Chapter 507
Chapter 507
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 507
Chapter Title: Gedroits's Heir, Deul (17)
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‘What the hell is this?’
There were unknowns scattered all around me right now, but what occupied my mind was this nagging sense of wrongness I felt.
Of course, it was natural to feel out of place.
The place I was walking through was a massive underground concrete facility, two kilometers from the entrance and at least 700 meters below the surface, with English, Chinese, and Russian signs painted on the walls everywhere.
Yet flanking me as I strode through this facility were works by art history masters like Rembrandt, Goya, Courbet, and Andy Warhol—names even an outsider like me had heard of—not some makeshift long-term survival habitat.
And the one proudly explaining them was Andrey Gedroits, the era-transcending scientist speaking through an augmented reality drone in the form of a man in a white suit. If you didn’t feel a sense of wrongness in a situation like this, that would be the weird part.
But it felt too pointed to chalk up to just these ‘ordinarily bizarre’ things. In the old days, I might’ve brushed it off as mere unease, but after getting royally screwed over at the start of 4World and gaining all sorts of insights along the way, I’d come to trust these gut signals quite a bit.
‘Andrey Gedroits. Does the man I investigated match the one right in front of me?’
Everything checked out, and he’d admitted it himself, at least in part.
So what the hell was this ‘other part that wasn’t Gedroits’?
“You look lost in thought.”
W-Gedroits, who had shifted back from the weary old man of moments ago to his usual tone, spoke up as we passed from early 20th-century modern art into the era where 3D installations started taking off.
“Thanks to you doing all the talking.”
“Indeed. Piecing together small bits of info to glimpse the big picture—that’s your specialty. Very well. Before we meet the Collector, how about a little chat of the sort our esteemed guest desires? As a reward for waiting so patiently.”
“...Do we have to?”
“From what I’ve observed, you tend to get aggressive the more doubts you have about someone. It’s a safety measure for the Collector—a part of my ‘guiding’ duties.”
“Anyone’d think you were some dutiful monster from how seriously you take your job. The Collector sent the invite, but you’re the one dosing the guests with hallucinogens.”
“Of course, that’s just another part of guiding them into the Artists’ Union. Every guest invited here has gone through the same process.”
....Guiding. And duty.
‘He’s closer to the W I know right now.’
From the stories I’d heard about him in the past, W was the type who couldn’t stay put when he didn’t have official business. Maybe that’s why he seemed oddly excited—because ‘guiding Professor Park to the Collector’ gave him an excuse to return to this Artists’ Union hideout. If I remembered right, he really cherished sticking around in one place.
Splash—
In the end, amid circumstances pointing to this Gedroits-like figure leaning toward the man known as W in speech and action...
W-Gedroits beckoned to me as I racked my brain while crossing a translucent waterfall-shaped sculpture. Hidden behind it was a rest area lined with chairs and tables that were just bare frames.
“‘Thought and Contemplation,’ Allaud Kar, 2048. A landmark work of late modern art that returned art to the masses in an era when its excessive complexity had driven the public away.”
“...Those uncomfortable-looking steel rod chairs?”
“Have a seat first. You’ll understand the intent once you do.”
“Hmm....”
It felt a bit iffy, but my body wasn’t so frail that some steel ridges would bother me, so I plopped down roughly.
Zzzzt!
“?!”
The result was astonishing. A faint current seemed to flow from the chair’s steel frame, transforming the hard metal seat into the familiar feel of my worn-out old sofa.
“Allaud Kar was a brilliant engineer before he was an artist.”
“Don’t tell me it reads memories of touched objects and recreates specific sensory moments—”
“Not quite that advanced. It just reads the subtle muscle movements upon contact to detect what structure your body is most accustomed to sitting in, then recreates it with electrical signals. Your body’s touching an utterly uncomfortable steel rod chair, but your senses feel the thing your butt spent the most time on in life. Late modern art emphasized moments like this, where the viewer triggers a specific perceptual sensation. Right now, aren’t physical discomfort and sensory comfort coexisting?”
I nodded as the description perfectly matched what I felt, and W nodded back as if it were only natural.
“The separation of emotion and divinity. Can the mind replace physical sensation? Or can physical stimuli control the mind’s form? Fields the elderly Andrey Gedroits was deeply obsessed with. Oh, and this exhibit was installed in the lobby of Gedroits Company headquarters before the war. It says something that a man who hated waste shelled out big to relocate such a complex installation piece.”
It seemed like he was building up to something important, only to veer into art history. Just as I started suspecting this was some stalling tactic,
“Sitting in this spot is what brings the ‘Gedroits’ within me to the surface.”
“The moment his ‘completer’—what he desperately longed for—calls his name, Gedroits emerges on the surface, if only briefly.”
My suspicion turned to shock at his words.
“I am a being that became a Type-3 variant by deliberately absorbing his flesh in the presence of his corpse to commandeer Andrey Gedroits’s knowledge, and...”
“At the same time, a middling personality that lusted after his status so pathetically it ended up tainted by him.”
Step, step, step.
The figure emerging from behind the holographic waterfall filled the spot occupied by his illusory double perfectly.
“Pleased to meet you. It’s not exactly what I was after, but facing Gedroits’s longed-for ‘completer’ like this isn’t half bad.”
W. His real voice, emerging from the white-suited form, had a bizarre blend of youthful and aged tones.
“Let’s see if we can satisfy that curiosity of yours that won’t let you rest until you know everything.”
With the white fedora and mask removed, his face was a horrific mashup of a melancholic young man and a stubborn old geezer.
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“William, there was a man named William Turner. No need to repeat the ‘tragedy’ I confessed to you long ago, right?”
“Wait.... Give me time to think.”
“Take all the time you need.”
Just a few sentences, but packed with so much info I couldn’t process it properly.
‘To assimilate Gedroits’s knowledge.... He deliberately became a Type-3 variant in front of his corpse? And that’s the story of W, the ‘original’ William Turner?’
Gedroits’s death, inheriting his knowledge, the fact that one could willfully become a Type-3 variant, and the result being... a multiple personality where specific memory triggers manifest a persona akin to the real Gedroits.
“This.... It’s contradictory. It doesn’t add up.”
No matter how I turned it over, it clashed with multiple pieces of info in my memory.
“Oh? And what part doesn’t sit well with our completer?”
“You, W-Gedroits—assuming every word he said was the gospel truth....”
“That much I can swear to. When I say ‘I,’ I mean both the old me as W and the current me. We’re distinct for convenience, but not truly separate personalities. More like a manic-depressive split close to a psychiatric disorder. Anyway, I’ve never lied, not once.”
“Then it’s impossible for you to be what you just described. William Turner, W’s original, was killed by his mother’s hand.”
“Hmm. Yeah, it could look that way.”
“That white-suited businessman was his father? No, that’s a stretch. Hell, a Russian like Gedroits having blood kin with a German name like ‘William Turner’ doesn’t even make sense. No matter how you connect the dots, everything you say turns to bullshit!”
“Ahem. Keep going. Your thought process is quite intriguing.”
W, tilting his head so the Gedroits face was forward, tossed out vague responses like this was some fun quiz.
“You have incredibly sharp instincts.”
“What, you saying my thinking’s all based on irrational hunches?”
“No, pure praise. From what I’ve seen, this Professor Park is someone whose boundary between conscious and unconscious is looser than any living human. A sort of trauma-induced savant, shall we say.”
Tap, tap, tap.
“The human brain’s unconscious is like a vast repository that takes in all info without filters. If a city dweller passes a thousand people a day, consciousness remembers maybe one or two, but the unconscious stores every single one perceived by sight. For most, access to that massive trash-bin vault happens maybe in dreams. But you’re different. Your surface consciousness has dipped into the depths countless times due to bizarre experiences. You know exactly what I’m talking about, better than I do.”
“....Hyde.”
“Right. Hyde. That other sub-personality you named Hyde—or did it name itself? GG’s database shows how much that guy dragged your surface consciousness down to the unconscious depths. Fascinating stuff. If Gedroits were alive, he might’ve spun another project off it.... Shame you already swiped all of GG’s key data, so I can only speculate.”
The finger at his temple shifted toward the metal-plated chest, then shrugged it off casually.
“Point is, what you call ‘gut feeling’ is actually a logical conclusion from countless calculations and possibilities. When your data-packed unconscious spits out an answer to a puzzle, it bubbles up to your surface as ‘Hmm? Feels like this is it?’ Then your conscious mind just double-checks to accept it.”
“....So why’d your ramble about William Turner and Gedroits suddenly pivot to me?”
“Because explaining it verbally would take an hour, but five minutes of calm thinking from you transmits it all. Think, Professor Park. Look at the answers you’ve already intuited without realizing!”
W-Gedroits shut his mouth tight like a clam after that. The melancholic youth’s head looked like it had something to say, but it stayed silent too.
‘I already know?’
No way. Hadn’t I already concluded his statements were full of contradictions?
‘Remember clearly. W had a pretty convincing tragedy.’
The encounter in the 38 District caravan inn was so shocking I remembered nearly every word of that conversation.
A respectable businessman father who favored white suits.
A son who admired him, and a mother worn down by constant affairs.
One night, the son sneaks into his father’s white suit in the dark; the stark white silhouette against the shadows makes him look just like his callous dad.
Booze. Drugs. Years of pent-up resentment. The son rejects his clinging mother, she gets hurt again and flies into rage. Bang—
William Turner dies, becomes the white-suited W, and that day’s guilt births a special Type-3 variant that can’t stay put.
....That’s the story W told me in the 38 District inn.
If even the lies in that perfectly structured tale are true, how does a third party like Gedroits fit in? It’s so vivid I can picture it with my eyes closed. Wealthy family, self-made philandering husband, abandoned wife, son idolizing his rare visits....
‘....Huh?’
Something snagged. A jolt.
‘William Turner died like that and became a Type-3 variant?’
Sure, Type-3s can happen, but the imagery.... didn’t match the backdrop.
‘The variant virus only spread after the Great War. During the war, you’d have seen Red Army guys riddled with rifle fire rising like zombies.’
‘But that story of family drama in a household where wealth is taken for granted—could that happen after World War III?’
The timeline didn’t fit. An angry wife accidentally killing her son over her rich businessman husband’s cheating? That’s pre-war material. Which means the sacrificed William Turner couldn’t become the Type-3 W.
‘W’s original, William Turner, didn’t die there?’
The story definitely ended like this: Enraged mother aims at the white suit, bang—
“....The one who died wearing the father’s suit wasn’t the son—it was the mother?”
“Exactly. Faster than explaining. She was drunk and in close enough range to cling. Son freaks at the gun pointed his way, tries to stop her finger already on the trigger, and—bang—”
“The bullet pierced her lung. Amid agony and massive bleeding, she screamed like a demon as she died. The pristine white suit was drenched in blood. She was the one lunging to kill, but... accident or not, that sight traumatized my original, William Turner. This glum young half of my face is that guy.”
“....Wasn’t really hiding it.”
The melancholic youth face muttered softly, then the old man’s took over.
“Now, exemplary citizen and med student William Turner faced trial for murdering his mother in the act. He defended himself as best he could, but it was clear-cut guilt. The victim’s status fueled public outrage, landing him life without parole.”
“Andrey Gedroits came to me while I awaited transfer to prison after the trial.”
His head turned smoothly as consciousness shifted, the youth face continuing seamlessly.
“Said he’d read my thesis. Said it was a waste for talent like me to rot in jail. Why not spend life imprisoned in a spacious, comfy building with buffet meals every time instead? It was a recruitment pitch. Said the company was hiring a resident psychiatrist for employee welfare.”
“A doctor.”
“‘Considerations on Mental Dissociation by William Turner’ was famous enough to find online even now. Officially hired as chief physician, but really I assisted R&D on the game he was developing. With nowhere else to go, talented William Turner was perfect for secretive R&D.”
Creak—
W-Gedroits. The adapter with both old man and youth faces rose, one sneering, the other ashamed.
“The deeper the research went, the more I had to admire the great scientist Andrey Gedroits. His unreachable genius bred envy in my respect, and my leashed existence added humiliation. Rotting in his pen like that.... I met her.”
“Her?”
W ignored my question. Instead, he approached the wall behind our seats and slipped fingers into a crack in the concrete.
“She was bright despite her frail state. Gedroits said she was the core of GG’s development, the first master of the grand digital ark to hold humanity, the first beneficiary to reclaim her stolen life.”
Clunk! Rumble—
The spot where W’s hand tugged revealed a hidden door beyond the concrete. In the nuclear bunker’s residential area, the safest panic room built for special disasters.
“The more I studied her mind and delved into her inner world, the more I fell for her. Or rather, I couldn’t stand that this girl dying of leukemia was at the center of some inexplicable experiment. I became obsessed: someone needed to comfort her, give her the care and treatment she deserved.”
“Pathetic as it is, I even coveted Gedroits’s seat as Natasha’s father.”
The melancholic youth face glared at the old man’s on his right.
His hand knocked carefully, a voice leaked from within, and the stark white door in the concrete swung wide.
Walls white as an asylum, blindingly bright lights.
Myriad screens of all sorts hanging, thick cables linking them.
And at the center, a woman’s back, eerily familiar, with all those cables plugged into her.
“Natasha Gedroits. Andrey Gedroits’s sole blood kin, dying of leukemia—the original slated as GG’s sole administrator. The template that birthed the first data soul, and the basis for the first Type-3 variant with a will: the esteemed Collector.”
New names aplenty, but neither matched what popped into my head.
“World Tree.... ma’am?”
World Tree. GG’s overseer managing countless simulated worlds, the girl with silver hair.
The woman before me looked exactly like what she’d grow into.
『Seeing her in me means you’ve met her yourself, right?』
Her voice came not from vocal cords but a vibration plate.
『Nice to meet you. Completer, the one endorsed by my sister-like ‘World Tree’—I’ve wanted to meet you in person.』
World Tree—no, the Collector wearing her likeness—greeted me with a serene sleeping face and a beaming emoticon on her screen.
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