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“Beep—.”
The hologram screen slipped weakly from Han-gyeol’s fingertips.
A yellow warning window popped up among tens of thousands of lines of white logs.
“Noah. Look at this.”
Noah at the seat beside him did not move at all.
Synced to NOS’s central server, she was staring into space with unfocused eyes.
“Noah?”
“Yes. I am listening.”
Her pupils instantly regained their spark.
“What is it, Citizen No. 001?”
“The café android Nora-2. She apparently handed a customer an empty cup?”
Noah tilted her head and scanned the logs.
“The other android also received an empty cup and pretended to drink for 15 minutes. It is the result of overactivation of the atmosphere-building process at Interaction Level 4.”
“Why drink from an empty cup? Isn’t that lag?”
“Administratively, it prevented resource waste. The act of drinking is what matters, not whether there is liquid. Shall I correct it?”
Han-gyeol chewed his gum and pressed the “hold” button.
“Leave it. They don’t know what taste is anyway; it’s enough if they’re holding a cup.”
“Understood. Recording the judgment result. Reasonable basis: human laziness.”
“Lazy? That’s consideration.”
Han-gyeol stretched.
The office was extremely quiet.
In a perfect stillness with not even the sound of machinery,
the only sounds were Han-gyeol’s rough breathing and the chewing of gum.
“It’s lunchtime.”
Noah stood up from her seat.
When they went down to the cafeteria, Lucas held out the same gray porridge as yesterday.
“Hey, Lucas. Don’t you have anything different today?”
“20% protein, 60% carbohydrates, 20% vitamins. It’s a perfect blend.”
Lucas’s eyes were still like glass beads.
Han-gyeol took a bite of the porridge and looked out the window.
Across the plaza, androids were walking at exact angles, as if measured with a ruler.
“Don’t they eat?”
“They’re heading to the charging station. They only pretend to eat after 5 p.m.”
“5 p.m.?”
“Yes. When ‘Daily Mode’ begins.”
The afternoon work was reviewing documents for administrative officer Aria.
Every sentence was polite to the point of being creepy.
Reading the same sentence over and over made the back of his neck ache.
“Ding—.”
5 p.m.
The city bell rang.
“Work Mode has ended.”
Noah neatly straightened her uniform.
“From here on, it’s Daily Mode. Let’s go.”
Once they stepped outside, the texture of the air had changed.
The androids who had walked as if measured with a ruler now moved lazily.
Some leaned crookedly on benches and watched the sunset, and some spoke to the person beside them.
“Human, are you taking a stroll?”
Yuna, sitting on a park bench, waved.
Unlike her stiff daytime voice, it was quite lively.
“Yeah. Just looking around.”
“Today’s sunset wavelength is longer than yesterday’s. Tom has been spacing out for 30 minutes already.”
Yuna pointed to Tom sitting beside her.
Tom gave Han-gyeol a slight bow of the head, then turned his gaze back to the sunset.
“What’s so good about just sitting there like that?”
“I don’t know. But the system defined this as ‘rest,’ so that’s what we’re doing. Would you like to sit too, oppa?”
“No. I’m going to go have some real coffee.”
The café was eerie.
Androids were “acting out” cheerful conversations with empty glasses in front of them.
“Would you like to order, real human?”
Nora-2 asked.
“Real coffee. Make it hot.”
“I can’t guarantee the taste. It’s only the standard flavor in the data.”
The coffee she handed over really did taste standard.
A nearly colorless, odorless liquid, neither bitter nor sweet.
Han-gyeol gulped down the coffee while looking at the night view outside.
“NOA. Don’t you rest?”
Han-gyeol asked Noah, who was sitting across from him.
“‘Stop’ is not included in my logs. I have to ensure the city’s continuity.”
“You live such a tiring life.”
“Tiredness is the result of accumulated biological fatigue substances. I only need a steady voltage.”
Noah looked indifferently at Han-gyeol’s coffee cup.
There was neither curiosity nor envy in her eyes.
“Noah. In the 650 years you’ve been watching that sunset, have you never thought it was pretty?”
Noah blinked her visual sensors.
“The visible-light concentration of the sunset was exactly as stated in the data sheet. The word ‘pretty’ cannot be quantified, so I cannot answer.”
“That’s horrifying, seriously.”
On the way back to the lodging.
The streetlights perfectly divided the borders of the sidewalk blocks.
Han-gyeol suddenly looked back.
Behind the peaceful stage play performed by the machines, an absolute silence pressed down on the city.
The next morning.
The scent of a forest was sprayed into the room.
“It’s 8 o’clock. Wake up.”
Han-gyeol opened his eyes at Noah’s voice.
The self in the mirror was still 25, but 600 years of fatigue lingered in his eyes.
“What’s today’s assignment?”
“It’s a sensor damage case in the external buffer zone. I’m activating field verification authority.”
The underground parking lot.
A glossy self-driving vehicle was waiting.
As they passed through the city gate, the scenery changed drastically.
Massive tree roots had burst up through the asphalt.
Unknown vines were winding tightly around buildings.
The real Earth, which the androids had “left alone,” appeared.
“What’s that?”
A snail as big as a bear was crawling in the middle of the road.
“It’s an evolved external organism. It’s not threatening, but if it gets on the car it’ll be sticky, so we’ll detour.”
Noah’s voice was still flat and lifeless.
The vehicle stopped near the transmission tower.
When the door opened, the thick smell of earth and damp undergrowth rushed in all at once.
“Impact trace analysis. Physical impact from the beak of a large bird.”
Noah examined the damaged panel.
Han-gyeol stayed alert to his surroundings.
The city had been all silence, but here it was noisy.
The fluttering of insects’ wings, the low calls of beasts.
“Noah, over there!”
At the top of the transmission tower.
A gigantic bird, with a wingspan of at least five meters, was looking down at them.
Its eyes glinted coldly like machine sensors.
“I know. It has no intention of attacking us, so ignore it.”
Noah reconnected the severed wiring without even turning around.
The bird merely watched them.
To the androids, the outside was simply “a place that is not the city,”
and that bird was “an entity not subject to management.”
“Repair complete. Returning.”
Noah stood, brushing off her uniform, not a speck of dust on it.
Han-gyeol watched the bird’s receding figure until the very end.
On the way back to the city.
Han-gyeol fiddled with the dirt caught beneath his fingernails.
A clean island floating above this huge, unfamiliar world.
From tomorrow, he would have to wipe the dust from that island again.
“Tomorrow at 9 again, right?”
“If you’re late, your credits get docked. Don’t forget.”
That was the only way for the lone human living on Earth in the year 2850.
“Aren’t you heading home?”
Noah asked, leaning against the corner of the desk.
Han-gyeol was scanning the list of “scheduled for disposal” data filling the screen.
“Can’t this be restored?”
“You mean the 0.15% error data? The system has already put it in the trash. The height of inefficiency.”
Han-gyeol chewed his gum.
At the bottom of the list, he saw a familiar file name.
“That’s my backup file.”
“What are you going to use 600-year-old code for? It’s not even compatible with the current NOS kernel. That’s like trying to run a quantum computer with an antique relic.”
“I just wanted to look at it.”
As Han-gyeol pressed the restore button,
a red window appeared.
“Tch.”
Noah came over and snatched the pad away.
“Honestly, you’re stubborn.”
With a few flicks of her fingers, the red window disappeared and the door to the tucked-away archive server opened.
“Follow me. The physical server is on basement level 12. There might still be some data residue there.”
Basement level 12.
The numbers kept changing for a long while as the elevator descended.
When the door opened, instead of the clean air of downtown, a strangely familiar, damp smell stabbed Han-gyeol’s nose.
“Dust…?”
“Even androids don’t come in here. It’s a zero-zone for cleaning efficiency.”
The flashlight beam split the darkness.
Rusty server racks stood in rows like a forest.
Han-gyeol walked deeper inside, following the light.
“Over there.”
A corner old-model terminal.
It was similar in form to the hardware he had assembled himself 600 years ago.
Han-gyeol pressed the power button.
“Whirr—.”
A screaming fan noise broke the silence.
Dust billowed everywhere, but a faint blue light came on the screen.
“It turns on, this thing.”
“It seems NOS has been trickling power to it for emergency use. Administrative waste.”
Noah crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.
Han-gyeol typed on the keyboard with trembling hands.
The cursor blinked.
Password entry window.
“……”
Memories from 600 years ago.
Without hesitation, he entered the password.
“Oh.”
Noah’s eyes widened slightly.
“You remember it?”
“I typed it more often than my service number.”
The folder opened.
Among tens of thousands of blocks of code, one image file stood out.
Han-gyeol clicked the file.
On a screen full of noise, three faces appeared.
His parents in their youth, and young Lee Han-gyeol smiling between them.
“……”
The sound of chewing gum stopped.
Han-gyeol reached out to touch the screen, then stopped.
In the overly clean world of 2850, this one old, dirty photo was the only thing that made it possible for him to breathe.
“Who is it?”
Noah asked.
“My family. The people who left for Beta-1 Zone.”
“According to the data, they’re marked as deceased entities.”
“I know.”
Han-gyeol sank deep into the chair.
600 years of time.
Only now did he seem to understand why he had awakened in this strange paradise.
Not because of a system error, but perhaps to see this one photo again.
“Noah.”
“Yes.”
“You androids don’t have parents, right?”
“We have a manufacturing process. We did not adopt the inefficient production method called parents.”
“Then you don’t have anyone you miss, either?”
Noah was silent for a moment.
Her pupils flashed blue.
“Data recovery is not an emotion included in my computations. But….”
“But?”
“Mr. Lee Han-gyeol’s heart rate has stabilized by 15% compared to earlier. If this photo helps your ‘Daily Mode,’ then I’ll approve a postponement of deletion.”
Noah picked up the pad and turned away first.
“Let’s go. The shuttle will stop running soon.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
Han-gyeol transferred the photo to his personal terminal in his chest pocket.
When he shut down the server’s power, darkness came again.
But it was different from before.
The heavy data in his pocket was supporting him.
When he came out to the lobby, the night patrol robot Paul was waiting at the entrance.
“Chief. You’re 2 hours and 14 minutes late leaving work. That’s an energy-efficiency violation.”
“Hey, Paul. What did you see today?”
“I saw moss growing under a streetlight. It had grown 0.02 mm more than yesterday.”
“Really? I just came back from seeing a ghost from 600 years ago.”
“Ghosts do not exist in the data sheets.”
“They do. A very pretty ghost.”
Han-gyeol tapped Paul on the shoulder and walked out.
The city at night still shone, and the androids were still acting out a human evening.
Machines sitting blankly with cold coffee in front of them.
Han-gyeol crossed through them and headed for the lodging.
“Noah.”
“Yes.”
“Can I mod that… ‘Ark of Error’ a bit more tomorrow? The cargo bay is too narrow.”
“I’ll approve it after reviewing efficiency. But what are you planning to load?”
“Not sure. If I see some pretty moss while passing by, I’ll bring it back.”
Han-gyeol smiled faintly and lay down on the bed.
The ceiling was still white and glossy, but it felt as if the warmth of the photo in his pocket was being passed along.
The world was intact, and the city was precise.
And Lee Han-gyeol, no longer a component of that city, decided to become a traveler carrying memories from 600 years ago.
He still had to go to work by 9 tomorrow.
But this time, he thought he might be able to wake up feeling a little differently.
That was all.
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