A Place to Call Home
As I passed through the Monolith Gate, my vision went pitch black, and white text flickered to life.
> OK
> ...ATDT014XY...
> CONNECTING...
Beep-beep-beep-shhhhhh... Beeeeeeep...
An unrecognizable electronic tone.
I heard it every time I connected to the Internet, but I had no idea what it actually was.
It was a sound I had never encountered in my life.
Before I could search for an answer, my vision brightened, revealing the clear blue sky of Chungmuro.
“Another peaceful day,” a voice chimed.
Standing beside me was a girl with short blonde hair.
CC took the lead, stepping forward.
Normally, we would have headed straight for the guild, but today we were walking in the exact opposite direction.
Our destination was a business hotel not far from Chungmuro Station.
“Hurry up! She's waiting!”
CC scampered toward the hotel.
I quickly grabbed her before she could draw any unwanted attention.
“What is it?”
“Get inside the processor first.”
“Hmph. I don't want to.”
“I checked into a single room. Imagine what it looks like if I walk in with a kid.”
“I guess so. Besides, for us to pass as father and daughter, our... well, our faces are a bit too different.”
CC pointed at her own face.
“It's only because my avatar is a Goblin. If this were reality...”
Fine, fine. Let's just hurry up.
CC vanished from sight, leaving only the message behind.
As I stepped into the hotel lobby, the receptionist behind the desk called out to me.
“Excuse me, guest from Room 1303?”
“Yes, that's me.”
The employee hesitated for a moment, a slightly nervous expression crossing their face.
“Were you... not in your room early this morning?”
“I had some business to attend to and am just returning now. Is there a problem?”
“Ah... no, it's nothing major. We received a noise complaint from the neighboring room at dawn, so we knocked on your door, but there was no answer.”
“A noise complaint?”
“But since you weren't there, the neighbor must have been mistaken. Please don't worry about it.”
The receptionist bowed politely and returned to their work.
A noise complaint.
What on earth happened in my room while I was gone?
I quickened my pace, boarding the elevator and heading up to the thirteenth floor.
I tapped my keycard against the electronic lock, scanned my surroundings, and slipped inside.
“...Good grief.”
The room was an absolute disaster.
Snack bags, empty soda cans, and half-eaten convenience store bento boxes were strewn everywhere. A pair of dirty socks lay rolled up in a ball on the floor. The television was paused on a streaming service's home screen, and a strong scent of roses wafted from the bathroom, where the bathtub was filled with pink water—likely from a bath bomb.
And right in the center of this chaos, a little red-haired girl was fast asleep, sprawled out like a starfish.
“CP!”
CC, who had materialized her avatar again, leaped onto the bed with a soft thud and wrapped her arms around CP.
“Ugh... you're back...”
CP rubbed her eyes as she sat up.
Do AIs even sleep? Come to think of it, I had never seen CC sleep before.
“What took you so long... I was dying of boredom...”
“Mister is always a bit slow.”
“I was working. Unlike you kids, I actually have a job.”
I sat down on the single-seater armchair.
CC had retrieved a comb from somewhere and was busy taming CP's bedhead.
“People came by last night...”
“Last night?”
“Yes... at dawn... They knocked on the door... I stayed quiet, so they unlocked it and came in. When they saw no one was here, they left... It was a little scary...”
So that receptionist lied about not entering.
“They said they got a noise complaint from the room next door. What did you do?”
“I didn't do much... I just watched some movies.”
I picked up the remote and checked the TV.
There were several action movies in the watch history. When I hit play on one of them, the speakers—cranked up to maximum volume—blasted my eardrums.
“Damn it! No wonder the neighbors complained with the volume set like this!”
“Dynamic sound settings are essential for the full cinematic experience... I almost went to a real theater...”
“If you had just brought CP to Intra-Maetan in the first place, none of this would have happened, Mister!”
CC and CP locked eyes and nodded in unison.
I wanted to bring her along more than anyone.
But...
“What do you want me to do? There's no storage space left...”
I leaned back against the sofa and sighed.
CC and CP couldn't pass through Intra-Maetan's Monolith Gate on their own.
They would trigger the gate's firewall, sending out a massive alert that F was attempting an intrusion.
How did I know? I really didn't want to find out the hard way.
However, having a Quantum Processor (Item) changed the rules.
CP could be stored inside the Quantum Processor I had obtained from Kang Sihyeon's house. That way, she would be treated as an item, allowing me to carry her into Intra-Maetan.
Yet, she still had to remain on the Internet...
Because there was no room left in my prosthetic arm.
“Is there really nothing you two can do about the storage space?”
“No. We can modify and adapt the processing units and storage drives of a machine to fit us. Before you got the Quantum Processor that serves as my main body, I was using the CPU and SSD inside your prosthetic arm, compressing myself over and over again.”
“But right now, there's no room in your arm, Mister... because CC's Quantum Processor is already taking up the slot...”
“Can't the two of you just squeeze in together?”
“Do you think this is like two people sharing a single bed?”
“The personality data of the AC Series is quite massive...”
“Because we're high-performance!”
“With great power comes great storage requirements...”
CC and CP boasted proudly, noses held high.
I used to think they had the exact same face except for their hair color, but looking closely now, there were subtle differences. CC had a rounder, softer look, while CP's slightly drooping eyes gave her a sleepier, more relaxed impression.
Though they were equally cheeky.
“To bring CP along, we need another unified chip that combines storage and processing.”
“Even if you obtain my physical Quantum Processor in reality, I won't be able to use it like this... there's nowhere to plug it in...”
“It would be solved if you freed up some space in your Neck-Hub, though.”
“That's out of the question.”
The Neck-Hub was directly connected to my brain.
A simple item was one thing, but I couldn't store an AI's personality data there. If things went wrong, they could potentially control me through the interface.
After all, F controlled humans by infecting their Neck-Hubs.
“Ah, so you think we can't access your Neck-Hub unless you give us permission, Mister...”
“...What's that supposed to mean?”
“Or... how about cutting off your right arm and putting a prosthetic there too...?”
“That's a great idea! We can take one arm each!”
“What do you mean 'great'...”
“Anyway, leaving CP in a hotel forever is just too pitiful.”
CC hugged CP tightly as she spoke.
I agreed with that. Pitiful or not, a hotel wasn't a great environment. It was also incredibly annoying having to deal with the staff every time I entered.
“I'll look into expanding the prosthetic arm with a new chip. But until then, you'll have to stay on the Internet...”
There was one option.
But I wasn't sure if she would accept it.
I asked cautiously.
“...How about staying at Seok Hayeon's place?”
CP's face brightened for a split second before instantly clouding over.
It had been nearly a week since we met Choi Minseol.
Having severed their connection to their physical bodies, they had become permanent residents of the Internet while maintaining their egos.
Since that day, CP had visited their home a few times.
But in the end, she always returned to the hotel by evening.
“No... I really don't think I belong there anymore...”
CP mumbled, her voice trailing off dejectedly.
She already viewed herself as an intruder in that household.
Even if Seok Hayeon and Kim Hun had no such intentions, CP believed she would eventually become a source of discord once the baby was born.
Choi Minseol's gaslighting had been thoroughly effective.
“Why don't you just buy a house, Mister?” CC suggested.
“A house?”
“Yeah. You have plenty of money. And since your Neck-Hub has barely any storage... remember the Rank 1 guy's house? It was packed with items. If you have a house, you can store items there that you can't carry in your inventory.”
“A house...”
I had never even considered it.
To me, the Internet was merely a tool.
A means to find Choi Minseol and exact my revenge.
Once my revenge was complete, it was a space I would leave behind without a single regret.
Which also meant there was no reason to hoard my money.
“...Maybe I should. But I don't know anything about it. The purchasing process, residency registration, the common sense of this world... I have none of it.”
“Were you seriously worrying about that? We'll handle everything.”
“You two?”
“Yep. Relevant laws, culture, procedures... it's a piece of cake. Who do you think we are?”
“Humanity's greatest masterpiece, the AC Series.”
“Leave it to us. We'll find a nice place.”
CC and CP spoke with absolute confidence.
They looked like children and acted immaturely, but it was an undeniable fact that they were powerful AIs capable of going toe-to-toe with F.
At the very least, their understanding of the Internet's systems far surpassed mine.
“...Fine. I'll leave it to you.”
“Hehe, time to spend that lottery jackpot... Any conditions?”
“...It shouldn't be close to the city center. Somewhere secluded, if possible. A place where a fight won't draw F's attention like last time.”
“Are you planning to live in the mountains or something?”
“If there are no people... security will be terrible... I'll be scared by myself.”
“Just somewhere that doesn't draw attention. And it needs to have at least two escape routes in case of an ambush.”
“Why are you being so ominous... are we planning on getting ambushed...?”
“? Isn't it more unsettling not to have an escape route?”
CC placed a reassuring hand on CP's shoulder.
“Got it. We'll match your conditions as closely as possible.”
When I passed back through the Monolith Gate into Intra-Maetan, a sharp pain throbbed in the right side of my head.
There was no special reason for it. It was merely the standard computational load that anyone experienced when connecting to the intranet using their own brain.
However, for someone with average computational capacity, simply logging in rarely caused actual pain.
They would only feel a mild sensation, enough to think, Ah, my brain is working right now.
But as an E-Grade, I experienced sharp pain upon connection, followed by a high fever by the time the pain began to subside.
“It's been a while since I felt this pain...”
Lately, whenever I connected to Intra-Maetan, CC had been with me, handling the computations that my brain was supposed to perform.
Before the headache could worsen, I headed to the plaza and logged out.
After a brief moment of darkness, the cramped ceiling of my room, crisscrossed with pipes and cables, came into view.
The smell of gunpowder drifting in from next door tickled my nose.
I raised my left arm and called out.
“CC.”
No answer.
CC's personality was currently loaded into the Quantum Processor item, back in the hotel room on the Internet.
I left my room and knocked on the door next door.
A woman with taped-up glasses and dyed blonde hair—with dark roots starting to show—tied back in a messy bun cautiously opened the door. It was Lee Ha-neul.
“...What? I haven't blown anything up yet.”
“Did you just say 'yet'?”
Following the recent fire incident, Lee Ha-neul had been forced by the building manager and me to sign a pledge promising not to bring gunpowder into her home.
“I smell something, though.”
“Well, I have the ingredients before they become gunpowder. Like nitrates... liquid hydrogen... perchlorate composites... But since I haven't mixed them, it's technically not gunpowder yet...”
“I'm pretty sure I just heard several terrifying words.”
Lee Ha-neul treated me like a tax collector.
Neither she nor I had many places to go if we got kicked out of here.
I didn't know her full story, but buildings outside of Maetan's official jurisdiction usually attracted people with similar circumstances.
“...Just don't start a fire. I didn't come here to complain today.”
Lee Ha-neul, who had looked terrified a moment ago, brightened up instantly.
“Oh! You scared me! Why did you have to look so serious? What is it? Why are you here? Down for a drink?”
“I want to modify my prosthetic arm.”
“Your arm? Is it broken?”
Lee Ha-neul grabbed my left prosthetic arm and inspected it from various angles.
“We just installed that gun not too long ago. You don't like it?”
“I haven't even had a chance to use that yet... It's not that. Can you expand the processing and storage units?”
“Storage? Chips? Are you running out of space?”
“Yes.”
“What about your Neck-Hub?”
“My Neck-Hub is... full.”
Lee Ha-neul smirked mischievously.
“Geez, what on earth have you been up to...?”
Normally, people rarely filled up their Neck-Hubs.
Most data was kept on Intra-Maetan. The Neck-Hub was reserved for highly personal information, like one's avatar data.
If a Neck-Hub was full, it usually meant the user was storing data from places outside of Intra-Maetan.
Like the Garden, or the Cradle Cult.
“It's nothing like that... I just have a lot of data from the Internet...”
“Sure, let's go with that. So you want to expand another processor slot, right? I can do it. But shouldn't you resolve my request first?”
“Your request?”
“I asked you, remember? To bring me the trajectory calculation program for ballistic missiles. I modified your arm in advance as payment for that.”
Lee Ha-neul glared at me with narrowed eyes.
Faced with her flawless logic demanding fair compensation for her labor, I had only one response.
“...I forgot.”