“Who are they?”
Seo Jinhyeok asked.
The android on the operating table struggled to move its eyes.
“They were… the people at the exchange shop.”
“What exchange shop?”
Just as the android was about to answer, another warning beep sounded from its chest. The erratic power readings plummeted.
The medical staff immediately surrounded the android.
“That’s all we can do.”
The doctor on duty switched off the external speaker.
Auxiliary power was connected inside the operating room. The android’s eyes closed again.
Seo Jinhyeok stared through the window for a moment, then turned away.
“Find the owner of the right arm first.”
The next morning.
The android had been transferred to the protective ward at a robot hospital.
A temporary power unit was connected to its upper body, while the right arm and left leg remained deactivated. The screen beside the bed displayed the temperature of its personhood core and the stability of its memory sectors.
Park Mujin and Jin Seoah sat in front of the bed.
Im Suhyeon was watching the questioning from a short distance away.
“Currently, it isn’t a suspect.”
Im Suhyeon spoke calmly.
“It possesses body parts belonging to a missing android, but we haven’t confirmed how it acquired them. Coercive questioning or memory access isn’t permitted.”
Park Mujin pulled his chair closer.
“If we can’t even ask questions, why are you sitting there?”
“Ask whatever you want. I’m saying you can’t force it to answer.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
Jin Seoah switched on the recording device between them.
“Let’s begin.”
The android on the bed opened its eyes.
Jin Seoah asked, “Do you have a name?”
A brief silence passed.
“Doyun.”
“Is Doyun your registered name as well?”
“Yes.”
At a terminal in one corner of the room, Rian looked up the registration information Doyun had provided.
“It matches the direct authentication value of the personhood core. Only the wireless registration signal has been removed.”
Park Mujin looked at Doyun.
“Why did you erase the signal?”
“If I connected to the official registration network, they would’ve found the replacement parts.”
“So you knew it was illegal.”
“I knew.”
Doyun made no excuses.
Park Mujin turned his tablet around to show them.
It displayed a diagram of Doyun’s body, with each part marked in a different color.
“Where did you get all of this?”
“I didn’t get it all at once.”
Doyun spoke slowly.
“It started with my left leg. There was an accident at a logistics warehouse. The compensation my company paid wasn’t enough to buy an official replacement.”
“So?”
“I found a used part.”
“And after that?”
“The used leg didn’t fit my original pelvis. I replaced the pelvis, and the change in weight damaged my spinal support frame. The output of my chest power unit became insufficient, too.”
He had installed one part to replace another that had broken.
The newly installed part caused something else to break.
After replacing the parts one by one, all that remained of his original body was the personhood core and part of the skull frame.
Jin Seoah asked, “Did you get the parts at an exchange shop?”
“At first, it was a private repair technician. The second time, it was an unregistered hospital. Later, I used an exchange shop.”
“What kind of place is it?”
“They find the parts you need and perform the surgery, too.”
Park Mujin asked, “What do they take in return?”
“If you have money, you pay money. If you don’t, you hand over usable parts or sign an installment contract.”
“What parts do you have to hand over?”
Doyun looked at his motionless right arm.
“That’s how I ended up in debt.”
“You’re saying the people chasing you last night were the creditors?”
“They called themselves the recovery team.”
“What were they recovering?”
Doyun didn’t answer for a moment.
“The parts installed in my body.”
Park Mujin’s expression hardened.
“They were going to take them back out of your body?”
“The contract said the exchange shop retained ownership of the parts until they were paid for in full.”
Im Suhyeon asked, “Were you informed of that clause when you signed the contract?”
“They explained it to me.”
“Could you refuse?”
“If I refused, I couldn’t get the surgery.”
“Couldn’t you choose another hospital?”
Doyun looked at Im Suhyeon.
“The quote from an official hospital was an amount I couldn’t repay even if I worked for seven years.”
The room fell silent.
Jin Seoah asked, “Why did you run yesterday?”
“I couldn’t make this month’s payment. The recovery team came to my workplace.”
“Didn’t you consider reporting them to the police or the AI Administration?”
At Park Mujin’s question, Doyun closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“I thought they’d confiscate my body first.”
Park Mujin had no rebuttal.
Android parts with no confirmed source were subject to confiscation. There were no exceptions, even when they were installed in someone’s body. If the parts were removed from Doyun, he wouldn’t even have a power unit left to keep his personhood core running.
Jin Seoah brought up the serial number of the right arm.
“Do you remember the owner of this arm?”
“Yes.”
“The registered name is Sol. A missing-person report was filed three months ago.”
Doyun’s gaze stopped on the screen.
“Sol isn’t dead.”
Park Mujin leaned forward.
“How do you know?”
“I met Sol in person.”
“When?”
“The day I received the arm transplant.”
Doyun continued, “Sol was right beside me.”
Two in the afternoon.
Gu Daechul repeatedly reviewed the internal footage of Doyun’s right arm.
The cut surface was clean. There were no signs that it had been forcibly torn off or damaged in combat. The joint connection bore the even marks left by surgical cutting equipment.
“At least the arm itself was removed surgically.”
Gu Daechul spoke.
“Was it removed while the owner was alive?”
When Park Mujin asked, Gu Daechul nodded.
“The power circulation was maintained when it was separated. That much is certain.”
“What about consent?”
“Machine marks can’t tell us that.”
The interrogation records of the captured recovery-team employees were displayed on the conference-room screen.
They admitted to attacking Doyun. However, they claimed they had only been recovering the parts according to the contract.
The contract they submitted bore Doyun’s personhood-core authentication value.
All installed parts to be recovered in the event of a breach of contract.
Any damage to the body incurred during recovery to be borne by the contractor.
In emergencies, forced deactivation of the body, excluding the personhood core, was permitted.
Im Suhyeon was reading the contract when he switched off the screen.
“It’s invalid.”
Park Mujin asked, “Even though he authenticated it himself?”
“A contract in which a person gives someone else the right to damage their own body isn’t valid. The same applies to androids.”
“But legally, parts are property.”
“They’re property when they’re sitting in a warehouse.”
Im Suhyeon looked at Park Mujin.
“Whether they remain the same property after becoming part of someone’s body is still unsettled in the courts.”
Seo Jinhyeok brought the contract back up on the screen.
“What about the companies that signed the contracts?”
Rian answered, “We found three companies on paper. All of them either went out of business or used nonexistent addresses. The payments moved through several accounts under assumed names.”
“And the ones we caught?”
“They claim they received instructions for each recovery job through an encrypted hiring network. They say they never met their employer directly.”
No Geon, sitting in the corner of the conference room, raised a hand.
“The android named Sol—its last connection was cut off in the Yeongdeungpo area, right?”
Rian checked the screen.
“Near the Yeongdeungpo electronic-parts market.”
“There’s a place where unregistered repair techs gather.”
Park Mujin looked at No Geon.
“You knew about it?”
“Knowing about it and using it are different things.”
“I didn’t ask if you used it.”
“Because I figured you were going to.”
No Geon pushed back his chair and stood.
“If we drive an Administration vehicle, they’ll close up. I’ll go in first.”
An old electronic-parts market in Yeongdeungpo.
Most of the street-level shops were closed, but a few basement repair shops were still lit. Inside narrow, unmarked storefronts, unregistered androids were repairing circuit boards and joint components.
No Geon went down to the basement first.
Park Mujin, Rian, and Jin Seoah waited in a vehicle across the street.
About ten minutes later, a message came from No Geon.
Found it. Come down. Don’t scare them.
The three of them descended the stairs.
No Geon was waiting at a small repair shop in the very back of the market.
Inside, an android was soldering a circuit board with a magnifying glass held in front of its eye.
Its right arm was thicker than its left. It wasn’t meant for precision work, but was a low-cost work arm used at construction sites. It had only three fingers, too.
The android raised its head.
The moment it saw the Administration identification cards, it stood up.
When it tried to retreat through the rear door, Rian blocked the way.
“We’re not here to take your arm back.”
The android stopped moving.
Park Mujin asked, “You’re Sol, right?”
There was no answer.
Rian brought up a photograph of Doyun’s right arm.
“This arm matches your registration records.”
Sol stared at the photograph for a long time.
“Is Doyun alive?”
Jin Seoah answered, “He’s in the hospital.”
Only then did Sol sit back down.
The right work hand lowered beside the circuit board. Its three fingers failed to regulate their pressure precisely and pushed a small screw across the table.
Sol said, “I sold that arm.”
Park Mujin asked, “No one forcibly removed it?”
“I consented.”
“Why?”
Sol pointed to the two visual devices mounted on its face.
They looked like ordinary eyes from the outside, but focusing mechanisms moved inside the irises.
“The original visual devices had reached the end of their service life.”
“You sold your arm to fix your eyes?”
“If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t do precision work.”
Sol tried to pick up the screw with its three fingers. After failing twice, it picked it up with its left hand.
“There was still work I could do with one arm. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t do anything.”
Park Mujin looked down at Sol’s right arm.
He didn’t ask anything else.
Jin Seoah said, “You gave the arm directly to Doyun?”
“We met at the exchange shop. They removed my arm and transplanted it into Doyun immediately.”
“Do you remember where the exchange shop was?”
Sol shook its head.
“I traveled there with my visual devices removed. I woke up somewhere else after the surgery, too.”
“What about a way to contact them?”
Sol hesitated, then opened a drawer in the workbench.
It took out a black chip the size of a fingernail.
“They called it a connection key for warranty service. They told me to use it if there was a problem with the replacement eyes or arm.”
No Geon took the chip.
There was no writing on its surface. When he connected it to a terminal, a single encrypted address appeared.
Available connection hours.
From eleven tonight until two in the morning.
No Geon checked the address.
“Can we contact the exchange shop through this?”
“An intermediary will appear first.”
Sol’s gaze remained on the chip.
“But if you’re going there, there’s something I’d like you to confirm.”
Jin Seoah asked, “What?”
“There was another android beside my operating room.”
“You saw it?”
“I couldn’t see anything. My visual devices had been removed then.”
Sol’s work fingers slowly curled inward.
“It kept banging on the wall.”
Park Mujin asked, “What was it saying?”
“It said it had never filed a disposal request.”
“What does that mean?”
Sol answered, “It said its personhood core was functioning normally. It also begged them to keep it alive.”
Eleven forty at night.
No Geon arrived at the location indicated by the black chip.
It was a closed underground parking garage.
The gate at the entrance was down, and the security office was empty. When No Geon held the chip to the reader, the gate slowly rose.
Basement level three.
Gray vans stood in rows between the pillars.
One of them was the same model as the vehicle that had fled after chasing Doyun the previous night.
No Geon didn’t slow down.
A man stood in front of a makeshift tent deeper inside the garage.
“What brings you here?”
No Geon held out the connection key.
“I’m looking for a replacement part.”
“Is the user here in person?”
“The client is someone else.”
The man looked No Geon up and down.
“What part?”
“A chest power unit. Something with high output.”
The man lifted the tent flap.
Inside were terminals displaying photographs and prices for various parts. Arms and legs with their serial numbers erased, visual devices, and power units filled the listings.
No Geon scrolled through the screen.
“Can I trust the condition?”
“We have parts that came in today. Want to inspect them yourself?”
“If possible.”
The man opened a steel door in the back.
A long hallway stretched beyond it.
No Geon followed the man inside.
Numbered doors lined both sides of the hallway.
As they passed one of them, something slammed against the other side.
Bang.
No Geon slowed his pace.
Bang. Bang.
The man turned around.
“Don’t worry about it. Just reflexes before disposal.”
Just as he was about to walk on, a voice came from inside the room.
“I didn’t consent.”
The man’s face stiffened.
The voice behind the door spoke again.
“I never filed a disposal request.”
No Geon stared at the door where the sound had come from.
Blue coolant was leaking through the narrow gap beneath it.
Another voice came from behind him.
“Sir.”
No Geon slowly turned around.
Two men in black maintenance uniforms stood at the entrance to the hallway.
One of them held a neural-blocking device.
“What are you doing here?”