Azrak's alien parasite friend, who was also a drone-friend, hovered a few meters above the truck as it moved, scouting the surroundings. Azrak, bored of watching the empty road while the autonomous vehicle drove itself, had leaned back in his seat and put himself to sleep—a cybernetic choice to make time pass faster, even if he didn't strictly need it. His drone-friend Jul scanned the environment constantly with beams emitted from a blue, pearl-like eye. While Azrak didn't think there was any power on this planet that could threaten TESO, he wanted to play it safe. After all, the money at the end of this job was the money needed to save the life of his parasitic friend, Jul.
Interestingly, Jul woke Azrak only a few minutes after he lay down, prodding his shoulder while making strange alien noises. Azrak's eyes were open, but his consciousness was not yet fully present. Then Jul, hovering in the air with its propeller blades, connected to Azrak via a cable from its underside and brought him fully awake.
As Azrak slowly sat up, he realized something was wrong when he noticed Jul hovering anxiously in the air. "Which way?" Azrak asked.
Jul flew up to the top of the truck. Azrak tried to open the truck door, but the safety lock was engaged. He managed to loosen the lock with his hands and forced the door open with immense strength, as if opening a train car hatch. The truck was moving at a constant speed on a road laid in the middle of barren lands. A small canyon was visible ahead. They would descend a small hill and enter the canyon, where they would be vulnerable to any trap until they emerged from the other side.
"Is it this?" said Azrak, half his body outside the door, pointing at the canyon ahead. He had one hand thrown over the truck, clinging to it like Tarzan hugging a tree in the old movies. "Is this what's bothering you? The canyon?"
He looked at the drone. The drone's blue eye charged up, flashed, and pointed toward a plot of land to the west. With an acrobatic move, Azrak threw himself onto the roof of the truck with a mid-air half-flip.
Despite looking in the direction of Jul's beam and zooming in with his ocular lens, he couldn't make out anything. Azrak pointed to his back. Jul took its place in the rig on his back. When they were connected, they could understand each other better, even if they didn't know each other's languages. As Azrak fell into silence, Jul began to murmur one thing after another. Each was a "Beep... Bop... Beep..." sound, but they were designed for alien auditory systems, so they sounded a bit strange. Azrak glanced toward his back, trying to understand—or rather, feel—what was being said.
"Are we being followed?" Azrak asked. "Is that what you think?"
As the fabric of the bandana on his head fluttered in the wind, he shifted his weight and scanned the surroundings for a while. The sky was dark with clouds, and both sides of the road consisted of parched earth filled with cracks. What was visible on the horizon were usually crooked electrical antennas and factory chimneys rising toward the sky. Every city on this planet besides Uruzen was used as a colony by TESO. There was nothing in the name of freedom in any city.
To the east, there was a pond covered in chemical waste. At the edge of the pond were a ruined port and sunken, scrapped cargo ships. These cargo ships had likely become useless, like most of the colonized people, and were left to die. The massive TESO logo written on each ship was barely legible. With his cybernetic eyes, Azrak could see the port to the east quite clearly.
People gathered around small fires, their bodies infested with worms and reduced to skin and bone from hunger; most were writhing in pain from starvation while arguing over who would eat a lizard they had found.
"In Lebanon too…" Hikmar said. He was sitting in the back of the truck's cargo bed, meditating. He was so quiet and calm that Azrak hadn't noticed the old man sitting atop the truck.
"In Lebanon too?" Azrak interrupted. "Where is that?"
"It was a country in the Old World… and at one time, a region…"
"So what happened to Lebanon?"
"In the diary of an Ottoman officer during the First World War, it says this about Lebanon: There was such a famine during the war that even though people were lying face down on the ground, their spines could touch the earth."
"Just like the Uruzenians…"
"Not exactly. While the Lebanese administration held luxurious banquets in palaces, only the people suffered such hunger. So, what do you think the Lebanese administration did?"
"That's a very open-ended question…" Azrak said. "…they could have done anything. What did they do? Did they share their food with the people? Or did they drive the people away from the war?"
Hikmar held his staff in his lap with his third arm and chuckled softly. When he struck the staff against the floor and stood up, his eyes were still closed as if he were still in meditation. He took two steps toward Azrak and stopped. "The people were suffering from hunger. Their agony filled the streets with ear-piercing screams; foul odors and disease covered the streets. The corpses of people who had died of hunger, out of sight, filled the streets. The Lebanese administration stepped in. If there were people screaming from hunger, they tried to collect them before they died. They stacked them one on top of the other in a wooden wheelbarrow and carried them far away. If they were going to die, at least their voices wouldn't disturb the streets of Lebanon. Besides, the dead would be moved that way too. Didn't they solve the problem beautifully?"
"I don't understand," said Azrak, confused by the story. Similarly, Jul the drone made strange alien noises. It probably didn't understand either and was agreeing with Azrak. "You speak very confusingly, Wise Hikmar. First you portrayed the problem as hunger, and now you say the problem was solved because the screams stopped and the disease was moved away."
"There… now you're starting to understand," Hikmar said. His eyes were still closed. He had split his brain in two. One part was occupied with meditation, while the other was busy telling stories to Azrak. "For you, the problem is hunger; for some, it is being exploited; and for others, the problem is the ear-piercing noise."
As he returned from meditation, Hikmar's eyes snapped wide open. He smiled. His eyes were also smiling after hours of meditation. He continued speaking. "Understanding the problem allows you to bring the solution. These people…" he said, pointing to the people by the pond to the east, fighting over a lizard by the fire. Finally, the man holding the lizard squeezed it so hard that its organs squirted through his fingers and spilled onto the mud-covered ground. One of the young boys began stuffing the lizard's burst organs into his mouth while they were still bloody, arguing with the other children. "…what do you think these people see as the problem?"
"It must be hunger! Definitely!"
"Is that so?"
"Yes…" Azrak said. "…don't you see how hungry they are? They're going to tear each other apart for a lizard."
"Every human tears another apart, Azrak. A human tearing another human apart does not mean something unusual is happening. Ever since Homo sapiens dominated nature, throughout history since then, man's greatest enemy has still been man."
"Humans were always hungry, Azrak. When great famines hit Asia, it started the Great Migration. When famines hit Ukraine, terrifying things happened. When hunger hit the Middle East, great massacres occurred… But the problem here isn't hunger. You don't understand this either, and it saddens me that a man who knows his way through the forests of technology like you doesn't understand this."
"No…" Azrak said. His tone had the calmness of a man who sees the light of wisdom through a crack in the door and acts cautiously so as not to scare it away. "…actually, I might understand. The problem here… the problem here isn't hunger or misery. The problem here is exploitation…"
"It's not exploitation either! It's not that simple!" Azrak said, becoming heated. The whole scene was taking on a theatrical air. "What else could it be, Azrak? It's normal for man to tear man apart. It's normal for man to want to leave man hungry. It's normal for man to oppress man. So what isn't normal? What is the problem these people don't want to see?"
"Man not letting man speak!"
"Everyone here is speaking, but they're talking nonsense, Azrak. No!"
"Man despising man!"
"If you can't give the right answer, I'm going to despise you now."
"The absence of God?"
"The absence of God? Ah… even the most faithful lose their gods in situations like this, Azrak. I tell you this even though I am a Cyoh Katum priest. Even though I worship the most living and true God! Think of something else!"
"Wait a second!" Azrak said, raising his finger and asking for absolute silence. "Nothing happening here right now is tied to the present. It's tied to the past or the future…"
"Yes, Great Hunter… you're on the right track," Hikmar said, placing his hand on Azrak's arm to support him. "…please, continue."
"All of this actually happens in indifference. From the indifference of humanity! A human can be anything, but they cannot be indifferent! While nature, humans, the laws of physics, and so many other things strive to kill people, no descendant of Adam can just exist indifferently. Either nature kills them, or humans exploit them, or they are crushed by the laws of physics!"
"Yes!" Hikmar shouted. "I shouldn't have interrupted you when you were going so correctly, I'm sorry! Please continue, dear Azrak."
"Before I became a member of Exosanguis, I had an older brother. I still do, actually, though we don't talk much. He was striving hard to become a scientist. He wouldn't leave the library; he worked day and night. I used to make fun of him constantly. I'd tell him that all his struggle was in vain, that the discovery of immortality was the final point science could reach."
"And what did your brother say?"
"He'd say, 'A human who doesn't struggle is dead.'"
"Ah… your brother was a very wise man too. I admire him greatly." Azrak let go of the young man's shoulder and turned toward the canyon. As the wind whipped his cloak, he spread his arms and greeted the journey. "Humans are cannibals. Humans are cowards. Humans are brave. Humans are fools, wise, skillful, clumsy, powerful, and helpless. If you don't struggle, cannibalistic humans will eat you, cowardly humans will want to be rid of you, and the helpless will envy you and try to undermine your work. You must constantly struggle in life so you can be ready for any situation. Humanity has struggled since its very origin. It struggled just to continue existing. What they couldn't struggle against, they called God and showed respect. But even in that respect, there was fear. The fear that humans, once they have enough power, will cast aside like a snake shedding its skin to be free!"
"Dead galaxy!" Azrak said. "Now I'm starting to understand the poem. What is this galaxy, where no one struggles, if not a dead galaxy?"
"Yes… we are on a dead planet in a dead galaxy right now. Only corpses are talking, and they are following us."
"Did you notice we were being followed too?"
"I noticed while the cargo was being unloaded back in Uruzen City."
"Is it the Uruzenians following us?"
"I don't know. But no colony on this planet is brave enough to attack a truck protected by İki (two) cybernetics."
"I'm going to research the organizations on this planet," Azrak said, and as he opened his palm, a hologram appeared. "Let's see what information is on the Network!" He stopped, his breath catching in surprise.
Noticing Azrak's breath hitch, Hikmar asked, "What happened?"
"The connection to the Network is cut," Azrak said in a surprised tone. "This… this is impossible, isn't it? Even on TerraNova, the connection to the Network is rarely cut outside of the dungeons."
"It seems Labiba has a foul intention behind this."
"Do you think she's setting an ambush for us?"
"I don't think so… The story she told us about needing money seems true. If Labiba is the one who cut the connection to the Network, she can't keep it up for long. She can't disrupt production in the other cities too much. I mean, if they had cut the connection for us, they would have attacked by now."
"Then who could they have cut it for?"
At that moment, Hikmar and Azrak realized simultaneously who they might have cut it for and looked at each other. "Pity for the doctor lady," Hikmar said. "A great pity…"