"Where did you find this man?" Sevda asked as she stared at the face of the man on the operating table.
Interestingly, despite not being a cybernetic, this man had faced a danger that could kill even a cybernetic and managed to survive. It was unclear whether it was due to swelling from a lack of oxygen or an explosion, but his face had been blown apart, shattered into pieces. This face, stripped down to the bone, was horrifying. Looking at it, you could see nothing more than a blood-filled pit screaming in agony, refusing to give up the ghost.
His left arm had been strained to the point of tearing off. This was evident from the fact that there was almost no muscle mass left on it and the joint was broken; yet, strangely, there wasn't a single scratch on other parts of the arm's skeleton, and it remained in place. This man's general skeletal structure had to be hundreds, perhaps thousands of times stronger than that of ordinary Enhanced humans.
When the machine opened the man's internal organs, Sevda became even more fascinated by his body. The body before her had to be worth more than millions of dollars.
There was a needle-like structure attached to his stomach—a mechanism that balanced stomach acid. This mechanism, acting like litmus paper, filtered and extracted substances that could cause harm, such as poisons, and channeled toxic waste specifically to the kidneys to be expelled.
The man's nerves were intertwined with his powerful skeleton; if there was any excess electricity in his body, the skeletal structure conducted it to his wrists, and his wrists could discharge that electricity like a weapon.
His lungs possessed their own sort of storage reservoir. Currently, this biological reservoir located at the bottom of the lung, in the corner where the heart was absent, must have been depleted, as it was completely shriveled. As for the lungs themselves… the gaskets and filters installed inside them were pieces so effective that they wouldn't be found in most nuclear facilities.
As many more expensive enhancements were revealed, Sevda grabbed the old man by the arm and pulled him out of the glass dome. While all the Uruzenians watched the duo intently, Sevda, thinking she needed to speak with this man privately, dragged him to her room and asked the same question once they were alone:
"Where did you find this man, old man!"
"Isn't he a beautiful thing? Quite a rare piece…"
"He's definitely valuable, but… but I've never seen such a precious body before."
"Really?" the old man said. He was stunned that Sevda was so surprised. "Even in the Supreme World?"
"Yes… Even in the Supreme World, in TerraNova, or even in Antay, the vacation spot for the wealthy! Being a high-tech Enhanced is more expensive than being a high-tech cybernetic. Unless you have a fetish for being an Enhanced, you wouldn't want to incur such an expense."
"What kind of expense are we talking about?"
"This man…" Sevda said, crossing her arms in thought, "…this man must be a noble or something. Perhaps the heir to a throne."
"In the state I last saw him, he'd be the heir to a graveyard at best," Urgan said and chuckled softly.
"Well, are you going to tell me?"
"Of course… I was planning to anyway. I just didn't get a chance because you kept asking questions," said old Urgan, one of Sevda's old friends.
When Sevda first established this facility, the healing robots were constantly breaking down. For Sevda, who had never set up a facility in such a terrain despite being a doctor, constant malfunctions were inevitable. Breakdowns caused by humidity or atmospheric pollution occurred frequently. To constantly fix these machine failures, Sevda had to pay insane amounts of money out of her own pocket.
Urgan was the technician for the company from which she bought her machines. Through his constant work for Sevda, this old man had developed an intimacy with her. Sometimes, he even refused to accept service fees.
To the old man named Urgan, what Sevda was trying to do here seemed like rowing against the tide. He had come to this planet many times to fix malfunctions at the TESO factory. The Uruzenians were colonized, but unlike other colonies, they didn't even have a need for freedom.
For TESO, everything was as it should be. To prevent them from thinking too much, it didn't allow them to eat healthy. It poisoned their water and added brain-numbing additives to their food. To prevent them from living too long and making plans for the future, they poisoned the atmosphere and shortened their lifespans. Every now and then, TESO would act as a guarantor for some Uruzenians among the people, promising them long life and wealth; in return, they demanded assurance that they would lull the public with false promises.
To keep the Uruzenians—who were vitamin-deficient, weak-willed, powerless, and leaderless—alive, you had to be a woman like Doctor Sevda. Why?
Sevda had achieved the impossible in her academic life. She had found cures for viruses that caused mass deaths. After her research in a colony revealed that a genetic mutation occurring a million years later would bring the end of a rare alien race, she treated them genetically and was declared a goddess by animal rights activists. Although many SWR institutions pursued her, she refused to become an inspector, wishing to help people by touching them personally rather than dealing with bureaucracy.
One day during a speech, one of the speakers asked her: "You have saved many lives, Ms. Sevda. It looks like you will receive the Gawerna Savior award this year. But there is a criticism made against you, and I wonder what you think about it. (As camera lights flashed one after another, Sevda searched for the woman's voice with her eyes.) The number of those dying from war or exploitation is millions of times higher than those dying from disease. Although most of them are not SWR citizens and thus do not have human status, they are genetically human. Most SWR citizens believe the Gawerna Savior award should go to a diplomat, not a doctor. What do you think about this?"
That question was the turning point. Sevda had heard many rumors about thousands of people still dying in the colonies. At least while she was in high society, she viewed these comments as rumors. Why? Because the mainstream media never reported on those oppressed in the colonies or in war. Those who mentioned these issues were usually alternative media outlets labeled as conspiracy theorists.
To see the situation with her own eyes, she had come to the END99141 colony, which was claimed to be one of the colonies. According to what was said, a large—albeit mild—colonial community lived there. Later, Sevda was shocked by the slaughter she witnessed and stayed on this planet to help these people.
After all, she was one of the most famous professors in the galaxy, wasn't she?
Nothing had gone as planned. She was a woman who could be considered a figurehead for women's rights organizations. When she took to the streets to voice what was happening to Uruzenian women, she found no one by her side. Some were afraid to cross the SWR, as Sevda's allegations were indeed major accusations. Others argued that the rights of SWR women should be defended before those of Uruzenian women. One woman even shouted: "I can't even get my cybernetic breasts lifted! Am I going to bother with those damn Uruzenians? They shouldn't have been exploited!"
She was a doctor… so perhaps doctors would stand behind her. But no academic wanted to admit that the colonies existed. Especially the professors of the University of Mars Colonies rejected Doctor Sevda's meeting calls in a very harsh tone. You know that the men of that university cannot become academics without becoming members of SWR institutions, particularly the Space Archaeology and Heritage Protection Agency.
She appeared in the newspapers, but what she said was seen as the delusions of a madwoman. When she appeared on television, the program host manipulated her and brought the subject to her ex-husband cheating on her; she cursed in a moment of anger and left the channel, thus becoming the "mad doctor" of the SWR. And many more dramas followed…
That was what the old man named Urgan felt sorry for. He felt sorry for this young girl—she was 106 years old—wasting her destiny for a colonized people, and he couldn't make sense of it. The Uruzenians would never be able to repay their debt of gratitude to this woman.
If there was one more person who had a debt of gratitude, it was the old man named Urgan. He had been fired from the technical service company where he worked as the cause of a small financial crisis. He wanted to share with Doctor Sevda that he had been fired because she was a woman who treated him well.
When Doctor Sevda saw the long face of this unemployed old man, she said:
"Am I going to lose my best parts supplier just because a company has an economic crisis? I don't think so…" and made him a job offer.
Urgan was a very high-level technician. Sevda asked if he could find cheap machine parts and repair her machines if she provided him with a good vehicle. Urgan was so happy at this question that he couldn't hold back the tears that hadn't flowed for nearly 30 years. Since he activated the crying module in his cybernetic body for the first time in a long while, the module malfunctioned, and he cried involuntarily for hours.
Urgan went to scrap planets with his ship to find technical parts; sometimes he traded with the human remnants called Scavengers, and sometimes he would appear among the wreckage as soon as space ship battles ended to loot the debris.
But finding technical parts wasn't his only duty. If he found a body with intact limbs or functional internal organs, he brought it to the facility. Doctor Sevda used the organ parts of these corpses to help the Uruzenians. Especially for Sevda, who suffered from a lack of biological remains, these corpses were critically important. Doctor Sevda had only one condition for bringing these corpses: they had to be unclaimed. Whenever he brought a corpse, Urgan would be interrogated at length by Sevda, as if he were in a cross-examination but by a single person.
This old man named Urgan, who was actually the same age as Sevda, had gradually begun to feel something for this doctor named Sevda. This woman was maternal even toward an ungrateful race like the Uruzenians. She struggled madly to protect and watch over them, and throughout this struggle, she never gave up on the ideals she possessed. She had even saved this man's life when he was about to fall into a debt trap and be ruined, rescuing him like a miracle.
Because Urgan was a senior employee, he had been turned into a cybernetic at a late age and in a cheap manner by the company. That's why his cybernetic components were junk. His face bore the look of an old man. Because of his cheap cybernetic internal organs, his breath stank, and while sleeping, he made a noise like a chainsaw motor struggling to work.
But despite all these physical deficiencies, he was madly in love with our girl Sevda. Perhaps if the company had installed hormone modules to prevent love, he wouldn't have felt this love—but that was a separate mystery.
If Urgan wanted Sevda to love him, he needed to be a beautiful and good cybernetic. If he renewed his parts, had plastic surgery on his skin, or if possible, even mechanized his face; with a few innovations, he could be a Casanova. He could convince Sevda to turn off her hormone module, and so maybe they could even experience love. But he had no money, and he wouldn't have any… It couldn't happen while working for Sevda and giving everything to her, because Sevda wasn't giving him a large sum of money. He was paying his life debt to Sevda by working, so he only took enough money from Sevda to get by. Although Sevda offered more, he couldn't bring himself to accept it out of pride.
That's why this old scavenger began not to bring all the parts to Sevda, but to sell some to others. He saved and saved. He worked day and night. It might take a hundred years to save the money, but he didn't care. On every lonely night he lay looking at the void of space thinking of the blonde hair of the woman named Sevda, he dreamed of stroking that hair with love.
Either he would save money, become a perfect cybernetic, and do his best to live his love, or he would have a hormone module installed and give up on his love. But how could he give up after tasting love once?
While navigating through all these thoughts and plans, just a few days ago, Sevda secretly examined the travel logs of the transport spaceship she had entrusted to Urgan. Why Sevda had done this, she didn't know herself. Perhaps she was uncomfortable with Urgan's very well-intentioned looks. Perhaps she thought the transport spaceship had worn out more lately. Or perhaps it was just paranoia. Thus, it was revealed that Urgan was secretly selling parts behind Sevda's back and helping illegal colonial planets. He had even sold products to TESO several times, which was truly unacceptable for Sevda.
That is why, a few days ago, this old Urgan had been banished from the planet by Sevda's angry roar. When Sevda asked Urgan why he did this, Urgan couldn't tell her it was because of his love; he couldn't find such mad courage in himself while being such an ugly man.
But now, before even a few days had passed, he had returned. Along with a strange, unexpected man. Perhaps this man could be an opportunity for him to make Sevda forgive him.
"If you're ready, I'm starting to tell the story."