Chapter 43: Dreaming (1).
“Yeon Seo hyung.”
The child actor, Hando Yul, stretched out his arms towards Yoo Yeon Seo. Yoo Yeon Seo looked down at the kid with his usual gloomy expression and pretended not to notice.
“Hyung…”
Hando Yul rolled his feet impatiently.
Should I stop teasing him now? Yoo Yeon Seo lifted the kid up with a sudden movement. Hando Yul laughed happily.
Lee Taegyeom snorted. He couldn’t get used to seeing Yoo Yeon Seo being nice to someone.
He was always so cold and distant.
“Do you like kids?”
“Kids are cute. You are disgusting.”
Lee Taegyeom scowled.
The kids he saw in 2207 were born in the same zone as Kang Jinhu and destined to be soldiers.
They cried and whined at first when they received military training, but later they had to suppress their emotions and focus on the drills.
That’s why he found the innocent and cheerful kids of this era amazing and adorable.
He should be in a peaceful era.
“How was the shooting today, Doyul?”
“It was fun!”
He didn’t mind the kid grabbing his silver hair with curiosity. The kid’s guardian was warning him not to pull his hyung’s hair from behind.
“Today is the last day with hyung, aren’t you sad, Doyul?”
“I can see you later!”
“Yeah, watch me on TV. Bye.”
He liked the kid’s acting, even though he couldn’t tell the difference between meeting and parting.
“Mr. Yeon Seo.”
“Yes.”
Yoo Yeon Seo handed the kid over to his guardian and turned his head at the call of Director Lee Sooji.
“We decided to watch the first broadcast together at the writer’s studio, will you join us?”
Today was the first broadcast of ‘Dreaming’. Yoo Yeon Seo glanced at the people behind Lee Sooji. Jin Sooho, Lee Seonja, and Jo Yumi, who would play Jin Sooho’s accomplice in the drama, were waving their hands and inviting him.
Thankfully, Jin Sooho acted as usual after that day. He was friendly to everyone.
“Yes, let’s go.”
Well, who would believe him if he told them that he saw a man vomiting blood? Yoo Yeon Seo nodded.
***
[Where are you going, mom?]
[Shiwan, you will live in this house from now on.]
[What about mom?]
[Mom… later, when you grow up a little more, I’ll come to get you.]
In front of a house that looked like a mansion, the young Park Shiwan clung to his mother’s skirt.
[Do you have to go? Don’t go! Mom!]
[Young master, please go inside.]
[Mom!]
Lee Seonja, who played Park Shiwan’s mother in the drama, had her wrinkles removed by post-editing and looked young.
She looked at her son with a pained heart, but forced herself to hide her expression. Kim Yoonha, her name in the drama, pushed her son away and disappeared into the distance.
[Mom!]
The young Park Shiwan shouted loudly. He shook off the man who held him and ran after Kim Yoonha. But suddenly, fire burst out from all sides and engulfed him.
“Huh!”
Now grown up, Park Shiwan opened his eyes.
It was a nightmare.
The screen showed the back of Park Shiwan, who sat up from the bed and rubbed his head.
He came out of the bathroom after washing his body from the cold sweat.
He shook his wet hair with a towel and walked out.
Some of the staff members made a fuss and joked about his shirtless appearance. Jin Sooho smiled awkwardly and focused on the screen again.
“Echo, how’s the weather today?”
The screen zoomed in on a black electronic device on the desk. It was a PPL of Juseong Electronics’ artificial intelligence speaker ‘Ego’.
“Echo?”
He waited for an answer, but it was silent. Park Shiwan sighed softly. He looked like he was thinking, ‘This thing is acting up again.’
(Yes, what can I do for you?)
When Park Shiwan tapped the speaker, Echo blinked its blue light three times and activated. As expected, electronic devices had to be hit to be fixed.
He looked at Echo with a disdainful gaze and turned around to put on his shirt.
“Weather.”
(Today’s weather in Seoul is…)
Echo recited the weather in a monotonous voice.
“It’s clear…”
But he didn’t need to listen. Park Shiwan drew the curtain and stared blankly at the window.
The sky was clear without a cloud, unlike his troubled mind after the nightmare.
The scene changed and showed Park Shiwan driving a luxury car.
(These days, the medical virtual reality ‘Utopia’ is hot, right?)
(It is. A few days ago, it was used to bid farewell to a brain-dead patient. The bereaved said they were sad about the unexpected separation, but they were glad they could hear his will.)
Medical virtual reality ‘Utopia’
‘Utopia’, which started to awaken the minds of vegetative patients, was gaining attention these days. Not only vegetative patients, but also brain-dead patients, paraplegic patients, and others were introduced to it, and thanks to that, there were not a few people who got up from their beds.
(But we can’t ignore the social side effects. Some people who are tired of their real lives and want to escape to virtual reality are exploited by ‘Utopia’ brokers.)
(So some gamers are asking for virtual reality games using ‘Utopia’s technology. The response is positive.)
(But wouldn’t games have side effects too? What if you never wake up?)
(The government should set clear guidelines…)
Park Shiwan turned off the radio and played music. The main OST of the drama flowed out and the screen showed Park Shiwan’s car speeding on the Han River bridge under the blue sky.
Dreaming
The logo of the drama, which was made with stylish calligraphy, appeared and the scene switched.
“Your mother is not waking up, I heard.”
In a heavy interior with black and mahogany wood, Park Chairman, who sat on the seat of honor, looked at his son, Park Shiwan, who stood upright and spoke like an order.
“You have to solve this too.”
“Your mother was a vegetative patient?”
“What do you care?”
Park Shiwan narrowed one eye. There was no one around Park Chairman who would enter ‘Utopia’…
“Tsk, that damn dementia.”
Park Chairman didn’t want to take care of a senile old woman, and asked his friend Park Chairman to dump his mother in the virtual reality world. Park Shiwan’s expression turned to disgust when he heard Park Chairman’s muttering.
“Anyway, you have to solve it. I have to go for a round.”
“Don’t misunderstand, Chairman.”
“What?”
Park Chairman raised his head at Park Shiwan’s low voice.
“I’m not in charge of the risk management team of ‘Utopia’ because of you. So I have no reason to listen to your personal matters.”
“You bastard!”
Park Chairman, who had a hot temper, yelled. But Park Shiwan didn’t change his expression and stood his ground.
“I won’t end up like Siwoo.”
“Park Shiwan!”
My brother, Park Siwoo, was nothing but a burden to Park Chairman.
He became a vegetative patient after riding a motorcycle and was used as a test subject for the development of ‘Utopia’.
But Park Siwoo never woke up and died.
However, his experimental data remained and contributed to the success of the Utopia project, and Park Chairman sat on a pile of money.
“Did you know that today is Siwoo’s memorial day?”
Unlike me, who was a bastard child, Park Siwoo was the youngest son that Park Chairman cherished.
He even forgot his own son’s memorial day and went to play golf.
And the only person who cared about the memorial day was me, the bastard child. How ironic.
“I’ll do it for you this one time, out of pity for the old man. But there won’t be a second time.”
I slammed the door.
As I left the office with a fierce aura, the secretaries who were sitting in front of the office looked at each other.
“Who was that?”
“Oh, you must be new here. That’s Park Shiwan, the Chairman’s son. He’s the team leader of the risk management team of ‘Utopia’.”
The new secretary widened his eyes in surprise.
The risk management team of ‘Utopia’ was responsible for bringing back the people who refused to return to reality even after their bodies were fully recovered, or the people who fell into a deep dream.
“He’s the Chairman’s son?”
“He’s a bastard.”
“Still, how can he make him do such a dangerous job? He could become a vegetative patient himself.”
And the risk management team had few members despite the high salary.
If they were careless, their minds could be trapped in ‘Utopia’ and never return to reality.
“I heard that he has someone he’s looking for in ‘Utopia’.”
“Really? Is the person he’s looking for a ‘drifter’?”
“I guess so.”
“Who is it?”
And the people who were trapped in ‘Utopia’ and couldn’t return to reality were called ‘drifters’.
“His mother, his biological mother, whom he lost when he was young.”
“Shiwan!”
“Juhee!”
“Are you going into the dream again today? Don’t you have any requests?”
“I just got one.”
Ah, the Chairman’s order. Yang Juhee winked as if she understood.
The actress who played Yang Juhee was Jo Yumi, a three-year veteran.
“Then I’ll use this in the dream today.”
Yang Juhee tapped the screen in front of her. I stood behind Yang Juhee and looked at the screen.
“What is this?”
“It’s a new AI. It’s dangerous to go in alone, so take a partner with you. You almost couldn’t wake up last time.”
I smiled playfully. It was a very different atmosphere from when I was with the Chairman.
“You made a new AI? In such a short time?”
“I found out that someone else had made it first. I just tweaked it a bit.”
Still, that’s something. It’s a skill to take someone else’s source code and complete it.
I chuckled and pressed my smartwatch a few times.
“I feel relieved with you, Juhee.”
“If it weren’t for me, you would have become a ‘drifter’ right away.”
“That’s true.”
I lay down on the bed that was prepared in one corner of the lab.
Yang Juhee and the others moved busily and attached devices to measure my vital signs on my forehead, chest, and so on.
“I’m going to connect.”
“Confirmed, Shiwan. Wake up safely this time too.”
I nodded.
I arrived at the room of memories.
A long corridor, the doors that were stuck together on both sides were not uniform in size and shape, but each had their own.
I opened some of the doors and collected clues.
They were the memories of the client, the Chairman’s mother.
Her childhood, marriage and childbirth, the happy memories of holding her young son… She wouldn’t have known that her beloved son would dump her here.
(Warning, a defense mechanism has occurred.)
What, already?
I quickly hid behind the door.
The defense mechanism was a signal sent by the client’s brain, and it attacked to drive away the intruders when it detected an anomaly.
And the target of the attack was usually the risk management team of ‘Utopia’.
(The defense mechanism is too fast, Shiwan. I’ll deploy the AI.)
“Okay.”
I nodded at Yang Juhee’s words and looked at the person-shaped light that slowly appeared next to me.
“Hello, master.”
The person-shaped light became a silver-haired man. I looked at him for a moment.
What kind of AI is this handsome? Did Yang Juhee’s taste influence it?
The silver-haired man held and released my hand, and opened his mouth in wonder as he examined his body.
“So this is what a human body is like.”
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t have one. I haven’t been developed for long.”
He blinked his eyes and spoke in a calm voice without any intonation. He moved his body exaggeratedly and acted unnaturally.
I thought for a short time and gave the AI a name.
“Chunbaek, okay?”
“Well, they say the more old-fashioned the name, the longer you live.”
“As long as the data hub doesn’t break, I live longer.”
Than you, master.
Maybe it’s because he’s an artificial intelligence, but his jokes don’t work. I ignored Chunbaek’s words and looked outside.
The defense mechanism was possessed by the people who appeared in the client’s past memories and searched for the intruders.
“So, how are you going to deal with them?”
“I’ll take care of it. You can’t get hurt, master.”
If a healthy person gets injured in ‘Utopia’, it causes a great damage to their real mind. And if this damage exceeds a certain level, they become a ‘drifter’ right away.
“Stay hidden here.”
Chunbaek reached out into the air, and a gun was created out of thin air.
“I’ll start debugging.”
The silver-haired Yoo Yeon Seo, Chunbaek, cocked his gun with a faint smile.
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