Mechanism, Core, 2
The Doctor didn't know what to say in the face of Mr. J's furrowed brows and sullen face. Mr. J wore a flawless black shirt. The more the Doctor looked at that shirt, the more he felt a darkness settling inside him. After taking a sip of his bitter coffee, Mr. J raised his shoulders and looked at the doctor. "A world without the sound of a child echoing through the window," Mr. J said, as if feeling regret. "This city is a mechanism. Whatever is being controlled, it triggers chaos rather than fueling order," he spoke. His tone carried that noble demeanor of a wild animal spending its only night in the wild.
The Doctor questioned how his old friend's worldview had evolved so much, but quickly composed himself. "I need to tell you something regarding Patient 22.37." He lowered his eyes, looking at the tips of his pointed leather shoes. At that moment, Mr. J wavered between touching and not touching the cactus at the edge of his desk. "Patient 22.37?" This idea seemed to pique his interest. "That popular woman who caught the President's attention..."
The Doctor did not want to show interest by joining this conversation that didn't concern him. "The latest data regarding her shows that the woman is a predator-prey..." He cleared his throat because Mr. J's gaze had become intensely focused on him, causing him to lose his concentration. He loosened his collar. "Several old patterns in the brain regions combining predator-prey instincts have collapsed. The passive or active depressive episodes are being replaced by a life model where emotions are used more intelligently and with common sense. There is an alignment in the neural firings that can be understood even intuitively. We are tracking 22.37 with the latest imaging techniques. But the President..."
Mr. J shifted into a more attentive listening posture. He nodded as if to say, "Go on."
"We are moving away from the brain patterns the President would prefer. The young woman must be feeling that her idea generation and problem-solving skills are strengthening, while crying fits and unnecessary emotional shifts are decreasing."
After listening until the end, Mr. J stopped playing with his coffee cup and spoke in a mysterious voice, "Intriguing, my old friend." The doctor looked excited. Mr. J continued: "This must be exactly what gives her strength. The will to live. We all shrink before her. There is no other world, and we are only obligated to live this world to the fullest."
Without joining the philosophical debate, the Doctor argued, "I think there is a world beyond. But in that beyond, there is no heaven that would accept tainted people."
"You are interesting, Doctor," Mr. J replied. "Do you know what our next stage will be?"
"The next stage..." the Doctor said, his voice trembling. "I know that. To measure how long the new alignments formed by the young woman's strengthening survival instincts will last. But more importantly..." He spoke, meeting Mr. J's eyes. "To identify the alignments that form the predatory instincts and calculate to what extent we can increase them—if they exist at all."
Mr. J turned serious. "That is not a good idea."
"I don't understand you."
"You will understand, my old friend. Our goal is not to feed the predatory instincts."
"What must we do?" The Doctor felt his fingers trembling in his lab coat pocket. These protection signals sent by the body could quickly make a person the center of attention. While fearing to hear the answer, Mr. J said, "Simple." He, too, was thinking of what the President had said. "Watching people who are always the prey is boring. But how does a predator behave? Do you prefer a passive character who just accepts, or a character who resists? The answer is simple."
22.37 is showing signs of resistance, the doctor thought.
Mr. J was right about that.
"I see," the doctor muttered and added, "Also, sir... The woman locked in the prison..."
A look of pity appeared in the doctor's eyes. "Why did our President visit her?"
Mr. J's gaze became vague.
"I wish I could tell you that, my old friend..."
"It would be a matter that stays just between us," the Doctor murmured.
Mr. J did not answer.
The Doctor continued. "I will only explain why I am curious, but whether you tell me or not is entirely your decision. Every time I monitor that woman's neural firings, I feel her suffering with her whole body. It's as if her brain is catching fire like a flash in the pan, like regions marked on a map where there is a wildfire."
Mr. J continued to listen to his old friend's description with thoughtful eyes. What a unique perception.
He pushed the coffee cup aside and exhaled deeply. "Our President's ex-wife..."
Mechanism, Core, 1
After pushing his daughter's wheelchair forward a bit, he leaned down to pick up the fallen piece of the puzzle on the table.
Melek complained, "They keep falling on the floor, Dad."
"And every time, I lean down to get them back for you," the man replied.
"Dad?" The girl had started braiding the hair of the doll resting on her knees.
Her father slightly adjusted his sleeve and sat on the bar stool in front of the giant computers displaying camera recordings. "My sweetheart," he murmured, "Tell me..."
Without taking her eyes off the doll, Melek said, "My favorite character is in the tunnel." Her sadness was reflected in her voice. "I miss her..."
Her father glanced at the photo frame on the desk again. He wasn't actually hearing his little girl. His mind was wandering elsewhere entirely. "You love those who resist, don't you?"
"What does that mean, Dad?" Melek asked curiously.
"It means striving until the end, overcoming every difficulty..."
"Dad, my mom was a resilient person too, right?"
The man turned away to hide his suddenly watering eyes from his daughter.
He knew what it meant for everything one believed in to crumble.
A pessimistic background song from an old story was playing in his ears.
"She was," he murmured, remembering the woman's tombstone. A tombstone under which no corpse lay. He thought of a woman who had her grave dug long before she would lie in it. Someone passionately tied to death.
"Where is my mom?" Melek whispered. "I'm so curious about where she is... What kind of place is it? I've always wondered. Dad..." The girl tried to catch her father's eyes, which were fixed on the floor. "When will my curiosity go away?"
"It's curiosity; it passes," the man murmured.
But there were things that would not pass.
He dragged his chair toward Melek, approached her, and stroked her hair.
"You look so much like Özlem..." He shouldn't have said this out loud.
Özlem, with her infinite trust in death, had wanted to rot in a prison cell.
The man had tried so hard to love her, to keep her alive. But that woman... Özlem. She had wanted to be locked behind walls every single time.
Exactly seven years ago, she had said, "Consider me dead."
Those moments were passing through the man's mind in fragments.
"Otherwise, I will kill myself... But if you have a solution, lock me in that cell. Let me tell the people who come to the mechanism with hope how bad everything will be. Let me go..." Her teeth were chattering as she said this. The man had struggled to take the gun from her hand. An infinite distance had opened between them.
"What about Melek?" the man had asked. "What will happen to her?"
The woman had only shrugged. "You raise her. I can't be a parent. Someone like me... someone who has crossed the edge of death so many times cannot be a mother."
"You," the man had said, trying to stroke her hair. "You would be the world's best mother."
"No," Özlem had said.
"No..."
With a word that simple, she had expressed her longing for death.
"But why there?" the man had asked. "Why do you want to stay there? Why do you want to stay in the dark? I don't understand. This is the Mechanism..." His voice had trembled. "It's for the terminally ill. It's a shackle there."
"Send me there," the woman had said, her chin in her husband's palms. Her eyelids were trembling.
The man remembered these one by one as he looked at Melek's face.
He had always thought his wife's behavior stemmed from the baby they had lost before.
Years before Melek, the baby Özlem gave birth to had died during delivery.
Those years were the first times Özlem's mental health began to fade.
Özlem didn't always think this world was an ugly place. There must have been moments when she once harbored hope... The death of that baby had changed everything. Özlem believed that her motherhood and humanity had been completely taken from her. That was why she had lost her mind enough to enter the mechanism cell, leave her newborn daughter, and constantly attempt suicide.
The man saw his daughter looking intently at the screen.
On the screen, he saw her while watching a high-quality, detailed zoom of one of the walls: Sis (Mist).
That stranger.
Thoughts were pressing against his temples.
This man had been sent to the mechanism from a prison.
He had killed his father by shooting him in the head during a fight.
Sis's poor mother had died of a heart heart attack following the incident.
The mechanism was usually filled with permanent patients brought from psychiatric clinics, but sometimes a very small percentage was opened for criminals in prison. Like a quota. They had taken prisoners to fill a few quotas before.
Then, there was a knock at the door.
Mr. J slowly slipped through the doorway from the corridor.
"Wait, sweetheart," the man said and walked outside.
As soon as he opened the door with his own hands, he saw Mr. J.
"Mr. President," Mr. J murmured. "Do you have a moment?"
After glancing at his daughter's pink wallpaper, the President murmured, "Speak." They moved to the next room. As soon as the President entered, he lit his cigarette with an electric lighter, as if wanting to rid himself of the anxiety that troubled him inside.
Mr. J tried to gather his courage while buttoning the front of his black shirt.
They sat across from each other.
The President was consuming his cigarette angrily and quickly. The lines across his forehead revealed his advancing age. "Mrs. Özlem..."
The President's brows furrowed, but his interest increased.
"Mrs. Özlem just said that sentence again to the prisoner who entered."
"Which sentence?"
Mr. J cleared his throat. "'The Mechanism was a carnivore; it ate my son,' she said. I mean, she says this to all the patients who arrive."
The President knew from the beginning that Özlem saw the mechanism as the culprit for everything that had happened to her. According to Özlem, the sins of the people in the mechanism had caused her own son's death as an infant.
When the President remained silent, Mr. J continued.
"She also said this to 22.37. To that young woman... Do you remember? I mean, this information... it disrupts the order in the mechanism—"
"Be brief, J," the President commanded. His voice had turned angry.
"Of course, sir. In short..." Mr. J nervously rubbed his fingernail against the table. "One of the letters your wife left in the mechanism has surfaced from an unidentified location."
Since Özlem had been in the mechanism before, it was possible for her to have hidden notes somewhere.
"The places she hid them were monitored," the President replied.
"But finally... in the latest recordings, I mean. 22.37 pulled something out of the wall across from the toilet. No matter how much the camera zooms in, even if we can't see it... we didn't know there was a letter there. Your wife... in that letter—"
"It doesn't matter what she says, J, she is not of sound mind," the President spoke.
"That letter is in 22.37's hands. Should we take the letter and examine it? I mean, I don't want it to cause trouble for you."
There was a look of indecision on the President's face.
"Aysal," he repeated.
"The sacred resistor. Also, player number 22.37. She takes this game very seriously. She also manages to be my daughter's favorite." He blew the smoke out harshly. Shaped white clouds of smoke spread through the air. "Make an announcement, demand the letter."