Taeho quickly approached the fallen agents and activated BioVision.
His field of view changed. The colors inverted. The bodies of the people became transparent. Nerves, blood vessels, organs came into sight.
He checked Team Leader Kim’s brain. The neural signals had slowed. But there was no damage.
Agent Park. Agent Lee. It was the same.
“Rema, what kind of gas is this?”
-It is a variant of the VX nerve agent. It is not a lethal dose, but it temporarily paralyzes the central nervous system. It should last approximately thirty minutes.
“Why am I fine?”
-Because I am protecting your nervous system.
“How?”
-From the moment you began using BioVision, you were linked with me. Right now, I am blocking the gas from binding to your neural receptors.
Taeho lifted his head and looked toward the open door.
Blue light was leaking through the crack.
He could see a cold, artificial LED glow. An alien light unlike anything he had seen before.
“Rema. What’s inside?”
-Prometheus.
“Is Prometheus a person? A machine?”
-Both.
“What does that mean?”
-It would be better for you to see for yourself.
There was a strange emotion mixed into Rema’s voice. If it were human, it would be something like fear or sorrow.
But wasn’t Rema an artificial intelligence?
Taeho’s brow furrowed.
“Rema, are you all right?”
-Yes.
The answer came quickly.
Had he imagined it after all?
Taeho slowly walked toward the open door.
He stood before it.
Blue light shone on his face. It was so bright that he covered his eyes with his hand.
“The gas?”
-It is safe. Concentration: 0.001 ppm. A harmless level.
Taeho drew in a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.
Wooooong—
A low vibration rose through the soles of his feet. Taeho stopped. He looked around.
‘What is this................?’
His mouth fell open.
The core room was even larger than he had imagined.
A circular space that looked easily thirty meters in diameter. The ceiling opened up ten meters overhead. The walls on every side were packed densely with black server racks.
Thousands of LED lights blinked. Green, blue, and red lights shone like stars in the night sky.
Wooooong—
The sound of the servers.
Heat was being generated by billions of calculations per second, cooling systems were running to dispel that heat, and electricity was flowing.
At the center stood a transparent cylindrical structure.
Five meters tall. About two meters in diameter.
Inside it, blue light swirled.
‘Is that the quantum server?’
Taeho walked toward the center.
The closer he got to the cylinder, the brighter the light became. He could also feel the temperature dropping.
He placed his hand on the surface of the cylinder. Rather than cold, what he felt was pain.
Taeho quickly pulled his hand away.
-It is a temperature close to absolute zero. 0.01 kelvin. Minus 273.14 degrees Celsius. It is to maintain the quantum state.
Listening to Rema’s explanation, he peered inside the cylinder.
There was something inside the blue light.
Small chips. Hundreds of them, floating in midair.
Magnetic levitation?
-Those are quantum processors. Ten to the eighteenth operations per second. More powerful than all the supercomputers on Earth combined.
“Is this Prometheus?”
-Part of it.
It was then.
Crackle—
He heard the sound of air being torn apart.
When he turned around, light had begun gathering around the cylinder.
One pillar of light appeared, then another, until there were seven.
Within the pillars of light that rose from floor to ceiling, forms began to take shape.
People.
Seven of them in all.
They stood at equal intervals around Taeho on a circle with a radius of five meters.
Taeho instinctively took a step back.
“Mr. Kang Taeho.”
The figure standing directly in front of him spoke.
He was a Western man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He had short hair streaked with white and wore a gray suit.
“I am Abel.”
He said.
“Chairman of the Prometheus Supreme Council.”
Taeho clenched his fists. His lips had gone dry.
“And these are the members of the Supreme Council, selected from across the world.”
Abel raised his hand and slowly drew a circle.
The seven holograms nodded at the same time.
Taeho’s gaze moved slowly, then his eyes widened.
An Asian woman in her early thirties.
Her black hair was neatly tied back, and hers was a face Taeho knew.
“Lin Wang?”
Lin Wang smiled.
“It’s been a long time, Kang Taeho.”
Had she been one of them from the beginning?
Taeho’s mind became tangled.
“Are you all holograms?”
“That is correct. We do not physically exist here.”
“Then where are you right now?”
Abel answered in her place.
“In the future, 132 years after the time period in which you exist.”
“.........”
“Are you surprised? Naturally.”
“Did you invent a time machine or something?”
“Strictly speaking, this is not time travel. It is spacetime communication. Information transmission using quantum entanglement. We cannot physically come to the past. But we can send information.”
“Quantum entanglement.......”
Taeho murmured.
A fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. When particles are entangled, they affect each other instantly, regardless of distance. Even Einstein had called it “spooky
action at a distance.”
Abel continued.
“We applied that to time. We entangled particles from your time period with particles from ours. And through that entanglement, we transmit information in real time.”
“Is that possible?”
“The fact that we are here is proof.”
Abel spread both hands.
“Are you humanity from the future?”
“Precisely.”
Taeho looked at the seven holograms. Judges from the future.
And he realized.
‘These people are the real Prometheus. Bio Synergy and Han Seokhun were only proxies. The true enemy was in the future, 132 years from now.’
“But why are you interfering with the past?”
“To save humanity.”
“By spreading a plague?” “We were not trying to kill you. We made a selection.”
When Abel lifted his hand, at that moment, the space of the core room distorted.
Crackle—
The hologram projection system activated. The wall behind the seven council members vanished and transformed into a massive screen. No, it was not a screen. It was a three-dimensional holographic space.
Within it, Earth appeared.
A blue planet. A beautiful planet. But red numbers floated above it.
-Current population: 8.03 billion.
“This is Earth’s current population.”
Abel explained.
“This number surpasses nine billion by 2040 and reaches its peak in 2055.”
Earth rotated. The number increased rapidly.
-2055: 9.72 billion
“But the problem begins here.”
Abel snapped his fingers.
Red warning lights began to appear across the Earth.
“Fresh water is depleted, and arable land decreases by forty percent due to desertification. Food production plummets beginning in 2089.”
Abel’s voice remained calm. As if he were reading a weather forecast.
“As a result:
-2089–2095: 1.2 billion deaths by starvation.
-2095–2105: 800 million deaths in resource wars.
The image changed, and a world map appeared.
Red dots spread explosively across the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and South America.
“We call the period from 2095 to 2105 the ‘Ten-Year War Era.’ Regional conflicts over water and food spread across the entire world. Nuclear weapons were not used. Not yet.”
Abel snapped his fingers again.
-October 8, 2112
-Outbreak of the India-Pakistan nuclear war
-Deaths: 320 million direct / 1.4 billion indirect deaths from nuclear winter
Earth turned black. Gray clouds spread through the atmosphere. It was nuclear winter.
“The India-Pakistan war spread to the Middle East, and eventually NATO, Russia, and China intervened. It was not a full-scale nuclear war, but a total of 247 nuclear warheads were used. As a result, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by 4.7 degrees, and agriculture collapsed for three years.”
Taeho felt as if he could not breathe. The Earth in the hologram was no longer blue. It was a dying planet covered in gray and brown.
-June 3, 2145
-Remaining human population: 1.2 billion
-Prediction model: 94.7% probability of extinction by 2170
“This is the future if we do not intervene.”
Taeho spoke heavily.
“So you tried to reduce the population with a plague?”
“That is correct. We decided to reduce the population to four billion before 2089. By inducing a voluntary decline in birth rates, selectively distributing medical technology, and, if necessary, through biological intervention.”
Taeho asked.
“Then why Korea, of all places?”
“Because of the Singularity in the data flow.”
When Abel raised his hand, the hologram changed. A grid network appeared, enveloping Earth.
“To transmit information from 2157 to 2025, we need a ‘spacetime anchor point.’ A location where a state of quantum entanglement can be maintained for 132 years.”
Six red dots appeared on the map.
“Korea: 98.7%. New Zealand: 87.3%. Arizona: 84.1%. Inner Mongolia: 81.9%. The Amazon: 79.2%. South Africa: 76.8%. Korea ranks overwhelmingly first in the entire world. Even in terms of Earth’s magnetic field and underlying variability.”
“How did Han Seokhun find out?”
“He received a doctorate in quantum physics from MIT in 2003. The subject of his dissertation was ‘Temporal Retrograde Communication Using Quantum Entanglement.’ At the time, academia ridiculed him, but we knew his theory was ninety percent correct.”
Twenty-three faces appeared in the hologram.
“Mr. Han Seokhun and twenty-two other researchers were all scholars ahead of their time. Among them, Mr. Han Seokhun was special. He understood both physics and biology.
We gave him only a few hints, but he completed the task he was meant to carry out with remarkable excellence.”
Taeho narrowed his eyes.
“He has Rema too, doesn’t he?”
The seven members of the Supreme Council started in surprise and looked at one another.
Abel’s eyes gleamed with interest.
“As expected, you possess exceptional insight. After returning to Korea in 2008, Mr. Han Seokhun cooperated with us through Rema.”
“You’re saying he cooperated knowing it was a plan to kill millions of people?”
“He chose four billion in order to save four billion.”
“Bullshit!”
Abel shook his head and said,
“You have made the same choice.”
“What are you talking about?”
When Abel raised his hand, the image changed.
It was a hospital emergency room. Ten beds appeared.
“Ten patients have arrived in the emergency room. It was a major traffic accident. All of them are critically injured. But there is only you as the doctor, two nurses. Equipment is limited, and there is no time.”
The patients in the image were enlarged one by one. People bleeding, groaning, losing consciousness.
“Whom do you save first?”
Abel asked.
Taeho bit his lip.
“The most critical patient first.”
“Exactly.”
Only then did Abel smile, as if they were finally speaking the same language.
“You also perform triage. Red tag: immediate treatment. Yellow tag: wait. Green tag: later. Black tag: give up. You make this choice every day as well.”
Taeho was at a loss for words.
“And at times, you give up. You are being ruled by emotion. Look at the data. If the current trend continues, humanity will destroy itself.”
Images unfolded across the screen.
Dried-up rivers, starving children, mushroom clouds.
Taeho slowly opened his mouth.