The Prosecution's Call

Based on history.

“Team leader, all preparations are complete. System, all green!”

“Okay. Everyone take your seats and stand by. This is the real thing now.”

At his subordinate’s report, Yeong-sik, seated at the head of the room, answered. He looked unusually tense. It was only natural. The biggest event for ID Group was about to begin.

The ID Developer Conference—commonly known as IDDC—was moments away from starting. His close friend and superior, Yoo Jae-won, was scheduled to deliver the main stage presentation in just three minutes.

Though it was an annual event, Yeong-sik always felt his nerves tighten at this exact moment. His responsibility during IDDC was to ensure that ID Group’s entire internet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠service ran with absolute stability. He oversaw the network.

In the past, he had simply managed the data center in Coyote City. Now, having proven his abilities, he had risen to the position of managing ID Group’s entire global network infrastructure.

The official title on his ID card read Supreme Network General Manager. It was an extravagant position for a twenty-six-year-old. Yet ever since Yeong-sik had taken charge of ID Group’s network, not a single major incident had occurred.

While other internet companies suffered data breaches from hackers and corrupted databases, ID Group’s network remained rock-solid. When he was promoted to Supreme Network General Manager, no one objected. Instead, Yeong-sik himself felt an enormous burden.

ID Group’s network was the largest in the world, and the number of users matched its scale. On days like IDDC, when traffic exploded, the control room had been on high alert for days.

This year was no different. Even after completing every possible preparation, he had to remain chained to the monitoring room like a ghost, watching the entire network status in real time.

“Concurrent users have surpassed five hundred thousand!”

“Streaming servers stable!”

The speed at which users were connecting was terrifying. Tens of thousands joined the main stage stream for IDDC 2003 every second. The rate at which traffic volume increased was equally frightening.

Starting with this event, they were supporting FHD resolution for streaming. The staggering 1080p at 60 frames per second consumed a massive 8 Mbps of bandwidth per user.

“Eight hundred thousand surpassed! Of those, one hundred thousand are connected in FHD quality!” the operator shouted, voice rising.

The numbers were monstrous, yet every monitor in the control room glowed green—indicating normal operation. This was thanks to their distributed server technology.

If all those people had connected to a single network without any safeguards, the servers would have crashed long ago. The administrators would have been scrambling to restore them. After all, just the one hundred thousand users on FHD alone generated 800 Gbps of traffic.

The reason the network remained unshaken despite such insane demand was the distributed processing technology. ID Group had divided the world into eleven regions. Countries with advanced internet infrastructure like the United States and South Korea were treated as individual regions, while Europe was grouped into Mediterranean, Northern, and Western zones.

Each of these regions had its own channeling system, allowing traffic to be handled efficiently. Yeong-sik himself had designed this multi-layered server architecture. While he couldn’t say Yoo Jae-won hadn’t helped at all, the young man had solved most of the critical technical challenges.

Up to 1.6 million is manageable!

That was why Yeong-sik could roughly estimate how many concurrent users the current network could handle. The problem lay beyond 1.6 million.

There were ways to maintain streaming stability even past that threshold, but they would be highly abnormal measures. The best scenario was to stay under 1.6 million. Yeong-sik shook his head.

The items his closest friend—and the developer he respected more than anyone—would unveil today were simply too monumental. To protect ID Group’s reputation for stable server operation no matter the circumstances, he could only do his absolute best.

As the announcement rang out, the main screen displayed the ID logo alongside the Android mascot.

“One million surpassed!”

At the same time, concurrent users broke the one-million mark. It was truly beginning now.

Yeong-sik steeled himself and silently cheered for his friend as the man appeared on screen.

“We’ve held many IDDC events, but today feels hotter than any before.”

Amidst the crowd’s cheers, Yoo Jae-won stepped onto the stage with a light joke to open his presentation. It wasn’t entirely empty words. Today, he had put more effort into his styling than ever.

Yoo Jae-won always wore suits for public appearances, but today he had gone the extra mile. His hair was styled in a sharp regent cut, heavily slicked with pomade. Normally he would have simply used wax, but this time he had clearly made an effort.

The attention that began with Real Camera had not cooled even months later. In 2020, even the hottest topics would lose public interest after a few days, but in 2003, once a fire was lit, it burned steadily like a traditional ondol floor heater.

“To all the passionate fans who came to the main stage in person, and everyone watching through broadcasts or internet streams—I, Yoo Jae-won, know better than anyone how long you’ve waited for today. So let me introduce it right away. This is the next-generation Android smartphone S3 that you’ve all been eagerly anticipating.”

Yoo Jae-won moved straight to the main topic after a brief greeting. He set aside explanations of technical achievements for later and immediately pulled the star of the show—the Android S3—from his inner pocket.

The main camera zoomed in on his hand. On the massive Infinity Screens behind and beside the stage, the Android S3 appeared in enormous detail.

Gasps and applause erupted from the audience. It looked like a red gemstone. The device shining with a ruby-like crimson glow was indeed the Android S3.

Until now, Android smartphones had followed metallic tones—gold, silver, black. They hadn’t been overtly flashy, but used subtle variations in depth and hue to create a sense of luxury.

In contrast, the S3 Yoo Jae-won produced glowed with a brilliant red, as if molten ruby had been poured into its body. At the same time, a promotional video for the Android S3 began playing on the Infinity Display.

Starting with ruby, emerald and sapphire tones joined in, bathing the main stage in beautiful, jewel-like light. The S3’s color theme was Ruby Red, Emerald Green, and Sapphire Blue.

The case material remained reinforced glass, but the special coating applied inside the glass was a new formulation. It was a color that previous technology couldn’t achieve. One of ID Group’s first partners, 3M, had finally succeeded in mass production, and it was being used for the first time.

Yoo Jae-won called it the Jewelry Series, while inside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ID Technology it was referred to as the RGB Series. The S3 had finally been revealed to the world.

Since tens of millions of Android smartphones were sold each year, 3M had poured long-term effort into developing the coating. They had ultimately secured the supply contract for the S3.

The texture was exceptionally refined, and the S3 displayed on the Infinity Screen sparkled like melted gemstones.

“It’s common sense that flashy exteriors often hide empty contents. But the Android S3 is packed full inside as well.”

The M4A1 processor was made by pushing the 120-nanometer process to its limit, yet it still fell short of absolute performance. Nevertheless, Yoo Jae-won did not forget to praise the S3.

While it was far below his personal standards, it was undeniably built with the best technology currently available. Moreover, within the limits of the hardware, he had managed to pack every possible innovation he could into the S3.

“Then, while actually using the device, I’ll show you the new features of the S3 that you’re most curious about.”

Yoo Jae-won’s demonstration began with turning on the S3. The power-on method was unchanged. Press and hold the physical power button on the right side for more than five seconds.

What had changed was the boot screen. The mobile Android operating system installed on the Android S3 had undergone a major version upgrade. The interface had also evolved to match the introduction of AI, giving the mascot Android robot a more sophisticated appearance.

After about twenty seconds of booting, the lock screen appeared. Instead of the previous “slide to unlock” screen, new text emerged.

“Slide to unlock” had been a monumental gesture that signaled the beginning of the smartphone era. It had pushed feature phones aside, sending them into the dustbin of history.

However, objectively speaking, “slide to unlock” offered almost no real security beyond preventing accidental activation. If fingerprint sensors had been combined with the touchscreen, only registered users could have unlocked it that way, but sensor technology hadn’t advanced that far yet.

Therefore, the Android S2 used PIN numbers or a minimum 3x3 dot-connecting pattern. It was a necessary choice for security, but it lacked the convenience of “slide to unlock.”

“Now, everyone can enjoy a far more convenient security system than slide-to-unlock, thanks to Face Key.”

After entering the PIN once during the initial boot, the phone could be unlocked instantly with Face Key without any touching. Yoo Jae-won demonstrated by smiling at the front-facing camera. The lock icon, which symbolized that the phone was securely locked, melted away with a single smile.

Technically, Face Key was far more difficult to implement than a fingerprint sensor, yet Yoo Jae-won had commercialized it much faster.

“This is all thanks to AI Eyes. Users of the Android S3 don’t need to manually launch the AI Eyes app to receive its support. Simply pressing the power button activates AI Eyes to assist the user.”

At Yoo Jae-won’s words, cheers and applause exploded across the main stage. In truth, most people who had come in person had done so primarily to see whether AI Eyes would perform as impressively as it had on the variety show Real Camera.

That was why, even as they cheered at the striking first impression of the Ruby Red color, their eyes had sharpened like hawks, waiting only for the real-world demonstration.

For them, seeing Face Key powered by AI Eyes from the very first unlock was nothing short of shocking.

“Some of you might be worried that if it unlocks by looking at a face, wouldn’t showing a photo also unlock it? So we prepared this.”

He pulled a second item from his inner pocket. It was a 1:1 scale, high-precision photograph of his own face, taken from a straight-on angle like an ID photo.

Holding the photo in his left hand and the locked Android S3 in his right, Yoo Jae-won pressed the power button again and focused the camera on the picture. The lock screen that had vanished instantly when faced with his real face remained stubbornly unresponsive to the photograph.

No matter how he tilted or turned it, the result was the same. After struggling with his own ID photo and the S3 for a while, Yoo Jae-won set the picture down and began explaining.

“Face Key does not identify a user’s face from a single still image. It recognizes video itself. The core of Face Key is analyzing that input video through over one million tensor core operations per second to determine if it matches the registered user. Furthermore, AI Eyes’ machine learning algorithm is always running, so the more you use the Android S3, the faster and more accurate the recognition will become.”

Yoo Jae-won spoke with pride. He had every right to. In 2003, he was the only person in the world capable of programming hardware of this era to deliver such performance. In fact, the Face Key programming couldn’t achieve the desired speed even in C++, so he had written the code in assembly.

“Hehe. Now that the lock is released, let me properly demonstrate the core app of the Android S3—AI Eyes.”

Yoo Jae-won then began the demonstration of AI Eyes that both the live audience and internet viewers had been eagerly awaiting. Image-based encyclopedia searches, text recognition for document creation and translation, and more. The performance of AI Eyes was even more overwhelming than what had been shown on Real Camera.

“Next, allow me to introduce N Pay, the payment service integrated with AI Eyes.”

Yoo Jae-won also unveiled N Pay, which had been meticulously prepared in Korea. He demonstrated how registering a card with AI Eyes and linking it to Face Key enabled payments far simpler than one-click services.

The only drawback was that AI Eyes required a constant internet connection, but aside from that, it was a truly perfect app.

“And one more thing! For users who consent to sharing their personal information, we will distribute a portion of the resulting value through N Pay.”

The performance of the machine-learning-based AI Gold depended on the quality of data collected. For Yoo Jae-won, who aimed to create a general-purpose artificial intelligence rather than one specialized in a single field, diverse user data was essential.

Before the regression, many internet companies had collected user data without offering any compensation. Even though they earned enormous profits from the AI built on that data, they monopolized all the benefits.

Yoo Jae-won did not want to do the same. From the beginning, he had decided to return a share of the profits to users who contributed data toward completing AI Gold. The method he chose was N Points.

It might start small, but once AI Gold spread throughout society and generated massive profits, the N Points distributed to ordinary users would become quite substantial. He was confident of that.

“To celebrate the integration of N Pay and AI Eyes, we are also launching a special event. For the next 100 days! Among users who make transactions online or offline using N Pay, we will randomly select 10,000 people each day to receive 100 dollars worth of N Points. Every 10 days, we will draw 1,000 people to receive 10,000 dollars worth of N Points. And on the final 100th day, one lucky person will receive 1 million dollars worth of N Points!”

It was an event that clearly showed Yoo Jae-won’s determination not to suffer even two failures with N Pay. He was pouring money into it without hesitation.

After passionately presenting the new technologies applied to the Android ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠S3—from AI Eyes to N Pay—Yoo Jae-won concluded by announcing the price. The base model was 899 dollars, the same as the previous generation, while the highest-spec model was 1,199 dollars.

It felt expensive, but not excessively so. Moreover, starting with this S3 generation, compatible phones would be released. ID Group would handle the premium line, while partner companies would fill the mid-to-low range.

Thus, the biggest event of IDDC 2003—the unveiling of the Android S3—concluded successfully. But the festival was not over yet. New products and titles were lined up to take the stage, including Fantasy Universe - Legend League, which gamers around the world had been eagerly awaiting.

At the same time.

“Great work, everyone!”

“Yes, yes. Everyone worked hard.”

People were exchanging words of relief and exhaustion. They were the staff of the ID Group Network Control Room led by Yeong-sik.

The moment Yoo Jae-won had taken out the ruby-red Android S3, concurrent users had hit 1.2 million. The upward trend had not slowed afterward. The peak came when he demonstrated the various features of AI Eyes.

It had exceeded the capacity limit of 1.6 million and reached 1.9 million—an absolute emergency. They had no choice but to block new FHD connections, borrow resources allocated for AI Gold’s machine learning, and take every possible measure. Thanks to that, they had avoided the worst-case scenario of a streaming server crash.

It had felt like a battlefield, but now that it was safely over, Yeong-sik could finally enjoy a moment of relief. Of course, IDDC would continue for several more days, but there wouldn’t be this many concurrent users again.

Ding!

Just as he was savoring the relief, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yeong-sik’s smartphone rang. Wondering what it could be, he picked it up and answered immediately. It was a call from his mother back in Korea.

He greeted her warmly and began chatting, but his face suddenly turned deathly pale. An unimaginable message had come through the receiver.

“What? Mom! What are you saying? The prosecution?”

The Prosecutor’s Office was looking for him. Yeong-sik, who had started his career early thanks to his exceptional computer skills and even displayed some charisma, saw his composure shatter at the word “prosecution.” His hands and feet began trembling before he even knew what the matter was about.