A Play of Fake Families
> Logging out...
> CONNECTION LOG OUT
The black screen signaling the logout from Intra-Maetan faded, and the familiar ceiling of my room came into view.
“Ugh...”
I placed my right hand on my forehead to cool down my feverish head.
A burning heat radiated against my palm.
It was a fever and fatigue I hadn't felt since meeting CC.
It's been a while. Spending an entire day relying solely on my own processing power.
I turned my head to look at my left hand, which had taken a day off today.
“Hello,” Yeeun greeted me, bowing her head.
She looked visibly more stable compared to last night.
Yeeun was sitting there, her fingers tightly interlaced with my prosthetic left arm.
To anyone who didn't know the context, it would have looked like a highly dangerous scene.
“She says your left hand smells like you, mister.”
What?
The index finger of the prosthetic arm tapped Yeeun's hand repeatedly, as if hitting her.
What?! Hey! I told you that was a secret!
“She also said that even if there are no shower facilities, you should wash more often. And she said it's a bit funny how you act all cool when you actually have the personality of a kid.”
Geez, I told you not to say anything...
The message window trembled as if CC was embarrassed.
“You managed to have quite a conversation with a left arm that can't even speak.”
“We talked in ternary code. One finger for yes. Two for no. Three for in-between. We talked the whole time you were working, mister.”
“But I guess the magic of your left hand has to end now. I have to go out.”
Yeeun reluctantly untangled her fingers.
I wiggled my left fingers one by one, checking their functionality.
“Are you... going to get some sleep? You haven't slept a wink since yesterday. You can use this bed if you want.”
She slept a little during the morning... but she kept waking up. She must still be terrified.
Yeeun shook her head and said quietly, “I have to go to work.”
Evening comes quickly in Maetan.
Because of the high walls and towering buildings, the sun sets early.
Still, it wasn't so dark that it was unlivable.
A Maetan citizen's real day begins in the evening, when they log out of Intra-Maetan and head to their second jobs.
If anything, they had to worry about light pollution from the vertical farms installed on every floor of the skyscrapers.
But that was only true for the center of Maetan, where people actually lived.
On the outskirts of Maetan, right beneath the walls, there weren't even streetlights. It was pitch black.
The only sources of light were the oil drums being burned by sketchy groups gathered here and there.
“Hyung-nim! Over here, sir!”
Someone popped out from the crowd warming themselves by the drum fire.
Even in the dead of night, he was wearing sunglasses and a mask, making him hard to recognize, but his distinct tone and voice immediately gave away that it was Hee-cheol.
Beside him stood a man with a bruised eye, looking thoroughly intimidated.
“The cult is just up ahead, sir. I'm gonna find out what the hell those bastards did to steal all our customers today, ain't I?”
“What's with the sunglasses?”
“Those bastards know my face, don't they, sir... If a competitor comes scouting, it'd be a bit awkward, wouldn't it, sir?”
Does he really think that's going to hide him? He's clearly a smart guy, but...
I gestured toward the bruised man next to him and asked, “And who is this?”
“They say you can't get into the cult without a member's recommendation, don't they, sir? This is the friend who's gonna introduce us to the cult today. Take good care of us, okay? Friend?”
“Y-Yes, sir!” the bruised man replied, snapping to attention.
It seemed some sort of negotiation and agreement had taken place between the two.
“Let's move, sir.”
We headed toward the cult along the wall.
The cult was using an entire four-story building attached to the wall.
At the entrance stood a man in white Buddhist robes guarding the door. The bruised man stepped forward to introduce us.
“Ah, you've come for a trial initiation. Thank you for making the difficult journey, lost sheep. Our Cradle Cult welcomes you.”
The monk pressed his palms together and bowed.
It was brief, but I caught a mocking smirk directed at Hee-cheol.
We followed the monk inside.
“Ho.”
Though the building looked dilapidated from the outside, the interior resembled a solemn religious sanctuary.
My first impression was that it looked like a church due to the stained glass, but as we approached the altar in the center, I saw two golden stone lions with their mouths wide open on either side.
They held crosses in their mouths, and their pedestals were shaped like lotus flowers.
The walls were covered in bizarre paintings.
A man who looked like Jesus was smiling benevolently on a lotus flower, his fingers pinched into a circle.
Beneath it, it read: 'Nirvana and Salvation are the same path.'
Hee-cheol whispered to me, “They look like real religious folks, sir.”
“Would real religious folks run on a membership-only basis?”
“True that, sir.”
In the past, there were many religions that had strict rules for initiation.
Ahem. Since when does an AI butt into human conversations to show off its knowledge?
This is what Yeeun's father, Kim Chang-gyu, looks like.
A gloomy-looking middle-aged man's face appeared before my eyes.
Since the data in Intra-Maetan is outdated, he'll probably look older now. Before the war, he was an AI expert. Specifically, he's regarded as a first-generation developer who advanced Korea's AI industry—which had fallen behind other countries—by founding the basic theory of the KLLM model, which evolved Korean language models.
Several newspaper articles came to mind. Though I didn't actively try to read them, a few headlines that CC had highlighted on her own caught my eye: 'Success in Developing Korean Artificial Intelligence', 'Korean-Based Thinking'.
It looks like he had a rough life after the war when AI became humanity's enemy. And... his Computation Grade is also E-grade. He must have suffered a lot.
Computation Grade does not scale with intelligence.
Even if someone is highly intelligent, their Computation Grade can be low, and conversely, someone with intellectual disabilities can possess a Computation Grade of A-class or higher.
“Our cult aims to find peace at the boundary between this life and the next. To prevent you from growing weary of reality, we allow you to experience the land of happiness and peace that awaits at the end of this life,” the monk leading us said.
Passing the lobby with the altar, rooms labeled 'Confessionals' lined both sides of the corridor.
“They're probably private rooms, sir,” Hee-cheol, who ran a similar business, said. He explained that they were partitioned off so customers could enjoy their private time undisturbed.
Peeking through a peephole in one of the doors, I saw people sitting on sofas with USBs plugged into their Neck-Hubs.
Every single one of them looked blissfully happy.
Hee-cheol, sticking close to my side, whispered, “When you're connected to a Neck-Hub, your body doesn't move, but your facial expressions change based on your emotions at the time, sir. It's also a metric to judge if something is going wrong in the virtual world.”
Facial muscles are voluntary muscles that we can control at will, but when strong emotions trigger the brain's limbic system, signals bypass the motor cortex and go directly to the facial muscles. That's why people can't hide their emotions.
The monk guided us to the confessional at the very end.
“Please experience what our cult strives for in here.”
We split up and entered our respective confessionals.
The confessional was a cramped room containing nothing but a single sofa.
Suddenly, the room where field agents logged in during my first out-of-office mission came to mind.
“Once you enter, you will find a heart-shaped glass tube. Place your hand on that glass tube and earnestly picture the person you wish to meet.”
I connected the USB cable to my Neck-Hub and closed my eyes.
> ATZ
> OK
> CONNECT 9600
> Connecting to the Cradle Cult's Room of Paramita...
> Welcome, Lost Sheep No. 1125.
Along with the darkness, strings of text whose meaning I couldn't decipher scrolled past.
A moment later, my vision cleared, and a white space unfolded before me.
I had connected to the private server run by the cult.
In the middle of the endless space stood a human-sized, heart-shaped glass tube, inside of which colorful petals were shimmering.
The green face of my Goblin avatar was reflected in the transparent glass.
“He said it was heart-shaped, but it's literally a Valentine's heart. Wait, I've seen this somewhere before...”
It's an Aerial Element Fixation Device. I used one when I made your avatar.
“Ah.”
I remember now.
I saw it when I bought that cursed avatar that ripped 12 million Maetan Points out of me.
It was originally a tool that measured brainwaves to generate an ideal avatar. This one is larger than the ones in Maetan, and... well, its performance seems a bit lower, but... it seems to have a similar effect. Why is this here?
“Do they use it to create someone's ideal type and have them interact with it?”
A few specific uses crossed my mind, but I kept them to myself.
“Are other people connected to this private server too?”
Yes. I can see a massive amount of traffic moving through the Aerial Element Fixation Device. Once you connect to it, mister, I'll infiltrate it and search for Kim Chang-gyu.
“Alright.”
I placed my right hand on the Aerial Element Fixation Device and closed my eyes.
“He said to place my hand on it and think of the person I want to meet, right? The person I want to meet... I don't really have anyone.”
I felt data flowing through my right hand.
They say this flow of information isn't an actual sensation, but merely an illusion perceived by the brain.
A moment later, a flash of light burst behind my closed eyelids, and I slowly opened my eyes.
“Ah.”
An exclamation escaped my lips without me realizing it.
The short-haired girl sitting in front of me handed me a piece of pound cake she had pulled from a combat ration package and said:
“What are you doing, Oppa? Hurry up and eat.”
The left hand that handed me the pound cake was shimmering with silver metal.