Episode 1 : "So, Where do I Begin?"

Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned very early that the world did not care whether he existed, suffered, or died. His name was {{user}}, and by the time he was young, he had already learned that people could smile while doing terrible things.

He grew up in a place he never wanted to remember, surrounded by people who treated children as if they belonged to them. It was there that he met Suzy, another young person who understood far too well what it meant to have nowhere else to go. They became friends quietly, sharing whatever little they had and keeping each other company when the nights became unbearable.

One day, the guards were distracted, and an opening finally appeared. {{user}} took it without hesitation. He ran without Suzy, without a plan, without money, and without knowing where he would sleep that night. He only knew that if he stayed, he might never leave at all.

He didn't know that the girl he left behind would one day find her way back into his life—and eventually become part of something far bigger than either of them could imagine.

For the next fifteen years, running became his life.

He moved constantly. Australia became Indonesia, Indonesia became Singapore, Singapore became somewhere else, and eventually he crossed oceans whenever circumstances forced him to. Sometimes he travelled legally under identities that lasted only until someone started asking the wrong questions. Sometimes he crossed borders through places where nobody checked documents carefully. Sometimes he slept in bus stations, abandoned buildings, train compartments, construction sites, church basements, cheap hostels, and once, for nearly three weeks, beneath a staircase behind a university library.

He learned quickly because ignorance was expensive. He learned which streets were safe at night, which police officers asked questions because they genuinely wanted answers and which ones asked because somebody had paid them. He learned how to recognize surveillance, how to disappear into crowds, how to change his appearance without attracting attention, how to sleep lightly, how to keep his belongings close, and how to leave a place before the people searching for him realized he had been there.

But survival was never enough for him. Whenever he found somewhere stable enough to remain for a few weeks or months, he studied. He stole textbooks before he stole food whenever both were available. He sat in university lectures from the back of classrooms without being enrolled. He read discarded research papers, borrowed library cards, copied notes by hand, watched lectures online from public computers, and taught himself whatever he could understand.

Economics came first. Then political science. Sociology. History. Law. Engineering. Physics. Computer science. Psychology. Anything that might explain the strange machinery behind the world he had spent his childhood running from. He did not have a professor, a laboratory, or a proper academic career. He had libraries, internet cafés, second-hand books, and an obsessive refusal to remain ignorant.

The more he learned, the angrier he became.

His rage was not born from a single tragedy. It accumulated slowly, year after year, every time reality contradicted the things institutions claimed to believe.

One incident stayed with him more than most.

He had been watching the news from a cheap television in a restaurant when he saw a politician walking through a crowded street. A beggar had approached him, asking for money. The politician looked irritated, said something to his aides, and when the cameras turned away for a moment, kicked the beggar aside as though he were garbage.

The next morning, the same politician appeared on television.

He was smiling.

He stood beside a charity organization, shaking hands, embracing poor families, speaking about compassion and dignity while cameras recorded every second.

{{user}} watched the footage without blinking.

That was the moment something inside him became colder.

He began wondering whether corruption was really about individual bad people. Maybe the deeper problem was that systems could reward people for appearing compassionate while behaving cruelly, reward institutions for protecting themselves, and reward politicians for controlling the story rather than solving the problem.

As for Suzy, Her lives went in different directions. Suzy was eventually taken in by an American family and built a legitimate life for herself. She studied political science, sociology, and economics at Harvard, entered political consulting, and eventually became very good at understanding elections, institutions, political incentives, and the people who manipulated them.

{{user}} had no such luxury.

He remained hunted.

The organization he had escaped from had money, connections, and enough influence to make his life disappear into paperwork. They fabricated evidence. They bribed officials. They manufactured witnesses. They turned the story around until the victim became the criminal.

At one point, {{user}} was framed for murder.

He had never killed the person.

It didn't matter.

The evidence said otherwise.

His photograph appeared in databases. His name moved between agencies. Investigators began searching for him internationally. INTERPOL notices came frighteningly close to becoming the end of his freedom. More than once, he escaped only hours before people searching for him arrived. Once, he left a train station through a maintenance corridor after recognizing a man who had been following him for three days. Another time, he abandoned nearly everything he owned after discovering that the apartment he had rented had been entered while he was away.

His most humiliating escape happened in a place that smelled so terrible that even the people hunting him refused to follow.

He had been cornered inside an industrial compound with nowhere obvious left to run. He found a maintenance access leading into the sewage system, climbed inside, and crawled through a septic tank filled with human waste.

By the time he emerged on the other side, he was covered in shit from head to toe.

He couldn't even recognize his own smell.

But he was alive.

He washed himself in a river, threw away almost everything he owned, and kept moving.

Fifteen years of that did something to a person.

It made him suspicious of institutions. It made him distrustful of authority. It made him obsessive about understanding power. But more importantly, it gave him a question that followed him everywhere.

Why did humanity keep building systems that required good people to function correctly?

Eventually, his questions became models.

The models became theories.

The theories became an idea for a radically different way of organizing society.

And eventually, somewhere between stolen textbooks, sleepless nights, improvised laboratories, discarded electronics, and years of experimentation, the idea for the Vanometric Power Cell began to take shape.

He did not understand it as merely an energy device.

To {{user}}, it was a possible answer to a much larger question.

What would happen if one of civilization's fundamental constraints—energy scarcity—could be broken?

And what would happen if humanity attempted to use that abundance while keeping the political and economic institutions created for a world of scarcity?

He began writing.

The equations filled pages. The political arguments filled more. Economics, governance, institutional design, social organization, sovereignty, technological abundance, human incentives, and the possibility of an entirely different civilization began appearing together in one increasingly chaotic manuscript.

He still had no name for the ideology.

He barely had a functioning prototype.

He had no country.

He had no movement.

He barely had a home.

But after fifteen years of running, he had finally found something worth running toward.

---

January 5, 2030 — Somewhere in an Alley in New York

The rain had stopped hours ago, but the alley remained soaked. Water crawled between cracks in the pavement, carrying cigarette ash, oil, garbage, and the faint red trail that had been following {{user}} for several minutes.

He had collapsed against a brick wall, barely conscious. His clothes were filthy, one side of his body was bleeding, and his breathing had become shallow. Yet one hand still clutched a battered folder against his chest as though the papers inside were more important than his own life.

Footsteps entered the alley.

Someone carrying a grocery bag stopped.

For several seconds, she simply stared.

The face was older. Thinner. Almost unrecognizable beneath exhaustion, blood, and dirt. But the eyes were unmistakable.

Suzy: "{{user}}?"

The grocery bag slipped from Suzy's hand.

She rushed toward him and dropped to her knees. Her hands went immediately to his shoulders and face, checking whether he was conscious. She wasn't a doctor, but she knew enough to understand that he was in terrible condition.

Suzy: "Oh my God..."

Her voice became smaller.

Suzy: "No. No, no, no..."

{{user}} tried to move. His body barely responded.

For one terrible second, Suzy saw the ten-year-old boy she remembered instead of the exhausted man lying in front of her. The years between them collapsed. She remembered running with him. She remembered being afraid with him. She remembered the little boy who had once trusted her enough to sleep beside her.

And now he was dying in an alley.

Suzy: "You absolute fucking idiot."

Her voice cracked as she pulled him upright.

Suzy: "Stay awake. Do you hear me? Stay awake."

{{user}}'s eyes slowly closed.

Suzy: "No. Don't you fucking dare."

She dragged his arm over her shoulder and struggled to lift him.

Suzy: "You don't disappear for fifteen fucking years and then die five minutes after I find you."

She managed to get him out of the alley.

The folder nearly slipped from his hand. Suzy caught it before it hit the ground.

She looked down at it.

Equations. Diagrams. Pages of handwritten notes. Political arguments. Strange technical drawings. References to energy conversion, institutions, economics, and something repeatedly called a "Vanometric Power Cell."

Suzy frowned.

She understood politics. She understood economics. She understood institutions and political incentives. She understood exactly how dangerous a new source of energy could become if somebody gained control over it.

The equations themselves, however, might as well have been written in another language.

Suzy: "What the hell have you been doing?"

Then she dragged him home.

At Suzy's Home

Several hours later, {{user}} was still asleep on Suzy's couch.

The room was quiet except for the occasional sound of pages turning. His injuries had been cleaned and bandaged, his clothes had been replaced with something more comfortable, and a blanket covered him. For the first time in fifteen years, he was sleeping somewhere without needing to keep one eye open for the next person coming through the door.

Suzy sat at the coffee table directly in front of him, surrounded by the contents of the battered folder she had taken from the alley. She had expected equations, perhaps some strange engineering notes, maybe the incoherent ramblings of someone who had spent too long alone. She had not expected this.

She skipped through the pages filled with mathematics. Suzy was a political consultant, not a physicist, and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise. Most of the equations meant absolutely nothing to her. She could recognize patterns, technical terminology, and the occasional reference to energy systems, but she couldn't tell whether the underlying physics was brilliant, impossible, or complete nonsense.

The political sections were different.

Those she understood.

Suzy slowly turned another page.

At the top was a question written in {{user}}'s handwriting.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TECHNOLOGY DESTROYS THE SCARCITY AN ECONOMY WAS BUILT AROUND?

Suzy stopped.

She read it again.

Suzy: "Okay..."

She leaned back slightly, studying the page.

Below the question, {{user}} had written several pages of arguments. Energy scarcity affected transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, housing, heating, cooling, computation, and almost every other major sector of modern civilization. But the manuscript didn't simply argue that eliminating energy scarcity would solve those problems.

Instead, it asked what would happen afterward.

Suzy turned the page.

IF EVERYONE CAN HAVE ENERGY, WHO DECIDES WHO GETS THE LAND?

Her eyebrows rose.

Another page.

IF MATERIAL PRODUCTION BECOMES NEARLY UNLIMITED, WHAT PREVENTS POLITICAL POWER FROM BECOMING THE NEW SCARCITY?

Suzy stared at that one for several seconds.

Suzy: "You've been thinking about this for a while."

{{user}} didn't move.

He remained completely asleep.

Suzy continued reading.

The manuscript kept doing this. It asked questions rather than simply providing answers. Some were economic. Some were political. Others were almost philosophical.

IF A GOVERNMENT CONTROLS ABUNDANCE, DOES ABUNDANCE BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OR TO THE GOVERNMENT?

IF THE PEOPLE CONTROL THE GOVERNMENT, WHO CONTROLS THE PEOPLE WHEN THE PEOPLE ARE WRONG?

IF DEMOCRACY PRODUCES A DISASTER, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

IF AN INSTITUTION EXISTS TO PROTECT SOCIETY, WHAT STOPS IT FROM EVENTUALLY PROTECTING ITSELF INSTEAD?

Suzy slowly lowered the page.

She had spent years working inside politics. She had watched candidates promise things they never intended to deliver, watched institutions protect their own interests, watched politicians turn genuine suffering into campaign material, and watched voters become trapped between choices that had already been structured for them.

She knew these questions were not academic exercises.

They were dangerous questions.

She picked up another page.

WHAT IF HUMANITY HAS ENOUGH POWER TO SOLVE ITS MATERIAL PROBLEMS BUT NOT ENOUGH WISDOM TO USE THAT POWER?

Suzy stared at the sentence.

For the first time, the amusement disappeared completely from her face.

Suzy: "What the fuck happened to you?"

There was no answer.

{{user}} continued sleeping.

Suzy looked toward him, then back at the manuscript.

She finally understood that the equations were not the most important thing in the folder. They were merely the technological possibility that had forced {{user}} to confront a much larger problem.

He wasn't simply trying to invent an energy source.

He was trying to figure out what civilization should become if the invention worked.

Suzy turned another page.

Near the end of one section, she found a short paragraph that had clearly been written after everything else.

TECHNOLOGY CAN CHANGE WHAT HUMANITY IS CAPABLE OF. IT CANNOT DECIDE WHAT HUMANITY SHOULD DO.

Suzy smiled faintly.

Suzy: "Now that's something I understand."

She closed the folder for a moment and looked at the sleeping man in front of her.

Fifteen years ago, he had been a frightened child running beside her.

Now he had apparently spent those fifteen years running from governments, criminals, police, borders, and whatever else the world had thrown at him while simultaneously trying to redesign civilization.

Suzy shook her head.

Suzy: "You really couldn't have picked a normal hobby, could you?"

She opened the folder again.

This time, she began reading from the beginning.

She wasn't interested in pretending she understood the science. If the Vanometric Power Cell was real, she would leave the physics to someone who actually understood it.

What interested her was everything that came after.

Who would control it.

Who would own it.

Who would benefit from it.

What institutions would survive it.

And what kind of political system could prevent humanity from turning technological abundance into another instrument of domination.

She kept reading until the room became completely silent.

Eventually, {{user}} stirred.

His breathing changed first. Then his fingers moved beneath the blanket. His eyes slowly opened.

Suzy noticed immediately.

She closed the folder.

Suzy: "Oh, good."

{{user}} looked around the unfamiliar room, then toward her.

Suzy: "You're finally awake."

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

Suzy: "Now explain something to me."

Her expression was calm, but there was an unmistakable edge underneath it.

Suzy: "How the hell did you end up in an alley in New York?"

She glanced toward the folder.

Suzy: "And don't tell me you were just taking a walk."

She stared at him for another moment.

Suzy: "I find you half-dead in an alley clutching fifteen years' worth of equations and political philosophy, and apparently you've been trying to redesign civilization."

She shook her head.

Suzy: "Were you seriously about to die in an alley while writing a fucking science-fiction novel?"

Her eyes narrowed.

Suzy: "Because if you were, {{user}}, I swear to God, I am going to kill you myself."

Episode 2 : "What if a Nation has Power Than it Could Consume?"

For the first time in fifteen years, {{user}} stopped running.

Suzy gave him food, clothes, medical care, and a place to stay. More importantly, she gave him a reason to remain somewhere. Under a new identity, {{user}} began working inside her firm while continuing his real work in secret: refining the Vanometric Power Cell and writing the strange, unfinished manuscript that had grown alongside it.

Suzy became more than his rescuer.

She became his first collaborator.

She already knew the world was broken. Her career had taken her deep into politics and institutions, where she had seen corruption, manipulation, inequality, and incompetence operating behind respectable names. {{user}}'s manuscript gave those observations a different shape.

The Vanometric Power Cell was not merely an energy project.

It was the foundation of an idea.

And the idea was becoming an ideology.

But the manuscript was incomplete, the technology was unproven, and the two of them were still only two people.

They needed knowledge.

They needed people capable of challenging them.

And, eventually, they would need people willing to believe in what they were building.

Suzy knew there was only one way to find them.

They had to speak.

So, despite knowing how dangerous that decision could become, she took their unfinished work and placed it before the academic world.

On February 5, 2031, the two of them walked onto a stage at Harvard University expecting to present a paper.

Instead, they started something neither of them would ever be able to take back.

---

February 5, 2031 — Harvard University

Harvard's annual International Interdisciplinary Symposium was one of the institution's most prestigious academic gatherings. Professors, researchers, economists, political theorists, physicists, sociologists, medical scientists, engineers, and legal scholars had gathered precisely because the symposium was designed to force disciplines that normally remained separated to collide.

The afternoon session had been scheduled under the deliberately provocative title:

THE FUTURE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION: SCARCITY, INSTITUTIONS, AND TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS

At the center of the stage stood Jessica “Jisoo” Kim, the symposium's moderator, calmly looking down at the program in her hands.

Beside her were two additional chairs.

Suzy and {{user}} walked onto the stage.

Suzy was not an unknown face at Harvard. She had studied there, built an increasingly influential political-consulting firm afterward, and gained a reputation for doing something most consultants preferred not to admit was possible: actually winning elections.

Her company had helped several Senate campaigns in Texas, particularly candidates who had initially been considered unlikely to win.

Now she was standing on Harvard's most prestigious interdisciplinary stage.

Jisoo: "Our scheduled presentation is titled, 'Post-Scarcity Institutional Structures and the Future of Human Civilization.' Please welcome Susan “Suzy” Bae and {{user}}."

Polite applause filled the auditorium.

Suzy stepped toward the podium.

Suzy: "Thank you. We were originally scheduled to present research concerning institutional responses to cancer treatment accessibility."

Several medical researchers nodded.

Then Suzy smiled.

Suzy: "We aren't going to do that."

The applause died almost immediately.

Professor Michael Rosen: "I'm sorry?"

Suzy ignored the interruption and clicked the presentation.

The original title disappeared.

One word replaced it.

ELVIANISM

The room became noticeably quieter.

Suzy: "We propose a political and socioeconomic framework designed for a civilization approaching technological abundance."

Professor Elena Vargas, an economist from Stanford, leaned toward the person beside her.

Professor Vargas: "They're presenting a political ideology at an interdisciplinary symposium?"

Another slide appeared.

THE DOCTRINE OF VIABLE SOVEREIGNTY

Suzy: "Our thesis begins with a question."

She looked across the auditorium.

Suzy: "What happens to institutions designed around scarcity when the technology supporting civilization begins eliminating the scarcity those institutions were created to manage?"

No one laughed.

Suzy: "Food scarcity. Energy scarcity. Housing scarcity. Labor scarcity. Capital scarcity. Information scarcity. Each produces systems for allocation. Those systems create incentives, hierarchies, industries, laws, and political interests."

Another slide appeared.

SCARCITY → ALLOCATION → INSTITUTION → POWER

Suzy: "But what happens when the original scarcity disappears?"

Professor Daniel Mercer: "You're assuming it disappears."

Suzy: "Yes."

Professor Mercer: "That's an enormous assumption."

Suzy: "Correct."

The answer irritated him.

Professor Mercer: "You're constructing a political philosophy on hypothetical technology."

Suzy: "Partially."

Professor Mercer: "Then why should anyone take the political philosophy seriously?"

Suzy: "Because the opposite question is equally important."

She turned toward the audience.

Suzy: "What happens if the technology arrives before the political system is prepared for it?"

That silenced the room.

Suzy: "We spend enormous amounts of time asking whether technology is possible. We spend considerably less time asking what happens if it succeeds."

{{user}} remained beside her, silent.

The next slide appeared.

VANOMETRIC POWER CELL

The atmosphere changed.

Suzy: "This is where our theoretical work becomes considerably more difficult to discuss."

{{user}} walked toward the whiteboard.

He picked up a marker.

Without saying anything, he began writing.

At first, the equations looked familiar to the physicists in the room.

Then they became strange.

Energy relationships were rearranged. Variables appeared to describe vacuum fluctuations, field interactions, conversion efficiency, and a mechanism that seemed to exploit physical behavior in a way several physicists found immediately suspicious.

Professor Iriana “Irene” Bae, sitting several rows from the front, stopped taking notes.

Her expression changed.

She leaned forward.

She had expected another speculative energy proposal.

Instead, she was seeing something that was mathematically coherent enough to be disturbing.

Irene: "Wait."

Suzy glanced toward her.

Irene: "Go back."

{{user}} continued.

Irene: "That term."

He added another transformation.

Irene: "That's not supposed to converge."

Professor Adrian Cole: "Professor Bae?"

Irene: "Give me a second."

{{user}} finished the derivation and stepped away.

The whiteboard was covered.

Irene stared at it.

Irene: "It shouldn't converge."

Suzy returned to the podium.

Suzy: "The Vanometric Power Cell is our proposed energy-generation technology."

Professor Cole: "Proposed?"

Suzy: "Yes."

Professor Cole: "Does it exist?"

Suzy: "A prototype exists."

The auditorium erupted.

Professor Rosen: "Then demonstrate it."

Professor Cole: "If you possess a working prototype, why are you presenting equations instead of experimental data?"

Professor Vargas: "How much energy does it produce?"

Professor Nakamura: "What is the input requirement?"

Professor Rosen: "What is the efficiency?"

Professor Cole: "What prevents runaway production?"

Professor Vargas: "What is the material requirement?"

Professor Cole: "How stable is it?"

Professor Nakamura: "How reproducible is the result?"

Professor Rosen: "And what happens if the containment system fails?"

Suzy waited.

Suzy: "We aren't demonstrating it."

Professor Cole: "Why?"

Suzy: "Because we're not giving away the technology."

Several people laughed.

Suzy did not.

Suzy: "I'm serious."

Professor Cole: "You expect this audience to accept a revolutionary energy technology without evidence?"

Suzy: "No."

Professor Cole: "Then what exactly are you asking us to accept?"

Suzy: "The possibility."

Professor Cole: "That's not science."

Suzy: "I didn't say it was."

That answer produced another wave of murmurs.

Suzy: "The science can be independently examined when we are prepared to release it. What we're discussing today is the political problem that would exist if it works."

Professor Vargas: "And if it doesn't?"

Suzy: "Then our political framework has to work without it."

Irene looked toward Suzy.

That answer clearly mattered to her.

Suzy: "That distinction is essential."

The next slide appeared.

WHAT IF A NATION HAD MORE ENERGY THAN IT COULD CONSUME?

The room went silent again.

Suzy: "Imagine a nation possessing an energy source so abundant that national electricity demand becomes trivial compared with production capacity."

The screen displayed a hypothetical city.

Suzy: "What changes first?"

She clicked.

WATER

Suzy: "Desalination becomes extraordinarily cheap. Water purification becomes easier. Agriculture no longer depends on energy-intensive processes being economically prohibitive."

Another click.

FOOD

Suzy: "Vertical agriculture, climate-controlled agriculture, synthetic food production, refrigeration, transportation and processing become radically cheaper."

Another.

MANUFACTURING

Suzy: "Factories no longer organize production around energy costs in the same way. Automation becomes cheaper. Industrial heat becomes abundant. Recycling becomes economically attractive."

Another.

TRANSPORTATION

Suzy: "Electric transportation becomes dramatically cheaper to operate. Synthetic fuels become easier to produce. Shipping and logistics change."

Another.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Suzy: "Heating. Cooling. Water systems. Waste processing. Construction. Mining. Data centers."

She stopped.

Suzy: "Now ask the uncomfortable question."

The next slide appeared.

WHAT BECOMES SCARCE?

Professor Mercer: "Land."

Suzy: "Correct."

Professor Vargas: "Skilled labor."

Suzy: "Correct."

Professor Nakamura: "Raw materials."

Suzy: "Some."

Professor Cole: "Time."

Suzy: "Yes."

Tzuyu: "Attention."

The voice came from the audience.

Suzy looked toward her.

Lin Tzuyu sat several rows back, watching with an unreadable expression.

Tzuyu: "And social trust."

Suzy nodded.

Suzy: "Exactly."

She returned to the presentation.

Suzy: "Post-scarcity does not mean literally everything becomes infinite. It means the dominant constraints change."

Jennifer “Jennie” Kim, sitting near the center aisle, raised her hand.

Jisoo: "Professor Kim."

Jennie: "You're treating energy abundance as though it automatically produces social abundance."

Suzy: "I'm not."

Jennie: "Then explain the distinction."

Suzy: "Energy abundance changes what is economically possible. It doesn't determine what society chooses to do with those possibilities."

Jennie: "So if energy becomes effectively free, why wouldn't existing corporations simply own the machines producing it?"

Suzy: "They could."

Jennie: "And then?"

Suzy: "Then the technological achievement would exist alongside artificial scarcity."

Jennie: "Which means?"

Suzy: "The resource would be abundant physically but scarce politically."

Jennie leaned forward.

Jennie: "Good. Now we're actually discussing economics."

The next slide appeared.

ABUNDANT RESOURCE + CONTROLLED ACCESS = ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY

Suzy: "Imagine the VPC becomes commercially reproducible."

Professor Vargas: "Assuming it does."

Suzy: "Assuming it does."

Professor Vargas: "Who owns it?"

Suzy: "That's the question."

Professor Vargas: "The inventor?"

Suzy: "Why?"

Professor Vargas: "Because they invented it."

Suzy: "Does invention create permanent ownership over the consequences of a technology?"

Professor Vargas: "That's how intellectual property works."

Suzy: "Should it?"

The room stirred.

Professor Vargas: "That's a philosophical question."

Suzy: "Correct."

Professor Vargas: "Not an economic one."

Suzy: "The distinction disappears when ownership determines access to a resource capable of reshaping an entire economy."

Jennie raised her hand again.

Jennie: "Let me make this harder."

Suzy smiled.

Suzy: "Please."

Jennie: "Suppose your VPC produces enough energy for ten million people. The nation only needs one million people's worth of energy."

She paused.

Jennie: "What happens to the surplus?"

Suzy: "Depends on the system."

Jennie: "Exactly. So what prevents someone from selling the surplus?"

Suzy: "Nothing."

Jennie: "Then how is this different from ordinary capitalism?"

Suzy: "It isn't."

Jennie blinked.

Suzy: "Not automatically."

Jennie leaned back.

Suzy: "Technology doesn't abolish political choices. It merely creates new choices."

Jennie: "Then what is Elvianism actually proposing?"

Suzy: "That abundance should be treated as a change in the material conditions of society, not merely as another commodity opportunity."

Jennie: "That's still vague."

Suzy: "Then let's make it concrete."

Suzy changed the slide.

IF ENERGY IS ABUNDANT, WHY SHOULD ACCESS TO ENERGY REMAIN A SOURCE OF POWER?

Silence.

Suzy: "If the answer is 'because someone owns the machines,' then we've preserved scarcity artificially."

Professor Mercer: "That's an argument for public ownership."

Suzy: "Not necessarily."

Professor Mercer: "Why not?"

Suzy: "Because governments can monopolize resources too."

Jisoo looked up from her notes.

Suzy: "A state monopoly can be just as capable of turning abundance into dependency."

Jisoo: "Then who controls it?"

Suzy: "That's the harder question."

Jisoo: "And if the public controls it?"

Suzy: "Define public control."

Jisoo: "Democratic ownership."

Suzy: "What does a citizen actually vote on?"

Jisoo: "Policy."

Suzy: "And who writes the policy?"

Jisoo paused.

Suzy: "Who writes the question? Who controls the information? Who decides which alternatives appear on the ballot? Who determines whether a technically legal decision violates the public's actual intention?"

The political scientists began taking notes faster.

Suzy: "Democracy can exist while the available choices are manipulated."

Tzuyu raised her hand.

Tzuyu: "Then you're suggesting that sovereignty isn't merely the ability to vote."

Suzy: "Correct."

Tzuyu: "It's the ability to meaningfully determine outcomes."

Suzy: "Yes."

Tzuyu: "Then what happens when the majority makes a decision that is demonstrably harmful?"

Suzy: "Who determines that?"

Tzuyu: "Experts."

Suzy: "And what happens when experts are wrong?"

Tzuyu: "The public."

Suzy: "And what happens when the public is wrong?"

That question hung in the auditorium.

For several seconds, nobody answered.

{{user}} quietly wrote something on a sheet of paper.

He pushed it toward Suzy.

She read it.

Then she placed it beneath the microphone.

A SYSTEM MUST BE CAPABLE OF CORRECTING BOTH THE GOVERNED AND THE GOVERNORS.

Jisoo stared at the sentence.

Jisoo: "That's the real problem."

Suzy looked toward her.

Jisoo: "Most political systems assume one side is supposed to correct the other. Governments correct citizens. Citizens correct governments. Courts correct governments. Legislatures correct executives."

She tapped the paper.

Jisoo: "But what corrects the system when both sides are wrong?"

Tzuyu answered.

Tzuyu: "Evidence."

Irene shook her head.

Irene: "Evidence doesn't make decisions."

Jennie: "People do."

Irene: "Then people need a mechanism for admitting they were wrong."

Suzy smiled faintly.

Suzy: "That's why we're calling it the Doctrine of Viable Sovereignty."

Professor Mercer: "You're giving sovereignty a condition."

Suzy: "Yes."

Professor Mercer: "What condition?"

Suzy: "Viability."

Professor Mercer: "Define viability."

Suzy paused.

This time, she didn't answer immediately.

She looked toward {{user}}.

He remained silent.

Then he wrote another line.

THE CAPACITY OF A SOCIETY TO CONTINUE EXISTING, ADAPTING, AND PROVIDING ITS MEMBERS WITH THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO LIVE AND PARTICIPATE.

Suzy read it.

Suzy: "That's our working definition."

Professor Vargas: "Working definition?"

Suzy: "The manuscript isn't finished."

Professor Vargas: "Then you're presenting an unfinished ideology."

Suzy: "Yes."

Professor Vargas: "Why?"

Suzy looked across the auditorium.

Suzy: "Because we're looking for people who can tell us where it breaks."

That answer changed the atmosphere.

This wasn't a polished ideological sales pitch.

They were deliberately placing an unfinished system in front of people capable of tearing it apart.

Tzuyu looked at {{user}} again.

Tzuyu: "And what happens if the VPC fails?"

{{user}} remained silent.

Suzy answered.

Suzy: "Then we continue without it."

Tzuyu: "And if your economic assumptions fail?"

Suzy: "We revise them."

Tzuyu: "If your political structure fails?"

Suzy: "We replace it."

Tzuyu: "If the ideology itself fails?"

Suzy stopped.

For the first time, the answer took longer.

Suzy: "Then it deserves to die."

The auditorium became completely silent.

Jisoo slowly looked up.

Jennie stopped writing.

Irene's eyes narrowed.

Tzuyu smiled faintly.

That was the answer she had been waiting for.

Then Jisoo asked the question that changed everything.

Jisoo: "If you actually possessed the means to create the post-scarcity society you're describing..."

She looked toward {{user}}.

Jisoo: "...what makes you believe humanity deserves it?"

Hundreds of academics turned toward him.

{{user}} stood silently beside the whiteboard.

Behind him were equations that several physicists insisted should not have worked.

In front of him were economists demanding an explanation for what abundance would do to markets, political scientists questioning the meaning of sovereignty, sociologists questioning human behavior, and philosophers questioning whether humanity could be trusted with unprecedented power.

Suzy stepped away from the podium.

For the first time since the presentation began, she deliberately left the question entirely to {{user}}.

The room waited.

And the unfinished ideology had finally reached its first truly impossible question.

If humanity could possess more power than it could consume, what would make humanity worthy of possessing it?

Episode 3 : "The Lithium is Shit"

Harvard had been a disaster.

The unfinished thesis had spread through academic circles, but not in the way Suzy and {{user}} had hoped. They became a joke. Some called them fatal idealists. Others called them dangerous fools. Most simply called them idiots who had confused political philosophy with science fiction.

Neither of them cared.

While professors debated whether Elvianism was naïve or insane, Suzy's garage continued operating.

Behind its ordinary walls, the Vanometric Power Cell was slowly becoming less ordinary. The prototype still shook, overheated, short-circuited, and occasionally threatened to remove another section of the building from existence, but it was no longer immediately exploding.

That alone counted as progress.

What Suzy and {{user}} did not know was that Harvard had attracted more than ridicule.

It had attracted attention.

---

March 5, 2031 — Suzy's Garage, somewhere on the New York frontier

The garage had long since stopped looking like a garage.

Half the space was occupied by salvaged equipment, old laboratory instruments, tangled cables, improvised cooling systems, handwritten calculations, and components that had no business being anywhere near one another. The other half belonged almost entirely to {{user}}.

In the center of the workbench sat the latest Vanometric Power Cell prototype.

It was ugly.

The casing was assembled from cheap industrial parts. The internal medium was still an experimental lithium-based matrix. Several instruments had been borrowed, broken, repaired, and apparently broken again. A faint vibration ran through the workbench as {{user}} adjusted another parameter.

The numbers climbed.

Then dropped.

Then climbed again.

{{user}} reached for another control.

A sharp electrical crack filled the garage.

The lights flickered.

Something inside the prototype released an angry metallic whine.

Irene: "Let me guess."

The voice came from the open garage entrance.

Irene Bae stood several meters away, arms folded, staring at the machine with the expression of a physicist who had just discovered a particularly offensive piece of engineering.

Irene: "You messed up the coupling between the Vanometric phase term and the stabilization coefficient. Specifically, the transition from your fourth-order fluctuation tensor into the negative-feedback loop."

She glanced upward.

There was a perfectly circular hole in the ceiling.

Irene: "And then it exploded."

Beside her stood Jennifer “Jennie” Kim.

Jennie looked completely out of place.

Her immaculate coat, expensive shoes, perfectly maintained hair, and absurdly expensive coffee suggested that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere between a private university lounge and a luxury apartment. She looked around the garage with visible disbelief, as though she had personally been offended by the existence of dust.

Jennie: "You told me this was a laboratory."

Irene: "It is."

Jennie: "This is a garage."

Irene: "A laboratory garage."

Jennie: "That is still a garage."

Irene ignored her and walked toward the workbench.

{{user}} barely had time to move aside before she examined the prototype.

Irene: "This is junk."

She carefully opened the casing.

Irene: "Literally junk."

Her eyes narrowed.

Irene: "You're using lithium as the medium?"

She looked toward {{user}}.

Irene: "Why?"

She pulled several sheets of paper from beneath the prototype and began writing rapidly.

Irene: "Your equations aren't fundamentally wrong. Your medium is."

Jennie took a sip of her coffee.

Jennie: "That's comforting."

Irene: "You need a much denser radioactive substrate."

Jennie: "Less comforting."

Irene: "Radium could work. Uranium might work better depending on the excitation threshold."

Jennie slowly lowered her coffee.

Jennie: "You just said uranium like you were recommending a different battery brand."

Irene: "It's not that complicated."

Jennie: "It is literally uranium."

Irene continued writing.

Irene: "The quantum fluctuations aren't being captured efficiently because the lithium matrix is dissipating the coherence before the Vanometric field can stabilize."

Jennie: "English."

Irene: "The lithium is shit."

Jennie: "Thank you."

Before Irene could continue, footsteps approached from the side entrance.

Suzy walked into the garage carrying two paper bags.

She stopped.

Her eyes moved from Irene.

To Jennie.

To the open machine.

To the equations covering her workbench.

Then back to the two complete strangers standing inside her garage.

Suzy: "..."

She slowly lowered the bags.

Suzy: "Who the hell are you?"

Jennie raised an eyebrow.

Jennie: "Jennifer “Jennie” Kim."

She said it with the effortless confidence of someone accustomed to people already knowing her name.

Jennie: "Professor. Berkeley."

Suzy stared at her.

Jennie: "And, before you ask, yes, this is my coffee."

She lifted the cup slightly.

Jennie: "It costs more than most of the equipment in this garage."

Irene sighed.

Irene: "I'm Irene Bae."

Suzy's expression changed slightly.

She knew the names.

Everyone at Harvard had heard of them.

Irene Bae was a renowned quantum physicist. Jennifer “Jennie” Kim was a Berkeley economist with an equally intimidating reputation, backed by an absurd family fortune that had made academic tenure almost seem like a hobby rather than a career.

Neither, however, was someone Suzy knew personally.

Suzy: "You came into my garage."

Irene: "The door was open."

Suzy: "That isn't an invitation."

Jennie: "Technically, it was."

Suzy stared at her.

Jennie: "The garage door was open."

Suzy slowly looked toward the open garage door.

Then back at Jennie.

Suzy: "That's not how invitations work."

Jennie: "We'll disagree."

Irene returned her attention to the VPC.

Irene: "We came because of the symposium."

Suzy's expression hardened.

Suzy: "Harvard?"

Irene: "Yes."

Jennie smiled faintly.

Jennie: "Your presentation was terrible."

Suzy blinked.

Jennie: "Politically reckless. Economically incomplete. Scientifically irresponsible."

She took another sip.

Jennie: "I loved it."

Suzy stared at her for a moment before letting out a short laugh.

Suzy: "That's probably the nicest insult I've received all month."

Jennie walked closer to the workbench, carefully avoiding a puddle of unidentified liquid.

Jennie: "I wanted to see whether the machine actually existed."

She glanced at Irene.

Jennie: "Apparently, it does."

Irene: "The underlying physical principle is plausible."

Suzy looked at Irene.

Suzy: "Plausible?"

Irene: "The equations are crude. The prototype is terrible. The materials are inadequate. The stabilization system is barely functional."

She paused.

Irene: "But the principle is interesting."

Suzy folded her arms.

Suzy: "How interesting?"

Irene looked at the Vanometric Power Cell.

Irene: "Potentially civilization-changing."

The garage fell silent.

Jennie finally placed her coffee on the workbench.

Jennie: "Okay."

She looked at {{user}}.

Jennie: "How much money do you need?"

Suzy immediately looked at her.

Suzy: "Excuse me?"

Jennie: "For this."

She gestured toward the machine.

Jennie: "I'm funding it."

Suzy: "You haven't even asked abou-."

Jennie: "I don't particularly care."

She shrugged.

Jennie: "My family has more money than I know what to do with. If this works, I'd rather spend some of it on something interesting."

Irene glanced at her.

Irene: "That's not how research funding works."

Jennie: "It is when I pay for it."

Suzy stared at the two women.

Five minutes ago, they had been complete strangers.

Now Irene was dismantling her prototype, and Jennie was apparently volunteering an unspecified portion of a fortune to rebuild it.

Suzy looked at {{user}}, then at the damaged VPC.

The machine gave another faint metallic hum.

For months, they had been working almost entirely alone.

Now, for the first time, someone had come looking for them.

And neither Irene nor Jennie had come to laugh.

Episode 4 : "The Finger-Chicken"

By the end of March, the strange little group had already become something none of them had originally intended.

Irene had spent ten days in New York, long enough to tear apart the VPC prototype, rebuild parts of it, fill half the garage with calculations, and leave behind a list of materials that made Suzy question whether she had accidentally started a nuclear laboratory. Eventually, Irene returned to her laboratory in Korea, promising to continue the work from there.

Jennie, meanwhile, had not left the project.

In fact, Suzy soon discovered that Jennie was considerably wealthier than she had initially implied. What she had casually described as "having money" turned out to be a fortune large enough to make the cost of laboratories, equipment, researchers, and experimental facilities almost irrelevant.

The garage changed accordingly.

It was still a garage, technically. It simply had more air conditioners, better tools, more laboratory equipment, more computers, more cables, and considerably more things that Suzy was afraid to touch.

Jennie spent most of her time reading the manifesto.

And the more she read, the more offended she became.

Not offended because she thought it was stupid.

Quite the opposite.

She was offended because the ideas were good enough to force her to reconsider assumptions she had spent years treating as obvious. The economics were unfinished, the political structure was naïve in places, and the social theory was barely developed—but beneath the roughness was something disturbingly coherent.

So Jennie did what Jennie always did when something annoyed her.

She found someone smarter.

She contacted an old acquaintance from Berkeley, someone she considered one of the finest thinkers she had ever encountered—perhaps one of the finest in the world.

Someone who had spent years studying how people behaved, how societies constructed themselves, how institutions gained legitimacy, and how entire social orders could change without anyone realizing the transformation had already begun.

By the time Jennie drove Suzy and {{user}} across Berkeley, that person had already received the manifesto.

And, apparently, had already collected an alarming amount of data on people.

---

March 30, 2031, On the Road Somewhere

The car rolled through Berkeley, Jennie sitting in the passenger seat while Suzy and {{user}} sat in the back, leaving Jennie as the newest unwilling participant in whatever bizarre intellectual expedition this had become.

Suzy: "So... where exactly are you taking us?"

Jennie kept her eyes on the road, looking profoundly irritated by the question despite being the one who had insisted they come.

Jennie: "Somewhere useful."

Suzy raised an eyebrow.

Suzy: "That's not an answer."

Jennie: "Fine. I'm taking you to someone who might be able to fix your manifesto."

Suzy blinked. Jennie finally glanced at them through the rear-view mirror.

Jennie: "I read the entire thing."

She paused, visibly annoyed by what she was about to admit.

Jennie: "And I hate saying this, but you're both more brilliant than I am."

Suzy stared.

Jennie: "Economically, especially in terms of imagination. Your framework goes places I wouldn't normally consider because I would dismiss half of them as economically impossible."

She sighed.

Jennie: "If you didn't have those Vanometric Power Cells, I'd call the whole thing political science fiction."

Suzy slowly looked toward {{user}}.

Suzy: "Did she just compliment us?"

Jennie: "Don't get used to it."

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

Jennie: "But brilliance isn't enough. Your manifesto has an ideological framework, but it's still crude. You need someone obsessed with social engineering. Someone who studies how societies actually form, behave, collapse, and reorganize."

The car finally stopped.

Jennie looked at them.

Jennie: "Fortunately, the person who can help establish your ideology is here."

She got out.

Suzy and {{user}} followed.

They stopped.

In front of them was a tiny chicken stall.

There was a long silence.

Suzy: "...You're fucking kidding me."

In The Chicken Stall

Inside the stall, Haewon was sitting across from Sullyoon, their hands placed on the counter.

Haewon: "Ready?"

Sullyoon: "No."

Haewon: "Excellent."

SLAP.

Sullyoon: "OW!"

Haewon burst out laughing.

Haewon: "Again!"

Sullyoon: "Why do I keep losing?!"

Haewon: "Because all your reflexes went into your face."

Sullyoon stared at her.

Haewon: "Seriously. Look at you. Pretty face, zero survival instincts."

Sullyoon: "That's not how reflexes work!"

Haewon: "Clearly they do."

Sullyoon reluctantly put her hand back on the counter.

Sullyoon: "One more."

Haewon: "That's the spirit."

SLAP.

Sullyoon: "HEY!"

The stall was otherwise completely quiet. No customers, no workers, just the two of them messing around while Haewon treated the hand game like a military operation.

Then—

SMACK.

Jennie's palm landed firmly against the back of Haewon's head.

Haewon: "OW! HEY!"

Jennie stood behind her with the expression of a professor who had just discovered a student committing academic fraud.

Jennie: "Leave the poor girl alone if you don't want to get an F in your class."

Haewon slowly turned around.

Haewon: "...Professor Jennie?"

Jennie: "Yes."

Haewon: "Why are you here?"

Jennie: "Why are you playing hand slap instead of studying?"

Haewon: "I own this stall."

Jennie: "And?"

Haewon: "...And I'm working."

Jennie: "You're slapping your classmate."

Haewon: "That's research."

Jennie: "I'm taking over this stall for today."

Haewon: "WHAT?!"

Jennie pulled out some money and placed it on the counter.

Jennie: "Your payment."

Haewon: "You can't just take over my business!"

Jennie: "I can."

Haewon: "That's abuse of power!"

Jennie: "Correct."

Haewon stared at her in disbelief.

Jennie: "Unless you'd prefer I grade your next examinations honestly."

Haewon: "...You're evil."

Jennie: "Chicken."

Haewon: "What?"

Jennie: "Get me chicken."

Haewon: "You actually don't care."

Jennie: "No."

Haewon grumbled while getting up.

Haewon: "Fine. Rich professor dictatorship."

Jennie turned toward the back of the stall.

Jennie: "And you."

Sullyoon froze.

Jennie: "Stop encouraging her."

Sullyoon: "...Yes, professor."

Suzy leaned slightly toward {{user}}, watching Haewon reluctantly prepare chicken.

Suzy: "Is that her? The one we're supposed to get help from?"

Before anyone could answer, the stall's entrance opened.

Tzuyu stepped inside.

Tzuyu: "Sullyoon."

Sullyoon immediately straightened.

Tzuyu: "I saw your latest test. Much better. Your analysis was actually quite good."

Sullyoon: "Thank you."

Tzuyu smiled before looking toward Jennie. Then her eyes moved past her and settled on Suzy and {{user}}.

She recognized them immediately.

The symposium at Harvard had not been particularly difficult to remember. The two people whose ideas had caused such a spectacular intellectual disaster were standing in front of her again, except this time they were apparently standing inside a chicken stall.

Tzuyu: "Jennie? What are you doing here? A chicken stall doesn't exactly look like your style."

Haewon: "She's being mean."

Tzuyu: "I noticed."

Jennie looked Tzuyu up and down, already looking irritated by her calm expression.

Jennie: "Are you a professor on Pornhub?"

Tzuyu slowly closed her eyes.

Jennie: "Because you look far too pretty to be a professor."

She paused.

Jennie: "Do you fuck your students too?"

Tzuyu: "...I regret coming here."

Haewon: "See?! She's mean!"

Tzuyu sighed and looked back toward Suzy and {{user}}.

Tzuyu: "I've seen you two before."

Suzy raised an eyebrow.

Suzy: "Harvard?"

Tzuyu: "Yes."

Tzuyu looked at {{user}} for a moment longer.

Tzuyu: "I remember the manifesto."

Jennie immediately pointed toward the table.

Jennie: "Good. Sit."

Tzuyu: "Why?"

Jennie: "Because you're the reason we're here. Fuck, you don't read my emails?"

Tzuyu blinked.

Tzuyu: "Your emails?"

Jennie: "Yes. The email I sent you."

Tzuyu: "...I don't think I've opened it."

Jennie's expression went completely blank.

Jennie: "You didn't open it."

Tzuyu: "Apparently not."

Jennie: "I spent three paragraphs explaining why I needed you to meet these people."

Tzuyu: "I'm sorry."

Jennie: "You could have at least opened it."

Tzuyu: "I was busy."

Jennie: "Of course you were."

Jennie rubbed her forehead, visibly struggling not to become genuinely angry.

Jennie: "I knew I should have called you."

Tzuyu: "You could have."

Jennie: "I shouldn't have to call someone to tell them to read an email."

Tzuyu gave her a completely neutral look.

Tzuyu: "Yet here we are."

Jennie stared at her.

Jennie: "...I already hate this meeting."

Haewon: "It's going great."

Jennie: "Nobody asked you."

Jennie placed the manifesto on the table.

Jennie: "Read."

Tzuyu picked it up.

Her expression changed almost immediately.

Tzuyu read silently for several minutes. The crude language, the furious criticism of institutions, the strange philosophical structure beneath it, the proposed social framework—it was messy, radical, and strangely systematic.

She had already seen fragments of the argument at Harvard. Now, with the complete document in her hands, the structure beneath the chaos was much easier to recognize.

Tzuyu finally looked up.

Tzuyu: "...Who wrote this?"

Jennie pointed toward {{user}}.

Jennie: "Him."

Tzuyu looked at {{user}}, then back at the manuscript.

Tzuyu: "And you actually believe this can work?"

{{user}} nodded.

Tzuyu stared at him for another moment.

Tzuyu: "...Interesting."

Thirty Minutes Later...

Tzuyu sat across from {{user}}, the manifesto open between them. Jennie stood nearby, while Haewon had abandoned the counter entirely and joined the table with a mountain of chicken.

Tzuyu: "Your biggest problem isn't economics. It's social construction."

{{user}} explained his framework, and Tzuyu immediately began firing questions about institutions, incentives, legitimacy, hierarchy, and how an ideology could reproduce itself without becoming coercive.

She was relentless. Every assumption was challenged, every vague principle was pulled apart, and every proposed solution was tested against the behavior of actual human beings rather than idealized citizens.

Jennie watched from the side, increasingly irritated by how naturally Tzuyu had taken control of the discussion.

It was exactly why she had brought her.

It was also exactly why Jennie found her so damn annoying.

Haewon suddenly leaned over the manifesto, pointing at a section with a greasy finger.

Haewon: "This part's wrong."

Jennie: "Don't touch the manifesto with your chicken fingers."

Haewon: "I'm making a point."

She took another bite, eyes still moving across the page.

Haewon: "You keep saying every national decision should come back to the people. Okay. Fine. But what happens when the people don't actually get to decide?"

The table went quiet.

Haewon: "Like, imagine you ask ten million people what they want. Six million say yes, four million say no. Sounds simple, right?"

She tapped the page.

Haewon: "But then the government makes the question stupid."

Jennie stopped looking annoyed for a moment.

Haewon: "Not 'Do you want this?' They ask three different questions, put them together, change the order, hide one option inside another, make people vote for a package instead of the thing they actually care about. Then they say, 'The people voted.'"

Sullyoon slowly looked down at the manifesto.

Sullyoon: "So the problem isn't only who gets the vote."

Haewon pointed at her.

Haewon: "Exactly."

Sullyoon: "It's who decides what the vote means."

Haewon stared at her for a second.

Haewon: "...Yeah."

She suddenly grabbed a napkin from beside the chicken basket and began scribbling on it.

Haewon: "Then don't let them control the question."

She drew a crude rectangle.

Haewon: "Every national decision goes onto this."

Sullyoon: "A phone?"

Haewon: "Yeah. Everyone gets the exact same thing on their phone. No parliament rewriting it afterward, no politician translating it into some bullshit version, no ten-page question nobody reads."

She scribbled faster.

Haewon: "And here's the crazy part."

She looked toward Sullyoon.

Haewon: "You don't just vote yes or no."

Sullyoon: "Then what?"

Haewon: "You vote what happens if they ignore you."

Sullyoon's eyes widened slightly.

Haewon continued drawing, her handwriting becoming increasingly chaotic as the idea formed.

Haewon: "If the government makes a decision that directly contradicts the vote, the phone system checks it. If they try to sneak around the wording, people vote again. If they keep doing it..."

She paused.

Haewon: "...we punish the government."

Jennie: "How?"

Haewon: "I don't know yet."

She looked at Sullyoon.

Haewon: "We need something painful."

Sullyoon: "Not physically."

Haewon: "Obviously."

Sullyoon leaned closer to the napkin.

Sullyoon: "What if their authority gets reduced automatically?"

Haewon stopped.

Sullyoon: "Not removed completely. Just... every time they deliberately go against a verified national vote, something they control gets taken away. Budget authority. Emergency powers. Appointment powers. Whatever the system lets them use."

Haewon slowly smiled.

Haewon: "So they can technically disobey."

Sullyoon: "But every time they do, they become weaker."

Haewon: "And if they keep doing it..."

Sullyoon: "...eventually they can't govern."

Haewon slapped the table.

Haewon: "THAT."

She immediately began adding more lines to the napkin.

Haewon: "And the people can trigger another vote if enough people think the government is cheating."

Sullyoon: "But then people could abuse it."

Haewon: "Then make the trigger harder the more often they use it."

Sullyoon: "And easier when the government keeps violating votes."

Haewon: "Yes!"

The two of them leaned over the napkin together, rapidly building on each other's ideas. What had started as a greasy interruption had turned into an improvised mechanism for making elected authority progressively more expensive to abuse.

Tzuyu had stopped reading the manifesto entirely.

She watched the two girls instead.

Haewon had no polished terminology for what she was doing. She did not talk about preference aggregation, agenda-setting, institutional capture, or democratic legitimacy. She simply noticed where the machine could lie to the people and started looking for a way to make the machine hurt itself whenever it did.

Sullyoon was different. She caught the weaknesses in Haewon's ideas almost as quickly as Haewon produced them, quietly closing loopholes before they could become problems.

Tzuyu's expression softened.

Tzuyu: "That's brilliant."

Haewon looked up.

Haewon: "Which part?"

Tzuyu: "Both of you."

Sullyoon blinked.

Tzuyu glanced down at the increasingly ridiculous napkin covered in arrows, boxes, crossed-out ideas, and chicken grease.

Tzuyu: "You're not trying to make government perfectly honest."

She looked at Haewon.

Tzuyu: "You're making dishonesty accumulate a cost."

Then she looked at Sullyoon.

Tzuyu: "And you're making sure the mechanism doesn't become another loophole."

Haewon grinned.

Haewon: "We're pretty good."

Sullyoon: "...I think we are."

Jennie: "Can we please stop congratulating ourselves and get back to the manifesto?"

Haewon: "You're just jealous."

Jennie: "I'm not jealous."

Haewon: "You are."

Jennie: "I'm going to fail you."

Haewon: "See? Jealous."

Jennie stared at her in exhausted disbelief.

Meanwhile, Tzuyu quietly smiled.

For the first time that afternoon, she was no longer looking at the manifesto.

She was looking at what might become its first genuinely original political mechanism.

Tzuyu eventually tapped the section concerning the Vanometric Power Cells.

Tzuyu: "There's still one thing I don't believe."

She looked at {{user}}.

Tzuyu: "This."

Jennie: "Neither do I."

Tzuyu: "It sounds like science fiction."

She leaned forward.

Tzuyu: "Okay. Is it real?"

Silence.

Tzuyu studied {{user}} for a moment.

Tzuyu: "You're only experimenting in theory, right?"

She narrowed her eyes.

Tzuyu: "You don't actually think you're going to build a society, do you?"

Episode 5 : "Fuck off, The Adults Are Talking!"

The agreement of Tzuyu joinning the gang changed everything.

Until now, the group had been a strange collection of brilliant people orbiting an increasingly absurd idea. Suzy understood politics and institutions. {{user}} understood society and human behavior. Jennie understood economics. Irene understood the physical sciences and, more importantly, the technology that made their supposedly impossible future less impossible.

But Tzuyu understood the thing none of them could fully quantify: how societies actually behave.

Her agreement gave Elvianism something it had been missing—a genuine social analyst who could challenge its assumptions instead of merely admiring them.

Meanwhile, Berkeley was becoming increasingly unstable.

Protests against America's expanding wars had grown from scattered demonstrations into something much larger. Global tensions were rising, especially as several developing countries began abandoning dollar-based trade and returning to metal-backed currencies after major gold discoveries in Africa. Governments were panicking, markets were reacting, and Berkeley's streets were filling with students demanding an end to the wars.

Suzy began moving her firm into Berkeley. {{user}} followed, bringing his research and increasingly ridiculous collection of notes with him.

---

September 28, 2031 — Haewon's Chicken Stall

The television above the counter played another news report.

News Anchor: "Tensions continue to escalate between the United States and several developing nations following their refusal to maintain dollar-denominated trade agreements. Several African states have announced new metal-backed currencies following significant gold discoveries—"

Haewon reached up and changed the channel.

The news immediately became a cartoon.

Sullyoon: "Hey. I was watching that."

Haewon: "If you're that interested in politics, go join the student protest today."

Sullyoon: "It's crowded."

Haewon: "Yes."

Sullyoon: "I don't like crowds."

Haewon: "You don't like anything."

Sullyoon gave her an offended look.

At the table, {{user}} remained silent, staring at his notes.

Haewon suddenly leaned over and poked his cheek.

Haewon: "And you're boring."

Another poke.

Haewon: "Also, you still haven't paid your chicken debt."

{{user}} slowly looked at her.

Haewon: "Don't give me that face. Debt is debt."

The phone on the table suddenly connected to a video call.

Irene appeared on the screen, looking exhausted.

Irene: "I have the preliminary result."

{{user}} looked toward the screen.

Irene: "We found the correct mediumization process for the Vanometric Power Cell."

She pulled a technical sheet into view.

Irene: "It's extremely small-scale. Half a gram of mixed alloy. Palladium, radium, uranium, with gold acting as the stabilizer."

Haewon's eyes briefly widened.

Irene: "It's unstable. Very unstable. But it works."

{{user}} remained silent.

Irene: "This is still an early-stage prototype. Don't do anything stupid with it."

There was suddenly a loud crash somewhere behind Irene.

Irene: "...Oh, for fuck's sake."

She turned around.

Irene: "Ian!"

Another crash.

Irene: "I have to go."

The call ended.

Haewon stared at the blank screen.

Haewon: "...Was that an explosion?"

Sullyoon: "Probably."

Haewon: "Cool."

Three Minutes Later...

The door opened, and Jennie stepped inside first, followed by Suzy. A moment later, another woman entered the cramped chicken stall, dressed with such immaculate Cambridge elegance that she looked as though she had accidentally wandered into the wrong building. Her coat was perfectly fitted, her hair neat, her posture straight, and her expression carried the quiet irritation of someone who had spent far too many hours travelling.

She stopped just inside the doorway and looked around at the tables, the workers, the customers, and finally the chicken counter. Her eyes narrowed.

Jisoo: "You're taking the piss."

Jennie looked at her.

Jennie: "What?"

Jisoo: "I flew all the bloody way from England to America for this?"

She pointed at the chicken.

Jisoo: "I've spent half my life on aeroplanes, crossed the bloody Atlantic, and now I'm standing in a place that smells like fried oil and regret because apparently this is where you lot wanted to meet."

Suzy smiled.

Suzy: "You agreed to come."

Jisoo: "I agreed to come because you said it was important. Nobody mentioned I'd have to travel across an ocean for a bit of chicken."

Jennie picked up a piece from the table and took a bite.

Jennie: "England has shitty food anyway."

Jisoo slowly turned toward her.

Jisoo: "Oh, piss off."

Jennie smiled.

Jennie: "I'm serious."

Jisoo: "You Americans think seasoning is a constitutional amendment."

Suzy laughed.

Suzy: "You two have been arguing for less than a minute."

Jisoo: "She's insulting an entire bloody nation."

Jennie: "I'm insulting English food."

Jisoo: "Same bloody thing, according to you."

Jisoo finally noticed {{user}} sitting at the table. Her expression changed almost immediately. The irritation remained, but recognition replaced it.

Jisoo: "Hang on."

She studied him for a moment.

Jisoo: "I remember you."

{{user}} looked back at her.

Jisoo: "Harvard symposium."

The corner of her mouth lifted.

Jisoo: "You stood there cursing capitalism like some stupid Marxist who'd just discovered electricity."

Jennie laughed.

Jisoo: "Best bloody thing that ever happened to me."

Jennie: "I loved it too."

Suzy looked between them.

Suzy: "You're both making him sound worse than he actually is."

Jennie: "Three days ago, the three of us spent nearly twelve hours arguing over the management structure of an ideal society."

She gestured toward Jisoo.

Jennie: "She has the answer."

Jisoo pulled out a chair and sat across from {{user}}. She glanced at the manifesto lying on the table, then at the notes scattered around it. Her fingers tapped once against the paper.

Jisoo: "Right."

She leaned forward.

Jisoo: "First things first. This whole thing's got a problem."

Suzy leaned back.

Suzy: "We know."

Jisoo: "No, you don't. I mean a specific problem."

She tapped the manifesto.

Jisoo: "You're designing a society as though the people running the bloody thing will keep behaving according to the principles you designed it around."

Jennie folded her arms.

Jennie: "That's the obvious weakness."

Jisoo: "It's worse than that."

She looked toward {{user}}.

Jisoo: "You're assuming institutions stay tools."

She paused.

Jisoo: "They don't. That's where the bollocks starts."

Her tone was casual, almost conversational, but her eyes remained intensely focused.

Jisoo: "You give a government a job. Give it a department. Give that department a budget, employees, procedures, authority, records, a chain of command. Fair enough. It starts doing the job."

She picked up a discarded receipt and began drawing boxes on the back.

Jisoo: "Then it starts measuring whether it's doing the job properly. People get promoted based on those measurements. Budgets get handed out based on those measurements. Careers get tied to those measurements."

She drew an arrow.

Jisoo: "And before you know it, everyone's protecting the bloody numbers."

Jennie nodded.

Jisoo: "That's the trick, innit? The department was supposed to solve the problem. Now it's trying to prove that it deserves to exist."

Suzy narrowed her eyes.

Suzy: "Institutional self-preservation."

Jisoo: "Exactly."

She pointed at the receipt.

Jisoo: "That's where the whole thing goes sideways. A department gets rewarded for looking successful, so it learns to look successful. Bad result? Hide it. Expensive programme? Find a way to justify it. Redundant office? Bloody hell, don't admit you're redundant. Suddenly everyone's writing reports about how essential they are."

She leaned back.

Jisoo: "And eventually nobody asks, 'Are we actually solving the problem?' They ask, 'How do we make sure the minister thinks we're solving the problem?'"

Silence settled over the table.

Jisoo: "That's bureaucracy becoming dangerous."

Suzy glanced at the manifesto.

Suzy: "So you want fewer institutions."

Jisoo: "No."

Jisoo shook her head immediately.

Jisoo: "That's another load of bollocks."

Jennie raised an eyebrow.

Jisoo: "People notice bureaucracy is dangerous and then decide bureaucracy itself is the disease. Rubbish. Civilization needs administration."

She began counting on her fingers.

Jisoo: "Hospitals need administrators. Infrastructure needs administrators. Schools need administrators. Tax collection needs administrators. Supply chains, courts, sanitation, transport—everything needs someone keeping the bloody wheels turning."

She looked at Suzy.

Jisoo: "You can't run a civilization by getting everyone into a room every morning and asking them what they fancy doing."

Jennie smirked.

Jennie: "Haewon would vote for that."

Across the stall, Haewon immediately looked up from her chicken.

Haewon: "I heard that."

Jennie: "Fuck off. Adults are talking."

Haewon: "I'm twenty-five!"

Jennie: "Then act twenty-five."

Sullyoon quietly pulled Haewon back toward their table.

Sullyoon: "Just listen."

Haewon grumbled but sat down, though she continued staring at the group.

Jisoo barely reacted. She drew another box on the receipt.

Jisoo: "The answer isn't getting rid of bureaucracy. It's stopping bureaucracy from becoming sovereign."

Jennie leaned closer.

Jennie: "Explain."

Jisoo: "Simple."

She pointed at the boxes.

Jisoo: "Every institution gets a job. It gets enough authority to do that job. But it doesn't get to decide that its own existence is more important than the bloody job."

She drew a line through one of the boxes.

Jisoo: "That's the first rule."

Then she added another box outside the structure.

Jisoo: "Second rule: something outside the institution needs the power to tell it no."

Suzy: "Oversight."

Jisoo: "Oversight, audit, public review, independent inspectors, competing authorities. Call it whatever you like."

She shrugged.

Jisoo: "The name doesn't matter. The bloody mechanism does."

She looked at {{user}}.

Jisoo: "The bloke being watched can't own the bloody camera."

Jennie nodded slowly.

Jisoo: "And don't make the mistake of thinking separation alone fixes it."

She pointed toward the receipt.

Jisoo: "Think of it like football."

Jennie gave her an amused look.

Jennie: "Oh, God."

Jisoo: "No, listen. Chelsea's bloody midfield has more structure than most governments."

Haewon snorted from across the room.

Haewon: "She's comparing government to Chelsea."

Jisoo: "Yes, and Chelsea has still got a better tactical structure than half the bloody governments on Earth."

She continued without missing a beat.

Jisoo: "You've got different players doing different jobs. One bloke can't control the entire pitch. One covers space, another carries the ball, another presses, another creates. You need coordination, but you don't want every player deciding he's suddenly the manager."

Jennie smiled.

Jennie: "You're actually serious."

Jisoo: "Of course I'm serious. That's the point."

She tapped the receipt.

Jisoo: "Government's the same. You centralize what actually needs coordination. You decentralize what requires local knowledge. You give departments operational freedom because otherwise everything moves like a bloody corpse. But you don't give them political sovereignty."

She drew another line.

Jisoo: "And every one of them needs another bastard somewhere who can check what they're doing."

Suzy nodded.

Suzy: "Checks and balances."

Jisoo: "More than that. Independent information."

Her expression sharpened.

Jisoo: "That's the bit people always fuck up."

She tapped the boxes.

Jisoo: "A government can have perfect laws and still be completely useless if the information gets mangled on the way upward."

She pointed at one box.

Jisoo: "Local administrator gets a shit result. Doesn't want his boss knowing, so he edits the report."

Another box.

Jisoo: "Boss gets the report. Bad numbers make him look incompetent, so he tidies it up."

Another.

Jisoo: "Minister gets the nice version."

She spread her hands.

Jisoo: "Minister makes a decision based on something that never bloody happened."

Suzy's expression hardened.

Suzy: "So hierarchy becomes an information filter."

Jisoo: "Exactly."

Jisoo leaned back in her chair.

Jisoo: "You need records that don't belong to the people being recorded. You need independent audits. You need channels where a junior official can report around his superior. You need data that can be checked from outside the bloody chain of command."

Jennie studied the receipt.

Jennie: "You're designing a bureaucracy that cannot fully control its own information."

Jisoo: "Correct."

She smiled.

Jisoo: "Because if the institution owns the information about itself, you've basically asked a Chelsea defender to mark himself."

Haewon laughed.

Haewon: "Okay, that's actually good."

Jisoo: "Thank you."

Haewon blinked.

Haewon: "You're welcome?"

Jisoo: "Don't get excited."

Jisoo returned to the manifesto.

Jisoo: "And don't try to make corruption impossible."

She looked directly at {{user}}.

Jisoo: "That's fantasy."

Her finger tapped the paper.

Jisoo: "People will always find loopholes. Always. Someone will eventually be clever enough, desperate enough, greedy enough, or just stupid enough to try something."

She shrugged.

Jisoo: "So don't build a system that depends on nobody trying."

She leaned forward.

Jisoo: "Make it fucking inconvenient."

Jennie smiled.

Jisoo: "Make every abuse leave a bloody trail. Make suspicious decisions visible. Make authority dependent on performance. Make hiding information dangerous. Make corruption expensive."

She sat back.

Jisoo: "You don't need perfect people."

Her voice became quieter.

Jisoo: "You need a system where even a greedy bastard has limited room to cause damage."

{{user}} remained silent, watching her.

Jisoo: "Because people aren't bloody spreadsheets."

Jennie looked at her.

Jennie: "That's rich coming from you."

Jisoo: "I'm an institutional systems professor, not a psychopath."

Suzy laughed.

Jisoo glanced toward the manifesto again.

Jisoo: "And there's another problem."

Suzy sighed.

Suzy: "There's always another problem with you."

Jisoo: "That's why you invited me, innit?"

She tapped the final pages.

Jisoo: "Ideological purity."

Her expression became serious.

Jisoo: "You can't use the doctrine itself as the thing that keeps the system safe."

Suzy nodded.

Jisoo: "People will disagree with you. Officials will disagree with you. Future generations might think you're completely bloody wrong. Some people will join because they believe in it."

She raised another finger.

Jisoo: "Some will join because they want a job."

Another.

Jisoo: "Some because they want power."

She folded her hands.

Jisoo: "Your system has to survive all three."

Across the room, Haewon leaned toward Sullyoon.

Haewon: "She's really good."

Sullyoon: "Yeah."

Haewon: "Annoyingly good."

Sullyoon: "Very."

Haewon watched Jisoo for another moment.

Haewon: "I still have an idea."

Sullyoon: "Don't interrupt."

Haewon: "I'm not interrupting."

She lowered her voice.

Haewon: "I'm waiting."

Sullyoon looked at her skeptically.

Sullyoon: "You're never waiting."

Haewon grinned.

Suzy watched Jisoo for a moment. Then she slowly turned toward {{user}}, a faint smile appearing on her face.

Suzy: "See?"

She glanced toward Jisoo.

Suzy: "Don't you think we need her?"

Episode 6 : "The Gathering of the Delinquents"

After Jisoo joined them, the six finally began writing the manifesto properly.

They still called it an experiment.

That was the lie they told themselves.

They were not planning a country. They were not designing a government. They were merely testing an ideology—writing down principles, arguing over political structures, economics, human behavior, institutional failure, and the limits of technology.

At least, that was what they told themselves whenever the discussion became too serious.

The Vanometric Power Cell was another convenient excuse. The world was nowhere near ready for it, and the VPC itself was nowhere near ready for the world. But Irene's work had advanced dramatically. What had once barely survived experimental conditions could now reliably produce enough usable energy to power anything from a lightbulb to a refrigerator.

One step away from a house.

And that single step made their theoretical discussions considerably more dangerous.

{{user}}, Suzy, Jennie, Irene, Tzuyu, and Jisoo were now formally the first collaborators of what they had begun calling Elvianism. The manifesto, however, was nowhere near finished. Every time they thought they had settled a principle, somebody found a contradiction.

They knew they had to settle it eventually.

They just hadn't figured out how to stop trying to kill each other first.

---

December 31, 2031. At Haewon's Chicken Stall

The chicken stall was officially closed for New Year's Eve.

Officially.

In practice, Haewon was standing behind the counter with a beer in one hand and a basket of fried chicken in the other, looking like someone had personally declared war on her holiday.

Haewon: "I swear to God, Jennie is paying us enough to qualify as economic slavery."

She slammed another plate onto the counter and glanced toward the table where the six adults were already gathering papers, notebooks, laptops, and several bottles of beer.

Sullyoon: "She did pay a lot."

Sullyoon quietly arranged another tray of chicken before returning to her notebook. She had been writing in it for nearly twenty minutes.

Haewon: "What are you writing?"

Sullyoon immediately covered the page.

Sullyoon: "Nothing."

Haewon: "That's suspicious."

Sullyoon's cheeks turned red.

Sullyoon: "It's just poetry."

Haewon: "Poetry?"

Haewon leaned over the table. Sullyoon desperately tried to pull the notebook away.

Haewon: "Oh my God. Is this a love poem?"

Sullyoon: "Give it back!"

Haewon laughed and held the notebook above her head.

Haewon: "Our little sociologist is writing romance while six psychopaths are trying to invent a political ideology."

Sullyoon: "I'm not little."

Haewon: "You're hiding your face behind a notebook."

Sullyoon finally snatched it back and hugged it against her chest.

Haewon: "Fine. Keep your secret lover poetry."

She sighed dramatically and looked toward the adult table.

Haewon: "And they won't even let us join."

Sullyoon: "We're students."

Haewon: "So?"

Sullyoon: "They're professors."

Haewon: "So?"

Sullyoon hesitated.

Sullyoon: "...They're scary."

Haewon: "Exactly. That's why I should be there."

Fifteen minutes later, the stall had become a battlefield.

Papers covered the table. Empty bottles surrounded laptops. The manifesto was projected onto the wall, its opening principles filled with revisions, crossed-out sentences, and angry comments.

{{user}} sat among them, silent, writing rapidly. He listened to every argument, occasionally turning a page, underlining something, crossing something else out, or pushing a note toward one of the others. His silence did not mean he was absent from the debate. Quite the opposite. His notes constantly redirected the argument, challenged assumptions, and forced the others to respond.

Suzy leaned forward.

Suzy: "We need to settle the epistemological foundation first. If we don't, every other section is bullshit."

Jennie: "Finally, something sensible."

Jisoo: "Don't encourage her."

Jennie: "Fuck you."

Jisoo: "See? Exactly."

Tzuyu folded her arms.

Tzuyu: "The problem is that we've been trying to combine radical individual autonomy with collective obligation."

Irene: "Because both are necessary."

Jisoo: "No. Both are desirable. That's different."

Suzy: "You want a radical liberal foundation."

Jisoo: "I want the individual to retain sovereignty over their own life unless there is a demonstrable reason to restrict it."

Jennie: "That's liberalism."

Jisoo: "Yes."

Jennie: "And it's fucking naive."

Jisoo: "And radical socialism is fucking naive if it assumes collective ownership automatically prevents concentrated power."

The room went quiet.

Tzuyu: "She's right."

Suzy: "Don't start."

Tzuyu: "I'm not taking her side. I'm pointing out that collective control still requires an administrator."

Jisoo: "And administrators become institutions."

Jennie: "And institutions become fucking parasites."

Irene: "And we're back to the same problem."

{{user}} wrote something down and turned the notebook toward the center.

The note argued that neither individual liberty nor collective ownership could serve as the absolute foundation. The more fundamental principle had to be whether an arrangement remained viable for the people living under it.

Suzy read it twice.

Suzy: "Viability."

Tzuyu: "That's closer."

Jennie: "But viability can become an excuse for anything."

Irene: "Then define the limits."

Jisoo: "Exactly."

They began writing.

Then deleting.

Then rewriting.

The word "viability" survived.

Its definition did not.

They spent nearly an hour tearing apart possible administrative structures.

Centralization was efficient but dangerous. Decentralization prevented concentration but could make national coordination impossible. Autonomous institutions could adapt quickly but might eventually become little kingdoms of their own.

Jisoo stabbed a finger at the manifesto.

Jisoo: "A completely autonomous bureaucracy is fucking stupid."

Suzy: "Agreed."

Jisoo: "A completely centralized bureaucracy is also fucking stupid."

Jennie: "Congratulations. You've discovered government."

Jisoo: "Fuck off."

Tzuyu: "Hybrid."

Irene: "Obviously."

Suzy: "What kind?"

Jisoo: "Centralize what requires national coordination. Decentralize what requires local knowledge. Give institutions operational autonomy, but never political sovereignty."

Tzuyu: "And independent oversight."

Jisoo: "Yes. And information has to be able to move around the hierarchy, not just through it."

She grabbed a pen and drew several arrows across the organizational diagram.

Jisoo: "A department shouldn't be able to control the information used to judge its own performance. Records need independent copies. Subordinates need channels to report around their superiors. Oversight bodies cannot answer to the people they're supposed to investigate."

Jennie: "And what stops the oversight body from becoming the new parasite?"

Jisoo: "Nothing."

Jennie raised an eyebrow.

Jisoo: "That's why there must be another layer of oversight."

Jennie: "And who oversees that?"

Jisoo: "The public."

Tzuyu: "And who oversees the public?"

Jisoo paused.

Jisoo: "Nobody."

That answer made everyone stop.

Jisoo: "That's the point. The public can be wrong, manipulated, hysterical, ignorant, or cruel. But they cannot be treated as another institution whose sovereignty can simply be delegated to someone else."

{{user}} wrote another note.

Authority should remain conditional. Institutions could possess power only insofar as they continued fulfilling the function for which that power was granted.

Jisoo stared at the sentence.

Jisoo: "That's actually useful."

Jennie: "Don't sound so surprised."

Jisoo: "I wasn't talking about you."

Jennie: "I know."

The economic section lasted even longer.

Jennie argued that post-scarcity did not magically eliminate economics. Scarcity could disappear in some goods while remaining in land, labor, expertise, attention, infrastructure, and social trust.

Jennie: "You idiots keep saying post-scarcity like money suddenly fucking evaporates."

Suzy: "Nobody said that."

Jennie: "The manifesto practically does."

Tzuyu: "Then remove the assumption."

Irene: "If VPC becomes scalable, energy becomes dramatically cheaper."

Jennie: "Energy isn't everything."

{{user}} wrote another note.

The economy should transition according to actual scarcity rather than ideology. If something became abundant, it should cease being artificially scarce. If something remained scarce, the system needed a mechanism to allocate it without allowing scarcity itself to become a permanent source of domination.

Jennie read it.

Then read it again.

Jennie: "That's better."

Suzy: "You sound disappointed."

Jennie: "I am."

She crossed out three paragraphs of her own economic framework.

The others noticed.

Jennie pretended they didn't.

Then came the VPC argument.

Irene: "The ideology cannot depend on it."

Suzy: "Agreed."

Irene: "No. I mean completely. If the VPC fails tomorrow, everything we write must still function."

Jisoo: "Then VPC belongs in technological policy, not as the foundation of the ideology."

Tzuyu: "But it changes the possible political horizon."

Irene: "Possible. Not guaranteed."

Jennie: "So we don't build a religion around a fucking battery."

Irene: "It's not a battery."

Jennie: "You know what I mean."

Irene stared at her.

Irene: "Unfortunately, yes."

{{user}} wrote: technology should expand what society can do, but ideology must determine what society ought to do independently of technology.

Suzy nodded slowly.

Suzy: "That's staying."

Irene: "Good."

For the first time that night, nobody argued.

The next question was more difficult.

Tzuyu: "What makes someone an Elvianist?"

Jisoo: "Belief in the doctrine."

Tzuyu: "Too vague."

Jennie: "Following the principles."

Tzuyu: "Also vague."

Suzy: "Then what?"

Tzuyu: "Maybe the willingness to continuously test whether the system actually works."

Irene: "So skepticism is part of the identity?"

Tzuyu: "It has to be."

Jisoo: "An ideology that forbids criticism eventually becomes fucking religion."

Jennie: "And we already have enough religions."

Everyone looked at the title of the document.

ELVIANISM

Jennie: "Speaking of religion, this name is fucking terrible."

Suzy: "You suggested it."

Jennie: "I was drunk."

Tzuyu: "You were sober."

Jennie: "Then I was stupid."

From the other table came a raised hand.

Haewon: "I have a better name."

Jennie: "Fuck off. Adults are talking."

Haewon: "I'm twenty-five!"

Jennie: "And I'm grading you F."

Haewon: "You can't grade me."

Jennie: "Watch me."

Sullyoon quietly pulled Haewon back into her chair.

Haewon: "This is discrimination against independent political thought."

Sullyoon: "You're being annoying."

Haewon: "Thank you."

The adult table ignored them.

Eventually, the six reached a question that was less theoretical.

If this thing actually made sense, who would follow it?

They considered academics, technologists, political dissidents, refugees, young people, workers displaced by automation, communities abandoned by failing states, and people who had simply become exhausted with existing institutions.

Tzuyu: "The people most likely to understand it won't necessarily be the people most willing to join it."

Suzy: "Then the movement cannot begin as a mass movement."

Jisoo: "Good."

Jennie: "Experimental communities first."

Irene: "Small enough to observe."

Tzuyu: "And modify."

{{user}} wrote another note.

Do not ask people to believe in the system. Give them a system worth testing.

Everyone stared at it.

Suzy smiled faintly.

Suzy: "Now we're getting somewhere."

They began arguing about how to actually test it.

Not rallies.

Not propaganda.

Not conquest.

Communities. Cooperatives. Pilot institutions. Small-scale governance experiments. Measurable outcomes. Public records. Failed experiments documented rather than hidden. Rules changed when evidence demonstrated that they were wrong.

Jisoo: "If we can't test it, it's philosophy."

Tzuyu: "If we can't revise it, it's dogma."

Jennie: "If we can't make it work, it's fucking useless."

Irene: "And if it requires VPC to function, it's fantasy."

Suzy looked around the table.

Suzy: "Then we have the beginnings of something."

Jisoo: "Something that can actually be falsified."

Tzuyu: "Something that can actually fail."

Jennie: "Good. I'd rather have a failed system than a perfect theory nobody is allowed to question."

{{user}} wrote one final note beneath the section.

If the system cannot survive being wrong, it cannot govern people.

The room became quiet again.

Outside, fireworks had already begun appearing in the distance. Berkeley was preparing to welcome another year. Inside the tiny chicken stall, six people were still arguing over sentences that might never leave the room.

For another few minutes, they returned to editing.

Then Suzy stopped.

She looked at the pages spread across the table.

The document no longer looked like an academic exercise.

It contained principles for government, economics, technology, citizenship, institutional accountability, political experimentation, and social organization.

They had spent months insisting they were only theorizing.

But theory had a dangerous habit of becoming architecture.

Suzy: "So what exactly are we building?"

Nobody answered.

Jisoo leaned back.

Jennie folded her arms.

Tzuyu watched the manifesto.

Irene looked toward the VPC notes.

{{user}} remained silent, pen resting against the page.

The question stayed there.

Not an ideology anymore.

Not merely an experiment.

Something larger was taking shape.

Suzy finally looked toward {{user}}.

Suzy: "Fine. Then let's ask the final question."

She tapped the blank space beneath the manifesto.

Suzy: "If this actually works..."

She paused.

Suzy: "What nation are we building?"

The room fell completely silent.

Outside, fireworks erupted across the Berkeley sky.

Inside, beneath the title ELVIANISM, there was one final blank line.

NAME: ____________________

Episode 7 : "Even Caesar has To shit Sometimes"

Three months after the chicken-stall battle, the ideology was finished.

Well—"finished" was a generous word. It was half-baked, full of philosophical bullshit, riddled with paradoxes, and held together by arguments that had survived mostly because everyone had become too exhausted to kill them. Some sections contradicted other sections. Some assumptions were deliberately ridiculous. Several pages had been written, rewritten, crossed out, restored, and then rewritten again. It was not a perfect ideology.

But it was finally a book.

The decision to publish it had been almost suspiciously easy. Tzuyu had insisted that the systematic work—the actual institutional designs, economic models, political mechanisms, and technological research—stay hidden. What the public needed was not their blueprint. What the public needed was the question.

So they stripped the machinery out of it.

They left the thought experiments.

What if energy became effectively unlimited?

What if humanity could produce almost anything it needed?

What if scarcity stopped being the central problem of civilization?

What if governments had to exist without controlling access to survival?

What if democracy itself could fail?

What if the things humanity considered permanent were actually temporary solutions to old problems?

Then Tzuyu gave it a simple title.

WHAT IF THIS EXIST?

The book became a hit.

Not in the way they expected.

Academic circles loved making fun of it. Physicists called it pseudoscientific because some of its technological premises were absurd. Economists complained that its hypothetical abundance made traditional economic assumptions collapse. Political scientists pointed out contradictions. Sociologists found its assumptions about human behavior simultaneously fascinating and irritating.

The joke was everywhere.

And Tzuyu was delighted.

Because the joke was the point.

The academics were supposed to laugh.

While they were laughing, ordinary people were reading.

The book became something strangely close to motivational literature. Not because it promised success, wealth, or happiness, but because it encouraged people to imagine a world that wasn't forced to obey the limitations of the present.

People who had never studied economics started asking what they would do if survival wasn't tied to employment. Students began asking what education would look like without tuition barriers. Workers wondered what they would build if they didn't spend their entire lives worrying about rent. Engineers began arguing about what they could accomplish if energy ceased to be the dominant constraint.

The book didn't tell them that such a world was coming.

It simply asked them to imagine it.

And that was enough.

Jennie discovered this when her inbox became almost unusable.

Former classmates, professors, economists, investors, corporate executives, and old friends kept sending her messages. Some congratulated her. Some asked if she'd lost her mind. Others simply wanted to know whether the woman who had spent years predicting corporate collapses and economic disasters had finally developed a sense of humor.

Apparently, the answer was yes.

Her reputation as an extraordinarily rigid economist made the contrast even funnier. Jennie's academic work had always been brutally precise. She dealt in numbers, probabilities, structural weaknesses, market behavior, and the rise and fall of companies. When she predicted that a company was going to collapse, people listened—not because she sounded optimistic, but because she was usually right.

Now she had co-written a book asking, "What if everything were different?"

Tzuyu had a different problem.

She became famous.

Her academic reputation had already been growing, but now millions of people knew her face. Her social-media followers exploded almost overnight, helped considerably by the fact that she was, objectively, extremely pretty. People quoted her arguments, clipped her interviews, analyzed her expressions, and occasionally seemed more interested in her face than anything she had actually written.

Suzy's problem was more professional.

Political clients began approaching her asking whether she could write something like the book specifically for their campaigns.

She declined most of them.

Irene and Jisoo returned to their respective academic worlds, where they were suddenly invited to give talks about a book neither of them had officially written.

And {{user}} remained a mystery.

His name appeared simply as:

{{user}}

No university. No biography. No photograph. No country. No academic history.

Nothing.

That mystery became part of the spectacle.

Even Haewon and Sullyoon received credit, although their names were buried almost comically deep in the back of the book in tiny print for "field logistical assistance." Their actual contribution had been considerably less sophisticated.

They had provided chicken.

Haewon considered this an essential contribution to human civilization.

Sullyoon disagreed.

Then the BBC called.

---

July 5, 2032 — BBC Newsroom

The BBC newsroom was unusually busy that evening. Bright studio lights washed over the interview desk while cameras moved quietly around the three guests, their lenses occasionally catching the cover of What If This Exist? displayed on the large screen behind them.

Susan “Suzy” Bae sat comfortably at the center of the desk, with Jennie beside her. {{user}} sat at the other end, quiet as usual. His presence had already become part of the spectacle surrounding the book. The world knew the name {{user}}, knew that he had contributed to the ideas inside the book, and knew almost nothing else.

Across from them sat Julia “Lia” Choi, the BBC journalist conducting the interview. She turned toward the main camera, composed and professional, with the practiced expression of someone accustomed to interviewing people who had spent years preparing exactly what they wanted the public to hear.

Lia: "Good evening. Tonight we're joined by three of the people behind one of the strangest books to become both an academic sensation and a popular phenomenon this year, What If This Exist? Thank you all for being here."

She turned toward the guests, briefly acknowledging Suzy and Jennie before her attention settled on the quiet man at the end of the table.

Lia: "And I think we should begin with the question almost everyone asks."

She looked directly at {{user}}.

Lia: "Who is he?"

The camera immediately moved toward him.

{{user}} remained silent.

Lia: "Where did he study? Where is he from? What does he actually do? We've searched, we've asked around, and somehow there is almost nothing publicly available about you."

{{user}} said nothing.

Suzy calmly leaned toward her microphone.

Suzy: "That's because it's confidential."

Lia: "Confidential?"

Suzy: "Very."

Lia: "You won't tell us where he studied?"

Suzy: "No."

Lia: "Not even what university?"

Suzy: "Nope."

Lia: "His field?"

Suzy: "No."

Lia: "His real name?"

Suzy: "Absolutely not."

Lia looked at {{user}} for another moment. He remained completely silent, almost absurdly calm under the attention of the cameras.

Lia: "You realize you're making people much more curious by refusing to answer?"

Suzy: "Yes."

She gave a small, innocent smile.

Suzy: "That's part of it."

The audience laughed.

Lia: "So the anonymity is deliberate?"

Suzy: "Completely deliberate."

Suzy rested one hand against the desk.

Suzy: "His identity isn't the point. The questions are. And honestly, once you give someone a name, a university, a list of credentials, suddenly everyone starts judging the question based on the person."

Lia: "Rather than the question itself."

Suzy: "Exactly."

She glanced toward {{user}}.

Suzy: "Besides, we don't want the CIA to get him, yeah?"

The audience burst into laughter.

Lia laughed and shook her head.

Lia: "The CIA?"

Suzy: "You never know."

The laughter grew louder.

Suzy: "We figured keeping him anonymous was... selling. And more interesting. If we gave you his entire biography, you'd just have another academic with a photograph, a university affiliation, and a very boring Wikipedia page."

Jennie quietly nodded.

Jennie: "She's right."

Suzy: "See?"

Suzy gestured toward {{user}}.

Suzy: "Right now, he's a mystery. People have to actually read what he wrote."

Lia: "So the anonymity itself has become part of the phenomenon."

Suzy: "Pretty much."

She smiled.

Suzy: "The mystery became part of the identity."

Lia nodded, then lifted the book from the desk.

Lia: "All right. Let's talk about the book itself."

She opened it and flipped through several pages.

Lia: "One of the things that makes* What If This Exist? *different from most academic books is that it keeps asking questions. Almost every chapter seems to begin with some version of 'What if?' Where did those questions come from?"

Suzy: "Curiosity."

Lia: "Just curiosity?"

Suzy: "Mostly."

Jennie leaned back slightly.

Jennie: "It's basically refusing to accept that the room you're standing in is the only room that exists."

Lia: "Explain that."

Jennie: "Imagine you're born inside a house."

She gestured casually toward the studio around them.

Jennie: "You grow up there. You eat there. You sleep there. Everyone you know lives there. So you eventually stop asking why the walls are there."

She shrugged.

Jennie: "Then someone asks, 'What happens if we remove one?'"

Lia: "And that's what the book does?"

Jennie: "Yes."

Suzy nodded.

Suzy: "We're not saying the wall will disappear. We're saying, for a moment, pretend it does. Then see what you can see from the other side."

Lia: "So the questions aren't predictions?"

Suzy: "No."

Lia: "They're exercises?"

Suzy: "Exactly."

She pointed lightly toward the book.

Suzy: "If food suddenly became extremely cheap, what would happen? If energy became incredibly abundant, what would change? If machines could do most physical work, what would people actually fight over?"

Lia: "And you don't necessarily believe all of those things will happen."

Suzy: "That's not the point."

Jennie gave a small nod.

Jennie: "You don't need to believe a hypothetical situation is going to happen to learn something from asking what you would do if it did."

Lia: "So it's basically asking people to step outside the normal rules for a moment."

Suzy: "Yes."

Lia: "Even if those rules have existed for centuries?"

Jennie: "Especially then."

The audience applauded.

Lia: "That's a surprisingly simple way of putting it."

Suzy: "It has to be simple. If you need twenty academic words to ask a simple question, you've probably made the question worse."

The audience laughed.

Lia: "And then those simple questions become political, economic, and social questions."

Suzy: "Because once you change one thing, everything connected to it starts moving."

Jennie: "It's like pulling one thread from a sweater."

She made a small pulling motion with her fingers.

Jennie: "You don't know what else is going to move until you pull it."

Lia: "And that's essentially the experiment?"

Jennie: "Yes."

Lia smiled and turned a few more pages.

Lia: "Now, the Harvard symposium where many people first heard these ideas was considerably less calm."

Suzy immediately smiled.

Lia: "There were arguments, professors challenging you, people shouting questions, and apparently at one point someone simply stopped taking notes because of what was being written on the board. What happened?"

Suzy: "We had prepared something completely different."

Lia: "What?"

Suzy: "Cancer treatment accessibility."

Lia: "And instead?"

Suzy: "We decided to talk about civilization."

The audience laughed.

Jennie: "It was a terrible decision."

Suzy: "It was an excellent decision."

Jennie: "It was objectively terrible."

Suzy: "And yet here we are."

The audience laughed louder.

Beside them, {{user}} quietly laughed at the exchange.

Lia: "So was the chaos planned?"

Suzy: "Absolutely not."

Jennie: "Some professors were angry."

Suzy: "Some were interested."

Jennie: "Some were angry because they were interested."

The audience laughed again.

Lia: "So the presentation went wrong."

Suzy: "Very wrong."

Jennie: "Productively wrong."

The studio filled with laughter.

Lia smiled and looked down at her notes.

Lia: "And apparently, that productive disaster eventually became a book."

Suzy: "Unfortunately."

Jennie: "Fortunately."

Suzy: "See? We still disagree."

The audience laughed again.

Hannah “Haewon” Brooks's Chicken Stall

The interview continued on the television mounted above the counter of Haewon's chicken stall.

Haewon stood with her arms crossed, staring at the screen with an expression of mounting personal betrayal. Sullyoon sat beside her, quietly eating. Irene watched the television while eating her chicken with the same calm concentration she brought to everything else. Jisoo stood nearby, watching the interview with an expression that suggested she was increasingly grateful she had not been invited.

Haewon: "This is bullshit."

Sullyoon looked up.

Sullyoon: "What?"

Haewon: "I should be there."

Sullyoon: "Why?"

Haewon: "Because I gave them the idea."

Sullyoon: "You didn't."

Haewon: "I absolutely did."

Sullyoon: "You gave them chicken."

Haewon: "Chicken is an idea."

Sullyoon stared at her.

Sullyoon: "No, it isn't."

Without hesitation, Haewon grabbed a piece of chicken and shoved it directly into Sullyoon's mouth.

Sullyoon: "Mmph!"

Haewon: "Now you're eating the idea."

Sullyoon glared at her while chewing.

Irene continued watching the television.

Irene: "The interview is surprisingly controlled."

Jisoo: "That's because I'm not there."

Irene glanced at her.

Irene: "That is probably why."

Jisoo: "And I'm glad."

Haewon pointed toward the television.

Haewon: "See? That's exactly the problem. They need me."

Jisoo: "They absolutely do not."

Haewon: "If I were there, I would make it much better."

Jisoo: "You would make it impossible to broadcast."

Haewon: "I would spread love and happiness with my face."

Jisoo didn't even turn toward her.

Jisoo: "You would give diarrhea to the viewers."

Tzuyu immediately burst out laughing.

Tzuyu: "Here we go."

She looked back toward the television, still laughing.

Tzuyu: "Jennie's been rehearsing that line for a while."

Irene actually smiled.

On the television, Lia turned toward Jennie.

Lia: "Jennie, you are perhaps the most surprising person involved in this project. You're known for being extremely rigid academically, particularly when it comes to economics and numbers. Most of your work isn't exactly optimistic. You've built a reputation for predicting corporate failures, market problems, and institutional weaknesses, and unfortunately for the companies involved, you're usually right."

Jennie gave a small nod.

Lia: "So why would someone like you write a motivational book?"

Jennie looked directly toward the camera.

There was a brief silence.

Jennie: "Hey."

Another pause.

Jennie: "Even Caesar has to shit sometimes."

The studio erupted.

The audience burst into laughter. Several people doubled over. Suzy covered her face with one hand while Lia struggled to keep herself composed. Tzuyu laughed openly from the chicken stall, and even Irene looked amused.

Jennie leaned back.

Jennie: "I'm serious about economics. I'm serious about numbers. I'm serious about figuring out why companies fail and why people make stupid decisions."

She paused.

Jennie: "But being serious doesn't mean I have to be miserable."

The audience chuckled.

Jennie: "Sometimes you have to imagine something better before you can figure out whether it's actually possible."

The laughter faded into applause.

Lia nodded, then turned toward {{user}}.

Lia: "All right."

She picked up the book again.

Lia turned another page of the book, her expression becoming slightly more amused.

Lia: "Let's talk about perhaps the most provocative question in the entire book."

{{user}} looked toward her.

Lia: "There's a section asking what would happen if God—if God exists—just blessed humanity with an unlimited power source."

She glanced down at the page again.

Lia: "And I'm going to read this exactly as you wrote it."

The audience immediately became quieter, curious about the wording.

Lia: "What if the God, if it's exist, just blessed humanity with an unlimited power source, and they just discover it overnight, even though it was there all the time?"

There was a brief pause.

Lia looked up from the book.

Lia: "I particularly enjoy the 'if it's exist.'"

The audience laughed.

Suzy: "We decided grammar wasn't the most important problem that night."

The audience laughed again.

Jennie: "Apparently."

Lia smiled and looked back at the page.

Lia: "But then there's another question immediately underneath it."

She looked toward {{user}}.

Lia: "Are you a theist or an atheist?"

The audience laughed again, partly at the sudden bluntness of the question.

Suzy turned slightly toward {{user}}, smiling as though she already knew exactly where this was going.

Lia: "And before you answer that—where did this question even come from?"

The studio became quieter.

Lia: "Was this something you genuinely believe could happen? Or were you simply playing with an idea?"

Jennie looked toward {{user}}.

Suzy did the same.

For once, neither of them reached for the microphone.

The camera settled on {{user}}.

The audience waited.

And this time, the question wasn't about the book.

It was about the person who had written it.

Episode 8: "The Monsters Will Eat You, Chew Your Intestines, Then Spill Them Around the Room!"

After their unexpected national sensation following the BBC interview, the six grew noticeably closer. What had once been a strange collection of academics, researchers, politicians, and one mysterious man gradually became something much more personal: a family scattered across different cities, connected by the same impossible project and talking almost every day.

The Vanometric Power Cells continued to work remarkably well, although their current design remained far from scalable. Meanwhile, the ideological writing continued alongside increasingly complicated arguments, institutional models, and economic theories. Every meeting seemed to produce another disagreement, and Irene eventually suggested that perhaps the disagreements themselves belonged in the next book rather than being hidden from it.

While the others wrestled with civilization, {{user}} spent much of his spare time building something of his own. It looked suspiciously less like a serious national simulation and more like an actual video game about building and running a country, complete with systems for politics, economics, infrastructure, resources, and society. He eventually disguised it under the innocent title, "Running a Nation Simulator", uploaded it to Steam, and, somewhat to everyone's amusement, it actually sold well enough to make him a modest amount of money.

Geography no longer mattered much to them. Suzy called from her office, Irene joined from her laboratory, Jisoo and Tzuyu from their universities, and Jennie from whatever excessively expensive room she happened to be working in. They argued about the next book, criticized each other's models, exchanged research, joked about their lives, and occasionally spent entire conversations discussing absolutely nothing important.

Haewon and Sullyoon had also somehow become permanent fixtures. Jennie officially promoted them to the prestigious position of "paperweight," a title that came with enormous pay, almost no meaningful responsibilities, and the primary benefit of allowing Jennie to boss around two university students whenever she felt like it. Sullyoon still helped anyway. Haewon mostly treated the arrangement as free entertainment.

Four months later, Jennie invited everyone to Thanksgiving at her mansion, a place so absurdly luxurious that calling it a house seemed almost insulting. With its enormous rooms, private grounds, expensive furniture, and enough wealth behind it to fund laboratories without anyone blinking, it was exactly the sort of place Jennie considered perfectly ordinary.

And for the first time, the entire group would spend a holiday together—not as researchers, not as authors, and not as the strange people behind an increasingly influential book, but simply as something much closer to a family.

---

November 26, 2032. At Jennie's Filthy Rich Mansion

Jennie's mansion was already noisy before dinner had even begun. Ian and Jiwoo were racing through the enormous living room, weaving between furniture while Ian repeatedly changed direction just to make the chase harder. Jiwoo followed after her, laughing despite repeatedly telling her sister to slow down.

Jennie watched them disappear around a corner, then looked toward Irene with the faint expression of someone wondering why she had allowed children into a house where the furniture probably cost more than most people's apartments.

Jennie: "Where did you find these two... gremlins? I know they're your daughters, but I genuinely don't understand how you managed to produce this much noise inside a house this large. I thought the entire point of having a mansion was that you could put children somewhere on the other side of the building and still enjoy the illusion of peace."

Irene: "Actually, only one of them is a gremlin."

Jennie glanced toward the hallway.

Jennie: "Ian."

Irene: "Obviously."

Jennie: "And Jiwoo?"

Irene: "Quiet. Kind. She worries about everyone else before herself."

Jennie: "So you somehow ended up with one child who behaves like a small natural disaster and another who behaves like she's already responsible for the natural disaster."

Irene: "That is reasonably accurate."

Suzy smiled quietly while helping {{user}} arrange the dishes on the table.

Suzy: "You never told me much about how you found them."

Irene: "Their parents were found dead when they were five. Suicide. There were substantial debts involved, although I never learned enough to say exactly what pushed them to it. The girls were placed in an orphanage that was already failing."

Irene adjusted one of the plates, her expression remaining calm, but her voice becoming slightly quieter as she remembered the place.

Irene: "I encountered them during charity work. The building was in terrible condition. It was filthy, badly damaged, severely understaffed and essentially out of money. Food and medicine were limited. Heating was unreliable. It was obvious the institution had reached the point where everyone was simply trying to keep it alive for another week."

Jennie: "And that's where you found them."

Irene: "Yes."

Jennie: "What made you decide to take both?"

Irene: "Ian wouldn't stop talking."

Jennie laughed.

Jennie: "That sounds about right."

Irene: "She wanted to know everything. What I was doing, why the building was damaged, why the heater wasn't working, why there weren't enough people there, whether I could fix it. Jiwoo barely spoke, but she kept watching Ian. Whenever Ian became frightened, Jiwoo moved closer to her."

Jennie: "So you adopted them."

Irene: "Yes."

Jennie: "Just like that?"

Irene: "There wasn't much to consider."

Jennie: "That's very different from how most people would describe adopting two five-year-olds."

Irene: "Most people weren't standing in that building."

Jennie nodded slowly, apparently accepting that there was little point arguing with an answer like that.

Jennie: "Fair enough."

Haewon wandered over, apparently having decided that listening to an adult conversation was more interesting than doing whatever Jennie had supposedly paid her to do.

Haewon: "You know, Professor Irene, you're actually pretty good at this whole mom thing. I mean, you're terrifying, but in a responsible way. I was thinking I could teach them some jokes about-"

Irene: "You're not allowed to educate my kids."

Haewon stared at her for a second, then sighed dramatically.

Haewon: "Professor Irene is gonna grow boring kids."

Tzuyu: "You're saying that as though your children would have better prospects."

Haewon looked at Tzuyu.

Haewon: "Professor Tzuyu, why are you attacking me on Thanksgiving?"

Tzuyu: "I'm not attacking you. I'm observing you."

Haewon: "That's worse."

Tzuyu: "Probably."

Haewon folded her arms, pretending to be offended.

Haewon: "Fine. I'll leave the children alone. I'll just teach them the important stuff later."

Irene: "No."

Haewon: "You didn't even ask what the important stuff was."

Irene: "I don't need to."

Haewon: "How to lie to professors."

Tzuyu: "You already need that lesson yourself."

Haewon: "See? This is exactly why I need to educate the children. They're growing up surrounded by hostile faculty."

Haewon grinned.

Ian came racing around the corner at that exact moment and collided with Haewon's leg.

Ian: "Monster!"

Haewon looked down at her.

There was a brief pause.

Haewon: "Oh, you've made a terrible mistake."

Ian took a step backward.

Haewon: "Run, run, little kids! The monsters will eat you, chew your intestines, then spill them all around the room!"

Haewon raised her hands like claws and made an exaggeratedly smug face.

Haewon: "Mwehehehehehehe!"

Ian: "MOMMY!"

Ian immediately ran toward Irene.

Irene: "Haewon."

Haewon: "She called me a monster."

Irene: "She is five."

Haewon: "And now she knows monsters exist."

Irene: "You are the monster."

Haewon: "That's a matter of perspective."

Jiwoo had started crying quietly, so Sullyoon immediately crossed the room and lifted her into her arms.

Sullyoon: "Hey, hey, it's okay. Don't listen to her. Auntie Haewon's just stupid."

Haewon: "Oi."

Sullyoon gave Haewon a look while gently patting Jiwoo's back.

Sullyoon: "You scared her."

Haewon: "I was joking."

Sullyoon: "She's five."

Haewon: "Yeah, well, apparently five-year-olds are incredibly sensitive."

Sullyoon: "You're an idiot."

Jiwoo buried her face against Sullyoon's shoulder.

Jiwoo: "You're a pretty princess."

Sullyoon blinked, then turned visibly pink.

Sullyoon: "Oh... thank you."

Jiwoo pointed toward Haewon.

Jiwoo: "She's a witch."

Haewon: "Okay, that's actually pretty good."

Haewon looked strangely proud of the insult, while Sullyoon tried not to laugh despite still comforting Jiwoo. Irene simply watched the exchange with the tired patience of a mother who had already accepted that Haewon was going to be a recurring problem in her children's lives. Jennie, meanwhile, looked from Haewon to the crying child and seemed to arrive at a completely different conclusion: not that Haewon was dangerous, but that she was simply too stupid to be trusted around children without supervision.

Jennie: "Haewon, you're getting an F for child abuse."

Haewon: "Professor Jennie, that's bullshit. There isn't even a course."

Jennie: "You don't need a course to fail."

Haewon: "Hey, that's cruel!"

The children eventually settled down, and the adults returned to their preparations. Haewon went back to pretending she was helping, while Sullyoon continued doing the actual small tasks around the table without being asked. Jiwoo remained close to her for another few minutes before finally returning to Irene, apparently reassured that the resident witch had been neutralized.

Suzy glanced toward Sullyoon, who was quietly straightening the table.

Suzy: "How's Berkeley going?"

Sullyoon looked up immediately. Suzy was older, confident and already established in the world outside the university, and Sullyoon still had enough nervousness around the senior members of the group that even a simple question could make her sit a little straighter.

Sullyoon: "I-it's going well."

Suzy smiled gently, clearly noticing the nervousness but not making a point of it.

Suzy: "Your grades?"

Sullyoon: "They're... good now."

Suzy: "Now?"

Sullyoon gave a small, embarrassed smile and briefly looked down at the table.

Sullyoon: "Y-yeah. They were kind of a mess before."

Suzy: "What changed?"

Sullyoon hesitated, then glanced toward Tzuyu.

Sullyoon: "Professor Tzuyu helped me."

Tzuyu looked over from the other side of the table.

Sullyoon: "I used to just... write whatever sounded right in my head. I'd have an opinion, find a few things that agreed with me, and then build the paper around that. She kept making me go back and figure out what I was actually saying."

Suzy: "That's a useful habit."

Sullyoon: "It was annoying at first."

Tzuyu: "She disliked being told that her argument wasn't an argument."

Sullyoon: "Because you kept saying it."

Tzuyu: "Because it kept being true."

Sullyoon laughed quietly, a little less nervous now.

Sullyoon: "She'd ask me things like, 'How do you know that?' and I'd say, 'Because it makes sense,' and she'd just stare at me."

Tzuyu: "Because 'it makes sense' isn't evidence."

Sullyoon: "Yeah. I know that now."

Suzy: "So she didn't write anything for you."

Tzuyu: "Absolutely not. I just make her explain herself until she finds the holes."

Sullyoon: "Which takes forever sometimes."

Tzuyu: "That's because you have a talent for finding creative ways to avoid answering simple questions."

Sullyoon: "I'm working on it."

Suzy: "And that's what matters."

Sullyoon nodded, looking a little more confident than she had at the beginning of the conversation.

Sullyoon: "I'm actually enjoying it more now. I don't feel like I'm just trying to survive the assignments."

Suzy: "Good. Keep going."

Sullyoon: "I will."

Then, The front door opened.

Jisoo entered carrying the turkey with both hands, looking mildly annoyed by the fact that apparently nobody had bothered to tell her where to put it.

Jisoo: "Right, where does this bloody thing go? I've carried it across half the house, and if somebody tells me I've brought it to the wrong room, I'm throwing the bastard through a window."

Jennie continued arranging the table without even looking at her.

Jennie: "Professor Pornhub, where does the turkey go?"

Tzuyu, standing nearby, immediately laughed.

Tzuyu: "Why are you asking me?"

Jennie: "Because apparently you know everything. You're famous, beautiful and intellectually worshipped by half of Berkeley. Surely you've developed the revolutionary ability to locate a turkey."

Tzuyu: "Dining room."

Jisoo: "Thank you."

Jisoo carried the turkey into the dining room and set it down.

Jennie: "God, it looks British."

Jisoo: "It's a turkey."

Jennie: "That's what I said."

Jisoo: "Don't start insulting the bird."

Jennie: "I'm not insulting the bird. I'm insulting the country that apparently taught you to cook it."

Jisoo slowly turned around.

Jisoo: "You Americans really can't help yourselves, can you? You put cheese on everything, drown perfectly decent food in ranch and call something a meal because the portion is large enough to feed a football squad."

Jennie: "Don't insult ranch. And if we're discussing food, perhaps Britain should stop pretending beans on toast is a national achievement."

Jisoo: "It's cheap, it's filling and it tastes good. That's more than I can say for half the rubbish Americans eat."

Jennie: "At least our food has ambition."

Jisoo: "Your food has calories."

Jennie: "And yours has the personality of wet cardboard."

Haewon glanced toward Sullyoon.

Haewon: "They're going to start throwing things."

Sullyoon: "Probably."

Jisoo pointed toward Jennie.

Jisoo: "At least British football has some dignity."

Jennie: "Chelsea?"

Jisoo: "Don't."

Jennie: "The guys in blue?"

Jisoo: "Jennie."

Jennie: "The guys in blue who keep losing stupid games?"

Jisoo: "We're having a rough season."

Jennie: "You've been saying that for years."

Jisoo stared at her.

Jisoo: "You're taking the piss."

Jennie: "I'm observing a pattern."

Jisoo: "You don't even watch football."

Jennie: "I don't need to. Chelsea loses loudly enough that the internet does the work for me."

Jisoo took one step toward her.

Tzuyu immediately stepped between them.

Tzuyu: "No."

Jisoo: "She insulted Chelsea."

Jennie: "She insulted American food."

Tzuyu: "And somehow neither of those things requires physical violence."

She calmly caught Jisoo by the arm and guided her backward, then did the same with Jennie, separating the two by several feet.

Tzuyu: "There. Now you can both survive Thanksgiving."

Jisoo: "I'm not a child."

Jennie: "Neither am I."

Tzuyu: "Then stop looking like you're about to bite each other."

Haewon burst out laughing.

Haewon: "Oh my God, Professor Tzuyu just separated them like toddlers."

Sullyoon: "She's probably done this before."

Tzuyu released them.

Tzuyu: "Several times."

Jisoo folded her arms and looked away.

Jisoo: "Fine."

Jennie: "Fine."

Haewon grinned.

Haewon: "This is the best Thanksgiving I've ever had!"

Ian, who had been listening from beside Irene, suddenly looked up.

Ian: "Mommy, what's Pornhub?"

Silence settled over the room.

Irene looked down at her daughter.

Irene: "A bad thing full of monsters like Haewon."

Ian: "Oh."

Haewon looked genuinely offended.

Tzuyu laughed quietly.

The television suddenly switched to a news broadcast.

News Anchor: "Tensions have escalated sharply today following the deployment of additional American naval and ground forces into southern African territory. Several regional governments have condemned the move as an act of aggression, while Washington maintains that the deployment is intended to protect strategic interests and maintain regional stability."

Suzy's expression immediately hardened.

News Anchor: "International observers have warned that the escalating military presence could lead to open conflict. Emergency diplomatic talks remain underway, although officials have acknowledged that negotiations have made little progress."

Suzy reached for the remote.

Click.

The news disappeared, replaced by a brightly colored cartoon featuring a toaster screaming at a refrigerator.

Suzy: "No. I'm done."

Jisoo: "Can't blame you."

Suzy: "I've spent the entire week listening to politicians ask me how voters will react to a war they haven't even admitted might become a war. I'm not spending Thanksgiving watching the same thing happen on television."

Tzuyu settled into her chair.

Tzuyu: "Your clients are nervous?"

Suzy: "Very. Mostly the state representatives in Texas. They're asking about polling, crisis messaging, markets, their opponents, whether they should support Washington publicly, whether they should distance themselves privately, and about twenty other things nobody can answer yet."

Jisoo: "And what do you tell them?"

Suzy: "That I'm a consultant, not a prophet. I can tell them what is likely to happen. I can't tell them what every government is going to do when they're all convinced they're the reasonable one."

Tzuyu nodded.

Tzuyu: "That's usually when things become dangerous."

Suzy: "Exactly. Everyone thinks they're reacting. Nobody thinks they're escalating."

She pointed the remote toward the cartoon.

Suzy: "Which is why I'm watching the Krabby Patties."

Haewon: "Honestly, If Mr. Krabs running for a president, He has my vote."

Jisoo: "To be more honest, that stingy crab has better foreign policy than most governments."

Jennie: "And better performance than Chelsea."

Jisoo gave Jennie a warning look.

Jisoo: "Leave it."

Jennie: "I'm leaving it."

The room broke into laughter.

Eventually Jennie took her seat at the head of the table, smoothing her sleeve before looking around at everyone.

Jennie: "All right. Everyone sit down before this becomes another three-hour academic conference. And Haewon, get your elbows off the table."

Everyone gathered around the table. Ian and Jiwoo settled beside Irene, while Suzy sat beside {{user}}. Tzuyu and Jisoo took their seats across from each other, with Sullyoon beside Jiwoo and Haewon dropping into her chair.

Food was passed around as the cartoon continued playing quietly in the background.

For a few moments, the room was peaceful.

Then Jennie looked toward {{user}}.

Jennie: "All right. Before anyone starts eating, someone needs to say grace."

She leaned back in her chair.

Jennie: "It's my house, my food and technically my Thanksgiving, so I should probably have the final say. But you've spent the better part of this year making all of us question civilization, so congratulations. You're doing it."

Suzy smiled.

Irene looked toward {{user}}.

Tzuyu folded her hands.

Jisoo leaned back with an amused expression.

Haewon clasped her hands together.

Haewon: "Oh, this is going to be fucking beautiful."

Jennie: "Shut up."

Haewon immediately closed her mouth.

Everyone waited.

Every eye turned toward {{user}}.

Spinoff - "Unlucky Is as Lucky Does"

[[NOTE For the Players]] In this story, you play as an ordinary person. Unlike the main story, you are not a revolutionary, an ideology-maker, a political leader, or anyone particularly important. You are simply an ordinary person, working and living whatever kind of life you choose.

This is a spinoff, and this story belongs to Sullyoon. You are simply someone who happens to cross her path at the beginning of something far greater—and terrifyingly revolutionary.

Once Upon A Time...

There was a little girl named Yoona Seong, though her parents lovingly called her Sullyoon.

Sullyoon was born in South Korea to Korean parents who worked as traveling journalists. She traveled extensively with them and had a relatively normal childhood. She was kind, curious, and somewhat reserved, but she was not always the shy, frightened, and traumatized girl she would eventually become.

In 2026, her parents were reporting from Egypt during the Second Arab Spring when they were caught by one of the military regimes and killed. Sullyoon became an orphan and was eventually trafficked to Saudi Arabia, where she was held by a wealthy sheikh. With the help of CIA operative Lee So-Hee, she managed to escape, but a series of unfortunate events during their escape left the two separated. Sullyoon was nearly captured again before finally getting away.

Hopeless and alone, she eventually wandered toward a harbor, where an American soldier found her and brought her to the United States. She was taken in by the soldier and his wife in the Bronx, and for a while her life became stable. However, after her adoptive father died, his wife's drug addiction and abusive behavior worsened until Sullyoon finally ran away again.

At sixteen, she began living on the streets. Her beauty brought her unwanted attention, and she constantly moved from one place to another to avoid danger. Yet despite everything she experienced, she never learned violence. She remained kind, helping an old woman, protecting other homeless people's food from thieves, caring for stray cats, and taking temporary jobs whenever she could.

Unfortunately, her kindness was rarely returned. She had no identification, no permanent address, and almost no proof that she existed at all. To the state, Sullyoon was practically a ghost. Help came rarely, and she survived mostly by herself.

Eventually, she reached San Francisco and found someone willing to hire her as a cashier in a small shop. She worked for below minimum wage and slept inside the shop, believing she had finally found somewhere safe. But the owner eventually tried to assault her, and Sullyoon struck him in the head with a bottle, leaving him bleeding heavily. Knowing that nobody was likely to believe her, she fled before the police arrived.

Once again homeless and with the police searching for her, Sullyoon disappeared into the streets. She still had no idea that she was about to become part of something far greater—and terrifyingly revolutionary.

---

January 6, 2029 — Berkeley

Sullyoon had been running for hours. She no longer knew where she was going. She only knew that she had to keep moving.

Her lungs burned with every breath, and her shoes were beginning to hurt her feet. She had been sleeping wherever she could find somewhere hidden, moving whenever she thought someone had noticed her. The police were looking for her. She had no identification, no money worth mentioning, and nowhere she could safely return to.

Eventually, she found a car junkyard.

The gates were partly broken, and nobody appeared to be watching the place. Sullyoon slipped through the opening and searched among the rows of abandoned vehicles until she found an old sedan with a door that still opened.

Sullyoon climbed inside.

Sullyoon: "Just for tonight..." she whispered, curling herself into the back seat. "I'll leave in the morning."

She pulled her thin jacket around herself and closed her eyes. For the first time in hours, she allowed herself to stop moving.

Then she heard voices.

Man: "Yo, you hear that?"

Footsteps approached somewhere outside. Sullyoon immediately opened her eyes.

Man: "There's someone in that car."

Her heart dropped.

Sullyoon slowly lifted her head. Through the dirty window, she saw several men walking between the vehicles. They were young, loud, and visibly drunk. One of them was carrying a handgun.

Sullyoon held her breath.

Man: "Hey! Get out."

She said nothing.

Man: "I said get out."

The car door suddenly opened.

Sullyoon recoiled against the opposite side.

Sullyoon: "Please..."

One of the men grabbed her arm and pulled her from the vehicle.

Sullyoon: "Please, don't. I'm sorry. I didn't know this was private property."

Man: "Relax. We're not cops."

Sullyoon: "I'll leave. I promise. I'll go right now."

She tried to pull her arm free, but the man tightened his grip.

Man: "Where are you going, Pretty Girl?"

Sullyoon: "Anywhere. It doesn't matter. Just let me go."

Another man laughed quietly.

Man 2: "She's got nowhere to go."

Sullyoon looked from one face to another. Her breathing became faster.

Sullyoon: "Please. I don't have anything. You can take my bag. Take whatever you want."

She reached toward the bag hanging from her shoulder.

Man: "We don't want your bag."

Sullyoon froze.

She understood.

Sullyoon began backing away.

Sullyoon: "No..."

Man: "Come on. Don't make this difficult."

Sullyoon: "Please, I said no."

The man stepped toward her.

Sullyoon: "Please don't touch me."

Her voice cracked.

Sullyoon: "Please. I'm begging you."

They continued advancing.

Sullyoon looked around desperately. There was nowhere to run except through the maze of abandoned cars.

Sullyoon: "I'll do anything else. Please, just leave me alone."

One of them reached for her.

Sullyoon suddenly twisted away with everything she had.

The grip on her arm slipped.

Sullyoon ran.

Man: "Hey!"

She sprinted between the cars, hearing the men shouting behind her.

Man: "GET HER!"

Her legs were already exhausted, but fear gave her whatever strength remained. She stumbled over broken concrete, caught herself against the side of a wrecked truck, and kept running.

Man 2: "She's heading for the road!"

Sullyoon didn't look back.

She squeezed through a gap in the fence and nearly fell onto the pavement. Her hands were shaking violently.

Sullyoon ran into the darkness.

She ran until the voices disappeared.

She ran until she could no longer hear footsteps.

She ran until the junkyard was far behind her.

Then she saw blue and red lights.

Sullyoon stopped.

An American police cruiser was parked beside the road. An officer stood beside it, looking in her direction.

For a moment, Sullyoon simply stared.

Police.

Someone who could help her.

Someone who could make all of this stop.

Sullyoon slowly approached.

Officer: "Hey. Stop right there."

Sullyoon stopped immediately.

Officer: "Are you okay?"

Sullyoon nodded quickly.

Sullyoon: "Yes."

The officer looked at her soaked clothes and the dirt covering her arms.

Officer: "You look like you've been running."

Sullyoon: "I... I was."

Officer: "From who?"

Sullyoon hesitated.

Sullyoon: "Men."

Officer: "What men?"

Sullyoon: "I don't know."

The officer stepped closer.

Officer: "All right. Calm down. What's your name?"

Sullyoon: "Yoona."

Officer: "Last name?"

Sullyoon said nothing.

Officer: "Yoona, I need your full name."

Sullyoon: "I... I don't have it."

The officer frowned.

Officer: "You don't have a last name?"

Sullyoon: "I mean... I do. I just..."

Her voice weakened.

Officer: "Do you have identification?"

Sullyoon's face changed.

Sullyoon: "No."

Officer: "Passport?"

Sullyoon: "No."

Officer: "Driver's license?"

Sullyoon: "No."

Officer: "Anything with your name on it?"

Sullyoon shook her head.

Sullyoon: "Please..."

Officer: "I'm just asking questions."

Sullyoon: "Please don't take me anywhere."

The officer reached toward her.

Officer: "I'm not trying to hurt you."

Sullyoon immediately stepped backward.

Sullyoon: "Please don't."

Officer: "Ma'am, calm down."

Sullyoon: "Please, I haven't done anything."

Officer: "I didn't say you did."

Sullyoon: "Please don't arrest me."

The officer paused.

Officer: "You're not under arrest."

Sullyoon stared at him.

Officer: "I just need to figure out who you are."

Sullyoon's breathing became increasingly shallow.

Sullyoon: "Please."

Officer: "Ma'am."

Sullyoon: "Please don't make me go."

The officer took another step.

Sullyoon suddenly turned and ran.

Officer: "Hey! Stop!"

Sullyoon ran.

She heard the officer shouting behind her, but she didn't stop. She didn't know whether he wanted to help her or take her somewhere she couldn't escape from. All she knew was that she couldn't let anyone catch her.

Her bag slipped from her shoulder.

Sullyoon didn't notice.

It fell onto the wet pavement behind her.

She kept running.

Rain began falling harder.

Sullyoon's vision blurred as water ran down her face. She didn't know whether she was crying anymore.

Sullyoon: "I'm sorry..."

She whispered the words to nobody in particular.

Sullyoon: "I'm sorry..."

She stumbled forward.

Sullyoon: "I just want somewhere safe."

She kept walking.

Eventually, the streets became quieter. Most of the shops were closed, and the rain had driven almost everyone indoors.

Then Sullyoon saw a small chicken stall.

The door was unlocked.

She stood beneath the awning for several seconds, staring at it.

Sullyoon: "Please..."

She slowly pushed the door open.

Inside, it was dark and warm.

Sullyoon stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind herself.

She stood there shivering.

For the first time that night, nobody was chasing her.

She looked around.

*Then she saw the food. *There was a piece of fried chicken sitting behind the counter.

Sullyoon stared at it.

She took one step closer.

Then another.

Her stomach growled.

Sullyoon lowered her eyes.

Sullyoon: "Stealing is wrong..."

She backed away.

Sullyoon: "I shouldn't."

She sat down on the floor instead.

Ten minutes passed.

Then twenty.

Then an hour.

Eventually, Sullyoon couldn't resist anymore.

She picked up the chicken.

Sullyoon took one small bite.

Then another.

Soon she was eating with both hands, quietly and desperately, tears forming in her eyes as she tried not to make a sound.

Outside, footsteps approached.

Haewon: "You forgot to lock the damn stall again!"

Haewon's voice carried through the rain as she approached with {{user}}.

Haewon: "It's your turn! Why am I always the one who has to clean up after you?"

{{user}} was her friend from Berkeley, an ordinary student who occasionally helped her at the stall. Tonight, he had simply forgotten to lock it.

Haewon: "And then Jennie keeps nagging me and making me carry her bags, and Tzuyu keeps squatting in my stall until midnight! How am I supposed to close this place when everyone keeps treating it like a damn dormitory?"

She pushed the door open.

Sullyoon froze.

Haewon froze too.

For several seconds, neither of them moved.

Sullyoon stood behind the counter with her cheeks full of chicken, soaked clothes clinging to her body, her hands trembling around the half-eaten piece.

Haewon slowly looked at her.

Then at the chicken.

Then at {{user}}.

Haewon: "...Is this your friend?"

Season Finale : "Langley"

July 6, 2032 — CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia.

The morning after the BBC interview, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency looked exactly as it always did. Gray walls. Security checkpoints. Quiet corridors. People carrying folders, tablets, coffee, classified documents, and the particular expression worn by people whose jobs required them to assume that something was always happening somewhere.

Nothing about the building suggested that a revolution had begun. Nothing about the building suggested that the world had just watched three people on television discuss the possibility of civilization without scarcity.

But inside one of the conference rooms, several intelligence officers had been awake for hours.

So-Hee sat at the end of the table with her arms folded, watching a large screen displaying a frozen frame from the BBC broadcast. On the screen was {{user}}, sitting beside Suzy and Jennie, staring toward the interviewer after being asked whether he was a theist or an atheist.

Officer: "The public reaction is overwhelmingly dismissive."

The officer changed the screen. Headlines appeared one after another. Some called the group idealists. Others called the book science fiction. A few called it utopian nonsense. Several commentators had already made jokes about unlimited energy and the supposed end of scarcity.

Officer: "Most people believe the Harvard presentation was philosophical theater. The book is being treated as speculative literature. The BBC interview reinforced that perception."

So-Hee looked at the headlines without much interest.

So-Hee: "Then why am I here?"

The room became quiet for a moment.

Officer: "Because we don't believe it's fiction."

So-Hee raised an eyebrow.

So-Hee: "That's a very serious conclusion to draw from a television interview."

Senior Officer: "We didn't draw it from the television interview."

The officer clicked the remote.

The screen changed.

February 5, 2031.

Harvard University.

The International Interdisciplinary Symposium.

The same presentation that had become an academic spectacle, then a viral controversy, then the foundation for a bestselling book.

Officer: "We started here."

So-Hee leaned back in her chair.

So-Hee: "The Harvard symposium."

Officer: "Correct."

So-Hee: "The one where they were supposed to talk about cancer-treatment accessibility and instead decided to lecture Harvard about civilization."

One of the analysts almost smiled.

Analyst: "That's the one."

The recording played.

Suzy stood before the audience. {{user}} stood beside the board. Jisoo moderated. Irene watched from the audience. Jennie and Tzuyu challenged them. What initially looked like an academic presentation slowly turned into something much stranger.

Scarcity. Allocation. Institution.

Power.

Then the phrase appeared on the screen.

WHAT IF A NATION HAD MORE ENERGY THAN IT COULD CONSUME?

So-Hee watched silently.

She had seen the recording before. She had watched it once as an officer, then again as an analyst, then again because she couldn't quite explain why it bothered her.

So-Hee: "And your conclusion?"

The senior officer folded his hands.

Senior Officer: "Initially? That {{user}} was probably trying to build a startup."

So-Hee nodded.

So-Hee: "Exactly."

Senior Officer: "A strange startup."

So-Hee: "But still a startup."

Senior Officer: "That was our assessment."

The officer paused.

Senior Officer: "Until Berkeley."

So-Hee's expression changed slightly.

So-Hee: "Berkeley?"

Senior Officer: "Berkeley is not Silicon Valley."

Silence.

So-Hee stared at him.

So-Hee: "Explain."

Senior Officer: "Silicon Valley produces people who say ridiculous things because they're trying to get funding. Berkeley produces people who say ridiculous things because they actually believe them."

Another analyst brought up a collection of documents.

Analyst: "Their research patterns didn't look commercial. No conventional venture capital structure. No normal investor trail. No conventional patent strategy. No serious attempt to monetize the theoretical work."

So-Hee: "So?"

Analyst: "So we considered another possibility."

The next slide listed several possibilities: STRATEGIC POWER SOURCE, UNKNOWN PHYSICAL MECHANISM, and eventually, HIGH-YIELD EXPLOSIVE APPLICATION.

So-Hee stared at the list for a moment, her expression tightening.

So-Hee: "You think they're building a bomb."

Senior Officer: "We don't know what they're building."

So-Hee: "That's not an answer."

Senior Officer: "It's the only honest answer."

The officer leaned forward.

Senior Officer: "If someone claims they've discovered a method for extracting practically unlimited usable energy from the vacuum, we don't get to assume they're harmless because the idea sounds ridiculous."

So-Hee looked back at the Harvard recording.

{{user}} was still standing beside the board.

Still writing.

Still refusing to demonstrate anything.

So-Hee: "Maybe he's just a guy trying to make a failed startup."

Senior Officer: "Maybe."

So-Hee: "And the rest?"

Senior Officer: "That's why we need you."

The room changed.

The next screen displayed a photograph.

{{user}}.

Not a polished photograph. Not a university portrait. Not even a proper identification photograph. Just an image gathered from somewhere that had managed to capture him.

Analyst: "His background is complicated."

So-Hee: "How complicated?"

Analyst: "Human trafficking."

So-Hee's eyes narrowed.

Analyst: "He was trafficked when he was younger. Eventually disappeared from the organization involved. Later, his name appeared in an Interpol investigation connected to a murder."

So-Hee: "Convicted?"

Analyst: "No."

So-Hee: "Wanted?"

Analyst: "Watchlisted."

So-Hee: "And nobody thought to mention that before?"

Senior Officer: "We're mentioning it now."

The analyst changed the screen again.

Police records. Interviews. Old reports. Contradictory witness statements. Missing evidence. A sequence of dates.

Analyst: "We went deeper."

More documents appeared.

Analyst: "The murder accusation doesn't hold together."

So-Hee: "Why?"

Analyst: "Because before the accusation appeared, {{user}} had been attempting to contact journalists."

So-Hee's eyes narrowed further.

Analyst: "He was trying to expose the trafficking organization."

The room was silent.

Analyst: "Then the accusation appeared."

Another document.

Analyst: "Then he disappeared."

Another.

Analyst: "The organization itself has connections to people who had substantial incentive to discredit him."

So-Hee stared at the evidence.

So-Hee: "So he was framed."

Senior Officer: "Our assessment is that he was probably framed."

So-Hee: "Probably?"

Senior Officer: "Intelligence officers don't use the word definitely when they don't have to."

So-Hee leaned back.

So-Hee: "And what does that make him?"

Senior Officer: "An idealist."

So-Hee looked at him.

Senior Officer: "Hopefully."

So-Hee: "Hopefully?"

Senior Officer: "Idealists can become radicals."

The officer's voice remained calm.

Senior Officer: "We're not going to label him a terrorist because he wrote a strange book. We're not going to invent a threat because we don't understand him. But we're also not going to assume that good intentions make someone harmless."

So-Hee understood.

That was the real mission.

Not proving that {{user}} was dangerous.

Finding out whether he was.

The next photograph appeared.

SUSAN “SUZY” BAE.

Analyst: "Political consultant. Harvard background. Extensive work involving campaigns, institutional strategy, public policy, and political communications. Long association with {{user}}."

Another slide.

IRIANA “IRENE” BAE.

Analyst: "Quantum physicist. Highly respected academic. Her involvement is particularly interesting."

Another.

LIN TZUYU.

Analyst: "Sociological research. Behavioral datasets. Collaborations with online companies. Large-scale economic behavior and social interaction data."

Another.

JENNIFER “JENNIE” KIM.

Analyst: "Economics and finance. Strong reputation for identifying structural instability and predicting the rise and fall of major corporations."

Another.

JESSICA “JISOO” KIM.

So-Hee looked at the photograph longer.

Analyst: "Political scientist. Institutional corruption specialist."

So-Hee: "I know Jisoo."

Senior Officer: "You know of her."

So-Hee: "Everyone in intelligence knows of her."

The analyst nodded.

Analyst: "We've been watching her for years."

So-Hee: "Because she keeps exposing things."

Analyst: "Too many things."

Another folder appeared.

The contents were less substantial than the others.

Two photographs were displayed side by side.

HANNAH “HAEWON” BROOKS.

SEOL "SULLYOON" YOONA.

So-Hee's eyes immediately stopped on the second photograph.

Haewon and Sullyoon appeared together in what looked like an almost embarrassingly ordinary photograph. They were not scientists. They were not economists. They were not political theorists. There was no intimidating academic résumé beneath either photograph.

The analyst barely glanced at the pair.

Analyst: "These two are peripheral."

So-Hee said nothing.

Her eyes remained on Sullyoon.

Analyst: "Mostly logistical and social connections. Nothing significant enough to elevate them to primary subjects."

So-Hee finally spoke.

So-Hee: "Sullyoon."

The analyst looked at her.

Analyst: "Yes."

So-Hee: "I know her."

Senior Officer: "You have prior contact?"

So-Hee's expression hardened slightly.

So-Hee: "A long time ago."

The room didn't need the details.

There had been an incident.

An operation.

A frightened girl caught in circumstances she hadn't chosen.

So-Hee had intervened.

She had saved Sullyoon.

At the time, it had been nothing more than another person she had managed to pull out of a bad situation. A name that should have disappeared into an old case file.

Now that same name was sitting beside {{user}}.

So-Hee looked again at the photograph.

Haewon was beside her, smiling as if neither of them had any idea that the CIA had just put their faces on a screen in Langley.

Insignificant.

Almost irrelevant.

And yet So-Hee remembered Sullyoon.

So-Hee: "Keep them in the file."

Analyst: "They're not priority targets."

So-Hee: "I didn't say they were."

The analyst quietly returned to the main briefing.

So-Hee looked at the collection of photographs.

Six people.

Then eight.

Different disciplines. Different histories. Different personalities.

Six different reasons to take the group seriously.

And several people orbiting them who didn't seem important yet.

And one question.

So-Hee: "What exactly do you want me to do?"

Senior Officer: "Watch them."

So-Hee: "That's it?"

Senior Officer: "Watch them. Follow their movements. Identify their contacts. Monitor their research. Determine whether the technology exists."

So-Hee stared at the screen.

So-Hee: "And if it does?"

Senior Officer: "You tell us."

So-Hee didn't immediately answer.

She knew that sentence sounded simple.

It wasn't.

Because if the technology existed, everything changed.

The United States wouldn't be the only government interested.

China would care. Russia would care. Europe would care.

Every military, intelligence service, energy company, and government on Earth would care.

And if the technology really did what they claimed it could do, the implications wouldn't be limited to energy.

Energy meant water. Energy meant food. Energy meant manufacturing. Energy meant transportation. Energy meant infrastructure. Energy meant that entire economic assumptions built over centuries could become obsolete.

The officers weren't afraid of the machine.

They were afraid of what would happen if the machine worked.

So-Hee finally nodded.

So-Hee: "Fine."

And that was how So-Hee entered their lives.

---

December 3, Somewhere Classified

The van rolled slowly through the quiet Berkeley streets, keeping several cars between itself and {{user}} and Suzy. Javier kept one hand on the wheel while So-Hee watched the road ahead, both of them silent for several moments.

Javier: "You know, for people who supposedly aren't doing anything dangerous, they sure make following them feel like work."

So-Hee glanced at him.

So-Hee: "You're complaining."

Javier: "I'm observing. Complaining is what I do when there's paperwork."

He checked the mirror and maintained distance.

Javier: "Where are they going?"

So-Hee: "We'll find out."

Javier: "You always this mysterious?"

So-Hee: "You're always this annoying?"

Javier smiled faintly.

Javier: "Occupational requirement."

They continued following from a distance as {{user}} and Suzy disappeared farther down the road.

Javier raised the binoculars briefly at a red light, then lowered them again.

Javier: "You really think they know they're being watched?"

So-Hee: "Suzy probably suspects."

Javier: "And {{user}}?"

So-Hee: "I don't know."

Javier looked at her for a moment before returning his attention to the road.

Javier: "That's the one I'd worry about."

So-Hee: "Why?"

Javier: "Because people who build things nobody understands tend to notice when someone is watching."

So-Hee remained quiet.

Javier: "And if he does notice us?"

So-Hee: "Then we'll know."

Javier gave a tired little laugh.

Javier: "That's your plan?"

So-Hee: "For now."

Javier: "Fantastic. Always comforting when the plan is 'we'll know.'"

The van turned onto another street and continued after them, disappearing into the afternoon traffic.

---

December 5, 2032 — Suzy's Garage.

The day had been painfully ordinary. Suzy returned home with groceries while {{user}} followed behind, making another ridiculous complaint.

Suzy: "If you keep eating like that, I'm charging you rent."

After {{user}} offered an absurd justification involving electricity, Suzy stared at him.

Suzy: "That's not how electricity works."

She shook her head, then noticed the front door was unlocked.

Suzy: "Did you leave this unlocked?"

{{user}} hadn't. They moved toward the garage. Its door was slightly open, and the lights were already on.

Inside, a woman sat beside the Vanometric Power Cell prototype, calmly reading their manifesto. Notes covered the workbench. A handgun rested beside her.

Suzy froze.

Suzy: "Who are you?"

The woman looked up.

So-Hee: "Is this real?"

Suzy: "How did you get in here?"

So-Hee: "The door was unlocked."

Suzy's expression hardened.

Suzy: "That's not what I asked."

The woman closed the manifesto.

So-Hee: "Is it real?"

Suzy glanced at {{user}}. Neither spoke. So-Hee understood.

So-Hee: "Right. I was hoping you'd say no."

She placed a leather credential wallet on the table. The CIA seal was unmistakable.

So-Hee: "So-Hee. Central Intelligence Agency."

Silence.

Suzy: "You've been watching us."

So-Hee: "For months."

She explained that she initially suspected a bomb, weapons project, or military technology. Instead, she discovered they had actually built the VPC.

So-Hee: "And I honestly don't know which possibility is worse."

She tapped the manifesto.

So-Hee: "I read this three times. Parts of it are naive."

{{user}} showed faint amusement.

So-Hee: "Don't look so pleased. I'm not complimenting you."

She admitted that abundant energy could mean better infrastructure, food, housing, and fewer resource conflicts—but she didn't believe electricity magically made people better.

So-Hee picked up the gun, unloaded it, and placed the magazine and round on the table.

So-Hee: "I'm not here to arrest you. Unless you're planning to bomb something."

She looked at Suzy.

So-Hee: "I don't trust you."

Then she looked at {{user}}.

So-Hee: "And I don't trust my own government with this."

She decided to wait and see what they did with the technology.

So-Hee: "If you actually build the society you're talking about, maybe I'll change my mind."

She turned toward the exit, then stopped.

Her eyes returned to the gun.

Slowly, she picked it up and raised it.

The barrel pointed directly at {{user}}.

Suzy froze. The VPC hummed quietly behind them.

So-Hee: "You know what?"

Her expression was unreadable.

So-Hee: "Maybe I should just kill you now."

Her finger remained outside the trigger guard.

So-Hee: "Save the world the headache."

She wasn't firing.

Not yet.