Protein Structure Analysis (6)
JH Research.
Brrrriing.
The intercom in the CEO’s office rang.
“Yes.”
The number on the display belonged to Team Leader Gong.
“Sir, it’s Gong.”
Something in his tone was off. He sounded urgent.
“What’s going on?”
“Sir… the data center is acting strange.”
My brow furrowed.
“Is there a problem?”
“No. Not a problem, exactly… but it’s strange.”
Not a problem, yet strange. What was that supposed to mean?
“What kind of situation are we talking about?”
Gong hesitated a beat before explaining.
“The calculation speed of the data center’s LPU modules… just spiked.”
“The speed? By how much?”
A short silence followed. Soft keyboard clicks drifted through the line as he double-checked the numbers.
“Sir, this… this is a value that shouldn’t be possible. It has exceeded the modules’ design limits. There was no tuning. No update. It just… accelerated on its own.”
At those words my hands tightened on the wheelchair handrims.
Accelerated on its own?
“I’m coming down right now.”
“Yes. We’ll be waiting.”
I wheeled myself toward the elevator and pressed the button for the AI-dedicated floor.
A machine exceeding its own design limits. What did that even mean?
Ding.
The doors opened. I pushed into the corridor. One glance told me the atmosphere was anything but ordinary. Team Leader Gong stood in front of a monitor, brows knotted, refreshing the same screen over and over. Behind him engineers swapped displays and tilted their heads in collective confusion.
The moment Gong saw me he hurried over.
“Sir…….”
Bewilderment was written all over his face. Together we stared at the main monitor.
“What’s the issue?”
He seemed to wrestle with how to put it, then finally spoke.
“Sir… do you know anything about quantum mechanics?”
“Officially I’m a high-school graduate.”
One incomplete year of university hardly counted.
“Then do you know the idea of something that both is and isn’t?”
The question came out of nowhere.
“What are you talking about?”
“In a semiconductor, if a capacitor holds charge it’s a 1. If it doesn’t, it’s a 0.”
“Right. That’s how computers do binary—101010 and so on.”
Even a dropped-out engineering freshman who ran a semiconductor company knew that much.
Gong drew a breath.
“But something’s off.”
“How?”
“In the data center the capacitors are calculating as if the charge both is and isn’t there at the same time.”
“Could you put that a little more simply?”
“A 1 or a 0—present or absent. Only two possibilities, right?”
“Right.”
“Yet the system is calculating as if it can be both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously.”
The words refused to make sense.
“Team Leader Gong, I’m not following, but you’re saying the AI is computing in some weird way?”
“Yes—especially in selection logic.”
“For example?”
“There are two paths. Normally you’d have to walk each one once.”
“Sure.”
“But if something can be both 1 and 0, it can walk both paths at the same time.”
“Have you verified what you’re saying?”
“Yes. Multiple times.”
Gong stared at the monitor as though he still couldn’t believe it.
“This is like a quantum computer.”
“A quantum computer?”
“Yes. That’s what qubits do—both present and absent. The classic quantum property… Wait.”
His voice cut off.
“What?”
Gong flicked a sidelong glance at me, eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion.
“…Sir. You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Every time our data center or the AI suddenly leaps in performance, the cause has somehow always been you. Sir—did you secretly turn the data center into a quantum computer behind my back?”
I let out an incredulous laugh.
“Me? Why would you even think that?”
“Because the data looks exactly like it. The whole center feels like it’s become a quantum machine. Who else could swap out an entire data center for quantum hardware?”
“Not me. And have you checked with the data center itself?”
“Of course. They said nothing was replaced.”
“See? No swap. I didn’t do anything, and if the data center had swapped anything I would have been the first to hear about it—procedure.”
Gong scratched his chin and muttered.
“Hmm…….”
I rolled a little closer to the monitor.
“So what’s the exact current status?”
He inhaled deeply.
“…About ten times faster.”
“Ten times?”
“Yes. Not full quantum-computer territory, but it’s keeping pace with roughly ten percent of one. And that’s actually better.”
“How so?”
Gong still looked like he was struggling to accept it.
“Quantum computers are unfinished tech. They calculate fast, but the error rate is high. Our data right now is only fast—zero errors. It’s as if the speed got a little quantum while the stability stayed pure semiconductor.”
I almost smiled.
“Sounds to me like the data center just got really good.”
“Exactly. It was already the fastest in the world and now it’s even faster? If it wasn’t you, then who?”
He squinted at me again.
“Sir… you’re really not behind this?”
“Really. I’m not.”
Gong’s gaze bounced between the monitor and me.
“Then… why did this happen?”
“I wish I knew too.”
I stayed a while longer, reviewing the numbers myself. Gong and the engineers raced around checking every corner of the data center. No matter how they looked at it, the conclusion was the same: speed up, errors gone. Cause unknown.
Somehow it had simply improved. Everyone wore the same dazed expression as they were forced to accept that verdict.
Whirr.
I pushed my wheelchair out of the AI lab. Behind me someone muttered, “Could it still be the CEO…?” I ignored it and stepped into the elevator.
Ziiing.
Back in the office my phone rang. It was Illys.
I tapped to answer. The face on the screen looked… off.
“Illys?”
“Constellation… sniff.”
The tip of her nose was red. Tears clung to her lashes.
“Illys, why are you crying?”
She wore an expression that couldn’t decide between laughing and sobbing.
“Sniff… Constellation. I… I’ve become a 6-Circle Mage.”
“Whoa! Six circles? Congratulations!”
“Hic… It’s thanks to you, Constellation.”
“Thanks to me?”
“Because of the knowledge you shared with me.”
Between every sentence she sniffled, smiling and crying by turns.
“Six circles… how strong is that, exactly? I don’t really have a feel for it.”
“Mm… It feels like I’ve finally peeked, just a little, at the order that holds the world together.”
“The order of the world?”
“Yes. Matter has order—flow, rules, patterns. I feel as if I’ve lifted the tiniest corner of that veil.”
She clasped her hands to her chest like a child confiding a secret.
“Magic is ultimately the work of rewriting the world’s will into mana. The moment you see the order… you can draw that will more precisely, more easily.”
“Oh… is that so?”
I nodded along, offering sympathy even though I still had only the foggiest idea what a 6-Circle Mage actually meant.
Illys must have read my face; her eyes sparkled and she leaned forward.
“Shall I show you?”
She looked ready to burst with the urge to show off.
“Go ahead.”
“Perfect timing. Heehee. This is the magic practice grounds.”
So she had called from here on purpose, intending to demonstrate all along.
“Then I’ll begin.”
As if to declare this is what six circles looks like, she flicked her fingers lightly.
“Oh?”
Blue mana unfurled around her feet.
"Fire Storm!"
⟨ Fire Storm ⟩
In the next instant crimson flames blossomed like petals and twisted into a colossal vortex of fire in mid-air.
Whoooosh!
The grain of the flames was woven into an impossibly precise spiral. That was no ordinary fire. It was fire moving according to the blueprint of the world’s own “order.”
"Next spell. Wind Spire!"
⟨ Wind Spire ⟩
Wind followed at once. Transparent air flushed green and surged upward in a towering spiral column.
“Wow. That’s incredible.”
Fire and wind filled the practice grounds. The arena was no small space—tens of meters across—yet every inch blazed with searing flame and roaring wind. A single 6-Circle Mage of this caliber could rewrite the course of a war.
Whoosh.
At the heart of it all Illys’s golden hair caught the light and danced. She moved like a fairy casting spells mid-waltz—powerful, and beautiful.
“…You’re a complete magic princess.”
“A magic princess?”
“Yeah. It means you’re pretty.”
A beat of silence.
The fire and wind died.
Then her ears flushed scarlet first, followed by her cheeks blazing hot.
“M-me…?”
“Yes.”
After a flustered pause she suddenly remembered something.
“Oh, right! Constellation! Has Baby Constellation changed at all?”
Baby Constellation.
“You mean Nano AI?”
“Yes.”
“What about Nano AI?”
“I peeked at Baby Constellation’s order. And I also showed Baby Constellation my own order.”
“Showed what?”
“My order. The foundations of magic.”
Ah. So the change in the data center had been because of Illys?
“Illys.”
“Yes?”
“Does ‘the foundations of magic’ include the whole both-is-and-isn’t thing?”
“Oh! Exactly.”
“That’s magic?”
“More precisely, it’s the nature of mana.”
Team Leader Gong had said the data center now faintly resembled a quantum computer. Was quantum the same as mana?
“Anyway—congratulations on the circle advancement.”
“Thank you.”
“So now that you’re six circles, what’s next? With that much power there must be things you couldn’t do before.”
“Yes. I’m thinking of raising a tower.”
“A tower?”
“Yes.”
“A magic tower?”
“Yes. At six circles you’re recognized as a true mage. That’s the threshold where you can found a small magic tower—or join under a 7-Circle mage. But I’m a lord, so joining a major tower would be difficult. Building one in my own territory feels like the better path.”
“I see. Understood. Congratulations again.”
“Thank you.”
I ended the call with Illys.
Hmm.
I picked up an ordinary smartphone—not the Nano World one—and searched for a number.
“Let’s see… here it is.”
The number I found belonged to Blockbang.
They answered almost at once.
“Yes! Boss, great to hear from you!”
They recognized my number and sounded unusually delighted.
“You’re still doing the block work, right?”
“Of course. What can I do for you, boss?”
“I want something built.”
“What kind of thing?”
“A tower.”
A secret facility somewhere on the Chinese mainland.
Basement level six—signal-isolated zone.
General Secretary Liu Zhiheng and his aides were in conference. Arms folded, Liu listened to the briefing.
“Physical infiltration?”
An aide answered the General Secretary’s question.
“We reviewed it. However… it’s not feasible.”
He tapped the image of JH Research projected on the screen with his pen.
Outer security: electronic fencing, drone surveillance.
Inner security: dual biometric authentication, fully restricted movement corridors.
Data access: complete isolation of specific zones, air-gapped networks.
“The target’s movement patterns are too simple. That actually makes attack points hard to find. If the goal were a straightforward assassination we could force it, but stealing the AI isn’t something that happens just by eliminating the CEO.”
Liu’s eyes cooled to ice.
“Other options?”
“We’ve summoned the hacker unit.”
“Hacker unit?”
“Yes. They’re ready.”
The aide clapped twice.
Clap-clap.
A waiting soldier drew back the curtain along one wall.
Swoosh.
Behind the curtain a vast window was revealed.
“Ohh.”
Beyond the glass, people in black sat before countless computers.
Hacker Unit X.
Not one person—one thousand.
And the devices they would wield: a thousand machines per operator.
Hacker Unit X was a collective armed with one million devices. When someone marked the coordinates, a million machines attacked. Pure volume specialists.
Curiosity lit the General Secretary’s face. Emboldened, the aide began listing their achievements.
“Twelve successful DDoS campaigns against national agencies.”
“Paralysis of intelligence-ministry servers in India, Brazil, and Pakistan.”
“Attempted strikes on French, German, and American government servers.”
“Experience monitoring anonymous networks across twenty countries. And……”.
He paused for effect.
“Successful hacks of four cryptocurrency exchanges. Proceeds exceeding one billion dollars.”
A soft murmur of admiration rose in the conference room.
“Ohh… one billion dollars!”
A state-level hacking collective.
The aide was already certain of success. He rose from his seat.
“The target is JH’s Nano AI servers—or any research leads connected to them.”
Liu’s lips curved in a thin, cold smile. He looked at the aide.
“Good. Excellent. Bring it back properly. Don’t come back with just the shell.”
The aide nodded and swept a glance over the ranks of hackers waiting behind him.
“This time it’s certain.”