Chapter 57 – MetaCraft Cybernetics (4)

Entering the second research building, I felt a chill.

Only the orange emergency guidance lights were on in the dark room, but there was so much light coming from the shoulder lights of the troops that the field of view was not restricted.

Dark shadows stretch from drums marked with biohazard signs, forklift trucks, and pallets stacked with boxes.

I was looking through the data obtained from the computer on the second floor of the hall earlier.

Thanks to this, I became aware of two technologies being developed at the institute.

The first is a VR training system.

Soldiers are repeatedly taught real-life combat experiences without the cost, injury, or risk of death incurred during the training process.

Could there be a business proposition that would excite generals more than this?

That was what I was studying here.

VR training itself is a technology that has already been realized in foreign countries, but since few countries have it and thoroughly hide the technology, in-house development is forced.

In addition, what is being studied here is a more advanced product that adds sensory realization to VR training.

Although it is embarrassing that the source technology was developed for use in VR pornography.

[The VR simulation under study here is a comprehensive training program that includes not only infantry combat but also various equipment operations.]

Artemis looked over the data and said.

[There are a lot of mountains to go through, but the development record is good. If the research continued normally, it would have been sufficiently commercialized within 5 years? I could have mass-produced experienced elite soldiers.]

“Create elite soldiers in VR? It’s like making training wheels and mass-producing cyclists.”

Elite soldiers are created through actual combat or real-life training, not in video games.

[Is this a typical reaction of a veteran soldier when he encounters a new technology?]

“This isn’t just some shit stubbornness. Not distrust of new technology. There are many side effects to using it to create talent whose final destination is the battlefield.”

[The technology that has come out these days can implement a very realistic experience. It even has a sensory stimulation system, and it can realize a lot of the sense of crisis and survival desire that are easy to ignore in VR. It is indistinguishable from reality.]

Is she a VR training advocate? Hey, cyberspace is in some ways like her hometown.

What I am saying now may sound like a bad word for her hometown, where I have lived all my life.

“No matter how real it is, VR is just VR. What do you get when you make a serious mistake in real-life training? That could be serious injury or death. Not only the participants in the training, but also the colleagues who watched it realized a lot. But what if you make a mistake in VR? You just lose points. After training is over, I’ll just joke about it with my teammates.”

I’ve seen the form that side effect manifests on the battlefield.

“Among my classmates, there was a guy who came from the US after completing a one-year VR training course. He was the one who came after clearing a total of 120 combat experiences based on actual battles overseas as well as domestic battles such as the Korean War, armed guerrilla infiltration, and Operation Dawning in the Gulf of Aden.”

It was as if a legendary war hero had started his second life.

“I was always at the forefront in training, always full of motivation and energy. Some of the courses that even big guys who have been through quite a bit are hesitant to jump into without hesitation.”

[Isn’t that a good thing?]

“The problem is that all of this was a training situation. He was treating his actions as a kind of game.”

Even though his colleagues pointed it out several times, he never, never admitted it himself.

“A soldier who jumps into battle like a game and is full of confidence, but thinks he is serious. It was the ideal mindset that high-ranking people wanted when introducing VR training.”

[Did you die?]

Artemis, who had been listening silently, asked. He must have remembered the general’s son, whom he had previously spoken about.

“Dead. It’s terrible too.”

I still vividly remember it.

“That expression that was full of energy and courage right before being put into actual combat evaporated in an instant. Two machine gun bullets ripped open my stomach like a rag and my intestines spilled out. The colleague next to me tried to put the intestines into the stomach with shaking hands, but even the intestines were torn to shreds.”

While being transported by helicopter, the sandwich he ate and joked about was leaking through his intestines.

“He made eye contact with me right before he died, do you know what the emotion was in his eyes? If I had to describe it in one word, it would be ‘huh?'”

‘Huh?’ Or ‘Huh? Isn’t this?’.

“I finally realized the cold reality when I was shot and felt the pain, cold, and fear of death. VR is nothing more than a system that mass-produces artificial heroes that paralyze the sense of reality.”

I remember him stretching his fingers into the air with his eyes fading just before he died.

Were you looking for a reset button? Or was he hallucinating?

There is no way to know. I don’t even want to know

The second technique was beyond imagination.

The temporary name given is “Nerve response amplifier.”

Originally researched virtual reality technology was an experiment to move the user’s sensory organs and, furthermore, the mind itself into a virtual space.

But in the process, an interesting thing happened.

The subject connected to the virtual space slowly counted to 10, but in reality, less than 3 seconds had passed.

At first, the researchers regarded it as a lag or error that interfered with virtual reality access, but came to the idea of ​​what if this effect could be controlled arbitrarily in reality.

By increasing the reaction speed of nerves, real time passes slowly while maintaining a significant amount of cognitive and motor skills.

In a word, it implemented the bullet time ability that can be seen in games or movies.

This will have a great effect in the field of sports activities or medical care, and was especially valuable as a military technology.

However, looking at the e-mail exchanged by the researchers, it did not seem that the research process was conducted in a very sound manner.

〈 Intranet Mail〉

Type: Internal communication
Level: Level 1 Security

From: Senior researcher Shim Hyun-seok
Recipient: Park Jae-seong, Director of Research

Subject: This is a breach of contract.

Director, do you know that all of the clinical trial subjects who came to our laboratory this time were forcibly taken prisoner?

None of the contracts signed with the Ministry of Defense had anything like this.

Didn’t you promise to arrange only private applicants who came 100% voluntarily?

At first, healthy people who volunteered were sent, but at some point, foreign residents were mixed in, and now it is full of prisoners.

Besides, the experimental grade you instructed is too harsh.

This is a biological experiment, not a clinical trial!
I can’t do it like this.

(End recording)

There was a reply in the log about 2 hours later.

〈 Intranet Mail〉

Type: Internal communication
Level: Level 1 Security

From: Park Jae-seong, director of the research institute
Recipient: Shim Heung-seop, chief researcher

Title: Hey you bastard

If you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it, and if you can’t do it, where are you?

Do you think the military units that walk around the lab are simply there for security?

Are you going to quit? Try it somewhere!

The soldiers guarding this place will put you in a car and kindly take you out of the lab.

Don’t be surprised if I ask you to get off the field on the way. It’s because it’s pee time, haha.

(End recording)

“Hmm.”

This would have been unimaginable in Korea 20 years ago, but in Korea on the verge of an epidemic, there is nothing surprising. Because many more things have happened.

Still, it is worth considering that it did a good job of using illegal immigrants before mobilizing its own prisoners.

It was immediately clear what fate the prisoners had met.

Skeletons in a laboratory marked H1-1.

The white bones in orange prison uniforms were dead, confined to the white lab bench.

A cable extending from the skull’s neck vertebrae leads to a machine mounted at the bottom of the test table. It appears to be a machine that connects you to virtual space.

However, they died not because the experiment went wrong.

Because they had bullet holes all over their skulls.

It was possible to know what was going on through the PDA in the corner of the laboratory.

Right next to it, leaning against the wall, was the corpse of a soldier with a muzzle in his mouth and a broken skull.

Played the PDA.

〈 Communication log 〉

“Shoot me now!”
“General, I can’t shoot.”

(Gunshots, noise mixed with human screams)

“Shoot! This is an order!”
“But how do you shoot an innocent person, no, your own people?”

(Monster cry)

“I am Dr. Chang Chun-soo, a researcher in charge of clinical trials. We need to quarantine the test subjects now! Their neural response speed can be accelerated up to 2.5 times that of normal people. When they are exposed to infectious agents and mutate, it is impossible to imagine what terrible monsters will be born. It must be disposed of immediately!”
“Ha, but…”

(The gunfire, the screams of the soldiers, and the cries of the monster came at close range.)

“Hey!”

(Fuck!)
(Short screams and blunt knocking sounds)

“I’m going to shoot you, you fucking bastard. If you survive here, take off your squad leader’s epaulets and burn them, you asshole.”

(Gunshots ring out in single shots at short intervals.)

“Dr. Zhang, let’s move.”
“Yes! General!”
“This bastard isn’t even kicking very hard, but he’s so damn sick! Whether you crawl and follow me or follow me from there, do it yourself.”

(End of communication)

Similarly, in the laboratory labeled H1-2, there were also corpses with bullet holes in the head.

The problem is H1-3.

There were only traces of an empty laboratory and soldiers torn to pieces.