the people who started this evolution chain would be held responsible for a situation that does not comply with the BOA Statute occurring somewhere in this evolution chain, the BOA Statute will be seen as not having fulfilled its responsibilities." Ukar was losing so much fluid that his mouth was loosening, and his body was beginning to tremble. "Since such an exploitation is inevitable somewhere in this almost infinite evolution chain, Ukar Txq11_Klm has already been found guilty. Therefore, it is more appropriate for the facility's rejection to be decided by the BOA."
As soon as Ukar finished his sentences, he had lost the strength in his legs and let himself fall to the ground. When he fell to the ground, it was as if his human side had returned. He crawled on the ground a little, vomiting blood from his mouth. I didn't know if he was in pain, but he was writhing like a man in agony.
"Jaws!" he shouted. "What happened to me!" His eyes seemed to be spinning from weakness. "Quickly place me on the chair!" he shouted. The Jaws came toward him and slowly lifted the man and sat him back on the chair.
"Do you need help?" I asked from inside the cage.
"Chair… Start the healing procedure!"
The chair didn't even move.
"Chair! I said work!"
The chair wouldn't work no matter what, and Ukar was writhing in agony in the chair he was sitting on. While Ukar was vomiting blood, high-pressure steam spouting from his body was throwing most of the nails in his body out of their places. As he tried to get up, the nails on his face had been dislodged, revealing his computerized brain. As he walked toward me with the help of the Jaws, he was trembling in agony.
"You…" he said as his brain was shaking with steam pressure.
"What about me?"
"You are John Crowrift's agent!" he said and touched the bars of my cage. I had crawled backward as far as I could so that the nails flying from his body wouldn't hit me. As the blood he vomited covered the floor of my iron cell, his heart had fallen from his chest to the floor. With his last breath, Ukar had said: "You will be destroyed with him too!"
As his lifeless body fell to the ground, the sound of metal hitting the ground was heard. The two Jaws standing over his head, after Ukar's death and Ukar's control over the monsters was gone, had started hissing like animals. While they were standing on two feet, they suddenly fell onto all fours. After jumping in place for a bit, they had started to tear Ukar's flesh body apart with their mouths, and swallowing the pieces without chewing them. They were throwing the metal parts far away with their feet without much effort. They were so strong that the metal pieces they threw were leaving marks on the wall.
As the inside of my cage was filled with pieces of flesh and blood, I had taken my phone in my hand. I couldn't wait for these creatures to tear the iron bars apart and eat me too. I opened the BOA app. Of course, my hand was trembling with fear at that moment, so I was able to do this process as slowly as possible. Then I pressed "add file." I added the video I had recorded with Telkam and pressed the "Reject Audit" button.
A text appeared in front of me. "Please wait."
While one of the Jaws continued to eat Ukar's body, the other one seemed to be staring at me. It got up from the corpse and started gnawing at my iron bars. Its jaw was so strong that it had shattered an iron bar like a cracker in two seconds, but still, a big enough gap hadn't been opened for it to pass through. It was just about to break the other iron bar when a voice was heard.
"We are here as Bioethics Oversight Agency. Please put your hands on top of your head and kneel on your knees. If you don't have hands or knees, please lower yourself to the ground!"
As soon as this announcement ended, a gigantic robot broke through the ceiling and fell on top of one of the Jaws. As the Jaw was shattered, and all its flesh pieces scattered everywhere, I was covered in blood and pieces of flesh. Then that gigantic robot fired the gun in its hand at the other Jaw, and the bullet coming out of the gun blew up the other Jaw, splitting its body in two. As the lower half of the Jaw's body fell to the ground, I was screaming: "Thank God!"
I understood at that moment that the Bioethics Oversight Agency was a more badass institution than I had thought. While gigantic white robots covered in guns were hunting everything one by one, small drones were putting the creatures into a coma with the darts they were shooting.
If there was something to be killed, they were shattered in a second by the gigantic robots. The drones, on the other hand, would occasionally put some creatures into a coma with the needles they threw so that some creatures could be taken as samples. My small human brain couldn't understand how they were determining which creature to put into a coma or which one to kill.
I hadn't realized that so many different monsters were lying in the scientific facility until Ukar died. This could mean there were other habitats in other rooms as well. Had he perhaps hidden some of them when he realized we were coming? Maybe we just missed those rooms, who knows? If there was an irregularity in the creatures Ukar created, he probably wouldn't have hosted us this comfortably anyway.
"Maybe Ukar's only crime was working with this guy named John," I couldn't help but think. "But John, after all, pointed out the flaws in Ukar's new project. So, even if I didn't notice, there was an irregularity, right? Maybe John isn't a bad guy after all."
I had gotten out of my cell and gone to the rest room. While I was lying on the couch, two flying robots, the size of a cigarette pack, were pouring something on the burns on my body with their needle-like hands, melting them in a way and healing my burns.
While I was lying on the couch, my assistant Jose was on my lap. Petting his metal head somehow gave me a sense of peace. It was as if the entire facility had gone into sleep mode. The camera that was looking at me when I first came to this room was off. Most of the lights in the facility were off. I didn't know if this had something to do with the attack.
Jose woke up not long after. While I was expecting him to be in shock from what had happened, he looked as if he had understood everything.
"Good morning, Jose."
"Good morning, sir."
"You don't look very surprised."
"I'm a robot, sir. I don't get surprised…"
"But you make human expressions when it suits you…"
At that moment, the door to the rest room opened. A robot that resembled a praying mantis, but with jets on its lower body, flew in, and the two antennas on top of its head were in the shape of a half-crescent. When it spoke, it had a beautiful woman's voice.
"Last human, BOA Inspector Mehmet… You have truly achieved a great success for our institution after many years. Thanks to you, such an irregularity could be prevented."
"Thank you."
"I am…" She said and extended her hand. I was quite creeped out as I shook her metal hand. "BOA director Toxa. In return for this irregularity you prevented, we have deemed it appropriate to give you a new assistant as a nice bonus and also to make your job easier."
At that moment, a slightly bigger, white but with blue stripes, drone came in through the door; its black sphere on its head was even shinier. I glanced at Jose and then at the new drone. I was expecting Jose to make a sad face at that moment, but I guess he was hesitant to do so since the director was in front of him.
To be honest, if the assistant they had brought was a sexy female robot with blonde hair, blue eyes, and detective clothes that fit her perfectly, I would have accepted it without exception. I had been feeling lonely inside ever since I learned that I was the only 100% human on Earth. I would definitely not have missed such an opportunity. But the robot they brought was the white version of our Jose.
"Thank you, but I can't accept it," I had said. "But it can be said that I need a new healing computer. I'm having some trouble feeling my lower body, and the current computer can't fix this situation very well."
"I'm sending a new healing computer to your cave immediately, Mr. Mehmet."
"Thank you, Director… Or Mr. Director…"
"You're welcome, Mr. Mehmet."
I won't lie, I still had hope inside. That the healing computer that would come to my cave would be a beautiful robot in a sexy nurse's uniform. Before the director left the room, she stopped and asked me this question.
"Is there anything else you would like to add?" This could have been an opportunity to express my wish. It was as if a divine power was testing me. But it was as if there was something I could add. A name… The name John Crowrift…
"Absolutely not, sir."
While the robots were scanning everywhere and collecting evidence, I wandered around a bit. I had set my mind on visiting the planning room, in particular.
When I entered the planning room, one of those gigantic, two-meter-tall robots was busy scanning the room. There was a crushed creature under the robot's feet that I couldn't understand what it was. As the robot walked, this piece of flesh followed it around like a toilet paper roll.
Looking closely, that robot looked even more magnificent. It had a thin waist, and the cables rising from its waist disappeared somewhere under its shoulder. Since it was a white robot, it couldn't be said to be very scary, but it certainly looked strong. Its head looked just like a knight's helmet. It only had a single line for its eyes that was constantly lit up. When it spoke, there were some ripples in those eyes. It was armored, strong, and armed.
"IXMTM 14 is at your command," the robot had said, realizing that I was constantly looking at it.
"Would you mind leaving me alone in this room for a while?"
The robot left the room, leaving a trail of blood and flesh with its feet, while Jose was standing next to the robot like a bee. Jose had to move aside so that the robot wouldn't crush him. After the robot left, I looked around for a while. The lights of the room, which was pitch-dark when I first entered, were now on all the way, which was strange. The red light button that was shimmering in the middle of the room in the dark was still there even though the room was lit.
"You didn't mention John Crowrift to the director, sir," Jose had said.
"I'm not sure if I should have."
"You should have."
"Jose… Shall I tell you the difference between a human and a robot?" I had said, getting a little angry at Jose's words. "Humans take initiative. And they do it without knowing why."
When I touched the red button, lights once again scattered from the hole next to the button. The walls and ceiling were once again filled with diagrams. I followed the arrows and tried to find the name of John Crowrift, but I couldn't find it.
"He erased his own name… We were here before, weren't we? Did you get the image?"
"Sir, I still can't see the diagrams that you see."
"What do you mean?"
"You came and looked at the ceiling last time too, but I couldn't understand."
"But I asked you the name John Crowrift, didn't I?"
"Yes… If you hadn't asked the name, I couldn't have researched it."
"So there's a software barrier in these symbols. Ah… I wish I had been a little smarter and drawn the diagrams in a notebook or something back then. I'll shoot myself in the head!"
"Please don't be so hard on yourself, sir. You were sleeping for 400 years."
"You're right…"
The diagrams scattered by the beams were truly very different from the previous ones. Not only the name John Crowrift, but the entire diagram structure had changed.
"It looks like John Crowrift used us, but why?"
"The robots are saying that most of the memory chips are empty, sir. Someone has emptied the data storages of this facility."
"So John took what he could from here and escaped. I wonder what he took? Why did he take it?"
"You seem curious."
"I am, but… But would you believe it, I don't care at all. After I finish these three missions, I'm going to make a lot of money and go on a nice vacation. If necessary, let John come and f**k me to get that money, I wouldn't care."
"You're very serious…"
"Well… Not really."
As I was going up the stairs of the scientific facility once again, I had a strange feeling inside me at that moment. I didn't know if it was the pride of solving an irregularity or the fear that a man named John Crowrift could cause me trouble.
When I went up the stairs and lifted my head to the sky, I was stunned by the sight I saw. A gigantic spaceship, the size of a small island, was hovering in the air with its jets. Thanks to an energy shield around the spaceship, the clouds in its location were split in two; the rain had stopped there. There were two doors under the spaceship. One door was constantly dropping robots that were leaving the ship into the hole on the roof of the scientific facility, while robots with boxes in their hands were constantly coming from the scientific facility to the other door.
"Holy shit!"
"What are you surprised about, sir?"
"I'm surprised both by how organized they're working and by the energy shield around the spaceship. I'm pretty surprised, in other words…"
Our spaceship was standing where it was supposed to be on the platform, just as we had left it after all these events. As I was walking toward our spaceship on the platform, Jose approached me from behind and asked a question:
"Sir. How did you convince Ukar to confess?"
"How? If you remember, John Crowrift said something."
"What did he say…"
"He said to ask him about Leviathan. Maybe it was like a password. When Ukar heard this, he started acting crazy. John was controlling Ukar remotely without him knowing. He created this facility for him, robotized him, and used and discarded him. How cruel is that? You should have seen Ukar as soon as he heard that word. Holy shit, it was terrifying."
"What did you say the word was?"
"Leviathan."
Upon hearing this word, Jose suddenly froze where he was. Then, trembling, he had suddenly started to speak.
"The information I need to give you is as follows."
"No!" I had shouted in fear.
Jose turned off his jets and let himself fall to the ground, and he continued to speak while trembling.
"According to BOA Statute 13, Article 5…"
"Damn it!"
"and according to the Human Ethics Article 12…"
"Damnation!"
"…according to that article, Mr. Mehmet needs to be treated with a pipe so he doesn't s**t himself."
"What do you mean?"
Jose turned on his jets and flew next to me, and a smiling face appeared on his screen. "I was just kidding."
"What kind of joke is that!" I snapped in anger and continued walking toward the ship with angry steps.
"I remember you used to love jokes, sir."
"You only remember what suits you."
"I just wanted to make a joke to thank you for not replacing me."
"Oh, how funny!"
"Are you angry?"
"Angry is not the word for it!"
"But I was serious. You haven't been to the bathroom for hours, and an accident is about to happen."
"Then hurry up! Let's go back to the cave and get my ass fixed!"