Magic Tower Semiconductor (1)
"I must decline."
Wilson Hwang wore a deep smile.
"As expected... you know your own worth. Then how about one hundred billion dollars?"
"Excuse me?"
Just say yes! You have to take this! That's a hundred and fifty trillion in Korean won! Refusing this would be insane! You have to take it.
But still...
His devilish side was going completely haywire. Even his angelic side seemed so stunned by the words "one hundred billion dollars" that it couldn't manage a ready answer. But I held tight to the thread of reason.
"This isn't about the money."
"I see..."
Wilson Hwang nodded.
"People like you are the ones who change the world. I respect your decision."
Looking disappointed, Wilson Hwang held out a business card.
"My personal number."
"Ah... I haven't had a chance to make business cards yet."
A slip-up. The company itself had been thrown together in a rush for the auction, so of course there were no cards. He hadn't planned on meeting anyone in the first place.
Wilson Hwang suddenly held out his smartphone toward me.
"Then put your number in."
Am I... getting his number for free?
I typed my number into Wilson Hwang's phone. He left with a smile of satisfaction.
"Whew..."
I felt like I'd burned through every last scrap of willpower. Hundreds of millions of dollars? The units barely converted in my head.
Just who the hell scouted me? I'm a smartphone repair tech!
Drained, I sank into the wheelchair.
Then the lawyer standing beside me suddenly offered a greeting.
"Mr. CEO! Thank you for choosing our firm. We will work even harder for you going forward."
I glanced up to find him bowing at a full ninety degrees.
What's with this guy all of a sudden...
Seeing that, the insurance agent and the auctioneer both jumped in with ninety-degree bows of their own.
"Mr. CEO! We'll serve you even better from now on!"
"Loyalty. Absolute loyalty."
Mvidia's semiconductor research lab.
A conference room enclosed by gray walls and glass. Analysis graphs and microscope photographs were spread across the table. Wilson Hwang stood with his arms folded, staring at the monitor, while the chief researcher sat beside him with a stunned expression.
The screen displayed a precise rendering of the internal structure of the RAM brought in through the auction.
Wilson Hwang asked the chief researcher,
"Well? Worth a hundred million dollars?"
At the question, the chief researcher's eyebrows shot up in deliberate astonishment.
"Oh my God! A hundred million dollars? You practically stole it. As expected of our CEO—a once-in-a-generation businessman. Where on earth did you get a product like this?"
"That good, is it?"
"Yes. The technical capability is considerable. Here—look at the photographs."
The chief researcher enlarged an image on the monitor. Lines as straight as if drawn with a ruler.
"Perfect! Even at one-nanometer magnification, the alignment is flawless."
"Oh-ho."
Wilson Hwang narrowed his eyes with interest. The chief researcher brought up another enlarged image.
"Even when people claim a line width of two nanometers, that doesn't mean a perfect straight line, does it? Compared to this, what the Taiwanese labs produce looks like a child's scribbles. This... is a true knife-edge cut."
Wilson Hwang nodded.
"Even laser etching wouldn't manage that."
"Exactly. Among existing methods, nothing can hold a cut this sharp. And there's something even stranger."
"What?"
The chief researcher rotated the display.
"Here, and this section. Look carefully..."
He enlarged the image again. Traces of something painted over, as if corrected.
The chief researcher spoke with confidence.
"These are repair marks."
"...What?"
"This DRAM... wasn't finished from the start. There are clear signs of modification after fabrication. At the nanometer scale, no less."
Wilson Hwang said nothing for a long moment. His gaze slowly swept the monitor.
"And more astonishing still is the material."
"What's wrong with the material?"
"I don't know what it is."
Wilson Hwang looked at the chief researcher. His expression said, That can't be right.
"You can't analyze it?"
"Absurd as it sounds—yes."
Wilson Hwang exhaled a sigh.
"The chemical formula?"
"Unknown."
"What do you mean by that?"
Wilson Hwang himself held a doctorate from an engineering school. The idea of not knowing a substance's chemical formula simply did not compute. Put any solid into an electron microscope and you immediately learned the elemental composition. From the elemental content, the chemical formula followed at once.
"I'm not asking you to manufacture the substance. I'm asking what it is."
"And I'm saying... I don't know."
Reproducing a material was difficult. Matching composition alone did not recreate structure. Graphite was one hundred percent carbon; diamond was also one hundred percent carbon. Knowing through an electron microscope that something was pure carbon did not mean you could turn graphite into diamond. Complex structures were harder still. But determining a substance's chemical formula—electron microscopes, mass spectrometers, and more—offered so many methods it should have been trivial.
Wilson Hwang and the chief researcher proceeded to talk past each other in parallel.
"The elemental peak values are anomalous."
"Anomalous how?"
"They are not the peak values of any element we generally know."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Hydrogen, helium, lithium... we know the peak values for every element on the periodic table, don't we?"
"We do."
"These are not those values."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means I don't know either."
"Are you aware that you, the chief researcher of the world's number-one semiconductor company, are telling me you cannot analyze the composition of a mere solid material?"
"Oh! You've finally understood!"
"Bah! So what's the cause?"
"Several possibilities. First, equipment failure on our end."
"Don't talk nonsense."
"Second, some unknown interference effect we don't understand."
"Come now."
"Third, the discovery of a new element."
"A new element not on the periodic table?"
"Yes."
Wilson Hwang realized that even with his engineering doctorate, he was no longer keeping up with the conversation.
"Are you joking with me right now?"
"No. I'm serious. Do you know what award you get for discovering a new element?"
"The Nobel Prize?"
"Correct. You'll let me handle this DRAM research, right?"
The chief researcher's eyes sparkled. They already looked halfway like the eyes of a Nobel laureate.
"But you didn't make this DRAM. If anyone receives a Nobel Prize, it should be the other company."
"I'll settle for a foothold. Bringing something like this in for a mere hundred million dollars... CEO. I love you."
Wilson Hwang frowned at the stubbly-bearded chief researcher's attempt at charm.
"That depends on how you perform. Anyway—can we apply this to our HBM?"
"We'll have to research it. It would go faster if the makers explained it... You didn't try technology transfer or buying the company?"
"Of course I did. He said he wasn't interested."
"Why? This is Mvidia. Is he playing hard to get?"
"He says he's doing optical semiconductors."
The chief researcher snorted a laugh.
"Another dreamer..."
Then he corrected his expression.
"No... maybe not a dreamer. Not with technology of this caliber."
Wilson Hwang leaned back in his chair.
"By the way. How is our third-generation HBM coming along?"
The chief researcher spread out the materials.
"We're stacking about five layers without trouble now."
"Turning into apartments, are we."
The chief researcher smiled.
"Closer to a mixed-use villa than an apartment."
"A mixed-use villa?"
"An apartment doesn't have shops on the ground floor, does it? We lay interface circuits on the first floor and connect data buses right alongside them. Roads attached and everything. Then we stack the RAM layer by layer. The shape suits a mixed-use villa better."
"'Mixed-use villa-type semiconductor.' Rolls right off the tongue."
"Yes. Mixed-use villa-type semiconductors are the trend now."
"Good. At the next presentation, we'll announce it as the mixed-use villa-type semiconductor."
"An excellent choice."
Wilson Hwang and the chief researcher gazed at their mixed-use villa-type semiconductor and smiled in contentment.
At that same hour, in the Nano World.
The Rodriguez Territory was deep in construction. Under a blazing sun, the worksite rang with the crash of massive hammers and the call of work chants.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
"You there! Get this up!"
"On three! One, two, three—lift!"
"Got it! One, two, three!"
"Heave!"
It was the construction site for the semiconductor sent into the Nano World. Enormous structures, people laboring in earnest. A full three thousand workers had been poured into the project. Considering the territory's population was a mere ten thousand, every available hand had been put to work.
The labor was hard, but with meals provided so generously, no one complained. Not long ago they had been starving; now a worksite was handing out the kind of fine food only nobles usually ate. People scrambled for the chance to join.
Illys, clad in a magic robe, was touring the site and directing the work. Adeline, the chief maid, approached her.
"My lady. It is mealtime."
"Hmm. I'll eat later. I'm busy right now."
"My lady. You skipped lunch as well."
"Haah... Fine, give it here."
Illys wiped the sweat with a handkerchief, took the lunch box Adeline held out, and bit into it. Her eyes went wide.
"Mm! Whoa, what is this? It's delicious."
"It was sent by the Constellation, after all."
"The one after the pyramid?"
"Yes. The bread is so soft... quite popular, I must say."
"I knew it! Adeline! The Constellation is solving our food problem like this—should I work hard, or should I work hard?"
"Since the Constellation has sent something so delicious, perhaps you might eat and then work?"
One intent on feeding her, the other intent on working. Knowing the heart of Adeline—chief maid and former nanny—Illys took another large bite of bread.
"I'm eating this because it tastes good. Mmph."
Illys spoke with a smile, but her eyes were serious. Finished with the bread, she walked over to Ralph, who was studying the architectural plans nearby. Across the drawings was written: Constellation's Artifact Semiconductor Process.
"Ralph. What's the progress on semiconductor block three?"
"Proceeding according to plan."
"And the magic-tower style... you're confident?"
"Of course. Why else would a magic tower be called a magic tower?"
A magic tower was the very essence of magical engineering.
"Still, you haven't done this before."
"It's fine. We're proceeding according to plan."
Five buildings had come across from the Constellation. Each building had four black, square RAM chips attached to a green board. Illys and Ralph's plan was to combine them all and stack them vertically.
"The Constellation sent five buildings. That makes twenty black semiconductor buildings in total. Stacking these black buildings upward like a tower would be more efficient than leaving them spread flat—wasn't that the judgment?"
"It was. But if it were my own artifact, failure during construction would be fine. This is the Constellation's artifact, so I worry."
"Don't worry. I've built magic towers three times. The White Tower, the Yellow Tower, and the most recent version—the Blue Tower. I took part in all of them."
"I know. I'm from the White Tower myself."
"We've even mobilized the stonemasons who worked on those towers with me. Rather than simply stacking them like a tower, we made each floor connect organically. A colossal high-rise with magical efficacy! Isn't that magnificent?"
Illys did not believe there was anything wrong with the process itself. Magically it was a perfectly sound project—that was why she was working on it. She simply worried because it was the Constellation's artifact.
"The Constellation will like it too, right?"
Ralph murmured as he looked up at the whole structure.
"I am confident we can satisfy the standards of humans and dwarves. But whether the Constellation who sent us something like this will be satisfied... honestly, I don't know. Someone who has gazed upon artifacts of a far higher realm than ours might not be impressed."
At those words, Illys nodded calmly.
"We'll just work as hard as we can. If the Constellation finds our sincerity even a little endearing, that will be enough."
"No need to worry about that. The Constellation will certainly find us endearing."
Illys turned her gaze up toward the buildings being stacked into a vast black tower.
"A magic-tower-style semiconductor... I hope it pleases you..."