I was like a stranger in my own home. I had lost my memory; I couldn't remember my young mother, the early days of this house, and many other things, but they must have been hidden somewhere in my subconscious because now they were in front of us. As my foot stepped on the wooden floor of the house's hallway, I was trembling and nervous like an old man who could barely walk.
My mother was a woman who would get flustered when guests arrived. She gave the baby in her arms to Rose and hosted us in the kitchen. Rose was sitting at the kitchen table, not knowing what to do with the baby in her arms. While my mother was busily opening and closing cabinet doors in the kitchen, I stood in the doorframe, watching her hair get blown by the wind. She was a woman from my subconscious. And I was her son, whom she hadn't seen for centuries. I missed her so much that I would do anything for her to hug me and tell me she missed me. The problem was, I missed her; she, on the other hand, looked like she had just seen me the moment she opened her eyes. Her concern was to host her guests. My concern was… I didn't even know what my concern was.
After all, I had created a scene for a woman whose death I had caused, and I had put a woman who was supposed to be dead in front of me, in flesh and bone. She was an illusion of my subconscious. A ghost from my past, and many other things…
She turned to me and gave me a flustered smile. It was very obvious that she wasn't expecting guests. How did she see me? She knew I was her son, but… I didn't know what kind of mother my subconscious had created for me. Without waiting in the doorframe any longer, I went to the table.
"What is this ugly thing?" Rose asked, looking at the baby in her arms.
"I guess it's me…"
"Yes… It's you, Edgard…" my mother said, opening and closing the kitchen drawers feverishly. She turned on the stove, and while waiting for the pan to heat up, a robot assistant came next to her and immediately started mixing a mixture in a plastic bowl. My mother wiped the sweat off her face with the back of her hand and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting guests, so I was caught off guard."
"No problem," I said, but the coldness in my voice sent a shiver down my spine. It was as if I was talking to a ghost, not my mother.
"Then why is this ugly thing in my arms?" Rose asked. Baby Edgard reached his hand toward Rose's chest and tugged at her clothes.
"How rude!" I said and lightly nudged Rose with my elbow. "You don't say such stupid things when you're a guest."
"Don't you like babies, Rose? Don't you want to have a child?" my mother asked.
"Like babies? Dealing with a baby is entertainment for the nobles. For us, it's a burden… If I were sure I was going to die and had an inheritance to leave, maybe I would consider it then. But I would do my best to make sure my baby isn't so spoiled and helpless."
My mother was frozen in shock. It was obvious she was a little stressed out while smiling. "Yes… You are such a savage young girl… I never would have guessed that Edgard would have such taste in women." she said. "…Then, if you want, I'll take him from you." My mother ran to Rose with fast steps and took the baby from her arms. "He was already sleepy." She placed the baby in the basket of another drone assistant and said, "Will you put Edgard to sleep? The baby one…" she said to the robot assistant.
"No…" I said in a hurry. "…contrary to what you think, we are just friends."
"I'm sure you are," my mother said in a sarcastic, drawn-out tone.
"Your son screwed my sister," Rose said suddenly.
My mother suddenly started coughing. "Edgard! We will talk in private later because what I'm hearing isn't nice at all! I was curious about what kind of person you became when you grew up." she said through her clenched teeth. Maybe Rose was the weirdest guest who had ever come to our house, and so far, I hadn't felt that my mother could get along with her. My mother wiped her sweat with the cloth brought by the assistant robot and sat across from us at the table.
"So… How are you doing," my mother said, as the robot assistant came to us with a plate full of cookies. "Come on, drink your juice and eat your cookies. It's an Under-District recipe, it's incredibly delicious."
"Why are you giving us food? Edgard, don't you dare eat the cookie!" Rose said, holding my arm as it reached for the cookie. I pushed Rose's hand away with my arm and threw the cookie into my mouth with my other hand.
"Stop it, you idiot!"
"You're the idiot! You haven't learned anything from the training!" At that moment, Rose had raised her hand to punch me, and then when she saw my mother's flustered expression, she lowered her fists.
"I'm sorry, Mommy. Rose gets a little stressed when she's a guest, and she starts talking nonsense. Right, Rose?" I said and threw another cookie into my mouth.
"Are you crazy?" Rose whispered. "She could poison you…"
"Are you crazy? She's my mother…"
"That's just how humans are, sweetie… Everyone gets stressed when they're a guest," my mother said.
"But I'm not human. I'm half-human, half-mind-weaver…" Rose said.
"What's a mind-weaver?"
"We are mind-reading mutants, created by our lord Raiden to help take over the government by exploiting the lust of male humans."
"You choose your friends very well, Edgard. Are there any other details I don't know, don't want to know, but need to know?"
"Actually, no…"
"Then let's start over. How are you doing, kids…"
"The same… I woke up from a 400-year sleep and I'm trying to survive in a dead galaxy."
"It must be hard…"
"It's both hard and interesting…"
"How old are you now?"
"I must be over 300," Rose said.
"If you count the time I was asleep…" I did a little math in my head. "…it's around 440."
"440… You've gotten quite old. Oh well… When you calculate a person's age now, you need to divide it by at least five. 440 years pass so quickly, like the old 19 years."
"You can say that, my dear mother… You say you want to travel in space and a few years already pass while you're sleeping."
"So, have you ever thought about having a child?" my mother asked. "When am I becoming a grandmother?"
"No… I never had a chance to think about it, but… As for becoming a grandmother…"
"But what…" She stopped for a few seconds. "…Oh… I understand… It's a disease, isn't it? I'm sorry, son."
"I'm the one who should be sorry," I said, clenching my fists.
"What's the problem?" Rose asked.
"Oh… It's nothing important," my mother interjected, but I interrupted her because I had to let out the burden in my heart.
"My mother died to give birth to me… I'm sorry, Mom…"
"Sorry? No, don't be sorry…"
Rose had shaken in her chair from surprise. "You died to give birth to a child?"
"Let's just say I took a chance…" my mother said in a humorous tone.
"Unbelievable. Why would you do such a thing?"
"To be a family…"
"A family?"
"Marcin wanted a child born the old way. A boy who would carry his blood, who would save him from the loneliness in this universe… Because he was also born the old way, and he felt quite lonely in this universe. Humanity was changing, the world was changing; the values he believed in were crumbling one by one. He thought that if he could at least have someone of his own blood, of his own mind, he could be saved from this loneliness. I would have been so sad if he hadn't had a child just because he married me. And… And I also wanted a child. A sweet, cute, loyal, and most importantly, honorable child."
"Is a child so important to you?"
While Rose and my mother were in a heated conversation, I had buried my head in my chest because… Because for some reason, the feeling of guilt that engulfed me prevented me from speaking. Maybe because of the dreams I had seen, I saw myself as the one who was guilty of my mother's death. I wasn't wrong either. If I hadn't been born, my mother wouldn't have died. My father wouldn't have been so worn out. There would be no John Crowrift and many other things…
"Of course it's important…"
"Why?"
"Because…" my mother started to speak. When I lifted my eyes and looked at my mother, I felt her compassionate gaze on me. "…a child means the future, Rose. It means a future that can exist without making the mistakes we made. For a mother, it's hope; for a father, it's a loyal friend. A child is the thing that will teach fatherhood to a man who was born as a man, all alone in this world. Fatherhood means; being brave, being sacrificial, being able to do the right thing when needed, and many other things. A man cannot have these qualities without becoming a father. A mother cannot be compassionate without having a child… She learns compassion, common sense, and many other things with her child. Her child being full means she is also full, her child being in pain means she is also in pain. But most importantly…"
For some reason, my eyes suddenly started to well up with tears as I was sitting at the table. I hadn't really seen my mother doing all those things she was talking about. My mother hadn't been able to feed me while she was suffering from an illness. My mother wasn't with me when I went to first grade. My mother, the woman who made a huge sacrifice by giving birth to me, had left this world without seeing any of the fruits of her sacrifice. She wouldn't be able to see when I got married, the woman I would marry, or what kind of father I would become. For my mother, being a mother was a sacrifice thrown into the void of space…
"And… Most importantly, when you have a child, you can love them," she said, and my mother got up from the table she was sitting at and came next to me. She made a shield with her arms and hugged me as I was sitting in the chair. While I couldn't hold back my tears anymore and was sobbing with my head on the table, I could hear her chuckling.
"Oh… Mehmet… You have become such an emotional child. Come here… Let me hug you, son… What happened to you?"
But I couldn't lift my head from the table. I was still sobbing. At that moment, I realized from my mother's chuckles that my mother was also crying. As my mother's tears fell on my back, I realized this. As a son, I was making my mother, whom I hadn't seen for centuries, cry. Once again, as a child, I was being selfish, putting my own sorrow above my mother's sorrow. But she wouldn't have wanted to see her son cry either. She wouldn't have wanted to see her son, whom she gave birth to by sacrificing herself, in such a helpless state. The honorable, brave, loyal, compassionate son; I hadn't been that son she had dreamed of. The only thing I was was a middle-aged man lost in a dead galaxy.
"Okay… Okay, I'm fine…" I said and slowly straightened up. My mother took my head in her hands and pressed it to her chest.
"My sweet son… Rose, my son is a very conscientious, compassionate child just like his father. He doesn't hurt anyone… He always acts justly… He's always on the side of the oppressed. He's an amazing child."
"That's why he can't hurt anyone," Rose said. My mother laughed at Rose's words. Then, when she realized that Rose wasn't joking, she cut her laughter short.
She lifted my face from between her hands and our eyes met. She put a kiss on my cheek, and for a moment, the sorrow that had filled my body for centuries seemed to disappear…
At that moment, when I looked out of the kitchen window, I noticed a flying car landing in the garden. My mother, who noticed that my eyes were following the car, also looked out of the window. The person who got out of the car was a young man. My mother suddenly stood up and said:
"Marcin has arrived too…" she said. "…he will be so happy to see you."
"Should we go?" I asked involuntarily.
"Why? Don't you dare! Why would you go anywhere without seeing your father?" While my mother was going toward the door to greet my father, I was thinking about why I had said such a thing. Maybe it was this feeling of guilt. I was the killer of the person my father cared about the most in his life, his wife. I might not have wanted my father to sit at the same table with the killer of a murder that had been committed but had no victim.
A big joyful greeting at the door… I could hear the sound of the kiss my father placed on my mother's cheek. My father said as he came to the kitchen:
"We have a guest, Marcin. A guest you will be very happy to see…" As my father took off his jacket, he froze in surprise when he saw Rose and me at the table and put his jacket back on.
"Edgard? Is that you?"
"Yes, Dad…"
"Aha! Look at this guy! You've grown so much!" he said and came and hugged me tightly.
"He's grown so much, hasn't he?" my mother said from the back.
"Let me take a look at you! You've become quite a young man." Then he leaned closer to my ear and whispered, "You've gotten a girlfriend too!"
"Mind-weavers have very sensitive ears. I can hear you…"
"She's not my girlfriend…"
"I'm sure she isn't…"
"My name is Rose, I'm an assassin who can kill your son at any moment, and your son is screwing my sister. I'm not the one he's interested in."
My father's eyebrows furrowed when he heard what Rose said, and he turned to my mother. My mother, on the other hand, spread her hands as if to say there was nothing she could do and pulled out the chair my father would sit on. The family reunion could be considered to have begun.
My father looked very hopeful when he was young. He had a zest for life on his face that I had never seen before. For a man who had lost wars and men, looking so happy was not reasonable at all. Was my mind playing a trick on me in this scenario?
"Lately…" my father said. "…I've been on a really busy schedule, Edgard. I'm sorry if I made you wait. Did you meet your little self? Even if you did, it doesn't matter, I want to see my son, Jenny. Hey, robot assistant… Can you bring our little Edgard?"
"He's sleeping," my mother said in a sharp tone.
"Can't I love him?"
When my mother gave him a harsh look, my father sighed deeply. "Okay… I'll make do with the big Edgard. Oh… Son, don't you think that I'm separating you from my other son. I love you both as my own sons."
"Thank you, Dad…" But my father seemed very excited, so he continued to speak.
"So… Tell me… What kind of person did you become? How is the world? How is Neo-Britain? Did the Supreme World Union collapse? Tell me…"
"Are you really curious about all this?" my mother asked. "Are you going to talk about work even at a family reunion?"
"Jenny… Please don't start…"
"Don't do what, Marcin?"
"It's not about bringing work into this house. This is our future… Aren't you curious?"
"Maybe I'm not as selfish as you are… No, I'm curious about my son's future. I'm not curious about politics."
"Politics is life itself…"
"Oh, come on! You're the ones who put politics in the middle of life. I'm curious about my son's situation. I hope he finds a beautiful, compassionate, and hardworking woman like his mother."
"You're calling yourself hardworking? Robot assistants broke down one day, and I still can't forget the meal you made." Then he turned to Rose and said, "She was too ashamed to throw the food in the garbage, so she buried it under the ground. Even the ground didn't accept it; if you see a mound on the grass, that's our Jenny's cake."
"He's lying, kids…" my mother said and slapped my father's arm. "Marcin, that's very rude!"
"Ah…" my father sighed, rubbing his arm from the pain.
"It's obvious why Mehmet never shuts up," Rose said.
"Yeah, we were a more chaotic family than I thought," I said.
"Speaking of chaos…" my father said and looked at my mother out of the corner of his eye. "…I hope your life isn't as chaotic as ours, Edgard."
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"What do you mean? I'm saying I hope you have a good life. We couldn't. What could be more important than us wanting our son to live one?"
But my father's words sounded like a lie to me. How could the man who pushed me into the military with my mother's death wish for my happiness? A man who took to alcohol and saw his son as a burden after his mother's death… While I was thinking all these thoughts, I suddenly clenched my fist in anger and started to speak.
"You're lying."
"What do you mean?" my father said.
"You made me a soldier! You blamed me for my mother's death!" So many words were accumulating in my mind, but I couldn't say any of them. Fear, anxiety, or tears waiting to flow were twisting the words on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't even make sense of what I was saying, but my father looked at me for a while as if he could. Just as I did when I was stressed, he put his hands on the back of his neck and started scratching it.
"Ah… A bad scenario happened, huh… Jenny…"
"Yes, it's a sad situation," my mother said. At that moment, the two of them probably would have wanted to hug each other and cry, but they were both trying to look strong in front of their son. Even though their son was about 440 years old…
"Look, son…" my father said in a commander's sharp tone, but then he softened his voice. "…we are also human; we can make mistakes. In fact, we are very simple people. Your mother and I are not just memories from your past; maybe we are even memories of the past for the time we are living in now. I… I might not have been a good father, but… But I don't know what I can do. I'm just a soldier. A soldier who has dreams, who wants to have hopes… That's why I always wanted a child. A child I could trust, who would show a simple man like me the way and tell me about life. Because the world seemed too lost. The world was too full of lies. I always thought that my own blood, my child, would honestly tell me about the world. I always thought that he would be my greatest friend in this world." My mother put her hand on my father's shoulder. "We are your parents, so maybe you expect some things from us, but… But actually, you are our parent. Every child is the teacher of their parents. You taught me how to be a father, and you taught Jenny how to be a mother." My father suddenly stood up. "If that's the case… We ask for your forgiveness, son."
"What does this mean?" I said angrily. "The scenario has gotten completely out of hand! Rose, stop playing with the scenario."
"I'm not doing anything…" Rose said.
"My subconscious is talking nonsense."
"No!" my father said and took two steps, stopping in front of me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me from the table. "I, as your father, am telling you this, Edgard. We made a child to have a future." Was the thing flowing from my father's eye a tear? If it was a tear, it was impossible for me to believe it. This man had shed very few tears even when my mother passed away. "I'm looking at our future now… For some reason, I'm proud of our future even without knowing you."
"Dad?"
"So, put us on the right path, Edgard. Give us a life lesson… Teach us about the world…"
"I… I can't do any of this…"
My father smiled. "You are better than us. I believe that with all my heart."
"No…" I was just about to object when my father grabbed me tightly by the arms and hugged me. My mother joined in as the third person while the two of us were hugging tightly.
"Can I join in between the father and son?"
This warmth was enough to bring me to tears. It was as if I was suddenly letting go of the atonement for my centuries-old sins, the burden that had accumulated on my back for centuries. But… But in the middle of all that beautiful scene, Rose's scream was heard.
"They're here, Mehmet! I got distracted! I didn't notice they were coming!"
"Who's here?" my mother asked.
"Is there a problem?" my father asked.
Rose grabbed me by the arm and took me from between my mother and father.
"Don't we have time for a goodbye?" I asked Rose.
"No!"
"Not at all?"
"Not at all!"
"I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, Dad!" I said, as the scene slowly began to scatter like a grain of sand. As it scattered around like grains of sand, darkness engulfed the surroundings. My mother and father hugged each other. They started to scatter like a paint stroke.
"It's okay, son!"
"I want to see you again!"
"You will! We'll be waiting for you!"
"We have been in your subconscious for a very long time! You will suddenly wake up! It will be as if you have woken up from a dream, so you won't feel very tired, but… But don't forget that you are not in the subconscious! You won't be in the mind anymore! Remember the real world! You will die if you don't breathe! You won't be able to move if you don't use your muscles and many other things! Don't forget that you have a body!"
As my body was trembling, I asked Rose this question. "What if I can't do what you said?"
"Then you will either go crazy from the shock or die!"