Tower E-Book

Myung-hoon Bae

• Herausgeber: Honford Star
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 319

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Tower is a series of interconnected stories set in Beanstalk, a 674-story skyscraper and sovereign nation. Each story deals with how citizens living in the hypermodern high-rise deal with various influences of power in their lives: a group of researchers have to tell their boss that a major powerbroker is a dog, a woman uses the power of the internet to rescue a downed fighter pilot abandoned by the government, and an out-of-towner finds himself in charge of training a gentle elephant to break up protests. Bae explores the forces that shape modern life with wit and a sly wink at the reader.

Leseprobe

TOWER

BAE MYUNG-HOON

Translated by Sung Ryu

This translation first published by Honford Star 2020

honfordstar.com

© Bae Myung-hoon 2009

Translation copyright © Sung Ryu 2020

All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator and editors has been asserted.

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-9162771-2-0

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-9162771-3-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Paju, South Korea

Cover illustration by Jisu Choi

Typeset by Honford Star

This book is published with the support of the

Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).

CONTENTS

TOWER

Three Wise Recruits

In Praise of Nature

Taklamakan Misdelivery

The Elevator Maneuver Exercise

The Buddha of the Square

Fully-Compliant

APPENDIX

Excerpt from “The Bear God’s Afternoon” by Writer K

Café Beans Talking

A “Crazy” Interview with Actor P, Who Understands Interiority

Author’s Note

Three Wise Recruits

The Version Including the Dog

Some liquors serve as currency. In life, there are times when one must give something to someone with no guarantee of getting anything in return. This is different from giving bribes, kickbacks, payoffs, or sweeteners, in which cases what to give is fairly straightforward and what to get in exchange is crystal clear. But in payment-for-service relationships that involve far more delicate and sensitive mechanisms, like offering a “token of gratitude” or a “little something,” what that subtle gift might be and what is expected in return are not specified explicitly. This is intentional, leaving a way out should things go awry. That is how power usually works, except in emergencies.

Professor Jung of Beanstalk Tacit Power Research, who learned early in his career how difficult it is to choose a gift that caters perfectly to the recipient’s tastes in such delicate exchanges, investigated how people dealt with the problem.

“That fucking auditor the client sent us, I have no idea how to grease his palm,” Professor Jung told his colleague at the research center. “Who does he think he is, a saint? What did Vertical Transportation Research buy him with? Should I give him tea or something? Or ginseng? Hell, should I just load him up with cash?”

Of course, the professor knew he shouldn’t do that. Straight cash was never an option, however desperate one might be for a medium of exchange as universal as money. In all eras and cultures, using cash in such delicate relationships has been taken as cheating. If one were to be caught, cash would be the most incriminating evidence there is. So, how were people dealing with this problem? Professor Jung pondered over this question, searching far and wide for new currencies that worked admirably in such situations. He discovered quite a few—one of which was liquor.

For liquor to serve as currency, its value as a gift must stay above a certain baseline regardless of whom one gives it to and what their tastes are. It should be a universal medium of exchange that pleases even those who already own the same product, should not run the risk of offending recipients for religious or ethical reasons, and should hold some value even for non-drinkers. This is how liquor functions when it qualifies as currency.

Of course, not all liquor qualifies. Based on two decades of primary data collected on his political connections, Professor Jung ruminated on what types of liquor ultimately acquire the status of currency: “First, it has to be the kind of liquor that everybody raves about, and it doesn’t matter if they don’t know why. How many people can tell apart a twenty-year-old whisky from a thirty-year-old one just by taste? Older liquor is more expensive, so people buy it thinking it’s better.”

“Is it really better?” asked Dr. Lee.

“Sure,” replied Professor Jung. “You don’t buy that kind of liquor to drink at home by yourself—you only buy it when you need to show off. People think, ‘How expensive can a bottle be?’ But when you actually have to pay, it’s a lot of money. Which is why most people never have an expensive bottle of liquor lying around the house unless it was a gift. And even if it had been a gift, you wouldn’t drink it. You’d regift it. There’s always occasion to visit someone’s house, and you can’t go empty-handed even if you were invited on short notice, can you?”

“So, it circulates. That means a bottle you give can come back full circle?”

“Correct,” said Professor Jung.

Dr. Lee was already in his third year at Beanstalk Tacit Power Research. Listening to Professor Jung talk, he couldn’t decide if the man was a genius or a crook. But when Professor Jung announced one day that he would spend the equipment budget on three cases of hard liquor, Dr. Lee thought he finally had some measure of what this man was: a nutcase. But this conviction faltered when Dr. Lee heard how the liquor would be used. After pointing out that the liquor wasn’t any old liquor but the strongest gifting currency in Beanstalk of late, Professor Jung argued that if he put electronic tags on every bottle, entered them into the upper echelons of Beanstalkian society, and closely tracked their circulation, he would eventually get a distribution map of tacit power within the building. This was indeed a convincing hypothesis. So much so that the client who commissioned this research wound up approving the absurdity of purchasing three cases of thirty-five-year-old liquor with the research funds.

When he got his hands on the liquor, Professor Jung popped open a bottle for a “quality check,” handed around a glass to each researcher in broad daylight, and, his face flushed brick-red, rambled on about which parts of the research required the most careful execution.

“The liquor will circulate by itself sooner or later, but we could get completely different results depending on what channels we use to introduce the bottles into the system. So, my guess is that the initial distribution phase will be the most important. Am I right?”

Everyone nodded. It was decided that Professor Jung would personally execute the distribution phase.

“And bear in mind that the researcher’s actions should not influence the subjects,” added Professor Jung. “It’s common sense really, but we should preserve the power structure of Beanstalk exactly as is while we conduct the research. Down to the smallest detail. Got it?”

Everyone nodded again. It was decided that Professor Jung would take all the bottles home and, when the holidays came around, casually send them out to people he needed to express his gratitude to, like he always did. He also ordered customized stickers for electronic tagging.

“I already know what to write on the stickers: Military Distribution Only. Nice, huh? Just stick that on the bottle and its value jumps by fifty percent.”

And so the research kicked off. It would be carried out over a year and a half. The first batch of liquor was distributed fifteen days before the holidays, after which the research team took daily 3D scans of the entire building to track each bottle. But soon Professor Jung claimed it was ludicrous to track the power structure of a 674-story building with a population of 500,000 using only three cases of liquor, and he ordered five more. Professor Jung added that while Beanstalk may look small, it was a globally recognized sovereign state whose power structure was not so rudimentary.

When the client’s audit team asked why Professor Jung had to distribute the liquor in such small batches every day over several months instead of doing one mass distribution, he shot back angrily, “I told you—this is currency. What happens when you issue too much money? Inflation, right? This isn’t the only gifting currency out there: there’s five more. If this currency inflates, it would mess up the exchange rate with the other currencies. Then we might have to start the research all over again. How does it make any sense to throw away our research funds like that?”

Dr. Lee watched this exchange in silence. He was at a loss for words.

Professor Jung was out of the office every day distributing the newly procured liquor. He clocked in around lunchtime and clocked out at dinnertime, but he always made a point of submitting overtime requests. The other researchers were not happy about that, but no one could deny Professor Jung’s talent for doling out “little somethings” to a vast number of people surrounding the locus of power, and God knows how he managed to get in with them in the first place. As Professor Jung had pointed out, failing to properly introduce the liquor would skew the results, so his colleagues had no choice but to trust him with the job. No one else could do it.

The research was on a tight schedule that required the final report to be written up before the Beanstalk mayoral elections in March. The results therefore had to be finalized by late January to allow time for drafting the report. There were five categories to track other than liquor, and by observing the flow of the six categories, the client wanted to understand how power in the current mayor’s regime was structured and exploit those findings in the last stretch of the election campaign—the client being the opposition’s campaign. It seemed the opposition campaign already had an ace up its sleeve but had commissioned the research to secure definitive evidence. That put more pressure on Dr. Lee. The client’s impress-me attitude made it hard for him to take any part of his work lightly.

The researchers were also tasked with creating an elaborate 3D illustration of Beanstalk’s power distribution by early January. Perhaps this was more important than writing the report itself, as they lived in a world where citable images were more important than the research findings. So, in reality, the research had to be wrapped up by the end of December, and even if they did not have the final results by then, they needed conclusions that were relatively accurate.

When December rolled around, everyone except Professor Jung began working around the clock, punching in early and punching out late. Professor Jung, meanwhile, hired three young PhDs from outside Beanstalk, all barely over the age of thirty, leaving him free to continue what he had been doing—that is to say, not much.

Dr. Lee asked the three new recruits, “Did Professor Jung at least say he’d give you part-time wages?”

“Excuse me? Did you just say part-time? Are we not on payroll?” asked Dr. Song, one of the new researchers.

Heaving a sigh, Dr. Lee skimmed over their personnel files. “I see Dr. Song Yunjoo majored in power field analytics, Dr. Nam Sungho did skyscraper ecology, and Dr. Hwang Yunjin—wait, you did your PhD on World War I?”

“Yes.”

“That’s unusual. I don’t mean it’s unusual for a female researcher to major in war, I’m just wondering why someone with that specialization would come here.”

“Beats me. I’m not sure myself why he called me in,” admitted Dr. Hwang.

Things were busy but with the deadlines being manageable, Dr. Lee did not plan on assigning especially difficult tasks to the three new recruits, nor did he feel the need to hire more backup staff as he didn’t foresee any emergencies arising. But no sooner had December arrived than Dr. Lee ran into an unexpected problem.

“A57 on Level 487, whose house is this?” he asked.

Dr. Lee had found a unit where the liquor wasn’t moving with the natural flow of the power structure. The inhabitant of unit A57 on Level 487 appeared to have blocked the flow. Given that five bottles had flowed into the unit in the past ten days, whoever lived there was evidently an important person. But as all five bottles went in and never came back out, the inhabitant had to be either someone at the pinnacle of power or a binge drinker.

Although the liquor had acquired the status of currency, Dr. Lee could not say for certain it would keep circulating without ever being consumed at some point. Yet so many bottles gathering so quickly at one place and not moving a single unit further was definitely abnormal. The inhabitant could be out of town, or there could be numerous other explanations. In any case, first and foremost Dr. Lee had to check on the situation and clear the blockage.

To trace the inhabitant’s identity, Dr. Lee consulted the resident directory that Professor Jung had obtained a while back by bribing a senior employee of the Security Guardhouse. All he found listed in the directory was “Film Actor P.” Deciding that sorting things out in person would be faster, Dr. Lee hopped into an elevator and headed up to Level 487. Levels 27 and 487 were so far apart that he had to change elevators six times.

When Dr. Lee arrived at unit A57 on Level 487, it became obvious why the liquor had hit a dead end. Film Actor P was not human. He was canine.

Dr. Lee was appalled. A dog could not possibly drink thirty-five-year-old liquor. Why would anyone send liquor to a dog? And five bottles at that.

Going straight back to the research center, Dr. Lee looked for Professor Jung. As he had expected, his boss had left work early so he phoned Professor Jung and gave him the full story, then asked whether or not the dog should be included in the power network analysis. Professor Jung chided him with a mildly indignant air.

“Oh come on, drunk people do stupid things, but to call them a dog? An educated man like yourself should know better.”

Dr. Lee explained that no, that was not what he had meant, people were sending liquor to a real dog, the kind that walked on four legs.

The news did not seem to surprise Professor Jung very much. On the contrary, he barked, “Of course we should exclude the dog. We’re not zoologists, are we? This is a power field we’re talking about.”

However, Dr. Lee knew that this being a power field was precisely the problem. If the research was simply about determining who had power, taking one dog out of the picture was fine. But a power field is a different story. It is like a gravitational field, where a celestial object warps the space around it due to its mass. When massless particles of light pass through the warped space, they cannot travel in a straight line and are instead refracted by it. Power fields work the same way. When power warps the very space around it, creating a power field, even people who believe they are impervious to power begin to show signs of caving in to it and start acting as if they are consciously trying to please it. Whether people intend to cave in to power or not, their actions appear more or less the same to an outside observer. According to this power field theory, a dog could very well end up in the locus of power.

Dr. Lee considered what results he would get if he excluded Film Actor P. Using the data he had so far, he simulated Beanstalk’s power structure after five holiday seasons into the future. The structure evolved into completely different shapes depending on whether or not the dog was included. Without the dog, several loci of power besides the existing one appeared sporadically between the middle floors and the rich neighborhood on the top floor, then disappeared. With the dog, however, the locus of power became a neat sphere with a nucleus centered on the City Hall complex on the middle floors. That model was true to life.

The following afternoon, Dr. Lee went to see Professor Jung and voiced his concerns. But the professor wouldn’t budge.

“Be that as it may, we can’t write that in the report,” Professor Jung said. “What would we tell the client, ‘Hey, Beanstalk’s power network has a dog in it, and there’s no way we can finish the research if we exclude the dog’?”

“Why not?” asked Dr. Lee. “I don’t see the harm in telling them. We wouldn’t tell the newspapers.”

“We wouldn’t, but how do you know they wouldn’t? ‘The mayor’s key power source is a dog!’ The papers would have a field day. And let’s say the mayor gets re-elected, are we going to close the research center?”

“But this isn’t something we can categorically exclude. We don’t know why, but we can’t deny the power field bends in that direction. Without the dog, there’d be many things we can’t explain.”

“Then just say it’s a person. Do we really need to specify it’s a dog?”

“It wouldn’t make sense for the liquor bottles to keep going into a person’s house but not out, unless that person was pretty high up. But not disclosing who it is would look suspicious. If you were the opposition’s campaign team, would you let something like that slide? You’d start sniffing around.”

“I don’t care. Just exclude it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Dr. Lee declared. “If you’re going ahead with this, I’m out.”

In the end, Professor Jung kicked Dr. Lee off his team, which presented a serious setback to the research timeline. The three new recruits had to now help out in earnest.

“It’s nothing too difficult,” said Dr. Lee airily. “Just simple tabulation. Well, you’ll have to crunch a year’s worth of data. Call if there’s anything weird.”

However, the work proved anything but simple. Although Dr. Lee’s work was now split between Dr. Song, Dr. Hwang, and Dr. Nam, they had no clue what they were doing.

Beanstalk was an environment they had never seen before; it seemed spatially impossible. The number 674 for starters. Instead of 674 spaces lying neatly on top of each other in clearly defined floors, oddly-shaped spaces like Tetris blocks were piled to a height commensurate with 674 floors, so you could not say for sure how many floors the building had. The total number of floors changed depending on where you started counting.

The specialist was none the wiser. Dr. Nam said, “My expertise doesn’t help much here. You just don’t see buildings like this in skyscraper ecology. Normal skyscrapers are occupied only during working hours. The buildings have a primary purpose and most of their occupants work there for that purpose. The rest are cleaning and maintenance, et cetera. You should be able to make that sort of distinction, but folks here never leave the building—they live in it. Anyway, Dr. Song you’re the power field analysis expert. Shouldn’t this stuff be right up your alley?”

“It should be, but I’ve never done anything like this either.” replied Dr. Song. “I have to draw a power field in 3D. The city center should also be 3D, but I honestly can’t picture a power field bending itself around a locus of power in 3D. In 2D, you can think of a locus of power as putting a heavy object on a flat plane. Then that point would sag down, right? A downhill would form, pulling everything to the bottom. Now that I can picture intuitively, but to translate it to 3D is beyond me.”

Dr. Hwang chimed in, “So imagine what it’s like for me. I’m a military history major, and I’ve no idea why I’m here. At the end of the year too.”

“You did say your father’s a friend of Professor Jung,” Dr. Song said.

“Yes, but still.”

Whether it was doable or not, they had to pull it off. And do it well.

The days rolled on. When the holidays arrived, the building exterior was covered with dazzling decorations. Beanstalk Tower wasn’t a pencil-thin skyscraper, but a thick one in both length and width. Adverts that hung on its outer walls were visible to everyone—everyone in the neighboring capital, that is, not to Beanstalk residents. The adverts were so massive and placed so high up that no one could avoid looking at them. They reduced the amount of sunlight entering Beanstalk and lowered the temperature of many levels inside, but that was a sacrifice worth making for the enormous ad revenues. Level 27, where Beanstalk Tacit Power Research was situated, was one of the affected levels.

Dr. Song was blowing warm air on her hands as she stared dully into the monitor, when she suddenly looked around at her two colleagues. “Shouldn’t we go visit?”

Dr. Nam replied, “Why should we? We’re not exactly close to him.”

“Professor Jung said his wife insisted we come, remember?” “She couldn’t have. She doesn’t know us. It was just a polite thing to say.”

“She came for a visit once. When you weren’t here. Dr. Hwang and I met her. She seemed glad to meet people her own age. I bet that’s why she’s asked us to come over. So let’s go?”

Dr. Nam replied, “If we had time on our hands, sure, but we’re swamped.”

“Oh, come on,” Dr. Song tried again.

But like Dr. Nam said, their work was nowhere near finished. Although they had intended to wrap up the project by now, the research was not going as planned. As the year came to a close, “gestures of goodwill” were exchanged much more than usual, giving the researchers exponentially more data to track.

Dr. Song looked up anxiously at the clock. “Wouldn’t it look bad if we don’t go and everyone else does?” she asked.

“Please, you know people don’t visit new mothers for three weeks after they give birth,” said Dr. Nam.

“Apparently you do here,” said Dr. Song. “I heard you don’t actually see the mother or the baby, you just need to leave a gift and make an appearance. Everyone else said they’re going.”

“Because they have less work than we do,” said Dr. Nam. “You want to come in tomorrow too?”

Dr. Song replied, “You’re right. There’s no way I’m coming in on Christmas, I’m not even getting paid. Forget it.”

Professor Jung had not made the slightest mention of salary, but the three researchers still had to do a proper job. However unfair, they had to do it to stay on his good side. Get on his wrong side, and they had no hope of surviving in academia. They could not show their displeasure or slack off, and if anyone asked about the research, all they could say was it made for a great learning experience. Professor Jung may not have enough clout to help them achieve success, but he had enough clout to stand in their way of it. If they harbored any ambition of landing, say, a faculty job in Beanstalk University’s political science department, they had to work without complaining.

“Wish they’d turn on the heaters at least.” Dr. Song wrapped her shoulders with a purple blanket someone had taken from a plane and gazed blankly at her monitor. This was usually Professor Jung’s job. Notorious as he was for shirking his work, the professor had nevertheless gotten a little done each day, but today he had gone straight to the hospital first thing. Declaring that his wife, or more precisely his second wife who was seventeen years his junior, had gone into labor, he took three whole days off when everybody else was so busy. As if that wasn’t enough, he invited all his colleagues to the hospital to see the baby. It was a strange custom. He could of course take leave, but Dr. Song didn’t understand why Professor Jung had to invite other people.

“Still, shouldn’t we go?” asked Dr. Song again.

With a hint of impatience, Dr. Nam replied, “We’ve no business going there, alright? It’s bad enough a man his age was cheating with a young woman, but to get her pregnant, dump his wife, and marry her? I saw him all jittery, like a firsttime dad in his twenties. As if. The guy’s got three kids already. Even I was embarrassed for him.”

“But isn’t that why that woman’s making a point of inviting everyone over?” asked Dr. Song. “So people like you don’t say how embarrassing they are behind their backs. I’m telling you—they’re writing a hit list. I say now’s the time for us pop in and present ourselves.”

Dr. Nam said, “If you finish that model today, I’ll go with you.”

Dr. Song turned back around. She did not feel like rushing on Christmas Eve just to see someone’s wife and their new baby. Rushing wouldn’t help her suddenly solve the problems she had been struggling with anyway. Dr. Song stared at her screen, perturbed. Looking closely at Level 100, something seemed off there, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Common sense told Dr. Song that Beanstalk’s locus of power should rest between Levels 250 and 350, where the city’s administrative center was nestled in the shape of a sphere. There were a few anomalies, but they were explainable—all but one. A highly concentrated locus of power sat on the northeastern outskirts of the region between Levels 90 and 130, but she didn’t have the faintest idea why a locus would form there.

Dr. Song lapsed into deep thought. Even after going through the primary data again Dr. Song found no answers. She could only guess. Perhaps there was a gang, a local big shot, or some other explanation everybody knew about except out-of-towners like her. She couldn’t expect to solve the mystery by the end of the day.

“Hey Dr. Nam. See this area here?” asked Dr. Song. “Near Level 100, right at this edge. It’s super concentrated, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

Dr. Nam examined the screen and thumbed through pages of data in search of causes, but he couldn’t pinpoint a satisfactory explanation either. “I don’t know, maybe the mayor’s lover lives there. Shouldn’t we ask a local? Professor Jung’s our best bet if we want the dirt on someone.”

Dr. Song asked, “Shall we call?”

Professor Jung did not pick up, to no one’s surprise. After debating what to do, Dr. Song called Dr. Lee, who fortunately answered. In a voice that was neither annoyed nor overpleased by her call, Dr. Lee told her about the dog that lived on Level 487.

“I don’t know what the professor’s thinking,” said Dr. Lee. “When you run the simulation without the dog, you keep getting the locus of power at odd points, right? When I did it, the locus would appear on higher floors, but I guess you’d get different patterns every time you input more data. At the end of the day though, Professor Jung should be the one to deal with that. Seeing as the research will be published under his name. If any problems come up later, this isn’t something he can blame you folks for.”

Dr. Song said, “Professor Jung’s not in right now. He’s been at the hospital since morning.”

“Ah, that woman’s having her baby? I heard she used to be a singer, or maybe an actor? A celebrity that never made it big. She’s not keeping the news hush-hush then. Anyway, I can’t tell you what to do. What if I did and something were to go wrong? Suppose you say you did it because I told you to, where would that put me? Get a definite answer out of Professor Jung. Or don’t do any more work until he has to do it himself.”

Dr. Song hung up and turned wearily back to her screen. She told the other two about what she had discussed with Dr. Lee, but most of it was lost on them because it involved too much power field analysis jargon.

“I’m not a big fan of computerizing research,” said Dr. Hwang. “I don’t think we understood anything you just said. Looks like you’re on your own, Dr. Song.”

Dr. Song certainly had no qualms about computerized research or computers that learn. If anything, she rather trusted them. Although she didn’t dare mention this to the other two, Dr. Song thought that taking a power field analysis program typically used on 2D city structures and repurposing it for a 3D space like Beanstalk was an achievement by Professor Jung that deserved some credit.

“We should create two versions. One with the dog, one without,” she announced.

This was a reckless decision. They already had enough on their plates, but Dr. Song was now suggesting they double their workload. Despite furious protests from Dr. Hwang and Dr. Nam, Dr. Song had made up her mind and hurriedly set to work.

Dr. Song said, “This needs to be finished today no matter what.”

Even though the research used computer models, inputting data did not automatically crank out results. Computerized research was only a tool, one that required humans to constantly monitor and tweak. It made a great instrument if used well, but it was complicated to employ correctly. Dr. Song began to input the data, including the trajectory of liquor bottles that flowed into unit A57 on Level 487. As reference points, Dr. Song used five projection models created from tracking other currency-goods such as concert ticket vouchers, red ginseng gift sets, and fountain pens, and punched in each of their reference priorities and confidence levels. That was not something a computer could do for her; the process relied entirely on Dr. Song’s judgment.

As she worked, Dr. Song had doubts about whether making two versions was a wise decision. But she had gone too far to turn back now. Initially she stayed on top of which variables to track, but as the number of variables grew, she missed more things. The number of errors snowballed. Dr. Song struggled with the massive ball of errors weighing down her shoulders. If she fixed one error, another popped up. But with time, she solved problems faster than the rate at which new ones occurred. Not fast enough, however. The problem was time.

After three hours, Dr. Song had produced a workable model. By now everyone else had left and they were the last three in the research center.

“Almost done!” Dr. Song said.

Dr. Nam and Dr. Hwang came over to survey her screen. Dr. Nam asked, “So can we go home now?”

“No. I have to repeat what I’ve done one more time.”

Dr. Song’s heart was heavy. She wished she had made the version without A57 first. Then she could have called it a day and gone home. But it felt good to have completed something. Besides, this version was closer to the truth: power including the dog.

The three of them huddled around the monitor and examined the true power structure of Beanstalk Tower. With a crisply defined center and periphery, it looked much cleaner than any model they had pored over so far. This was how true power should be. Somehow, power did not seem like true power when it was complicated, scattered, and fraught with competition. They were no advocates of authoritarianism, but as researchers, simple things sometimes struck them as more beautiful.

“Looks great, but how do you read this thing?” asked Dr. Hwang.

“Well. Frankly, I’m not sure myself,” replied Dr. Song.

A silence fell. No one spoke for five whole minutes until Dr. Hwang said, “Brighter colors mean higher concentration, right?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Song. “I’m not saying the concentration of goods or people is actually high there, I’m speaking theoretically. The idea is to work backwards, so if the goods are refracted at a point, then we assume power is concentrated there.”

“Does this line show how the power space is warped?” asked Dr. Hwang.

“Yes, it’s an imaginary line,” answered Dr. Song. “But it should be pretty accurate as we have the data to support it.”

“I’m no expert but this part right here, where it’s bright, where it’s sticking out a little. Isn’t that near Professor Jung’s place? Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like it.”

Dr. Song riffled through the building’s resident directory. It did seem like it. That was also where all the researchers had convened for the first time before the liquor was distributed. Dr. Song checked Professor Jung’s address, which tallied with where Dr. Hwang had indicated. A thin line extended from the locus of power to a point just above Level 190. Professor Jung’s address was M225 on Level 193, precisely at that point.

“That’s odd,” said Dr. Hwang. Odd indeed. Dr. Song zoomed in on the point. She was aware of Professor Jung’s influence in academia, but he wasn’t important enough to cause such a wide angle of refraction as she saw on the screen. What was more, the refracted line was long and ran in one direction, which was not a typical pattern of power.

Dr. Song reviewed the data again. She had not forgotten to account for the fact that Professor Jung distributed the liquor. That variable was eliminated. In other words, sometime after the initial distribution, more goods must have flowed into the unit.

But the movement of goods was bizarre. In the enlarged image, Dr. Song saw that a path formed between A1 on Level 339.7 and M225 on Level 193. In theory, A1 on Standard Level 339.7 was at the heart of Beanstalk’s power structure, yet strangely enough, M225 was pulling goods directly from there. The goods were leaving a highly concentrated source of top power in A1, so the weighted value of each was staggeringly high, even though there weren’t large quantities of them.

Dr. Song asked “What the devil could this mean? Dr. Nam, do you know if Professor Jung’s friendly with the mayor?”

“He can’t be,” replied Dr. Nam. “At least not to that extent anyway. The mayor’s not on the list of people he sent holiday gifts to. Which means they’re not acquainted.”

“Exactly. But you know what this looks like? Like something has stuck its hand into a black hole and snatched out a star that had been sucked in. If this thing were a person, it’d be a robber, so to speak. Or a secret lover?”

As soon as Dr. Song finished speaking, a hush fell over them. A secret lover! It wasn’t impossible.

“Are you saying Professor Jung is seeing the mayor?” asked Dr. Hwang.

Dr. Song and Dr. Nam looked at her in exasperation.

“No, that’s not who I meant,” said Dr. Song.

Dr. Hwang thumped the desk as if she had finally cottoned on.

“Hang on, can it be Professor Jung’s new wife? She wasn’t a superstar, but she was relatively famous. She used to turn up in the tabloids once in a while, but then disappeared one day, right?”

Relapsing into silence, they racked their brains. They had clearly discovered something, but they needed more time to deduce what the implications would be.

“Professor Jung will have a fit if he finds out,” said Dr. Hwang.

Dr. Song was about to call Professor Jung when a thought occurred to her and she put the receiver back down. After all, Professor Jung was not the main problem. The mayor was who really mattered. He was not guaranteed re-election, but he was a politician whose approval ratings were still fairly high.

They considered how Professor Jung’s wife could help them. Nothing in particular came to mind. But that was how a power field worked. It was not an express contractual relationship in which one paid for specific services; it was a delicate, curious equation in which variables like simple gestures of goodwill or one extra face-to-face interaction may someday result in an unexpected boon. To solve that equation, elaborate and precise calculation was far less important than tact and timing.

“Mrs. Jung insisted we visit, you say?” asked Dr. Hwang. They had to choose a ladder to climb. Should they tell Professor Jung about their discovery, or pretend it never happened? It did not take them long to decide. Whichever ladder they chose, the person they would meet at the top was not Professor Jung but his wife.

“I guess we’ll have to drop by the hospital?” said Dr. Song. The other two nodded.

“Let’s keep this under wraps,” said Dr. Song, pointing at her monitor. “If this gets out, the mayor’s going to be obliterated in this election.” Then, she quickly backed up her work. She had no intention of making any threats, but she wanted to keep some evidence of how they were helping the mayor. She added, “I’ll come in tomorrow to create a different model to be used in the final report. Is that alright with you? And you?”

“Absolutely,” the other two replied.

The hospital was on Level 647, near the rich district. Earlier that December, construction had begun on Beanstalk’s rooftop of an installation that had the shape of a giant. The residents, however, recalled not the giant from the building’s namesake fairytale, “Jack and the Beanstalk,” but King Kong. Yet once the figure was painted, it turned out to be Santa Claus. The three recruits had to go nearly all the way up to where that giant Santa hung to get to the hospital.

Situated on Level 27, Beanstalk Tacit Power Research sat a little above the visa-free levels. The basement floors had never been Beanstalk territory, and Levels 1 to 12 comprised a single large garden. Above the garden was the Middle Zone, or Demilitarized Zone, where foreigners were free to enter—commercial facilities such as department stores, malls, and movie theaters all the way up to Level 21. Then, Levels 22 to 25 were dedicated to the Security Guardhouse, effectively forming Beanstalk’s national border with six border checkpoints and two thousand of Beanstalk Army’s twenty-two hundred soldiers.

That the border consisted of four levels was a mark of how many enemies had their sights on Beanstalk. After two attempted bombings by terrorists, Beanstalk expanded its border from one floor—Level 22—to four. If hostile relations with Cosmomafia continued, Beanstalk Tacit Power Research may well be included in the border before long.

The trio packed their things and set out to the nearest shopping mall. As prices above the border were too high, they did not dare shop for a gift to take to the hospital there. So, they crossed the border and took the elevator down to the entrance of a mall on Level 19.

“Let’s meet back here in half an hour,” said Dr. Song. “I’m getting a gold ring. You know the Beanstalkian custom is to give babies a ring at birth instead of their first birthday, right? You two get something other than a ring. Good luck picking your gifts and see you back here in thirty.”

Dr. Song disappeared into the mall before anyone else could speak.

“Not cool, calling dibs on the ring. She just doesn’t want to have to worry about what to buy,” said Dr. Nam, staring about him, unsure of what to buy. When he spotted a perfume shaped like a mini liquor bottle at a nearby fragrance store, he grabbed it without a second thought.

“I’ll just go with this. It looks like one of our liquor bottles,” Dr. Nam told Dr. Hwang.