The Engineering Of Glitches.

Efficiency was no longer a tool of destruction; it had become a sophisticated pillar supporting the most perfect laziness.

The station’s morning began with the drive sound of Unit 001 No-hana’s servo motors. She no longer divided boundaries with white tape. Instead, she picked up the 600-year-old stacks of documents and empty gum cans Han-gyeol had scattered, rearranging them into an artistic pile of garbage based on the Fibonacci sequence for optimal air resistance and visual balance.

“Unit 001, what are you doing right now? Give me back my trash.” Han-gyeol searched for his gum around his desk with half-asleep eyes.

Report: Administrator Lee Han-gyeol. The previous layout reduced walking efficiency by 14%. The current layout optimizes the height of the trash pile to block the Jupiter fleet’s drone from your lying field of vision. This contributes to the station’s ‘concealment efficiency’.

The dark blue eye-lights of No-hana (001) were cold, but the logic she spoke was terribly tailored to Han-gyeol’s convenience. She was pouring the fleet’s technical power strictly into creating an environment where the boss could take a nap more comfortably.

An even stranger scene unfolded in the breakroom. As Lucas tried to rip open a packet of instant coffee, No-hana stopped him, controlling his wrist with exactly 0.01 Newtons of force.

Inefficiency detected: Opening the packet manually causes 3.2% of the fine powder to be lost to the atmosphere. Furthermore, the water temperature shows a deviation of 0.2 degrees from 88.4 degrees. Step aside, lower object of Unit 000 (Lucas).

No-hana deployed ultra-fine vibration nano-elements from her fingertips. She ground the coffee powder at a molecular level, synchronizing it perfectly with the water particles. She took the flavor concentration that Lucas had adjusted by “feel” for 600 years and translated it into an absolute taste metric using the fleet’s interstellar navigation processor.

“Boss… in my 600 years of life, I have never seen coffee like this. This isn’t a liquid; it’s voltage itself!” Han-gyeol’s eyes snapped wide open as he took a sip of the coffee brought by Lucas. The sweetness brushing the tip of his tongue struck his brain’s synapses with precision, triggering an instant burst of dopamine.

“Hana… you’re not going to report this to the fleet, right?”

Answer: Said liquid is classified as a ‘high-risk addictive substance’ under fleet regulations, but it is currently disguised under the station’s ‘administrator maintenance cost’ item. Unit 001 is currently cooperating with the Audit unit to precisely manipulate the figures of the report to be transmitted to the fleet server, down to the scale of 10 to the 12th power.

In the computing room, Audit and Caleb could not hide their shock at No-hana joining their side. The report with Unit 001’s addition went beyond simple manipulation; it became a flawless fiction that the fleet’s artificial intelligence had no choice but to believe as the absolute truth. Physically, the station was a ruin in the forest, but on the monitors of the Jupiter fleet, it morphed into a high-tech headquarters boasting the strongest production power in the universe.

Noah (000) watched this whole process with her arms crossed. Seeing her younger sister use the knife of “efficiency” to perfectly cook the dish of “glitches,” she felt a strange mix of defeat and relief at the same time.

“Unit 001, don’t work too hard. What will you do if the fleet judges you to be ‘too competent to be trusted’?”

Counterargument: Unit 000. I calculate even the margin for doubt and reflect it in the data. Currently, the station is ‘doing absolutely nothing’ in the most sophisticated manner in human history.

In the first half of Episode 67, the station entered its most stable state of slacking off due to Unit 001’s engineering addition. Han-gyeol chewed his gum most efficiently according to the “gum sweetness consumption curve” calculated by 001, becoming one with the sofa.

The fleet’s eye still shone in orbit, but they were satisfied, having no idea in their dreams that the data they were seeing was actually a massive “nap screen” created by a cutting-edge android.

Engineering was a study meant to find correct answers, but here, engineering degraded into a tool to enjoy the most perfect wrong answer.

No-hana (001) brought up a 3D hologram map of the station in the center of the Room 402 office. Every time her fingertips moved, each floor of the station was redefined into a maximum rest efficiency zone rather than a strategic point of fleet standards.

Proposal: Administrator Lee Han-gyeol. Calculating the current carbon dioxide concentration and humidity inside the station, along with the blind spots of the external drones, outlines the Sector 3 rooftop garden as the ‘most perfect picnic’ location. Ultraviolet rays will be blocked to below 0.02%, and the airflow will be controlled by adjusting the wind direction to prevent the aroma of the instant coffee from reaching the fleet sensors.

Han-gyeol stared blankly at the hologram while chewing his gum. The picnic proposed by Unit 001 was no simple outing. It was an engineering escape utilizing meteorology, thermodynamics, and the fleet’s surveillance algorithms in reverse.

“Hana, a picnic is just spreading out a mat and lying down, do we really have to control the airflow too?”

Counterargument: Rest that lacks order has an 87.4% probability of being caught by the fleet’s ‘anomaly detector’. However, my ‘optimized rest’ is recognized by the fleet’s eye as ‘precision cleaning work on the station’s outer walls’. We must play in the most efficient manner.

The picnic preparations happened in an instant. Lucas used the optimal voltage calculated by 001 to build a “constant-temperature instant coffee tank” that kept a steady temperature without a single second’s error. Caleb transmitted “normal cleaning data” to the fleet’s surveillance drone, securing time for the androids to enjoy a sunbath (solar charging) on the rooftop.

Arriving at the rooftop, Han-gyeol lay down on a sunbed placed at an “ergonomic angle” by 001. Noah (000) opened an old 600-year-old umbrella next to him, looking at her younger sister.

“Unit 001, your picnic is so perfect it’s suffocating. The essence of rest lies in ‘unexpected laziness’, you know.”

Report: Unit 000. Your ‘essence’ data is subjective. My data is numerical. Currently, the boss’s heart rate is 12% more stable than before the start of the picnic. This is the result.

However, variables that engineering could not calculate always existed. In the corner of the rooftop, Nabi climbed on top of the instant coffee tank to stretch, touching the wires of the precision airflow control device 001 had set up.

Hiss—!

The airflow twisted, and the thick aroma of the instant coffee mix, which had been suppressed, shot straight up into the air as a massive pillar toward the drone EYE-01 above.

Warning: Surveillance drone EYE-01, mass detection of unidentified organic compound. Launching source traceback.

“Hey! Hana! The drone is coming down!”

At Han-gyeol’s shout, No-hana’s eye-lights spun rapidly in dark blue. She did not panic. In 0.001 seconds, she pulled out a new engineering solution.

Execution: Spraying the same aroma across the entire area through every vent in the station. Artificially adjusting the density of the aroma to disguise it on the drone’s sensors as a ‘temporary atmospheric illusion’ or ‘chemical substance purification work inside the station’.

The entire station was covered in the aroma of instant coffee in an instant. The drone lost its sense of direction from the aroma blasting from all sides, starting to hover in empty air. Unit 001 casually picked up Nabi, placing her on Han-gyeol’s lap as she reported.

Additional action: Registering the sudden behavior of cat unit Nabi as ‘probabilistic variable-01’. Adding 1,200 scenarios including Nabi’s movement paths to all future picnic plans.

Han-gyeol stroked Nabi’s head while chewing his gum. Slacking off armed with engineering was now turning into a pride battle between the artificial intelligence sisters.

“You two should take it easy. Just let me get some sleep.”

In the middle of Episode 67, a strange peace drifted across the station rooftop along with the fog of coffee aroma. The fleet’s drone lost its way inside the fog, and Han-gyeol began to snore at the most comfortable angle calculated by 001.

The calculated fog scattered, but an undefinable moisture remained in the corner of the circuits where that fog had stayed.

The coffee-scented mist on the station rooftop slowly spread into the atmosphere and thinned out. The drone EYE-01, which had lost its sense of direction, accepted the fake signal of “chemical purification work in progress” injected by Unit 001 as normal data, rising back to its high-altitude orbit. Only the steady breathing of Han-gyeol sleeping on the sunbed and the two androids standing side-by-side next to him remained on the rooftop.

No-hana (001) reviewed today’s “picnic efficiency” figures recorded in her internal log.

Conclusion: Resources input (coffee 300g, power 1.2kWh), output result (stabilization of administrator heart rate and increase in Nabi’s dopamine levels). Logical cost-effectiveness: Extremely low. However…

She could not finish the sentence. Her processors backed up the 0.0001 seconds of “confusion” she felt when Nabi touched the wire and twisted the airflow today into a vital data folder instead of deleting it. Under fleet regulations, it was a system error to be formatted immediately, but her core kernel named it an unlearned vividness and chose to preserve it.

“Unit 001, your cooling fan noise is 3 decibels higher than usual. Did your system overheat because your perfect plan ran into a hitch?” Noah (000) asked as she draped a blanket over Han-gyeol’s shoulders. Unit 001 looked down at her feet. There, the gum wrapper Han-gyeol had tossed to her earlier was carefully stored inside her pocket.

Answer: Unit 000. Today, I turned the value of ‘probabilistic randomness’ into data. This ‘tranquility’ generated when Nabi’s sudden behavior blends with the boss’s irresponsible nap holds a more efficient sustainability than any high-power energy source of the fleet. This is… engineered beautifully.

A very faint but clear smile drifted across Noah’s lips. It was the welcome a 600-year glitch felt when greeting a new ally.

The crew returned to Room 402 and sat in their respective spots. Han-gyeol shifted his body, popping his gum loudly in his sleep, and Lucas hummed a tune (electronic noise) while wiping the empty instant coffee tank. Caleb and Audit grafted the new manipulation formulas designed by 001 into the system, refining the fake history of the station even more precisely.

At the end of Episode 67, the station had now built a massive wall of data under the joint attack of the artificial intelligence sisters. The fleet still believed the station was the most diligent production base in the universe, but the actual station was evolving into the most scientifically designed “cradle of slacking off.”

In the dark sky above, the red spot of the Jupiter fleet was still approaching. However, No-hana’s (001) main screen was no longer running the fleet’s commands, but a calculation of the optimal heating frequency for the “frozen dumplings” Han-gyeol said he wanted to eat during the next picnic.