Translator: Dreamscribe
"Hyungnim. I heard about it. Apparently you couldn't help yourself again yesterday and snuck some soju and pork belly?"
"Ugh. Which bastard ratted me out to you this time."
"It's all because they're worried about your health. You're getting on in years, so please cut back on the drinking."
"Jin-ho. You know what I always say. In the end, it all comes down to genes, right? Look at the people who live the longest. More of them than not spend their whole lives with a drink and a cigarette in hand."
He wasn't actually wrong.
As the medical field continued to advance, one common truth kept surfacing.
A person's future is decided by their genes.
Health, intelligence, talent, physical ability, perseverance, personality, and so on.
Everything is determined by genes.
Genes are the bullet, and the environment merely plays the role of the trigger that fires it.
"In the end, what matters is not getting stressed. If I have to drag along miserable and stressed out without eating what I love, I'd rather just eat whatever I want and die happy."
After that, hyungnim walked through the park with me for a while before settling down on a bench.
"Whew... Just twenty years ago, this place was nothing but desert, barren land. Science and technology really are something."
The park we were strolling through now, dressed in lush greenery, was in Africa.
As hyungnim had said, this place had once been barren, with nothing but dust swirling in the air.
But after Kwangwoon set up a base here and developed the infrastructure, advancing the technology that allowed grass and plants to grow even in such harsh conditions, this beautiful park had come into being.
"They call it Green Reversal. Developing countries, or even the ones that were fully undeveloped, took our Kwangwoon investment and worked hard to turn themselves into green regions."
Through the science that made dense forests bloom in barren soil and the continued cooperation of African nations, we had turned the impossible into a miracle.
The crisp scent of grass drifting around us now was proof of it.
"Right now, a similar project is underway on Mars too. So that flowers and trees can grow even in places like Mars where life can't survive without going underground or building dome facilities."
Mars terraforming was currently in progress.
"I heard dozens of rockets get sent to Mars every day?"
"Yes. And tens of thousands of androids are already at work there."
Launching dozens of rockets a day to Mars to carry out terraforming had originally been Milon Tusk's plan.
When his Tesla and its affiliates were acquired by our Kwangwoon, it had looked like that plan would be scrapped, but I hadn't wanted to throw away such a good plan, so I had carried it on just as it was.
Even now, rockets were carrying dozens of androids beyond the atmosphere and on toward Mars.
"But Jin-ho. I may have stepped back from the front lines, but my ears are always open."
Hyungnim patted my shoulder and went on.
"The Mars terraforming, this project to build forests in barren regions, all of it. On the surface, it looks like humanity really is moving forward, but in truth we're walking a razor-thin tightrope."
As hyungnim said, we were walking a tightrope right now.
We had pulled off the miracle of Green Reversal, but the fundamental problem still hadn't been solved.
We were working to cool the earth, yet once the planet had built up momentum, it just kept getting hotter.
Eventually, before long, the earth would turn into a desolate, barren red land like Mars.
"The more money you have, the better, but that doesn't mean money solves everything. Especially not when it comes to nature, which follows the providence of God."
Still, hyungnim hadn't lost hope.
"Even so, I believe you'll find a way to solve it somehow."
"I'm not even a scientist. But... the researchers at GAIA will definitely work it out."
And that was what I believed too.
"How's Se-yoon doing at GAIA? It's already been three months."
"Yes. Thankfully, he's adjusted well and is doing fine."
"You said it before, didn't you? That Se-yoon would become a scientist who saves the world. I've met him a few times now, and from what I've seen, he really is a bright boy. He's only twenty, but there's something about his eyes, a kind of wisdom, as if he's already seen through the world."
Hyungnim had a good eye for people.
He had praised our Se-yoon many times, saying that he would go on to do great things.
"But you'll need to be there to guide him and give him advice. Se-yoon has an extraordinary mind, but he isn't the kind of kid who has the qualities of a leader like his father."
"What?"
"He's more the type to make the leader he serves shine even brighter. Leading a large organization takes incredible talent. And when it comes to that, Jin-ho, you've got the greatest gift in the world."
"Me? I really don't think so."
"Heh. You probably don't feel it yourself, but the moment I watched you come into our guild and tame all those hot-blooded old-timers, I knew. You were born to lead."
His break over, hyungnim rose from the bench again.
"That's enough, go on back. I can't keep a busy man like you tied up for too long. Oh, and one more thing. I hear the rebels have been getting more active lately, so those bastards might pull off a terror attack. Increase your security. Whatever else happens, if you go down, all of humanity goes down with you."
"Why do you have to put it so grandly..."
"I'm not joking. You always have to look out for yourself."
"Yes, hyungnim. Please take care of yourself too."
"Don't worry about me. Thanks to you, I'm getting round-the-clock health care."
I watched hyungnim let out a short groan as he got up, and I felt the cruelty of passing time.
He had always been a man of solid presence and charisma.
Now he was becoming a small, frail old man.
"......"
If the chance ever came, I wanted to drink and eat meat with a healthy, robust hyungnim again, the way things used to be, without a care in the world.
* * *
There was one fastest, surest way to solve global warming right now.
Population reduction.
If roughly thirty percent of the population were eliminated, there would be no need to worry about global warming for the time being.
'But there was no way Father would agree to something so inhumane.'
[Rebel activity is intensifying all around the world. They are causing innocent casualties and committing numerous acts of pillaging, and fear of them is steadily growing.]
Jung Se-yoon was quietly watching the news.
The hottest topic in the world right now was the rebels.
They were also known as 'Contra Mundium'.
In Latin, it meant those who stand against the world.
They rejected Kwangwoon's KW Biochip, which they saw as symbolizing the devil's number 666, branded Kwangwoon's head, Chairman Jung Jin-ho, as the Antichrist, and held the doctrine that they must destroy the satanic world he had built and find the path to salvation.
They called themselves those who stand against the world, and claimed to be the only path by which it could be saved.
But Jung Se-yoon defined them differently.
"They're like a plague."
The world his father was building was the true salvation.
When human beings are scattered apart, each holding their own land, war always breaks out.
But if a great ruler gathers that land into one and governs it under a single leadership, humanity will no longer have to suffer through war.
Nor will there be any more fighting over different ideologies.
Only the ideology of the ruler who governs them will become truth.
"That's how humanity evolves."
But those plague-like creatures were trying to block his father's great work.
And on top of that, the foolish masses had been taken in by their doctrine and believed his father was the devil.
The father Jung Se-yoon knew was the most angelic being in the world.
And yet they were slandering such a father as the devil...
"......"
He couldn't forgive it.
Knock, knock.
At the sound of a knock, Jung Se-yoon let the edge drain from his eyes.
"Yes. Come in."
"Team Leader. Here are the reports, revised according to your notes."
"Ah, thank you."
"The other team says they'll be coming by soon to thank you in person as well."
"What? There's really no need for that..."
"Come on. You solved all the problems they'd been stuck on for so long. You should have seen how they reacted when they saw the equations you sent; they looked like they'd just been shown the light."
A few months had already passed since he had joined GAIA.
Once he'd arrived, Jung Se-yoon had first focused on reviewing the projects each team was running, finding the parts where they had hit walls or overlooked something, and solving those issues.
"As a result, project progress has sped up by at least five times compared to before. If you weren't here, Team Leader, everyone would still just be dragging their feet."
But Jung Se-yoon hadn't come here just to solve other teams' projects for them.
"Our team should start our own independent projects now too. The urgent work seems to have wrapped up, Team Leader."
"We're ready to start your project whenever you give the word, Team Leader!"
Jung Se-yoon smiled faintly.
"Everyone's so fired up."
"Yes. So just throw anything at us. We're fully prepared..."
"I'm planning to run about three in parallel. Will that be all right?"
"...What? Th, three at the same time?"
"Yes. For now, I'm thinking at least three. Of course, the list I've prepared already has over twenty items on it, but we can't do all of them at once, so I want to break it down and work through them step by step."
"......"
Only then did the team members' expressions stiffen.
They knew that Jung Se-yoon wasn't the sort of person who made light jokes.
"First... please send this list to headquarters."
"Headquarters?"
"Yes. The Chairman himself will probably decide which research should come first. Then we'll focus our development efforts on that."
So the Chairman was going to look over this long list and anoint the project they should start with? The team members cocked their heads at the unusual way of running things.
But with development, setting priorities and following them was crucial.
Predicting in advance which project would yield the best efficiency, which would benefit them most, and then deciding on it, was not an easy thing to do.
And yet, Jung Se-yoon already knew.
That in all the world, no one's judgment was more correct than his Father's.
* * *
"Chairman. The rebels have attacked the A-23 development area in Canada."
"Any injured?"
"The death and injury toll is over two hundred."
"......"
It was a tragedy.
The idea that people could kill others without batting an eye simply because they held different beliefs.
Sometimes it fills me with self-reproach.
It feels as though all of this is my fault.
"Make sure the bereaved families receive sufficient compensation. Take good care of the wounded as well. And it seems rooting out the rebels isn't easy?"
"Sentinel and several governments are cooperating on it. The problem is that they operate in small, scattered cells and cleverly slip through the radar. We're catching them steadily, but they appear suddenly in places our hand can't reach, strike, and vanish, so it's hard to respond in time."
To keep public anxiety down, news of the terrorist organization was being controlled as much as possible. But through the dark web, they were steadily growing their influence.
The problem was that they appeared out of nowhere, in places beyond our reach, and carried out their attacks.
"Tell Sentinel that no matter how much money it takes, they need to come up with a way to respond immediately."
"Yes, Chairman. And... this is the list of projects that came in from GAIA this time. They're asking if you could decide which of these should be developed first."
"What? Something like that came in?"
"Yes. Lead Researcher Jung Se-yoon is the one who sent the project list."
My son?
In all this time, GAIA had never once asked me to decide which project they should pursue.
But my son had sent me something like this.
"......"
I roughly skimmed through the project contents.
The moment I looked at it, one thing came to mind.
When I had first joined a securities firm and sat in on a meeting.
I had felt like I was listening to an alien language, and it was the same sort of feeling now.
How was I supposed to understand this just from the scientific jargon and equations?
"Why would Se-yoon send me something like..."
The moment I muttered that.
"......!"
The project names on the list began to light up in unison.
As if each one was insisting, passionately, to be the one chosen first.
"......"
As if drawn in, I chose three of the projects and checked them off.
* * *
"...What are you saying this is?"
"At Team Leader Jung Se-yoon's request, these are the projects the Chairman himself decided to invest in."
Jung Se-yoon really was like light and salt at GAIA.
Thanks to that monstrous genius, all the projects that had been stalled were getting resolved.
So when word came that Jung Se-yoon was starting his own project, General Director Kim Geum-ho had readily given his approval.
He had even cleared the authority for him to freely draw investment funds from headquarters for any project he wanted to run.
"But he didn't decide it himself, he had the Chairman decide? You're sure?"
"Yes. Out of twenty projects, the Chairman personally selected three and gave the order."
Something felt off.
Normally GAIA decided its own projects and only received investment approval; they had never once asked the Chairman for advice on which project to pursue.
"Are these the three approved projects?"
"Yes."
Kim Geum-ho quickly looked over the contents.
The first was a project on cellular immortality.
The second, a project to create artificial atmospheres to make terraforming planets far easier.
And the third, the last, was to gather specially built satellites and drop beams onto the earth's surface to supply energy...
"Wait. What is this?"
Cellular immortality.
Fine. It had nothing to do with global warming, but overcoming disease was a good thing, so there was reason enough for it.
Creating an artificial atmosphere to aid planetary terraforming also had clear potential applications for global warming.
But dropping beams onto the earth to supply energy?
Kim Geum-ho hurriedly dug into the contents of the project.
"So... the idea is to build giant satellites that gather energy from the sun, embed fusion facilities inside them, and then beam that explosive energy down to the surface?"
"I checked the details too. Apparently they plan to build facilities on the ground to receive those beams and store the energy."
"Right. On the surface, it's a revolutionary technology that could rapidly send clean energy wherever it's needed. Literally, 'on the surface'."
General Director Kim Geum-ho saw through the intent behind the technology the moment he read it.
"This is basically saying they're going to build the Rod of God."
The Rod of God.
A piece of imagined technology that had only existed in science fiction until now.
But if, instead of an energy storage facility, they fired it at a specific group?
"An ICBM, at least, the other side can respond to."
Even if fighters or drones were deployed, the enemy could still anticipate the attack.
"But this, you can't predict it. Because it's fired from space."
And the beam would come down at the speed of light.
Even if it were anticipated, there would be no way to dodge.
"It would truly be divine punishment."
"Exactly. And I just heard that the rebels have been popping up everywhere lately and carrying out terror attacks before we can respond..."
If they had this, the moment the rebels showed themselves, heaven's judgment could be delivered on them with the Rod of God.
But would it really be used only for the purpose of wiping out the rebels?
If this were ever completed, it would be no different from pressing a gun to the head of every leader in the world.
A perfect means of control.
And even more than that.
"So the Chairman didn't put his son into GAIA for nothing after all."
GAIA, as it turned out, did not exist solely to solve global warming.
While tackling the difficult problem of global warming, it was simultaneously intended as a pretext for Kwangwoon to build the mightiest weapon in existence, one that surpassed even nuclear arms.
And to do so through the most trustworthy hands in the world: those of the Chairman's own child.