A Reason No One Could Ever Understand
[ Good heavens. What on earth is that dreadful word? Spies? ]
Jonathan, CEO of Ontel.
He seemed to have called the moment he received the report from the lawyer Kim Cheol-min, and his voice carried a hint of agitation as he spoke to me.
[ First AS Electronics comes sniffing around pulling their shady tricks, and now foreign spies are loitering around Mr. Kang? This is simply intolerable! ]
Jonathan fumed as if it were his own business — and in a way, it was. The people approaching me were after the core information behind the optical semiconductor that Ontel was staking its very survival on mass-producing, so he had no choice but to treat any threat to me with extreme sensitivity.
[ Mr. Kang, don't stay there a moment longer. Come over to the United States right away. No one here would ever dare approach you so brazenly. ]
Leave Korea and come to America, Jonathan urged. He had long been courting me with every enticement imaginable to keep me close to Ontel, but this time his tone was far more resolute and forceful.
[ We will thoroughly support every legal procedure required for the immigration of your family and relatives, Mr. Kang included. We can provide the land and facilities needed to run your company, your entire living foundation — everything. I will personally take responsibility and see it done! ]
In other words: just show up, and he'd handle the rest. If I ever expressed a desire to immigrate to the United States, it wouldn't be Ontel but the American government itself that would step forward with open arms to welcome me — of that I was certain. But I had no intention of doing any such thing.
"I appreciate the thought. But as I've said before, I have no intention of leaving this country."
[ ……. May I ask why? ]
[ Frankly, Mr. Kang, I find your decision very difficult to understand. ]
Jonathan couldn't comprehend my stubborn insistence on staying in Korea. And in truth, from his perspective, everything I was doing was profoundly irrational and inefficient.
[ Sir! No matter how I think about it, this is no place for the company — it's the middle of nowhere! At the very least, move to Sejong or Daejeon! Those places already have an established R&D industry cluster, don't they? ]
[ You can't seriously expect doctorate-level talent to give up the capital region and come work out here. ]
[ There's nothing but rice paddies and fields out there. We'd have to build the water and sewage systems, the electrical grid — the entire infrastructure from scratch. Do you have any idea how much that would cost……. ]
A village in Bug-i-myeon, a stretch of near-empty land with nothing to offer but soil.
Cheongju City had flagged it as one of the villages dying off from population decline, and had thrown every policy it could muster at attracting young residents to revive the area — all without the slightest effect. It was a village slowly fading away.
Amid everyone's protests, Limitless had been established in this backward region purely by my unilateral decision. And Jonathan simply could not understand it.
[ Even the staff from Ontel Korea, whom we provided, suggested securing a site in Seoul or the capital region — but I hear Mr. Kang insisted strongly on choosing this location instead. Why on earth would you make such a difficult decision? ]
With an easier, faster path plainly available, my choice seemed to him like taking the long way around for no reason. But I could guarantee one thing: not a single person living in this era could truly understand what I was doing.
Because…….
This was a decision I could only make because I had already glimpsed the future that would unfold across this country.
— Entry into ultra-long-term economic stagnation driven by shrinking domestic markets and declining export competitiveness
— Full onset of population decline from collapsing birth rates; large-scale regional extinction
— Deepening generational income inequality; political chaos and frequent civil unrest from internal division
— Launch of expansive, aggressive, unrestricted mass immigration policies
— Failure of cultural and ideological assimilation with immigrants; accelerating social disorder
…….
— Surprise invasion by the hostile nation, the North Korean People's Republic. Outbreak of the Second Korean War
— Defeat of the Republic of Korea. Establishment of a unified peninsula government
— Formal annexation as a member of 'The Empire'
Information concerning the Republic of Korea, stored in Alex's database.
A report supposedly written in 2125 by a certain nation belonging to the so-called 'Union' and declassified in 2155. Its contents, while slightly less shocking than the first time I had examined them, were still deeply disturbing to read through again.
A future Republic of Korea awash in every conceivable catastrophe.
I could trace the desperate struggles of the people of that era as they flailed against the countless social problems born of an already low birth rate, trying somehow to solve them and survive — but at the end of the report, it was clear that all of those efforts had ended in failure.
A massive war erupting on the peninsula yet again in the year 2100.
The future Republic of Korea, worn down by prolonged economic stagnation, population collapse, and endless social strife, would be helplessly defeated. And then…… as a member of 'The Empire,' by around the year 2600, it would become one of the principal perpetrators of the atrocity of blowing up this blue star called Earth.
That was why I could not leave the Republic of Korea — if only to prevent that horrific future.
'But I can't exactly explain that as my reason…….'
If I went around telling people the real reason, I'd deserve whatever came to me when they had me committed to a psychiatric hospital on the spot. It was an utterly preposterous story no one could possibly believe, so I gave a wry chuckle and answered Jonathan.
"Well…… let's just call it a grand, magnanimous decision for the sake of humanity."
[ ……? ]
Jonathan clearly hadn't understood a word of that. But there was no need to explain any further, so I wrapped up the call in a perfunctory manner.
"I'll be careful to make sure nothing you're worried about comes to pass. If a situation arises where I need help, I'll contact you again. We can discuss relocating the company seriously then."
Not that such a situation would ever come, of course.
[ That Jonathan fellow is absolutely desperate to drag you off to America, Grandpa. ]
"I suppose so. He has no idea what money-making technology might pop out of me next, so of course he wants to keep me as close as possible and watch me carefully."
Alex seemed to have instinctively caught the indescribable scent of money radiating off me. I'd heard he was so enthusiastic that he'd been singing my praises to American government officials, insisting I was talent they had to recruit by any means necessary and that the state should actively court me into immigrating — but to me, who couldn't have cared less, it was nothing but a burden.
"By the way…… did you identify all the spies?"
[ Not perfectly, but roughly, yes. ]
Alex gave a light laugh at my question and snapped his fingers.
Instantly, a list of dozens of names materialized before my eyes.
The spies circling me like hawks, waiting for their moment.
Finding information on these people hadn't been particularly difficult. This era's security systems had no corner Alex couldn't infiltrate.
But that didn't mean I could go around telling NIS agents that I'd cracked the intelligence databases of multiple nations and dug up the identities of everyone targeting me. So Alex had produced the list of their personal information in a rather crude way — backed by 'plausible' evidence.
[ It's compiled from photographs captured by the CCTV cameras installed in the company building and the surrounding area. I filtered out only the individuals showing abnormal behavior — repeatedly loitering nearby or suspiciously surveying the surroundings. ]
[ I also cross-referenced it against data from partially opening the intelligence databases of various countries a while back, so it should be mostly accurate. I deliberately mixed in a few ordinary people, so no one will get too suspicious, either. ]
"Hmm……. That's convincing enough."
They might find it a bit fishy, but at this level it was more than sufficient — the NIS would handle the initial screening of the flies buzzing around me on their own.
After handing the compiled evidence over to Section Chief Yang In-ho, I could finally turn my attention to preparing for the next project.
"Alex, where did we leave off last time?"
[ We were downgrading Robotoby Company's compact battery to a level that's realistically achievable. The theoretical framework is more or less complete, and I've fabricated plausible experimental data. All that's left is finishing the prototype design. ]
Separate from the construction of Limitless's new laboratory, I had temporarily rented a lab in the Sejong research industrial complex to conduct my personal research. Since I hadn't yet properly recruited research staff, I was effectively its sole user, though I was running the project while maintaining close exchanges with academics in the relevant fields.
[ Oh, that reminds me — because of the experimental data you sent over, that professor, Hwang Byung-joon or whatever his name is, has been emailing nonstop. ]
"Has he?"
[ Yes. He's in an absolute panic, saying that at that level of performance, the charging capacity would be at least five times greater than the solid-state batteries currently in development — enough to lay waste to the entire industry? ]
The 2200s. A global corporation famous for having all but monopolized the android and drone markets. Robotoby Company.
The Vera-tian Battery this company had used exclusively was built from Vera-tian, a new material of their own development, and boasted staggering capacity, formidable stability, and absurdly fast charging times and energy efficiency.
"So even a minuscule amount produces that kind of efficiency……. Remarkable."
[ Vera-tian really was a revolutionary new material for the battery industry. Even in the era I come from, it was an indispensable core material used across countless fields. Though plenty of next-generation batteries with even better performance did come out later. ]
Unlike the optical semiconductor, Vera-tian remained in active use well into the 2600s.
Implementing it had given me considerable trouble, but the raw materials weren't particularly rare, so in a very small quantity, I had succeeded in synthesizing the new material on my own in the laboratory.
Click.
A gray crystalline structure sealed inside a small flask.
Gazing quietly at the Vera-tian I had stored away to send as a sample, I deliberated.
"So…… who would be the best partner to commercialize this with?"
Aerospace, space, robotics, electronics, defense…… any industry that used batteries would have no choice but to come running, salivating over this item.
I briefly weighed who I should approach and on what terms I should propose the deal for this business venture that countless parties would surely lunge at clutching fistfuls of cash — and before long, I had made my choice.
"Sir. You called for me?"
Cheol-min knocked and entered at my summons.
He must have been in a meeting about the new Limitless headquarters until just moments ago — his arms were laden with documents stuffed full of thick blueprints.
"Ah, do you happen to know anyone at KG?"
"KG……?"
"Hmm……. One of my law school classmates has worked at KG, I believe. Why do you ask?"
"Could you reach out to them and set up an introduction for me?"
"……. An introduction?"
Cheol-min asked with a bewildered expression, as if to say, where did that come from?
To him, I replied with a faint smile, as if it were nothing at all.
"I was thinking we might do a little business together with them."