Chapter 58:  03:14– REFLECTION BLACK/BLUE/BLACK/BLUE [8:46pm]

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< REFLECTION:BLACK >

Time log, Mir Age 20
3 years prior

Two years had passed. And Cheolyong was so very nearly there.

His latest hideout was on the fringe of the slums, so close to the edges of the Ghetto floor that he could see the walls which skirted the borders from the tiny peephole of his front door. It was a tiny place, a mere ten by twelve single bedroom lit only by a dingy ceiling lamp that flickered every hour or so. Other than the tiny circular lens in the door there were no windows. But there was a mattress, and an adjoining toilet and, above all, privacy. And so Cheolyong made do.

Satisfied that the voices outside his door were just a group of gossipy neighbors, Cheolyong backed away from the peephole and returned to his task at hand.

Sprawled across the floor in a tangle of wires and black screens was his assembly of computers and keyboards. Cheolyong sank cross legged in front of the largest screen and watched as words in white panned down the monitor. With one finger he paused it and scrolled back up, eyes flickering across and digesting the information log to backtrack and catch up on what he had missed. Then, nodding approvingly, he let go and allowed the log to resume its prior slow descent.

It was going well. Progress was slow, but steady. It was the cost for perfection. And perfection was vital for what Cheolyong was going to do. Any errors could cost a life and Cheolyong was dealing with hundreds, if not thousands.

It had taken him two years just to get to this point: to be able to code and hack and read as instinctively as breathing. Code and hack and read because that was the lifeblood of this world in which they all lived in.

A digital world. A computerized world. A world in which human consciousness had been uploaded to.

The deaths, the experiments, the Three Levels: they were all just minor components of a far larger device. An unnerving one, if Cheolyong had to admit.  It was strange and disconcerting to think that every morning he would wake and rub at his eyes with a hand that wasn’t really a hand, at least not in the physical sense. His hand was simply code that relayed information to his brain, saying ‘here are five fingers and a palm and this is the sensation of you touching your face’. But information was all it was. He wasn’t really touching his nose or his cheeks with his hand, it was his brain telling him that he had done so and did that actually mean he had performed the action? Or was he just thinking that he had?

This world played with perception. It manipulated and adjusted it and everything was a pretense. It was a deception and dark things happened under its cover.

Cheolyong’s understanding of this world had begun the night after he had escaped from the innermost wall of the factory. That night his escape had been nothing short of a miracle and a lack of organization within the enforcers. Had somehow the scientists or first throe of enforcers who had stormed the innermost wall known his face, then Cheolyong would have merely been another addition to the rows of experiments lined there.

But instead pure luck and instinct had saved him and he had hidden in some dark corner after slipping out the fourth wall. His entire body had been shaking with fear and the overstimulation of shock and he wondered if he would die of this – his heart stopping from sheer terror.

But he was young and he was strong. His body reacted as it should in times of stress, his brain sending signals to produce norepinephrine and cortisol. His heart rate increased, his breathing quickened. His eyes dilated and he could feel his skin flush. And in the midst of danger and potential death, Cheolyong felt his mind clear and his senses sharpen. He could smelt the stale sweat on hard laborers who had gone home a few hours ago, he could taste the acrid tang of smoke from the factory in the air, and as he raised his head to look into the far distance, his eyes settled on the Edge Walls. And in that one moment, Cheolyong knew what to do.

The Edge Walls were towering slabs of stone, so smooth that they were impossible to climb. Not that anyone would for to climb over them was to reach the side where the Ghettos ceased to exist. Literally.

Nothing was what lay beyond the walls. Each of the Three Floors had their respective Edge Walls, built to ensure that no person fell over the edge, whether by accident, on purpose, or perhaps, by darker mechanisms.

Before Cheolyong had grasped an understanding of the true nature of his world, he had been like the several other millions living in the Ghettos – afraid. Afraid of what lay beyond the walls. They were an unknown place, somewhere that not even the enforcers knew of.

Now, Cheolyong understood. There literally was nothing.

Like how his hand was made up of code which told his brain what to see and what to feel, the land upon which they stood was also made up of code. The markets he had walked in every day of his life, the walls which he had brushed up against as he hid from enforcers and his sisters alike, the grassy hill upon which he had laid back and stretched out against, all of that was code. But beyond the Edge Walls there was no code.

Cheolyong had no idea what would happen to someone who did try to step beyond the Edge Walls. Possibility A was that you couldn’t step beyond the walls end of story. No code meant no physical place you could actually step into. It would be something akin to an invisible wall, impenetrable for your body and so you would simply be unable to. Possibility B would be that you would fall, a belief that many of the citizens held. It was easy to imagine just stepping off the edge of the Ghettos and plummeting straight into nothingness. Where you would end was an unknown. If there was an end, another unknown. Perhaps you would just fall forever, never ceasing, never stopping, forever falling, unable to die. Possibility C, the one that Cheolyong found most likely, was the complete opposite. Outright deletion. An error to the System, and so goodbye.

But Cheolyong hadn’t headed for the Edge Wall that day two years ago because he wanted to find out what lay beyond the walls. He had gone there because he didn’t know what lay beyond them, and neither did the citizens of the Ghettos, or the enforcers, or anyone who might come after him. There was a fear of the unknown and it was an innate one.

Thanks to that he would be left alone in the relative emptiness of the vicinity close to the Edge Walls.

So Cheolyong aged twenty found himself directly in the shadows of the Edge Walls. There he bided his time, scavenging for food and sleeping fitfully and thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Of how he could save everyone in the innermost factory wall.

There were thousands of them, and to delete the manually one by one would take months, never mind the fact that security would be doubly as tight now and the possibility of him even getting back in was a remote zero. No. He couldn’t use that method again, which meant he needed another way around it.

Bur how exactly he just couldn’t solve.

Until one day he got the trigger he needed.

It was, unexpectedly, another human being.

Cheolyong had come all the way out here to avoid other humans but it seemed that even in the face of fear there were always exceptions. This man was one of them.

His appearance had been disconcerting to Cheolyong. Not just because he hadn’t been expecting any humans to approach him – he had seen the stragglers about the Walls, but he had assumed they would all keep to themselves – no, it had been disconcerting more so because the man who approached him looked old. Not just age-wise, but physically. It was the wrinkles in his skin, the bags under his eyes, the way he walked with a slow sobriety as if weighed down with chains. His hair and beard was streaked with grey but it still was a strong shade of black and his eyes shone bright with intelligence. He was a strange mix of old and young and Cheolyong had nearly jumped out of his skin with shock when the man first approached him. 

Who are you? What do you want? Can I help you? These were all the questions on the tip of Cheolyong’s tongue as the man approached him. They tangled and collided and he had no idea what to ask first, unsure if he would come off too hostile or rude or easy and well, he wasn’t sure what to do in this situation.

The man saved him the worry by speaking first. “You’re that brat the enforcers are trying to find.” He said without ceremony is  rasping voice, young enough but sounding tired, just like his appearance.

Cheolyong had stilled. Was this man going to call the enforcers on him?

“I’m not going to hand you in if that’s what you think I’m going to do,” the man had scoffed, sounding amused that Cheolyong had even entertained the thought. “I just want to know what you did to attract their attention. The bounty on your head is high enough to interest me in your deeds.”

There was honesty in the man’s voice, enough to convince Cheolyong to speak against his otherwise fears. “I snuck into the factories. I saw things there…”

“Bad things?” the man had raised an eyebrow the color of smoke and ash combined.

Cheolyong had swallowed. “Pretty bad,” he admitted.

“And you plan to do something about it, don’t you?”

Cheolyong had his lips. How much did this man know? Was it all guesswork? Or could he working with the enforcers?

“I-“ he started.

The man held up a hand and shrugged. “Am suspicious of me, and for good reason.”

“Then?” Cheolyong hesitated.

“I want to see if you are the somebody worth my time.”

Cheolyong had stared. “Who are you?” he had said incredulously.

“Does it matter,” the man had shrugged carelessly. “I’m just a man who’s going to die soon and I want to see things change.”

“Die?!”

The man gave him a wry look. “Don’t we all?”

“But-“ we aren’t meant to die, was what Cheolyong wanted to say. Only the words caught in his throat, heavy and acidic.

“I’m older than I look,” the man said with another shrug. “Old enough to know that this world has changed for the worse, and if someone doesn’t do something then with time it will collapse. 

Cheolyong’s mouth had dried. Collapse?

“A world built upon sacrifices alone will never last long,” the man said with an air of distance. It made Cheolyong think of the walls and walls of human bodies. Did this man know of it? “And you,” he then said, voice growing hard as he turned his steely gaze upon Cheolyong, “What are you going to do?”

“Me?” Cheolyong had pointed at himself. “I-“

“Don’t know what to do,” the man finished. “Well how about this. Let me give you a starting point. You know nothing about this world, so how would you expect to be able to do something about it. Start from the beginning. Learn exactly what this world is, and maybe then you will have an idea of what to do.”

Cheolyong gaped at him. “Learn? What? How?”

“Here,” the man said as he held out a slim, black object. Where he had produced it from Cheolyong had no clue, for he could have sworn that one moment the old man’s hand had been empty, wrinkled and browned and spotted, and then the next there lay a slim table in his hand, thick as two fingers and as long as Cheolyong’s forearm.

“What is this?” he asked without taking the proffered item.

“A portable comp,” the old man replied, shaking the object at Cheolyong again. Cheolyong eyed it with suspicion.

“Why are you giving me this?”

“Because,” the old man said with a growl and grabbed Cheolyong’s arm with a vice grip that did not match his age, forcefully dumping the comp into Cheolyong’s hand, “I want things to change. And you look like the sort of person who can make that happen.”

“Who are you?” Cheolyong whispered again, his fingers curling around the cold edges of the computer. It felt foreign but magnetic and he knew once it had been placed in his hands that he would never let it go.

This time the man cracked a tired grin that only highlighted his age. “Does it matter?” he quipped and Cheolyong blinked and the man was gone. Cheolyong would have thought he imagined the entire thing if it wasn’t for the computer in his grasp.

It had taken Cheolyong another two days to realize how to use it. As a Ghetto child he had never had to the opportunity that children of the Peaks had to play with keyboards and monitor screens. The only experience he had properly had was back in the research facilities where he had hastily copied what the scientists had done and as the machines had instructed.

He had brought up the keyboard and his fingers hovered over the screen. On a whim his fingers came down and he typed /help. Enter.

A box popped up. Help commands. To input functions  insert a ‘/’ in front of any commands. To run a function please use the ‘enter’ key to the right-

Cheolyong had scrolled down, furiously reading and absorbing the information. Was this what the old man wanted him to learn? How to code and use computers? But how then was it then going to help him?

It was a week and a half later that he realized just how powerful coding could be. It was the method by which the factories were run by and so if one could use code and code well, one could essentially access all of the information held within the walls.

And so, slowly and carefully, Cheolyong learnt how to pull apart the information there. It was slow work because it took Cheolyong a long time to realize how to get past the outermost firewalls and make use of the trace he had left behind in the innermost walls when he had released Hyo Jin. Only then was he able to slip into the System without flagging up alerts. He fabricated an identity and learned how to cover up his traces.

And it was careful work because he had to learn through trial and error of the security sweeps and of how to evade being noticed. There was many a time when he came so close to being caught, but his quick thinking and his rapidly widening knowledge of coding saved him. And over the course of the year or so he came to master coding and hacking and it was then that he learnt about the true nature of their world.

The Factories were directly government run, so it wasn’t unexpected for their databases to hold information about the true nature of the Three Levels. And once Cheolyong caught a whiff of the truth he began to unravel it bit by bit and it was then that he realized how he could save all the victims in the innermost factory wall.

Knowledge was power and Cheolyong was going to shape it into a weapon.

He was going to use the very nature of this world as his tool.

He was going to create a program to save them all in one go. 

Over the following year Cheolyong slowly slipped back into the city. The search for him had died down with time, his capture becoming secondary to the capture of two siblings for some reason that Cheolyong could not discover. But it didn’t matter. The enforcers averted attention meant he could return safely and obtain the computers and tools he needed to create his program. Slowly he built the system he needed, coding and testing, re-coding and refining.

And then, just a little over the two years after Hyo Jin’s death, the time had arrived. Cheolyong was so very nearly there.

He yawned and stretched, stiff limbs clicking.

Soon he would have to move hideouts again. He had been here for over three weeks and he wouldn’t be surprised if those gossipy neighbors outside finally tried to take the initiate to engage in conversation. They had already tried knocking twice and on both times Cheolyong had pretended that nobody was in. But it wouldn’t last forever.

He reached forwards for the file, tapping the monitor to save it and close it down. He would continue come tomorrow. But for now he would sleep and gain his strength and bide his time.

This is how I make your deaths meaningful, Cheolyong thought and wondered if somewhere out there Hyo Jin and Hyo Sun could still hear him. Even if they could not, he would still go through with this.

He closed down the programs and stared at the calendar in the background. Just two more months till Christmas. And with it, he would finally bestow his gift.

 < / REFLECTION:BLACK >

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< REFLECTION:BLUE >

Time log, Thunder Age 21
3 years prior

The enforcers were getting close again.  They were catching up, learning how to recognize Sanghyun and Sandara’s hacking traces so that even when they thought themselves impeccably hidden it would only be a matter of days because the enforcers found their trail again.

This was already the fourth time this month they had had to change hideouts.

“We can’t keep running Sanghyun,” Sandara had said just that morning as she frowned down at her computer screen. Those had been the first thing they had procured upon entering this world. “And the more we run the less we concentrate on finding Durami’s killer.”

Sanghyun sighed. They were running in circles, forever skirting their true goal.

For the past two years they had dedicated themselves to finding Durami’s killer, and for two years the killer had evaded them. Slowly frustration was getting the better of them, making them sloppy of late. They had been too eager for results and the enforcers had picked up on their messy cover ups.

The enforcers were relentless. It forced Sanghyun and Sandara to constantly swap hideouts be on constant alert. It was tiring and even in a world where technically they didn’t need to sleep or eat if they programmed themselves properly it was still possible for their minds to become exhausted and it only served to form a destructive spiraling cycle.

Ideally Sanghyun wanted to relocate to the Mid-Levels where the larger population and greater usage of programming would hide them better. But to get there would require a huge amount of data processing and that would not go unnoticed. Not to mention security was even tighter on the Mid-Levels. At least here in the Ghettos there were so many unregistered citizens and so many hiding places that it afforded them better cover, even if it meant finding Durami’s killer was harder.  

Durami… Sanghyun thought, pausing to look out their tiny window and at the grey-blue sky that was a poor mimicry of the real world sky. Admittedly even in the real world the sky was also grey, their atmosphere so destroyed that sunlight no longer filtered through as blue but only in monochromatic tones. Still, it was better than the clearly fake ceiling.

“Don’t think about it,” Sandara said softly, reading her brother’s mind. She knew he was yearning after home, their real home and not this artificial illusion. But they had made a vow when Durami was killed: to find her killer and discover why she had been killed.

Well, they did know why. At least on a surface level.

It had been a clean-up job. A plan to eliminate all humans still residing in the real world.

There hadn’t been many of them left to begin with. Sector 421, once upon a time known as South Korea, had a remaining number of OFFLINE consciousness less than fifty. The lure of a digital world where the air wasn’t so polluted that you choked with every breath or ground so crumbled that each step could be your last was far more desirable than the reality that lay outside of electrical grids and firewalls.

When the System first went online people had been reluctant to relinquish the care of their bodies to cryo cells and to submit their brains to a completely electronic world, but after the first few test batches of people had entered and came out with nothing but glowing reports, more and more people became ensnared.

The year was 2067 and the world was falling apart. The strain of extreme human populations had exceeded Earth’s capabilities and it could no longer support the thirteen billion that it was attempting to do. Cities were crumbling under hastily built infrastructures which reached skyward and inward. Global logistics and transport stuttered and war between countries broke out for the limited resources that remained.

The ideal of Cryogenesis grew more popular. People would be stored in one set location. There they would be fed and water and taken care of without having to even move a limb. The liquid in which the body would float in would provide sufficient movement that muscles would not wilt and should the user so wish to return his or her consciousness to their original bodies, they would find it perfect condition, as if they had never left it.

Of course though the consciousness had to go somewhere and people weren’t willing to be put into a hibernation like sleep, so the System was developed.

Originally the digital world had been built for entertainment purposes. Come, upload your consciousness to a place where you can achieve anything. Where there are no physical boundaries, no tiredness, no hunger, no four limbs tying you to ground. In the digital world so long as your brain could send the signals and the system respond fast enough, then you could do as you liked.

Thus the System was enhanced and developed further, evolved so that people could almost live the life they did back on Earth, but in a world with far more possibilities.

Back then when supplies were difficult and the news was filled with nothing but negative articles, the System became an interesting and curious new place. People first began to enter in order to see what the hype was about, but then they saw the lure and so more and more poured into the Digital world, handing their bodies over to Cryo Cells and computers that would monitor and ensure their well-being.

And then, over time, it came to the point that people no longer wanted to leave the Digital world. Why go back to a planet that is dying under their feet when they could stay in a world where they had everything at their fingertips.

And so it happened. Facilities in each country were built, big enough to house every last person if they had to. Computers and software were developed competent enough to keep watch twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Human checks were still required and so not everyone could be uploaded to the Digital world, but that was fine. The Digital world was not for everyone and some willingly stayed in the real world. They became the first generation Administrative Teams who made sure the facilities ran smoothly.

These were Sandara and Sanghyun’s grandparents. Over time they had given birth to their parents, and then, them. The two of them and Durami had been raised in a dying world where the majority of humanity slept under the ground in floating cells of blue liquid, their minds ever active in a very different place.

The administrative job was passed down over generations. Children were taught how to code and control from the minute they could talk and walk. It was something that became as natural as breathing to them. Sanghyun, Sandara and Durami grew up fully expecting to inherit their parent’s positions one day.

But that day was shattered when they had come home to find all the inhabitants of Sector 421 Facility annihilated.

It had been an unassuming day as per norm. The three of them would start the day with lessons or practice or just general maintenance to get them used to a future life of admin. Lunch would be plain, shapeless food that apparently had years ago been used in the military as easy but nutritional sustenance. Then they had the afternoons to themselves.

They would occupy their time by exploring the remains of Sector 421.

In the fifty or so years that had spanned since humanity had first retreated into the Digital Worlds, scientists had put forwards their plan to restore Earth. They called it Bioenergia. It was an engineered bacteria which they released into the air and into the soil. Some were modified to convert the destroyed atmosphere to a more habitable state in hopes that one day blue skies would return and air be breathable without masks. Others would fertilize the Earth so that perhaps when humans decided to return to their real world they would be able to plant greens and sow seeds and reignite the dream of an Earth overrun by vegetation. There were a lot of plans and some of them had worked and some hadn’t.

The world that Sanghyun had explored as a child had been a strange amalgamation of urban and jungle. It was like a war between concrete structure and growing vegetation. In some places stone and steel conquered and Sanghyun and his sisters would spend the day climbing half rotten stairs and ducking in and out of collapsed brick walls. They would make a map as they explored, sketches on scraps of paper that they would then take back and add to their ever growing computer version. There was a map of sorts already on the System but the adults were all occupied with maintaining the Digital World’s system and so they allowed the children to do as they pleased.

Having not been updated for almost a decade or so the map on the computers lacked the recent, almost voracious growth of vegetation. It did not detail the spiraling dual tree trunks that had taken up residence where once upon a time a proud gate like structure known as Gwanghwamun had stood. Nor did it show the fantastical purple and green ivy, thick an automobile and curled tightly around a topple needle-like structure. They had measured it once, over two hundred meters it was, and they had found out from their a woman back at the facility that it used to be called N Seoul tower and was where her grandfather had taken her grandmother on their first date. It had been a tradition apparently to fasten a lock with their names escribed upon to the fence there and throw away the key. Sanghyun had always found it fascinatingly romantic and wondered where romance had gone these days.

Lost in a world of code and deceived perceptions apparently.

Sanghyun had never entered the Digital World before the day Durami was killed but he had seen glimpses of it through the visual screens.

One of the jobs of the Admin team was to keep in close contact with the respective administrative team in the Digital World.

These were the people descended from those who had first tested the Digital World when it had been in its trial stages. Like Neil Armstrong they had been the first people to experience something completely and wholly new. They had been the first to experience what letting go of the mortal body truly felt like. It felt like normal. Gravity had not changed. The unconscious sensation of breathing through my nose, of feeling with my hands and feet, of yawning and stretching and touching, all of that was the same as in the real world, the first testers had said. But there’s a strange tingling sensation. Like I can do anything, they had then said. Run to the ends of the Earth, climb the highest mountain.

All limitations had been removed.

And that in itself became a problem.

People began to abuse the Digital World and the System. They did as they liked, so long as it sated their endless desired. People were free now of work, of money, of the law even. And that was dangerous. People without leashes could bare their teeth without fear. Order within the digital society faltered.

Despite the death laws, despite the then implemented 24 day law, despite all the government’s attempts to try and create law and order people still rebelled. They knew they were in a Digital world and so long as they were competent enough they could hack around whatever the government tried to enforce.

And so it came to pass, a new and radical solution.

They decided to wipe the minds of every citizen of the Digital World.

The government of each country came together and discussed it for four days and four nights. And on the final night they came to conclusion to wipe the minds of every citizen in each country, for the Digital world was so big that each country was situation on a separate grid and citizens forbidden from crossing the borders to one another. There was enough to do with running one country let alone them all at once. Each country had its own facility and its own grid and its own set of administrators. The world pulled apart from each other; they withdrew into their own shells and tried to survive.

There had been resistance to that at first, the inability to see a friend or a family member who may be located in another country and so another inaccessible part of the Digital world, but this was a problem that was also solvable by a world-wide memory wipe.

The benefits outweighed the risks. And so they did it.

The year was 2088 and no one suspected it coming. The only ones spared were the core governmental figures and the admin team still living in the real world. Apart from that, on the night of March 20^th 2088, the entire Digital world lost their memories and realization that they were living in a computerized world and from thereon then, the Digital world became their one and only world that they knew of.

It was the perfect solution.

Order returned with the need to work for money, to provide for family, to pay for entertainment. Levels of crime reduced but human satisfaction with life standards was still high as they believed they were in a highly sophisticated society where health care was almost perfect, lifespan till almost a hundred, and in the rare case of death, the victim was granted twenty four days in which he or she could make their final farewells before passing on to the next world, wherever or whatever that may be.

But of course no society stays perfect forever. There were still those who knew about the existence of the real world out there and they knew that should the day come when Earth was restored and could be once again habitable by the hundreds, then a dilemma would come: should we return to Earth, or should we stay in this Digital paradise?

The votes were equally divided.

Some thought that once Earth could be inhabited once more, then humanity should slowly start shifting back to there. Others thought that why leave such a perfect place?

The discussions continued, this time for years on end and not just days. 

Until one person decided to take things into his own hands. He decided to eliminate all contact with the outside world, thus forcing everyone to stay within their perfect Digital paradise. He hired an assassin. He started killing off the admin teams all over the world. Sector 332: Brazil. 791: New York. 113: Malaysia. 088: South Africa. 421: Seoul.

But why Durami?

She was just a child. Barely an adult. She didn’t deserve to die.

And so they were going to make him pay. For their sister.

Because what else did they have to live for than revenge.

“We’ll find him,” Sandara murmured as her fingers skimmed the keyboard. Sanghyun watched them move their delicate dance. She was so driven by her failure to save her own sister that Sanghyun wondered that once they had done the deed, what then would Sandara live for? His beautiful, delicate, fragile, fierce sister.

He opened his mouth, wanting to reach out to her, to reassure her. To say he loved her. His hand floated outwards, halfway there, and then the door to their tiny hideout flew open and a dozen odd men poured in.

“Hands up!” one of them barked and Sanghyun jumped, the keyboard in his lap falling to side. One man jerked his hand and a bullet soared through the air and Sanghyun turned in time to see Sandara fall to the floor.

His beautiful, delicate, fragile, fierce sister.

He knew it even before his fingers found her pulse.

Her body shuddered once. And then it was still.

< / REFLECTION:BLUE >

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< REFLECTION:BLACK >

Time log, Mir Age 20
3 years prior

Cheolyong was setting up the monitors in his newest hideout when the small laptop that he always had linked to the System started beeping. Cheolyong dashed over, skidding to his knees as he opened the window that had sent out the alert.

Someone was accessing the System roughly, the code short and brutal. To the point. This hacker wasn’t bothering with hiding tracks; he or she were too busy trying too busy trying to do something else.

Cheolyong cursed and feverishly tapped at the screen, pulling up barriers and walls to try and hide himself in case the enforcers attempted to do a more careful search that could unearth him.

Who was this careless hacker and how dare he try to damage all of Cheolyong’s hard work!

Cheolyong hissed and tried to follow the hacker’s traces. His fingers halted over the keyboard as he read the code and the path, and he was utterly, utterly confused.

/access: The Graveyard.

The Graveyard was a myth, a rumor that mothers used to scare their children into being good. If you don’t behave well and do your chores then you’ll be sent to the Graveyard. It wasn’t a real place. Or, it shouldn’t have been.

Except that someone was directly trying to transport themselves there. Cheolyong’s heart raced – first of all, was that even possible? To do direct transportation?

The only method that Cheolyong knew of was via the Spine. To try and disseminate yourself into data and funnel yourself to a new location without a containment would be to scatter yourself across the four corners of their Three Levels. Theoretically, transportation required three thinfa. One, a large energy source; two, a container to keep the data within a certain area whilst being transported; and three, a designated arrival location so that the data particles would know where to stop and reassemble at. This was the foundation of transportation theory and by right it made instant transportation to anywhere and at any time impossible without something as huge and well powered as the Spine. But somehow this hacker thought he or she could do it without any of the following.

If this hacker could actually transport there directly then this would be a miraculous breakthrough for researchers of the Digital world.

And then the second issue struck Cheolyong.

Even if they could, and were confident of transportation, why of all places would they pick the fictitious Graveyard? Unless of course it wasn’t fictitious. Unless it was a real place. Which then begged the question: why did everyone thing it fictitious?

A memory resurged. Files in the factory. Disposal. Bodies. Graveyard.

Was the Graveyard quite literally as the name suggested? Was it actually a place where…people were sent to when they died? Cheolyong choked on the very thought. Did that mean that those who died didn’t really die? Were they all sent to this Graveyard place…and then what? Did they live there? Did they know they were dead? Did they, did they-

Cheolyong held a hand to his head as if it would stop the swirling thoughts inside there. This was all just speculation. He had no real idea of whether or not this Graveyard place even existed, and if it did, what it was really used for.

He returned his trembling hands to the keys. He would follow the tracks of this hacker and see where he or she went. Then he would calmly assess the situation and investigate. Yes, that was the right plan of action to take.

He tried to slow his breathing and half-succeeded.

This Graveyard… if it did indeed house all the ‘dead’, then would that mean Hyo Jin and Hyo Sun were there? Were they still ‘alive’ in some shape or form? Or were they gone even from there? Nothing but metaphorical dust in a coded world.

Cheolyong bit his lip as he thought. Where did the dead go?

They lived in a Digital world which meant that their bodies were still out there somewhere in the real world. When someone died, what would happen to that body? Would it shut down and be removed? Would the physical brain cease to function?

Or… or….

Cheolyong truly had no idea. It scared him, the bottomless pit of possibilities, and his stomach churned fearfully.

“Noona,” he whispered in a cracked voice, meaning both of them because the fear was building that maybe he hadn’t saved either of his sisters and that maybe they were still out there somewhere, suffering.

And if he tried to save and delete all those hundreds of poor people in the innermost factory, what then would happen to them?

The possibilities. The endless, endless, possibilities.

He had to investigate. He had to. The code had to be perfect and this could be a huge flaw to it. What if he hadn’t save Hyo Jin that day two years ago? What if instead he had condemned her to a far worse fate. What if-

Cheolyong’s breath caught in his throat and his fingers froze.

So many what if’s. So many what could wrong’s.

He was so scared. But he had to succeed. And so he put his fingers back to the keys and continued typing.

< / REFLECTION:BLACK >

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< REFLECTION:BLUE >

Time log, Thunder Age 21
3 years prior

Sanghyun typed furiously, anger fueling him on.

Around him lay the stunned bodied of the enforcers who had stormed their hideout. They were lucky they were not dead. They deserved to be. For killing Sandara they deserved to be ripped apart limb by limb.

He had covered his sister’s still body with a jacket.  He did not want to see her glassy eyes watching him even though he knew she would only last for a few more minutes at most.

When people ‘died’ in the Digital World, it wasn’t a real death per say. A real death would qualify for their consciousness being deleted from the System, their corporeal coded bodies vanishing, and then their human bodies back in the real world shutting down, heart stopping, brain ceasing to function. That was a real and true death.

But that would be incredibly inefficient.

One of the admin staff had explained it all to Sanghyun one day when he had popped the question curiously: why is it that when someone dies in the Digital world they don’t die in the Cryo cell?

Sanghyun couldn’t recall what he had looked like, but he could clearly remember the sharp tones of his accent and the way he would lilt on the upturns of his speech. That, and his lips. As strange as it sounds Sanghyun could remember the sharp bow wave of his lips as he spoke and told Sanghyun all about why people did not die. 

“How many people do you think are there here in Sector 421 Sanghyun?” he had asked in that teacher like tone, precise yet not demeaning.

Forty three had been the answer. At that point of time there had been forty three people left in the facility. Of those, Sanghyun and his two sisters had been the only three children there. The rest were all administrative members of various levels.

“There are only forty of us in the whole of sector 421 and we have to monitor the lives of over fifty million. We rely so heavily on computers that without them there is no way we could handle everything. And to power all the computers they need to remain indefinitely hooked up to the power plant beneath this facility.”

So? Sanghyun had asked, not seeing the point. He had been twelve at that time.

“So it means they cannot leave this facility. Ever. And if anything has to be done outside of this building it has to be done by human hands.”

What did this have to do with life and death? Sanghyun had thought, brow furrowed deeply.

He had laughed at Sanghyun’s twelve year old confusion.

“The Cryo Cells are built so that essentially the person inside will never die. You remember learning about the contents of the liquid right? The particles are engineered to be good at transferring substances. When we pump nutrients into the tank, the liquid will assist the nutrient particles into the mouth and esophagus of the human. When the human excretes the liquid helps direct it to another pump. Hayflick limits of cells are halted so people do not age past a certain point. With the Cryo Cells people effectively can live forever.”

So why do people die in the Digital world?

“Well they don’t know they’re in a Cryo Cell. They think they’ll living a normal life over there in the Digital World. When they die, that’s it. But it’s not. If it was then upon death the System would send an electric signal to the Cryo Cell, telling it to shut down the functions. The brain would stop, the heart would stop, the human would ‘die’. But they don’t have to die, at least their bodies don’t, even if their minds do. Or are told so.”

I’m confused, Sanghyun had said, utterly lost at where the conversation was going.

He had sighed, and tried to explain as clearly as he could. “In the past, when someone died in the Digital world, a signal was sent to the Cryo Cell telling it to shut down. However then we would have to deal with a body. After all, without the liquid the body will start decaying. And ideally we would like the computers to deal with the aftermath: the removal to somewhere far away, the burial, etc. Except they can’t. The computers can’t leave this facility and so it would fall to us, the admin team. But there are only forty of us and we don’t have time for that sort of thing, let alone the inclination to even want to deal as cleanup crew. We’ve long passed that age of manual labor.”

So then what actually happens when someone ‘dies’ in the Digital world?

“Their consciousness gets put into a coma like state and stored. Their bodies are still alive and maintained in the Cryo cells, but their minds are completely asleep and unaware. And to everyone else in the Digital world they are ‘dead’.”

So they’re technically still alive?

“In a way, yes. If the right signal is sent to the consciousness stored then they could be reawakened.”

But until then they have to stay asleep and alone? Sanghyun had commented in a question, face downturn.

He had shrugged. “It’s necessary.” A lot of things apparently were.

Necessary that Sanghyun was expected to grow up and become one of them, deceiving people and being deceived in turn.

Necessary that in turn he was expected to donate his DNA to produce more children who would one day take his place.

Necessary that they then would not be his children, but children of the facility.

That was what Sandara, Durami and Sanghyun were. Children of the facility. Their DNA may have come from two individuals of the forty, but they were considered children of them all. No one person raised them more than another. They were all fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters to the three children and so when they were all killed, Sanghyun had no idea how to grieve for a parent, because collectively they were all his parents.

And to grieve for forty would to destroy yourself.

So they had decided to grieve for only one: Durami.

“The place where the deceased’s data is stored. Do you remember where that is Sanghyun?”

Sandara and Sanghyun, the two survivors of the annihilation of sector 421. They had sworn that day to get revenge for Durami, the sole person who was closest to them in blood.

They had taken her body to an empty Cryo Cell and started it up. Computers would still function even without human hand and so it was relatively easy to start one up and leave it functioning without anyone to monitor it.

Blue liquid had filled the tank and slowly they had slipped Durami in, watching as she slowly sunk down and then bobbed up and down.

The cell wouldn’t bring her back, but it would prevent her from decaying any further.

And in the meanwhile they would find Durami’s killer and make him pay.

Only this was a setback now. Sandara was dead, and all the dead went to one place in the Digital World.

“That’s correct. The Graveyard.”

The Graveyard.

The System may have considered Sandara dead, but Sanghyun knew that all the dead were simply just data funneled away to the Graveyard.

Normally the data of a deceased would be stalled, a cache formed and then returned to the living world for twenty four days. In those twenty four days the government sorted and filed the deceased so that when the cache finally faded, it would be impeccably stored in the library of other dead, all within the graveyard.

But Sandara was an anomaly. She wasn’t registered on the System so to speak and so her data would be immediately sent straight to the Graveyard without filing and without mediation. There the System would attempt to collect and isolate her whilst trying to identify who and what she was. Then they would take action and declare her either dead or to be slated.

Sandara was still alive.

She was in the Graveyard, dumped there with all the other unknowns of the Three Levels. And if Sanghyun could get to her in time he could still save his other sister.

/access: The Graveyard, he typed – the final command of his long, winding code.

Enter.

He felt the very code that made up his particles tremble. It shook with the electric force of a hurricane and Sanghyun’s eyes rolled back in his head. The last thing he saw in between the unconscious bodies of the enforcers was his jacket limp on the floor. Sandara was already there. And he was coming.

“Wait for me noona,” Sanghyung whispered, and then everything went black.

< / REFLECTION:BLUE >

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What is happening??? Even I don't know. Half of what's going on now isn't even planned? But finally an update?