The walls of the lab were covered with aquariums like honeycombs. All but one of the tables with nitrile gloves, microcentrifuge tubes, microscopes, and Petri dishes on them were empty. Although other researchers left the lab, Yagiz continued his work until morning.
He got up from his desk and started walking in lethargic steps towards the aquariums. He grabbed a fish that looked like anchovies floating in the bottom aquarium with a small bucket and took it away, and threw it into the water tank in the middle of the room. The cube-shaped water tank was filled with human-sized poisonous algae. After the fish balanced in the water, it took a piece from the leaf of the toxic algae. The genetically modified fish liked the taste of it. He started gnawing at the leaf of the algae with serial movements. Yagiz went around looking for other fish that he had previously thrown into the tank. All of the translucent fish, the size of an index finger, lived. They were finally able to produce a fish that was not affected by the venom of algae. Now it was time to make all subspecies of the family resistant to the poison. He predicted that they would be able to complete this job in about a month.
He stretched out his arms and headed for the door to go to his room. Just as he was about to walk out the door, he noticed that the movements of the fish had become stagnant. Under his feet, the ground began to shake, and the fish in the aquariums started to flee in panic. Wondering what was going on, he turned around and saw a car with a screw in front. A large creature was driving a vehicle that resembled a giant syringe. The beast had short arms and legs, a long nose, and pointed ears. He shuddered because he couldn't see anything resembling an eye on the ugly face of the greasy creature. A few fish jumped right and left in despair over the water flowing to the floor of broken aquariums. From the hole in the wall came a second vehicle with another ugly creature. With gold chains around their necks and bracelets decorated with jewels on their arms, the creatures got out of their cars and threw themselves at Yagiz. They tied his arms and legs, stuck a yellow ball in his mouth with tires on both sides, and prevented him from shouting. The taller of the creatures pushed Yağız into his vehicle.
The creatures that attacked Yagiz were soldiers of aliens who, eight years ago, carried out coordinated attacks on all the cities of the world. These creatures, called Shapeless because of their ugly images, destroyed armies that tried to resist them and launched a relentless hunt for survivors. They assumed that what they were doing was expected because they had rented Earth for ten thousand years by winning the tender filed by the Milky Way Federation.
The creature started the auger of its cylinder-shaped steel-tracked vehicle. The vehicle pierced the opposite wall of the lab and began to move through the ground. After a while, they came across a rock. As the car pierced the rock and passed through it, the noise and shaking inside increased. After passing through the Rock Block and moving for a while, they came to Earth. There was a blizzard outside. He felt cold as the car pallets moved along, buried in snow. In the whiteness extending to the horizon, only the pine trees, whose branches had been broken by the storms, could be seen. The creature sitting in front of him had no complaints about the snow that fell in May.
On the contrary, they were responsible for making the world so cold. In the years following their arrival, there were mass fish deaths in the oceans, and a species of moss that was as ugly and wild as the Shapeless invaded the ocean floor. These poisonous algae, which fish cannot eat, can live even in deep waters with very little light and accumulate carbon dioxide, reducing the greenhouse effect. This caused the average temperature in the world to drop rapidly. Yagiz was a member of a multinational research team that studied toxic algae, and when they looked at toxic algae, they came across genes that were not found in our world. When it became clear that toxic algae were a biotech product, studies were initiated to change the genetics of common ocean fish to eat toxic algae.
The planet, the main home of the creature driving the vehicle, was known to be dark and cold. The misshapen had no problem with the light, but the hot air was a significant problem.
As his teeth began to ring from the cold, Yağız extended his right hand forward and touched the creature's back, which was covered in cracks and wounds. When the beast didn't look back, he shouted, "I'm freezing; turn on the heat." The creature pulled a metal ring out of the glove compartment with its giant claws, turned towards Yağız, and placed the ring on its head. Hooks from the Metal ring pierced his scalp, securing the ring to Yağız's head. He pushed the claw of the fat creature and tried to separate the ring from its head, but this move did nothing but increase the blood that seeped through the holes in which the hooks entered.
The device attached to his head translated the shapeless conversations into the world's languages at a frequency that the human ear could not hear. "If you remove the device I put on your head, your brain will break into a thousand parts," the creature told Yagiz via the device. Yagiz estimated that there was some kind of mine inside the device. He was so cold that he was afraid of breaking his teeth that hit each other. "I'm freezing; turn on the heat," he repeated with difficulty. "They give 20 credits for each human body," the creature said, indicating that the device's translation function was not one-way. He guessed that the greasy creatures were unaware of the purpose of the lab. The types he dealt with were probably ordinary bounty hunters. Barely moving his blackened lips from the cold, he said, "Do you want to earn 500 credits?" he asked.
"They always say that to save their lives," the creature said, as the device on its head reflected the cynical tone in the creature's voice.
"There's a group of 25 people hidden underground," Yağız said. After driving for a while on the snow-covered plain, the car went underground again.
" I'm fed up with such nonsense," the creature said.
Yağız's body was now in a state of uncanny calm. It took a great deal of effort to keep his eyelids open. "I've already stopped saying it," the words barely spilled between his black lips from the cold.
As soon as the creature heard these words, it became enraged. "Our master has given up. I'll kill you. I will rip it apart. I'll make you regret your birth."
Yağız regretted his offer with a moment of heedlessness, and he would not turn anyone in to save himself. He could no longer feel his fingers and had a slight hum on his head. At that moment, he closed his eyelids because he wanted to die.
"No one can die without my permission. I've seen a lot of arrogant people like you," the creature shouted.
In the lethargy he entered, Yağız's whole life flashed before his eyes like a storyboard. Before he died, they managed to produce fish that would save the world. He had no problem accepting his fate.
He was lying on a narrow cot in a dim room when he opened his eyes. The cell he was in had no window. So he guessed it was underground. He had bandages on his hands, and he felt pretty powerless. As he thought the hooks came into contact with his skull, the ring on his head was in place; he had not come to heaven or hell. He tried to get up and sit down, and because his eyes were blackened, he went back to the original position. He felt an itch in his throat and sneezed noisily. Through the narrow door of the room, a woman entered, the skirts of her dress sweeping the floor. She had a ring on her head identical to Yağız's and a timid expression on his face.
"Where am I?"
"I thought you'd never wake up."
"What is this place?"
"It is a labor camp. I took care of you."
"I wish you hadn't bothered."
"Don't say that. The resistance is growing stronger every day."
"Tales made up by the shapeless to prevent suicides..."
"You're free to believe what you want."
"Is it possible to remove things from our heads?"
"Only after death, to attach it to someone else."
"What are people doing here?"
"They accompany the machines in the mines."
"What about you?"
"I'm a nurse. My Name Is Sema."
Immediately after the nurse left, the creature kidnapped Yağız from the lab arrived in the room.
The ring conveyed the words, "I spared your life. Now it's your turn,"
"I don't know anything. You can kill me if you want," Yağız said.
"You think it's easy to die, but it's not," the creature said, exasperated. He grabbed Yağız with his big claws and put him in the water-filled boat next to the bed. Yağıt didn't try to resist. He just waited in the water, leaving himself at the mercy of the creature. When the air in his lungs ran out, he tried to raise his head above the water. When the beast prevented him from removing his head, he began to scramble to reach the air involuntarily. The creature continued to hold his head under the water, ignoring Yagiz's flutters. When he realized he was going to faint, he pulled his paws over Yağız. Yağız pulled his head out of the water, took a deep breath in a hurry, and started coughing because of the water he had swallowed.
Yağız's exasperation to breathe led to shapeless's enjoyment. "Was it easy to die?" he asked.
"I lied to save my life. I don't know where people are."
The creature clung to his collar, pulled Yağız from the room where he was first, dragged him along the long corridor, and put him in a narrow cell created by carving the soil. After locking the iron door, he said," Call me when you're ready," and left.
Yağız put his back against the cell's earth wall and began to think. When the creature stuck its head in the water, its instinct for life was dominant. Although he had no intention of spending his life as a slave to the shapeless, his suffering grew longer and longer. And the creature might have turned on its friends as a result of their torture. There had to be an easy way to die. He raised his left hand and scratched his head, and his fingers touched the ring on his head. He moved his hand around the ring. The places where the hooks got into the scalp were scabbed. He tried to grab one of the hooks and pull it out of his scalp. His fingers, devastated by the cold, were weak. He couldn't even grasp the hook properly.
He began to scan all sides of the cell with his gaze. And he noticed that there was a thick nail buried in the ground on the opposite wall. He grabbed the tip of the nail and pulled it out. Seeing that he couldn't get it out, this time, he started looking for a solid object that he could dig around the nail. He began carving the hard, dry soil around the nail with a branch he found. After long efforts, he managed to remove the pin from the ground. It was a rusty construction nail that was about to rot. He passed the nail through one of the hooks of the ring and, using it as a lever, removed the first hook from under the skin of his forehead. Blood seeped between his two eyebrows as the hook tore through his skin. He pulled all the hooks out of his scalp one by one, not caring if he was hurt and his face was covered in blood. As soon as he removed the ring from his head, the pressure on his head would disappear, probably a trigger mechanism would be activated, and the device would explode. With bandages on his hands, he oozed from his wounds and wiped the blood from his eye sockets. He grabbed the ring from both sides, took a deep breath, and decided that the right thing to do was to remove the ring.
He was surprised to see that there was no explosion when he removed the ring from his head. He took off his blouse and tore off part of the skirt, and tied the piece of fabric he had obtained to his head like a bandana to cut off the blood flow. He bent the end of the rusty nail by pressing it against the metal ring. He put the nail in the door lock of the cell he was in and started tampering with the lock. The wounds around his head hurt, and his hands, devastated by the cold they were exposed to, prevented him from working comfortably. As a result of his persistent efforts, he managed to open the door. He fixed the end of the rusty nail by pressing it against the metal ring, this time in the opposite direction. He took the ring and nail and went out into the hallway. As he made progress on his escape route, his morale rose, his self-confidence increased. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of the shapeless, hoping that the notion he had as a biologist would help him outsmart them.
As he walked down the aisle, the creature that put him in the cell appeared. Taking advantage of the creature's pause for a moment to grasp the situation, Yağız stuck the nail he was holding in his hand into the creature's neck like a dagger. He managed to stab the pin into the creature's carotid artery. The creature's yellow blood was spraying from its neck with tremendous pressure. He took several steps backward to avoid a possible claw blow. As the misshapen fell to the ground, losing consciousness, he removed the beam gun and the key to his vehicle from the holster on his belt. After spitting on the creature's body in anger, he left it behind and continued to move down the corridor.
The door at the end of the corridor opened to a large gallery, where enslaved people mine silver along with autonomous robots. He came down the iron stairs with heavy steps and threw the ring in his hand towards the gallery's center like a Frisbee. The ring struck one of the carriage cars in the middle of the gallery and made a metallic sound. Enslaved workers and the shapeless turn around their heads to the side where the metal ring had fallen. He fired at the greasy creature with the ray gun and cut his body in half. He proceeded to where the ring fell, picked up the device in his hands, lifted it into the air, and shouted, "first free your minds," to the workers who were watching him with a confused look. He then threw the ring aside, turned around, and left the gallery to look for the creature's vehicle. In the room behind the gallery were numerous cylindrical vehicles. He looked at which vehicles reacted by holding the smart key forward and pressing the power key. The door of the front car opened automatically. Yağız got into the car, belted himself, started the engine, and the vehicle began to move underground, piercing the dirty walls. To return to the lab, he had to go up to Earth and find his way. He pulled the steering wheel towards and turned the car's nose to the ground.
Image Sources:
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