Ali turned around, but it was too late. He had received a strong blow to his head, and to his surprise, it was from Noor, who was tossing and turning in her sleep. Ali, annoyed, pulled off her leg and picked her up to put her back in her place. As soon as he finished and raised his eyes, he was surprised that the fog had completely disappeared. This left him in a state of doubt, but then he noticed another movement making a sound, and he looked again at the three sleeping people, saying, "That chicken, Noor, didn't I just put her back in her place, and here she is moving again? Wait, what is this?!" Ali noticed that Noor hadn't moved...
But the one who had moved was Luna. She was curled up because her tattered, worn-out slave clothes didn't provide enough warmth. Ali took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. The weariness faded from Luna's sleeping face, replaced by comfort and a faint smile. Ali continued rowing all night, gazing at the light-free night sky. All the stars were clear, painting a breathtaking picture amidst this enchanting tranquility.
"So this is how beautiful the world would be without humans," Ali thought to himself. Then he returned to his contemplation as he rowed. The view was extraordinary. The red and blue nebula, surrounded by stars, and the absence of the moon, which allowed us to see all that space concealed from us, were truly a sight to behold. The water, now free of debris and crystal clear, reflected the sky like a mirror.
016 spoke up, asking, "Mr. Ali, I don't have much information about the universe in my data. Whenever I look up at the sky..." A question haunts me: the universe is a matter of cause and effect. You, Mr. Ali, are the cause of my existence, 016, and my robot brothers. Therefore, we are the result. But what is the result of the vast universe? What is the truth behind all of this? Why...? *beep...beep...beep* 016 stopped speaking, then went completely silent. It restarted, but in a data processing mode that we humans might consider sleep.
Ali watched him carefully, then spoke. "Hmm... so version 016 took only one week to arrive at this question. Truly, the pace of development of the artificial intelligence program I created has become terrifying. But... where did we come from... and where are we going?" Ali sighed and returned to his contemplation. The night continued in this manner, and in the early morning, shortly before sunrise, Ali woke Julius to exchange words with him before the girls woke up and to get some sleep himself. As soon as Julius woke up and prepared to row, he stopped and turned to Ali, smiling. Malicious.
Ali asked him with disgust, "What's wrong with you?" Julius replied, "Oh, it seems someone's become romantic. Look who put my sister back in her place, because it's impossible for my sister to stay in one spot while she's sleeping. And look at the princess hugging your jacket like it's the most precious thing in the world!"
Ali retorted, "You idiot! It's obvious she's clinging to it because she's cold and wants to keep warm."
Julius exclaimed, "Oh, is that really what it is? And let me tell you, I don't mind if my sister marries another woman Like Luna, breathtakingly beautiful."
Ali snapped, "Shut up!"
Julius, surprised, asked, "But really, brother, don't you feel any strange feelings when you're near a beautiful girl like Luna? I was saying that my sister didn't affect you because she's young, but even Luna, don't you feel anything for her?"
Ali answered, "Yes, I do. Who said I don't? I'm human, after all." Julius, surprised and excited, asked, "Really? What is it?" Ali replied, "I "Of course I feel sorry for her poor life now, and I want to help her." Julius fell backward in shock, muttering to himself, "That idiot only sees her as a cat. Ha! He'll have a long way to go before he becomes a normal human being. Why is he so different from anyone I've ever met? Why?"
As Ali tried to sleep, he remembered something he'd noticed the previous day. "Hey, Gorilla, I just remembered something. Yesterday, a strange fog descended upon us, then vanished suddenly without warning. So be careful." Julius, offering a mocking salute, replied, "Yes, sir. I will be careful." Seeing Ali's sneer, he asked, "Can I really rely on him?"
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Ali turned around and found that the two girls had woken up, their faces flushed. It seemed they had been listening to the conversation almost from the beginning. Ali was surprised by their redness and, without warning, placed his hand on each of their foreheads, which only made them blush even more. "Strange, your temperatures are normal," he said. Everyone thought to themselves, "You're the strange one." He continued, "I thought you both had caught a cold after such a cold night, especially you, Luna."
Luna blushed even more and said, "No, I didn't feel very cold... thanks to... your jacket." Ali was surprised by her reaction and decided to ignore them and go back to sleep. Another day passed, and the routine was quite ordinary. Nothing particularly significant had happened, just the four of them and the water surrounding them on all sides. They now had four days left until their arrival.
Nour and Luna were playing word games, a common practice among Orthodox students. Their relationship was developing well; Nour even called Luna "my older sister." Sometimes she would sit on her lap. Julius rowed, 016 was almost asleep, and Ali was asleep. The atmosphere seemed calm and peaceful.
But after Ali woke up in broad daylight and regained consciousness, Julius leaned over him, saying, "Ali, I feel something is wrong, something's out of place. It's... it's... like the calm before the storm." Ali responded with equal concern, "Yes, this is unusual. Where have all the remains of the creatures disappeared to..." Ali turned to 016. "Hey, buddy, are you awake?" A beep, the robot's restart sound, recognized by its owner's voice. "016 is ready for action. What do you need, Mr. Ali?"
Ali: "I need you to scan the area around us."
016: "Understood. Scanning a 40-meter radius area.... no distinctive signal, sir."
Ali: "Then make the radius of the surrounding sphere 100 meters."
016: "Very well." A thin, spherical column emerged from the front of 016, radiating more and more until the magnetic field emanating from it could be sensed. "Beep beep beep beep... Mr. Ali, it seems that "An object is stalking us from afar." Noor and Luna, who had been engrossed in conversation, were taken aback. They fell silent, and Julius's senses sharpened at this comment. Ali smiled.
"Good. Can you describe it to us? Is it a person, an object, or if it's a living being, what kind?"
"Given its enormous size, its intelligence in remaining undetected, and the fact that it has the same pulse pattern as some sharks, it's most likely a zigra that hasn't yet reached maturity."
Everyone was in a state of extreme panic. Luna looked dejected, Noor's limbs turned blue with fear, Ali couldn't hide his intense dread, and Julius was sweating profusely with tension. It was clear to them all; they realized they were only steps away from the afterlife.
[The zigra was a creature developed by the intelligence services of the Fourth Empire, which has long been infamous for its horrific and frightening biological experiments. But one of the most heinous things in history was their creation of..... A monster like the Zigra was an evolved form of the great white shark, a hundred times larger and possessing superhuman healing abilities. It could regenerate severed limbs in just a few days, as if they were merely claws, and these limbs would become even stronger. Unless its heart was blown out, it wouldn't die. The problem was that its heart was located beneath its hard, two-meter-thick skin, and bullets had no effect on it. It had limbs that allowed it to walk on land, consisting of forty-centimeter-long claws and a jaw capable of grinding steel into paste. Its bite force was seven tons, and it could reach speeds of four hundred kilometers per hour and swim nonstop for ten days. It was literally one of the most dangerous creatures of the sea at that time, although there were creatures even more terrifying, but these creatures lived in the depths. It preferred to live at the surface, and the purpose of creating it was to develop a marine force that was easy to reproduce and powerful enough to destroy enemy forces in the blink of an eye. This was during the Seropene War, and the laboratory conducting this experiment was confident of its success. However, this hybrid strain It developed intelligence and became capable of extracting control chips, allowing some of its members to act independently. It escaped, and thanks to its intelligence, it was able to form what could be called its own society. After the war ended, all the empires focused on eliminating it because it was disrupting commercial shipping and killing more than a quarter of a million people a month. Eliminating just one adult required ten TMSF submarines, the most powerful submarines of their time, numerous warships, and more than five hundred soldiers. Fortunately, its reproduction rate was slow because the laboratory never finished its experiments with it before it escaped. The birth rate was approximately one individual every 10 years. Nevertheless, it took a global effort to make ZIGRA incidents rare.]
But it was never expected that this monster would appear during this catastrophe. Being relatively intelligent, it could tell that our boat wasn't a military vessel, and that one bite would send us into its watery playground.
There, the question will no longer be whether we will die, but how long it will take. Everyone instinctively stops moving; even Julius stops rowing. They face only one question: how will they get out of this predicament?....