Chapter 04
Rumors
After glancing around the stall, Seong Geon-woo picked up another item.
“Is this… a watch?”
“Yep. A wristwatch,” Jin Hyeon-oh said. “The mechanism inside is surprisingly intricate, and it still runs—though it needs a bit of adjusting.”
His eyes sparkled as he went on.
“Think about it: the hands and numbers glow in the dark, so you don’t even need a lantern to check the time. Inside the company, I’d bet fewer than a hundred people own a good watch like this. If you bought it, you wouldn’t have to rely on the public clocks anymore. Everyone on this floor would envy you. Who knows—some young lady might even notice and strike up a romance…”
The silver band dangling from Geon-woo’s hand was cracked and rusted in places. The second hand on the sapphire-blue dial ticked with effort, and the glass was laced with tiny fractures.
“How much?” he asked evenly.
After a pause, Jin Hyeon-oh said, “Sixty thousand points.”
Geon-woo set the watch down as if it had burned him.
Sixty thousand—on a D1 employee’s monthly allotment of eighteen hundred points, he’d need nearly three years of eating and drinking nothing to save that much.
It seemed Jin Hyeon-oh had never intended to sell it to him anyway; he was only teasing the young man. Soon the merchant pointed to a metal cylinder at the center of the display.
“How about this? Top-notch stuff—military canned rations!”
Geon-woo picked it up and examined it. The outer plastic wrap had rotted, the label so faded only “Braised Beef” and “500 g” were barely legible.
“Heavy, isn’t it? Means it’s packed full!” Jin Hyeon-oh said eagerly, even spitting a little as he spoke.
“I swear, these rations taste amazing. I’ve never forgotten that flavor. Far better than the Salvation Army’s dried tins! If my old comrade’s son hadn’t just unearthed a crate of these, you’d never even get a chance to try one. And the price? Only sixty points. That’s cheap—fresh meat at the supply market costs fifty points a pound, and you’d still need spices and someone to cook it. Besides, when is fresh meat ever guaranteed? And after you eat it, you can turn in the empty can for contribution points. Can’t beat that deal.”
Geon-woo waited until the pitch ran its course, then asked, “What’s the expiration date?”
“How would I know? I can’t even convert old-world dates.” Jin Hyeon-oh widened his eyes.
“New Era’s only in year forty-six; it should still be fine.”
His voice softened with memory.
“When I worked for the Security Division, I once nearly starved on a mission after we lost our supplies. Luckily I found a military depot stocked with these cans. No idea how old they were, but they tasted incredible and did me no harm.”
Geon-woo neither replied nor put the can back. After a long moment of silence he asked,
“Does it sing?”
“…What?”
For the first time in his long life, Jin Hyeon-oh wondered if he’d misheard.
Just then, Yong Yeohong burst in from outside the activity center, two yellow plastic lunch boxes in hand. Spotting Geon-woo, she beamed.
“Come have dinner with me later!”
“You buying?” he asked, setting the can down and standing.
She shook her head firmly.
“Nope. Don’t you still have plenty of your stipend?”
Geon-woo’s parents had left no inheritance, but the company paid him a compensation allowance, and after he entered university he received a student subsidy of twelve hundred points a month—standard for all undergrads. That kept him afloat. The subsidy continued until a student’s first official month of work after job placement.
He smiled, unfazed by her refusal.
“When something good happens, of course you share the joy with a friend.”
“And buying a meal is the best way to share it?”
Jin Hyeon-oh chuckled and joined in.
“Yeodora, you looked so down earlier. Something good must have happened to lift your spirits.”
“Don’t call me by my childhood name…” she grumbled, but then grinned.
“Mother says I don’t have to wait until next year’s joint-marriage event. Some colleagues’ daughters are skipping college and starting work; she wants to introduce me. I might even end up dating one of them.”
Employees had only one chance to enter university. Miss it, and they were assigned directly to work—unless exceptional talent earned a special recommendation. Most were about eighteen at the time, too young for the mass-marriage roster.
Many preferred choosing a partner they actually liked to the random matches of the joint-marriage program. But free dating wasn’t easy. Once assigned, they worked 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. with only a ninety-minute break. By 9 p.m. the activity center and streetlights went dark, forcing everyone home. Opportunities for romance were scarce.
Universities, by contrast, allowed far more freedom to meet and date.
Still, Yeohong’s smile faded.
“Of course she might not like me. I had gene enhancement but I’m only 175 centimeters, nothing special to look at, not great grades, and no department assignment yet…”
“Something’s going on over there,” Geon-woo cut in, pointing to an old table a few meters away where a cluster of employees were deep in discussion.
Curious, Yeohong followed him over. She spotted someone she knew and called,
“Auntie, what’s everyone talking about?”
The woman, about forty and striking even in a simple Terylene shirt with her hair pinned up, was Im Gyeol, Yeohong’s neighbor and a D3-grade employee in the company’s Strategy Committee.
Sighing, Im Gyeol said, “A rumor that’s been going around.”
“What rumor?” Yeohong pressed.
As they spoke, Jin Hyeon-oh glanced back at the military can on his stall and swallowed hard, remembering the desperate hunger of the day he’d first tasted one.
“Yes,” he muttered, almost to himself, “that can could sing… it could make my belly and soul sing.”
Meanwhile Im Gyeol lowered her voice and looked around.
“They say the company plans to take away everyone’s right to bear children.”
“What?”
The idea was so unexpected Yeohong couldn’t even parse it.
Im Gyeol continued, meeting Geon-woo’s calm gaze.
“They’d have couples who want children provide biological material under medical supervision. Then, in a giant growth center, the lab would handle everything—test-tube fertilization, artificial wombs, supervised infant development. By the time parents meet their babies, the children might already be months old.
“They claim it would free women from pregnancy and childbirth and help solve the labor shortage.”
A young woman nearby blurted, “Isn’t that… a good thing?”
“How is it good?” Im Gyeol shot back, face darkening.
“Conceiving life is a sacred right given by Heaven. How can we hand that over to machines? How could parents bond with a child grown like that?”
“Yeah,” said a man across the table, twisting a lock of hair.
“I’ve heard the Old World fell because it ignored ethics and performed forbidden experiments.”
Im Gyeol nodded vigorously, then looked to Geon-woo and Yeohong.
“What do you think? Isn’t pregnancy and birth the essence of being human, a holy right granted from above?”
“Yes,” Geon-woo answered without hesitation.
Yeohong gasped under Im Gyeol’s intense gaze.
“O-of course.”
“You two still have good sense,” Im Gyeol said with a relieved smile.
Another employee laughed.
“Isn’t everyone being too serious? It’s just a rumor. My uncle works under the Board of Directors and has never heard of such a thing.”
Im Gyeol’s voice grew firmer.
“I only mean to warn everyone. If such a policy ever comes, people must speak out and oppose it.”
Some fell silent, others nodded, and one imaginative soul asked,
“If they really did that, would marriage or the joint-marriage program be canceled?”
The man who had mentioned the Old World shook his head.
“Impossible. Director Ki has said that harmonious, healthy marriages are vital to employees’ mental stability in times like these.”
Director Ki—Ki Taek-jo—was an M3-level executive and vice-president of the company, known for his frequent broadcasts and New Year’s addresses to all staff via the activity-center screens.
