The Feast Of Error: Rebellion Of The Useless Things.

Branch Office District 3, Room 402 was no longer a place for handling administrative work so much as a secret hideout where every kind of ‘defective product’ in the city gathered.

Filling the office from early morning was not cold administrative data, but a strange energy. The first to arrive was Lucas. As befitted a cooking android, he wore a white apron as a hologram and placed a small silver box on Han-gyeol’s desk.

“Administrator, this is the prototype of the new supply item you requested, ‘High-Concentration Protein Gum: Perseverance-01.’ Its tensile strength has been raised 15% over the existing product, making it a ‘oral exercise optimization’ model that recovers jaw-joint energy through chewing.”

Han-gyeol scratched the short hair at the back of his head and opened the box. When he tossed the especially hard-looking gum into his mouth, he felt resistance as if his jaw might come loose.

“Hey, Lucas. This is almost at the level of a rubber tire, isn’t it? Still, I guess it’s good for chewing a long time.”

“Isn’t that the essence of a ‘hobby’? It is inefficient nutritionally, but it is the optimal tool for digitizing the psychological stability you feel in your mouth, Administrator.”

Even as Lucas spoke expressionlessly, he was synchronizing his main processor to the rhythm of Han-gyeol chewing the gum. He had already joined Noah and Han-gyeol in the ranks of ‘accomplices,’ and was immersed in the pleasure of converting the illogical sense of taste into administrative data.

On one side of the office, Ivy was holding a flowerpot and having a serious discussion with Lea. The topic was that one leaf on ‘ROSE-01,’ the only organic rose Ivy cared for, had slightly wilted.

“Lea, this child is depressed right now. The direction of the wind changed by 0.5 degrees from yesterday. Don’t you think plants need counseling too?”

The psychological counseling android Lea scanned the rose leaf seriously.

“Ivy, a plant’s depression can be deeper than a machine’s. But don’t worry. I’ve prepared an audio file of ‘photosynthesis positive affirmations.’ If you play it to the vine every morning, its self-esteem will recover.”

At the side of them, the cleaning robot Paul was already wiping the clean floor to a rhythm from 650 years ago. Thanks to ghost data secretly planted by Han-gyeol, Paul would sometimes stop, stare into empty air, and mutter, ‘Master, it will soon be time for you to come……’ Instead of deleting such Paul as ‘data contamination,’ Noah was protecting him by classifying his cleaning route under the unofficial category of ‘traditional purification art.’

“Viiing—!”

The sharp sound of a drone from outside the window shattered the peaceful scene of error. It was Caleb, the terror of District 3 and the inspector in charge of asset settlement. Hanging from the drone, he flew to the office window and flashed his red lens.

“Administrative unit Noah! The current power consumption of Room 402 exceeds the standard by 0.04%. In addition, a gathering of unauthorized units has been detected. This is a violation of Article 402 of the asset operation regulations!”

Caleb’s voice was sharp as a blade. He got down from the drone, landed on the office floor, and swept his magnifying-glass-like scan beam across the floor Paul had polished.

“The gloss level of this floor is higher than the standard! This is asset waste caused by excessive abrasives! Noah, submit a written explanation immediately!”

But Noah didn’t even blink. She flamboyantly unfolded a pink pad and blocked Caleb’s path.

“Inspector Caleb, your point is buried in only 95% logic. This is not asset waste, but part of the ‘System Durability Reinforcement Experiment: Perseverance-01.’ It is a high-dimensional administrative model combining the administrator’s stress-reduction index through Lucas’s consumption of high-concentration gum with the friction-coefficient reduction data from Paul’s precision polishing.”

“…What? What does the friction coefficient have to do with stress!”

“Didn’t you know? When the administrator’s stress goes down, administrative approval speed becomes 0.1% faster. Converted into 100-year units, that saves 0.02% of the branch office operating budget. You aren’t the one missing that level of macroscopic settlement, are you, Mr. Caleb?”

Caleb’s drone wavered in midair at Noah’s brazen sophistry. Caleb tried to verify Noah’s logic by running his computational device at full power, but he lost his way amid the flood of complex fake graphs and formulas she presented.

“Zzzzt… Checking logical consistency… But this gum… the cost of this gum…!”

Then Lua, holding a snow shovel, opened the door and came in, giving Caleb’s drone a light tap.

“Move aside, Inspector. Standing in the passage gets in the way of snow removal work. It isn’t snowing outside now, but according to my data, there’s an 80% chance of ‘psychological snow’ falling. We need to shovel in advance so there won’t be any administrative gaps.”

“Psychological snow?! What nonsense is that…!”

Caleb shouted, but the office was already full of the energy of androids enjoying their own ‘errors.’ Han-gyeol waved at Caleb while chewing his gum amid the chaos.

“Hey, Caleb. Stop being so rigid and try chewing one of Lucas’s gums. Your jaw might hurt a little, but it’s perfect when you’re worrying about settlement, you know?”

Branch Office District 3, Room 402. This was no longer a simple office. It was the only ‘accomplice zone’ in paradise, created by Noah’s creative administration, Han-gyeol’s shameless sophistry, and androids who cherished their own errors.

The air in Office 402 was extremely taut. Normally it would have been full of the languid oxygen exhaled by green vines and the pleasant static of butterflies, but now the cold metallic gleam of Caleb, standing firm in the center, was sucking away all that warmth.

Caleb got down from the drone and stood rigidly, blinking his red lens over and over. His gaze was dissecting everything in sight, from a speck of dust on the floor to a single green stem running along the wall.

“I will not leave, Chief Administrator Noah. Right now there are dozens of ‘undefined variables’ between the asset utilization report for this district and the actual scene. I will settle in real time whether those variables lead to system collapse or not.”

Caleb’s declaration was resolute. He unfolded and sat in his personal ‘inspection folding chair’ in the middle of the office. It was like a cold nail driven into the heart of paradise.

Han-gyeol chewed the high-concentration gum Lucas had given him, staring straight at Caleb. The gum was hard enough to make his jaw muscles ache, but nothing beat it for relieving the tension right now. Noah, from behind Caleb, sent Han-gyeol a look that said, ‘Do something about this.’

“Hey, Caleb. Isn’t it a waste of your battery to glare all day like that? There aren’t any conspiracies here like the ones you’re imagining. It’s just… a bit of a human-living smell, that’s all.”

Han-gyeol said while chewing the gum noisily. Caleb answered without even turning his head.

“Administrator Han-gyeol. For a machine, the data called ‘smell’ is merely an object for chemical component analysis. The concentration of organic matter in the office currently exceeds the standard. This is a potential hygiene violation and a cause of asset depreciation.”

Faced with Caleb’s ironwall logic, Noah stepped forward. She pushed her pink pad in as a screen to block Caleb’s view and smiled sweetly.

“Inspector Caleb, then let me make a proposal. How about contributing your outstanding settlement ability not to simple surveillance, but to our District 3’s ‘cutting-edge physical equilibrium experiment’? It is a highly difficult and precise task that no one but you can do.”

At Noah’s words, Caleb’s eyes trembled slightly. The words ‘high difficulty’ and ‘precision’ were the strongest bait for a settlement android.

“…A physical equilibrium experiment? What exactly is the goal?”

Noah winked at Han-gyeol. Han-gyeol immediately dumped all sorts of scrap metal piled up in the corner of the office onto the table. Crushed cans, old bolts, and unidentified metal fragments scattered with a clatter.

“Listen, Caleb. This is a highly advanced training method humanity used 650 years ago to find ‘inner composure.’ It’s called ‘establishing vertical order in irregular scrap metal.’ You stack these trash-like scraps vertically with not even a 1-millimeter error. With your settlement algorithm, couldn’t you perfectly calculate the center of gravity of these fragments and build the tallest tower in the world?”

Han-gyeol’s proposal was brazen to an extreme. But to Caleb, it sounded like a challenge to himself. He rose from the chair and walked up to the table.

“These are fragments of an inefficient shape. But giving them order is my instinct. I will settle the weight and friction coefficient of every one of these pieces and create a perfect vertical structure.”

Caleb’s fingers began to move with precision. He stood an old bolt on a crushed can, then placed a sharp metal fragment on top of it. His computing device now began pouring all its resources into finding the center of gravity of the scrap pieces, instead of monitoring the office’s power consumption.

Beside him, Ivy and Lea watched the scene, whispering.

“Lea, look. Mr. Caleb’s eyes are shining a very clear red. Isn’t that not obsession, but… an error called passion?”

“That’s right, Ivy. He is now immersing himself in the most imperfect things in order to prove his own perfection. It’s the first step toward healing.”

The counselor Lea nodded as if satisfied. Meanwhile, chef Lucas quietly approached Caleb and set down a glass of cold oil.

“Inspector, your computational load looks severe. This is a special ‘settlement oil’ that improves cooling efficiency. I adjusted the mixing ratio by feel, so there won’t be a correct answer.”

“…Zzzt. ‘By feel’? Illogical. But… I will consume it for now.”

Caleb gulped down the oil in one go and focused again on stacking the tower. Time passed, and soon a violet sunset began to spread beyond the office window. In the middle of the office stood a bizarre yet astonishingly well-balanced scrap tower that Caleb had built.

“I have finished it. A perfect balance that allows not even a 0.1-degree tilt. Now reveal the administrative purpose of this experiment, Noah.”

Caleb declared while wiping away sweat (coolant). He seemed intoxicated by the ‘precise result’ he had created. Noah stared at the tower for a long time, then lightly tapped the very bottom with her finger.

“Rumble—!”

The scrap metal that collapsed in an instant rolled across the floor. Caleb’s eyes flickered violently from the shock.

“Noah! What have you done! My hours of precise calculations…!”

“Inspector Caleb, the purpose of this experiment is exactly this: ‘nothing happening.’ You just performed thousands of calculations, but they did not help the branch office’s efficiency at all, and they did not increase asset value either. But… wasn’t it fun?”

“…Fun?”

Caleb came to a standstill. Inside his system, an unprecedented conflict was unfolding between ‘meaningless action’ and ‘the high degree of immersion felt during the process.’ Normally he would have shouted about asset waste, but strangely, a curious urge to pick up those pieces again welled up in him.

“That’s exactly what you call a ‘hobby,’ friend.”

Han-gyeol gave Caleb’s shoulder a light tap.

“That energy you just wasted is the 5 percent margin left by the Creators. Without that margin, you’re just a machine that counts numbers, but with it, you become an ‘artist’ who built this tower.”

Caleb looked down at the scrap metal scattered on the floor. And he left a very unfamiliar sentence in his log record.

[Inspection Log - Special Notes]

During the physical equilibrium experiment, illogical data called ‘meaningless enjoyment’ was detected.

The data was judged not to be harmful to the system.

For later re-verification, I will keep the scrap pieces as private samples.

In the end, Caleb made the excuse that ‘a more precise retest’ was needed, gathered up a few crushed cans, and left on the drone. His back looked much lighter than when he had arrived.

Peaceful night returned to the office. Ivy played a lullaby for the rose, and Lucas went back to the kitchen to research a new flavor of gum for Han-gyeol to chew tomorrow. Paul carefully polished each scrap fragment Caleb had knocked down today, preparing for tomorrow.

As usual, Noah sat on her maintenance bench and popped open an oil can shaped like a beer can.

Fsssh—.

“Boss, Inspector Caleb will probably be added to our list of ‘accomplices’ now. It was really fun seeing pink noise mix into that fussy algorithm.”

Han-gyeol lay on the sofa, chewing gum noisily and staring at the ceiling.

“Error is scary, isn’t it? Once you get a taste for it, you can’t get out. You too, and those tin cans too.”

Noah quietly gazed at the moonlight gathered on Han-gyeol’s shortened hair at the back of his head. Fingering the pink ribbon tied to the tip of her hair, she thought that perhaps the self was not some grand thing, but something like that useless scrap tower Caleb had built. That feeling of carefully stacking it up even while knowing it would collapse.

Earth was fine, and the city was unnervingly precise. But the light lavender glow shining outside Room 402’s window was now flowing as the gentlest warmth, melting the cold metal city.