My name is Ellei, and my job is as an investigator. It's not a job that I chose for myself; I have been assigned to it. Like everyone else on this continent, we are a different race than the others who live with us on the planet. We are 68% biological and 32% machines, and they call us Androids, although I don't know where the name came from. We call ourselves Andorians.
We live peacefully with a small human population that lives among us, and we welcome any race to our country. As long as they don't commit any crimes and abide by our rules, anyone is welcome.
Since we are not like the rest of the species, you will rarely see any crime that needs investigating. That is why my job was, until today, the most boring job ever. And, in case you're wondering, yes, I was bored, and yes, we have feelings just like everyone else. The only difference between us and other humans is our physical strength and our collective intelligence. Our brains can process any information within seconds, and knowledge gained by any one of us is available to everyone.
The other humans on this planet, to achieve something similar to us, created a quantum computer and implanted small chips in their brains to be able to gain and process information, but only the information stored on it. Unlike us, each one of us is an individual with our own thoughts and feelings. We simply are not machines, as they like to think of us. We do share all the available knowledge and all the new information instantly, but not the personal information. There is no way I can access any personal information about anyone unless that person is sharing it willingly.
What happened today was something that has never happened before in our history. Although we welcome anyone to our country, we have a process for entering, starting at the borders. We have conducted a high-level security check at the border, which allows us to determine who will enter and who will not. After the person is cleared, we issue him or her an identification card.
That will be a small, one-millimeter card implanted on the palm of the right hand. That ID allows the person to live and work anywhere in the country, and immediately that person is treated like any other citizen, with the same rights and responsibilities. In short, our system was built tightly and only got better over the last decade, when immigrants started to flow into our country, which is not something that we mind. On the contrary, we welcome it since our country is a whole continent and our population occupies only one third of it.
The conclusion is that no one can sneak into the country by any means. Without the ID from the border, no one can enter. Of course, there are no huge walls surrounding the borders or the cities, so many people tried to sneak in, and every single one of them was apprehended within a few minutes. Of course, those who tried to sneak in are those whose entrance to the country has been rejected.
That brings us to the situation that we are facing now. The young lady in front of me seems to have appeared from nowhere, and nonetheless, into our capital city, to find someone without an identification card who speaks our language, and by the way, less than 0.2% of the humans that can learn and speak our language, even those who were born here, speak our language as fluently as she is.
My ability to process anything within seconds was the main reason that I had been assigned as an investigator, and my record until today was a hundred percent, which was the reason I was assigned to this strange case. However I look at it, I guess this will be my first fail. The girl has no memory of how she got here. I confirmed that after scanning her memory, everything she said was the truth. No lies were detected.
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This approach was the common way to integrate humans, and I hadn't gotten any clue so far. Although I was able to scan all her memories, I didn't, because it is not ethical to pry into someone's personal life without consent, and also because I needed approval from my supervisor, which is what I am waiting for. While I am looking at her, the confusion and stress that she is feeling are high, which is normal in a situation like this, so in order to ease her tension, I asked her, "Would you like to drink something?"
"Coffee, please," was her answer. "Coffee?" I don't think we have anything like that, perhaps a tee?" Within those few seconds during our conversation, I searched for something called coffee and couldn't find it. It was something I had heard of the first time I heard of it, but there was no reason for me to disclose this information to her. "Yes, please, that will be fine also." relieved that at least she knew what a tee was, I ordered it for her and straight forwardly told her the truth, "Apparently whatever you are saying is the truth, but in order to get to the bottom of this matter, I need to scan your whole memory, and I need your consent for that."
"What do you mean by scanning my whole memory, and can you do that?" She asked me, a surprise showing on her face. It seems she even lost her memory of the advancement of technology on this planet as well. Since she looked surprised with my statement, "Yes, we can do that." It is a very simple thing, but apparently there is a lot missing from your memory, not just what happened. "She furrowed her eyebrows and asked me, "Is that going to be like surgery?" It's the first time I've heard of it. I didn't even need to look at my monitor to confirm if she was lying; I could see from her reaction that she meant what she said."
At that time, someone brought the tea I requested, and I waited for her to drink some of it at least, before explaining how it works to her.
I don’t know how much you know about the technology on this planet, since you don't have any memory of it all, and no, there is a surgical procedure involved. I have already scanned your memory, looking for specific things, like where you came from and how you entered our country, but you didn't do more than that. That is why I need your consent to get more information. The way you didn't feel anything like before, now you also will not feel anything."
.................
The look on the faces of the two men was strange when Tahir asked them if they spoke English. Their features looked Western, though the uniform, the design of the hall that he is in now, and the room he woke up from everything seems like a setup of one of the Hollywood studios when actors are acting in a movie or a TV show.
Although Tahir was not familiar with all the languages of the earth, he traveled a lot around the world for his family's business, and he was familiar with most of the European, Asian, and also some of the African languages.
But the language those two men spoke was completely unfamiliar, and from their expressions, they had never heard anyone speak English. In some of the Latin American countries he visited, at least when he asked someone if he or she spoke English, he would get a "NO" as an answer.
One of them took out something similar to a gun and pointed it at him and asked him something. All he could do was raise his hands and say, "I don’t know what you are asking me, and I didn't do anything."