Mika, as if disbelieving, examined her own hands, her own legs, her own body — then, startled, hurriedly covered her chest with both hands.
“Aah! What is this?! Give me something to put on!”
Dr. Jang turned his head away with a disinterested air, as if such things were beneath his concern. From Mika’s perspective, it had been a mere cyborg body until now, but now that consciousness had seeped in, she had indeed become a woman. Rachel snapped her fingers. Ba-ba-bang— once again photon beams shot from every direction, and clothes were 3D-printed directly onto Mika’s body. Reporter Yoon Mika’s signature leather jacket and leather pants, just as before. Rachel gave a single command.
“Levitation off.”
Mika’s body, which had been floating in midair, thudded to the floor — kung-.
“Ugh!”
Mika’s body lost its balance and immediately toppled over. Rachel smiled and offered Mika her hand. It felt like a mother reaching out to a fallen daughter.
“Take my hand and stand up. Slowly.”
“Couldn’t you have set me down more gently?!”
“Sorry. I just said ‘off,’ that’s all.”
Taking Rachel’s hand, Mika stood up.
“Try walking. If you can’t lock in your center of balance, you might fall again right away.”
As Rachel slowly released her hand, Mika carefully attempted a first step. Inside Mika’s new body, two systems came online simultaneously. Six-axis gimbals embedded in the soles of both feet measured ground tilt in microsecond increments, and an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) flowing along her spine recalculated the gravity vector in real time. A PID control loop, correcting posture angles at 0.001-degree resolution, was distributing commands to 24 leg actuators. In theory, she should have been more stable than a human. But it seemed Mika’s consciousness had not yet adapted to the body’s calibration.
Step—
The moment she took a step, the gimbal registered 0.3g of acceleration. On her next step, a 14-millisecond delay arose between the signal sent by the synaptic core and the actual leg movement. Under normal conditions it would be a negligible error, but for a freshly activated equilibrium circuit, it was fatal. The control loop entered overcorrection.
Stagger— thud!
Mika’s body tilted sharply backward and crashed hard to the floor, right down to her caudal module. Even the raw sharp pain came through in full.
“Ow ow ow. My tailbone hurts. The pain is this vivid — this body’s completely human, isn’t it?”
Mika, though in pain, wore a face somewhere between astonished and laughing as she looked at Dr. Jang, whose eyes happened to meet hers. Dr. Jang wore only an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile. Rachel answered in his stead.
“Your body has been perfectly restored. Inside your head, however, we’ve implanted an artificial cerebrum made of neuromorphic chips — a synaptic core. It synchronizes in real time with all your big data stored on the servers, faithfully reproducing your former cognitive functions. Everything else is a bio-fused cyborg body.”
Mika touched her body all over, again. When she pressed her aching bottom, the soft, elastic sensation of her buttock muscles felt exactly as it should. Her chest was full and rounded, too. *‘Wow, even my chest is this perfectly done.’* She quickly opened her palm to check. On the fair, pretty hand of a woman in her twenties, even the fingerprints had been reproduced. *‘These must be the actual fingerprints of the human Yoon Mika…’* Astonishing technology. Mika, who had only been marveling, was suddenly struck by a single doubt.
“So am I human now? Or a robot?”
Rachel couldn’t answer that question and looked back at Dr. Jang. Dr. Jang was already looking at Mika, his lips trembling slightly as if trying to speak. Dr. Jang gazed into Mika’s eyes and said slowly,
“That question… in time… you must find out for yourself.”
Dr. Jang’s voice was hoarse, weak, and low. He had wanted to smile and speak with composure, but hemiplegia on the right side of his face made it impossible. Dr. Jang knew well enough that his own life was fading.
Kwang- tudututududu- hudoodook-
From the ceiling, the sound and vibration of an enormous drill boring toward the basement transmitted through the room. Mika sprang to her feet, startled, and asked,
“Rachel. What do we do? Is there any way out?”
At that moment, a pilot robot approached and reported to Rachel.
“All equipment and cargo are loaded. The hyperloop is ready for launch.”
“And Abraham?”
“Connected to the final car.”
‘Abraham?…’
The reporter’s intuition made Mika immediately wonder what it was, but it wasn’t the moment to ask. Rachel pushed Dr. Jang’s wheelchair and said,
“Let’s go.”
Mika hurried after them, afraid she’d lose them.
“Where are we going?”
“To Busan.”
“What? Busan? But how?”
At that moment, a massive launch platform spread out before Mika’s eyes. Its scale was overwhelming. On either side of the platform, 2-meter-diameter auxiliary magnetic acceleration coils were aligned in 32 rows, and above them flowed the bluish quantum-stabilization beams of a zero-gravity system. Right in front of the vacuum tube entrance, a massive 15-meter-tall shielding shutter stood open like the gate of a temple, and beyond it the infinite darkness stretched deep, breathing.
‘That such a maglev station could exist beneath a Seongbuk-dong mansion!’
As if reading all of Mika’s questions, Rachel headed for Car One and explained,
“This hyperloop is a vacuum-tube maglev train that runs the 441 kilometers between Seoul and Busan in 16 minutes, at 1,650 km/h.”
Mika asked at once,
“A hyperloop! Can I file this to Shocking News right now?”
Rachel smiled and answered,
“Obviously not.”
“But—”
“Let’s go. We have no time.”
Two nursing robots came over and loaded Dr. Jang’s wheelchair directly into the train’s first car. In the second car, 40 Atlas robots were loading the Silica servers and closing the doors. Finally — shoong- clang- the third car coupled to the train. No one boarded it, and it seemed somehow autonomous. On the surface of that locked car, the word ‘ABRAHAM’ was faintly engraved.
‘What’s inside there? Some kind of important research equipment?’
Mika, as a reporter, had a hunch. Whatever was inside that final car might be what these drones had come to seize. And Dr. Jang might be leaving in order to protect that very thing — that was her guess. That very something — the one they called “Abraham” — had to be moved to Busan. Mika was following Rachel into Car One’s inner cabin when she suddenly stopped.
“Oh! Leo is outside. What about Leo?”
Rachel smiled and said,
“Don’t worry. Leo isn’t a baby lion.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Oh — sorry. ‘Baby Lion Leo’ was an animation from Dr. Jang’s childhood. I’m synced with Dr. Jang’s brain right now, you see.”
“Ah. I see.”
Mika smiled in response, but Rachel’s last words — that she was synced with Dr. Jang’s brain — wouldn’t leave her mind. She wanted to ask more, but a call came in from Leo.
“Master.”
“Leo!”
“First of all, congratulations on receiving your ‘new body.’”
Leo already knew what was happening here. At Leo’s words, for some reason, Mika felt her chest swell. *‘Is it because a bio-heart is beating inside me, just like before?’* The area around her heart grew hot, and something like emotion actually rose through her, like electricity — a tingling that spread across her chest. It was astonishing. That she — a cyborg — could feel emotion.
“I will go to the Blackcar repair center, fix the damaged chassis, then drive myself to Busan in autonomous mode. Please don’t worry about me.”
“Really?”
Mika was relieved, but something felt slightly off. Now that she thought about it, Mika had never once been separated from Leo. Maybe that was why, for some reason, her heart felt wistful.
“So how long will it take?”
“Including repair time, my arrival in Busan is estimated at three hours and forty minutes.”
“Okay. Come quickly.”
“Yes. Master.”
Tu-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta- bang- ku-koong-
At that moment, the enormous drill broke through the ceiling and crashed to the floor with a massive roar. Rachel ordered the pilot robot,
“Launch.”
“Yes!”
Shoooooong— the hyperloop shot out of the platform as if fired from a gun. Then, with a kung, a steel blast wall slammed down onto the platform—
Ku-kwa-kwa-kwang-
A tremendous explosion went off. On the far side of the blast wall — opposite the direction the hyperloop had left — the mansion collapsed straight down, fully sealing the platform entrance. You could not even tell that a hyperloop platform had been there.
Suddenly, as if the inner cabin were transforming into a control room, countless holographic monitors popped up all around. Through the transparent window, Mika could see the afterimage of the tube streaming past like light. It was as beautiful as a prism’s spectrum fanning out into rainbow colors.
“It’s beautiful.”
In the middle of her wonder, Mika quickly turned at a death report coming from the monitors. The control room’s many screens showed CCTV feeds from the underground facility they had just left. On those feeds, beneath the collapsed pillars of the underground lab, Dr. Jang Jin-gyu lay sprawled across an overturned wheelchair, alongside Rachel, destroyed by the blast. Each drone was reporting its confirmed findings to the strike command AI FutureForce.
“Dr. Jang Jin-gyu, death confirmed. Android Secretary Rachel, destruction confirmed. Super-intelligent artificial drone impersonating Shocking News chief reporter Yoon Mika, destruction confirmed.”
The butterfly drone that had once been Mika herself also lay half-destroyed on the floor. Mika felt a shudder run through her. She herself was right here, alive; Dr. Jang and Rachel were right beside her — and yet, dead? What did this mean?
Rachel turned to Mika and smiled gently.
“In the ruins are our three decoys. Two synthetic biological corpses — the Doctor’s and mine — plus the butterfly drone with your identification chip left inside. Only when they believe the three of us died together will the pursuit stop.”
“Ah. I see.”
Mika answered briefly while her mind raced through deductions. *‘If our three deaths end the pursuit, then that piece of equipment called Abraham isn’t the important thing? Or is it that they still don’t know what it is?’*
Mika turned suddenly to Dr. Jang. Dr. Jang’s eyes were watching the endless aurora of the tube’s spectrum pouring in from outside. Looking at him, Mika made a vow.
‘I have died, and I have been resurrected. For now, that is all I need to remember.’
The hyperloop tore through the aurora of light at 1,650 km/h.
Leave a Reply