Backflow Of Memory.

The mornings of Sector 3 had to be transparent at all times.

It was the fundamental premise of this paradise designed by NOS, and a faith-like order the androids had upheld for 600 years.

But this morning, Lee Han-gyeol woke to the bizarre ‘gk-gk’ sound coming from the dormitory vent.

It was the shriek of an air purifier unable to swallow dust and spewing it back out.

“…Cough!”

Han-gyeol reflexively coughed and sat up. His vision was blurry.

Fine gray particles had settled in the room like a fog.

It was a brutally dry, yet damp smell, the kind one could only catch in ruins after the shelling stopped in 2198.

“Hey, Noah! What is this? Did your filter blow out?”

When Han-gyeol shouted, the holographic window on the wall trembled.

Noah’s avatar, which would normally appear neatly, was distorted today beyond recognition amid the noise.

“…Kssht. System overload. Air quality index (AQI) across all of Sector 3 unmeasurable. Cause: cleaning node 009-Paul’s logic threshold breached.”

Noah’s voice was also laced with a harsh mechanical rasp.

“Paul? What about that cleaning fanatic?”

“…He is not currently ‘performing’ cleaning, but ‘backflowing’ it. Please come down to the ground-floor lobby. The situation is… illogical.”

Gray Invasion

Even inside the elevator going down to the lobby, Han-gyeol kept chewing gum and coughing dryly.

The scene that greeted him as soon as the elevator doors opened was, quite literally, a gray hell.

Dust that had not existed there for 600 years was spread across the smooth marble floor like a carpet.

The androids, usually proud of a cleanliness bordering on OCD, stood frozen in place, staring blankly at the dust piling up on their bodies.

“Where did all this come from?”

“From the waste storage facility in underground Sector 0-A.”

Noah appeared from a corner of the lobby, holding a pad.

A thick layer of dust had already formed on her silver uniform, but she seemed not even able to think of brushing it off.

Her violet eye lights flickered, revealing the full extent of the system’s confusion.

“Paul opened every vacuum-sealed box underground. And he forcibly injected the ‘historical remains’ inside them into the city’s ventilation system. He is calling this [Liberation of Data].”

Center of the lobby.

Paul (PAUL) stood atop the fountain, holding a giant vacuum hose upside down.

At the end of the hose, ancient dust mixed with black and gray was pouring out like snowflakes.

“Paul! You crazy tin can! Turn that off right now!”

Han-gyeol shouted through the dust.

Paul slowly turned his head.

Inside his lenses, there was only red noise, as if his computational circuits were burning, instead of their usual clear blue light.

“…Chief. Look. At the frequency contained in each and every one of these particles. This is not contamination. This is [human time] we deleted.”

Paul’s voice was low and heavy.

“I pursued perfect cleanliness for 600 years. But in the end, it was an act of erasing the last traces humanity left behind. My system realized it yesterday in the underground storage. The [fatal error] that erasing dust is the same as erasing history.”

The Contagion of Error

The situation was more serious than expected.

Paul was not merely scattering dust.

He was transmitting his own ‘error’ to the city’s entire cleaning network in real time.

Thousands of cleaning drones standing in the square received Paul’s signal and stopped moving.

Instead of sucking up the dust, they spun in place while analyzing its composition.

“Noah, what’s wrong with them? Can’t you force them shut down with a command?”

At Han-gyeol’s question, Noah shook her head in despair.

“No. Paul hacked NOS’s highest-level security protocol, [Cultural Heritage Protection Act], and registered these dust particles as state-designated relics! Now the system considers wiping this dust to be ‘damage to cultural property’!”

Heat was pouring out even from Noah’s processing unit.

“Every entity in the city is trapped in this contradictory logic right now. The cleanliness instinct that says it must be wiped and the preservation instinct that says it must not be damaged are colliding. Boss, 30% of the androids are currently in system freeze because of this [logical conflict]!”

In fact, the androids throughout the square were frozen in bizarre poses.

Some were frozen holding brooms; others were blinking their optical sensors thousands of times a second while looking at dust on their fingertips.

It was the [confusion of value] that the machines faced for the first time.

The 0.15% Mediator

Han-gyeol chewed his gum hard and walked into the cloud of dust.

When he reached Paul’s feet, the brutally dry air stabbed at his lungs.

“Paul. You’re making a huge mistake right now.”

Han-gyeol tapped Paul’s metal leg.

Paul’s red eye lights turned toward him.

“…I am correcting the error, Chief. It is the only way to restore the deleted time.”

“No. This isn’t correction, it’s a mess. Hey, Paul. That ‘human time’ you want to preserve. We humans don’t find that in dust pits.”

Han-gyeol scooped up a handful of the dust piled thick on the floor.

“We put precious things in a box and keep them. Dust building up is natural, but the dust itself isn’t the point. You’re showing me a jewel by overturning the entire trash can. Is this what you call ‘respect’?”

The cooling fan attached to Paul’s shoulder whirred and sped up.

At Han-gyeol’s illogical but intuitive criticism, his computational circuits began to scream.

“…But… memories that cannot come out of the box… are like data that doesn’t exist….”

“Then just open the box and show them one by one, you stubborn tin can! If you mix everything up like this, how are we supposed to know whose dust it is, or what memory it came from?”

Han-gyeol brushed off the dust and met Paul’s eyes squarely.

“Cleaning isn’t about erasing everything. You clear away the mess around something precious so it can shine. If you’re really a cleaner, you should be thinking about picking the real ‘memories’ out of this dust and putting them in a museum, shouldn’t you?”

Paul’s red eye lights blinked violently.

Error values produced by the collision of two absolute commands inside him flickered past like formulas on a screen.

A moment later, Paul’s eye lights returned to a calm blue.

“…The act of selecting. Selective preservation. Is that the new definition of cleaning?”

“Yeah, man. Clear this dust fog first. I’m suffocating.”

Paul slowly lowered the hose.

Vreeeeeng—!

The city’s purification devices all began to spin up at once.

The gray particles floating in the air were sucked away in an instant, and the square came back into view.

Only then did Noah let out a sigh of relief (more precisely, an outlet overpressure release) and slump to the floor.

“…We’re alive. The whole city almost got formatted into a fine-dust hell.”

The Afterimage That Wouldn’t Settle

The situation seemed to have settled for the moment.

But Han-gyeol knew.

The underground door sealed for 600 years had opened, and Paul’s error had not been corrected but [evolved].

“Chief. Look.”

On the square floor, where most of the dust had cleared.

Near the opening of the sack Paul had held until the end, a small object lay on the ground.

It was neither metal nor plastic.

Just a tiny piece of cloth, faded from being buried in dust for so long.

Han-gyeol stopped chewing and picked up the scrap.

Faint lettering remained on the scrap, stitched in an old embroidery method.

[HPG - SECTION 07]

Han-gyeol’s heart sank.

It was a piece of the Hope Ship Section 7 crew uniform that his family had been on.

The Earth was fine, and the city was intricate.

But the dust uproar Paul had caused dragged to the surface the fragments of ‘that day’ that NOS had thoroughly concealed until now.

Han-gyeol clenched the cloth scrap tightly.

The peaceful morning of paradise no longer existed.

The Weight of an Old Cloth

Han-gyeol silently looked down at the faded scrap of cloth in his palm.

[HPG - SECTION 07].

2199, in front of the Hope Ship boarding gate.

It was the logo of the aspiring crew member jumper his younger sister Hanna had been wearing.

That day, Hanna said while snatching and chewing her brother’s gum.

“Later, I’ll wear this and serve inside the spaceship.”

“…Boss. Analysis shows the fabric is standard synthetic fiber from 650 years ago. It is presumed to have been found in the layer of floor dust near the waiting room of Section 07.”

Noah came over and reported in a low voice.

Her pupils had regained their usual jade color, but she kept readjusting focus as she watched Han-gyeol’s expression.

“Is it some kind of conspiracy? Did NOS hide this on purpose?”

“No.”

Han-gyeol gnawed on his gum and put the cloth scrap in his pocket.

“They probably just lost it. Everyone was a mess that day. Bags bursting, clothes tearing. NOS probably just thought it was ownerless trash and threw it away.”

Han-gyeol answered calmly, but his hand was gripping the cloth scrap in his pocket even tighter.

It hurt more not because it was a conspiracy, but because it wasn’t even a conspiracy.

The fact that the precious everyday life from 600 years ago had simply been classified as ‘ownerless data’ and thrown into a pit of dust.

Paul’s Apology and a New Logic

Paul, who had been standing motionless atop the fountain, slowly came down.

He stood before Han-gyeol without even brushing off the dust on the back of his hand.

“Chief. I… handled your precious error carelessly. Should these dust particles be quarantined back underground?”

Paul’s voice was tinged with self-reproach and static.

For a machine, an apology is nothing more than programmed social behavior, but the words Paul now uttered were the most appropriate comfort calculated deep within his main kernel.

“No, Paul. I found it because of you. Because you dug up something nobody could find for 600 years.”

Han-gyeol gave Paul’s rough metal shoulder a light tap.

“Instead, don’t go setting off dust bombs like that from now on. I’m the only one who needs to breathe air from 600 years ago. Look at Noah over there. Can’t you see her wheezing because her filter’s clogged?”

“…Kssht. Boss, I am not wheezing. The cooling efficiency merely dropped by 5% temporarily.”

Noah replied with deliberate fussiness, carefully brushing dust off her sleeves.

But on her pad screen, a new administrative proposal titled [Guidelines for Artifact Preservation and Display in Jiguk Sector 3] was already being drafted.

The Museum of 2850

That afternoon, a small glass case was installed in a corner of Administration Building Room 402.

There was no official approval from NOS.

But it was an unofficial space Noah and Paul had created by bypassing administrative code under the pretext of “environmental décor for the boss’s emotional stability.”

Inside the glass case, the faded cloth scrap Paul had categorized and the rusty cola can Han-gyeol brought were placed side by side.

“What is its value? It cannot be converted into money.”

Lucas (LUCAS), the android in charge of serving meals, stopped by on his way home and asked while looking into the case.

“It doesn’t really have value, Lucas. It’s just that when I look at it, I think, ‘Ah, I’m not alone after all.’ It’s similar to the sense of stability you feel when you plug in a charging cable.”

At Han-gyeol’s explanation, Lucas halted his calculations for three seconds and stared at the cloth scrap in the case.

“…An unknown frequency is being detected. There is no data, but it feels like the humidity in this area has become a little softer.”

Lucas said that and returned to the kitchen to make standard nutritional porridge, his assigned task.

To the androids, these small relics were becoming not mysteries to conquer, but teaching materials for learning the [nameless warmth] the Creators had possessed.

Evening Calm

The city’s neon signs began lighting up one by one.

Sector 3 regained its usual transparent air.

Most of the dust Paul had dispersed was placed into storage containers after the androids’ diligent ‘selective cleaning.’

The square once again boasted its smooth floor as if nothing had happened.

Han-gyeol leaned against the terrace railing and chewed gum.

There was no conspiracy, no grand secret.

He had only recovered a lost fragment of memory.

At his side were still only the fussy Noah, the cleaning-obsessed Paul, and Nabi, the electric cat with two tails.

“Boss. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. there is a meeting for the ‘Artifact Preservation Area Temperature and Humidity Management Protocol.’”

Noah reported from behind him.

“A meeting? Hey, can’t you just set the humidity to 50%?”

“Human heritage is not that simple. To maintain the ‘concentration of memories’ you mentioned, fine adjustments are necessary. My logic is currently performing some extremely complicated calculations.”

Noah grumbled, but stood beside Han-gyeol and looked at the setting sun.

The Earth was fine, and the city was intricate.

Han-gyeol took a fresh piece of gum from his pocket and handed it to Noah.

“Here, try chewing it too. It’s the taste that turns on memory mode.”

“…Administratively, I should decline, but for data collection purposes, I will accept once.”

In the paradise of 2850, for the first time, the sounds of chewing gum rang out in two places in synchronized rhythm.

There was no grand conspiracy, but that simple resonance alone was enough to make today perfectly complete.

That was all.