Sci-fi Novel - The Love Algorithm - Part 20

Part 1: Our Sweet Home
Part 2: Love In 12 Minutes
Part 3: Machiavellian Berkan's Concerns
Part 4: Bonanza and His Friends
Part 5: Long-lasted Love
Part 6: Pre-design Battle
Part 7: My Dear Father
Part 8: Video Speech of A Public Enemy
Part 9: A Job Interview
Part 10: The Second Great Attack
Part 11: Big Hopes
Part 12: An Unexpected Disaster
Part 13: Sediment of the Days
Part 14: The Goddess Of Matchmaking, Gülizar
Part 15: Saturday Night Fever
Part 16: Red Alert
Part 17: Writing the Codes of Love
Part 18: Bombastic Folk Singer Ayhan
Part 19: The Drama Of An Ordinary Toy Soldier

Part 20: Phone Call In The Morning

If your phone rings at an hour when the weather isn't fully lit, you want to think that's a dream. On the other hand, you know with the instinct that the phone calls are not a normal part of the world of dreams. The persistent voice that forces you to wake up, while experiencing your sweetness of sleep, often carries a leading jolt of bad news. Resisting waking up will never help to prevent it in this regard.

“Come to Eskisehir in a hurry.” My aunt's voice was more severe than what she said, suffocated from sadness. She couldn't tell an extra word, so she hung up the phone. I had to know more about my father's condition. My aunt's power was only enough to say a sentence, who would I get more detailed information? I just got up where I lay and called my sister. Maybe the phone rang for ten seconds at most, but the time I waited for my sister to pick up the phone seemed to me like a lifetime. As a result, I received feedback from the phone, " the number you are calling is not responding." I ended the call and started thinking about who else I could call. In the background of my mind, my aunt's words, and the tone of the voice kept spinning. The worst-case scenario was that my father was dead, and on the phone, of course, they wouldn't say "your father is dead," and they thought it would be better for me to find out what happened to him when I arrive. The best of the worst was the possibility that he was still alive, but that he was in imminent danger. What was the content of the vital danger if he was alive? I got a call from my sister when I was searching for my father's upper neighbor's phone number on my mobile.

“Hello, Samet,” said my sister in a cold voice.

“My father is dead?” I asked her.

“No, he's in intensive care,” my sister said, crying.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Heart? What do the doctors say? How is his situation?”

After saying, “He had a heart attack at night, he called the upper neighbor,” she hung up the phone. My father didn't die, at least, and he was in the hospital under the supervision of doctors. At this stage, there was nothing I could do but hope that he would recover in a short period. I got dressed in a hurry, took my pocket computer and my backpack and left the house.

I was able to get on the fast train, which had an ad of chocolate-soaked ice-cream cover. Even though I missed the time, thanks to a ten-minute delay in a young woman's attempt to commit suicide. There weren't many passengers on the fast train, so I sat in the seat on the window side I first found. When the train accelerated, I started to watch out of the window in a heart-throbbing. There was a brown circle in my window the size of a football ball that was part of the ad. The sun was breaking at the edges of the brown paint representing a chocolate drop bounced from the front, creating strange light games. The air was clear because the rain the night before, the roofs, the birds, the trees and the sea that came into my sight were all shining together in full light. Nature, as usual, continued to walk in its way, regardless of what happened to us. I was in a strange state of numbness, accompanied by the unique ambiance of the fast train and the rhythmic sounds rising from the tracks. I stood up in my seat, feeling sorry for what I was in; it was no time for melancholy, nor for sightseeing. I took out my pocket computer that looked like four-fold paper, opened it up and called my aunt. My aunt answered at a rate I didn't expect with her voice: “Hello” There was a worrying divergence in her sound thickened by cigarette, suggesting that she was not healthy.

I asked her, “How's my dad?” in a hurry.

“We lost your father, nephew, let him sleep in the lights,” said my aunt.

As soon as I heard my aunt's words, my eyes were dim, and my waist was sore. I said, “Okay, I'm coming,” and I ended the conversation. I gave my aunt a ridiculous response, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. I noticed that something was touching my lips on both sides of my nose. It was strange because I thought I wasn't crying. I didn't know what I was doing, and it didn't matter. Neither the love algorithm, nor the quest for love, nor the problems of everyday life, any of them had no meaning. There was no village beyond death, and grieving changed nothing. He was gone, and he wouldn't come back; in the new atmosphere of this significant loss, the weight of everyday worries has been eliminated, and there was only a vast painful void in me.

The next day, everyone who had more or less place in my life met at the funeral. I was together with my sister, brother-in-law, and aunt the day before, so I was more busy with our Istanbul crew at the funeral. My interview with the team was interrupted when I accepted the condolences of relatives, friends, and neighbors who have known me since I was a child. I felt like I should take special care of Tuğ, who made an impression that he was attending a funeral for the first time in his life.

“Condolences to you, bro,” he said when we met.

“Is this the first funeral you attended?” I asked.

“Our family is tiny, and no one has died yet.”

I didn't want to be soppy, but when I saw Zeynep crying, I couldn't stand it and started crying. I stopped myself with difficulty by taking deep breaths. For some reason, I was surprised to see Berkan among those around me who wanted to wish condolences. From the previous morning, I had stepped into such a different world that my business partners, who I spent my day with, were completely out of my mind. When I realized that the girl standing next to Berkan was Deniz, my surprise increased one more time. As soon as I saw Deniz with the eyes were full of tears, I was surprised because she didn't even see pictures of my father. She had a unique ability to perceive and internalize the feelings of the other person. After a short look, we embraced each other by taking a step toward each other. Then, holding my shoulders gently with both hands and looking in my eyes, she said, “I'm so sorry.”

With a seriousness that I was not used to seeing from Berkan, "God bless, get plenty of lands, I'm sorry, brother," he said.

When we got to the cemetery with my father's funeral on our shoulders, the digging was done. The robot dug a neat hole next to my mother's grave as if drawn by a ruler. Among those who knew my mother were those who went to his grave and prayed. We settled my father in his tomb in the white shroud. It seemed to me that it was not right to leave a person you knew for years. The idea of just leaving him in the ground and going home, knowing he was dead and never going back to the world, had been an occasion of extra sadness. We built a large circle around the grave to make the digger robot finish his work. One of the neighbors brought by a man with beards, he began to read the Qur'an at this time. The robot not only closed the tomb but also erected the marble tombstone on its head. When the man with beard finished reading Qur'an, the crowd began to fall apart. Before I left the cemetery, I took the last look at my parents' graves. I was all alone in the world now.

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/transport-system-train-station-3228041/