by Axie Oh
Of course, not all cars are self-driving. The majority of socialites prefer to have a driver, and cabs, like the ones I usually take, serve Old Seoul citizens — who, although they cannot own property in the city, are allowed transient visas to work low-level jobs in the service industry. Cabs with drivers are also cheaper than the self-driving cabs, owned by big Neo Seoul tech conglomerates, which charge exorbitant rates.
The Grid rumbles with the sound of the magnet working beneath it, a low grinding offset by the zooming of the cars. At midnight, the magnet shuts down, slowing speeds significantly. Cars can still move on the Grid, but the max speed lowers from one hundred twenty kilometers per hour to sixty.
The interior of the car is L-shaped, and Alex sits on the two-seater, while I sprawl out on the longer bench. The walls of the car double as windows to the outside and display screens. At present, the windows are set to the news of the day, live from City Hall.
A woman stands outside on the black marbled steps of the government building, speaking into a bouquet of floating mikes. Her voice is low and monotone, relating news she couldn’t care less about. “The trial for the UKL traitors who were behind the attempted assassination of our city’s Director concludes today.”
So they’re blaming the attack on all the dancers, not just the girl. Perhaps to make an example of anyone tied to the UKL.
“After four days of intense deliberation, the High Court of Neo Seoul has sentenced these five men and women to death by firing squad, which will be carried out in two weeks’ time on the military base at Incheon.”
The screen switches from the reporter to the Director, presiding over a large chamber inside City Hall’s municipal building.
His voice booms through the speakers of the car where Alex and I sit, silently watching. “Their deaths will not be recorded, nor will their bodies be buried, but burned, their ashes scattered in separate places from one another, far away from the NSK. It is ironic that their greatest punishment will not be that they have died, but that their restless souls will never be cradled in the bosom of the homeland they say they will have died for. We will not be haunted by these worthless shades of men and women.”
The screen pans out to show the full room. Below the Director kneel the members of the dance troupe, three women and two men, their hands locked together with electro-braces, their heads bent toward the floor. One dancer, a boy who couldn’t be older than fourteen, sheds tears on the marble.
Alex slides his hand over a panel, and the windows of the car clear into a view of the city. We’re passing through a university center, where the car slows due to traffic.
On either side of us are cafés, two per city block, alongside colossal tiered restaurants, crowded interiors visible through clear windows. SimTech bars top almost every building, where a person can pay an hourly fee to use the simulation rooms, experiencing any kind of unreality.
Moving walkways on the street take shoppers from block to block, slanting upward to bridge over the Grid. Advertisements line the walkways, flashing with colors — ads for makeup brands; cosmetic surgery physicians; brands of coffee, tea, and alcohol, all produced and shipped from factories in southern Korea. Sela of C’est La Vie appears on floating billboards and on the sides of Skyway trains overhead, endorsing a variety of multicolored products.
Alex sweeps his hand on the panel again, and the windows darken. He lights a cigarette, the spark of the lighter temporarily dispersing the darkness inside the car, revealing his face for a moment, his eyes downcast and focused on the cigarette.
“They’re not telecasting the news of the execution on the billboards,” I say. Usually important bits of news make it in between the commercials and music videos.
Alex presses a switch on his armrest, which opens a window that sucks out the smoke. Like all pollutive gases, it’ll eventually get swept up through one of the large purification pillars that rise up from the city and released into the atmosphere outside the Dome. They say you can see the halo of smoke over Neo Seoul for three hundred kilometers. You can definitely feel it in Old Seoul. In Old Seoul, it’s in your skin.
“No one wants to watch something so depressing,” Alex says.
With the window of the car open, I can hear the noises of the city streets — the humming rush of the Grid cars and the indistinguishable sounds of thousands of voices merging together, all set to the backdrop of booming techno music.
A group of middle school kids, their blue-and-white uniforms placing them at an academy in Nonhyeon, walk down a side street. I watch as one girl throws an arm around another. One of the boys jumps on the back of his friend, who carries him halfway down the street.
To think that in a few years, these kids will be conscripted to join the war effort, a two-year requirement for all Neo Seoul citizens eighteen years and older. The senior placements give students the opportunity to start their military quotas in higher-level positions, and many students choose careers in the military even after their quotas are fulfilled, but one of the consequences of living a privileged life beneath the Dome is a two-year sacrifice outside it, defending the Neo State. Of course you hear the stories of rich kids paying their way out of service, but to many, a life of such dishonor is a fate worse than death.
Old Seoul citizens are not required to serve, although many young men and women join with the hope to better their situations, for themselves and for their families. It’s also the most common way aside from marriage for an Old Seoul citizen to become a Neo Seoul citizen. However, they face disadvantages from the outset. All Old Seoul citizens start off as foot soldiers, who have the highest rate of casualties in the war, and unless they prove themselves exemplary soldiers, it’s very difficult to raise their initial rankings.
Still, the hope of a better life is a dream most Old Seoul citizens share.
I know I do.
Alex closes the window, and we don’t speak the rest of the way to the Tower.
* * *
■ ■ ■
We arrive at the Tower at 12:24:47 KST, the exact time Athena had calculated for us.
The Tower is the tallest structure in the city, a giant monolith hundreds of meters thick and over a kilometer in height, constructed of reinforced concrete and steel. It was completed between the end of the First Act of the War and the beginning of the Second, a building to symbolize the power and prosperity of the NSK. It’s rumored that an elevator ride to the top of the Tower takes twelve minutes — five minutes in a high-speed elevator.
As I think this, an observation car at the side of the building ascends from one of the lower floors into the Spire, the highest point of the Tower. The car travels higher and higher, the vague figure of a person standing inside. Squinting against the sunlight, I watch it disappear as if sucked straight up into heaven.
Alex’s vehicle comes to a halt at the front of the Tower, and the doors lift open. We follow the representative waiting outside into the lobby.
An enormous replica of the Tower’s most famous weapon from the First Act of the Great War, the infamous God Machine called the Marionette, dominates the middle of the floor. It’s a huge machine, around sixteen meters tall, built for air mobility with jet thrusters, a machine gun attached to its right arm, and a titanium blade in place of its left.
In the war, the computer-operated Marionette was a killing machine. Without a pilot, it could carry out ceaseless attacks, unable to feel pain or fatigue, the common weaknesses of human pilots.
Marionette production ended after the Second Act of the War, though, due to the high expense of producing even one of them, as well as the reality that, as a machine, it couldn’t account for human ingenuity, or even human error. On the battlefield, well-placed or forgotten detonations from its own side could destroy a mindless Marionette, and a skilled pilot could break through the Marionette’s programmed maneuvers, evidenced by “ace pilots” throughout the end years of the w
ar.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
We turn to see a small, skinny man with round glasses approach us across the lobby, the representative having disappeared during our examination of the machine.
“I cried at her funeral,” the man continues jovially, “but I’ve come to accept that all great inventions will be replaced by even greater ones.”
The man blinks at us, his eyes magnified behind his glasses. He’s about half my height.
“You must be Alex Kim and Lee Jaewon.” We bow to him, and he smiles. “My name is Koga Hiroshi, but you can call me Dr. Koga. I’m one of the directors of weapons development here at the Tower. If you’ll please follow me, I’ll show you around.”
Dr. Koga walks away without waiting for a response. For a man who looks like a turtle in a white coat, he moves fast.
“The first three floors of the Tower are public and act as our state’s premier military museum,” he informs us. “Floors five through fifty are private and function as headquarters for our Department of Defense. Fifty and above comprise the Spire of the Tower, which holds offices, a few private living quarters, and of course, at the very top, the Skyroom, where we host sponsor-related events.”
The Spire also has the searchlight, but he doesn’t mention it.
We follow the doctor through security — a wide, metal-detecting gateway — and into the main interior of the building, a construct of leveled floors. Dr. Koga leads us to a receptionist, who scans our eyes and records the cadences of our voices before issuing us Tower IDs, complete with a photo she takes on the spot — I attempt a smile in mine; Alex doesn’t — and our employee numbers.
Lee Jaewon. T1103.
She injects the ID, programmed into a chip, into my wrist. The wound left by the injection smarts only for a moment before the receptionist places a square of MediTape over it, dulling the pain. I don’t ask how I’ll get it out later.
“Now that’s taken care of,” Dr. Koga says, “we’ll go to the conference room and debrief you on where you’ll be placed in the Tower.”
I hope I’m not placed anywhere above floor ten. I’m not afraid of heights, but I’d prefer to be closer to the ground. Actually, a placement in the museum would be great.
Dr. Koga leads us toward the elevator bank at the back end of the lobby. Before we can reach it, though, a man stumbles out. He’s wild-eyed, one hand pressed to his head. He stares dazedly around the hall before his eyes land on Koga. The man swallows an agonized breath of air before gasping, “She’s escaped.”
The loud wail of a siren pierces the air.
11
Third Meeting
Koga grabs his comm, shouting, “Shut it down!” As abruptly as the sirens started, they stop. It was a short enough amount of time that most workers remained in their stations.
Koga helps the wounded man to the floor. “How did this happen?”
“I went into the room to check on her. We got into a fight, and she threw me against the wall. I blacked out.” The man is in his late thirties, powerfully muscled. Whoever he fought with must be pretty tough.
“How long ago was this?” Koga retrieves a small mobile tablet from his coat. It displays a map of the Tower. He presses a button, and a flashing red light appears against a 3-D floor plan.
“About fifteen minutes,” the man says. “After I woke and realized what happened, I came here directly.”
“That was the right thing to do,” Koga says. He checks the man’s head wound. “You’ll be fine.” He motions to the receptionist, who summons a medic with a gurney. They lift the man onto the bed and wheel him away.
Koga stands. “According to the beacon of her tracker, she hasn’t left the Tower. But she must have jammed the signal. It shows her location to be here in the lobby.”
We survey the large room. Since he’s using the pronoun “she,” I look for identifiable women in the lobby. There’s the receptionist behind her desk, who’s currently fielding phone calls, and the rest of the women are either guards or scientists.
“Is it possible she could have taken out her tracker?” This from Alex, who, for all I know, is as in the dark with all this as I am.
“Possible, but unlikely,” Koga says. “The tracker is located inside her chest.”
And I thought the ID chip inserted in my wrist was invasive.
“It’s more likely the jammed signal is confusing the depth of the Tower.” He points on the tablet screen to the flashing red dot, which hasn’t moved for the past several minutes we’ve been standing here. He moves his finger in a line upward, dotting in green the different levels of the Tower. “She could be on any of these floors, and as we just discussed, there are over a hundred levels in the Tower, not including the basements.” Although Koga was friendly before, his voice is hard now, faced with a difficult situation. It changes slightly my initial impression of him as a hapless scientist. “If we don’t find her soon, we’ll have to notify security. They’ll evacuate the Tower, which will lead to questions from the media. I want to avoid that if at all possible.”
As he speaks, I have a thought. “Can I see that?” I point to the tablet, and Koga hands it over. “On the way here,” I say, thinking out loud, “I noticed the Tower is mostly comprised of steel-reinforced glass, which would make an escape from the windows impossible. There are exits, but at different points with varying accessibility.” I tap the exits, which are highlighted in red. They’re not anywhere close to the beacon. “If she’s attempting to escape, then she’d either be here” — I point to the lobby, which has the obvious public exit — “or here.” I point to the roof of the Tower, which, from my limited knowledge of the Tower’s infrastructure, has escape capsules in case those on the upper floors need to evacuate.
Koga gives me an approving nod. “That’s a good lead.” He takes back the tablet. “I think we’ll follow it.”
He heads over to the receptionist desk and scans his wrist to open a panel in the wall beside it, out of which he removes two electro-guns and a set of electro-braces. He hands Alex and me the guns. We follow him to a different bank of elevators across the lobby, the high-speed ones with access to the upper floors.
I’m surprised he’s not bringing more guards with us. Alex and I placed second and fifth in marksmanship at the academy, but he doesn’t know that. Then again, he must have reviewed our records, since he’s in charge of our placements.
Before the elevator closes, a voice calls out, “Dr. K!”, and a hand reaches between the doors, causing them to reopen. A girl around our age stumbles into the elevator.
“I just heard the alarm!” she pants, obviously having run a distance. “I want to help.”
Koga seems shocked to see her. “How did you — ?” He cuts off, glancing at Alex and me. He takes off his glasses and begins to wipe the right lens with the hem of his lab coat.
I wonder if this newcomer is Koga’s daughter, but I don’t see a resemblance. Her features — large, light brown eyes, and sun-burnished skin — place her parentage in China, possibly the South, while Koga is a Japanese surname. She also hadn’t called him “Father.”
“Dr. K,” she says, her voice higher in exasperation, “I think I, of all people, should be able to handle this situation. I mean, I’ll just logically explain to her, in graphic detail, why jumping off the roof would be in bad form.”
She pauses. “Pancakes!” she yells, causing Alex to jump a little.
“Oh, sorry,” she says. “My mind just went there, you know; first I was thinking of Tera jumping off the building, and then I pictured her flat, like a pancake, and then I was thinking how I’d love pancakes right about now.”
She grins, revealing two dimples. She’s cute.
Alex doesn’t say a word, just stares at her, his expression guarded.
“It’s past noon,” I say. “You’ve missed breakfast.”
“I know,” she groans.
I think of what I ate for breakfast this morning. Hard-boiled eggs off the bridge ajumma’s food cart. Six of them.
“Oh,” the girl whines, “You’re making me hungry.”
I hadn’t said anything aloud.
“Ama!” Koga says worriedly, “You always say you dislike heights, my dear. They give you . . . headaches.”
“They pop my ears!” Ama says. “I might even swoon.” She glances back up at Alex, smiling shyly. “But you’d catch me, wouldn’t you? You’re the kind of boy who catches girls, aren’t you? Do you have lots of girlfriends?”
“No.”
“No to everything or no to just to the last?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a yes or no question.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Ama!” Koga says, exasperated. “This isn’t the time! Can you hear Tera?”
Ama rolls her eyes. “Please, Dr. K. Not even my hearing is that good.”
I ignore their conversation and check the electro-gun’s chamber. It’s fully charged.
A couple more minutes pass before we reach the top of the Tower and the doors open.
We face a marble platform with staircases that drop to the left and right, descending into a massive ballroom lined with round tables and high-backed chairs. The walls of the room are all floor-to-ceiling windows. Clouds outside obscure the sunlight and cast patches of shadows across the mosaic floors.
“We have to take the stairs,” Ama says, moving away from the glass elevator to a side door. She wrenches it open to reveal four flights of cement steps, leading up. Ama, in her haste, takes them too fast, and trips. Alex catches her arm before she can fall on her face.