Assembly +15
Basement Level 3 of Research Building 2, the Next-Generation Quadruped Combat Robot Lab.
It was a place cut off from the glittering splendor of the main building, a damp, heavy air hanging over it like a lid.
As soon as I stepped through the entrance, the acrid stink of machine oil and the scorched smell of solder hit me in the face.
“Welcome, Director Baek.”
Waiting for me there was Yoon Taeseok, the director of the next-generation quadruped robot lab, the same man I’d seen in the conference room yesterday. His expression was stiff and guarded.
It was a face marked less by welcome than by wariness, and deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
I gave him a small nod and slowly looked around the lab.
It was a strange sight.
One wall of the lab was lined with proudly displayed doctoral diplomas in robotics and control engineering from world-class universities like KAIST and MIT.
In other words, they’d gathered up the sharpest elite minds in the company and dumped them here.
And yet, despite those brilliant résumés, the scene on the floor was nothing short of miserable.
In one corner of the lab, titanium joint motors and drive shafts worth tens of millions of won apiece were stacked like garbage, shattered beyond recognition.
There was no sign anyone had tried to analyze or repair those expensive parts.
They’d simply been given up on and left to rot.
More than anything, the researchers themselves looked terrible.
What filled the monitors of people who were supposed to be researching robots was not complex algorithms or 3D models.
Request for Extension of Project Delay and Additional Budget Allocation
Report on the Third Joint Failure and Request for Exemption from Liability
They weren’t trying to solve the problem so much as mechanically polishing excuses for why it wouldn’t work.
Their eyes were blank and sunken, stripped of all focus.
Yes, it really did deserve the nickname “the graveyard of elites.”
“The condition here is… not great.”
At my low mutter, Director Yoon gave a bitter smile.
“Embarrassing, I know. I’ve heard a great deal about your reputation, Director Baek, but… as you can see, our situation is a little different, so there are a few points that worry me.”
“Worry you?”
“Yes. Robots are devices where so many different technologies are intertwined. I was worried this might become a place that reflects poorly on the reputation you’ve built elsewhere… that sort of concern.”
Yoon’s tone was exceedingly polite.
He was even worrying about me, in his own way.
Of course, beneath that concern lay a cautious doubt: what exactly could a man who had spent his entire life handling machinery accomplish in their field?
Sure, I’d talked a fine game yesterday in the conference room about missile systems and torpedoes—areas that had nothing to do with ground equipment—but that had all been just words.
Whether any of it could actually be applied to the research, whether it could serve as a meaningful step toward development, was something that could only be verified by testing it here in the lab.
“I’m sorry. You’ve only just arrived, and I’ve gone and filled your ears with discouraging talk… haha. I don’t have any other intentions, so I hope you won’t misunderstand.”
Director Yoon said with an awkward laugh.
I smiled lightly.
“It’s fine. It’s natural for you to worry. For now, let’s take a look.”
“Yes. Please, this way to the test room.”
*
Beyond the thick bulletproof glass, a steel beast crouched in place.
A four-legged walking robot that had swallowed up tens of billions of won in budget, code-named Hunt-Dog.
Armed with a high-end titanium frame and ultra-precise actuators, it was the kind of cutting-edge weapon that looked ready to sprint straight into enemy territory at any moment.
“Starting mobility test.”
At Director Yoon’s signal, the robot lifted its massive body.
Its movement across the flat concrete floor was fairly smooth.
The hydraulic motors sounded crisp, and the bending angles of the joints were exactly as calculated.
“Hmm, not bad on level ground.”
“The problem starts now. I’m switching it to rough-terrain test mode, so take a look.”
An artificial field of gravel and a 20-degree incline appeared in the robot’s path.
The instant its front paw stepped onto the uneven stones—
Whiiiiiing—!
Clunk!
The robot, which had been walking fine a moment ago, suddenly began trembling violently as if seized by a fit.
Watching that, I couldn’t help narrowing my eyes.
The robot’s head, the sensor module.
The control signal telling it to detect the gravel field and adjust its posture was flashing out in a clean, urgent blue.
There was nothing wrong with the sensors.
The head was issuing commands perfectly intelligently.
The problem was the body.
For that brief moment, as if it were a person slipping on ice, all four legs flailed at the air in different directions.
Around the heavy titanium legs and drive units, jagged, rough red lines were surging and writhing like mad.
The control flow descending from the head continued in smooth blue curves.
But the heavy legs, unable to overcome inertia, slipped out of that trajectory.
Worse, even after the blue control signal had already broken off, the red physical-force signal was still stretching another span into empty space.
That instant of mechanical discord became a lump of crimson stress, brutally concentrated on a single knee joint.
Then it swelled like a vein about to burst—
Crack!
A hideous splitting sound, like bone snapping, rang through the room.
The joint that had been burning the hottest red had blown apart.
The robot was collapsing to the floor.
“Damn it… this is insane. Emergency stop, cut the power!”
As if the stress of watching this, even having expected it, was too much, Director Yoon grabbed his forehead for a moment and shouted. Researchers rushed over and doused the machine with extinguishers.
Black smoke rose from the robot’s joint assembly.
It was the scene of a disastrous failure.
I replayed the image I’d just seen in my head.
I only needed a second to understand.
This was a momentary disharmony caused by the head’s signal and the body’s movement timing failing to match, and that tiny mismatch had snapped the joint.
“You saw it, didn’t you? It’s enough to make you believe in ghosts.”
Director Yoon let out a deep sigh and handed me the sensor data chart.
“There was no external impact. And yet, whenever it enters rough terrain, the thing twists its own joints and breaks them. We can’t figure out why it’s doing it.”
I took the chart from his hand without a word.
Then I flipped through the pages and lowered my gaze.
Thousands of lines of log data were packed onto the paper, but my eyes went straight to a single section without hesitation.
I already knew, from what I’d seen with my own eyes, exactly where the problem lay.
“It’s not a ghost, Director.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a problem caused by spending too much money. The parts are all over-specced, so they’re showing off against each other and falling over.”
“Spending… too much money?”
I pointed to a specific point on the chart and went on.
“Look at this log. When it stepped onto the gravel and slipped, the sensors sent the stop signal in just 0.01 seconds. Those sensors in the head are the most expensive and sensitive ones in the world, right?”
“Ah, yes. Top-grade American—”
I cut him off and pointed at the thick leg motor of the robot, still smoking.
“But the high-end motors in the legs and the heavy titanium frame are the same. They’re too powerful, too heavy. Because the inertia is so enormous, even if those ultra-expensive sensors tell it to stop in 0.01 seconds, the mechanical limit makes it keep pushing forward on its own for another 0.05 seconds.”
“……”
“The head is delicate and smart, but the body is basically all brute strength. Of course that out-of-sync load concentrates on the weakest part—the joint. The system as a whole can’t keep up with the specs of those expensive components, so the robot ends up breaking its own legs.”
A heavy silence settled over the control room.
The researchers looked back and forth between me and the robot with dazed expressions.
“Uh, um… as Director Baek said, we tried running the simulation again with a 0.05-second mechanical delay value.”
The main operator, fingers trembling over the keyboard, brought up the screen.
In the simulation, the robot toppled over and snapped its knee at exactly the same angle as the real machine had just done, enough to make my skin crawl.
“My God….”
Director Yoon’s eyes went wide.
After months of struggling, they’d never found the mechanical cause, and I, on my very first day here, had spotted it.
“You… just saw that and knew?”
At Director Yoon’s words, I gave an awkward little smile.
I’d figured it out thanks to my supernatural ability, of course, but the others had no way of knowing that; to them, it must have been nothing short of shocking.
“The real monster is the one standing right here…”
“Is this what it felt like to be around someone like von Neumann…?”
Apparently, I was coming across as pretty impressive.
I pretended not to hear them and simply looked back at the robot beyond the bulletproof glass.
Then I glanced around and saw that the lab’s atmosphere was grim beyond words.
It didn’t seem to be only because of me.
Even though we’d found the cause, they probably still had no practical way to fix it.
As if to prove my thoughts right, Director Yoon wiped his face and groaned.
“Knowing the cause doesn’t solve the problem. To capture that 0.05-second delay…”
“We’d have to tear apart and rewrite the control code, adjust the hydraulic valve response, and machine down the titanium in the joints to lighten it.”
“Exactly… software, hydraulics, and materials all have to mesh together perfectly. With zero-point-zero-zero-one seconds of error.”
At Director Yoon’s words, one of the researchers who had been listening to our conversation from the side said,
Director Yoon looked as though the mere thought gave him a headache. He pinched the bridge of his nose and pointed toward the researchers farther away.
Those were the ones arguing furiously among themselves, eyes bloodshot, about the robot that had just fallen.
“We’re about ready to go insane here. As you can see, those guys are some of the biggest geniuses in Korea. But… that’s exactly the problem.”
“The problem?”
“They’re all too perfect in their own fields. The software team insists the code is flawless, and the hardware team proves with data that there’s nothing wrong with the frame rigidity.”
“Ah.”
I roughly understood what he was getting at.
They were trying to avoid taking responsibility.
If the fault was theirs, then they’d have to answer for every failure the project had suffered so far.
It wasn’t that the finest minds were solving the problem anymore; they were just obsessing over how to escape blame and keep surviving in this company.
And because Director Yoon himself couldn’t be free of that responsibility, he could no longer control the movement.
Lowering his head, Director Yoon said with resignation, “I know you’re capable, Director Baek, but this isn’t something you can fix by tweaking a few drawings on your own. As you can see, our team no longer has the ability to solve this.”
It was a bitter thing to hear, but not at all wrong.
At least when it came to this problem, Director Yoon’s team was basically helpless.
My ability could show the answer—what was wrong and how it should be fixed.
But I couldn’t, by myself, flit back and forth across the building, coding, cutting metal, and tuning hydraulics all at once to make that answer real.
“Hmm…”
That was true enough.
Just as Director Yoon had pointed out, there was no way I could do all of this alone.
I needed people to move with me.
People who would take what I said and carry it out precisely.
People I could trust, people I could hand things over to and work alongside.
“Looks like I’ll need to form a team.”
“Pardon…?”
“I was given the authority to assemble an audit team.”
I took my phone out of my pocket.
It was the direct extension to the HR director that Senior Vice President Kang had handed me yesterday.
- Yes, Director Baek. Go ahead.
“I’m contacting you because I need to urgently request personnel for the robot lab.”
- Yes. Which department, and who exactly?
“Department Head Maeng Giyong and Principal Researcher Jo Seokhun from the Powerpack TF, Manager O Jinhyuk from Design Team 2’s structural analysis unit, and Team Leader Park Kwangchul from the Production Technology Team.”
- …Pardon?
The HR director’s dumbfounded voice came through the other end of the line.
Which was fair enough.
None of the names I’d just called were exactly ordinary.
“Is that a problem? I think I need to bring those people over here.”
- Hah, haha… no, of course not. The Chairman has already instructed HR as well. We were told to approve personnel requests from you whenever possible, Director Baek. I’ll notify them immediately.
“Yes. Thank you.”
As I hung up, I met the gaze of Director Yoon, who was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Is that… really okay? To call all of them?”
“Well… if someone shouldn’t be brought in, wouldn’t HR cut them on their own?”
“I suppose that’s true.”
I gave Director Yoon a light smile and went to sit on one of the sofas.
I’d done the diagnosis, and I’d called in the people I needed, so now… all that was left was waiting, right?
*
An hour later.
The heavy iron doors of Research Building 2, which had been tightly shut, swung open.
“Seriously, yesterday it was missiles and fin-stabilized rounds, and now it’s me? Baek, you really think I’m easy to drag around now that I’m a department head?”
The first one through the door was Department Head Maeng Giyong of the powertrain team.
The only man in the company who could completely control hydraulics, the muscles of a robot.
The moment he saw me, he started grumbling.
“I can’t do this without you, Department Head. Please save me just this once.”
“Hm? What’s this about?”
“If you’ll just come in and wait, I’ll explain everything in a bit.”
“You brat. You summon your senior with nothing even prepared? Tch. You’re hopeless, really.”
Maeng Department Head shook his head and strode into the lab.
Right behind him came Principal Researcher Jo Seokhun, the master of control algorithms and simulation, and Manager O Jinhyuk, the expert in structural analysis, both wearing bewildered expressions.
“I came because you called, but… am I really allowed to be here?”
“If I called you, doesn’t that mean you’re allowed? Good work coming. Thanks for coming, Principal Researcher.”
“I came partly because you called our department head too. If I’d left him to go alone and stayed behind, he’d make a huge fuss about it later.”
“Well, that does sound like Maeng Department Head.”
After exchanging a few words with Jo, I turned and looked down the hallway.
Approaching with a monkey wrench slung over his shoulder was Park Kwangchul, the production technology master who could machine complex joint shapes with zero-point-zero-zero-one millimeters of error.
“Hey, I hear you got promoted to department head in the blink of an eye. Congrats.”
“Haha, thanks. Shall we go in?”
Past the ground systems division, it was as if the true monsters of Hanseo Defense—its very top-tier technical elites—had gathered in one place.
“W-whoa… they all really came…”
As I led them into the lab, Director Yoon and the researchers’ eyes widened.
I walked to the center of the stunned crowd and smiled.
“The job is a little too big for me to handle alone, so I brought some people who can help.”
I tapped the whiteboard and looked around at all of them.
“Today, let’s make this troublesome robot walk properly at least once.”
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