Aldoux was aware that he and Sevda had just had a heated argument, but he couldn't help but agree with her. Since he was a very well-maintained and luxury cybernetic, his body didn't seem to handle this much drama well. Aldoux's heart, on the other hand, had long grown calloused against dramas.
That was why he stood in the parking area of the transport spaceships, watching the outside world through the opening. One hand was in his pocket, fiddling with the coin. Since the old man's clothes were making him itch, his other hand was scratching his chest hair and his face. Although he used to have a beard, it had never grown this thick. Now, despite being alive for only a few days, his overgrown beard was itching like crazy.
"I can't be Aldoux anymore..." he muttered to himself. He thought about the last thing he remembered. He recalled being on the prison ship, watching the news on the television he turned on from the table where he sat in the corridor. The attack on the ship as soon as the news of Damon Weisshafen's death arrived... The Weisshafens were likely after Aldo. Ah, he had been thinking that many people were after him since he got into trouble with that damn Heir named Mael, and the addition of the Weisshafens to that list was truly depressing. But with his new face, maybe he could live as a different person without drawing attention.
But there was something. He remembered the man named Marcin Grom, whom he had found in a capsule inside a temple. His head was throbbing, but he remembered a few things. The battle between Lucius Varden and Marcin Grom, the killing of Marcin Grom by Aldoux, and the death of Velsil... As all of these circled in his mind one after another, he put his hand to his head and tried to calm down.
"Want one?" asked a Calosian dressed like a scavenger. His jacket was full of tears, and under the jacket, there was nothing but a naked body bent double from thinness. He smiled, spreading a mouth of missing teeth, and after putting a cigarette he took from his jacket pocket between his lips and lighting it, he offered it to Aldo.
Aldo reached into his back pocket and felt the money. He had only one coin and couldn't afford to spend it on a cigarette. "I have no money."
"Is that so? It's on the house... Please, don't hesitate. You look a bit troubled."
He looked at the cigarette for a long time. This cigarette, already thin, would disappear after two puffs. "Thank you," he said, reaching for the cigarette and placing it between his lips. As Aldo took a deep breath, he tasted something bitter once more. Did everything on this planet have a bitter taste?
"Aha! Did you actually inhale it?" said the surprised scavenger. "Did no one warn you not to take anything from the scavengers in Calos? I've been offering it for years, but no one even deigned to consider it."
Aldo was surprised by the man's reaction. Looking at the view with wide eyes, he took another puff and blew it out. "No one gave me such a warning."
"That thing you're holding is a biochemical weapon. We call it Enfari."
"That's a shitty name... just like its bitter taste..."
"Enfari can make even a cybernetic addicted in a single puff. Right now, you should be begging for more. Raving, falling into hallucinations, and so much more..."
"Then this must be a pretty weak Enfari," Aldo said and laughed. "It didn't do a damn thing to me. And I'm not even a cybernetic."
"No way... was I scammed?" the scavenger said and asked for the cigarette back. "Or did it expire because it's been waiting in my pocket for years? Let me see."
Aldoux handed the cigarette to the man without question. After examining it for a while, the man took a drag into his lungs. As the man's pupils dilated, he began to sweat profusely. He was screaming while bending over in a hunched position, like a werewolf. "Damn it! It works!" he said.
"No way..." Aldoux said and took it from his hand. "Let me look again," he said and took a drag. Then, due to the bitter taste, he gathered the saliva on his tongue and spat on the ground. "This is just something bitter!"
"Damn it!" the scavenger shouted. "I... I'm addicted! Fuck my luck! Need more... need more!" he said and ran away from there. As he ran, he fled on all fours, like a dog.
"Ah... that's right... nothing affects my lungs." After taking one more puff, he couldn't stand the bitterness and threw the tobacco downward. Although there were kilometers of height between him and the ground, the cigarette reached the bottom safely. Someone below would later smoke that cigarette and become addicted. Of course, Aldoux wasn't smart enough to notice this. "Tsk... shame about the guy... he seemed like a man who knew his business," he muttered.
"You really put him in his place, sir," said a boy with green eyes and mud-colored hair. He was at most eight years old and had a slightly lighter skin tone than the local people of Calos.
"Putting him in his place?" Aldoux said, looking at the boy at his feet. The boy was looking up at Aldoux with great admiration. "Where did you learn that phrase? Aren't you too young even to speak?"
"Nope..." said the young boy. "What a strange question."
"I don't know... I looked at your height and..."
"People start talking when they are three years old."
"Three years old? Is three even an age? I've forgotten the existence of single-digit ages so much that you surprised me, young man."
"It was you who surprised me, sir. The way you defeated that scavenger with your intellect was admirable."
"Are you a scammer too? What did I do to deserve a compliment out of the blue?"
"And you are modest too."
"Are you serious or are you messing with me?"
"I'm serious..." the boy said and continued to scan Aldo with wonder. "You look like a very intelligent, brave, and powerful person. What is your name?"
"My name?" He thought for a while. "I have no name, young man... I was born two days ago and they still haven't given me a name. I'm waiting for my mother."
"You are witty and mysterious too..."
"Can you just fuck off already?" Aldo said angrily. "What the hell are you confusing my head for!"
He thought he should return to the transport ship to get rid of the child and the other Calosians. He let out a deep sigh and tried to climb the stairs despite the pain in his body. While climbing the stairs, he felt a hand on his butt. At first, thinking someone was touching his butt, he reached for it. Then he realized: the money in his back pocket was gone.
While descending the stairs, he saw that brat showing the coin to Aldo, sticking out his tongue, and starting to run. This brat was the same one who had been praising him just a moment ago. Now, he had stolen the money of the man he called his hero. Calos was a more cursed place than even the damn CLAUDIS planets.
"Bring... bring that money back right now!" he shouted and started chasing the boy. He crossed the parking area full of spaceships.
Passing through robots and people, one of the robots pointed at Aldo and said: "Isn't that the friend of that crazy woman? Why is he running around now?"
Aldo was making a great effort not to lose sight of the little boy. He pushed people, passed through robots, and jumped over stands. Sevda, seeing from meters away that Aldo was running like crazy and causing small-scale chaos, suddenly shouted, drawing people's attention: "What is this maniac doing?"
Aldo continued to run without caring. While tearing through crowds of people one after another, he was trying not to lose sight of the boy. Since the boy's mud-colored hair blended with other Calosian children, he had to be very careful. He gave a hard kick to one of the Calosian cleaning children while running, but he had no chance to turn back and look at the child. He would protect his last money like his honor.
At that moment, he saw the money-thief boy running toward one of the elevators. Showing the money in his hand and sticking out his tongue, he began to descend with the elevator. When Aldo reached the elevator, it had already descended several floors.
"Nothing else to do!" he said and jumped down. He fell meters down and hit the elevator hard. "I wish I hadn't jumped directly onto my feet," he muttered as a pain rose from his legs to his spine. He had jumped from a height that was at the limits of his augmented body.
Because he hit the elevator hard, the elevator's alarm started ringing. Probably everyone in the TESO2 factory was busy investigating that strange incident right now.
Once the alarm rang, there was no turning back. Striking a hard blow with his hand, he bent the cover on the elevator ceiling made of thin sheet metal and opened it slightly. As he looked into the elevator through the slight opening, the boy who saw a few eyes on the ceiling was scared to death.
"Oh, fuck your mother!" the boy said in fear. He was trembling with his back against the elevator.
"It's not enough that you stole my money, now you're cursing my mother, huh brat! Now I've caught you!" Aldo said and began to bend the plate with all his strength.
When Sevda saw the robots heading toward the elevator as the alarm rang, she slapped her forehead hard. "That idiot ruined the Weisshafen facility!" she thought to herself.
A few of the robots signaled the woman as soon as they saw her. Sevda, who didn't know what kind of crime Aldoux had committed and thought the man was a notorious runaway, considered the charges she could face as Aldoux's friend. This situation created an instinct in her that she had to escape from the robots.
"What have you done, you stupid man? What kind of trouble have you gotten us into?" she muttered.
While the robots signaled Sevda to stop with their hands, they also put their hands to their ears and were in communication with the facility. When Sevda saw the crowd of robots coming toward her tearing through the crowd angrily, she realized she had to run. She started running at great speed in the opposite direction.
Her cybernetic legs were fast. She passed through people, jumped over some. After running in the crowd for a while, one of the security robots that suddenly appeared in front of her startled her, and as a reflex, she punched the robot. While she was shaken by the shock of what she had done, the robot had already flown meters away and crashed into the wall. These robots were the same as those cheap and useless robots in Labiba's TESO factory. As the robot's eye popped out, its head fell into its lap due to its broken spine. Fear, anger, and other emotions... Sevda hadn't really felt them this way for a very long time. The emotion module had been on for this long for the first time.
The interesting thing about the module they bought was that it was a very primitive one. She couldn't turn off that module with her cybernetic mind. She had to reach someone else's spine and turn it off manually, which was why she couldn't restrain her emotions and was experiencing them excessively as someone who hadn't experienced human emotions for a long time. Her punching the robot out of fear was because of this.
As the people who saw the robot being destroyed ran away shouting, she began to notice a larger crowd of robots coming there. As the sound of the alarm rang one after another, she couldn't even perceive her own voice or thoughts. The computer structure of her mind had stopped working as efficiently as before after the bullet she took.
"Please come here..." said a woman's voice. Sevda glanced toward the woman. The woman, buried in robes, was calling out to her from the gap of a door. She extended her hand and:
"Please..." the woman said once more.
Sevda seemed to have no better option than to follow the woman. As soon as she threw herself inside the door, she found herself on the fire escape. But additionally, two knives were waiting under her throat, ready to cut it.
"Damn it... I've fallen into an ambush."
The boy was in a state of great panic when he saw Aldo bending the metal sheet on the ceiling with his hand. When the sheet was completely bent, the elevator stopped, and the boy started running as fast as his legs could carry him. Aldo first dropped himself into the elevator, then threw himself out of the elevator to chase the boy.
He didn't know how many floors they had descended, but the place they were in was different from the upper floor. First of all, there was a rectangular prism plate on the ceiling, and everywhere was illuminated by the lights spreading from all four sides of that plate.
Right under the plate, there was a statue nearly five meters tall, but the statue was covered with a cloth. The boy was running toward that statue with fear and anxiety.
This was a town... All the streets in this town opened toward the square where the statue was located. As you moved away from the square, the buildings became denser, positioned in a way that they were stacked on top of each other. In this town full of shanties, the dominant colors were light and dark gray. Even the ground was a bit darker shade of gray. If it weren't for the colors of dirt on people's clothes and such, a suffocating gray could have covered everyone's heart.
Also, tables were placed in front of some buildings; although the tables were gray, the flowers placed on each table were in different colors.
"Hey brat!" Aldo said, pointing his finger at the boy. "You'd better give me my money..." At the same time, he was observing the surroundings for any possible danger.
A woman in a faint red dress came and asked the boy: "Who is this man?"
A man in a suit, who left the newspaper he was holding on the ground, extinguished his tobacco in the ashtray and rose from the table where he sat upright as if he were getting up for a fight. While getting up from the table, he hit the table, causing his tea to spill.
A scavenger begging at the head of the statue woke up from his drowsy state and straightened up. A woman stopped hanging laundry on the clothesline they had stretched between the opposite building and poked her head out to watch the square. An alcoholic man hit his bottle on the table and shouted: "What's going on?"
This place... this place was truly a town where people lived. And as far as could be seen, these people were neither cybernetic nor augmented. They were simple humans. Perhaps they were the natives of Calos. Every one of the ancient cultures seemed to live here. Aldo had never seen so many sane skin-owners in one place before.
"This man..." said the boy, hugging the woman in the dress and burying his head. He seemed quite scared. "...this man is the savior... I saw him and wanted to bring him. But..." he said with a tearful voice.
"Savior?" Aldo said in surprise. "If you think you can get out of this by crying and talking nonsense, you're wrong, buddy. I will demand my money under any circumstances."
"Ah... my dear..." the woman said and lifted the boy's face and wiped his tears. "...this is definitely not him." Then she gently took the money from the boy's hand and threw it toward Aldo. Aldo caught the money in the air instantly and:
"Thank you," he said.
"Please excuse us. Calmo must have mistaken you for a Bioethical Oversight Inspector..." the woman said.
"Sure, no problem. People make mistakes like that," Aldo said and was walking toward the elevator with heavy steps when he suddenly turned and asked the question in his mind: "I need to ask a question before I leave," Aldo said. "There is a matter I'm curious about. Who did you say this child mistook me for?"
"Ah... never mind. Just a folk tale... People can cling to anything as hope, even an imaginary Bioethical Oversight Inspector."
"Don't talk nonsense!" an old man shouted as he came with his cane. "The Bioethical Oversight Inspector is real..."
"Please..." said the boy named Calmo. "...is this the time for that now?"
"Wait a second..." Aldo said. The words "Bioethical Oversight Inspector" were giving him a headache. "...are you saying Bioethical Oversight Inspector? There haven't been any of them around for centuries." He narrowed his eyes and investigated the source of the headache.
During the period when he worked as a resource collector, they had found a capsule. The man inside that capsule was Marcin Grom, and he knew many secrets of the SWR. Before Aldoux, who was the first to find the capsule, could reach that secret, others had tried to reach it. These were two Heirs. One of these Heirs, Mael, was working for a mysterious figure. The words spoken by that mysterious figure came to life in his mind. "The Bioethical Oversight Inspector must wake up..." he muttered.
The woman in red. "Yes... a story is going around."
"It's not a story!" the old man shouted and stood in front of Aldo. Then he put his hand on Aldo's shoulder and brought him along. "Don't believe these visionless people, sir. Don't believe these people who have lost their hope for the future and humanity, sir. Come... let me tell you the truths."
"The truths?"
"Yes... the truth..." he said and brought him in front of the statue buried like a giant white sheet. "Only a few years ago, the news broke on television. For the first time in perhaps a century, a facility was closed because it was unethical."
"The television is deceiving us!" shouted one of those in the back. "They want to instill false hope in people."
"SWR doesn't care about ethics!"
"No one closes a facility unless the SWR wants it."
"No!" the old man shouted toward the crowd behind him. "Institutions existed for this reason! They existed to defend the rights of people spreading into space!"
"But they were never like that, father..." said the woman in the red dress. She came to the old man's side with heavy steps and took his hand. "...come, let's put you back in your bed, old man."
"Wait a second..." Aldo said. "...I'm curious about the rest of the story."
"Is that so?" the old man said, his eyes suddenly sparkling. He broke free from the hands of the young woman holding him and suddenly pulled the statue's sheet with great force. As the sheet fell heavily from the statue, the statue was revealed in all its nakedness.
There was a man. He had a brown jacket on, and under it, a shirt ironed sharply enough to suit officials... A pair of trousers under it, but there was a gun resting on the belt of the trousers. This man was holding a briefcase in his hand. He stood quite confident and proud. Leaning on this man's left shoulder was a drone assistant. The man's face was not carved, but this was not due to the sculptor's lack of skill. Probably they didn't want to carve that face they didn't know. Right under the statue, it said in large letters: "Mehmet".
"This man?" Aldo said. "The Bioethical Oversight Inspector..."
"Yes... as far as we could see in the background on the news, it was him. A Bioethical Oversight Inspector who rejected a science facility in the old world... This... this was a first in centuries. Humanity's ethical values could be returning. This man is a true revolutionary..."
The boy named Calmo appeared behind Aldo and said: "According to what is said, Mehmet was one hundred percent human."
"That's impossible, I know of no one who is one hundred percent human and a citizen of the SWR. In official records, the last one hundred percent human must be around 230 years old. If a person is to be a citizen of the SWR, the Republic takes very serious care that they are at least augmented."
"Yes... but it is so..." said the old man.
"These are just rumors..." said the woman in red. "...Calmo probably thought you were human too." While saying this, she was stroking Calmo's hair. "No augmented had ever come here. Since he thought you were made of skin too, he must have thought you were human."
"He thought I was the Bioethical Oversight Inspector, Mehmet, right? Mehmet? Isn't everyone's name Mehmet already anyway? It's a very common name..."
"A rare person who bears a common name," the old man said.