"This city is like a caricature…" Aldoux had thought to himself. As he took his first heavy steps into the town, he found himself in the middle of a set that looked like it had been plucked from an old cowboy movie. However, here, only the spirit of the settlement was nostalgic; not its matter. Everything that should have been made of wood consisted of rusty corrugated iron sheets, warped pipes, and unidentified scraps welded together. The walls didn't fit flush; the wind howled through the gaps, and the metal expanded in the sun and groaned with cracks in the night cold.
The bar in the center of town was the hollowed-out carcass of an old train car, propped up to stay upright. The door creaked open, and immediately afterward, a drunken man was hurled into the street by two massive arms. As the man shouted curses before hitting the ground, a half-naked woman appeared on the threshold of the bar, leaned over, and spat on his head. Her chest was covered with randomly applied tape, though on her emaciated, skin-and-bones body, it wouldn't have been clear her breasts were even there if not for the tape. This act was both an indecency and a silent proclamation of the place's own sense of morality. No one turned to look. This scene must have been one of the town's daily rituals.
People sat on the shaded porches of metal houses, chatting quietly or sipping drinks from handmade, matte glass bottles. Their clothes were patched: a piece of leather here, an old cloth there, different fabrics sewn on top of each other… But the nobility in their posture went far beyond what they wore. Their spines were straight, their gazes direct and calm. Their hands, though calloused from labor, possessed a kind of internal rhythm, a pride in their movements.
A cultural reform had taken place here; perhaps people who were once merely trying to survive had created their own code of honor, a way of being. He wondered what had brought this reform to this city.
At the other end of the square, in the shadows of small huts made of scrap metal, street vendors had lined up their faded fruits. Discolored apples, shriveled orange root vegetables lay on dusty cloths as if reminding one of a once-vibrant life. In the air, the sound of metal expanding from the heat mixed with the distant hum of an engine, low-voiced conversations, and occasional bursts of laughter. The wind carried dust and a faint smell of rust, oil, and cooked meat. The town offered a strange but uniquely beautiful hybrid of poverty and resilience, the Wild West and industrial collapse. It was a caricature, perhaps, but its ink was drawn deeply from real life.
Edmond had momentarily forgotten the man on his back and approached one of the metal huts. "Is fruit actually sold here?" he asked in surprise. "I didn't know agriculture was possible on this planet."
"Everything changed when that woman arrived," said the guard who was leading him to the infirmary. He was scratching his greasy head under his hat with one finger. "She is a very brilliant scientist… She's helping us turn this place into a paradise."
"A woman arrived?" Could the woman they were talking about be Sevda? "A woman who is a scientist? I would very much like to meet her."
At that moment, Mahu, on Edmond's back, woke up for a second as if he had heard what Edmond said and murmured: "I'm dying… help me!"
"He's awake!" the guard said in shock.
"He does that from time to time, don't get excited… He's done it a few times before. He screams for a second and then passes out immediately. If the damn old man hadn't made any noise, I would have left him by the side of the road thinking he was dead. But no… he has to make me feel guilty, damn him! If I thought he was dead, I wouldn't have exhausted myself this much."
"Well, why does he pass out again?"
"I have no idea. He keeps saying he has a disease," Edmond said. "Anyway, let's get this man to a hospital first. Or an infirmary, whatever it is!"
This city of metal scraps was not a single-story pile as one might think; on the contrary, it consisted of multi-story structures superimposed, intertwined, and connected sometimes by stairs and sometimes by ropes. The buildings seemed to rise by stepping on each other's shoulders. The roof of one structure was the balcony of another; the back wall of one was the interior space of another. In this chaos full of narrow passages, tunnel-like streets, and sudden elevations, one's sense of direction was quickly lost.
The moment one stepped out of the square, the city turned into an oppressive labyrinth. The structural order, trying to fit thousands of people into this tiny area, had multiplied the crowd not only horizontally but vertically. Hanging cables, dripping pipes, rusty ladders, and swaying metal bridges passed overhead or underfoot at every step. Humans and buildings were so intertwined that getting lost in the crowd was not a possibility, but an inevitable result.
Compared to the people of this city, Edmond looked far too well-dressed in his leather jacket. The fabrics weren't torn; the seams hadn't come undone. Moreover, his healthy-looking fair skin practically shouted among the grayish faces here, darkened by the sun and smoke. Because of this, he realized he was drawing stares before he had even taken a few steps.
As he walked, some people paused, nudging their friends with their fingers when they noticed a stranger like him passing through the street. Some let their gazes roam over Edmond without hiding it, sizing him up from head to toe. Others, as if deliberately, in a needless challenge, narrowed his path by walking right in front of him. Shoulder-to-shoulder brushes and intentional bumps were not lacking.
In these looks, there was not just curiosity; there was hunger, calculation, even a slight anger. Edmond felt it. Being a stranger here meant attracting attention. And attracting attention was either an opportunity or a threat. The city immediately noticed what did not belong to it; it was either preparing to swallow it or looking for a place to tear it apart.
"Here it is…" the guard said, pointing with his hand to a small door. If the guard hadn't been showing him the way, Edmond would definitely not have noticed this door tucked away in the corner. As he approached the door, he looked for a sign indicating it was an infirmary. Indeed, looking closely, there was faded paint on the door. A needle symbol must have been painted in white long ago because only faint, scattered traces remained.
"Ah… I'm dying," Mahu said and passed out again.
"Stop the theatrics, old man! If you were going to die, you would have died hours ago! You can grit your teeth for five more minutes."
They opened the door to the infirmary. As they opened the door, a woman in a nurse's outfit appearing at the edge of the door looked at Edmond with surprise and then at Mahu on Edmond's back.
"Mahu! Is this Mahu?" the old woman asked.
"Yes, it's him…"
"Did he fail to take his medicine again? How long has it been since he took it?"
"It's probably been half a day."
"Quickly…" the woman said and began to walk with fast steps. Edmond followed her with the same speed. "…lay him down here quickly."
Edmond laid Mahu on the bed. The nurse continued to call out from behind. "I'll call the doctor," the nurse said. "Please remove the patient's clothes until then."
"The only thing left was for me to strip an old man! Damn it…"
Edmond first reached for the man's belt. Then he changed his mind about removing the belt. Why had he jumped to the man's belt first anyway? Why had he done such a thing? "Stupid man!" he muttered and first removed the man's jacket.
At that point, the doctor had arrived.
"Could you hurry up a bit while taking off the clothes?" the woman said, searching for medications in the drawers at that moment.
"Don't you see I'm doing my best?" He had already removed the jacket; now it was time for the t-shirt. The old man smelled so foul that Edmond was almost nauseated. How could an old man manage to smell worse than an infirmary full of wounded people? As he removed the man's t-shirt, maggots were falling down from the man's clothes. The guard was crushing those maggots with his feet before they could scatter.
"I want you to grasp the man's arms from his chest."
"What do you mean?"
"Hold the man's chest and pull it open to both sides," she said. The man had a strange chest anatomy, full of wrinkles. "I have to give this injection between his breasts."
"Is there a medical explanation for this?"
"I'm trying to deliver the medication directly into the bone marrow within the sternum, the breastbone."
"Why does it have to be there?"
"Am I not the doctor? Why are you questioning it?"
"Damn it!" he said and gripped both of the old man's breasts, pulling them toward the sides. The woman firmly inserted the needle into the point on the breastbone. She had to use all her strength for the needle to pass, but the woman's cybernetic arms looked even stronger than Edmond's. While Mahu continued to sleep like a peaceful man after receiving the injection, Edmond raised his head and looked at the woman.
"Sevda! It's you!" he said in surprise.
Sevda narrowed her eyes for a while, trying to recognize Edmond. Then she shouted: "Aldoux! Is that you?"
"Hey!" Edmond shouted. "Don't you remember, I'm Edmond?" he said, glancing at the guard at the same time. Then he added in a whisper: "Are you stupid? Why are you saying my real name out loud? Do you want to get us into trouble?"
"Edmond? What a wannabe name… And what's with this style? Leather jacket and all? Do you think you're cool?"
"I'm glad to see you too, Sevda… Me too…"