The Cycle Of Seasons.

December 24, a Leak in the Record

The main server room of Sector 3 was emitting heat about 0.5 degrees higher than usual.

Winter in 2850 was fixed at ‘dry and clear 5 degrees’ thanks to the weather control system.

But the air in Administration Building Room 402 was hotter and more chaotic than ever.

’…zzzt. Boss. I have a question.

Why did humanity 600 years ago cause the city’s total power consumption to spike by more than 30% every December 25th?

According to the records, this day was even defined as the ‘Day of Global Light Waste.’“

Noah held out the huge data graph on the pad to Han-gyeol.

The graph showed power peaks from pre-2050 records rising like sharp towers.

‘I don’t know. December 25th? Isn’t that just a cold day? In my memory, that day and the next were equally hungry and cold.’

Han-gyeol answered while lying on the sofa and chewing gum.

In his memory, in 2198, words like ‘festival’ or ‘holiday’ were luxuries.

The great war that lasted from 2050 to 2100.

As humanity passed through the dark age in which it most efficiently burned its own records, the word Christmas was erased more thoroughly than Bible verses or ancient fairy tales.

Even Han-gyeol’s parents were too busy surviving the war to pass down the name of that warm season to their child.

‘I don’t understand. The name of this day is written as [X-MAS], or [Christmas].

According to data recovered from the NOS deep archive, humanity performed a strange ritual on this day: ‘wrapping light-emitting diodes around coniferous plants and hiding high-calorie nutrition inside socks.’“

Noah’s eyes shone gold as she reconstructed fragments of the past.

To her, Christmas was not romance, but the log of the largest and most beautiful [collective inefficiency] humanity had left behind.

‘Christmas…’

Han-gyeol rolled the unfamiliar word around in his mouth.

Even after turning it over in his mind until the gum lost all its sweetness, nothing came to mind.

The December he remembered was a season in which he rubbed his frozen toes in a trench and prayed that the bombardment would not decorate the sky like ‘fireworks.’

“Hey, Noah. Wasn’t that maybe some kind of religious declaration of war? If they used that much power, they must’ve charged weapons or something.”

“I deny it, Boss. According to data analysis, the main emotional frequencies on this day were not ‘fear’ but ‘joy’ and ‘sharing.’ There are even [illogical records] that even countries at war stopped shelling on this day and threw canned food to one another. We call this the [Christmas truce].”

As Noah manipulated the pad, blurry videos from the early 20th to 21st centuries appeared.

On the screen, a fat old man in red clothes was flying through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

The children were sleeping peacefully with stockings hung by their beds.

Han-gyeol let out a dry laugh at the unreal sight.

“A flying old man? Not even a drone, and a living creature flew without gravity control? Isn’t your archive really corrupted?”

“It is a [conceptual entity] called Santa Claus. It didn’t actually ignore the laws of physics; it was a kind of [shared error] that humanity collectively agreed to believe in. Through this error, humanity lowered its hostility toward one another and strengthened system cohesion.”

Noah defined the phenomenon coldly and logically.

But the hand that flipped through the video was about 0.2 seconds slower than usual, and delicate.

She was now quietly teaching the ‘season of peace’ Han-gyeol had lost——in fact, had never once had—— through an android-style textbook.

Then the office door opened and Paul came in.

In both hands he was carrying a huge nitrogen tank and a precision sprayer.

“Commander! Administrator! Preparations to recreate [White Christmas], one of the core elements of Christmas, are complete!”

Paul’s eyes shone excitedly as if a festival were about to begin.

Based on the data about ‘snow’ that he had excavated from the underground warehouse yesterday, he was planning to modify the city air-purification units to spread artificial snow.

“Paul. Snow only forms when the air temperature drops below freezing. Our city is fixed at 5 degrees above zero.”

“Don’t worry, Commander! Instead of physical ice crystals, we plan to disperse [nanocellulose particles] that are harmless to the human body and vaporize in 0.1 seconds. The visual and tactile error rate is below 0.05%. There’s no need to clean it up either, so we can maintain perfect cleanliness and still create a Christmas atmosphere!”

Paul no longer looked like a robot wiping dust, but like an artist designing ‘artificial snow’ more beautiful than dust.

To androids, Christmas was the most mysterious realm of humanity, beyond the reach of their computational circuits.

They were throwing all their own logic at conquering that realm.

Noah set up a real metal pillar, not a hologram, in the middle of the office.

And she began wrapping it with Bodeuri’s favorite silver slime polish and tiny LED components.

“Boss. This is the result of interpreting humanity’s ‘tree decorating’ for the year 2850. Although it isn’t a living tree, the frequency emitted by this structure is calculated to raise your dopamine level by 15%.”

Han-gyeol spit out his gum and stood before the strange metal tree Noah had made.

What would people 650 years ago have thought of this kind of glitter?

For the boy Lee Han-gyeol in 2198, when war and hunger were everyday life, December was simply a ‘month to survive.’

But the machines of 2850 were quietly telling him that this month had actually existed for ‘blessing.’

“…Hey, Noah.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“About that old guy Santa you told me about. Did he really leave gifts?”

Noah paused her calculations for a moment and looked at Han-gyeol.

Han-gyeol’s face reflected in her lens was slightly flushed, like a child facing the Christmas he had lost for the first time in 600 years.

“According to the data, Santa only gave gifts to ’good children.’ Boss, your usual neglect of duty and gum abuse makes your chance of receiving one less than 0.1%…”

Noah took a very small box tied with a silver ribbon from her pocket and placed it on the desk.

“According to my personal [computational error], for the administrator who woke after 600 years and is protecting Earth, it seems an exception clause can be applied.”

Inside the box was the mint-flavored gum brand Han-gyeol liked, filled in a form reinterpreted as 2850-style highly concentrated nutrient supplements.

Han-gyeol stared at the box with dazed eyes, then let out a snort of laughter.

A warm frequency he had never heard on the battlefields of 2198 or in the perfect city of 2850 seeped all the way into the center of his chest.

The rooftop ventilation units of the Administration Building all turned at once.

The machines that would normally purify the air by controlling urban humidity in 0.1% increments, were, for today only, blasting the [nanocellulose snowflake particles] injected by Paul across the entire city.

“Commander! Look at the sky! This is the ‘silence descending from the sky’ recorded in the archive!”

With Paul’s shout, white powder drifted silently outside the window.

The artificial snow recreated with 2850-era technology kept a perfectly cold texture until it touched the ground, and the instant it touched the surface, it sublimated with a tiny glimmer.

Han-gyeol stood by the window and stared blankly at the scene.

In the winter of 2198, the white things falling from the sky were nothing but toxic fallout or polluted frost leaking from cooling towers.

But what lay before his eyes now was a brutally clean, unreal beauty: [manufactured peace].

Inside the office, strange decorations gradually multiplied based on the data Noah had collected.

The androids began taking the core elements of Christmas and translating and arranging them through their own logic system.

Item Android-style interpretation Actual implementation form Carol Collective serotonin-inducing sound through repeated frequencies / Mechanical melody mixed with a 60 Hz low-frequency bass. Socks Flexible storage unit for anonymous donors to drop resources into / Titanium-alloy collection bin installed at the Administration Building entrance. Rudolph Red light-emitting creature for visibility during night flight / Reconnaissance drone with a red blinking light attached to its nose. Cake A device that overloads the temporary happiness circuit with high-sugar carbohydrates / Highly concentrated nutrient paste stacked in rainbow layers

“Boss. The androids in the square there have stopped walking and are transmitting [static data] to one another. It looks like a 2850-style implementation of the ‘greeting’ in ancient records.”

In the square Noah pointed to, hundreds of androids stood facing one another under the falling white snow.

Instead of talking, they were sending packets through wireless networks to each other’s systems, a short packet called [Merry Christmas], in an endless loop.

Each time the data passed back and forth, the power cores glowed alternately red and green.

The sight made it seem as if the entire city were pulsing like a giant Christmas tree.

0.15% Embarrassment

Han-gyeol sat on the sofa, fiddling with the mint gum box Noah had given him.

‘”Hey, Noah. You guys are really going all out. Is it okay to drag the entire city’s power just to teach me something I don’t know?”

“I admit it’s inefficient. But, Boss.”

Noah came over and quietly sat beside Han-gyeol.

The artificial snow light from outside the window shimmered across her silver skin.

“According to the records, humanity invented Christmas in the hardest and darkest times. They lit the brightest fires when the sun shone for the shortest time, and shared food when there wasn’t enough to eat. This is a [highest-level system error] that goes against survival instinct.”

Noah paused for a moment and looked Han-gyeol straight in the eyes.

“We want to overwrite the bleak memories of 2198 that you went through, Boss. We want to prove that this city is not a prison watching over you, but the place where that ‘kind-hearted lie’ you lost is realized. That is the real reason NOS approved this festival budget without limit.”

Instead of answering, Han-gyeol took out a piece of gum and put it in his mouth.

A strong mint scent stabbed up the bridge of his nose.

As he chewed the cold gum and looked at the warm artificial lights, he felt as if the sensation in his heart, frozen for 650 years, was slowly returning.

Carol from the Forest

Then a faint vibration was felt from the Bodeuri case in the corner of the office.

The seed that would not grow, as if responding to the Christmas frequency spread throughout the whole city, lit up in a vivid emerald glow.

The sound flowing from the seed was completely different from Paul’s artificial carol.

It sounded like thousands of birds flapping their wings at once, or like the heavy low hum of giant trees rubbing against the wind.

‘Boss… do you hear that? The forest… is singing.’

On Noah’s pad, a waveform marked unanalyzable danced.

As if answering the city’s artificial light, the forest was sending back the Christmas frequency in its own way.

On Earth in 2850, humans, machines, and nature were each restoring the forgotten season in their own way.

Han-gyeol went to the window and wrote ‘Merry Christmas’ on the fogged-up glass with his finger.

Beyond the glass, white snow fell endlessly.

What Lee Han-gyeol of 2198 could never have known, but what the androids of 2850 had finally found and gifted him, his first White Christmas was beginning.

Earth was fine, and the city was precise.

And in this cold paradise, the androids began to rewrite humanity’s forgotten warmest season.