Chapter 2. Why Does This Keep Going Better and Better?>
Chapter 2. Why Does This Keep Going Better and Better?>
More? He was asking if I had more? Just how many was he planning to buy?
Honestly, I would not even care if I sold all seven I had left.
I could always just buy new parts and load my system onto them again.
If I got rid of all of them, the pure profit alone would be 2.45 million won.
And if I added the one I had sold last time, that meant I would have made a full 2.8 million won for free.
[Up to 7 units are available.]
[I'll take all of them.]
“Holy shit. What’s with this guy?”
At my muttering, Taeju, who had been slumped over in the seat next to me, jerked his head up.
“Why? What happened?”
“No, this guy’s making a huge fuss about buying a cheap drone that costs 150,000 won for 500,000 won.”
“How many does he want?”
“All the ones I have left.”
“All of them? All seven?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he look like he might buy more?”
“Huh?”
“You crazy bastard, then shut up and make more and sell them!”
Damn. So this was why engineers and management existed as separate species in the world.
Now that he said it, he was right. I could just buy up the parts, churn them out like a factory line, and sell them.
A laugh burst out of me before I knew it.
“Hey, Taeju. Doesn’t this totally count as a money-duplication bug?”
“This isn’t a bug, you lunatic. It’s a business!”
Apparently he found it hilarious too, because he fought back a grin as he said it.
“Tsk! Hey, you two in the back. Can’t you keep it down?”
The teacher’s thunderous rebuke flew at us from the blackboard.
“Sorry!”
“You little punks are always quick with the answers. Study, unless you want to waste your lives.”
After school,
I was standing at the used-goods meetup spot with seven drones, waiting.
I was nervous. There was no way he was coming back to beat the hell out of me for ripping him off, right?
“Doctor?”
The big foreigner from a few days ago called out to me in clumsy Korean.
“Ah, hello. Oh…”
I sucked in a breath for a moment.
Behind him stood a blacked-out Starex van, and through the open door I could see a bunch of rough-looking foreigners built just like him packed inside.
(Translator’s Note: Hyundai Starex — A van/minibus line produced by Hyundai Motor Company of South Korea. It debuted in 1997 and became widely used across Asia for passenger transport, business use, and cargo service.)
The pressure rolling off them right in front of my eyes was no joke.
“There were a lot of drones… so I brought a car.”
Seeing my stiff expression, he hurriedly waved his hands and explained.
Whew. Thank God. I really thought they were going to drag me into some back alley, beat me senseless, and take the drones.
“Ah, right. Here’s the merchandise.”
I handed over the seven drones I had set down by my feet one by one and added instructions on how to use them.
“If you want to control all of them together, you need to set them up like this…”
The foreigner watched every movement of my hands as if engraving them into memory and nodded seriously.
Then he glanced around once, pulled out a thick yellow envelope from inside his coat, and held it out to me.
3.5 million won.
I did not count it right there in the middle of the meetup spot. Those big brothers looked like the type to have put the money in properly themselves.
“Thank you.”
The heavy thickness of the envelope made me bow instinctively from the waist without even thinking.
Damn, how much money was this in an instant?
“Doctor.”
“Yes?”
“Drones… can you make more?”
The moment I heard that, countless thoughts flashed through my head.
“Ah, yes! I can make more.”
Once the AI had been completed once, all I had to do now was input it into the drones. This really was no different from printing money.
“I’ll contact you again.”
Sliiide, bang.
Leaving only those meaningful words behind, the foreigner disappeared back into the black Starex.
Why were they buying so many?
For now, one thing was certain: it was not for war.
Those cheap drone motors did not have the specs to carry gunpowder or explosives. The moment you hung anything heavy on them, they would obviously fail to lift properly and just spin and crash.
The AI I had written had never been trained with that kind of weight attached either.
The next day, the results of the March National Union Academic Assessment, known as the first gateway of senior year, were handed out.
Korean: 5. Math: 1. English: 5. Korean History: 3. Physics: 1. Chemistry: 1.
It was a parade of extreme numbers.
In South Korea’s college entrance system, it was a grotesque report card that would never be welcomed.
“Damn, look at the state of this report card. It’s got a hell of a lot of personality.”
Taeju suddenly leaned over from the next seat and snatched the score sheet right out of my hand.
“If I keep going like this, forcing myself to go to college and prepare for employment like everyone else, I’ll definitely starve to death.”
In a country where lining people up by grades was everything, a guy like me, who had invested his stats so extremely, was basically guaranteed to be a failed build.
“Hey, don’t chicken out. Just keep making drones and selling them.”
“Keep selling drones?”
“Yeah. Or strip out that program you made and sell it to a drone company.”
Actually, it was more accurate to say I had trained that program than written it, but there was no need to waste my breath explaining that.
“How do you even sell something like that?”
“You brute-force it, obviously. Send proposals to company CEOs by email with videos attached and all.”
Sell the drones or AI I made to a company?
Then I could use that money to make weapons again.
Without worrying about money.
That was when it happened.
Ding!
A notification sounded from the used-market app.
It was that same ‘VodkaLike’ from last time.
“Huh? That foreign guy contacted me again.”
“That mafia-looking guy?”
Taeju stuck his head over my shoulder.
[Weapon Doctor. Have you made more drones?]
[How many do you need?]
[50 units. Is that possible?]
“Holy shit.”
“He’s insane.”
The two of us sucked in breaths and stared at each other.
I was buying them in bulk at 150,000 won and selling them for 500,000 won, which meant that if I sold 50, the pure profit alone would be a staggering 17.5 million won.
A sum like that was suddenly rolling my way?
[But can 50 units be controlled simultaneously?]
“Hey, can you do it?”
Taeju asked as he swallowed hard.
“I don’t know either. It’s not like I’ve ever flown 50 at once.”
In my head, I thought, It’ll work, but I could not say it for certain.
Science had to be proven in practice, not just theory.
I could not say something would work when I had never actually done it.
“You bastard, this is a chance! A chance to make a killing!”
Taeju was worked up, the veins in his neck standing out.
“Hey, you lunatic, I only have 4 million won on hand right now. If I want to buy 50 drones, the base cost alone is 7.5 million won. I’m short by 3.5 million!”
The problem was that I did not have the seed money to buy 50 drones in the first place. I was a poor student.
“So?”
“What do you mean, so? Where the hell am I supposed to get that money? And I don’t even have an empty lot big enough to launch 50 at once and test them all. If I charge that many and get slapped with a bomb of an electric bill, my grandma won’t stop at just smacking me in the back!”
“Hmm…”
“I should just refuse and say 50 is impossible for now.”
I was just about to press send on a message declining the deal when—
“Wait.”
“What now?”
“Just say you can do it.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? This is beyond the scale I can handle.”
“I’ll cover all of it. The money you’re short, the test site, even the electricity.”
With his arms folded, Taeju made the declaration in an expressionlessly serious face utterly unlike his usual self.
Faced with that unfamiliar resolve, I ended up sending the acceptance message almost as if I had been possessed.
[It’s possible. Give me one month.]
I did not know anymore. I would just say it was possible and test it first.
“Here. Use it however you want.”
The place Taeju led me to was a huge logistics warehouse in a secluded area on the outskirts.
The ceiling was dizzyingly high, making it an absolutely perfect environment for indoor flight tests.
“Holy shit, what is this place?”
“A warehouse my dad’s company used to use. The contract still had time left, and it was sitting empty, so I swiped the key.”
“Wow. You rich bastard.”
Shrrak!
Taeju pulled away a huge waterproof tarp covering one side of the warehouse.
Under it were fifty of the exact same cheap 150,000-won drones I had sold on the used market, stacked in their boxes like a mountain.
“Ta-da.”
“Damn… now that’s execution.”
Taeju was not all talk. His execution was like a bulldozer.
“I spent the investment money nice and boldly. Like I said, the profit split is seven for you, three for me. Deal?”
He proposed that he would cover the entire capital himself without touching a single won of my money, and later, after deducting the principal, we would split the profit seven to three.
There was no reason to refuse.
Without this rich sponsor, this whole project would not even have gotten off the ground.
I immediately opened my laptop and loaded the system onto all fifty drones.
“Haaah. Done.”
“Let’s test it right away.”
WEEEEEEEENG—!
The roar of fifty motors spinning all at once thundered throughout the giant warehouse.
The sight of the drones lined up on the floor rising into the air together was truly spectacular.
“Hey, hey! Is this actually going to work?”
Taeju swallowed dryly and cautiously hid behind a pillar.
He had been swaggering around like an investor in name, but it was obvious he was scared stiff that all fifty might malfunction at once and come crashing down.
Wiiiiing—
But just as I had expected, the flight did not go smoothly.
The fifty drones simply floated in the air, and they did not respond at all to commands from the standard control system.
It was a typical case of freezing.
“What the hell? Why aren’t they moving?”
“Signal interference. Trying to bundle them into a single channel scrambled the communication signals. Well, I did not expect much from the start. I only ran it just in case.”
This had been purely a personal experiment on my part.
The system up to this point was just the kind ordinary people used.
“From here on, I’m going to load in the AI I made.”
I dropped down right there on the spot and began hammering away at the keyboard furiously.
If one central AI tried to control all fifty one by one, it caused a bottleneck and the signals collided.
Then the solution was simple.
Remove central control and implant independent AI into all fifty drones.
If I did that, there was no reason for signal interference to happen.
All fifty would judge the situation and move on their own.
Tap-tap, smack!
The moment I fired off the Enter key like a turn shot, the fifty drones that had been frozen began reacting sharply again.
WEEEEEEENG—!
With a single gesture from my hand, the fifty drones flew through the warehouse while maintaining perfect formation like one giant organism.
It was an eerily precise swarm flight, repeatedly scattering and regrouping.
“But this isn’t the end.”
Like a maestro, I crossed both hands through the air and conducted them.
Then the fifty drones began violently twisting their trajectories, launching into random intersecting flight paths.
WEEEEEEENG—!
Hundreds of times, they narrowly crossed past one another without a single collision.
It was, quite simply, an overwhelming spectacle.
A perfect success. I had believed it would work, but seeing it in reality made my chest tighten.
“Damn… this is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Taeju muttered, unable to take his eyes off the swarm of drones weaving through the air.
“Pretty sick, right?”
As if bewitched, Taeju raised a firm thumbs-up.
“You looked exactly like a supervillain.”
I shrugged and immediately sent a message to ‘VodkaLike.’
[All the goods are ready.]
As if he had been staring holes into his phone, the reply came back in less than a second.
[Do all 50 units really operate normally?]
[Yes, of course.]
But this time, the reaction was different.
Unlike before, when he had fired off a response within a second, the little 1 in the chat disappeared and then the screen stayed quiet for a long while.
Eventually, a sentence that felt distinctly ominous appeared on the screen.
[Our boss would like to meet you in person.]