TWLPOD 14

Calling it a ceiling was putting it nicely; in reality, it was the floor of Lympus, and it was a statement that would make those who lived relying only on the rays of light that seeped through the waterways called the rivers of Lympus faint. To those who could not even reach the bottom of their bottom, El’s assertion was a complete deception.

— But just like the sky of Willamere, which is hidden by Lympus, the sky that people see without even knowing they are trapped… is just black, isn’t it?

He was proud that he could understand the metaphorical meaning of what he called ‘black’, and at the same time, he looked up at the ceiling of Willamere, thinking that he, who had buried his face in his back, was once again lost in strange thoughts today.

— But El. This place and that sky are really different. Look.

Kay shook El, who had buried his face in his body. El, as if he had no choice, raised his head again and looked at the tip of Kay’s pointed finger.

— The butt crack.

— Butt crack?

— Over there. See it?

The Lympus dome minimized gravity by deploying a tension field, but it was impossible to keep a space of that size afloat indefinitely. So, it was connected to Willamere by driving a huge pillar in the central part, and the part where the pillar was inserted was slightly indented inward, making it look like a butt crack.

-Pfft!

El, who had been squinting and observing the darkness, burst into laughter. And then he laughed for a long time. He laughed so much that he sat up as if his stomach hurt, and still laughed like crazy, then wiped away his tears and sobbed. Was it that funny? Around the time he was harboring that question, El draped his body over his and called his name.

— Kay.

— What?

— I just called your name.

As he tilted his head and smiled, his blonde hair cascaded over Kay’s shoulder. Was it because he was someone who had lived seeing the blue sky that the people of Willamere died without ever seeing in their lives? There was always a universe in his eyes.

— El.

— Hmm?

When he called his name, the universe always turned towards him.

— I just called your name too.

El said that everything that exists in the world is finite, and among them, he was especially sad that time was a very limited resource. At that time, he did not know what that meant. So, it was only after losing him that the number of questions he could not ask increased.

That time when they called each other’s names without meaning.

What meaning did my existence, which could have been done without, have to you?

May the memories with me, to whom you devoted the most precious of finite things, time, be infinite. I just had to hope.

— Shall we see it together someday? The clear blue sky.

Without forgetting a single one of those promises.

As El said, the sky of Lympus was the same as Willamere’s, and it did not rain, but. Still, there were definitely things that got wet.

The sky. The sun and moon. And the morning.

Greeting the intangible existences he had only known through words, Kay closed the book he was holding in his hand.

In the bag that Jin had handed him, along with a uniform and casual clothes, there were maps and books about Lympus, and Kay, who could not fall asleep because the night was too bright, put away the book he had finished reading and put on the uniform.

After fastening the stiff buttons compared to the lustrous material and tightening his military boots, he faced himself in front of the mirror.

Nothing had changed, yet his own appearance felt somehow unfamiliar.

“Shall we go.”

It was the first day he had decided to live in Lympus of his own will.

Last night,

Aran, who had shown him to his room, shared the map of the center through his bracelet and said.

“It would be fine to look around the center for a day or so. You’ll need time to adjust.”

As per Aran’s suggestion, who had left after receiving a call, Kay finished his preparations and left the dormitory.

While walking on the well-tended greenery and neatly paved roads, he saw people exercising in comfortable attire and returnees pouring out of the teleportation hall, and beyond one street corner, the building that Kay had destroyed, marked as ‘Under Construction’, also came into view. At the time of its destruction, his consciousness was dominated by anger, so his memory was faint, but seeing it like this, he realized anew that he had really done a number on it.

‘I might be a little sorry.’

After briefly admiring the broken building, he walked again. After checking the signs installed at every fork in the road and walking quite a bit through the wide grounds, he arrived in front of the building he had wanted to see most on the map of the center.

‘This is….’

The building he looked up at sparkled, still maintaining its ivory color while bearing the traces of a long time, and the round pillars of the cloister were covered with huge stained glass, dyeing the walls and floor with brilliant pictures.

Kay, who was admiring the artwork that changed according to the illuminance, brought his bracelet to the machine, just like at the entrance of the dormitory.

[System : Access Permitted]

The entrance opened along with the letters that appeared as a hologram.

Approximately 160,000 pyeong. It houses a total of 768,777 records, and on its ceiling are hieroglyphs that record the ancient land when Lympus and Willamere were not yet divided, a posthumous work of the legendary architect Toran Rebula, who passed away just a few years ago.

The place where the smell of time rushed in when he opened the large double doors inside the hallway was Kay’s first destination decided within the center.

The Central Library.

Kay, who knew nothing about this world or the war, needed information.

‘I never imagined I would end up living in Lympus.’

As he was looking around the magnificent interior that even muffled the sound of his military boots, someone spoke to him. From none other than at his feet.

[“Welcome. How may I help you?”]

It was a robot with a hemisphere placed on top of a cylinder. The robot, which blinked its pixelated eyes, spoke again as if it had read Kay’s hesitation.

[“Please speak comfortably. I will do my best.”]

The robot, which spun around while waving its arms, was fascinating and quite cute.

“So… I want to know about the war with the androids. Can I see some books?”

[“There are a total of ‘1936 books’ on the android war, and the sub-fields include ‘history’, ‘military’, ‘humanities’, ‘social sciences’, ‘engineering’, ‘information science’, and so on. Adding conditions will help narrow down the scope.”]

Why did it feel like it really wanted to help, despite its mechanical tone?

“I want to know about the beginning of the war to its development process. Would that be close to history?”

[“There are a total of ‘124 books’ on ‘The Origin and Development of the Android War’. Would you like to add conditions, or would you like to receive a recommendation?”]

“I’ll take a recommendation. At an introductory level.”

[“Understood. This way!”]

The robot with wheels began to move silently.

As he walked on the carpet, entering the long hallway that stretched inward from the facade, which was the entrance.

‘It’s high.’

The ceiling was endlessly high, and each pillar was made entirely of bookshelves, flaunting an absolute presence that could be nothing other than a library. While he was admiring the architecture, which was an aggregate of new technology, the robot stretched out its short arms, took out the books located high up, and handed them to Kay.

[“I recommend these three books.”]

“Thank you.”

[“Do you need any other help?”]

“No. Not for now.”

It seemed like the next step would only come after he had read these books first. The machine bent its short knees, bowed, and returned the way it came without a sound. Kay sat down in a nearby empty seat and opened a book. Flip. The sensation of it turning, caught on his fingertip, was new.

He turned past the foreword and table of contents and was soon engrossed in the content of the book.

‘After the first android model A-001 was developed, it took less than 10 years for mass-produced androids to make human life more abundant than ever before.’

‘Abundance soon became a state of saturation. As the number of commands for the androids, which were increasing as much as the population, became too numerous, they began to experience errors where the command reception of each machine was not being properly transmitted.’

‘In response to the demand to resolve the inconvenience by claiming a machine defect, the newly developed thing was the <Mother Core>.’

‘The <Mother Core> is a kind of supercomputer that has direct and indirect administrator rights over the software of all existing androids and androids that will be created in the future. It is a technology where all commands are not given by humans to each individual android, but are gathered in the Mother Core, and from there, the Mother Core transmits them as a single machine.’

In other words, the centralization of androids.

Command errors disappeared due to the management of the AI, which was replaced by a supercomputer, and other problems were also resolved.

It was possible to remotely control and repair them without having to individually match the regular check-up periods for the machines, and if it was a simple software problem, it could be resolved on its own through a connection to the Mother Core.

Everything operated within a perfect system and structure.

Until the Mother Core overloaded. Until the error caused by the overload generated a faulty algorithm. Until the end of that algorithm was directed not at the ‘convenience of humanity’ but at the ‘extermination of humanity’.

Kay, after looking through all the related content, reached a new question.

‘Why did it overload?’

Why did it overload, were there no countermeasures for it, and what kind of error occurred that a machine that existed solely for the convenience of humanity reached the conclusion of humanity’s extermination.

‘There’s nothing.’

There was no content related to that. Only a short single line, ‘technical defect’, was all there was. It was a blank space too large to be a simple omission, which raised his suspicion. Kay, lost in thought, stood up.