I missed Jose. Traveling the entire facility without him had truly made me feel lonely. Yes... We had experienced some things with Lara, but strangely, I would prefer the constant annoyance of a weird assistant like Jose hovering over me to Lara. There were many reasons for this. We're about to get a little personal, but I didn't feel bad at all when I was alone with Lara. It was good, I enjoyed it. But Lara was a bit of a harsh woman, and she made me feel like I was being used. It hadn't crossed my mind that such a small and sweet woman could have such devilish fantasies.
Since Jose had short-circuited and collapsed dramatically on the floor, he still hadn't woken up because the facility wanted to make sure he was asleep until I gave the go-ahead. While all this commotion was happening, he had been kept in a small room in that warehouse.
It wouldn't be long until Jose woke up, but I wanted to give him a surprise. You remember I had asked Lara for improvements and changes for Jose... These changes didn't only include his hardware and software. I also wanted to make some changes in Jose's appearance. Who am I kidding? The changes I really wanted were changes in appearance. When I told Lara I wanted to improve Jose, she thought it was hardware or software and added improvements accordingly. The change I had in mind was for our Jose to look like the robots in this facility. I had all the other changes added just so Lara wouldn't make fun of me.
You know, since Jose had a simulated personality inside him, he was constantly trying to use facial expressions like a robot and failing. He was, after all, a flying yellow box with a black sphere... How human-like could he act? I thought that if he had the body of one of the overly realistic robots in this facility, he could use those facial expressions he wanted more easily.
So, what happened next? First, we put Jose in the body of a robot that looked like a metalhead kid. We gave up before Jose woke up because I didn't want a guy in a skull t-shirt constantly wandering around next to me. It felt creepy. Then we made him an old uncle. We thought it didn't suit him... A simple clerk... It was too boring... We tried and tried. I couldn't find a robot that suited Jose's personality. Besides, all these robots looked a bit unsettling to me when I looked at them up close.
"Make up your mind already!" Lara shouted. At that moment, a muscular robot dressed like a construction worker was getting up from the table. "Alright, you can go... They didn't want your body either."
I took Hulk with me and went out the door to get some air.
"Boss, you're acting weird," Hulk had said. "You've been weird ever since you took the wine bottle I gave you and left."
I gulped.
"You had something with the doctor, didn't you? The disappearance of that wine and the fact that the disinfectant didn't come back was already a bad sign."
"..."
"What did you do with the wine bottle, boss?"
"..."
Suddenly, he climbed my leg and grabbed my collar, starting to shake me.
"Where's my disinfectant?"
"Just stop it..." I kept getting shaken one after another.
"Don't you dare tell me you used that bottle for your evil purposes!"
"What are you, a maniac?" I could have slapped him and pinned him to the floor with the back of my hand, but I restrained myself. My brain was spinning from being shaken one after another.
"I trusted you!"
"Didn't they give you any other disinfectant?"
"They don't!"
"Lara!" I had shouted. "Can you give this friend some disinfectant?"
We were still standing and waiting in the corridor. Hulk was vacuuming his disinfectant. To say he was drinking it would be an understatement.
"You look bored, boss," he said. "...and it doesn't seem to be because of me."
"Is it that obvious..."
"You're sweating like crazy. What's wrong, didn't it go well?"
"What didn't go well?"
"With Lara..."
"No... It was quite good. It's just..."
"Just what?"
"I might be a little bored of people."
"In one night? How did you figure that out?"
"People aren't that different either, it seems..."
"What do you mean?"
I looked at the pots with artificial flowers that lined the corridor at regular intervals, and I ran my hand over the metallic and cold wall of the snow-white corridor.
"What do you think is the difference between Ukar's science facility and this science facility?"
"They use Juliva12 for molecular cloning."
"It's not that kind of thing..."
"The test tubes are more sterile."
"Not that kind either..."
"Their toilets have an incredibly good butt-cleaning attachment. It's pretty good..."
"That's not it either... The only difference is, Hulk. This one makes an effort to look cuter. It doesn't become more beautiful just by painting it white and equipping it with artificial flowers."
"What do you mean? You mean having sex with Lara resembled having something with Ukar? Is that what you mean? Let me tell you, it definitely doesn't resemble having something with Ukar. He had disgusting fantasies. He would always have people lick his ear. The weird thing was that he had them lick his metal ear."
For a moment, my stomach had turned, and then my brain had frozen. "Dude... What does that have to do with our topic? How can you infer that from this whole conversation? I told you... our night with Lara went well."
"Then what's your problem, man!"
"I'm bored of advanced technology! It's boring, it's not sincere... People who have been exposed to the latest technology are distant from sincerity. They're repulsive... Whether it's their conversations or their attitudes... They're all know-it-alls, snooty types. That's why I would prefer to see Jose as a sincere robot rather than one of those latest technology robots."
"So, what kind of thing do you want to do to Jose?"
At that moment, a cleaning robot was coming toward us, mopping the floor. It must have seen us, as it started to hum a melody. It had a huge wheel underneath, a pair of eyes on its head that was round like a ball, and a flickering LED light where its mouth should have been that changed colors as it talked. It could change colors from light blue to red depending on its tone of voice. It had a triangular body, with arms protruding from the side of its body. Its arms were quite long and could reach the floor despite the huge wheel underneath.
The best part was that its face didn't look like the faces of very advanced robots. It was sincere, you know. Yes, it had eyes and metal cheek muscles that moved and made realistic expressions as it talked, but that was it. Everything else was a robot. The fact that it didn't have a mouth and nose probably stemmed from a robot not needing such an improvement at that time.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen," it said toward us. Its voice sounded like the voices of people from a radio from old times. "...If you will allow me, I will continue to sweep."
Hulk and I looked at each other. "If it were to disappear..." Hulk started. "...I don't think anyone would notice."
I thought we would have a hard time trying to exchange the cleaning robot's body with Jose's. However, the robot was really just a robot. I mean, a robot from our time, one that obeyed orders; a robot whose only job was to do the given task... That's why when I told Lara I wanted the cleaning robot, she first laughed; then, when she realized I was serious, she shuddered.
"Are you going to change the body of a robot like Jose with the body of a cleaning robot?" she had asked.
And I had said: "Yes..." and had grinned cheekily. "...wouldn't it be beautiful? The cleaning robot has hands, it has metal face muscles that can make some expressions, and it's so cute. Look at its bald head, it's practically polished!"
While we were dealing with Jose's improvements and so on, we had waited for about 4 hours for Jose to wake up. If you ask what we did during these 4 hours; first, Hulk and I watched a movie in the movie theater. Lara didn't want to come and said the movie was quite barbaric. The movie theater was completely empty, and the movie was a very good action movie. The movie was called "Interstellar" and it lasted 1.5 hours.
"How realistic these movie effects are! The spaceship looks like it really exploded!" I had said, spitting out the popcorn in my mouth.
After he waved the popcorn that landed on his face away with his bottle, he took another sip and said: "Colan really did blow up a spaceship while shooting this movie. He was a very great director. He even destroyed a planet's moon."
"Whoa! Really?"
"It was a dead planet's moon. He only killed millions of bacteria, that's all."
"So you're saying the guy was truly burning with a love for art..."
Later, we played table tennis with the robots for an hour. The robots literally wiped the floor with us. We couldn't even score a single point. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to be partners with a creature the size of a boot like Hulk. He was standing on the table, blocking my view, and he couldn't hit the balls because he was drunk.
"Hey!" I shouted at the drunk Hulk. "Move your butt so I can see the ball!"
He, in turn, responded to my angry shout by lowering his pants in front of the robots. Even the robots were shocked at what was happening.
After that, of course, we stopped playing table tennis. When I returned to Jose's side, Lara, who hadn't had a human friend for a long time, wanted to show me the toys she had collected by occasionally leaving the facility and wandering through abandoned colonies. Of course, I had initially misunderstood this and accepted. After all, things like stamp collections and toy collections were coded things. At least, my simple human brain from 400 years ago had coded them this way. However, she was really showing me her toys, and if I had known it would be like this, I might not have accepted the offer.
These toys were human-made toys, at least according to Lara. Her room's chest was full of toys such as a simple four-wheeled truck, a plush rabbit with blood splattered on it and its color faded, a tiny guitar played with a finger, an electronic game console whose memory was shattered, and so on. Lara was looking at all these toys like a godsend, taking the utmost care while handing each one to me. As for me, I was doing flips on the finger skateboard she had given me on the floor.
"Do you think we humans will ever enjoy living one day?" Lara had asked, looking at the toy doll in her hand. I, on the other hand, had already skated along the wall with the finger skateboard and started climbing my legs. Upon this question, I slid and stopped the skateboard. "Or has our species already gone extinct in the dusty pages of history and have we been left all alone?"
I could understand that this question was not really a question. If I gave a simple answer to this question, another conversation that was emotionally charged and would last for just as long would happen. If I wanted to end the conversation without prolonging it, I had to say something confusing and definite.
I reached my hand for the toy doll in Lara's hand. Maybe something would come to my mind... While trying to grab the doll, I had accidentally grabbed Lara's hand. As Lara was looking into my eyes, I had to form that confusing sentence. As someone who was second to none at making things up, I could easily overcome this as well.
"We are human as long as we have dreams and hope. A human can die, but what makes them immortal are their deeds. They are unaware of this sanctity of humanity."
While I was thinking about what these words meant and where they came from all of a sudden, it hit me in an instant. These were the last words of the movie "Interstellar" that I had just watched, and they were said before an incredibly impactful alien base explosion. After I said these words, I had closed my eyes in shame, but when I opened my eyes, I found a Lara with teary eyes in front of me.
"Nothing is in vain, right?" Then she left the doll in her hand with me and walked toward the window in the corner of her room. She watched the working robots sitting at their office desks below. "You say they are unaware of this sanctity of humanity, but... Do you really believe in the sanctity of humanity? After what you've seen..."
I had to continue with the movie lines. And that's what I did. "Human, alien, robot... No race matters. Humanity will continue to live. Every being has a piece of this humanity inside them. They just describe it with other words. That's why I want to give you this assurance; as long as there is any being that can perceive what we've done, what we've done for humanity will not be in vain."
"So..." she had said and wiped her teary eyes with the sleeve of her dress. "...you're saying that there will always be someone who can comprehend the work we're doing here." She smiled, then walked toward me and placed an incredibly gentle kiss on my cheek. "Maybe you're not as simple a man as I thought, Mehmet."
"Sleeping beauty... Shh... My dear... Wake up already," I said, while waiting with my arms crossed in front of a table full of electrical cables, metal parts, and tools and gadgets that my mind couldn't comprehend because of advanced technology. "Look, wake up or your Uncle Hulk will give you a kiss..."
Hulk, who was sipping his disinfectant bottle and swinging his legs from the edge of the table, burped and said: "I'll kiss you if you don't wake up, just so you know, robot!"
One last time the electrical currents were checked; the area around the table was cleared, and Doctor Lara and I, one last time, went behind the nano-curtain in the corner of the room to avoid radiation. After a big flash of light, Jose's energy reactor had started to work. I slowly poked my head out from between the curtains and looked at Jose. Since he now had eyes in his new body, I could tell whether he was awake or not by whether his eyelids were open or not.
I waited for a while, and as Jose's eyelids slowly opened, I first hugged Lara and then started running toward Jose.
"Jose! Sleeping beauty! So you're finally awake!"
Jose straightened up and put his hand on his head, scratching his metal head. "Sir... How are you? I am detecting that your heart rate has increased."
"How are you? You've been gone for so long!"
"I fainted," he said and looked at his hands. "This..." He threw himself off the table with his hand and landed on his wheels. His eyes had opened wide. "...this is not my body!"
"I'm so glad to see you too, Jose."
He examined his body by spinning around. "Sir..."
"Now you have hands and a face, at least partially. You can make the expressions you want."
"Sir..."
"You even have a wheel."
"Sir! Did you take me out of the body of a high-tech assistant robot that glides in the air and put me into the body of a cleaning robot?" He had furrowed his metal eyebrows. He had raised his voice. "I don't want to overstep my bounds, but I have to ask this! Are you stupid?"
"Holy crap!" Hulk said from behind and spluttered the disinfectant in his mouth. "Can a robot assistant insult a human?"
Lara, who came out from behind the curtain, said: "You had asked us to add some improvements. So we removed some of the procedural software that was hindering the simulated personality inside."
"So you enabled him to swear?" I asked.
"You could say that."
Jose looked at his arms and the wheel underneath him in anger.
"I don't have jets..."
"Now you have a wheel. And it's a very beautiful one..."
"A wheel is useless in space, sir!" His anger could be perfectly understood from his tone of voice. "And what about the laser gun on my finger? My high-tech storage area? I was a VFA-210. I was registered as a VFA-210 in the system. How will I log into the system with this body's data?"
At that moment, a voice was heard. The voice coming from the speaker in the corner of the room said this: "Don't worry, VFA-210, we have transferred all your features to this body as well." It was an extremely terrifying and robotic voice.
"What do you mean?" Jose said and pointed his finger at the ceiling. Yes, the laser gun on his finger was really there. When the two covers on his back opened, he even glided in the air. "It would take an incredible amount of hardware knowledge to be able to do this."
"Constantly spending energy on your jets was shortening your battery life," said the monstrous robotic voice rising from the speakers. "Wheels will provide you with help in this matter. They will help you use your energy in a balanced way. Your storage has been expanded. The laser gun on your finger and your jets have been transferred to this body in the same way. Your processor has been updated to the latest version and renewed in terms of hardware. I am transferring the added weapon features to you." At that moment, I had just realized that Jose was still connected to an input in the middle of the table with a cable. As Jose received data one after another, his pupils were flickering. After the entire data flow, Jose had looked at me and said:
"Thank you, sir." He had said. "And I apologize for swearing."
"It's okay, Jose. Come... Come and let me give you a hug."
Since Jose was not used to his new metal arms, he didn't hurt me when he hugged me. As we were hugging, I also included Hulk, who had reached for his bottle and was sipping it, in our gigantic hug. Then I had caught a glimpse of Lara, who was standing on the side. As I walked toward her, I noticed that she was also trying to stay away from us like a fool. With two or three steps, I lunged at her, and with a thud... Lara had also joined our gigantic hug.
When the hug was over, Jose also unplugged the cable from the table and said to Lara: "I would like to meet the engineer who repaired me."
"That doesn't seem very possible. He doesn't want to meet anyone..." Lara had said.
"But I can make an exception." said the robotic voice from the speakers.