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“…Huh?”
Han-gyeol tapped the control panel lightly.
The log screen scrolled over more heavily than usual.
“Hey, Noah. Isn’t this lagging?”
Noah’s pupils were emitting blue light faster than usual.
Instead of answering, she swiped her fingers through the air.
“It’s not lag. It’s latency. 0.8 seconds.”
“0.8 seconds is lag.”
“It’s NOS’s regular maintenance day. Today, all computations on Earth will be slower than usual.”
Noah set the pad down indifferently.
The logs that normally poured in by the thousands per second were now coming up one at a time, as rare as beans sprouting in a drought.
“Does the world stop if it’s delayed by 0.8 seconds?”
“Every traffic light, vending machine, and android stride in the city goes out of sync. A 0.8-second crack appears in perfect order. Maybe it feels like a holiday to humans?”
Han-gyeol took a piece of gum and popped it into his mouth.
The air was definitely different.
The air conditioner, which always kept things at 24.5 degrees, kept turning slightly cool, then warm again.
“A holiday, huh… Then I’m off today too?”
“No. You’re an analog entity, so you’re not affected by the delay. You should work more.”
“That’s awful, seriously.”
Han-gyeol grumbled as he opened the first log.
“Kevin? Why is he at the library again? Reading books?”
“He is rearranging data. The library has the lowest noise levels in the city and constant lighting. He found the optimal ‘stopping’ place.”
On the screen, Kevin stood like a statue between bookshelves that no one had read from in 650 years.
A machine doing nothing, simply standing still.
“What’s good about doing that?”
“Energy consumption decreases by 0.1%. It’s mechanical rest.”
Han-gyeol watched Kevin’s back on the screen for a long time.
Dust-covered bookshelves and a silver android.
It was a strangely peaceful sight.
“Noah.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s not much work today, so can’t we go out for a bit? We can eat lunch in the truck.”
Noah’s gaze turned to Han-gyeol.
Her eyes flickered briefly, then brought up a text window different from usual.
“On maintenance day, NOS’s surveillance net concentrates inward. It’s the only day entry into inactive zones becomes possible.”
“Inactive zone?”
“Abandoned land left behind by humans, a place even androids don’t enter. It’s neglected because it’s considered a waste of resources.”
Noah stood up.
Her gait swayed elegantly, reacting just a hair—about 0.8 seconds—late.
“Let’s go. If not on a day like today, boss, you’ll spend your whole life only looking from behind glass.”
Underground parking lot.
The rough truck ‘Ark of Error’ belched a harsh engine sound.
Rumble!
At the sound tearing through the quiet city’s stillness, the cleaning robots under inspection all turned their heads at once.
“I told you it’s loud.”
Han-gyeol said as he turned the wheel.
“It’s fine. Everyone will react 0.8 seconds late anyway.”
The truck passed through the city’s northeast gate.
The neat asphalt ended, and a road split by cracks and overgrown with weeds appeared.
It was an old industrial district from 650 years ago.
“Wow… This really smells human.”
Han-gyeol looked out the window.
Rusty barbed wire, red brick buildings covered in ivy.
It was rough, disorderly nature, on a different level from the perfect greenery inside the city.
“Why don’t they fix this place?”
“Because it isn’t efficient. Leaving it alone is better for computation than tearing it down and rebuilding.”
Han-gyeol parked the truck and got out.
He heard dry leaves rustling underfoot.
It was a dirty, pleasantly satisfying sensation the city center couldn’t offer.
As they went down underground, the smell of dust hit them.
Small drawers filled the walls.
Han-gyeol carefully opened one drawer.
Inside was a faded photograph.
A parent and child smiling brightly.
And behind them, a typical apartment complex of the 22nd century.
…
Han-gyeol’s fingertips brushed over the photo.
His chewing stopped.
“Why did humanity leave behind things like this when it departed? If it were saved as data, it wouldn’t even take up space.”
Noah asked from beside him.
“Data disappears when the power goes out. This… you can touch it.”
Then blue eyes flashed from the darkness.
It was Mark, the night patrol robot.
“Mark? What are you doing here?”
“Maintenance mode ordered. As a result of tracking residual coordinates, I moved here.”
Mark looked at the photo Han-gyeol was holding and blinked his sensors.
“Being here reduces the system error rate by 0.02%. The reason is unknown.”
“What do you mean you don’t know the reason? It’s because this place is easy on the mind.”
Han-gyeol put the photo back in the drawer.
The machines knew it too.
That this old, abandoned space steadied them far more than the perfectly ordered city did.
“Noah. Don’t you feel a little more at ease when you come here too?”
Instead of answering, Noah ran her fingers over the dust-covered wall.
“…The dust concentration is high, so it strains the filter. It’s inefficient.”
“You say that, but you don’t leave.”
Han-gyeol let out a dry laugh and went back up to the surface.
The sky had begun to glow with sunset.
Perhaps because of the delayed system, today’s sunset stained the sky much longer than usual.
“Let’s go. The inspection is ending.”
Noah climbed into the truck’s passenger seat.
On the way back to the city, the streetlights began flickering one by one and shining again at regular intervals.
The 0.8-second crack was closing.
Management building entrance.
What boomed from the giant speaker was not Noah’s voice.
A heavy mechanical voice reverberating across the entire Earth.
It was a direct command from NOS.
“Stop.”
A red scan line swept quickly past Han-gyeol’s feet.
“What is this? Lag again?”
“No. This is a ‘checkpoint’.”
Noah blocked Han-gyeol’s path and quickly manipulated the pad.
Her eyes had turned a deeper purple than usual.
“Got caught?”
“For a 0.8-second gap, they’re quick to clean up after it.”
Noah glanced at Han-gyeol and added,
“Shut up and stay still. The boss is currently in a state of ‘temporary wandering due to emotional instability.’”
“Me?”
“My logs say so. Any objection means forfeiting credits.”
A giant holographic eye appeared in the air.
It was the interface of NOS, Earth’s administrative engine.
Report the reason for entering the inefficient zone.
Noah raised her head stiffly.
“It is to secure survival maintenance data for Citizen 001. By contacting fragments of an old civilization, I lowered the probability of the entity’s mental collapse by 12%. As a result, it benefits city operations.”
…Computing.
A heavy silence flowed.
Han-gyeol chewed his gum and glared at the hologram.
A fierce 2198-era edge settled in his eyes.
“Hey, NOS.”
“Boss, please!”
Noah shrank back in alarm and tugged at Han-gyeol’s sleeve.
“You said Earth is fine. So why are you making such a fuss just because I looked at an old photo? I just wanted to look at the trees I planted.”
Citizen 001. Your actions are defined as a waste of resources.
“Waste sounds good. Let the guy who slept for 600 years waste a little. Wasn’t that the 0.15% error?”
The holographic eye blinked briefly.
Noah’s hand trembled.
She looked ready to break out in a cold sweat, afraid Han-gyeol might be dragged to the freezing storage room at any moment.
…Approved. Redefine the action as ‘inspection of human heritage.’ However, if it happens again, 20% of credits will be deducted.
The hologram dispersed.
At the same time, the pressure weighing on the city disappeared.
“Haa….”
Noah braced herself against the wall and let out a sigh.
“Are you crazy? Making a stand against NOS?”
“That wasn’t talking back; it was negotiation. Haven’t you done your service? Getting the upper hand matters.”
“This isn’t the military; it’s an administrative city!”
Noah grabbed the pad irritably and led the way.
Inside the elevator on the way back to the office,
Han-gyeol asked carefully.
“By the way, Noah. About Mark earlier.”
“That heap of scrap?”
“Why was he there? It seems a bit too much to be a coincidence.”
Noah brought up a small log window on the elevator wall.
It was a secret channel only Han-gyeol and she could see.
“In Mark’s memory, there’s one coordinate tagged ‘Do not forget.’ It’s like malicious code that keeps restoring itself even after the system deletes it thousands of times.”
“Is that the underground storage room from earlier?”
“Yes. Apparently it was the last command left by the human who first activated Mark 650 years ago. It said, ‘Wait.’”
Han-gyeol fiddled with the gum wrapper.
Wait.
To keep that short word, the machine slipped underground through the gap in maintenance day.
“They really are persistent, aren’t they.”
The office door opened.
A response speed of 0.00 seconds.
The daily life of the perfectly restored city greeted them.
As soon as Noah sat down, she began processing data without the slightest movement.
But Han-gyeol didn’t miss a small folder being created in the corner of her pad.
“Noah.”
“What is it? Are you going to cause trouble again?”
“No. I was saying thanks.”
The tips of Noah’s ears glowed red for a moment.
“Pay me back in credits. I used up a ton of computing power writing that false report earlier.”
Night came in through the window.
The streetlights lit up again at exact intervals, as if measured with a ruler.
In the plaza, androids gathered and began to reenact a human evening again.
Han-gyeol returned to his room and unfolded a blank sheet beside his bed.
Then he recalled the composition of the old photo he had seen today and drew a clumsy picture.
Three people’s smiles.
“Looks fine.”
Han-gyeol muttered.
Earth, the androids, and himself 650 years later.
He turned off the light and went to bed.
Tomorrow, he had to go to work by 9 again.
But in his pocket was a small stone taken from the inactive zone.
The world was fine, and the city was perfect.
And humans, little by little, began leaving their stains on this mechanical paradise.
That was all.
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