When I woke up and found the metal ceiling of the ship in front of me, I still felt tired. I was lying on my right arm and constantly clenching and unclenching my fist to get rid of the numbness. At the same time, I was yawning so much that it brought tears to my eyes. The second mission was so long and difficult that a good sleep had felt truly good, but it was definitely not enough.
I looked at the ship's cockpit. Jose was still managing the ship with his cable.
"Good morning, sir, I hope you are well."
"Good morning to you too, Jose. I'm great. You have no idea how great I feel. It's like my memory is coming back... I had a dream. I was sitting with my father in a park, pouring our hearts out. Then Dante Shade came and gave my father a job. Strange things... I even remembered my name."
"So what was your name, sir?"
"Edgard Grom... My father's name is Marcin and my mother's is Jenny..." I applauded myself out of excitement. "Finally! I thought my memory would never come back."
"I'm happy for you, sir."
"Thank you..." After a while, I asked: "Aren't you going to say anything? Aren't you going to do any analysis?"
"I don't know what I can do, sir."
"But I have heard these names somewhere before. I already know that Dante Shade is the owner of the Dermovox facility. The names Edgard, Marcin, Jenny... Yes, I remember. They were some of the simulated personalities in our cave. Does this mean anything?"
"I don't know, sir, but if you wish, I can perform an analysis considering this situation when I return to my cave."
At that moment, I heard a flushing sound. It was Hulk, who came out of the toilet. He walked toward us with a piece of toilet paper stuck to his foot. He shook his foot and threw the toilet paper to the corner of the room and said:
"Jose has been acting weird for a while," he said. "He doesn't seem to be the same since he fainted..."
"I don't think there has been any change in my person, sir," Jose said.
"Yeah right... Boss, Jose thought we wouldn't make it to the third mission while you were sleeping, so he told us to set off early. That means we won't be reaching the cave before the mission. So that also means I have to come with you to the third mission."
"Is that so? Shouldn't you have asked me before getting such an idea, Jose?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I had some procedural obligations. Besides, we've already arrived, sir."
"What do you mean?" I said and ran and leaned against the ship's window. "F*ck! What is this planet?"
The moment we entered the planet, I found a tangled mass of dry mountains in front of me. In the middle of this mass, there was a land full of grass, looking like a green stain dripping from a brush. As we descended on the rusty ship runway, which was stained green and at the end of this land, we could feel the iron platform creak and tremble. As Şahin's engines shut down, I was trying to understand the scenery in front of us.
This green area in the middle of the gray lands was filled with tombstones. Although these tombstones were made of metal, they were painted in such a way that they looked like stone. There were some codes in front of each tombstone, and as a human, I could not understand what those lines of code meant. The tombstones were so numerous and scattered so chaotically that it was hard not to say that this place was creepy.
"Jose... Why do you think these tombstones are here?" I asked. No answer came from Jose. "Hello... Jose..." I went to the robot and tapped his metal head. "Are you there?"
"Boss, he seems to have shut down again," Hulk said.
"Why, for f*ck's sake! Why!" I shouted in anger. "Just once, let something go right!"
As always, we had started a mission with an unlucky event that we couldn't understand where it came from. Jose had shut down, just like he did on the way to the Dermovox Facility. Suddenly... Abruptly... Unexpectedly and with a great shock... Seeing this, I was constantly pacing back and forth to keep from losing my mind.
"This goddamn robot seems to have made this a habit..." I said as I lay in bed. At the same time, I was reading the robot repair instructions, but what was written was difficult to understand. The only thing I understood was that there was a button to turn it on and off. I would have loved to press that button and turn the robot on and off, but we had changed our Jose's body. So I kept reading aimlessly, hoping something would be useful to me.
"You care about him too much, boss. You act as if you can't live without him. Of course, his ego will get big. Anyone you care about that much will get that big of an ego."
"Does a robot's ego get big?"
"Normally, a robot doesn't even curse its master. But do you remember how he cursed when he learned you changed his body?"
"So you think he's playing hard to get?"
"Of course... If I were a robot, I would definitely play hard to get." He walked to the robot and stared at it for a while. "Do you need him?" Hulk asked from under his glasses.
"Of course I do."
"Then let me mess with him a little."
With sounds of "clatter, clang, bang, tick," constantly rising from inside the ship, I had put on my extremely cool astronaut clothes and was examining the tombstones below the iron platform. You probably remember that the uber-super-cool suit I was wearing had a helmet as cool as itself. This helmet allowed me to scan the things I was looking at. Maybe if Jose was gone, I could scan these codes with my helmet.
As I walked toward one of the tombstones, my foot got caught on something. A cable... One of the cables that transmitted energy. If you're asking how I knew it was an energy-transmitting cable; when I first woke up, I had seen that Jose was also connected to the main computer with such a cable. I dug the ground with my hand and tried to follow where the cable went. One end of the cable reached under the tombstone, but I couldn't figure out where the other end was going.
At that moment, my helmet was showing me some warnings. It was a warning that an extremely large energy current was passing through this cemetery. Then I raised my head and looked at the sky. A sun almost twice the size of Earth's sun had begun to rise from the 12 o'clock direction relative to the ship.
"Hulk! Could these tombstones be working like solar panels?"
My helmet's headset was directly connected to the computer on the ship, so I could talk to Hulk from there.
"Why not?" I heard two or three thumping sounds and a static that was about to blow my ears off.
"What are you doing over there?" I said and looked toward the ship's window. Hulk, with his clothes torn and his glasses bent, came out onto the window with a crowbar in his hand and said:
"Boss, I almost opened the cover on his back!"
"What happened then?"
"My arm almost came off! That cursed robot! I think I broke a screw!"
"Do you remember the question I asked you?"
"Which question?"
"Could these be solar panels?"
"Very possible! Otherwise, no lunatic would line up this many metal tombstones for nothing."
"If I follow the cables, do you think I'll find the facility?"
"You know, sometimes I say you might not be as stupid as we think."
"Thank you. You wait here, I'll be back. I'll just go into the facility, take two or three photos, and give my approval. We don't have much time left either."
"I'll come too!"
"Why?"
"Because if Jose wakes up while you're gone, he'll definitely kill me! Damn it! I think he's missing a screw!"
We were walking along winding paths, following the direction the cables under the tombstones were going. We went down hills, up hills, jumped over pits, climbed over bumps, crossed valleys, and then repeated the same things in a different order.
"We're sure the cables are pointing in this direction, right?" I asked Hulk. Hulk dug under one of the tombstones next to his leg with his fingernails and examined its cable.
"Yes... They are definitely going in that direction." Hulk had not worn any protective clothing, saying that the oxygen in the atmosphere was enough for him. Who could know what conditions a strange creature like him could live in anyway? After all, he could drink disinfectant whenever he was thirsty.
I got very tense and stretched my arms. "Then we're going to walk more..."
"How many minutes have we been walking, wherever I look, there's a cemetery. Does a science facility need this much energy?" I asked Hulk. I was out of breath and had started sweating inside my clothes.
"You're taking solar energy too seriously. It's not a very powerful thing."
"They said solar power plants were the technology of the future... They said it would be used more effectively as years passed."
"Of course, solar energy is a good energy source when you have a planet that you can't destroy... These days, we don't have anything more abundant than planets. Don't be surprised if civilization starts creating its own planets in 250 years. You'd be surprised if you knew how many planets have come to the brink of extinction just to produce Level 4 nuclear energy."
"What do they do when planets are destroyed?"
"They move their factories, businesses, or cities on that planet to another planet."
"Is that really effective? Think about the transportation costs..."
"There aren't many companies that do this anyway. Don't worry, companies can think about costs better than you can."
"Then what was used as energy on the planet where your facility was located?"
"Everything... Waves, lightning, winds... Earth was such a chaotic place that wherever you looked, you could see an energy source. We built so many power plants and so many work areas... Sometimes, thinking that all this effort went to waste gives me goosebumps."
"So all of this was to create a creature named Cthulhu?"
"Actually, yes, you remember the name... The previous experiments, the acquisition of all those scientific tools, the research... All of this was for the creature named Cthulhu. The entire reason for Ukar's existence was to be able to create a race that could understand the Incompatibles. At least, he wanted to take the first step in the chain of creating a race that could understand the Incompatibles. And Cthulhu was in this first step."
"So do you think this research would have been successful?"
"It could have been. The simulations showed that it was possible. There were many indications that this race we would create, called Cthulhu, which had evolved in harsh conditions, would be creatures beyond human capacity. But it's very difficult to know how what they would create and what their creations would create would come to life. In my opinion, Cthulhu was an alien race that could be an incredibly great success on its own."
"Why?"
"Have you seen a Cthulhu example before?"
At that moment, the octopus-like creature, which was shorter than a human inside the glass case, came to my mind. It was ugly, scary, and definitely looked like a freak of nature.
"Yes... I didn't really like it."
"No... If you're talking about that creature you saw in the glass case at the entrance, that was a prediction. I don't know how to explain it to you. You're not a person whose head works very well. So I'll start explaining slowly. What was Ukar's goal?"
"To be able to make a creature that could understand the Incompatibles."
"No! It was to be able to obtain a race of creatures that could make a computer that could analyze the Incompatibles. He didn't want to obtain creatures that could perceive them with animal instincts, fight with them, or act far from human logic. He wanted to create a creature that could think like a human, analyze, produce advanced technology, and dominate them. When necessary, it should have the will to add a new creature to the chain of creation. A virtuous creature that would strive for the advancement of science. Only if he succeeded in creating such a creature, could this creature help humanity."
"Wait a second... So..." I had to strain my head and this was giving me a big headache. "The point wasn't to create an alien race that could perceive the Incompatibles. It was to create a race that could understand and explain what it had perceived. Did I understand correctly?"
"Attaboy! I really didn't expect you to understand it that well. What was I saying... Yes, I was talking about the creature in the glass. You might have noticed that that creature resembled a human a lot. It had a straight spinal structure, it had hands, etc. It was something like an octopus human."
"Yes, I can definitely remember such things."
"What you saw in that glass was actually the desired Cthulhu example. When the computer was making a simulation, it predicted that if we needed to create a Cthulhu that was an advanced creature that could use a computer, a creature like this would be formed. But... But the creature we actually got with all the experiments was quite different. In fact, most of our research was to evolve that different, primitive-like creature into an advanced creature that could use a computer."
"What do you mean?"
"Look... Let's sit and catch our breath for a bit. In the meantime, I'll give you some details." he said and showed the empty ground next to the slope. As I sat on the ground, he sat on one of the stone tombstones in front of me, dangling his foot down.
"I'm listening..."
"Now..." He opened his hands to both sides and made a grimace. He had a look as if he was reluctantly explaining things he didn't really want to explain. "...The only reason we gave this half-human, half-octopus creature the name Cthulhu wasn't just its appearance, you understand. This creature had some flaws. Just like the Cthulhu of Lovecraft, whom Ukar admired and thought was a crazy writer...
"Just get it out already, man!"
"Look, we weren't waiting for 150 years for a creature that could perceive the Incompatibles, okay? It wasn't that difficult to create a race that could understand the Incompatibles. After all, bees could see UV rays, snakes could see IR rays. These animals could perceive these rays until our technology noticed them. This problem was a similar problem. We didn't have the technological competence to perceive the Incompatibles. But this didn't mean that there couldn't be a creature that could perceive the Incompatibles." While Hulk was having this conversation, for some reason, he couldn't stop shaking his legs from excitement and couldn't control his voice.
"You guys..."
"We had created this creature. A creature that could perceive the Incompatibles had been obtained through trial and error simulations in some evolutionary codes and with the help of artificial intelligence. But we couldn't bring it to a level that our computers or human intelligence could perceive. This was the inadequacy of our computers."
"And then you wanted this creature you created to create these advanced computers for you. In fact, that's what your research was about. You were aiming for this primitive creature to become an advanced creature up to a certain level. This was necessary for this creature to be able to explain the Incompatibles to humans with science. It was necessary for it to be useful to humans."
"Yes... But there's something you don't understand. This creature we created... This first example... It was incredibly terrifying."
"Terrifying?"
"It was a freak of nature, difficult to comprehend, a real one."
"I don't know what that means."
"The creature we succeeded in creating, well, it was very similar to the Cthulhu creature in Lovecraft's story. Neither Ukar nor I could easily perceive it. It was very difficult to destroy physically because there were times when it didn't conform to any physical theory. It was like a timeless creature. It was like an immortal creature from another dimension. But we knew the genetic codes and physical forms we used while creating it. Despite that, it somehow managed to rise above our perception. To be able to achieve this, we had to use the research that had been done since the existence of humanity."
"What happened to that creature then?"
"We succeeded in creating it, but we failed to keep it alive."
"Why?"
"Because according to the creation procedure, this creature had to be a creature with will and the ability to think. The computers, realizing that we couldn't obtain such a creature, cut the creation procedure short. The created creature did not live long. It was tried many times, but they could never succeed."
"In short, you created an incredibly dangerous creature."
"A creature is dangerous if it harms living things. The creature didn't have any instincts."
"But wouldn't this create other dangers?"
"Think of it as a black hole... Yes, a black hole might be a dangerous thing in the universe, but it doesn't wander around to hunt you unless you happen to come across it. This creature was like that. It was a terrifying piece of flesh, but it could perceive the Incompatibles; it could exist beyond human perception."
"What would something like that be good for?"
"Of course, for nothing... Of course, for nothing as far as Ukar and I thought."
"So is Cthulhu, in Lovecraft's story, a troublesome creature?"
"It's said that it constantly sleeps in the story, but even while waking up, it enters people's nightmares and drives them crazy. The insane people become attached to it as if it were a divine god and watch for the arrival of that imprisoned god."
"And what happens when it wakes up?"
"Cthulhu will bring about the end of humanity."