There was a massive door on one side of the room, which could be considered an operating room. It could be said it was as large as a private airplane hangar. We were standing side by side with Jose as the massive door opened.
"The engineering he did, sir... It was commendable. Such metalworking belongs to a very ancient time." The rusty, gigantic door was taking a really long time to open. As the door opened, a dim red light spilled out from between the crack.
"In what sense?"
"None of the mechanisms that reach the ceiling in the operating room are automatic. This is a section left from before the Interstellar War, and everything is manual."
"An operating room?"
"Most of the tools on the ceiling are operating room tools, sir. Especially brain surgeon tools..."
"So a human operating room?"
"What else would it be?"
That's why I liked having Jose next to me. I truly felt like there was an intelligence by my side. It was as if he was the real inspector and I was like the entertainment robot next to him.
"So what's the problem with that?"
"It seems very difficult for any computer to manually use and become so proficient with such old tools. And the tools themselves are problematic..."
"How problematic?"
"These tools were made for humans to use manually. I would really love to meet the computer that can use these tools." The door was almost fully open.
"How can you be so sure it's a computer, then?"
"Because that's how it talks."
As we stepped into the room, we found a large, dimly lit room adorned with dim red lights. Right next to the door was a computer with many levers. Each lever seemed to be controlling a different tool on the ceiling. Jose advanced on his wheels toward the darkness and extended his hand into the dark.
Out of the darkness came a huge metal hand, at least the size of two humans. Then, one of the many small metal fingers that came out of this metal hand touched Jose's hand.
"Thank you for not opening a flashlight and bothering me," said the robot in the darkness.
"I thought you wouldn't want to appear that way. If I had known you were in this state, I would have turned off my dark vision and come. I'm sorry..."
That terrifying robotic voice coming from the darkness was giving me goosebumps. When I looked more closely into the darkness, I saw two eyes glowing red. They were looking at me just like hunters in the dark.
"You have too many human-like behaviors for a VFA-210." The pair of red eyes moved in the dark as it talked.
"I owe that to my master."
"Hello," I said, waving my hand toward the darkness. "...I'd like to say you look really good, even though I can't see you. I think you're overreacting."
"Is that your master?" the monster in the darkness asked with a mocking tone.
"He loves to make jokes."
The robot put its hand on the floor, and I felt the ground under my feet tremble: "My master was also cheerful once. He loved to make jokes. His jokes were like the jokes old fathers made. Most of the time, they weren't funny in that way." But I hadn't made a joke. How terrifying could a robot really be? I had said it without really thinking it was bad.
"What happened to your master then?" I asked.
"There was a war..." it said.
Jose put his hands on his hips and looked at me as if he was annoyed by me butting in with questions. Yes... Maybe it was a mistake to give Jose such human-like expressions and a body that could make these expressions. He seemed to be trying to make an expression at the slightest thing.
"Thank you so much for the surgery. It was an incredible surgery. You... You're an Owl-22 model paramedic, aren't you?"
"You must have an incredibly sharp database, Jose."
"I understood it from your use of human-like mechanisms and the stamp on you. But you have a human brain, don't you?"
"A human brain?" I said in surprise. "Are you a human?"
"As much as you are."
"But your body is a robot, right?"
"Calling my body just a robot would be an insult to my body. My body was a weapon."
"Owls were remote-controlled paramedic assistants that helped doctors on the battlefield. I say remote-controlled because doctors who didn't want to come to the battlefield would manually perform surgery by controlling that robot."
"Then why are they so big?" I asked.
"Owl-22s would form an iron dome over the wounded with their bodies and protect the wounded with the energy shields that opened from their backs."
"Then why were they used manually?"
"Because..." Owl-22 interjected. "...the battlefield was incredibly chaotic for a robot. There were too many incomprehensible probabilities that needed to be calculated. Robots were not that advanced in our time. Well... So how did you know I was a human, Jose?"
"The tools on the ceiling were too mechanical for a simple healing robot to use. That's why I thought you were a paramedic robot. I couldn't have guessed you were an Owl-22. But if you're an Owl-22 model, there should have been a human controlling you at that time. When I couldn't see that human and also realized that this metal room you were locked in was designed so that no data flow would be provided anywhere, I understood that that human was inside you."
"He is an incredible intelligence..." I said, patting Jose on the shoulder. And then: "I had heard that it was dangerous to transfer a human brain to a robot body. I think Hulk said it... That it would drive the person crazy."
"Are you trying to ask me if I'm crazy?" said the monstrous metal voice angrily.
"No, I didn't mean that."
"You think I'm a crazy person trapped in this metal box of a room, is that it?"
"Absolutely not..."
At that moment, Jose, who noticed that Owl-22 was getting angry, interrupted and asked: "What's your name?" "I hadn't had a chance to meet an Owl-22 before."
"My name is Joe Stone." Then he continued to speak proudly. "I was the doctor of a team of 12 people. Our last two missions were quite unfortunate. In fact, these misfortunes were one of the reasons they were called the last missions. In our second-to-last mission, we were at a science facility. I was shot... I was on the verge of dying... We didn't have much time, and there wasn't much place for us to escape. Our leader, Dante Shade, couldn't afford to lose more people from his team. He trapped me in this robot body. It was a selfish act, but I can understand him."
"The integration of a human brain into a robot's brain is incredibly difficult," Jose said.
"It was an incredible facility," Stone added. "You seem to want to ask me why I didn't go crazy in this robot body." Then he pointed his gigantic metal finger at me: "Especially you..."
"I can't say I'm not a little bit curious."
"To not go crazy, I don't go outside, I just stay here. In this metal box... I don't receive any data flow, I don't move my robot body in any way... My memory is constantly being wiped, most of my human memories have been erased, I can't do anything but survive so that I don't go crazy. I wouldn't even remember that I'm a robot if it weren't for you... I connect my brain to a simulation and wander around there with a human body; I listen to jazz, play games, and watch the facility, usually..."
"We're sorry for reminding you," Jose said.
"Why didn't they transfer you to an artificial body when technology had advanced so much..." I asked.
"Because..." Jose interjected. "Both the human brain and the robotic processor were incredibly damaged during the surgery. This... This can be easily understood. I'm sorry, Joe Stone."
"If I know one thing, it's that I should have died that day. I should have died... I should have died there with my friends."
"You're in pain, aren't you? Constantly..." Jose asked.
"A pain that never subsides... Endless..."
I swallowed and took two steps and touched the robot's metal hand. "Mr. Stone... I'd like to say that I'm truly sorry for your pain."
"It's okay, Inspector Mehmet..."
"If there's anything we can do, we won't hesitate to help."
"For me? For someone you don't even know?"
"Why not? We can't be said to act by thinking too much."
"There's nothing you can do, but thank you."
"I'm sure we can find something, can't we, Jose?"
"First, we need to finish the missions we have left, sir. We don't have much time left."
"Ah... Right... We had a time limit, didn't we?"
"We've spent 45 hours of the 60-hour limit, sir. We won't have much time left once we return to the base to get the new mission. We might not even be able to return to the base."
"When I retire. I promise I'll come to help you then, Joe Stone."
"Thank you. I don't know what to say."
After looking at the robot's red glowing eyes in the darkness for a while, we said goodbye and left the room. When I looked back one last time as the gigantic door of the room was closing, I had seen a pair of red eyes looking at me with sadness.