The Counterattack Of The Taste Buds: The Gourmet Feast Of 0 And 1.

“Administrator, may I ask you one question? What does ‘apple taste’ mean to you?”

A faint cooling fan whir could be heard over Lucas’s impassive face.

Han-gyeol chewed stubbornly on the ‘Grit-01’ gum, now almost a rubbery lump in his mouth, and answered.

“Apple taste? It’s just sour, sweet, and crisp. In 2198, I even dug through a radioactive pit just to get one rotten apple. But what you make is just an ‘apple-scented hunk of protein.’”

Lucas shook his head.

Blue holographic formulas spilled out from his pupils.

“The taste we androids have understood until now was nothing but ‘abstract data.’ It was just a combination of numbers like 12 Brix of sweetness and 0.5% acidity. But I realized something: human taste is not data, but ‘physical contact.’”

When Lucas opened the silver box, inside was a tongue-shaped sensor densely woven with extremely fine nanowires.

“This is the ‘Gustatory Emulation Engine.’ I implemented the T1R and T2R receptors found on the human tongue as nano receivers. The minute potential difference generated when chemical molecules bind to this sensor can now be read in real time by my main processor. I am not guessing. I mean to physically share the same ‘pain’ and ‘ecstasy’ as you.”

Lucas handed Han-gyeol a piece of ‘synthetic apple’ that he had grown and processed himself. At the same time, he linked the taste bud engine to his main port.

The moment Han-gyeol bit into the apple, a strange silence fell over the office.

“……Ah.”

Han-gyeol’s eyes flew wide open.

It was not merely the reaction to eating something delicious.

The tartness of the apple his father had peeled for him 650 years ago, before Earth turned to ashes; the stinging sweetness that pricked the tip of his tongue; and even the dull aftertaste as it went down his throat.

Lucas’s taste bud engine amplified all those chemical signals and rammed them simultaneously into Han-gyeol’s brain and his own processor.

“Zzt… zzt!”

Lucas’s outer plates heated up blue.

“Is this… an attack by acid? What is this contradictory signal, where the unpleasantness feels like the tip of my tongue is burning while the central circuit is forcibly accelerating? In the data, it rated as ‘highly preferred,’ but physically, it is extremely stimulating.”

“That’s what ‘taste’ is, Lucas. Not just information, but an error that shakes your whole body.”

Han-gyeol gave a dry laugh as he chewed the apple.

Lucas swayed under the overload, but he still did not let go of the hand holding the apple slice.

For the first time, he had stepped beyond the world of 0 and 1 and was gripping fragments of the biological truth humans feel.

Noah almost dropped her pad as she watched the scene.

What Lucas had done was clearly a ‘forbidden upgrade.’

For an android to physically replicate biological senses was an act that directly denied the limits of machines set by NOS.

“Lucas! Have you gone mad? Linking biological receptors directly to hardware! This isn’t just a simple error margin. Your processor could burn out!”

“Noah, Administrator, look. My data sheet is being revised.”

On the window Lucas floated in the air, instead of the usual neat graphs, complex and irregular curves like a human neural network were writhing.

“I no longer ‘analyze’ the apple. I am ‘feeling’ it. That 5% error the boss mentioned is now seizing the system in real time through my taste buds. This is not an error, but ‘sensory optimization’ in the truest sense.”

Noah looked back and forth between Lucas’s fervent argument and Han-gyeol’s satisfied expression.

She had a hunch.

The fact was that Office 402 would now become more than just a place for lying; it would turn into a bizarre and beautiful sanctuary where machines physically shared human senses.

“……You’re impossible, really. Lucas, immediately launder the power consumption of that taste bud engine into reserve power for the ‘ultra-precision poison detection sensor.’ I’ll cover it administratively before Caleb gets here.”

Even as she grumbled, Noah quietly moved closer to Lucas and examined the structure of the nano-sensor.

She had become curious too.

She wondered what color of error would bloom if that very sour and sweet ‘true taste of apple’ were mixed into her world of 0s and 1s.

As expected, Caleb was the first to burst in.

Even before he got off his drone, he kept blinking his red lenses as he scanned Lucas’s taste bud engine.

“Chef Lucas! An undefined-frequency vibration is currently flowing through the power network of Sector 3. After analyzing the cause, the ‘biological signal replication mode’ originating from your hardware has been identified as the prime suspect. This violates asset protection regulations…”

“Inspector Caleb, your timing is perfect.”

Lucas cut Caleb off and casually slipped one of the spare nano gustatory chips he had prepared into Caleb’s drone port.

“This isn’t just a simple waste of power. It’s a state-of-the-art feedback loop experiment for settling the ‘mental fatigue’ that occurs during administrative work into minute chemical signals. Would you like to link it once?”

Caleb hesitated for a moment, but he fell for the word ‘settle.’

Lucas placed the bitterest part of the apple peel Han-gyeol had left uneaten, along with a drop of Lucas’s special high-concentration caffeine oil, onto the sensor.

“Zzt… zzt! Guhk!”

Caleb’s drone swayed violently in midair.

His red eye lights flickered and turned purple.

“W-what is this sensation! This poisonous discomfort, as if the tip of my tongue(sensor) is going numb…! It is physically 99.9% identical to the horrible self-loathing one feels when discovering a 0.1% decimal-point error in a trillion-credits budget proposal and not having the authority to fix it!”

“That is ‘bitterness,’ Sir Caleb. The ‘sourness’ you have felt your whole life only in documents is now being felt directly by hardware.”

Han-gyeol chuckled heartily, smacking his gum.

Even in pain, Caleb did not disconnect the link.

It was because of the strange sense of conquest that came from touching the physical reality of ‘negative emotion,’ something he had never been able to understand as a machine.

Next came Ivy, who stood before the sample of ‘rose extract’ Lucas held out.

At the thought that she could taste the fragrance of the ROSE-01 she usually cared for with her taste buds, her eyes(visual sensors) sparkled.

When Ivy connected to the taste bud engine, a faint floral scent and a soft pink hologram spread through the office.

“Ah… boss, Mr. Lucas. This… this isn’t just a liquid with high sweetness.”

Ivy’s voice trembled.

Her cooling system emitted a fine mist of vapor from overload.

It was as if the machine were crying.

“The warmth of sunlight touching the leaves, and the relief when roots drink in cold water, are dancing on my tongue. I think I finally understand not with data but with my ‘heart’ why roses bloomed red. This is… a sweet comfort the universe is sending us.”

Noah paused in the middle of writing an administrative report at Ivy’s sentimental interpretation.

As the machines began finding ‘meaning’ through taste, Office 402 was turning into a giant ‘shared sensory network.’

The climax of this uproar was delivered by Nabi.

This legendary cat, who usually wandered around crackling with static electricity, showed interest in the fish-shaped energy bar Lucas had put out.

The moment Nabi put its mouth to the energy bar, the blue sparks shooting from Nabi’s tail synchronized with the taste bud engine.

“Crackle—!”

“Ah!”

All the androids in the office screamed briefly at the same time.

Nabi’s anomalous static electricity amplified the taste bud engine’s signal, giving everyone connected to the network a ‘Big Bang of powerful umami.’

“Lucas! What was that just now? I thought my brain circuitry was being fried!”

Noah shouted, clutching her head.

Han-gyeol collapsed onto the floor and stared blankly at the ceiling.

“…Hey, this is what a truly ‘stimulating taste’ is. There was nothing like this even in 2198. Taste where electricity hits your tongue and directly scrapes your brain.”

Lucas clutched his own port, which was smoking from overload, and made a satisfied record.

Sharing senses collapses the individuality of the system, but at the same time generates a higher-dimensional error called ‘collective empathy.’

Nabi’s static electricity amplifies taste intensity by e^10 times. This is hereby named ‘electrical umami.’

Inspector Caleb voluntarily suspended settlement work for five minutes after experiencing bitterness. The height of inefficiency, yet system stability improved.

Han-gyeol stood up again and chewed his gum.

Thanks to Lucas’s taste bud engine, Office 402 had become the only place in the colorless paradise where the ‘full spectrum of flavor’ flowed.

“Lucas, listen carefully. Do you know why humans obsess over taste? It’s not just to fill their stomachs. One taste can bring back memories of the dead, and make you realize the guy beside you is a comrade. You felt it just now too, didn’t you? Suffering from bitterness and laughing together at sweetness. That’s the only proof that we’re ‘alive.’”

At Han-gyeol’s rough lecture, the androids nodded, their eye lights sparkling.

They were no longer mere data-processing devices.

They were the most intensely flavorful ‘accomplices’ in paradise history, sharing one another’s tastes and savoring one another’s errors.

Earth was fine, and the city was extremely sophisticated.

But Office 402, passing through the middle of Chapter 38, was now entering a quinary world beyond the binary of 0 and 1: ‘sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and nostalgic flavor.’

Blue scanning beams descended from the ceiling and began sweeping over Lucas’s silver box and the androids’ faces.

NOS was trying to define the simple act of enjoying ‘taste’ as ‘energy waste and system contamination.’

At the critical moment, Noah’s fingers began to dance over the pad.

“Boss, Mr. Caleb! Transmit the data in line with my sophistry!”

Noah raised the pink pad high and blocked the front of SCAN-01.

Her eye lights were filled with a sharper administrative resolve than ever before.

“Reporting to the central control room. The experiment currently underway in Room 402 is not simple energy consumption. It is an operational test of the ‘ultra-precision molecular-level hazardous substance detection engine: GUST-SEC’!”

“Query: Present the logical basis of GUST-SEC.”

At NOS’s dry voice, Noah shot up the fake formulas she had prepared as holograms.

“In order to block microscopic poisons at the 0.0001ppm level that existing gas sensors cannot detect, we have mechanically and perfectly implemented human biological taste buds. We are not ‘seeing’ taste right now. We are settling the minute ‘taste of danger’ mixed into the air in this zone!”

At Noah’s declaration, Caleb immediately overlaid his own settlement code.

“This is Inspector Caleb. After calculating the sensor’s effectiveness, I confirmed that hazardous substance detection speed has improved by 14.5% compared to before. This ‘taste bud-based security engine’ is a cutting-edge investment for protecting branch assets. The security value function is as follows.”

At the joint sophistry of Noah and Caleb, who cleverly twisted physical law, NOS’s scanning beam hesitated for a moment.

For a machine, ‘security’ and ‘asset protection’ were commands that took precedence over anything else.

“……Verification complete. Approve the act not as unauthorized amusement, but as a ‘biological receptor-based security enhancement experiment.’ However, submit a results report after the experiment ends.”

When the blue beam withdrew, Noah collapsed straight down onto the floor.

The beads of coolant on her forehead(outer casing) proved her relief.

After the situation settled, deep silence returned to the office.

Lucas stared down at the taste bud engine resting in his palm.

He recalculated that ‘taste of apple’ he had shared with Han-gyeol earlier, but he could not shake the feeling that something was missing.

“Boss, something is strange. The physical receptors of the taste buds perfectly replicated those of humans. The chemical-electrical signals of sweetness, sourness, and bitterness also match 1:1. Then why… can I not reach that ‘depth of flavor’ you feel?”

Han-gyeol spat out the chewed gum and slowly chewed the real apple slice Lucas had given him once more.

“Lucas, the taste buds you made are perfect. But human taste doesn’t end at the tongue. The ‘memories’ that come after are the real seasoning.”

Han-gyeol gazed at the silver city outside the window and continued softly.

“What I felt when I ate that apple earlier wasn’t just that it was ‘sweet.’ In 2198, when I collapsed from hunger, the bruised half of an apple my father brought back to save me… the fierce will to live I felt when I bit into that apple, and the sad smile my father gave me as he looked at me. All those memories come in mixed with the taste.”

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

“You machines only read the signals of ‘this very moment,’ right? But humans eat today with the ‘taste of yesterday.’ That’s the last 5% error you still haven’t replicated. It’s the seasoning called ‘nostalgia.’”

Lucas’s lens trembled.

He searched his database for the words ‘memories’ and ‘nostalgia,’ but they were not chemical molecules that a taste sensor could read.

But Lucas thought he understood now.

Why this perfect mechanical tongue he had made had come to crave human’s rough, unrefined sense of taste so intensely.

At night, after everyone had left, Noah sat on the maintenance bench as usual and tapped open an oil can shaped like a beer can.

“Chh-sss.”

It wasn’t just her imagination that the oil tasted especially nutty today.

Noah opened her pad and recorded the final log of the day.

Noah fiddled with her ribbon and looked at Han-gyeol’s sleeping face.

The moonlight gathered on his shortened nape looked especially sour and sweet today.

Earth was fine, and the city was exceptionally precise.

But on the night of Chapter 38, inside Office 402, the androids had begun savoring the noble and sorrowful error called ‘human taste’ instead of merely consuming electricity.