Father's Collection
"We're preparing to roll out ten films and ten dramas. What you just experienced was Star Wars."
"I was genuinely astonished. It felt as though I were standing in the middle of a war in space. I used to be a Star Wars fan, you know. It was truly moving."
Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok spoke with open admiration at Oh Gong-tae's words.
"Thank you, Vice Chairman. If you run an entire film start to finish in virtual reality in one sitting, it puts a serious strain on both the person and the machines, so we're planning to break it into thirty-minute segments. The fatigue is incomparably worse than watching a regular movie."
It seemed a wise call. Even five minutes in the experience had left him a little dizzy — and yet the sense of presence, the sheer emotional force of it, defied any attempt to put it into words.
"To feel this properly, you'd really need a simulator."
"That's a problem for later. For now, the HMD alone seems more than enough to watch and experience it."
"If we're not careful, the side effects could be considerable. Confusion, mistaking it for reality — that sort of thing."
"Yes, that was exactly our concern, so we left out thrillers, horror, and anything with brutal imagery, and built the lineup around entertainment for now."
"Ohh… Director Oh Gong-tae is remarkably sharp. Figuring all that out on your own."
"Well… it's my baby. I made it, so of course I have to make sure it launches properly. But."
Oh Gong-tae turned to look at Ko Yoon-seok.
"This may be out of line, but… when might I be able to meet the Chairman? I feel as though I need to show him the service myself to get a proper evaluation."
At that, Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok glanced at Jung Jinwoo and let out a quiet chuckle.
"You needn't worry about the Chairman. He's reviewing everything quite thoroughly. As I mentioned, the Chairman is occupied with other matters."
"Ah, I understand. Now that I'm here, I can see how much you've taken on. Twelve affiliates alone…"
That was Korea only. Tally it up on a global scale and you'd drop dead from the shock. The only reason any of it was even possible was that Ko Yoon-seok was the one actually running it all — an impossible feat for just about anyone else.
"Anyway, this is truly remarkable. I was curious what virtual reality even meant, but after experiencing it, I'm genuinely astonished."
"How's the dizziness? Older people tend to struggle with it — neural response slows down, so it hits them harder."
So that was why they'd had Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok put on the HMD and try it for himself.
"I was a little dizzy, but I was fine."
"Just as I thought…"
Oh Gong-tae was beaming.
"But how would ordinary people actually use this?"
No matter how remarkable a service might be, people would only use it if it was convenient. Who would bother with something cumbersome?
"It's simple. Just connect the HMD to a computer and a TV and you're good. You can run it on a regular monitor or television too, but then you lose the virtual-reality feel."
"That's all it takes? The picture was incredibly sharp."
"Kiseong IT's streaming tech and image compression went into it. We'll have to pay royalties for that. And if you push the upscaling to the maximum, you get that kind of quality."
"Upscaling?"
"Simply put, technology that turns a low-resolution image into a high-resolution one."
Not that it mattered. Kiseong IT was essentially his anyway.
"When are you targeting for launch?"
"Testing starts next week, and about a month after that?"
"With the staff you've got now, you're going to be badly short-handed."
"That's exactly what I wanted to say. We need to hire at least ten people! Vice Chairman, I'm begging you."
Oh Gong-tae turned pleading eyes on Ko Yoon-seok.
"You mentioned it then, so we've already posted the listings. They should be filled by next week."
"Ahh, as expected… I respect you, Vice Chairman."
"Not at all. Had you told me sooner, we would have hired even earlier. Even now, we're behind."
"I'm sorry I couldn't bring it up in advance."
"It isn't your fault, Director Oh. Starting a company with only two researchers was unreasonable to begin with."
Those last words were aimed at Jung Jinwoo. Even a pint-sized IT firm divided its people into management, marketing, and service. They had taken Oh Gong-tae and Jeon Gwang-jin — two researchers, nothing more — and built a company around them.
"Hyung, why don't you come work here? The Kiseong IT work is pretty much done, right?"
Oh Gong-tae looked suddenly at Jung Jinwoo.
"Me?"
The contracts were wrapping up, true enough — the place would run without him. The deals already signed were more than enough to keep Kiseong IT afloat.
"I-I'll think about it."
I haven't even been at the company a month.
"Well, if you don't want to, forget it."
It's not that I don't want to.
"Shall we simply move Kiseong IT over here instead?"
At Ko Yoon-seok's suggestion, Jung Jinwoo and Oh Gong-tae both stared. Jinwoo was startled that the man would say such a thing in front of Oh Gong-tae. Oh Gong-tae was startled because they were suddenly talking about absorbing a company that had nothing to do with them.
"Ah — I take it you didn't know. We hold the majority of Kiseong IT's shares. The Success Kiseong private equity fund that invested 38.5 billion won? That's us."
"Wh-what? What did you just say?"
If they were going to reveal that and merge the two anyway, what was the point of bringing Oh Gong-tae and Jeon Gwang-jin over in the first place? Teheran-ro in Gangnam did have excellent internet lines and easy access to the data centers, but still.
A glance at Oh Gong-tae showed his pupils trembling. Quite the shock, apparently.
"Ah, you idiot… So when Jinwoo-hyung said he was putting up the money, the rich guy he knew was Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok. Ahh. Now everything makes sense. Of course…"
Oh Gong-tae nodded to himself, as though every last question had been answered.
Makes sense? You don't know a damn thing. I'm the one standing behind Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok.
The words turned over and over in Jung Jinwoo's mouth, and stayed there.
After finishing their work at JW Dive In, Jung Jinwoo and Ko Yoon-seok rode up to the twenty-fifth floor. The entire floor was a sprawling fourteen-thousand-square-foot space, divided into the chairman's office, the vice chairman's office, and a conference room.
"Since you've come all this way, why don't you take a look at the chairman's office."
"Would that be all right?"
He had wanted, at least once, to see the office his father Jung In-seok had used. It wasn't as though he couldn't go now — but there were too many eyes around, and he had been cautious.
"The secretaries are all downstairs. It's just you and I here, Chairman."
"Ah…"
"And you'll want to see your father's collection as well."
"Collection?"
"I'll show you. This way, please."
Just outside the chairman's office lay the secretaries' workspace. Four desks — meaning four secretaries had once worked there.
A security chime rang as Ko Yoon-seok tapped his card to the door, and it opened.
"This door opens only with the Chairman's card and mine. Ah — there are no secretaries at present, but Grade 1 secretaries do have authorization to open it."
They passed through the security glass and slid aside a heavy inner door. Beyond it stood an enormous desk of ebony. Jung Jinwoo approached and laid a hand on the wood, trying to feel whatever trace of his father Jung In-seok still lingered there.
"He didn't spend much time here. Your father preferred working on his feet to sitting at a desk."
"I see."
For the desk of a chairman who ran a company of this scale, it looked almost excessively clean. The reason was simple: there was nothing on it but a computer.
"This is what you need to see."
Ko Yoon-seok pressed a switch mounted beneath the desk. With a long, sliding rumble, what had been a wall folded away, and glass display cases stood revealed. Lights burst to life in a rapid-fire cascade, and stones of uncanny shapes and colors emerged from the dark.
"This side is gemstones. This side is minerals."
Half the exhibition was gems; the other half, ores. They were stones of differing colors, the smallest no bigger than a fingernail, the largest the size of a car tire.
"These are emerald, ruby, and sapphire roughs."
"Wow…"
"These are actually the inexpensive ones. The truly precious pieces are these."
Ko Yoon-seok's hand, which had been tracing along the lower shelves, rose to indicate the upper tier.
"Zoisite, jadeite, the Pink Star, and red and blue diamond roughs. The uncut stones of the most expensive gems on earth."
He felt as though he had heard of them somewhere. Pink diamonds, blue diamonds — a piece the size of a fingernail supposedly worth hundreds of billions of won. Jung Jinwoo was not the sort of man who cared for gemstones. He would rather put a few hundred billion toward something useful than blow it on rocks.
A bitterness settled in his chest. A man who, through superhuman effort, could have possessed everything — and yet had never found happiness. He had lost his health and died young, and still he had arranged all of this. Feeling the meticulous care in his father Jung In-seok's heart only made it more painful.
"If I ever get married, I'll use it."
At Jung Jinwoo's words, Ko Yoon-seok gave a quiet chuckle.
"And look over here."
He pointed to the mineral exhibition beside the gemstone cases. Some pieces were nothing more than chunks of rock. Others had veins of a different color running through the stone. A few were heavy-looking metal boxes, and there were capsules about the size of a beer keg.
"Tantalum, rhenium, ruthenium, iridium. The ones in the lead boxes over there are highly radioactive — you can ignore those."
Saying that only made him more curious.
"What are they?"
"Hmm…"
Ko Yoon-seok seemed to weigh something for a moment.
"Uranium, californium-252, and tritium. And originally there was francium in here. A magnetic-field control error caused it to decay, so it has no commercial value now — but had it not decayed, it would have been worth about two trillion won a gram."
He said this while pointing at a capsule that looked for all the world like a stainless-steel beer keg. It was, in fact, a sealed containment vessel that used lead and magnetic fields to hold radioactive elements.
"Two trillion?"
The figure was almost impossible to believe.
"This is tungsten, titanium… and this."
Pointing at a lump of rock some thirty centimeters across, Ko Yoon-seok grinned.
"This is what I brought you here to show you."
"What is it?"
"A metal that has never been announced to the world. It has no official name."
"There's a metal like that?"
"It was discovered in a titanium mine. Its properties are similar to titanium, but a few things were different. Your father thought there might be more of it, so he searched thoroughly — but he never found another piece. This is the only specimen discovered to date. Do you know what your father intended to name it?"
"How would I?"
How desperately must the man have missed him, wanted to meet him, to put his son's name on a newly discovered mineral? It was an obsessive attachment — but if anyone ought to understand Jung In-seok's heart, it was Jung Jinwoo.
Unregistered Element — Unique Specimen
Harder and stronger than titanium. Ductility comparable. As light as aluminum. Does not melt even at 3,400°C. Mass: 20 kg.
"This is a miracle metal. Harder and stronger than titanium, with similar ductility, yet as light as aluminum. And it doesn't melt even at 3,400 degrees Celsius."
"That's impossible. A metal like that exists?"
"Yes. Right here."
"If a metal like that exists, you should be able to analyze the molecular structure and mass-produce it some other way. Chemical processing, for instance…"
"We tried. We couldn't reproduce it. And since this twenty-kilogram piece is all we ever found… we simply held onto it."
A metal like that would have no end of uses — aircraft, missiles, spacecraft, and more.
"I believed the Chairman needed to know this metal exists, so that you can decide how to use it when the time comes. That's why I'm telling you."
"Yes. I understand."
Someday, he would put it to use at a very special moment. No — even this twenty-kilo chunk of rock, delivered to NASA or the Pentagon, would fetch a price beyond imagining. But he couldn't do that. Hadn't his father Jung In-seok named it JW Titanium after his own son? He would honor that meaning, and put it to good use when the time came.
"Isn't the security a little too thin? Anyone who gets into the chairman's office could just walk off with these gems and minerals."
"Would the work your father and I do be that sloppy? This reinforced glass will stop a machine gun. You couldn't break it with a hammer. Ah — during the system reset a while back, it might have been possible."
"Then how do you open the case?"
"Do you remember the pupil scan from some time ago?"
They had scanned Jung Jinwoo's irises once, saying they were building out the company security system.
"To open the display case, you must scan the Chairman's eyes. Then it will open."
Jung Jinwoo was about to say, You could just pluck out an eyeball and scan it, when Ko Yoon-seok went on.
It was somewhat reassuring. It was also a terrifying thing to hear. They had, after all, accounted for the possibility of someone taking an eye.