Aftermath

The aftershocks hit hard.

By the time the full picture of the 9/11 attacks emerged after lunch, newspapers across the country began issuing special editions. The dominant headline on every extra read: AMERICA UNDER ATTACK.

It was understandable. Even during the brutal fighting of World War II, the American mainland had never been directly attacked. No one had imagined that in the twenty-first century, after the United States had risen to superpower status, it would suffer an assault on this scale.

That common sense was shattered when the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol were deliberately struck by passenger planes in a horrific act of terror. It would have been stranger if special editions had not flooded the streets.

The headlines were printed in letters more than five centimeters tall, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the accompanying photographs were equally shocking.

“Even if people called me crazy, maybe I should have gotten more directly involved.”

Even Yoo Jae-won, who had lived through this once before, found the images devastating. The collapsed north tower of the World Trade Center was at least somewhat expected. The south tower had been damaged by falling debris—scored like the claw marks of a wild beast—but it had held. Thanks to CNN’s early collapse predictions, the number of dead and missing was significantly lower than in the original timeline.

The real problems were the Pentagon and the Capitol.

Both locations suffered far greater damage than before the regression. The Pentagon’s collapse zone was twice as large as it had been. Where only the outer western section had previously collapsed for about ten meters, the photographs now showed more than twenty meters of destruction. The increased scale meant increased casualties. Multiple deaths had been confirmed, and a major fire—fueled by jet fuel—was still raging and proving difficult to extinguish.

The strike on the Capitol was something that had never happened in the previous timeline. The hijackers had intended to target it, but the plane had crashed before reaching Washington D.C. This time, United Airlines Flight 93 had entered D.C. airspace without crashing. The military had scrambled fighters, but the decision to intercept came far too late. Only after Flight 93 was already over the capital and its target was identified as the Capitol did the order to engage finally come.

Worse still, the missile strike tore the plane in half. One of the large sections slammed directly into the eastern wing of the Capitol—the section housing congressional offices. Congress had been in session, so many members and staff were at work. Most had reached the underground bunker after the evacuation alert, but a significant number who remained in their offices were caught in the impact.

The other section fortunately crashed into the botanical garden behind the Capitol, causing fewer direct casualties, but the trees there caught fire and the blaze was spreading rapidly.

In exchange for saving the World Trade Center, the Capitol had been hit. While the total casualty count was lower than before, the scope of the attack had widened. The successful strike on the Capitol—something that had never occurred previously—left Yoo Jae-won unable to predict what new variables it would create.

The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt. He decided to focus on what he could actually do.

“Director Andrey!”

He called Andrey Park, director of the ID High Tech research institute.

“Yes, fortunately. Has the news reached Iraq as well?”

Andrey Park was currently in Iraq.

It was the U.S. military base in Iraq. Officially, they were there to conduct field tests of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠advanced communication technology. One of the Android Phone commercials aired at IDDC 2001 had featured a soldier who had been unable to witness his wife’s childbirth and was connected via video call instead. It had not been staged; it was real.

The U.S. forces in Iraq had requested the field test to verify whether Android Phones could function reliably in harsh environments. For that purpose, a large number of relay stations had been erected across Iraq.

Many people had asked why Iraq. If the goal was simply to test equipment in a Middle Eastern climate, there were far safer countries than Iraq. But Yoo Jae-won had chosen Iraq deliberately. While claiming it was to improve the welfare of deployed American troops, he had distributed Android Phones at low cost and personally built the relay infrastructure.

In South Korea’s conscription-based military, soldiers were still completely banned from using cell phones. The U.S. military, however, allowed personal communication devices. As a result, Android Phone market share among troops deployed to Iraq had reached 90 percent. In some operational zones, soldiers even preferred Android Phones over standard military radios because the phones had better connectivity.

The scale of the communication infrastructure ID Group had deployed in Iraq was enormous.

“What’s the status of the drones?”

“We may need to deploy them in actual combat soon.”

Director Andrey was the kind of person who understood ten things from a single word. The moment Yoo Jae-won mentioned preparing the drones, he immediately grasped their purpose.

He was correct.

Yoo Jae-won had installed communication relay stations in Iraq early on and supplied them to the U.S. military precisely in preparation for the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 attacks would ultimately end with the capture of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Of course, the aftermath of 9/11 would not simply fade away once bin Laden was caught. The United States after 9/11 would become an entirely different country.

At least with Al Gore—rather than George W. Bush—as president thanks to Yoo Jae-won’s intervention, there was a small hope that things might turn out differently. Still, the situation was far from positive.

In the previous timeline, it had taken an extremely long time to capture Osama bin Laden. This time, Yoo Jae-won intended to intervene directly and dramatically shorten that timeline. The key equipment required for that plan was the cutting-edge drone.

Just as PCs and smartphones had advanced nearly a decade earlier, drones had as well. However, while PC and smartphone technology had been largely made public—allowing the entire industry and user base to adapt rapidly—drone development was happening exclusively within ID Group, and only inside the High Tech research institute.

Thanks to his regression knowledge, Yoo Jae-won knew Osama bin Laden’s movements and possessed drones capable of tracking him. Capturing the man alive, something considered nearly impossible, was no longer a problem.

After ending the video call with Director Andrey—having checked on his well-being and the drones’ readiness—Yoo Jae-won fell back into thought.

“But how do I insert myself naturally?”

He needed to participate in the operation to capture Osama bin Laden, yet no matter how he looked at it, the scenario never felt natural. He had prepared many scenarios, but few of them felt convincing.

It might not seem like a big issue, but it carried significant risk. The 9/11 attacks would be scrutinized for decades. There would be congressional hearings at the government level and academic studies in the private sector. Everything would be examined under a microscope. If anything looked even slightly out of place, conspiracy theories—and formal investigations—would follow.

That was why Yoo Jae-won had responded to 9/11 in the most commonsense, least disruptive way possible.

“If necessary, I’ll do it.”

Yet after seeing the dark red flames erupting from the Capitol, his thinking had changed considerably. If necessary, he would intervene aggressively. That was his new resolve.

A few minutes after making that decision, an ID Talk notification chimed. Yoo Jae-won immediately turned on the television. The screen, which had been locked on CNN all day, showed President Al Gore staring into the camera with a rigid, almost mannequin-like expression.

The setting was different from usual. The room looked smaller. It appeared to be a makeshift stage inside a secure bunker beneath the White House rather than the regular press briefing room.

“Faster than Bush was.”

In the previous timeline, when George W. Bush had been president, the response to 9/11 had been pure chaos. On that day, the only parts of the U.S. government that functioned properly were the fire department and police. Everything else was confusion. Rumors had spread wildly, and anxiety had skyrocketed. It had taken Bush a long time to appear on camera with an emergency statement.

Al Gore, while not instantaneous, had appeared on television much faster and had managed to calm a frightened American public.

President Al Gore’s statement was unconventional from the very first sentence. Perhaps because he had spent so much time with Yoo Jae-won, he went straight to the point. The rest of his remarks were equally concise.

It was a short but powerful emergency address. Most remarkably, the administration had identified the perpetrators within just a few hours of the attacks—an unprecedented achievement made possible by the Prism system Yoo Jae-won had created.

The early detection of the hijacking plan and the extraction of the keyword “al-Qaeda” from the 9/11 attacks were both thanks to Prism’s formidable analytical capabilities. However, there was one absolute secret: the raw data fed into Prism had been deliberately curated by Yoo Jae-won himself.

No matter how powerful Prism was as an analytical tool, if the raw data was garbage, it could not produce accurate results. That was why Yoo Jae-won and Yeong-sik had used the Next Trend tool to compile detailed information on al-Qaeda into a database and fed it naturally into Prism, allowing the system to detect the threat in advance.

The Gore administration’s critical miscalculation had been assuming the hijackings were intended for hostage negotiations.

5:00 p.m.

“Everyone, go home. Given the circumstances, head straight back.”

Yoo Jae-won ordered his staff to leave for the day. He packed his own bag as well. Rescue operations were still ongoing in New York and Washington D.C., but no new information was coming in. ID Group had quickly restored order and was operating normally, so he felt comfortable leaving.

“Whew, it’s been a long day.”

Fatigue washed over him. During the original 9/11 attacks, he had been nothing more than a distant spectator across the Pacific. This time, he had been forced to handle countless invisible tasks behind the scenes. He wasn’t out there breathing toxic dust like the firefighters or diving in the Hudson River like the rescue divers, but the mental exhaustion was no less real.

“Already?”

The notification made the word slip out involuntarily. Only a few hours had passed since President Al Gore’s address, and now Osama bin Laden was appearing?

In the previous timeline, Osama bin Laden had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠personally explained his reasons for the 9/11 attacks in October 2004—three years after the event. Yet here he was, revealing his face on the internet less than a day after the attacks. It was an extraordinary development.

Yoo Jae-won immediately abandoned his plan to leave and sat back down at his computer, connecting to the livestream address where bin Laden was appearing. The video was nearly frozen—clearly an enormous number of people were trying to watch, many from locations with poor internet connections.

His voice, at least, came through clearly. He was speaking in English, so Yoo Jae-won could understand him without translation.

“Insane.”

The word escaped him again. Every nation in the world had been offering condolences after the 9/11 attacks and condemning terrorism. Even radical militant groups had issued statements denying involvement. Yet here was Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda, personally going live to confirm that he was responsible and spouting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all manner of twisted justifications.

Yoo Jae-won turned the stream off. Instead, he considered why bin Laden had chosen to appear so publicly and so soon. There was also a high probability that bin Laden had been behind the DDoS attack on ID Group’s data centers that morning. If true, it meant al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had planned not only the 9/11 attacks but also a simultaneous cyberattack to paralyze American computer networks—something they had never done before.

Confident in their internet capabilities, bin Laden had chosen to reveal himself directly through a livestream.

“Arrogant fool.”

For Yoo Jae-won, this was better than he could have hoped. The internet was his territory. He had been searching for a natural justification to participate in the operation to capture Osama bin Laden, and now he had one.

The Android Phone rang. This time it wasn’t a notification—it was an actual call.

“From Tiffany?”

It was Tiffany. Without hesitation, Yoo Jae-won answered.

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s going on? …When did this happen?”

During the call, Yoo Jae-won was stunned by the news Tiffany delivered. Her uncle, Jacob, was missing.