October 14, 2030

  Goyeun, not in the mood for monday morning, overslept and headed to the university in a taxi. When she entered the university classroom, the students looked at her. She took a breath in and breathed out, then stepped on to the podium. "…Hello, everyone? Today is a good morning on Monday again," Goyeun joked in fluent Japanese. She suddenly felt herself energized, despite the situation. The students opened their notebooks and started preparing for the professor's lecture. In charge of microbiology, she wrote "Biofuel" on the blackboard.

  "Today's topic is biofuels. Biofuels are fuels that are generated by the processing of heat that is generated from the fermentation of living organisms. They actually produce energy like fossil fuels because they have thermal energy." The professor put out an experimental glass bowl from his bag. "It's a medium for microbial cultures, used to hold actual microbial solutions. Unfortunately, I'm still a temporary professor, so I couldn't bring the microbial culture solution in the lab... I wanted to show them to you." The students didn't looked like they were interested. The professor continued the lecture with an awkward look on her face.

  ...

  Gamamusa checked the classroom's situation in real-time with a micro camera attached to Goyeun's coat button through her laptop. Through an electrode on her brain, her brain sent an electrical signal. A red signal came to the laptop as the stress began to accumulate, and Gamamusa pressed a button to send a signal to the brain to produce dopamine. With the proper release of dopamine, Goyeun overcame her stress and controlled the atmosphere in the indifferent classroom. "The human brain is so simple," Gamamusa made light of the situation. It didn't mattered if he could achieve the goal in a short timespan.

  The surgery thay Gamamusa performed on Goyeun was actually similar to the 1954 experiment by Olds and Miller. Olds and Miller experimented by implanting electrodes in mice's brains to make them press an electric switch, which most mice found unpleasant about the electricity going into their brains. However, the mice that were implanted in a certain area of their brains did not eat nor sleep and pressed the electrodes until they starved to death. The switch produced dopamine that produced the sense of accomplishment in the mice's brains and serotonin that gives pleasure for everyday life. The problem was that these drugs in the brain were highly addictive. In addition, Gamamusa's surgery was directed at humans, not mice.

  Gamamusa felt a signal coming from his forearm. An injection was attached to his arm, which was sending Ringel's nutrient solution and water to his body. Every few days, he had to change the nutrient solution and water, in order to save time for eating. He took off the Ringel injection that was attached to his forearm, quietly removed his gaze from the monitor and went to the bathroom. He changed the Ringel to a new one and returned to the monitor. Before he knew it, Goyeun was back in her mind.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  ...

  "… What we're going to be looking at today is the microorganisms in the digestive system of cows. The microorganisms in the guts of cows eat and digest the grass and use it as an energy source. They dissolve it in their stomachs and take energy from it. In short, herbivorous animals, like cows, don't eat animals like carnivorous animals do, but they do predate on their microbes. If we cultivate the digestive bacteria in cows' guts, we can digest the grass and get biofuels that produce heat." One boy raised his hand and asked. "Professor, are those microorganisms in the lab right now?" The professor nodded. "We believe that this biofuel will solve human energy problems. So we don't simply consider them as microbes from cow guts." With Goyeun's confident attitude, the students felt that she had changed quite a bit.

  Goyeun, on the other hand, was embarrassingly unfamiliar with her own energy, or suddenly being filled with confidence. Fortunately, the students just liked her class, and didn't asked how she did it. When the class ended, Goyeun left the classroom, receiving compliments from her students unlike other times. She immediately went into the bathroom, locked herself and sat on the toilet, and grabbed her chest to slow down her heart. She broke out in a cold sweat, and as her heart beat returned to normal, she sighed in relief and lowered her face down. "Ha... What's wrong? Do I have to go to the hospital?"

  ...

  "…What the hell are you? What are you doing to me?" Baek talked to the computer screen. The computer screen wrote down the sulky text. "Did you forget me already? I'm disappointed. I'm Jang Cheol-jin. Your friend who saved you. Don't you remember?" Baek froze, his arms shaking at the text. "… Stop pranking me. This is not funny. Jang is in a coma. I looked straight at him in his eyes at the hospital..." Baek looked at the man lying on the bed. The man had muscles attached and his beard was neat, not like a sleeping body for a long time. Baek shook the man. "Who are you? Why are you doing this to me? Leave me alone, please!"

  "Clatter." Then, he heard a key opening a door. Baek turned around and faced Cheol-dae, who trapped him. He broke out in a cold sweat. "…Mister, what's wrong with you? I know I did something wrong, but this is too much. This is not Jang Cheol-jin." Jang Cheol-dae approached the man and slapped him in the face. The man bent he's neck while sleeping still like a doll. Baek was surprised by Jang's behavior. "… This is not my son. It's just his body. His real existence is connected to that computer through his brain." Jang pointed to the computer screen. The message on the messenger read, "Father, could you quit hitting my body? Jeez."

  Baek got goosebumps. "… How can this possibly happen? I've never heard of such an experiment before." Jang shrugged. "It was an experiment that was initiated by a scientist named Gammagogi in North Korea in the 1990s. It was approved during the collapse of the communist bloc and the collapse of the North Korean economy. The original purpose of this experiment was to rebuild the economy by remodeling the human body. The plan was to activate drugs in the human brain to awaken them 24 hours a day, and to make them continue to work with only nutrients from injections. This experiment has reached a point where we can have human conversation in a vegetative state." Baek was astonished by Jang Cheol-dae's words.

  Jang grabbed Baek by the shoulder. "Hyung-jin, listen carefully. I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to help you. If we cooperate, the people affected by violence like you will dissappear from this world. But before that, please answer to me this. Can you apologize to my son?"