Yes, I Am Human (4)
"Hm?"
Just to authenticate that I was the real deal, I'd uploaded a photo — and within mere minutes I'd been forcibly ejected from the gallery.
The server had kicked me out.
"What the heck."
"Jeong-uk, something wrong?"
"The server crashed on me, sir."
"What kind of garbage post did you drop to get banned on the spot?"
The Department Chair asked with a playfully mischievous face. This from the man who had clearly, clearly heard me say the server had glitched.
I sighed. "No, the server kicked me, like I said. Also, Director — watch your word choice. Since when does a professor post 'garbage' anything?"
"What, am I not allowed to use young people's words? Our age gap's tiny, you know. I'm your generation, punk."
"You're turning forty the day after tomorrow, sir."
I lightly dodged the chop aimed at my forehead and tried the gallery again. Thankfully, the server appeared to have recovered right away. By the time I was back, the gallery administrator was already calling for me.
If you are there, please reply in the comments.
"Yes, I am Huamn" indeed. As I sat there staring at the error page, the Department Chair beside me let out a low whistle.
"Jeong-uk, what's wrong?"
"The server crashed on me, sir."
"What kind of shitpost did you drop to get banned on the spot?"
The Department Chair asked with a playfully mischievous face. This from the man who had clearly, clearly heard me say the server had glitched.
I sighed. "No, the server kicked me, like I said. Also, Director — watch your word choice. Since when does a professor post a 'shitpost,' exactly?"
"What, am I not allowed to use young people's words? Our age gap's tiny, you know. I'm your generation, punk."
"You're turning forty the day after tomorrow, sir."
I lightly dodged the chop aimed at my forehead and tried the gallery again. Thankfully, the server appeared to have recovered right away. By the time I was back, the gallery administrator was already calling for me.
Due to current server instability, please refrain from posting unless you are the Professor or in an emergency.
Professor, if you are reading this, we would be grateful if you could spare us a moment of your time.
Committing the sight of the administrator cleanly deleting a man into memory, I carefully began writing my reply.
Come to think of it, the players of Paranoid Institute had indeed been called Administrators.
Because of that, users of the game had developed a culture of addressing one another as "Administrator" as well.
Calling someone "Administrator" in a gathering place full of such people. The potential for confusion was, admittedly, quite high.
"Head Mod?"
At the unfamiliar word, I found myself about to push back — then paused. I recalled the explanation about "Head Mods" I'd been given recently.
"Ah, you mean someone like the Department Chair."
The Chair beside me flinched, but since I'd muttered it half for him to hear, I paid it no mind. I posted my reply at once.
The answer came back immediately. But below it, strange comments began exploding onto the thread.
"…?"
The reactions made no sense. Every single word I uttered was being loaded with layer upon layer of meaning, sparking wildly intense responses. Before long, the Head Mod's iron fist came down and swept every last one of them away.
My questions were more than one or two. Why had I become the Gallery Owner? And what was with these reactions? If my other account — Hippocrates — had been outed instead, this kind of welcome would have made perfect sense.
But Professor Lee Jeong-uk, far from being showered with hospitality by the gallery, would have deserved to get kicked the moment he stepped in.
Because of what I said on that public broadcast.
I had demanded the creation of WINy on the grounds that I couldn't trust the gallery's professionalism or reliability. Anonymous internet communities were far too dangerous a place to entrust human lives to. Looked at one way, it was a remark that must have scraped raw against the gallery members' pride.
Which meant this reaction was the opposite of everything I'd expected.
I packed every one of my doubts into a single sentence and asked.
Someone — presumably the Assistant Moderator, colloquially known as a "Sub-Mod" — had chimed in as well.
What a relief. Contrary to my fears, the gallery bore me not a shred of ill will. If anything, they were positively friendly.
That comment was the last straw. The replies that had come flooding back within seconds abruptly cut off.
I was staring holes into my phone, wondering whether something had happened to the Head Mod, when the Department Chair — who had likewise been browsing the gallery on his own phone — spoke up.
"Head Mod's taking his sweet time replying, huh?"
So he had been watching my conversation in real time.
"You know what a Head Mod is, Director?"
"Hey, I told you, we're the same generation? I'm only three years older than you."
"Look in a mirror, sir. You're seasoned enough to pass for a father of two."
"What was that?"
The residents who'd been eavesdropping on us in the corner of the department burst out laughing. The Chair whipped his head toward them.
"Hey! You two, no laughing! You're Internal Medicine anyway! Do a few more years of on-call after your military service and this happens to you in the blink of an eye! Any day now!"
"I'm a woman, sir." R3 Soyeon.
"I've already done my service, sir." R2 Song-woo.
"I'm the child of a decorated national veteran, so no army for me, sir~" — and me.
The three-pronged assault sent the Chair down in flames. "Tch… I'm still in my prime, okay… I got presbyopic eyes because I wanted presbyopic eyes, not because I'm old, okay…" As the two residents patted the shoulders of their despondent chief, my phone buzzed violently.
The gallery had sent me a notification. I tapped it, and there was the Head Mod — silent for so long — calling for me at last.
Following his instruction, I obediently returned to the gallery's home screen. There, a notice I'd never seen before was posted.
Castrato Medical Center (Resonating Echo: Unknown) — Survivor Sub-Channel Created (New!)
"Oho?"
Only now that I'd seen that notice did other things come into view. That sub-channel announcement was not the only one.
National Museum of Korea (Resonating Echo: Unknown) — Survivor Sub-Channel Created
Yongsan Park (Resonating Echo: Unknown) — Survivor Sub-Channel Created
5th Division (B033.3-KR0005/1) — Survivor Sub-Channel Created (Resolved. Channel slated for closure)
They're right, of course. Dedicated channels exclusively for people trapped in location-type Entities like these would genuinely aid survival.
Apparently the gallery was being run far more systematically and organizationally than I had ever imagined. It was the moment I realized how arrogant my assumptions had been — that they must lack professionalism, that they must be irresponsible.
Brief penance concluded, I entered the Castrato survivor sub-channel. The Head Mod's first post — clearly written for my eyes — was already waiting there.
This sub-channel exists for those trapped inside the Castrato Hospital Entity.
It is a channel for sharing rules and information discovered within the resonance site, and only survivors present at the site may post.
Anyone who posts deliberately false information or incorrect material within this channel may be permanently banned from both the channel and the gallery.
Furthermore, this channel will enforce a special rule found nowhere else:
All posts by [Castrato CV Prof. Lee Jeong-uk] within this channel shall be regarded as official, canonical Echo rules.
I pointed out the gallery's inefficiencies? When?
The question formed, but before I even needed to ask it, the Head Mod kindly explained.
Aha.
I revised my assessment of the gallery.
These people were far better than the government, weren't they? A hundred times, a thousand times better than those incompetent politicians who had spent an entire month bleeding taxes while taking commemorative photos.
Not that those people hadn't tried. The problem was that every time anyone produced an idea, it dragged on endlessly — this won't work because of X, that won't work because of Y, this one isn't perfect, that one has ambiguous lines of accountability.
When did I ever ask for perfect? One single attempt would have been nice.
It occurred to me that even if South Korea's administrative system ever returned to normal, I might well keep using this gallery.
The server must have been unstable, because no reply came for a while — then, belatedly, the Head Mod's answer arrived.
What is wrong with this person?
The enthusiasm was almost overwhelming — but compared to those indifferent politicians, it felt infinitely better.
Escape the hospital, and you still needed a home to come back to, didn't you?
Since I would be staying inside the hospital for the time being, guiding people through the apocalypse unfolding outside was something I had no choice but to entrust to the gallery members.
"Huh?"
Something in the conversation wasn't meshing. It felt exactly like that time Jihun and I had discussed an Entity's contents.
Just as I had back then, I went back to square one and carefully cross-checked what each of us knew.
Only upon reading that answer did I finally understand my own mistake.
Aha.
It wasn't all of South Korea that was doomed. It was only Yongsan — and our hospital.