Declaration of War
In reality, telecommunications companies were not the kind of business that generated rumors very often. A biotech firm launching a new drug, or a technology company developing some cutting-edge invention, could be thrown into violent swings by failed trials or accusations of patent infringement. Telecoms were a different breed entirely.
"There isn't one?"
"Nope!"
Tom answered with certainty, but James, still on the line, was smiling.
"Wouldn't it be better if nobody knew?"
"Uh..."
Tom wondered if James had been digging into TY Telecom's troubles while staying in Korea.
"Do you happen to know of any bad news already? Some important information you picked up in secret, perhaps..."
"Information only I know..."
"Information is life for an investment firm. If we can trust what you've told us, then we can work with James too."
"Sorry, but I don't think it's trustworthy information. It's just..."
"...So there is something?"
"I heard that TY Telecom's core servers and some of its critical base stations have been acting unstable lately. That's all."
The greatest weakness of a telecom company was the electronic equipment that could disrupt its communications service.
"If something goes wrong with the core servers and base stations..."
"Soon enough, people subscribed to TY Telecom may not be able to use their phones for a while. Of course, that's only a limited speculation, if something goes wrong."
James was already forecasting the next step as though the disaster had already happened.
"Customer complaints will lead to subscriber losses, and the telecom company will have no choice but to pay compensation for the time its services were down."
What's more, a new law had recently come into effect in Korea requiring telecom companies to pay ten times the damage when service was interrupted due to their own negligence. A user paying 100,000 won a month in telecom charges could receive 1 million won in compensation if the service was unavailable for an entire month.
If things really unfolded as James predicted, TY Telecom's stock would be shaken badly.
"James. Is this solid information?"
"Didn't I just tell you? It's not reliable information. It's only something one of the engineers over there told me. If the server really blows up, I make a killing. If not, I'll be wandering the streets like a homeless man."
"Hmm..."
Tom had received no information about TY Telecom at all, so it was hard to judge. Since it was a Korean company, not an American one, it was difficult to get reliable data.
Should I try to figure it out through the Korean branch?
But even if he checked through the investment firm's office in Korea, there would still be limits.
"Anyway, put all of my available funds into a short position. Use maximum leverage."
"If the stock rises by more than 10 percent, James's 30 million dollars will all disappear. Are you really all right with that?"
It was a safeguard to minimize the risk of leveraged trading. With tenfold leverage, the maximum rise in stock price he could withstand was 10 percent.
"I don't care."
"Phew. Then I'll proceed. Please remember that it's not my responsibility."
"Of course. Tom is only following my instructions. I won't blame him even if I lose everything."
"I'll contact you once it's done."
After ending the call, James set his phone on the table and checked the materials he'd gathered recently. It was a map showing TY Telecom's core systems and key base stations in the provinces.
"Start with the provinces..."
James was staring at the base station located near the center of the map.
"If one base station is all that goes down, the media will keep their mouths shut. We can smother that kind of thing however we want."
His gaze swept over the surrounding area. The important base stations in each region stood out one by one.
"But what if one isn't the end of it? Could they still stop it then?"
His eyes moved past the provinces and toward TY Telecom's headquarters.
"If the whole country is in chaos and the headquarters systems go down too, recovery will be delayed even more."
James had no expectation that this alone would topple a giant corporation. But it would certainly be enough to hit its stock price hard.
"A declaration of war can't be too strong, either."
* * *
A few days later, TY Telecom users in Daejeon were in an uproar over phones that had gone dead.
"What the hell is this? Why did it suddenly do this?"
"What's going on?"
"I was just on a call, and then it suddenly cut out and won't reconnect. Does yours work?"
"Yeah. Mine's fine."
The base station signal shown on his phone was normal.
"Which carrier do you use?"
"GL Telecom... Wait, you weren't on TY Telecom?"
Another friend jumped into their conversation.
"I'm on TY Telecom too, and mine's dead as well."
"Then it's TY Telecom's problem!"
"What, are you new? Even the other carriers have this happen a few times a year."
For ordinary subscribers, all it meant was a bit of inconvenience in daily life, but stores were different.
"...I'm sorry, customer. Due to today's carrier internet problem, card payments are..."
"I don't have cash..."
"Transfers are also possible."
"...This is really inconvenient. Please give me your account number."
Stores that processed card payments through internet lines serviced by the telecom companies were taking a major hit.
Even online media had no shortage of related articles. But because the problem was confined to a single province, it didn't rise to a major issue. That too was exactly as James expected.
"Tomorrow is the east and south."
After that, wherever James secretly visited at night, the base stations blew out one after another. Because these were core relay stations that distributed signals, wide areas were affected by each failure. Only then did the media begin to react.
In response to the media's criticism, TY Telecom quickly released a rebuttal article.
It was a denial, an attempt to insist the fault was not their own. The article was meant to shield them from responsibility for the damages to come, but the base station problems were still happening now.
* * *
Darkness deeper than darkness, darkness that came before light...
Seoul had fallen into night. A mage was waving his hand through the air. Mana was surging before the mage's hands, and its density was steadily rising.
...Let the primordial chaos overflow.
At James's gesture, the dark gray mana gathered and seeped into the building. Then the lights of the server room, which had been blinking on in rapid succession, began to go out one by one.
That settles TY Telecom's data center too.
Having confirmed that the power of chaos was doing its job, James's figure vanished from the spot as if it had been snuffed out.
Whoosh.
* * *
TY Telecom's president's office had just received a report on the recent wave of simultaneous base station failures and the service interruption at the data center the day before.
"Executive Kim. ...You brought me this and called it a report? Huh!?"
Rustle.
President Choi Jeong-san threw down the report he had been reading, and the incident summary pages scattered through the air.
Flap.
The last sheet brushed lightly past the report writer's head as it fell.
"...I'm sorry, sir."
"Sorry won't fix it! You need to handle this now!"
"......"
He couldn't even let out a complaint or a sigh.
Right now, fixing it comes first.
"To prepare for the worst-case scenario, as I wrote in the report, we'll need to borrow base stations from GL Telecom and KD Telecom to keep communications services running, and use them for cable TV and internet service too..."
"Ha! Do you have any idea how much it'll cost just to repair the base stations and replace the data center servers? And now you're asking our competitors for help? You think they'll lend them for free?"
The report also included the costs related to server, base station, and telecom line rentals.
Then what, you think they'll lend them for free? Read the report properly before throwing it...
"If service interruptions continue like this, the compensation amount will be astronomical. We need to resume service first, even temporarily, so we can reduce the damages..."
"If you'd planned for a crisis from the beginning, none of this would've happened!"
"......"
Of course, he had reported those preparations before. He had submitted budgets for maintenance of aging base stations and for accidents that could occur at the data center, such as fire, but the Choi Jeong-san standing before him had rejected them. He had put them off, saying the cost was too high and they could deal with it later.
"The base stations and data center aren't our fault. Blame the subcontractor's design error and the outsourcing company's mistake in operations."
"...Yes, sir."
That very wording was already in the report.
"As for compensation..."
But there was no way to avoid the legally mandated payouts now that the amount had already been fixed by law. The only way to reduce the losses at all was, as the report stated, to use competitor companies to continue communications services and shorten the period of interruption.
"...Try asking GL and KD for cooperation."
"......"
So in the end you're just going to do what I said anyway. Then why throw the report?
"I'll revise the report as instructed and submit it for approval."
Nothing had changed, but it was a report that had to be resubmitted anyway.
"Get written apologies from everyone involved! That includes you, Executive Kim!"
"...Yes, sir."
* * *
"Damn it. Now I have to go back in..."
The approval folder he had taken from the president's office had an untidy report sticking out of it. He did not return to his own desk, but instead headed for the department that had submitted the report.
"Section Chief Jeong."
"Ah! Yes, Executive Kim."
Thud.
"Do it again. Just change the wording a little and it should be fine."
"Yes, Executive Kim."
"...And I'm told to attach written apologies from the people involved too. For now, let's just have you and me write them. What did the people below do wrong?"
"...Ah. Yes, Executive Kim."
Section Chief Jeong couldn't bring himself to ask what had happened in the president's office after seeing the irritated face of Executive Kim.
"Phew. Is this where it ends, at least?"
Section Chief Jeong called the department members again and assigned them the revision work, while the actual handling was carried out by the deputy chiefs and managers below the section chief level.
"Damn it. If all we're doing is changing the wording, then it means the president was too pissed off to approve it."
"That seems to be the case, Deputy Chief. I heard just now that he even ordered the section chief to write a written apology..."
"Base stations are blown and the data center's dead, and this is what they're doing. What the hell is the point of a written apology now?"
"......"
"You think sighing will solve anything? Open the report file already. Let's revise it together and finish this fast."
"Yes, Deputy Chief."
The man dragged over a chair and sat beside the manager, waiting for the existing report saved on the server to load, but the computer screen kept showing only the message that it was still reading.
"...Manager Park, how old is your computer?"
"About seven years..."
"Time to replace it. It's way too slow."
"It usually isn't like this... Huh? An error's coming up."
"I'll try mine."
The deputy chief went to his own desk and tried connecting to the server, but a warning message immediately appeared saying the connection was unavailable.
"...Now what's wrong with this?"
* * *
At that same time, the IT team that managed the servers was tearing their hair out.
"...The server is dead."
"A line problem?"
"No. The lines were replaced not long ago."
"Then the operating system? Or maybe a hardware issue?"
"We can't identify it exactly, but it's definitely an internal problem. The trouble is, because this happened all at once, we don't even know where the source is."
"'We don't know' isn't exactly an answer."
"...We may have to open it up to find out."
"Open up a server to fix it when? Have you lost your mind? Start by checking the parts where the recent scale-up was done."
"...But this problem looks similar to the one that happened on the data server. It doesn't even have power."
"How can the same problem happen there and here?"
It would be nice if venting anger could solve things, but for now, getting a fix mattered more, so they had to find another method quickly.
"The backup server is fine, right? Switch it over for now. We mirrored the data recently, didn't we?"
"I'm sorry, but that one was showing the same symptoms too. It doesn't even power on."
"Argh! Just what are you telling me to do!?"
"There is a NAS server we mirrored a little further back."
"Damn it... Then get that applied as fast as possible."
"...Applied where? We don't even have a backup server."
"Then go buy one!"
The mage had visited headquarters too.
"Good luck."
After finishing his work, the mage was leisurely walking past headquarters while chewing ice cream.
"It tastes even better today."