The Bio Device
"Hmm. Pretty beat up. Six hundred credits."
"Hey, it might be old, but I've kept it maintained on schedule. Can't you see the oil I just put on it?"
"Seven hundred."
"Eight hundred."
"Seven-twenty. Take it or get lost."
"Tsk. Fine. Hey, kid."
Bargaining like a regular who'd been coming for years, Jincheon drove the price up and had Kunlo take the payment for him. Only people with Bio Devices could use credit accounts, and in this world the currency was unified under a single electronic standard: Credits.
There was no paper money, no coin. If you insisted on dealing in physical goods, barter was the only option left.
Having sold the bike for seven hundred twenty credits, Jincheon and Kunlo stepped out of the vehicle shop.
I still don't know what one credit is actually worth, but I'll figure that out once I get a Bio Device implanted.
"Mister."
"What."
"How did you just bargain like that?"
Kunlo, his wounds treated with the medicine they'd found in the hunters' settlement, asked in genuine bewilderment. Jincheon had no knowledge of this world—how had he managed to haggle at all?
"Merchants always lowball anything whose price depends on condition. First face they don't recognize, they start at a hundred percent off. If I actually knew this world's market, I could've pushed it higher."
Jincheon answered simply and allowed himself a faint smirk.
"No matter how far the age advances, no matter how different the species—people are people wherever you go. Heh."
Even in a future world he could never have imagined, human nature turned out to be the same. The realization left him more at ease than before.
"That aside."
Jincheon took in the faces of the villagers. Every one of them looked dark, heavy. Children, adults—smiles were almost nowhere to be found.
"Is there a reason almost nobody's smiling?"
"Of course there is. Those Zabalcan Empire bastards ruined our lives."
"The Zabalcan Empire? Why?"
The question was all Kunlo needed. The anger he'd been holding poured out at once.
"Those sons of bitches only treat their own people as citizens. Every other race is just slaves to them."
The Zabalcan Empire was a militaristic state that still clung to a rigid caste system. Zabalcans born with horns were recognized as noble blood, and the entire imperial family took pure-blood "work" seriously enough to preserve those horns at any cost.
The real problem was that they believed—without a shred of doubt—that they were the greatest race in the cosmos. So they conquered other species' planets by force of arms and set about turning the populations into slaves.
"Then what about the people living out here?"
By Kunlo's account, everyone here should already have been enslaved and put to work. Yet outside the walls—a zone that was lawless in all but name—they had built a society of their own.
"It's the slave district. They didn't want to live in the same place as filthy slaves like us, so they walled the zones off."
"Huh."
"Even going inside, you're only allowed through when there's work to do. Surveillance drones follow you the whole time."
The more Jincheon listened, the more it sounded like a nation that shouldn't be able to function at all. Technology had probably made this kind of tyranny possible. The stronger the weapons, the more advanced the surveillance, the easier it became for rulers and the powerful to crush any resistance.
Whether it's arrogance or confidence, I don't know—but they said an alliance was formed just to stand against the Zabalcan Empire, so the empire must have real strength.
That, too, was a problem that would become simple once he had a Bio Device implanted.
"Here we are."
Unlike the other buildings, this one was clean, refined metal. Two guards in matching black full-body armor stood watch, holding rifles of a different make from anything the hunters had carried.
A soft electronic hum—
Through the transparent automatic doors, Jincheon stepped inside and felt a pleasant coolness wash over him.
Air conditioning. First artificial chill I've felt in a long time.
Feeling the convenience of science in his own body made the moment oddly moving.
Meanwhile, an amphibian-faced employee who had been playing something game-like on a holographic window hurriedly closed it.
"Welcome to Teltanic. Is this a new implant, or a re-implant?"
"New."
"I see. Shall I show you the catalog?"
Jincheon glanced toward Kunlo.
"Basic model, please."
"That will be two hundred fifty credits. Payment in advance."
Kunlo brought up a hologram crowded with numbers in front of him, tapped the screen several times, entered 250 into the small window that appeared, and finally dragged the window across to the employee as if handing it over.
"Here."
"Confirmed."
Watching a frog-like face and tongue speak so fluently filled Jincheon with a strange fascination—and with the thought that every one of his questions was about to be answered, a quiet excitement rose in him.
"Hm?"
The employee who had just taken the payment tilted his head.
"Sir, you said this was a new implant, correct?"
"Yes, that's right. This man here is the one receiving it."
"Grrk… my apologies."
The employee had assumed Kunlo was the customer. The idea of an adult who had never received a Bio Device was simply unthinkable. When Kunlo used his own device to transfer the credits, the contradiction had registered—and he'd asked. He erased the doubt just as quickly and focused on the work in front of him.
"New customer. Basic implant."
"Please have a seat here."
The employee gave the order to a colleague of the same species further inside. Jincheon sat in the chair the preparing staff member indicated.
The employee produced something like a power drill with a hollow center and fitted a translucent capsule filled with green liquid into the empty core.
A pistol-shaped injector?
"This will sting a little. Don't move."
The employee readied the gun-form injector, issued the warning—
and pulled the trigger against the nape of Jincheon's neck.
Interesting. Tiny foreign particles are gathering at the back of my neck.
They were so fine that he felt no discomfort at all in ordinary movement.
"Done. Biometric data is being registered—please wait a moment."
While the employee went back to his own business, Jincheon was already looking at a new world.
So this is a Bio Device.
Windows began rising across his retinas like an augmented-reality overlay. First, centered in his vision:
A little time passed, and icons began to appear in the corners of his vision the way desktop shortcuts once had. If that had been all, he wouldn't have been particularly surprised. Back in the twenty-first century, America had already tried something similar in the form of glasses.
The problem then had been that you had to wave your hands to flip windows, and the display itself blocked your sight—commercialization had been nearly impossible.
What Jincheon was seeing now was nothing like cramming everything into a narrow pair of lenses.
I can move the screens, shrink them, enlarge them—all through thought alone.
Remarkably, every piece of augmented reality in his vision answered to his will: dismiss, reduce, expand—entirely at his command.
When biometric recognition finished, a detailed first-use guide appeared, congratulating him on his Bio Device and walking him through opening an account and connecting to the network. In this world, first implants usually went to children just old enough to think for themselves, so the instructions were extremely thorough.
Account first… wait. That fast?
In Korea, opening a new account required identification to prove who you were. Here it was almost absurdly simple. Choose a bank, enter an ID, done. He hit create, and the system reported that biometric data had been registered—and that was the end of it.
> Biometric registration complete.
> Credit account created.
> Identity lock: BIOMETRIC ONLY — no password required.
Because it uses biometrics, there's no need for ID cards or passwords. Convenient.
That also meant that even if someone forcibly removed another person's Bio Device and tried to use it, a mismatch with the originally registered biometrics made it useless. And if a device broke and you received a new implant, remembering your ID was enough—the biometrics would confirm you were the same person.
While he was at it, Jincheon opened a Galaxy Network connection as well, and a message confirmed the terms.
At first he had no idea what that warning meant and tilted his head; after reading it carefully, he understood.
Like playing a game whose servers are overseas from Korea and getting lag?
A message sent on the same planet arrived instantly. One sent to an outer planet in the same system took two to ten seconds. One sent to another star system stretched, depending on distance, from a few minutes to tens of hours.
Other questions surfaced, but Jincheon decided he could learn them gradually through the Bio Device itself.
Take it slow. What I need now is time.
Unlike his younger years, when a clear reason to grow stronger had driven him to race ahead, the Jincheon of now—complete in every respect—had no reason to run.
As a final check, he brushed the foreign particles gathered at the back of his neck with a thread of Tushinryeok. Fortunately, nothing went wrong.
"Business is done. Let's go."
"Yes."
Outside the shop, Jincheon voiced a question that had just occurred to him.
"How did you get a Bio Device implanted, then?"
"Dad had it done for me before the war started."
"Hmm. Cheaper than I expected."
"Bio Devices are cheap to begin with. Living without one is unthinkable."
That made sense. Credits were electronic currency—without Bio Devices, the flow of money itself would seize up.
"Hm?"
In that instant, Jincheon felt killing intent approaching from the direction of the village. And that killing intent was swelling as if it might erupt at any second.
"Follow me."
"What?"
"No time to explain."
At the seriousness in Jincheon's eyes, Kunlo hurried after him.
A heavy blast shook the air once they had put some distance between themselves and the village.
Then came the sharp, metallic rattle of automatic fire, and screams rose with it.
Looking between the buildings, Jincheon saw people of mixed species in mismatched clothes locked in a firefight with soldiers in full body armor.
"What the hell is this?"
"Those people… they're the resistance."
"Resistance?"
Asking Kunlo would be faster and more accurate than searching the Bio Device.
"A few days ago there was a battle between the resistance and the Zabalcan Empire near the White Shriek Forest. The resistance lost in the end."
"A few days ago…"
Only then did Jincheon understand the war that had left him in pieces.
"Those are probably the survivors from the resistance side."
"None of our business, then."
With their identity clear and his curiosity spent, Jincheon turned away without a second glance and kept walking.
Kunlo, though, watched the resistance fighters fall one by one until the end.
I don't have the strength now—but someday…!
The Zabalcan Empire had killed his parents and shattered the peaceful life he'd known. The boy banked that unquenchable fire in his chest and followed Jincheon.
"How did you know, though?"
"I felt the killing intent. Once you learn martial arts, you'll be able to sense things like that too."
"Then… could I become as strong as you, mister?"
"That depends on your talent and your effort."
They had been heading for the building that had belonged to the hunters Jincheon had killed when Kunlo changed direction mid-stride.
"I'll go to my place. What time should I come find you tomorrow?"
"Annoying."
"Sorry?"
"It's annoying, so don't come and go. Follow me."
"Ah… y-yes!"
It wasn't a proper building, but Kunlo was free of tent life—canvas roughly tied together—and he followed Jincheon with open relief.