by Kevin Brown
He gazed at the attendees as if he waited for an answer from them.
“We have been working hard every day, being tied by the logic of the competition, and by capitalism. While people may not have time to think about what they want and where they want to go, they do know they want to have a happy life. People have the potential and the ability to foster a beautiful life and lead it in the direction they desire.”
His voice became more powerful.
“We need to refine our lives so we can live the best way we know how, both for ourselves and for future generations. These refinements will vary by age, situation, and level of living. We are here to make the world’s population happier, to provide them with more leisure time and help them escape from a competitive society that is oriented toward suffering.”
Thunderous applause filled the conference room, and when it died down Mr. Kim continued speaking.
Reversion 5
After Mr. Kim’s speech, attendees exchanged thoughts over a cup of tea. With Junsik and Miyoung’s support, Mr. Kim moved among the tables shaking hands with everyone. There were casual conversations scattered throughout the room as well as some deep discussions, and occasionally the exchanges became intense. The afternoon passed quickly and towards evening the event drew to a close. Those who had attended seemed to leave all at once.
Even though many such events had been held, this one was more meaningful than ever since they’d managed to attract the support of various organizations, something that had not been easy in the past since there were no clear results to show anyone.
Junsik was tired, yet relaxed the inside of the conference room to make sure everyone had gone.
“We got to go, as well, before traffic gets congested. It’s almost rush hour.”
“Thank you for your hard work, sir.”
“You had more trouble than me.” Mr. Kim laughed.
Junsik accompanied Mr. Kim and Miyoung to the underground parking lot and watched them leave.
Junsik checked the time as he got in the car and then left the parking lot in a hurry. He did not want to be in the middle of Gangnam during rush hour, but the road was already filled with cars as he entered the street. He picked up speed whenever he got a green light, trying his best to get out of the Gangnam area as soon as possible. When he saw that the crosswalk light was red he slowed down, but then it turned green and he pressed down hard on the gas pedal. The thud of something hitting the front of his car barely registered until a body flew up and slammed onto the windshield, blocking his vision momentarily before it rolled onto the street.
Junsik hit the brakes and screeched to a stop, but he was immobilized with fear and could only stare at the body on the ground and the group of people gathering around it. Other drivers stopped, looking at him with astonishment stamped across their faces. He reached a shaky hand for the door handle and dragged himself out of the car to make his way to the body lying so still on the street. Yet the dying man’s eyes watched him. They exchanged a look.
Then Junsik’s brain simply blanked out and he could not think of what to do. His whole body trembled. And in the shock of it all, the lump of memory in his subconscious which had bothered him for so long suddenly came alive and his body shook with the debris that rose to the surface of his consciousness. Nightmarish scenes from his dreams littered the landscape of his mind. He realized the fallen man was trying to get up, but the look of pain that flashed across his face made it obvious the effort was too great. The man stared at Junsik and seemed to reach out to him, asking for help. Then his head rolled to the side. He seemed to stare at the chocolates scattered on the street, and then slowly, his eyes closed.
As he watched the man die, Junsik felt the shock of his old memories burst forth like fireworks.
A childhood memory of growing up in Cheongju.
Another of him driving a plane through a transmission device to drop a nuclear bomb on Taebakun and dying in the explosion.
His memory clock continued to go back in time.
The invasion of Taebakun and the death of Hanmoo.
Chanman staying on the battlefield until the end.
The revolution and the seizure of the leadership with Daekhan.
The memories in the camp. He was sent there because he was falsely charged.
Junsik ordered his memories in sequence.
He was a member of a secret organization and strongly criticized the leadership for not preparing for the invasion of Taebakun. He was charged for planning an uprising and, for that, was sent to the camp, losing all his memories in the process.
Junsik was born in 1978 and grew up here in this place called Parahan and Earth, without knowing it was a prison camp.
His name was Sunghoon.
Sunghoon grew up and worked for a company. One day he had a car accident on his way home.
It was the man in front of him, and he was dying while looking at the current himself.
He never forgot this scene afterward even once.
He was released in Hoon as soon as Sunghoon died.
His name in Hoon was Taehan.
Taehan helped Daekhan and his colleagues wipe out the corrupt leadership and compose a new leadership.
However, Hoon was defeated by the attack of Taebakun.
He went to Kubaisen to recover Hoon. He passed through a transmission device flying a bomber carrying a nuclear bomb.
He moved to Taebakun and dropped the bomb on the culcoon factory. He died due to the explosion. It was his last memory in Hoon.
In 1980, Taehan was born in the camp again as Junsik.
Junsik grew up and did various things for his life in Seoul to hit someone with his car today. The victim, interestingly, was the previous himself in the camp.
He was more confused than organized when he connected the fragments of his memories thus far.
Before he was born as Junsik on Earth, he was dead in Hoon and not sent to the camp.
Why am I in the camp? It is the camp Parahan.
The fallen man in front of me is Sunghoon, who is myself. The current myself killed the past myself in a traffic accident.
Suddenly, it became crowded and very loud; the police had arrived.
Junsik went to the police station and made a statement about the accident. When he left the police station, the police emphasized several times that he needed to have the plea agreement first.
The woman who he saw at the supermarket near his home yesterday was the person from who he needed to have an agreement. He was also aware that she was his wife when he was here as Sunghoon.
Junsik came back home and lay down in his room. He had experienced too much for one day, and his heart was still pounding.
He recalled things on Hoon.
When he moved to the memory that he went to the camp and met Pachun, the director of the camp, he stood up suddenly.
Ghil!
Pachun said that Ghil was the name of the actual designer of Parahan.
Junsik quickly searched through the inner pocket of his jacket and found the note he got from Miyoung.
‘Ghil Kim’s real name is Sato Kiyoshi.’
The name on the note was also ‘Ghil.’
Pachun had told him that before he was born on Hoon, Ghil was killed on Earth’s ‘Geoje Island’. The Ghil on the note was born in Japan and naturalized in South Korea. Later he lived on ‘Geoje Island.’
Is it a coincidence?
Those two pieces of information, ‘Ghil’ and ‘Geoje Island,’ matched…
Junsik looked again at the word ‘Geoje Island’ in the address.
He thought more about it, feeling that it could not be a coincidence and his speculation turned into conviction.
Junsik decided to go to Geoje Island tomorrow and then afterwards, he’d take care of the complicated things regarding the accident and the agreement procedure. He wanted to go to Geoje Island immediately, for he felt all his riddle-like questions would be solved when he met this mysterious ‘Ghil Kim.’
That night his thoughts distracted him, and the memories, all mixed up in his mind tortured him.
I was killed in the nuclear explosion. How can I be here – in the camp?
How can I meet myself when I was Sunghoon?
Reversion 6
He drove to Geoje Island as soon as he awoke the next morning. He’d barely slept three hours, but he hardly felt tired since all he could think of was solving the mystery of this place.
He drove six hours to reach the address on the note. When he arrived, he asked an old woman in the house about Ghil. She said he would be at the Hakdong Cruise Ship dock or nearby on the Mongdol seashore. Junsik headed to the dock.
When he arrived and asked for Ghil, the man pointed at the beach with his finger. Numerous fist-sized pebbles paved the seashore and one man was sitting there staring into the distance.
Junsik walked toward the man cautiously. It was March, but it was as warm as early summer. Even the wind blowing in from the sea felt warm.
Ghil felt his presence and turned his head to look at Junsik.
He had a rough beard, as if he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, but his eyes were kind, in contrast. While his hair was quite gray, he only looked to be about forty years old, and Korean rather than Japanese.
“Excuse me,” Junsik said, “are you Ghil Kim by any chance?”
“Yes, I am…” Ghil answered in fluent Korean. He looked at Junsik as if to ask who he was.
Junsik hesitated for a moment and then said, “Have you ever heard about, Para-Han?”
Ghil was startled when he heard the question. His eyes widened and then shock took over for he was unable to speak for a minute or two.
“Where are you from?” he asked, looking Junsik up and down.
After seeing Ghil’s reaction, Junsik was convinced that his hunch had hit the bull’s eye.
Junsik pushed back the questions he had for the man and introduced himself, calmly explaining what he had been going through.
Finally, Ghil said, ““May I call you Junsik?”
“Sure, as you like.”
“When were you born?”
“In 1980.”
“When were you born as Sunghoon?”
“In 1978.”
Ghil stared at something in the air, immersed in his thoughts. It took a few minutes before he spoke. “I think I know roughly what happened to you. It’s all because of the camp I made.”
Ghil looked sorrowfully at Junsik.
“Will you be more explicit?”
“It is 2013 so you lived as Sunghoon from 1978 to 2013. About thirty-five years, right?”
“Yes.”
“It took you two years, instead of thirty-five, when you were released in Hoon; that was the issue. You were born in 1978 on Earth, which was when you were sent to the camp. You were released two years after, so it was 1980 on the Earth. When you spent a few months in Hoon, and died after dropping the nuclear bomb, you were soon after reborn here and it was still 1980.”
“I lived as Sunghoon until 2013 on Earth. I was born as Junsik in 1980 and lived 2013 again. I met my past Sunghoon and killed him…”
Junsik slurred the end of his sentence. It was logical but did not make sense. How could it happen?
“The traffic accident happened by accident. You had experienced a temporal reversion due to the camp I made, and you two met unexpectedly through the traffic accident. Consequently, it made an abnormal feedback loop in your life that made it possible for you to kill your previous self.”
Junsik finally began to understand what happened to him.
However, there were a lot of questions that remained unanswered.
“I understand that I was admitted to the camp built by you to be born here as Sunghoon. I cannot understand, conversely, why I am here after I died in the war of Hoon. It is the camp, and I did not go to the camp. I just died.”
“It is a long story.” Ghil smiled slightly.
Junsik sat down next to him and looked out toward the horizon, waiting to hear the story.
It was the first time he’d met Ghil and they hadn’t spoken much, but he felt like he had known him for ages.
“I was born on Earth before, as well. At that time, I went through the Korean War. During the war, I was forcibly conscripted by the North Korean Army and fought against the South Korean army. Then, I became a POW of South Korea. After that, I died here at the Geoje POW Camp. I was born in Hoon after I died here.”
Junsik recalled what he heard from Pachun, the director of the camp. However, he decided to focus on listening to him instead of asking questions.
“I was born on Hoon and I was special. I remembered my previous life on Earth. Moreover, I was exceptionally smart. Smart is not the best way to describe me, for I remembered a whole life, although the civilization on Earth was way behind. My thinking ability and potential was beyond people’s imagination. In a short period of time I quickly studied, learned and absorbed many things. In the process, I also built the camp called Parahan.”
He looked out to sea as if recalling a dim past.
“I had many accomplishments while working as a researcher at the Institute of Military Science in Hoon. I provided a critical clue as to why we recognize only our world in a dimension even though many universes are superimposed in the same space.
I also tried hard to find the secret of the Earth during the Korean War. At first, I thought the Earth is another superimposed world, such as Hanbau, Koman, or Taebakun. I thought that we just had not found the pathway yet.
But after long years of research, I concluded that the Earth was in a different location. If I use a building as an analogy, Hoon, Hanbau, Kubaisen, Koman, and Taebakun are on the same floor. Yet, the Earth is on a different floor. People can move from one floor to another only after one is reborn and loses all memories. I designed Parahan based on the knowledge.”
What he meant was that Junsik was born as Sunghoon through the device called Parahan that was made by Ghil, and then Junsik was born on Earth after he died on Hoon, which was on a different floor.
“Different layers…” Junsik said, “…is there another universe that overlaps Earth? Other worlds on the same floor with Earth?”
“Of course. You can see unidentified flying objects appeared from time to time.”
“Are there other floors besides the floors for Hoon and Earth?"
“They exist. I also found out another amazing fact. The whole building with all its many floors is a large jail system.”
Junsik was speechless. Ghil’s story was almost more than he could grasp. This huge world was a jail system? If so, how big was the world outside of it?
He suddenly became curious how Ghil had come to know all this. Even though he was smart on Hoon, it was hard to explain how he knew all this just because he was smart.
Junsik thought he should check out Ghil’s story carefully.
“It’s amazing that you know all these things.”
“It is natural for you to doubt what I’ve told you.”
Ghil continued to talk as he noticed Junsik’s doubtful tone.
“Sometimes, when I was on Hoon, I wondered where I had been before I was on Earth experiencing the Korean War. I had an accident while I was designing Parahan and conducted experiments on myself. Since then, fragments of memories have randomly come up; things that I could not remember appeared in my dreams when I was conscious. Every time I woke up, I tried to remember it clearly before it was forgotten. I consistently worked on arranging and putting together the irregular pieces. It was like putting a puzzle together. Finally, I succeeded in reviving the memory of my life before Earth, although it was not a complete story.”
“What kind of world was it?”
“I thought it was the restoration of the previous world, but it was not.”
“It was not?” Junsik asked, surprised by an answer he hadn’t expected.
“It was a memory outside of the jail system. Additionally, in the process of re
storing my memory, I learned I was one of the people involved in operating the system. That’s why I know a lot about the structure of the entire system. I think it is a special thing to remember a previous life; maybe this happened because I was an operator.”
Ghil stopped talking and looked at Junsik. “Does this answer your question of why I know so much?”
Junsik looked sorrowfully at Ghil.
“How big is the world outside the system?” Junsik asked again.
“It is hard to imagine the extent of the system. Outside is even harder,” he answered back, laughing with Junsik.
“If you did not lose your memory because you were an operator, what is happening in my case? If I remember the life of Sunghoon and have a memory of Taehan, could the same thing be happening to me as what you just described? Could I have been one of the operators, like you?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s the case. Sunghoon was created because I designed Parahan. You also said that the memory of Hoon was not in your consciousness, but it was revived when you killed Sunghoon. That would not have happened if Parahan did not exist. If not for Parahan, you would live a very ordinary life. Your case is different from mine.”
“I was somewhat special compared to average people even before the accident,” Junsik said. “I was special as a child, as well.”
“There are many people born with a few memories of these things, which were supposed to be erased. People call it talent. I do not think you are a special case. I can say you are one of the worst victims of Parahan.”