The Price of the Prophecy

12:15, from where I sat in detention, I gave notice of two things.

“At 12:23 the auxiliary generator will trip. The left panel in the control room will flicker first, and Doctor Mun Rahee will be standing in front of the safety panel. At 12:25, in the cafeteria, Noeul will try to clear the second cup from the right and one cup will break.”

Kang Taejun did not write it down right away.

“Is this a prophecy?”

“It is a set of items to be verified.”

“Do you think changing the word changes the responsibility?”

“No. That is why I gave the times along with it.”

He called in the security officer outside the interview room. He had Go Yura open the control room screens, and for the cafeteria side he had only a text confirmation sent to Noeul. My wristwatch was in the evidence locker, so the references were the central network and Go Yura's two independent test units. The 63 second gap had already been confirmed.

Kang Taejun attached his conditions.

“One miss and cooperation ends. Being right does not mean I believe in the loop.”

“You do not have to believe.”

“You use that line often.”

“Confirmation is better than belief.”

He wrote my words down. This time he wrote them exactly. `Confirmation over belief.` It could be a line that worked against me. It is the kind of sentence a person would say if they had chosen the record over the people.

“One more thing,” Kang Taejun said. “You do not touch any of the events you predicted. Go Yura confirms the generator, and Noeul moves in the cafeteria by his own judgment. You only talk, from here.”

“Changing an input with talk alone is still an input.”

“Which is why I am recording it.”

He set a blank form in front of me. `Prior statement / verification result / method of intervention.` Three boxes. It was only when I looked at those boxes that I understood again how easily what I was about to do could look like manipulation. You predict, you move a person, and when the result changes you say you were right. Fraud and experiment cannot be told apart without a record.

“Why are you trying to stop the cup?”

“To confirm an input change where nobody gets hurt.”

“A cup moves people too.”

“I know.”

“You know and you are doing it anyway.”

“Yes.”

He wrote that answer down too. It was not a sentence in my favor. But it was a sentence that kept my choice from running away out of the scene.

12:23, the control room screen shook first.

Go Yura's shared screen was up on the interview room monitor. The power graph on the left panel dropped one notch. A yellow blink. Then the auxiliary generator trip alert came up. By central time 12:22 had only just passed, but Go Yura's test unit showed 12:23:00.

Go Yura's voice came faster through the speaker.

“It came. No, came is a weird way to say it, it popped. Left panel blinked first. Wait, Doctor Mun, why are you standing there?”

Mun Rahee was visible at the bottom of the screen. She was already standing in front of the safety panel. She did not look at her watch. She opened the cover before the generator trip appeared, and after it appeared she flipped the second switch from the left. It resembled the scene on the second day, when her hand had come before the alert.

Kang Taejun spoke while watching the screen.

“Was Doctor Mun Rahee's position announced in advance?”

Go Yura answered.

“Nope. If it had been announced I would have grumbled about it. She just showed up in the control room.”

Beyond the screen, Mun Rahee said one short thing to Go Yura.

“If you take your alerts as approximations, you are late.”

An exact sentence. An exact position. But I still could not conclude that she was a rememberer. A designer can hear equipment before people do. I did not cross that line.

Kang Taejun froze the screen. Mun Rahee's hand was on top of the panel cover, and the alert had not come up yet. Looking at one frame, it looks like advance knowledge. But one frame is far too little. I do not know the sounds outside the frame. Floor vibration in the generator room, the relay noise inside the panel, the warning signs Mun Rahee would know as its designer. All of it was possible.

“Do not use this as hidden memory,” I said.

Kang Taejun looked at me.

“Who said anything like that?”

“Because I might start wanting to.”

Go Yura's voice came low over the speaker.

“I almost started wanting to as well. Going to the logs for now.”

She closed the screen showing Mun Rahee and opened the generator log. That choice made Go Yura a collaborator. Look at the verifiable file before the suspicious person. I had to do the same.

Kang Taejun turned my way.

“One is correct.”

“It is one out of two.”

“Do both have to be correct?”

“No. One of the two I am going to change.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Meaning what?”

“I need to see whether blocking a prediction changes the result.”

12:25, the text I sent Noeul was short.

`Please move the second cup from the right to the left shelf now. It may break. I will explain why later.`

Noeul did not send back a long question. Instead, inside the cafeteria camera feed, he walked toward the counter. He cannot hear sounds outside the camera angle, but he handles text and the position of objects precisely. He picked up the second cup from the right and moved it to the left shelf.

The first prediction broke. The cup did not fall.

At that moment, one tray on the serving counter slid. The hand Noeul had emptied moving the right cup was late. The tray did not go all the way to the floor, it caught on the edge, but another cup on top of it tipped over. It did not break. Only water spilled on the floor.

Bae Junho, who was in the cafeteria, moved first. Rather than whether the cup had broken, he checked whether the water on the floor was heading toward the electrical outlet. Noeul set up the wet floor sign and pulled a dry towel from under the counter. The two of them exchanged no words. Bae Junho pointed a finger toward the outlet, and Noeul nodded. Even without sound, the cooperation they needed happened.

What I changed was the position of one cup, but two people moved. Noeul came out from behind the counter 3 seconds earlier than he would have, and Bae Junho looked at the floor instead of the weather monitor. A small input does not only make a small result. It moves where people look. That was the most uncomfortable rule of this loop.

Noeul did not look toward the camera. He blocked the water first, set up the wet floor sign, and then took out his text panel. The sentence sent through to the security office was short.

`Cup you named did not break. Different cup tipped over. Nobody hurt.`

Kang Taejun read that sentence twice.

“The prediction was wrong.”

“The input was changed.”

“That sounds like wordplay.”

“The first time I moved a spoon, a cup did not break. This time I moved a cup's position, and a different small accident happened. It is the same direction. Events do not follow memory, they follow the input.”

Kang Taejun did not argue back right away. He does not believe, but he knows how to move a condition. Right now there were two conditions. The generator trip was correct, and the cup breaking was changed. The changed result was not a clean cancellation but an accident pushed sideways.

“Did you only choose predictions where nobody gets hurt?”

“Yes.”

He wrote that answer down. That sentence might defend me a little, and it might also become proof that I chose people as experimental variables. Both were true.

12:30, in the hallway, Kang Taejun released one side of the handcuffs.

It was not full release. My right hand was still connected to his. Ten minutes, from the interview room to the control room. Exactly that much cooperation.

“I do not believe in the loop.”

“I know.”

“But I acknowledge that your information is verifiable. Ten minutes.”

“That is not enough.”

“Then you should have gotten something more precise right.”

He did not stop walking. Not a man walking with me because he trusted Ihyeon, but a man keeping himself at a distance where he could subdue me the moment I was wrong. That much distrust was what was needed now.

As we stepped out of the interview room, the hallway camera followed us. Kang Taejun deliberately walked along the lower edge of its view. It was the position where my handcuffs showed clearly on screen. A mark that detention stayed in place even with cooperation. It was a device that both the people who did not trust me and the part of me that wanted to trust myself too quickly needed.

Yun Haewon saw us from the end of the hallway. He did not come closer. He laid a hand over his right chest pocket and asked only Kang Taejun.

“Has Seo Ihyeon been granted conditional cooperation?”

“Ten minutes.”

“And what will you open in those ten minutes?”

“I do not know yet,” I said.

Yun Haewon heard my answer and nodded a very small amount. As though right now, saying you do not know was more trustworthy than saying you do. But with his next sentence he attached the cost immediately.

“When a person who does not know moves people, the responsibility gets bigger later.”

“I know.”

“You say that often too.”

He did not follow us any further. An alliance of distrust shows itself more clearly in the moment it stops walking than in the moment it helps.

Go Yura was waiting in front of the control room. The moment she saw me she pulled out three questions.

“How did you know? Why 12:23? And why does a different cup tip over instead of the cup?”

“I do not know any of the three yet.”

“Wow, that is an answer that kills the will to cooperate.”

“Let us start with the logs.”

Go Yura grumbled but turned the screen around anyway. The auxiliary generator trip log was stamped to the 12:23:00 independent reference. The central network display read 12:21:57. 63 seconds again. But the gap was no longer the only problem. There was an error address.

`ADDR: D-13 / SYNC_FAIL / AUX_GEN_ROUTE`

Go Yura pointed at the address with a finger.

“That is a room number that does not exist.”

“It is a room number?”

“By the official floor plan, yes. Building D goes up to 12. There is no 13. That is why the equipment is throwing a fit. The generator's auxiliary route is being set to an address that does not exist.”

Kang Taejun looked closely at the screen.

“Who can create a fake address?”

“By permission level, Doctor Mun Rahee, Director Hong, and the old audit partition permission. But if I say that now I am writing fiction too, so. I need to look at more logs.”

Go Yura cut her sentence short like someone who had learned from my words. Do not say you know something you do not know yet. Because of that one attitude the air in the control room changed a little.

I looked at D-13. The official doors run from 1 to 12. The thirteenth door is not a physical room but the audit partition that opens at 13 minutes and 13 seconds past the hour. I am not supposed to know the answer in the series bible right now. What Ihyeon knows at present is only the Q-13 Yun Haewon mentioned, the watermark on the envelope with no name, and the D-13 address that does not exist.

“D-13 may not be a room.”

I stopped right after saying it. That went too far. What I have confirmed at present is only `physical_map: null` and a floor plan number that does not exist. The hypothesis that it might not be a room is possible, but I cannot go as far as saying audit partition. There is no scene yet that would prove that word.

Kang Taejun asked at once.

“Grounds.”

“Yun Haewon said Q-13 is not used for opening a door either. The envelope with no name had a Q-13 watermark on it. D-13 may be a permission address rather than a physical door.”

“A possibility.”

“A possibility.”

He accepted the word. Since it was not a conclusion, he could use it.

Go Yura copied the log line twice. One was the central network original, the other the time corrected to the independent test unit reference. Corrected, the error timestamp moved up to just before the 12:23 trip. It was not the trip first and D-13 after, it was the order where the generator shook after the D-13 address was set.

“The address is closer to the cause side,” Go Yura said. “Not the result side.”

Kang Taejun asked back.

“Closer.”

“Not a conclusion. Still, it is not the fire truck arriving after the fire, it is the fire truck's number getting stamped first and then the fire starting. If you do not like the comparison I will delete it.”

“Leave it,” I said. “We need everyday language.”

Go Yura looked at me briefly and turned back to the screen. She was not decoration that explains things, she was the one turning difficult logs into sentences a person could make a choice from.

12:40, the weather monitor blinked once.

Bae Junho's balloon schedule was up on the right side of the screen. `Launch window: 17.0 seconds.` It was the number I had heard on the second day. The short window that connects to the outside of the island in the middle of a typhoon. I cannot use it as an exit right now. I do not know what to send out, whether what goes out survives, or how to confirm any of it from inside. So for now it has to stay a background number.

Bae Junho spoke from the control room doorway.

“The balloon may not go up today. Possibility and authorization are different things.”

What he said was not bad. A person who separates possibility from authorization can be useful later. Only, right now D-13 came before the balloon.

Kang Taejun checked my handcuffs again.

“The ten minutes are over.”

“I need to look at more of the D-13 log.”

“So you will look at it in detention.”

“Is this cooperation, or surveillance?”

“Both.”

He gave me back the answer I had given. I could not argue. Being both was the most accurate name for what this could be right now.

Go Yura turned the screen. The error address line was enlarged. Below D-13 there were small sub codes. `door_index: 13`, `physical_map: null`.

A room number that does not exist.

A thirteenth door that does not exist.

The blue letters on the screen blinked 63 seconds behind the central network. But I could tell even without a wristwatch. This time the problem was not a number but a blank. On a floor plan that runs from 1 to 12, an address called 13 had appeared in the log first.

Go Yura said,

“D-13 is not on the floor plan. And yet the generator believes it sent power there.”

Kang Taejun looked at me.

“The next ten minutes are because of this address. Not because of the loop.”

That condition was enough. Not belief but an address. Not a prophecy but a log. I nodded without taking my eyes off D-13 on the screen.

The thirteenth door that does not exist had eaten electricity for the first time.