“Waaah…”
I was able to walk around the spaceship… no, the medical ship, with the woman. It was enormous. After several hours of walking, we finally managed to see all of it. Most of its functions, however, were unusable.
“Does this medical ship have anything like a planet-destroying cannon?”
I thought of the sci-fi movies I’d seen. Scenes where a huge spaceship fired a laser and blew away an enormous planet in a single shot. It was the sort of thing that often appeared in sci-fi films where interplanetary travel was possible. There had even been scenes like that in the famous game, Star Wars.
Contrary to my expectations, however, the woman shook her head and said,
“It does not possess such weapons. This vessel is a medical ship. It is not equipped with offensive weaponry.”
Just as medical ships in reality didn’t have weapons, it seemed to be the same here. I had wanted to see a weapon from the future at least once… But after hearing what I said, the woman brought up something else.
“Do you perhaps wish to exterminate humanity?”
“Huh? Is that possible?”
“Yes. All we would need to do is create and release a virus. We would set the incubation period to around one year and make it airborne. It would be asymptomatic, with a fatality rate of one hundred percent.”
“Huh?”
I asked again after hearing that. But the woman’s answer was the same. Since this was a spaceship related to medicine, maybe it could create viruses too…
I could only be horrified. If what she said was true, humanity really could be wiped out. In the first place, if they were aliens with the technology to float a massive medical ship like this in space, it was entirely possible.
“No, absolutely do not make one.”
How was I supposed to live all by myself? And I was human too, so I could get infected by the virus. What fun would there be in living on Earth alone? Humans were social animals. They absolutely couldn’t live alone.
People living in this era might say they could live perfectly well alone, and ask why anyone couldn’t. But that was because they were communicating through smartphones and the internet.
If you tossed them into an empty room with nothing at all but their own body, they wouldn’t last a week before crying and saying they were sorry.
The woman nodded.
In that way, I was able to grasp the rough state of the medical ship.
Looking at the glowing Earth outside the medical ship, I said,
“I want to become rich.”
“Rich, you say?”
“Yeah. Overwhelmingly number one.”
Maybe it was because I’d grown up in a poor household, but I had always had a longing for rich people. Until now, however, I’d had no choice but to live an ordinary life. It wasn’t as if I had some talent or intelligence that could shake up my entire life.
But after seeing this medical ship, I was certain. I could become the most successful rich person on Earth. And it was definitely possible. The medical technology of the year 9999 made no sense. In a way, it was like using magic.
Who was it that said it?
If a primitive man saw the technology of our era, he would have no choice but to think it was magic. The existence of smartphones that allowed calls from anywhere, and the sight of machines moving on their own, made it clear that such primitive people wouldn’t be wrong to think so.
If I used the technology of this medical ship, it was entirely possible. If I suddenly used high technology, people might find it strange. So I had to do it without drawing suspicion from others.
I needed to establish a certain foundation first, and then unveil innovative technology. A treasure you couldn’t protect could endanger the life of the person who possessed it.
Of course, that was if I were the president of the company. If I didn’t step forward myself, there would be no need for that. Someone else would be the one to face the danger. Thinking about it again, it seemed like developing an innovative treatment would be fine.
It wasn’t as if it were a weapon to wipe out humanity or anything like that.
“Um… no, I need to decide on a name…”
I couldn’t keep calling her “hey” forever. Hearing me say that, the woman replied,
“Please decide one for me, Captain.”
I pondered. To think the day would come when I would name someone else… It wasn’t as if I was having a child or anything.
“A Korean-style name. Let’s call you Soyeon, all right?”
“Yes, understood.”
I nodded.
The first person I met on this medical ship. No, not a person—should I say a person made of some kind of foam?
It wasn’t like she was Aphrodite from mythology…
And so, I was able to return home again. I also received a tool that would let me enter the medical ship again. It looked like some kind of button, and apparently, as long as I pressed it anytime, anywhere, I could return to the medical ship.
----------------------------------------------
And then winter vacation arrived. I had more time. I went in and out of the spaceship.
I decided to call it a spaceship now. Calling it a medical ship felt a little off.
Most of the spaceship’s functions were turned off. Should I say it was a choice made to preserve the energy needed to maintain the spaceship? The spaceship’s energy was currently being replenished through sunlight. But perhaps because the spaceship was so huge, only its basic functions were being maintained.
If I wanted to use other functions, I had to bring in another energy source.
I wasn’t satisfied with only Soyeon.
Using the human cultivation capsules, I made one hundred people. I wanted to make one thousand, even ten thousand, but there were no materials. The maximum number of people I could produce with what we had was one hundred.
I made half men and half women. Their appearances were ordinary. They were the kind of people you could commonly see walking down the street.
“Greetings, Captain.”
“Yeah, I’ll be counting on you.”
One hundred people all looking only at me…! Somehow, I could understand why people tried to seize power. The one hundred people scattered throughout South Korea. Fortunately, obtaining identities for them wasn’t difficult.
We used the cyber network technology on the spaceship. We created one hundred identities in South Korea. Of course, the system shut down afterward.
“Can this hack other places too, by any chance?”
“Unfortunately, with the medical ship’s current functions, that is impossible. There is insufficient energy.”
What would have happened if this had been a spaceship equipped with weapons? Just imagining a spaceship carrying out orbital bombardment was thrilling. But I decided to leave it as a thought. If it actually happened, humanity would fall into complete chaos.
With humanity’s current technology, they couldn’t even properly send a launch vehicle into space, let alone build a spaceship like this.
The one hundred vat-grown humans worked hard at part-time jobs.
The men did day labor on construction sites, and the women worked at logistics centers. It felt as if I’d become the owner of a staffing agency commanding one hundred temporary workers. On top of that, these vat-grown humans didn’t complain or suddenly disappear without notice. They simply worked in silence.
And the best part was that their energy efficiency was excellent. Eating one meal a day was enough. They slept after returning here to the spaceship. With food and housing covered among the necessities of life, bundles of money poured in.
“Wow!”
After they worked hard for a month without skipping weekends, an enormous amount of money piled up. If one person earned 100,000 won per day, that meant we collected ten million won in a single day. In one month, we gathered as much as three hundred million won.
However, sticking only to day labor was far too inefficient.
And so, once a certain amount of money had been gathered, the foundation was laid.
“Then I’ll leave it to you. I don’t really know much.”
“Understood, Captain. Do not worry.”
Soyeon was extremely intelligent. She was different from the other vat-grown humans.
The vat-grown humans were slightly lacking in basic common sense and concepts. But as time passed, they improved a lot. Even if a primitive man were dropped into modern society, if he spent about a month there, he would be able to adapt to this culture well enough.
“We will now begin research.”
-------------------------------------------------------
And so, Jaeseong Bio was launched. We set up an office in Seoul. We also prepared a factory to serve as a decoy.
It was a pharmaceutical company that began with three hundred million won in capital.
If you judged it by amount alone, it was such a small sum of capital that it would make you laugh. This much capital for a pharmaceutical company? Anyone who saw it would think it was a paper company.
Soyeon stood inside the office.
The vat-grown humans were also diligently assisting Soyeon with her work. There were as many as one hundred people. It was a headcount on the level of a decent mid-sized company. On top of that, the vat-grown humans moved efficiently. They were different from the humans of modern society, worn down by exhaustion and fatigue.
“Hmm…”
Soyeon decided to come out strong from the very beginning.
After investigating South Korea, she found that it was an uncivilized society, but even so, it had a certain degree of social order. She did not know about other countries, but in Korea, bringing out a groundbreaking treatment should not cause too much trouble.
And although she had not told the Captain, the treatments Genesis produced could include a special additive.
It was an additive that prevented other pharmaceutical companies from making copycat drugs. With the technology of this era, other pharmaceutical companies could not copy the drugs produced by Jaeseong Bio. Even if they looked at the drug and tried to copy it, they would only end up making some strange, ineffective medicine.
Of course, if one looked only at the ingredient list of Jaeseong Bio’s drugs, there was nothing unusual.
Jaeseong Bio could create a treatment for dementia.