Pentium's Shadow and Stallman's Fury

Yoo Jae-won firmly refused. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

—What? Why? Did I do something to offend you? Jeon Myeong-heon’s voice, once the honorary chairman and now a congressman, carried a note of urgency.

“No, not at all. That’s not it.”

—Then what’s the reason?

“It’s best for unofficial power brokers to step back at the right moment. Otherwise, rumors start flying.”

Yoo Jae-won had never held any official position in the Tongil National Party, and he had no intention of accepting one in the future. Yet everyone knew he was the true power behind the scenes. He had seen in his previous life exactly what happened when a shadow figure overreached. Besides, controlling forty-four lawmakers brought him no real benefit. ID Group was already operating entirely within the law. He wanted no tax breaks or special favors—only stricter regulations on convertible bonds and measures to block shady inheritance schemes. That was all.

Distance served another purpose. If the Tongil National Party ever made a catastrophic mistake, the fallout could reach him. Better to pull away while everything was still going well. Of course, that did not mean he would abandon them completely.

“Is this because of the presidential election? Don’t worry—I’ll help when the time comes.”

He had already supported the general election; refusing to help with the biggest contest would be absurd. Backing Jeon Myeong-heon to create a major variable was not a bad idea. Still, he was not optimistic about Jeon’s chances. Analysis of voter data from the recent election showed that pro-government votes still outnumbered opposition votes. The only reason the ruling party had failed to secure a majority was the way the districts had been drawn. If those numbers held, Jeon Myeong-heon was headed for a solid third place, just like in his previous life.

—R-really!? Thank you!

Jeon Myeong-heon had not expected an outright refusal, so his reaction came a beat late. He had called intending to ask for help with the presidential race and, as a bonus, to introduce his grandchildren. None were exactly Jae-won’s age, but several were a few years younger. If one of his granddaughters caught Jae-won’s eye, it would be a tremendous stroke of luck. Yet Jae-won’s response suggested he had already seen through that plan as well.

After a bit more small talk, Yoo Jae-won ended the call and immediately pulled the phone cord out of the wall again. The moment he set the receiver down after speaking with Jeon Myeong-heon, the phone had started ringing insistently.

He spent the next three days resting. He met friends, visited Su-gyeong’s father and the president of Busan Brewery—formerly the Hyunmi Milk factory—and offered both greetings and advice. He also stopped by Kim & Jeong Law Firm to check on the progress of the Japanese military comfort women lawsuits and to offer encouragement. On the final day, he gathered with his parents and relatives at Ganghuije in Yeoju for a celebratory meal. While the Tongil National Party’s strong showing in the election was mentioned, the conversation focused far more on Yoo Jae-won’s business success and his acceptance into a prestigious university.

Once everything in Korea was settled, Yoo Jae-won departed in secret. It was time to play on a much larger stage.

“We saw your performance in Korea. Quite impressive. I had no idea you had a talent for elections, Chairman.”

“Thanks to you, we’ve been receiving quite a few subtle calls from American politicians as well.”

When he returned to the Silicon Valley office, Remington and the other executives welcomed him. The topic, unsurprisingly, was the Korean general election. To most Americans it was barely a footnote, but because Yoo Jae-won had personally participated, it had become a major talking point among ID Group’s leadership.

“It was nothing. I’m far too tired to even think about it right now.”

Yoo Jae-won waved both hands dismissively, yet he did not refuse outright. Knowing who would win the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠next presidential election, it made sense to maintain some level of contact even if no one asked for help. If a request did come, he was more than willing to assist. ID Group’s primary market was the United States, after all. Their current priority was entering the cable television business, and because cable required physical infrastructure in every home, starting from scratch was impossible. They would need to acquire an existing cable company, and any interference from the U.S. government would stop them cold.

“Then we’ll keep the matter on hold for now.”

“Yes, please do. Ah—Clinton is the exception.”

At Yoo Jae-won’s words, both Remington and Ellen nodded in understanding. Having worked with him the longest, they immediately grasped his meaning. Clinton was already creating a stir in the Democratic primaries, so the choice was not entirely surprising. President Bush had won the Gulf War, but his economic missteps made a change of power highly likely. The most prominent Democratic candidate was Clinton. Major corporate donors were still watching from the sidelines, leaving plenty of room for ID Group to make its move.

“Ellen, please handle the support on this.”

Yoo Jae-won pointed directly at Ellen. When dealing with politicians, Ellen was far more natural than Remington.

“Understood.”

Ellen smiled brightly at being assigned a task she was confident in. They decided to leave the matter with Ellen until the Democratic primaries concluded. If Clinton secured the nomination, Yoo Jae-won would arrange an official meeting. With external affairs settled for the moment, he returned to his core work.

—There’s a package from Intel at the boss’s residence.
—President Carmack of ID Software also sent a prototype for you.

The mention of packages arriving made Yoo Jae-won’s heart race. He quickly wrapped up his work and hurried home. Two large boxes greeted him in the lobby, each bearing a prominent logo that made the senders immediately obvious. Intel’s box was twice the size of the one from ID Software. The ID Software box also carried the logo of ATI, a VGA manufacturer. The contents were impossible to guess.

“What could these be?”

Unable to contain his curiosity, Yoo Jae-won rushed to the boxes without even changing clothes. He started with the ID-marked box. A warning label advised caution when using a box cutter, so he carefully sliced the packing tape.

“Oh!”

Inside, cushioned by packing material, were two smaller boxes. For a moment he worried it might be a Russian nesting doll, but fortunately it was not. The nearest box contained a game package—Doom 2. He had not expected them to finish it so quickly. A note explained that only Stage 1 had been completed. The software came on a compact disc rather than floppy disks, along with an external CD-ROM drive. His anticipation soared.

“Don’t tell me…”

With growing excitement, he opened the box marked with the ATI logo.

“Wow!”

The moment he finished unwrapping it, a gasp escaped him. Inside lay an expansion card the size of a forearm—a VGA card equipped with a 3D acceleration chip. The chip bore the unmistakable Glide X2 logo. A dedicated chip designed to hardware-accelerate the 3D libraries in Glide X2 had finally been completed. The card also featured twice as much memory as a standard VGA card. It looked expensive; mass adoption might be difficult. Still, memory prices would drop within a few years, and production costs would fall. This technology would not be buried.

“That’s everything.”

He checked the bottom of the box but found nothing else. Carefully placing the items on his desk, he moved to the much larger and heavier Intel box. He had a feeling about its contents, but he said nothing and began unpacking.

“As expected!”

Inside was a computer tower, nearly identical to the 486 Intel had sent him before. Back then it had seemed impressive; now, with New Egg dominating the market, it looked crude. Still, the full-tower case offered excellent expandability.

“Huh?”

As he removed the plastic wrapping, Yoo Jae-won froze in surprise.

“Pentium?!”

The logo beside the power button read Pentium. He had expected a 486 ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠DX4, but the machine contained Intel’s next-generation CPU, the Pentium—originally scheduled for release in March 1993, now delivered a full year early. His interventions had accelerated technological development, and Intel’s release timeline had shifted accordingly. Intel had once been criticized for holding back CPUs that were already finished in the lab, releasing them only when market conditions suited them. With graphical operating systems booming and high-resolution, high-fidelity games flooding the market, demand for greater processing power was intense. The 486 line, even the DX4, had reached its limit. ID Technology and the VGA manufacturers had jointly created 3D acceleration cards and libraries that everyone in the industry agreed would revolutionize PC gaming. Intel’s answer was the Pentium. Originally intended to be called the 586, the name had been changed because a purely numeric trademark could not be protected under U.S. law. The Pentium featured an improved pipeline architecture, a larger L1 cache, and superscalar design, delivering at least twice the performance of the 486. Intel had already begun reducing 486 production to retool its lines for the Pentium. Compatible CPU makers were rushing to fill the gap, overwhelmed by orders and considering capacity expansion. Releasing the Pentium now would force those competitors into even greater trial and error.

“A strategy worth learning from.”

Intel would make many blunders in the twenty-first century, but until 2010 it remained a company of dazzling progress. At the bottom of the box was a handwritten letter.

“Now what do I do with this?”

The Pentium had two major flaws. One was the FDIV bug, discovered by a mathematics professor running a prime-number program. Certain division operations produced incorrect results—a rare occurrence, roughly once every nine billion random divisions. The other was the infamous Meltdown vulnerability. It was not a logic error in the circuitry but an unintended side effect of the new pipeline architecture, a security flaw that would not be discovered until late 2017. In other words, the architectural weakness introduced with the Pentium would persist across subsequent models for nearly twenty-five years. The root cause was the pipeline’s inadequate security. While the design dramatically improved performance by allowing multiple instructions to execute simultaneously, it also created exploitable gaps. Operating systems protected sensitive data such as passwords behind permission checks. Intel’s pipeline, however, did not immediately discard unauthorized access attempts. Instead, it allowed intermediate operations. A hacker could request a password, have it rejected and discarded, yet still instruct the CPU to add an arbitrary number to that password and store the result in memory—thereby leaking the password through side-channel analysis.

“Let’s see if the bugs are still there.”

Yoo Jae-won assembled the Pentium machine using spare monitors and keyboards he kept at home. The operating system was the ad-free version of Android 1.0, but he deliberately installed the Enterprise edition instead. Released at the end of February alongside the second patch for Android 1.0, the Enterprise version offered significantly enhanced features, including better high-performance hardware support and native multitasking—ideal for demonstrating the Meltdown vulnerability.

“All right, let’s give it a try.”

He cracked his knuckles, launched Android’s Turbo C, and began coding with feverish intensity. An hour later, he leaned back and nodded ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in satisfaction at the dense lines of text on the screen.

“Good. My memory’s still intact.”

He had memorized the Meltdown demonstration code long ago—both the Windows and Linux versions. Using Memory Palace, he retrieved the Linux version and adapted it. Because Android had been heavily influenced by Linux in his previous life, the source required only minor adjustments. Skipping debugging, he compiled the code immediately.

“Oh, it’s fast!”

The Pentium’s speed was impressive. On a 486 the hard drive would have chattered loudly and CPU usage would have spiked, preventing other tasks. Here, he could browse the internet or edit documents without issue while compilation finished faster than on the older machine. Several minutes later, the message “OK” appeared. The code had compiled cleanly. Without hesitation, he ran the resulting executable. A small white box appeared on the Android desktop—minimalist by design, with no graphics or text. He then launched the Nextcom connector and logged in. The password, normally displayed as asterisks, appeared in plain text inside the white box. Meltdown was present in this Pentium as well.

“Just as I thought.”

His reaction was brief. The issue had caused an uproar in his previous life and had been a critical factor in his master plan. The conclusion then had been to address it through his own operating system. He had no intention of reporting it to Intel early. The current relationship between ID Group and Intel was limited to exchanging samples. He would patch the vulnerability so hackers could not exploit it, then keep the exploit as a hidden card to play at a decisive moment. The FDIV bug could wait; it had originally been discovered by an academic researcher, and leaving it alone posed no immediate crisis.

“Now let’s try this.”

With the master plan confirmed, Yoo Jae-won’s mind eased. His gaze naturally fell on the CD and 3D acceleration card John Carmack had sent. He opened the Pentium’s case, installed the card, and configured the system. Although Android was user-friendly, hardware installation still required a few old-fashioned steps. Fortunately, there were no conflicts, and Android recognized the card without issue. He installed Glide X2, followed by the CD from John Carmack.

“Over a hundred megabytes? That’s unexpected.”

Games exceeding ten floppy disks were beginning to appear, but a hundred megabytes was still surprising. The CD likely contained uncompressed high-resolution textures. Installation was smooth—no disk swapping, no errors.

“All right, let’s run it!”

The executable was simply named Doom 2.

“Whoa!”

Doom 2 launched, and admiration escaped Yoo Jae-won almost immediately. The story followed Doomguy, who had barely survived the demonic invasion of Mars, only to return to an Earth already overrun by hellspawn. His mission was to cleanse the planet once more. The visuals, fully leveraging the 3D acceleration card, were unlike anything before—a true polygonal 3D game. Combined with immersive spatial audio, the experience was on an entirely different level from earlier attempts at 3D. Even someone accustomed to twenty-first-century games felt he was finally playing something worthy of the name. Though only an alpha, the polish was extraordinary. What was meant to be a quick taste turned into a nonstop run through the final stage. The boss fight was especially brutal. Normally the first boss was tuned to be manageable, but with only a single stage available, the developers had made it punishing. It took more than ten attempts before he finally defeated it. Several calls came in, but he ignored them, completely absorbed.

After the hard-won victory, the game-over screen appeared, followed by a short message.

John Carmack had left a casual thank-you in the current internet slang. Yoo Jae-won was the one who should be grateful; Carmack had created such ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a game in this era. Eager to share his impressions, he launched ID Talk, confirmed Carmack was online, and opened a chat window.

“I just played Doom 2! The level of completion is incredible!”

He sent the message still flushed with excitement. Carmack’s reply was nothing like what he expected.

—Boss! That’s not the problem right now!

“What do you mean?”

—It’s about Android Enterprise. Someone named Richard posted a review on Nextcom, and it’s causing an uproar in the computer community.

What was he talking about? Yoo Jae-won immediately opened the Nextcom connector and navigated to the operating systems forum. The post was easy to find—it sat at number one on the BEST TOP10 board.

The title was deliberately provocative. The name Richard also felt familiar. Then it hit him—Richard Stallman, the man who had earned first place in the ID Office Security Challenge and served as director of the Free Software Foundation, overseeing the GNU Project. He commanded a large following and considerable respect. Yoo Jae-won himself held him in high regard. For Stallman to openly denounce Android Enterprise was not something that could be ignored.