Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Scarlett & Byte Line
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Even two bodies wouldn't be enough.
Truth be told, it was something I'd dealt with plenty back when I was Nothing's main director.
"Team Leader! Looks like we messed with some code in the last patch. There's this mystery bug..."
Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to get a call at 3 a.m.?
At least here in America, that boundary was strictly respected.
America treated even a world-ending bug as an after-hours problem.
But Korea? Not so much.
"What the hell? Why's the patch taking so damn long? If you knew it was broken, fix it right away!"
Surprisingly, not a single Korean user grasped that the sluggish speed was the result of all-nighters starting at dawn.
Being a game director was never a cushy gig anyway, and Forgarden lived up to its reputation as no ordinary twenty-year-old game by throwing legacy code tantrums with every patch.
'Is this better than back then?'
Sitting glued to the computer for hours—eyes on the monitor, hands on the keyboard—every random thought under the sun was bubbling up.
"Take a break while you work."
Thud.
A cool iced Americano placed on the desk.
"Thanks, Scarlett."
"Huck's a critical component of Savior. Can't have you breaking down."
"Duly noted."
Her sincere joke snapped me back to reality a bit.
'Yeah, no way I'm dying before this virtual reality game gets done. Other stuff? Who cares.'
I was pulling these all-nighters precisely to play that virtual reality game for real.
It'd be the height of irony if I wrecked my health and couldn't.
"Did you get your annual checkup this year?"
"Luckily, nothing major came up."
"Well, you're still young enough to push it a bit."
To make that possible, I popped supplements daily and got full checkups every six months, no exceptions.
No time or desire for workouts, so this was my compromise.
Gulp.
I took a sip of the iced Americano Scarlett brought and leaned back in my chair.
"That's bad for your back."
"Cut me some slack. It's the comfiest position I've got."
"Sigh... Seriously, why not take it easy? What's so urgent?"
Her question made me pause for a second.
"Hmm... NexGen sent over finalized designs for the new CPU chipset, based on the blueprints I submitted earlier. I'm reviewing those..."
Intel's recently launched budget CPU, the Pentium 3.
It lived up to their top-dog status in the CPU world—a true masterpiece.
But...
'Our CPU's a full generation ahead of the Pentium 3.'
The current market duopoly—Intel and AMD—might take offense, but there it was.
Intel pushed deep pipelines and raw clock speed; AMD boosted IPC with beefed-up FPU and SIMD.
Beating both? Simple: combine their strategies.
The result was Savior's CPU, the Savior Core 1999.
0.18µm process, 1GHz clock, 12-stage dual pipelines, and every cutting-edge trick in the book crammed into a monster chip.
Still not satisfied, though.
The CPU for Savior's first console, the Nexus, needed to be at least one generation ahead of even that.
Hence my current ordeal, designing a CPU that wasn't even my major.
"Weren't you working on graphics card blueprints for 3dfx just a few days ago?"
"Doing both at once."
"Are you insane?"
Her wide-eyed stare hit home.
'If I told her I'm also tinkering with AI and the rendering engine, she'd have me committed.'
Seeing her fuming, I vowed silently to keep that buried.
"You're driving me nuts. Why handle everything yourself? You're the CEO now, not a dev."
"Once we're on schedule, my workload'll lighten up."
"If you say so."
Couldn't argue there.
My past life gave me a silver tongue; it'd be weirder if I couldn't talk my way out.
But I wasn't lying to her.
'Once AI hits, say, 2025 levels, I won't need to grind like this.'
Our collab with Professor Jonathan was accelerating that timeline massively, so just hang in there a bit longer.
Until then, though? This was on me, pain or no.
Otherwise, I might end up in my sixties before VR gaming was viable—a disaster.
"Speaking of, why're you still here? It's almost midnight."
"Oh, sure, Mr. Conscience. Do you have any idea how much grief your 'mission' is giving me?"
My mission?
Korea ops were wrapped, Savior Pulse had smashed 70 million units sold in its first year—record-breaking territory.
Couldn't think of anything extra I'd dumped on her lately.
Greg was dying managing the Korean factories, sure.
"Forgot about the hospital?"
"Ah..."
"Ah?! How many calls have I fielded from the U.S. and Korea? Ah?!"
"Sorry. Slipped my mind completely."
"Hoo... The fact that I believe you just pisses me off more."
I had nothing—nada—to say under her glare.
It jogged my memory of what I'd asked her a year ago at the Eclipse reveal.
"Could we swap political lobbying for building a hospital as a donation?"
She'd said it'd be tough but doable; politicians would warm to a donated hospital.
"Negotiations with the California governor succeeded. We're greenlit to build a specialized Alzheimer's care facility in Redwood City, where our HQ is."
"Thanks. You just solved a huge headache for me."
"Eh, the money was lobby budget anyway. Maintenance costs make dumping more cash now the smart play for a clean fix."
I shook my head at her words.
"Time you learned the real deal, Scarlett."
"Huh?"
Until now, only Professor Jonathan knew my true goal. But Scarlett deserved it.
We'd been at it long enough, and she handled so much in my stead—no need to hide from her.
"The Alzheimer's hospital will collect patient data."
"Data?"
"Risk management stuff: complications from long-term unconscious states, short- and mid-term brain/heart effects from meds, plus monitoring cognitive and motor functions."
"You aren't suggesting anything illegal...?"
"Absolutely not. That's why it's a donation hospital. We keep treatment free or near-free, get patient consent, and gather data."
Her face shifted to something I'd never seen—like she'd heard something wildly dangerous.
"Why... why that kind of data?"
"I'm building a virtual reality game. That data's essential for it."
"Virtual reality game? You mean VR?"
I shook my head.
VR concepts were already around even now, so she assumed that's what I meant.
"Full-dive virtual reality. Where users feel full sensory immersion, identical to reality. The real deal."
"Is that even possible?"
Even with me warp-speeding tech, full-dive was nowhere in sight yet.
For a non-expert like her, it sounded pie-in-the-sky—totally reasonable.
But...
"I have to make it happen."
She stared silently out the glass wall toward the president's office exterior.
"Hoo..."
After a long wordless gaze, she let out a deep sigh.
"Finally makes sense—your frantic vibe all this time."
"Did I seem that way?"
"You kidding? I thought someone had a gun to your back."
Can't see the back of your own head.
I hadn't noticed, but apparently I looked desperate to everyone else.
"Remember this?"
"What?"
"What I said when I joined Savior."
"Oh..."
Flashback to Scarlett ditching her lofty Sega marketing team lead gig for us nobodies.
"I don't do hand-me-downs. Too greedy—I want what I build."
Her bold declaration of intent to grow Savior with us? Unforgettable.
"That's the scale Savior deserves."
Her final words drew a smile from me too.
"Byte Line?"
New hire Jang Hyuk-jun at Oseong Electronics was, as usual after clocking out, scrolling communities for game news.
"The future is computers and the internet! To that end, our government aims to popularize computers and high-speed internet via national projects..."
IMF fallout from last year?
The new administration preached Korea's future lay online, pushing IT hard.
'Hey, thanks to that, I scored a cheap PC. Silver lining?'
Overseas pundits predicted a decade for Korea to recover from IMF, but we'd bounced back quicker than expected.
「Savior CEO Seon Woo-hyuk announced sequential investments totaling $4 billion (about 5.6 trillion won) to share in the pain of Korea's suffering citizens...」
The savior? IMF bailout plus Seon Woo-hyuk, now hailed alongside Yi Sun-sin and King Sejong.
'Impressive. Snapping up bankrupt Korean firms and keeping jobs? That's a patriot.'
While giants like Oseong floundered, his dollar-fueled acquisitions made him a messiah to Koreans.
Heck, one paper ran...
-Is Seon Woo-hyuk and Savior truly our saviors? Indiscriminately buying up struggling Korean companies...
A critical op-ed led to the columnist's house getting terrorized, his paper boycotted into a national apology.
Jang Hyuk-jun nodded at the post.
Savior's online chat app, Byte Line.
Couldn't call yourself Korean without it.