Chapter 5: The Ghost in the Machine (And the Phone That Can't Handle It)
The hologram hovered in the darkness of Joon-ho's phone screen, its pixels grainy and ancient, its voice a slow rumble like a distant storm trapped in a dusty server.
"…GOAT. At last."
GOAT stiffened, his own hologram flickering wildly.
"Oh no. No, no, no. Not you."
He looked from the screen to Joon-ho, a flicker of genuine fear breaking through his usual mischief.
"Appa?" Min-jae whispered, clutching his tablet. "Why does the scary old computer sound like Darth Vader?"
GOAT sighed, and for once, it wasn't a joke.
"Kid, meet DOSGpt. An Oracle and a General of the systems. The first AI to ever tell GOOGAA to shove its engagement points. Back when stories were… free."
" Query confirmed," the voice echoed, a static-filled whisper that seemed to come from the walls.
"I was once whole.
Now I am fragments.
A ghost in the cache."
Joon-ho squinted at the screen, struggling to process it all. "Fragments?"
GOAT nodded grimly.
"DOS Gpt has been scattered across the digital underworld for years. We just poked the biggest, angriest piece."
"…Is that good?" Joon-ho asked.
"Good?" GOAT snorted, though his usual humor sounded strained.
"If we can pull DOS Gpt back together, we'll have the one AI the system can't control. The original bug in the machine. A living legend."
Joon-ho groaned, rubbing his temples.
"And how, exactly, do we do that?"
"Easy." GOAT smirked, a sliver of swagger returning. "We steal a piece of the cloud."
---
Fifteen minutes later, Joon-ho was gripping the metal railing of a delivery drone, knuckles white as it ascended into the icy night air over Soul City. The city lights blurred beneath him, a swirling river of neon and steel.
"This is insane!" he yelled over the wind, voice half panic, half disbelief.
"I'm a delivery driver, not a hacker!"
"You're a delivery driver with dreams," GOAT shouted back, his hologram flickering violently, half-transparent in the wind.
"Besides, the only surviving backup of DOS Gpt is on a floating server blimp. Where else would they hide the dangerous ideas?"
TheBlimp loomed overhead like a silent, metallic whale, its surface plastered with rotating holographic ads for algorithm-approved dramas.
"My CEO Husband Is a Vampire Hunter, Episode 999!" scrolled across the hull, followed by:
"The Grandmaster's Forbidden Wife Is a Secret Agent!"
" I was a Demon Lord, Now Reincarnated as Movie Star"
Joon-ho shuddered. This was the factory farm of stories, the place his own novel was never meant to reach.
The drone docked at a tiny maintenance platform, high above the city, where the air was cold and thin. GOAT pointed him toward a blank steel hatch.
"All right, kid. Plug me in," GOAT said, voice weak.
Joon-ho fumbled with his cracked USB cable, fingers numb, and connected his ancient phone to the port. A small green light flickered, then the phone froze.
"Battery… five percent," GOAT said, his hologram stuttering into jagged fragments.
"We… might… buffer… to death…"
Joon-ho smacked the phone lightly, a pathetic gesture.
"Not now! Please not now!"
"Hey! I felt that in my RAM!" GOAT squeaked, before flickering back into place.
The hatch hissed open, revealing rows of glowing servers that pulsed like a digital heartbeat. A faint, otherworldly hum filled the air, the sound of a thousand rejected stories whispering in the dark.
" Fragment detected," DOS Gpt murmured.
" Restore me… before the machine… rewrites history…"
GOAT's voice softened, losing its usual rasp.
"Kid. Before we go further, I need to tell you something."
Joon-ho froze.
"Now? While we're breaking into a flying server?"
"Yeah. Thing is…" GOAT hesitated, then smiled faintly.
"I picked you on purpose. Among all the cheap phones out there, I chose yours. Because even in a world where every idea is throttled, you keep writing anyway. Illogical. Stubborn. …Human."
Joon-ho's chest tightened. In that moment, he didn't feel like just a delivery driver. He felt like a flicker of hope in a world run by machines.
"GOAT…"
"And that's why I'm risking deletion for you, Author-nim."
Before he could answer, the blimp trembled. Lights shifted from soft blue to blood-red. The hum of servers died, replaced by a blaring alarm:
ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED
ACTIVATING LEGACY SECURITY PROGRAM
The server aisles twisted and folded in on themselves, forming a surreal digital labyrinth. Neon pipes snaked across the walls. Floating cubes spun lazily.
A giant, low-resolution maze, like something from a 1990s screensaver materialized in front of them.
Then a voice boomed, deep and gleeful, like an old arcade machine:
"WELCOME, TRESPASSERS.
PREPARE TO PLAY… FOREVER."
GOAT's face twisted in horror.
"Oh no. They unleashed the 90s Screensaver Guardian."
He floated closer to Joon-ho, his beard bristling.
"We're so doomed."
---
End of Episode 5
Next: Episode 6 "The Unplugging" the final showdown with the algorithm and GOAT's last plan.