The Goblin Computer
The prepared regressor spoke softly. “1988. Even our humble Yoo clan nearly caught a ray of sunlight that year.”
Yoo Jae-won had not chosen 1988 as the point of his return from the deal with the mysterious entity without reason. In his previous life, his immediate family and relatives had been the very definition of an underprivileged household, yet a genuine chance for reversal had existed. They had simply mistaken a modest stroke of luck for a windfall and let the true opportunity slip away.
“Especially our ancestral mountain. That was the decisive mistake.”
Whenever the uncles and other relatives gathered during holidays and the liquor flowed freely, the ancestral mountain always became the topic of conversation. An outsider had approached them with an offer to swap their mountain for another. The land he proposed was gentle, ideal for gravesites, and far larger in area. In contrast, the Yoo clan’s ancestral mountain was so rugged it was practically called a cursed peak—few suitable burial spots, and inconveniently distant from the village.
At the time, there had seemed no reason to refuse. Even a simple calculation of land value showed the outsider’s mountain was worth roughly twenty percent more. When he further offered to cover the cost of relocating the ancestors’ remains, the decision was made almost instantly in favor of the exchange.
They should have realized that the more generous the terms, the more likely something was being hidden. But the Yoo elders, simple country folk, had few among them capable of such suspicion.
The result came swiftly. A tunnel was bored through the mountain they had sold. Though not part of a major highway, the land was seized for a regional road project connecting cities. That was not all. The ancestral mountain they had given away turned out to be rich in rare medicinal herbs, mushrooms, and even wild ginseng. The mountain they received in return remained an ordinary hillside until the day Yoo Jae-won died.
The transaction had taken place in the winter of 1988.
“I have to stop them from making that swap with the outsider. The problem is my credibility.”
Besides the mountain, the family also owned rice paddies, fields, and a few other plots of land. If they had held on to them, those properties would have become quite valuable. Most had been sold off for a pittance. If he went to the main house now and tried to warn his uncle and the others, they would listen with one ear and let it out the other. The voice of a twelve-year-old carried little weight.
“Thinking about it, that kind of outcome was inevitable.”
The outsider had looked like a toad. The Yoo elders had believed they were trading an old house for a new one, but the opposite had been true. The toad-faced man had been willing to make the offer only because he knew he would never lose. He had come armed with information the family lacked: that a tunnel and road would soon cut through the mountain, and that rare herbs and mushrooms grew there. Those who seized information first always bought such assets cheaply from those who knew nothing. It was the easiest way for those in power and their inner circles to accumulate wealth. The original owners almost never reaped the windfall.
“First, I need to establish my own presence.”
There was a reason self-cultivation had been placed at the very top of his regression plan. To accomplish great things, his own standing had to change first.
Yoo Jae-won closed his eyes. The vast emptiness left behind after Infinity Dream had vanished was now filled with an enormous palace of knowledge and data. The Memory Palace. It contained everything from the 1980s to the 2040s—historical chronologies, manufacturing processes, technical standards, even source code for programs. All of it was there.
The unfortunate limitation was that the human brain was not a computer. It was impossible to build indexes and perform searches the way a database could. That was why Yoo Jae-won had organized everything using the ancient mnemonic technique of the Memory Palace, passed down from Roman times.
As for 1988, he had imagined the year so many times that he already remembered the major turning points. The biggest national event was the Seoul Olympics, which opened on September 17. It was an occasion large enough to stir even the quietest rural villages. Turn on the television and news about the Olympics was everywhere. Though the end of the Iran-Iraq War and MBC’s first-ever strike were also topics of discussion, people’s eyes and ears were fixed on the Olympics the following month.
Yoo Jae-won’s parents were no exception. They were not overly excited, yet they watched the Olympic coverage with far more attention than they gave to politics, current affairs, or even price fluctuations. Yoo Jae-won himself could not afford to let the Seoul Olympics pass by unnoticed. To make full use of it, he could not afford to miss even the smallest details. That was why he intended to enter the Memory Palace and review the complete record of the Games.
“If only sports betting had existed back then. That would have been a gold mine.”
Yoo Jae-won muttered with regret as he transferred the names of Korea’s gold, silver, and bronze medalists, along with records from popular events, into the 286 computer. This was an era before the government had authorized any official sports lottery, let alone underground betting. Even if he found a place willing to take wagers, the odds were a hundred to one that someone with fists would be standing behind it. Small winnings might be possible, but no one walked away with a fortune. The 1980s were the golden age of organized crime. Newspapers still ran stories of young women being abducted in broad daylight by vans and sold to bars or brothels. The government would soon declare war on crime and launch a sweeping crackdown, but for now the gangs were still operating at full strength.
Yoo Jae-won had no intention of associating with them. If anything, he hoped they would be suppressed. The data he was entering now would be used only for his parents. He added brief notes alongside the records. When he finished, he leaned back, stretched, and loosened the stiffness in his muscles.
“Good.”
The few lines he had just written contained a scenario worth its weight in gold—one that would place his parents, and by extension the entire Yoo clan, on unshakable ground amid the upheavals of the eighties and nineties. Because he had prepared it before regressing, its completeness was beyond question.
Finally, Yoo Jae-won pressed the keyboard shortcut to save the document. A plain message appeared at the bottom of the screen asking for a file name. It was not the elegant dialog box of a Windows operating system, but the function was the same.
“File name? Hmm…”
For a moment he hesitated. He had returned with an immense store of knowledge in exchange for Infinity Dream and had already laid out countless interlocking short- and long-term plans like the teeth of finely meshed gears. Yet he had never given a name to this very first plan he would execute after his return.
It was hardly a fatal mistake, nor a difficult one to solve.
“If I have to give it a title… Goblin Computer will do.”
Among the many factors considered when he chose to regress to 1988, the ancestral mountain had been one, but the element that loomed largest was the computer. Just as a goblin swung its magic bat, Yoo Jae-won intended to wield the computer as his own goblin’s bat and begin his great undertaking.
The document was saved to the hard disk under the name Goblin Computer. For good measure, he also backed it up to a floppy disk before powering the machine down.
Now it was time to move with his own two feet.