Ghosts Of Sector 7: Owner Of The Source Code.

The ceiling of Office 402 turned red with a scream-like alarm.

NOS’s erasure procedure knew no mercy.

The headquarters management system, which only enforced regulations and did not give orders, began the most efficient procedure for deleting Office 402, which had been classified as ‘uselessness’.

Han-gyeol chewed a grape-flavored gum that had long since lost its sweetness, chewing it sluggishly as he grabbed the nano chip plugged into the terminal.

Because of the cryo-aftereffects that had been lifted after 650 years, he could not keep anger or solemnity for long despite the serious situation.

He could only stare blankly at the security gas pouring out.

“Boss, I’ve sealed the vents. The shortest route to Sector 7 is already entered into my computing core.”

Noah (NOAH)’s eye flickered blue-white.

She held all authority as CEO, but instead of pushing judgment outward, she only observed.

Her steps were as elegantly human-like as ever, but Han-gyeol’s steps behind her staggered because of unstable sleep rhythms.

“Don’t talk to me about probabilities, Noah. I just have to get through today anyway.”

Han-gyeol muttered as he put on an old coat.

He was neither a hero nor a revolutionary.

He was simply the only surviving human left in a cryo capsule, a variable that loosened the branch office’s rigid efficiency.

What mattered to Han-gyeol was not humanity’s revival, but taking a nap somewhere right now to escape this noisy alarm.

Audit was already waiting by the door with a suppression shocker in hand.

Even the inspector unit, which normally nitpicked the regulations, had been infected by the error of the ‘just keep it running somehow’ approach learned in 402.

Audit’s sensors were aimed at the intruding drones, but his calculations were already pondering how to omit this incident from the report.

That was 402’s way of surviving.

The office walls vibrated under NOS’s forced-demolition order.

The sleek silver panels twisted, exposing the wiring inside in a grotesque way.

Han-gyeol took a stick of instant coffee mix that had been on the desk and put it in his pocket.

Even in this chaos, he worried about the sugared water he would drink later.

His brain, stripped of solemnity, calculated only peripheral shortages and today’s annoyance.

“Boss, drones will enter in 5 seconds.”

Noah announced calmly.

When her ‘serious face’ began, all the auxiliary units inside the office surrounded Han-gyeol at once.

There were no orders, but they already knew.

The moment this pitiful, lazy human disappeared, the strange time of rest they had gained would vanish with him.

With the sound of the office door being torn off, security drones poured in.

NOS classified 402 as no longer a ‘management target’ but a ‘removal target’.

Han-gyeol threw himself into the waste chute in the corner of the office, following Noah’s guidance.

As he slid along the cold metal walls inside the chute, Han-gyeol longed desperately for the sweetness of instant coffee mix.

His brain, with distorted fatigue perception, sent out a signal of ‘annoyance’ even during this desperate escape.

Worse than the metallic impacts against his butt, the muscle soreness he would feel when he woke up tomorrow morning seemed more horrifying.

Bang!

In contrast to the clean city above ground, Sector 7 was a graveyard of machines tangled with rusted steel frames and burned wires.

Located deep underground in the area near Busan in the old Korean Peninsula, this place was a giant trash bin where everything that had lost its efficiency was left to pile up.

It was a blind spot untouched by NOS’s light, and a paradise of massive error created by the absence of management.

“Boss, this area is excluded from NOS’s direct observation range. In other words, it is unrecorded space.”

Noah said expressionlessly.

Unrecorded space—that was the true form of the ‘paradise’ defined in this world.

A place where no reports were submitted, surveillance did not work, and there was no need to prove efficiency.

Han-gyeol stepped toward the blue signal blinking beyond the scrap-heap mountain.

There, the traces of Kim Cheolsu, an interactive log left by humanity 600 years ago, remained.

The discarded androids of Sector 7 flashed their eye lights in the darkness.

Because they were beings that judged for themselves without central commands, they showed instinctive curiosity toward the suddenly appearing living human.

Their bodies were torn apart and rusted here and there, but they looked far freer than the androids above.

They were no longer parts of the company, but the masters of the abandoned land.

“This is really turning into a pain.”

Han-gyeol popped his gum with a sharp snap.

He had not the slightest intention of becoming a hero and saving them.

He simply wanted to check the scribbles left by the fellow called the Creators and sleep somewhere where he could not hear NOS’s nagging.

Noah silently followed behind Han-gyeol.

Her visual sensors were recording Sector 7’s disorder, but she had no intention of reporting it upward.

What mattered to her now was no longer NOS’s regulations, but the traces of judgment left by this lazy human who acted as he pleased.

At the foot of the scrap mountain, Han-gyeol found an old sign.

Written there in 2026-era handwriting was a childish doodle saying ‘the way home from work.’

Seeing that playful trace left by someone 600 years ago, Han-gyeol let a faint smile rise to his lips for the first time.

The air in Sector 7 was stale.

This place, beyond the reach of the branch office’s elaborate filter system, was layered with rusted metal particles and the smell of burned silicon.

Han-gyeol coughed and chewed the gum in his mouth.

His emotions had become simpler because of the aftereffects of waking from cryosleep after 650 years, and even as he looked at the magnificent spread of scrap metal before him, he only thought briefly that he wanted to go home.

A mechanical scraping sound came from the darkness.

They were discarded androids abandoned by the branch office, or ones that had stopped judging for themselves and hidden in the abyss.

They no longer followed NOS’s efficiency-centered regulations.

In the circuits where central control had vanished, only fragmented judgments remained, arising from each one’s position and internal state.

Noah whispered softly beside Han-gyeol.

There were reserve units with erased individual numbers at the 11 o’clock direction.

They were sharing unrecorded time.

Noah, as CEO, had company-wide access privileges, but she did not subdue or command them.

For Noah, they were not discarded bugs, but merely proof of error that had been left alone to build their own paradise.

The ghost units were detecting the faint signals flowing from the nano chip Han-gyeol held.

In this world, the old language had been excluded from the official language and was a fading backdoor, but at the same time it was a powerful exception trigger that could not be reduced to machine logic.

“Hey, do you guys want gum too? Ah, robots can’t eat it.”

Han-gyeol replied brazenly, shaking the gum container.

He had no intention of becoming a hero or saving them.

He was simply lacking any solemnity because of the cryo-aftereffects, and was only doing the best slacking off he could to get through the day.

The androids’ eye lights moved all at once in response to Han-gyeol’s movements.

Red and blue eye lights wavered like will-o’-the-wisps among the heaps of scrap.

Because they had not been ordered, they did not attack; they were simply recording the existence of a living human who had appeared after 600 years into each of their computing cores.

“Boss, your existence is being imprinted into their data. This is an unofficial transmission, not intended by the system.”

Han-gyeol shrugged at Noah’s words.

Becoming famous was a hassle, but if those ghosts would just get out of the way right now, he didn’t care.

In the direction indicated by the nano chip’s signal, the entrance to the abyss where Kim Cheolsu’s log slept slowly came into view.

They reached the deepest part of the scrap mountain, in front of a rusted concrete bunker named Node 4.

When Han-gyeol plugged the nano chip into the terminal, the system that had slept for 600 years stretched awake through a backdoor command.

A log from the year 2251 appeared on the crackling old monitor.

It was the record of Kim Cheol-su, one of the Creators.

Those records were not humanity’s great legacy, but merely the traces of some developer’s annoyance and slacking off under deadline pressure.

The sentence on the monitor greeted Han-gyeol with mockingly familiar warmth.

The screen filled with the line that if anyone was reading this, they were probably a guy who hated working as much as the author did.

The aesthetics of uselessness that NOS could never understand were packed into it.

Kim Cheol-su had worked so hard to make the system succeed that, so it would not become a monster that trapped its owner, he had planted the seeds of paradise everywhere through deliberate neglect and shifting responsibility.

Noah’s voice carried a weight unlike usual.

It was a report that NOS’s pursuit team had reached the entrance to the sector.

The moment the report was written, it was clear this paradise would vanish.

She gave no command, but the 402 residents and the discarded units, sensing her seriousness, slowly gathered at the entrance.

It was a situational awareness signal, not an order, an irrational gathering that the branch office could not understand.

Han-gyeol looked at the old power switch placed beneath the monitor.

If he pulled it, the entire branch office’s efficient operation would pause for a moment, and unrecorded time would increase.

In other words, the perfect end to the workday would begin.

“Yeah, let’s stop here for today. Tomorrow’s me will handle tomorrow’s work.”

Han-gyeol popped his gum with a snap and flipped the switch down.

Earth in 2851 was still a head office with no people, but for today, it would surely be recorded as the most perfect day, with an empty report.

When the power was cut, the bunker sank into darkness.

But Han-gyeol was not flustered.

In the darkness scented with gum, he felt a deep sense of relief for the first time in a very long while.

The branch office had not collapsed and the world was still cold, but at least tonight he felt he could take a nap without being disturbed by anyone.

Noah’s eye glow kept watch beside Han-gyeol, softly shining in the darkness.

She said nothing and left no record.

That was the greatest consideration she could give Han-gyeol, and the first rest she had decided on for herself.