I had a new team. After that near month-long slog with Jose, having two new team members was a godsend. Especially since both of them were girls, that was an even bigger bonus. At least I could talk about different topics. Even though Jose chatted like a living, conscious robot, he was still a robot at the end of the day.
No, I'm not complaining about Jose being a robot assistant. I wasn't about to stab my closest friend in the back just because I saw two women. In fact, Jose had my back in more ways than anyone else could. The problem was that robot assistants were only as effective as their masters. I'd make plans, make decisions, and usually land us in hot water, limited by my own intelligence. But Rose… That red-haired, armed woman was different.
At first, everyone agreed that the voice's source was the President's fortress. Rose then laid out a detailed plan on how we could get there. The good thing was, it didn't take her more than a few minutes to whip up this plan. If I'd been the one making a plan like that, oh my God, it would have probably taken years.
The village we were in was an old, abandoned mutant village. This village, which mutants used as a kind of breeding farm, was created for them to mate comfortably. In fact, inside most of the houses, there were pictures that we thought stimulated them but made my stomach churn as a human. The streets were thick with grime, but every now and then, a pink liquid, like perfume, would well up from the manhole covers. Both Rose and Jose had warned me dozens of times not to smell this liquid. Jose even went out of his way to warn me one more time than Rose, as if he was jealous of her. According to what they told us, those perfumes emitted aphrodisiac scents.
"Very, very good…" Diana had said, taking off her helmet and standing on one of those manhole covers, bathing herself in the pink liquid. She was stroking her own breasts with her hand. A soft moan escaped her lips as the sweet, intoxicating scent of the liquid, now warmed by her body, wafted towards us, thick and undeniably carnal.
"What are you doing, you idiot!" Rose shouted and grabbed the girl by the nape of her neck like a cat and flung her to the side of the street. "Put your helmet on, quickly!"
"Don't worry, sister! I can regulate my own hormones, you know that."
"I told you to put your helmet on!"
As far as I understood, Diana was something of a superhuman. She could sense people's thoughts, control her own hormones, and even change her eye color. I wondered what else she could change in her own body, but I kept that thought to myself. I didn't want to feel the knife of this woman, who spoke in a sweet, delicate tone, at my throat. I didn't trust her. In fact, no matter where we walked, she would occasionally walk behind me, clasp her hands innocently like a nun, and then suddenly take a deep whiff of my neck.
"Rose, get your sister to back off!"
"Diana!"
"Okay, sister! I'm sorry!"
This woman's perversion could normally excite a man, but… But whatever happened to me, it was as if I had lost some of my urges. Why? When I was at the Dermovox Facility, I was desperately trying to dance between Lara Sharon's legs. Of course, I was knocked unconscious with a needle in my neck. Was it because of that? Had I suddenly lost my trust in women?
No… There was a knot of stress swirling inside me, moving from my throat to my chest; constantly trying to prevent me from breathing in different ways. This knot of stress manifested itself differently in every part of my body. Sometimes I couldn't get a firm grip on the water bottle offered to me. Sometimes my knee trembled when I stepped on the ground. I constantly said I was tired and wanted to rest.
"What's wrong with your master?" Rose asked.
"If he takes off his helmet, I'll try to tell you, sister."
"No! Let the helmet stay on my head. You never know what this madwoman will do."
"I have no idea," said Jose. "Without any data, I can't make inferences."
"So what's your deal?"
"I don't have any problems! Let's move on."
Ah, I was skipping something. You must be wondering how this team came together. Actually, what happened was this: the voice of the message coming from my helmet sounded very much like my voice. Then Jose said something ridiculous like, "Is that you, master?" and suddenly everyone was confused. Even me, even Jose… Because even Jose hadn't expected to make such a foolish mistake. Probably because of the barriers Sharon had removed in his software, he sometimes couldn't even predict what he was going to say; it was as if the personality he was simulating took over.
Jose and I looked at each other. And I said, "Screw it!" and told them everything about my life. From losing my memory, from Ukar, from Hulk, from the Dermovox Facility, from Sharon, even from Dante Shade… You must be wondering why I told these two mutants all this. What would have happened if I hadn't told them? The woman named Diana could read my mind. Choosing not to tell them would only erode their trust in us. They would eventually manage to get this information from me.
"So you're John Crowrift!" Rose had said and pointed her rifle at me. Similarly, Jose had pointed his newly repaired laser finger at Rose. The thing that came between me and the rifle was Diana.
"Sister, what are you doing?"
"We found John Crowrift! What are you doing?"
"He just explained… He's just a clone!"
"He carries his blood!"
"What will happen if you shoot him? What good will this do us when we don't even know why we're looking for John Crowrift?"
"Diana is talking sense…" said Jose.
"Shut up, robot!" Rose shouted.
"You can't talk to my robot like that!" I shouted from behind, but when the light of Rose's electronic rifle started to glow, I immediately hid behind Diana.
"What do you suggest I do, sister? What should I do then?"
"Let's help him get his memory back. There might be clues in the personality simulations Jose carries."
"Hey! I didn't have such a plan!" I shouted from behind, but no one even cared.
"Let's get his memory back. Let's get the information that will be useful to us… If he's going to cause us trouble later, we'll shoot him in the head and finish him off."
"This mind-weaver is talking very logically," Jose said from the side.
"Then the agreement is reached. We're going to the President's fortress, we're finding the owner of the voice," she said and lowered her rifle. "Let's see if there's anything that will bring back this idiot's memory."
That's how we set off. First, we passed that ruined village… Don't let me call it a village; it wasn't much bigger than a war camp. Then we started wandering around the city. Rose found a suitable Zaron outfit for me in the trash and insisted I wear it. At first, I thought a person in this mosquito costume would stand out a lot, but the aliens on this planet were truly dumb as rocks. These creatures had no chance against humans.
Rose and Diana, unlike us, had more information about this planet. Why? Jose could only access the Supreme World Republic's (SWR) data network. According to Jose, the SWR's data network had three levels. The first level was a data level open to some noble sections of the general public. Jose was pulling data from this level. The second data level was a level common among senior executives of institutions, and although this data network level could be hacked by experts, it was a difficult network level to access. No one had ever been able to access the third network level. Only those like Tiberion Solegard, the President of the Supreme World Republic, could be at this level. Yes… The President of the Supreme World Republic had not changed for more than a century. Tiberion Solegard was still governing the Supreme World Republic. I had wondered if my father was still the head of Weapon Security and asked Jose. Jose had said that the name Marcin Grom was not found in the data network, and the name found was General Victor Vanguard. Well, at least I tried my luck.
That's why Jose's data network couldn't go beyond simple information. Sometimes he could access second-level data networks by obtaining special permissions, but obtaining such permission meant that a notification would go to his senior executives. Jose had done something similar when he was at Ukar's facility.
"Can you enter the employee database of these companies and search for the name John Crowrift?" I had asked while on the ship and heading towards the Dermovox Facility.
"Should I do this with the identity of a Bioethical Oversight inspector?" he had asked.
"What happens if you do?" I had asked.
"Our operations become official. They receive a letter stating that the institution is auditing them. In addition, we have to inform our institution that we have engaged in such an activity," he had said. So, at that time, he had entered a higher-level data network. This was bad news because the Republic knew I had searched for the name John Crowrift.
Rose and Diana, on the other hand, had obtained their information about this planet from the black market. Sometimes, robot assistants coming to this planet would sell the information they had to the raiders outside when they left the planet. And what about the raiders? Ah… That's when I experienced one of the biggest shocks of my life.
Jose had told me that I might be the only human in the galaxy when I woke up, if you remember. Actually, this was not entirely wrong because most humans had become robotic. The remaining humans had mutated. The group called raiders were the losing group in the war between the colonies and the Supreme World Republic. In short, they were from the colonies that lost the war. These raiders had managed to escape the devastation of the war and had begun to hide in star systems outside the SWR's control.
These human groups had not been able to settle on any planet. Because no matter how much the raiders lived outside the SWR's control, the SWR could more or less notice if a colony was established on a planet, even if it wasn't in its own star system. That's why some of the raiders had set off to settle in distant star systems, even if their technology was insufficient. Of course, no news had come from them. It seemed no one was expecting much news from them either. Because going to distant star systems was a great and fearsome expense even for the SWR.
A large part of the raiders, therefore, lived hidden among asteroid communities in star systems. Their numbers were unknown, but one thing was known; they were no longer human.
They stayed in the vacuum of space for too long to expend energy to stabilize gravity. They had to have a biology that could be born and raised in a zero-gravity environment. That's why this group called the raiders had undergone genetic mutations. According to what was said, they had longer but thinner limbs. Their skulls were pointy, almost triangular. Their skin was so thin it could almost be called transparent.
They were called raiders not because of their savage nature or the fear felt towards them. Whenever a colony was on the verge of destruction or needed to be evacuated or moved for other reasons, this group would go to that planet, collect the remaining debris from that planet, and return. Their survival depended on this and on the things they sold on the black market in the galaxy. That's why, according to their religion, they worshipped a god they called the God of Collapse. People didn't want to be where there was collapse. But for the raiders, places of collapse were a godsend.
But according to what was said, recently a few of the raiders had found the courage to attack newly established colonies. The things they could steal from those living colonies did not go beyond a few cans of gasoline and a few boxes of provisions. It might sound funny to you, but for the raiders, this was probably one of their biggest scores.
So, Rose and Diana had obtained their information from this group called the Raiders. The information they obtained was truly useful and tangible compared to the information Jose and I had.
According to Rose, The Beyond World was a planet that Unify had bought from the SWR to create a creature named Volem. Rose didn't know why they were so eager to create Volem, but after I told her my dream, we both knew that Volem aimed to meet the energy needs of the Quartez company.
Then, according to the black market dealer, Unify wanted to shut down this project. The dealer didn't know why they wanted to shut it down either. That's why they had thrown a graviton bomb, causing each of the energy-laden stations on the planet to explode. The creatures named Volem produced such great energy that the destruction of a planet made up of those creatures created a strong gravitational pull. With that gravitational pull, anomaly clouds formed around that planet, protecting it like a wall.
According to the black market dealer, the graviton bomb was the most illogical bomb to kill Volems. After all, graviton was a high-gravity energy bomb, and it was inevitable that an anomaly like that cloud anomaly would form when it combined with the energy spreading from the Volems' corpses.
"So in short…" I said, scratching the back of my neck. "…are you saying Unify deliberately created those clouds?" I asked Rose.
"It seems so," Rose said.
"Did Unify want to hide the tests they conducted?" I asked.
"No…" said Jose. "…a bioethical inspector named Arthur Vale came here before this explosion, didn't he? The institutions were already aware of the tests they conducted and Volem."
"If there was something they weren't aware of…" Rose said. "…could it be what they were going to do, not what they did?"
"This woman is talking very logically," Jose said. It was very strange that Jose constantly agreed with these two women. It was as if he behaved differently when he was near a female creature. Especially after Sharon updated Jose's software…
"So right now, on this planet, Unify is conducting an experiment they want to hide? And what are all these creatures wandering around?" I asked.
"According to the black market dealer, the reason they use this planet as a dump…" Diana began to speak, but Rose cut her off.
"…if they didn't use this planet, they might fall under the Space Colonies Oversight Agency Laws. If a planet is not used by its owner for a very long time, it falls back into the hands of the SWR. It is very likely that they used this place as a dump planet to avoid attracting the SWR's attention."
"This woman is talking very logically," Jose said, and this was the final straw for my patience.
"Jose, can you come here for two minutes?"
"Why, master?"
"Just come for a second, we'll talk about something."
I took Jose's robot shoulder under my arm and walked until we were under a shadow a little further away.
"Is something wrong, master?"
"What do you think you're doing?"
"What am I doing, master?"
"Were you such a womanizer robot? Why didn't I know about such things?"
"On what basis are you saying this?"
"You keep telling women they're right!" Noticing that I had raised my voice, I started whispering again. "Look, these women might seem like our friends." I glanced at the two women waiting for us. Rose had rolled her eyes and turned her head. Diana was waving genuinely. But her terrifying black eyes shredded all sincerity. "But they are definitely not our friends. No… You even outdid me in this womanizing. I can't believe this situation."
"Yes, master. I can't believe it either. But how should I put it… If you remember, at the Dermovox Facility, Stone and Sharon removed some locks in the software. It's as if after that event, I identified myself more with the personality I was simulating."
"So with that personality…"
"I'm slowly turning into that personality and I can't control myself."
"Wait a second…"
"I stopped…" Jose said and stiffened.
"…I'm thinking a bit… Let me even think aloud… After your software changed, your low-quality jokes became even lower quality. You're a very good spaceship pilot. You're even so good that you managed to get us out of those anomaly clouds. And with your womanizing added… You… You are Oscar Destan!"
"How?"
"You've been simulating Oscar Destan's personality."
"Yes! I am Oscar Destan!"
"You are Oscar Destan!"
"I am Oscar Destan!"
I suddenly hugged Jose. "Finally, we solved something on our own!"
"Yes!"
"We're perfect!" I said and started jumping. "Hooray!"
"Hooray!" Jose said and started jumping rhythmically with me.
"We're amazing! We really are inspectors!"
"Master, I never lost my trust in you!"
"You are Oscar Destan!"
"I am Oscar!"
Seeing us jumping in a circle, holding each other's arms, Rose slapped her head with her hand and said:
"I can't believe we got stuck with these idiots!"