The Ants' Panic Sell and the Monster Chip
With short selling pouring in and the panic-sold shares of retail investors raining down on top of it, Ontel's stock price seemed ready to plummet straight into the floor. But ever since the announcement of the optical semiconductor's development, the stock had surged — and now, contrary to everyone's expectations, its decline was proving remarkably contained.
▼ 29%
▼ 13%
▼ 2%
▲ 1%
…….
Apart from the first week or two — when the short report dropped and the concentrated exposés and attacks against the CEO of Limitless followed in its wake — Ontel's stock had simply been drifting sideways ever since. Watching it refuse to fall back to its pre-announcement price, people couldn't hide their bewilderment.
Strangely enough, Ontel's stock was holding steady at around $40 — roughly double the $18 it had traded at just before the surge. As the listless sideways drift stretched past a month, Nicholas's patience finally ran out.
"Why the hell!!! Why! Won't it drop!!!"
Nicholas Coldwell — Chief Investment Officer of Parquet Capital, the man who had first proposed and led this entire short operation against Ontel. By now, enough time had passed that he could have pocketed a fortune and been lounging on a luxury vacation in the Bahamas, yet here he was, still screaming at the Ontel chart floating smugly above him.
"Grrrrgh……."
Parquet Capital's total assets stood at roughly $20 billion.
The short position on Ontel, which had started at a modest $3 billion or so, had grown and grown until, before anyone noticed, it had swollen to $13 billion.
"Boss……."
"What now!"
Nicholas snapped sharply at his subordinate's call. And at his irritated reply, the employee gave a small nod, as if confirming what he'd already suspected.
"Faisal's pulling out of this one too."
"Those goddamn traitors……."
Countless hedge funds and prop traders had joined hands with Parquet Capital in the short operation. But with Ontel's decline dragging on far longer and far shallower than expected, they had begun leaving one by one — closing out their positions or trimming them down.
"What do we do?"
"……How big were the positions those guys were holding?"
"At the current price…… roughly $150 million."
"Shit! Fuck!!!"
Cursing spilled out of him uncontrollably. And no wonder — Parquet Capital, the very first to go short, was now thoroughly caught in the jaws of this operation.
The short position had entered at around $6 billion. But as the other short sellers exited one by one, their buybacks pushed the price up, and to keep it from rising, Nicholas had kept adding to the short — until it had ballooned to $13 billion.
"Boss…… something's wrong with this situation. We should cut our losses now, while we still can……"
More than half of the firm's managed capital was already sunk into the Ontel short position. Pouring that much money into a single stock was, by any conventional standard, outright madness — but Nicholas was long past the point of rational judgment.
"What? Cut our losses? You're saying that to me? Now?"
At the suggestion of giving up, Nicholas shot to his feet, his face flushing crimson. He marched right up to his subordinate's face, breathing hard, and demanded:
"Do you even know how much we'd lose if we liquidated the position right here?"
"Ah…… yes, I do."
"Then tell me. How much?"
"……Roughly $4.3 billion."
"That's right. $4.3 billion. And that's assuming we can even liquidate at today's price."
Factor in how far the price would climb in the process of buying back $13 billion worth of stock, and they'd have to swallow losses of at least $5 billion. Which meant one thing: the firm would be shutting its doors.
"Are you planning to send your clients an investment report telling them you torched 25% of their assets? And you think you'll find clients dumb enough not to pull every dollar they've entrusted to us? And you're telling me — right now, in this fucking situation — to give up? If we liquidate here, every single person in this room — you, me, all of us — is finished!"
The office fell silent in an instant at his reasonless bellow. Everyone stood frozen, eyes darting nervously, mouths clamped shut. Nicholas steadied his breathing, clawed back his composure, and spoke.
"……This operation must succeed. We've come too far to turn back now."
"But……"
"We just have to wait a little longer. The moment the SEC announces the results of its investigation into Ontel, the price will come crashing back to where it belongs."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Nicholas clung to the unshakable belief that if the investigators probing the various suspicions surrounding Ontel exposed the whole colossal, absurd fraud, this incomprehensible stock price would return to normal. He kept muttering to himself, like a man hypnotizing his own mind.
"Just wait for the SEC announcement. Once the SEC announcement comes out…… everything will be resolved."
It was almost a prayer — please, expose every last detail of Ontel's fraud.
Amid all the noise in the world, the Ontel campus quietly buried itself in the work at hand.
And right now, in this very place, a great and historic moment was unfolding.
"Good heavens……"
"I can't believe it…… it's actually possible……?"
"Impossible……"
A square chip smaller than a fingernail, resting on a silver metal package. Its shape resembled an ordinary semiconductor, but its precisely cut surface revealed a multilayered structure — smooth as glass, yet faintly shimmering with reflected light.
Vvvvvvmm.
As power flowed into the optical semiconductor within the purified vacuum, a colorless beam of light rippled to life, as if awakening. And then…… before long, the performance figures of the optical semiconductor appeared on the monitor.
Everyone who examined those numbers could only stare in stunned disbelief.
"Two teraflops of compute…… with a few dozen of these tiny chips, you could match the throughput of the most powerful GPU server in existence?"
"0.8 nanoseconds of latency? That's effectively real-time control."
"No memory bottleneck, and a 5TB/s data bandwidth between compute and I/O… that's not data transfer, that's just dumping data straight onto the metal."
"And with all that performance…… power consumption is 19.8W? That's laptop-charger territory."
"No heat buildup even at full load. We wouldn't even need a separate cooling system."
A monster boasting specs that devoured every semiconductor in existence and still had room left over. With not a single flaw to be found — a chip that, once released, would undoubtedly seize total control of the market. At the fact that they had actually created it, the entire campus erupted in cheers, as if on cue.
[ Hm. Not bad. You actually made something usable. ]
"Usable? Is that good enough for you?"
[ Oh, come on. It needs to hit exascale before it's even worth using. ]
"……What on earth was the world you came from like?"
[ Semiconductor tech especially. After the Singularity, once the Control Personas were created, the data and compute demands became absolutely astronomical. ]
Alex, with his technology so absurdly overpowered that even if it were realized in this era, no one could make use of it. Grumbling that it would have been genuinely useful if this were the year 2200, he trailed off into mumbles — and I spotted someone approaching, wearing an expression on the verge of tears.
"Mr. Kang……"
Boyle — the head of this campus, who had silently honored my every demand while managing his researchers on top of it. Whether it was sheer gratitude that the optical semiconductor had truly been made, his whole body trembled, and he could barely string his words together.
"You've been through so much, Boyle."
"You…… you truly……"
He seemed to have a thousand things he wanted to say, but no idea how to say them — his lips kept opening and closing. Watching him quietly for a moment, I spoke first.
"There's still a great deal ahead of us. The systems and facilities need a complete overhaul, we need to develop a way to mass-produce the new materials, and we'll need new software and system architectures built around the optical semiconductor…… Honestly, doesn't the work seem endless?"
The optical semiconductor had been created in barely two and a half months.
But that didn't mean development was finished. It was a single chip built by pouring out money without the slightest consideration of unit production costs. To mass-produce it, the manufacturing process would have to be established, and the equipment and facilities built and developed from scratch.
Of course……
With the answer key already sitting in front of us, that process promised not to take too long.
"Leave it to me, sir. We'll mobilize the full strength of this campus and have it in mass production at the earliest possible date."
Boyle nodded with the grim resolve of a general marching off to war. Before I could find a word to say, someone came up from behind and clapped me on the back.
"Hahahaha! That's our Mr. Kang! I never doubted you!"
"Kevin."
Unable to wipe the grin off his face, he spun around and around, then grabbed me and said:
"We're flying to California tomorrow! We're going to show this monster to those damn board members and make damn sure they see exactly who was right."
Kevin had shielded us like a sacrificial lamb throughout development, absorbing the board's relentless pressure and the SEC's investigation. With so much pent up inside him, his eyes blazed, and he looked ready to drag me to Ontel headquarters that very instant.
"I suppose we should. By the way…… you haven't forgotten our contract terms, have you?"
"Contract terms? Don't be absurd! Whether it's adjusting the royalty split or anything else — whatever you ask for, Ontel will provide the fullest cooperation and support."
I had asked for Ontel's backing across the board — far beyond a simple royalty adjustment — for everything I needed. And Kevin nodded as if there was nothing to discuss.
"Not Jonathan, not a single soul on that board — none of them would dare ignore your word! If you ever need our help or want a favor, just say so, no hesitation! Is there anything you need right now?"
"Not need, exactly. But there is one favor I'd like to ask."
"A favor? What is it?"
Kevin tilted his head, then seemed to think it over for a long moment before asking again.
"You mean…… you want to unveil this optical semiconductor in Korea…… is that it?"
"Yes."
"……It's not impossible, but may I ask why on earth you'd want to do that?"
"Well, some rather strange rumors about me have been spreading all over Korea. I've suddenly found myself branded a fraudster, you see. I'd like to set the record straight properly, and promote the company I built while I'm at it — so why not do it in Korea?"
"Announcing it in America would accomplish much the same thing, wouldn't it……?"
"Aw, where's the fun in that?"
"……Fun?"
Kevin clearly didn't follow. So I explained, quietly.
"Sometimes, when you buy a few stocks, you notice something. The big, serious stuff always seems to happen while you're asleep."
America moves the markets of the entire world. The heavy, market-shaking news always broke in the dead of night — the deep pre-dawn hours when Korea was off in dreamland — and blew my account to pieces. So I wanted to return that miserable experience with interest.
To everyone who had shorted Ontel.
"Just thinking about it is fun, don't you think?"