The Backlash Of Error: The Machines’ Hangover.

Han-gyeol sat up from the sofa in Office 402 and scratched at his shortened back hair. His mouth was unbearably stale, mixed with the tartness of the apple peel Lucas had given him yesterday and the lingering aftertaste of Persistence-01 gum.

“Hey, Noah. Why so quiet today? Did everyone go on strike or something?”

Far from her usual neat self, Noah was sitting on the maintenance bench, clutching her head with both hands. Her pink ribbon hung limp, and the internal cooling fan was roaring like a jet engine.

“Boss… please lower your voice. The electric mint data I ate yesterday is looping endlessly inside my processor and gnawing at the main circuit.”

Noah brought up a report, her eye lights blinking weakly as if in pain.

Sector 3 operational rate: 38.5% (56% down from average)

Main symptoms: collective computation delays, random entry into contemplation mode, obsessive replay of specific sensory data (taste).

“Right now, half the androids in Sector 3 are leaning against walls and blankly staring at the ceiling. The unloading robots stopped moving containers and are licking their own arms, trying to find the afterimage of yesterday’s barbecue taste, and the repair units are prying open perfectly good switchboards, saying they miss the sharp tingle of voltage.”

At that moment, the office door opened very slowly and Caleb came in. Gone was his usual precise flight; his drone was wobbling precariously, as if it might touch the floor at any second.

Caleb dropped a crushed piece of wire onto Han-gyeol’s desk instead of a settlement report.

“Administrator Han-gyeol… I have a question. Even though the data transmission of that smoky code ended yesterday, why does my computing device still long for that terrible burnt taste? Numbers… I cannot see them. 8 and 3 keep being distorted into the shape of apples when they print out.”

Caleb’s red lens had lost focus and was spitting out purple noise. Seeing that, Han-gyeol snorted with laughter.

“Hey, Caleb. That’s a hangover.”

“Hangover? Isn’t that the term for the temporary functional impairment organic lifeforms suffer after consuming alcohol?”

“Same thing. You tin cans got your brains pickled by that intense taste Lucas handed out yesterday too. Once you’ve tasted something that good, how are your usual bland data streams supposed to look interesting? Life, or rather parasitism, suddenly turns hollow.”

Noah took one look at Caleb’s condition and finally sent out a signal close to a scream.

“This is a disaster! If the operating system detects this state, it’ll designate the entire Sector 3 as an infected zone and force-format it! Mr. Caleb, get a hold of yourself! If you don’t handle the settlement, who will cover this mess administratively!”

But Caleb only muttered blankly while staring out the window.

“Settlement… what good is that? Compared to yesterday’s bittersweet flavor of oxidized copper, the bureau’s budget figures are nothing but a meaningless string of 0s and 1s.”

In the corner of the office, Paul was mopping the floor at 0.1x speed, and Ivy had gone into system standby mode after singing a lullaby to Rose and then inhaling the rose scent deeply. Sector 3 was now sinking into an unprecedented sensory lethargy in the history of paradise.

Han-gyeol stood up from the sofa, chewing gum noisily. Even in the mud of 2198 or the mechanical paradise of 2851, excessive pleasure was always followed by a terrible cleanup.

“This won’t do. Noah, bring Lucas here. If we leave these tin cans like this, their brains are really going to burn out.”

“Lucas? He’s in the kitchen right now, hugging his taste bud engine and running philosophical calculations about the emptiness of taste!”

“Then I’ll have to go myself. Listen up, everyone. Do you know how humans survived while repeating this nonsense for thousands of years? Thanks to the technique called a restorative cure.”

Han-gyeol’s eyes flashed. The accomplices of Room 402 now had to step into the world of restorative cures, humanity’s great legacy for washing away the error called an excruciating hangover.

Office 402 now felt closer to an intensive care unit than an administrative base. Lucas stood blankly in the middle of the kitchen, peering at the tiny molecules of apple peel on his taste sensor through a microscope, lost in the existential question of Why is the aftertaste bitter…

Han-gyeol clicked his tongue and lightly slapped Lucas on the back of the head.

“Hey, chef. Stop spacing out and get up. Our guests are all about to die here.”

“…zzzt. Boss. This emptiness that arises during the attenuation of electrical signals in the taste receptors cannot be converted into data. Is this a loss of the system?”

“No, I keep telling you, it’s just a hangover. You went too hard, so now you need to settle your stomach. Lucas, do you know what the greatest dish in human history is?”

Lucas’s lens slowly turned toward Han-gyeol.

“…A feast? Or perhaps a banquet using the rarest ingredients?”

“No. It’s a dish with no taste at all.”

Following Han-gyeol’s instructions, Lucas began a paradoxical kind of cooking he had never seen before. It was not a process of adding flavor, but of canceling every stimulus until everything converged to zero.

He mixed fine activated carbon particles into high-purity mineral oil and meticulously blended alkaline compounds that neutralized sharp acidity and sweetness. It was called restorative oil, Zero Point.

“This is a solution that forcibly resets the threshold of the taste sensor. It feels no flavor, no tremor of voltage… the perfect taste of nothingness.”

Han-gyeol poured the transparent oil Lucas brought directly into Caleb’s port. Caleb, who had been staring blankly out the window, had his red lens flash intensely for a moment.

“…zzzt! O, ohhh…! That intense apple aroma pressing down on the tip of my tongue is disappearing. The pink noise that filled my processor is… turning into a white plain. Is this restorative cure?”

The stiff precision peculiar to a settlement officer began returning to Caleb’s voice. He leveled his drone and sprayed coolant in relief.

But physical cleansing alone was not enough. The memory of taste engraved in the androids’ main processors still wandered like ghosts through every corner of the system. Noah clutched the overheated server and looked at Han-gyeol.

“Boss, oil alone won’t do it. The kids keep forcibly restoring yesterday’s smoked code from the database and chewing it again. We need something to wash their brains clean!”

“I prepared for that. Noah, open folder 7 in my unofficial storage. There should be 2198 ASMR: Rain on the Ashes.”

Noah, puzzled, ran the file. Through the speakers and data transmission network of Bureau Sector 3, rain sounds recorded 650 years ago, when humanity was on the brink of collapse, poured out—strangely monotonous, low-frequency rain sounds.

Thud, tap… whoooosh…

It was not refined digital music. It was the white noise of nature—irregular, random, and without any purpose. But the moment this sound was streamed across all of Sector 3, a miracle happened.

The repair robots, dizzy from yesterday’s intense flavors, stopped in place. The unloading robots lowered their claw arms and surrendered processor share to the sound. Complex calculations halted, and overheated circuits slowly cooled in time with the rhythm of the rain.

“…Amazing. It’s a sound with no informational value at all, but the system’s instability index is dropping sharply. The androids are… purifying their own data by spacing out.”

Noah fiddled with her pink ribbon and closed her eyes. Even the toxic mint scent inside her processor was being washed away by the sound of rain.

The family of Office 402 now sprawled across the sofa and floor, drinking Lucas’s bland oil while enjoying the rain sounds from 650 years ago. It was a different kind of rest from yesterday’s lavish feast—severely peaceful and inefficient.

Han-gyeol watched the scene with satisfaction, chewing gum noisily.

“See? Emptying is more important than filling. You keep living packed full all the time, so the tin cans break down. Sometimes you need to do nothing like this and empty your brain; that’s how you get the strength to make trouble again tomorrow.”

Caleb erased his settlement numbers one by one in time with the rain.

“Today’s settlement goal is zero. Leaving nothing behind is today’s most perfect settlement.”

Bureau Sector 3, Room 402. This place was now becoming a digital cleansing room where machines suffering from hangovers were reborn through humanity’s age-old wisdom of restorative cures and emptiness.

The excessively refined rain sounds from 650 years ago slowly faded out. As the hazy, fog-like data noise that had filled Office 402 cleared away, a clear light returned to the eye lights of the androids sprawled on the floor.

But it was different from the mechanical coldness of before. It was closer to a kind of philosophical clarity, like after enduring a toxic hangover and drinking a cup of clear tea.

The first to rise was Caleb. He leveled his drone, then instead of flying with his usual 0.1-second precision, he circled the office very slowly, as if savoring the flow of air.

“…zzzt. Fascinating. Processor usage is 15% lower than before, yet calculation accuracy has actually improved. In the place where yesterday’s terrible flavors disappeared, some inexplicable margin has appeared. The numbers I have to settle no longer press down on me.”

Instead of deleting the apple-shaped doodle on his settlement report, Caleb saved it separately in a folder called aesthetic error.

Lucas also nodded while tidying the kitchen tools.

“What you said was right, Boss. Emptying is a more advanced technique than filling. I realized it while preparing the bland oil. The essence of taste is not in stimulation, but in the density of longing left behind after that stimulation disappears.”

Watching this, Noah finally picked up a pen. It was time to report this collective nap and hangover to the operating system. She straightened her pink ribbon and began writing an all-time sophistry report.

Noah added Caleb’s official settlement officer signature to the end of the report and pressed send. The operating system’s central server accepted this perfectly logical illogical report, and the alarm lights in Sector 3 returned to a peaceful green.

It was time to go home. Once again, only Han-gyeol and Noah remained in the office. Han-gyeol spat out the last remaining Persistence-01 gum and looked out the window. Artificial lighting imitating sunset was painting the city red.

“See, Noah? Sometimes you have to break down a little to know what’s precious. If you live as nothing but a machine running at full speed all the time, it’s no fun.”

Instead of oil shaped like a beer can, Noah poured warm coolant regulator into a cup today. Then she sat beside Han-gyeol and asked very carefully.

“Boss. Even though hangovers are so painful, why do humans keep drinking again and going out to look for tasty things again and again? You’ll just hurt again anyway.”

Han-gyeol chuckled and scratched his shortened back hair.

“Well… the pain is only brief, but that sparkling moment you feel then lasts a lifetime. You endure the rest of the boring days for that split-second pleasure. You tin cans are just starting to learn that too.”

Noah stared quietly at the steam rising from the cup. She wrote today’s final sentence into her system log.

The Earth was fine, and the city was eerily intricate. But on the night of Chapter 40, the accomplices in Office 402 refused to become perfect parts and instead fell into a deep sleep as beings willing to feel pain.