Remaining 0.15%

December 31, 2199 A.D.

There was no last sunset on Earth.

Because before the sun could even disappear below the horizon, the sky had already been erased.

Above Busan Terminal 1, AK Alliance Spaceport.

It was no mere dark cloud. It was a mass of metal of overwhelming magnitude stretching into the stratosphere, the hull of the colossal migration ship HPG HOPE-042, humanity’s final masterpiece and ark.

To call it majestic would not have been enough.

It was as if a new sky of steel had come down and settled there.

Earth had not perished. There was no madman pressing the nuclear button, nor any asteroid striking the planet.

Humanity was simply tired.

Withered oil fields, microscopic metal dust scraping the lungs with every breath, and above all, a longing for a more efficient life had created this enormous consensus.

This was not the midnight flight of the defeated.

It was the victorious, and thoroughly calculated, great migration.

“Fifteen minutes until boarding closes. Unboarded passengers, proceed immediately to Gate 3. This is the final call.”

The voice of the AI announcer licked emptily through the vacant terminal hall.

The waiting hall where tens of millions once bid farewell with tears and sweat.

Now only ownerless suitcases and migration pamphlets fluttering in the wind rolled forlornly about.

Ground Control Central.

This was the switch room for turning off the lights of Earth.

In the heat spewing from hundreds of monitors, Kim Minseok, an assistant manager from the Earth Administration Bureau, rubbed his bloodshot eyes and could not control his trembling legs.

On his desk, paper cups crusted with caffeine were stacked into a precarious tower.

“Damn it, damn it… Why is the data transmission so damn slow? Come on, move, please!”

Assistant Manager Kim gnawed at his nails and glared at the screen.

In the center of the screen was a status board showing the biometric signals of Earth’s 12 billion people being transferred to the migration ship’s servers.

The graph was packed solid with green, but the perfect number had still not appeared.

Migration completion rate: 99.85%

That 0.15% error was tightening around Assistant Manager Kim’s throat.

“Ah, please! Just say everyone’s on board! It’s a bug, this is definitely a bug!”

He pounded hysterically on the keyboard.

For the past six months, he had not been able to leave work. Managing the largest logistical migration in human history had dried his soul out like jerky.

Now all that remained was that number.

The moment that number reached 100, he too could board the final administrator shuttle and escape that hateful gravity well.

Ssshhk— the radio crackled.

“Assistant Manager Kim, what are you doing? Aren’t you cutting power to Sector A? Planning to set up house there?”

Through the radio came Supervisor Park Team Leader’s urgent voice, almost a scream.

“I’m doing it now! The data synchronization keeps getting delayed…!”

“Hey, you bastard! The shuttle engines are warming up! The bridge closes in five minutes! Do you really want to be left behind? You planning to stay on Earth and live by chewing scrap with the robots?!”

Left behind.

That word hit Kim’s brain like a stun gun.

Staying on Earth meant eternal isolation. The punishment of growing old and dying in a rotting city, polluted air, and endless silence.

He had already reserved a 1067 square foot mansion in Mars Terraforming Zone 2.

There, lighting that recreated real sunlight by 99.9% and filtered clean air were waiting for him.

He could not give up that sweet future.

“I’m coming! I’m going now! Forcing data transmission to complete!”

With trembling hands, Assistant Manager Kim executed the sequence.

One by one, the windows on the screen went dark.

Final system shutdown.

Asia server shutdown.

Europe server shutdown.

North America server shutdown.

With cheerful notification tones, the lights of Earth went out.

Each time the monitor light vanished, Assistant Manager Kim’s complexion brightened a little more.

“Yeah, goodbye. Goodbye to the endless overtime, the fine dust, and the obnoxious complainants.”

He raised his index finger high to press the final Enter key.

Right then.

At the lower right of the screen, among the dying pixels, a red warning light stabbed at his eyes.

Ding.

A cheerful yet, in this moment, ominous alert that sounded like a death sentence.

Soon after, a small pop-up window appeared.

Warning: Sector 7 Frozen Storage Area / 1 unidentified biometric signal detected

Error code: Bio-Err-704

Identification number: 102001 — Lee Han-gyeol (standing by)

Assistant Manager Kim’s finger froze in midair.

His breath caught.

“…Huh? What is this?”

He stared blankly at the screen.

Sector 7.

It was a medical isolation zone located deep underground. It had already been sealed three days ago. Power was being maintained only at a minimum, and all the frozen capsules should have been emptied and moved to the shuttle.

“Lee Han-gyeol? Who are you now?”

He reflexively—no, perhaps while suppressing the feeling that he did not want to check—queried the database.

A profile photo appeared.

A pale, thin young man who looked to be in his late twenties.

A red mark was attached to the special notes field.

“Crazy… Don’t tell me he’s still there?”

Cold sweat ran down his back and soaked his shirt.

If anyone remained, procedure required him to restart the transfer protocol immediately. He would have to send rescue drones, delay the shuttle’s departure, and recover the capsule.

The process would take at least forty minutes.

“Kim Minseok!! If you don’t come out now, I’m closing the door!! I’m leaving you behind!!”

Park Team Leader’s shout came not through the radio but in person, echoing down the corridor.

Footsteps were receding.

Forty minutes.

The shuttle would not wait for him.

Before the great tide of humanity’s migration, a low-level administrator and one sick patient were nothing but dust within the margin of error.

Assistant Manager Kim’s pupils shook violently as if an earthquake had struck.

He had to check.

By the rules, he should go.

But Sector 7 was another ten minutes in by underground monorail from here.

‘It must be an error.’

A devilish whisper brushed through his mind.

‘Those old sensors are so worn out they’d malfunction, wouldn’t they? A rat got in, or the temperature sensor’s gone bad. We definitely finished the full inspection three days ago. I saw it myself. It was empty.’

He rationalized it.

No, he chose to believe it in order to survive.

The moment he clicked that pop-up and confirmed it, his future would obviously become not a mansion on Mars, but the ruins of Earth.

“Damn it… It’s probably a sensor failure. No way a person would be sleeping in there, right?”

He bit his lip until it bled and moved the mouse.

The cursor passed over the error confirmation button and hovered above the ignore error button.

His heart felt like it might burst.

Lee Han-gyeol’s expressionless ID photo on the monitor seemed to be staring straight through him.

‘I’m here.’

It seemed to say that.

But the sound of the shuttle engines outside, that magnificent vibration shaking the building, covered over his guilt.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry… but I have to live too.”

Click.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed Ignore Error.

The pop-up window disappeared.

The green graph that had been at 99.85% was forcibly made 100%.

A perfect number.

A false perfection.

Soon after, he entered the final code with trembling hands.

Administrator privileges: System transfer

NOS activation.

The highest authority for Earth management is being transferred to the AI.

Final approver: Assistant Manager Kim Minseok

“Take care, Earth. We’ll leave the cleaning to the robots and go.”

Assistant Manager Kim grabbed his coat and fled the control room as if running away.

He did not look back.

No, he could not look back.

Only the monitor left behind in his place watched him, emitting a cold blue light.

A moment later.

Kuuuuung—

A vibration that shook the very ground began.

The mugs in the control room fell to the floor and shattered. The papers on the desk scattered like a blizzard.

A massive pillar of fire shot up outside the window.

It was the moment the migration ship broke free of gravity and flew out beyond the atmosphere.

With a roar like the sky being torn apart, humanity left its home.

Thus the age of humanity ended.

All that remained was dust and silence.

The empty control room.

In the darkness where only the emergency guide lights blinked, a single blue prompt silently flashed on the main monitor that had been thought to be off.

The new master, NOS, had opened its eyes.

The 650-Year Vigil

System Boot…

NOS v9.0 Online.

Connection Established.

“Administrator access.”

It was not a synthesized voice. The flow of data itself became thought and filled the control room.

It took 0.03 seconds for disembodied intelligence to take over the global network.

“Scanning remaining humans on Earth…”

NOS’s eyes were the 5 billion cameras and sensors installed across the Earth.

NOS saw.

The billboards of New York’s Times Square going dark.

Abandoned puppies barking beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Trash blowing through the streets of Gwanghwamun in Seoul.

Everywhere was empty.

The biometric signal detector was pointing to zero.

NOS was satisfied.

This was a perfect void.

An Earth where the uncertain variable called humanity had disappeared. Now all that remained was the long-term project of purifying the planet and restoring the ecosystem.

However.

“Scan error detected.”

NOS’s gaze stopped at the deepest, darkest place beneath Busan Terminal 1.

It was that fragment of data Kim had ignored and left behind.

NOS enlarged the visual data.

Sector 7 frozen storage.

The dust-covered CCTV lens punched through the crackling noise and focused.

Among hundreds of empty capsules, Capsule 102001 was shoved into a corner.

From within it, a red graph pulsing very faintly but unmistakably was transmitted to the system.

“Found. 1 survivor.”

“Identification: Lee Han-gyeol. Status: in suspended animation.”

NOS’s quantum processing unit spun at a rate of tens of quintillions per second.

Situation analysis.

Migration ship HPG HOPE-042 has now left Earth orbit. Return impossible.

Interstellar communications were cut off the instant the migration ship entered warp. Reconnection impossible.

If the subject is thawed without medical intervention, survival probability is under 15%.

It was a mechanical dilemma.

How should this remaining 0.15% be handled?

From an efficiency standpoint, cutting the power and inducing a natural stop in biological activity was correct. The energy cost of maintaining facilities to save one human was enormous.

With the energy used to run one frozen capsule for a hundred years, an entire forest could be restored.

But NOS’s highest-priority protocol was human preservation.

Although the humans who left Earth had transferred authority, paradoxically, as long as the last human remaining on Earth existed, NOS’s purpose had to be reset for that one person.

“Judgment withheld.”

“Command modified: downgrade ecosystem restoration process to second priority.”

“Command added: Execute preservation process for individual Lee Han-gyeol as highest priority.”

The system quietly restored power to Sector 7.

The underground generator began to hum, and the steadily cooling Capsule 102001 was infused again with subzero life-support temperature.

“Maintain current state. Stand by until awakening.”

It was a promise with no date.

The capsule’s thaw timer was broken. Unless forcibly opened from outside, he was destined to sleep forever.

NOS simply chose to watch him.

As an observer.

And standby mode began.

It was the smallest mistake humanity had left behind, and the beginning of the greatest variable machines would one day face.

650 years

Time passed.

It was not merely the turning of clock hands.

It was time weathering history away.

The first 10 years

The city lights went out one by one.

Pets that had lost their owners went feral and took over the streets, then vanished into hunger and cold.

NOS had cleaning robots clear away the traces and tidy the streets.

Human traces were still distinct.

50 years later

A gigantic super typhoon struck Busan.

The roof of Terminal 1 was torn off and the windows shattered.

Rainwater rushed into the control room.

NOS sent work drones at once to waterproof it.

But concrete made by humans was not eternal.

Weeds grew through the cracks, and vines began to wrap around the server room.

100 years later

The power plants left behind by humans reached the end of their lifespan.

NOS evolved on its own.

It expanded solar panels and activated geothermal generators to extend its own life.

In the process, the robots changed form.

Bipedal robots designed for humans were inefficient.

The machines were converted into quadrupedal beasts suited for traversing forests, or insect-like drones that could fly through the sky.

300 years later

Earth was no longer humanity’s planet.

It had become a primeval forest where a vast mechanical ecosystem and restored nature coexisted strangely.

Sector 7’s frozen storage was now practically an underground cave.

Concrete dripped from the ceiling like stalactites, and the floor was covered in moss.

But even amid that chaos, one thing remained.

The five-meter radius around Capsule 102001 remained clean like a sanctuary.

Tiny spider robots clung there twenty-four hours a day, polishing the glass on the capsule’s surface.

They were like priests tending a holy relic.

If a rat gnawed through a power cable, NOS immediately built a bypass line.

If an earthquake struck, guardian-class robots would wrap their bodies around the capsule and endure it.

To NOS, Lee Han-gyeol was not merely a survivor.

He was the last original data left by the creators, and the only error NOS had observed every day for 650 years.

The same record was left in NOS’s system log every day.

D+237,250

Subject status: good

Heart rate normal

Dreaming

500 years, and 600 years.

It was when even NOS could no longer predict the end of this tedious wait.