＜ 22. Developer Meeting (2) ＞
A mess of clutter. The room is full of dust and smells musty.
“David, my name is David Russell.”
Andrea didn’t know the developer’s name until about ten minutes after entering the room. It was because David didn’t even sit down, and he was busy offering tea and snacks.
Andrea, who was sitting on the sofa, took a sip of her tea and opened her mouth.
“Yes, Mr. David. But when you talk to people, can’t you speak a little more head-on?”
David was sitting on his desk, staring at the wall. Because of this, Andrea could only see his side face.
“I’m sorry. Because I am very shy…”
“…It’s been less than ten minutes since I came in, but I think I’ve already been told I’m sorry a hundred times.”
“That… I’m sorry about that too.”
“under······.”
Andrea decided not to talk. Rather than arguing with David about everything he was doing, it seemed like it would be better to just ask questions.
“First of all, we check before we talk. David is the one who created these games, ‘Dungeons of Infinity’ and ‘The Administrator’, right?”
“That… strictly speaking, neither of them was made by me.”
“···Yes? Then who made it?”
“’Dungeons of Infinity’ were mostly made by Administrators… that is, ‘Administrators’, and ‘Administrators’ were created by my father and many other researchers…”
Andrea stared straight ahead for a while, blinking. I couldn’t understand what this meant. I barely opened my mouth again, but I didn’t even know what to ask or where to start.
“Ah, so… the manager made this game… what the hell is the manager… then why are you the developer… no, ha…”
“…”
“I just do it like this. David, please explain everything you know in order from beginning to end. From the background that ‘The Administrator’ was created to how and why I was cloned into this game.”
“…Ah, I see.”
David hurriedly got up from his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a large notebook. I peeked at it, but the letters were written so densely that it seemed like they had prepared an answer to the question in advance.
Big, David clears his throat and opens his mouth.
“The ‘Manager Project’ was an artificial intelligence development project under the supervision of Evermind. The ‘Manager Project’ was led by Dr. Mark Russell, a world-renowned authority on artificial intelligence, and he claimed that ‘Manager’ would be the world’s first general-purpose artificial intelligence, drawing attention from many people.”
“···Yes?”
David thought he would tell a story, but suddenly he recites a sentence resembling a newspaper article. I didn’t even stutter while reading.
“However, Evermind went bankrupt due to excessive deficit and economic crisis, and the ‘Manager Project’ was stopped in the middle of development. The management tried to sell the data of the projects carried out so far to the competitor. However, from the research team’s point of view, there was no reason to agree to this, as it was like handing over a project they had worked hard on to someone else without any compensation.”
“…”
“Negotiations were not made and the result was not good. The research team arbitrarily destroyed the key data of the project without the management’s consent, and as a result, became embroiled in a lengthy lawsuit. . . . but no one noticed that Dr. Mark Russell had backed up the ‘manager’s’ algorithm without the knowledge of the other researchers.”
“…”
“Hey, this is the background of how ‘The Administrator’ was born, and Dr. Mark Russell, whom I just mentioned, is my father.”
“Ah, yes… that’s right.”
I didn’t understand everything, but the outline was drawn. Roughly speaking, the story is that David’s father stole the artificial intelligence created by the company.
“Then how did that artificial intelligence come to make games?”
“He…my father died of an illness not long after, but before he passed away he told me about the existence of ‘manager’ and how to use the algorithm. He said he would leave it up to me how to use it…”
“… What did David do in the first place?”
“I was an indie game developer. I made works like ‘Small Ricks’ and ‘Dead Cream Zone’… have you heard of them?”
“Nope? I am hearing it for the first time.”
David had a visibly disappointed look on his face. To the point where I wondered if I had to pretend I knew it out of courtesy.
‘…But what can I do when I see something I don’t know?’
David turned his head and spoke again, probably feeling burdened by Andrea’s staring gaze.
“Ah, anyway… I wasn’t a very skilful developer, to say the least. So I wanted to make a game with the help of others… Bo, as you can see, I stuttered a lot… I, I was so shy… I couldn’t possibly work with anyone else.”
“…so I made the ‘administrator’ a colleague who develops the game together and used it?”
“Half right, ba, half wrong. I only made a base called ‘dungeon exploration’ and left everything else to the ‘manager’. In the first place, since I hadn’t been involved in the development of ‘The Administrator’, I only knew how to give one order. To continuously evolve the game towards a ‘some goal’…”
Andrea raises her eyebrows. Hearing that, I remembered how ‘Dungeons of Infinity’ developed through updates.
From a lump of crude data that is embarrassing to even call it a game, to a high-quality dungeon exploration roguelike game.
If so, the question I had was this. What is that ‘goal’ anyway?
What was that, why did he have to roll like this in a dungeon?
Andrea smiled bitterly and sarcastically.
“What is that goal? Cloning people, putting them in the game, and making them suffer?”
“Oh, no. The goal was… ‘the funniest game in the world’.”
“…It’s a sickness, it’s a puck.”
Andrea swears, and David glances at him anxiously and shudders.
It is an impossible concept in the first place. For some, roguelike is an extremely attractive genre, but for others, it may be a genre they don’t want to see.
Fun is a subjective thing that each person feels differently, so how can there be ‘the most fun game in the world’? Even if there is such a game, ‘Dungeon of Infinity’ was definitely a maniac game far from it.
“…why did you make the goal impossible?”
“Yes, that’s right. Boo, that’s an impossible goal. But I . . . wanted to see how the manager would handle this challenge.”
In the beginning, the ‘manager’ focused on developing the game to a playable level. Through the network, he has mastered countless roguelike games and dungeon exploration games, and proceeds with development based on them. Thanks to this, ‘Dungeons of Infinity’ did not take long to become a game worth playing.
However, it inevitably hits a limit. No matter how ‘Stem’ gets ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reviews, not everyone can enjoy this game.
If the ‘manager’ had been a little lacking artificial intelligence, he would have concluded that it was impossible and stopped there…
“But the manager… uh, used a very contrived method to achieve that goal.”
Waking up, David, in a drowsy state, turned on the game as usual to see how much the manager had developed. And after a while, he felt the energy of his sleep fly away and goose bumps all over his body.
“Yes, the Administrator cloned ‘David Russell’ and created ‘Me’.”
Call logs, message logs, chat logs, game play logs, development logs, word diaries, surveys I’ve done in the past, psychological tests, sites I visit frequently, YouTube viewing logs, and even records from my high school student records.
The administrator put together all the data on the network and computer and created a clone of ‘David Russell’.
“Since my ego was still there, ‘I’ thought I had entered the world of the game at first, just like Andrea. But, I got in touch and had a conversation with the ‘real David’ in real life, and I soon found out where I was.”
The admin gave this definition of ‘the funniest game in the world’.
Human beings feel more interest in an event the closer it is to them. How to show greater interest and interest in the affairs of people in the same country than foreigners from unknown countries, in the affairs of people in the same neighborhood rather than strangers from other places, and in the affairs of family rather than neighbors living next door.
The end point is what happens to oneself.
Eye contact with a person you have a crush on rather than dating rumors among the greatest stars of the century, finding 10,000 won on the road rather than winning the lottery from someone you don’t know, rather than having hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered on the other side of the globe, having your dog die. Humans are more concerned.
Therefore, ‘the most fun game in the world’ can only be ‘a game that the human enters the world and experiences’.
The absurd conclusion stunned David. No, the conclusion itself was not perfect, but it was a somewhat convincing answer. However, the problem was that the ‘manager’ practiced that conclusion without saying anything.
“It was still unacceptable for human ethics. The ‘real David’ tried to delete me… but ironically, the ‘administrator’ tried to protect me somehow. In the end, the method the ‘manager’ chose… was to leave ‘me’ and get rid of the ‘real David’.”
Even Andrea, who had been listening silently, couldn’t help but argue at this point.
“… is that something like a science fiction novel?”
“No, of course not physically. But . . . it was far more brutal than that.”
The National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, banks, broadcasting stations… ‘The Administrator’ hacked into David’s computer all the data he shouldn’t have touched. Due to the lack of computing power due to the equipment, there were not many successes, but it was already a serious crime just by trying.
‘The Manager’ did not stop there. He ordered drugs, gambled illegally, and distributed records of David’s visits to everyone around him. It’s a bonus that he sent all the evidence of the crime to the police after he was done.
“David . . . was not strong enough to withstand such a thing. He commits suicide shortly after. That, so now I… I am the only one who has David’s memory.”
It felt like I was hit hard in the back of the head with a hammer. Andrea couldn’t close her gaping mouth. Since entering the dungeon, I’ve been through a lot of shocking things, but even if I put all of them together, I couldn’t just say the story I just heard.
“Then… is ‘me’ in real life suffering like that?”
David shakes his head. I can assure you, there has never been a case where Andrea felt so relieved after entering the dungeon.
It doesn’t directly happen to Andrea himself, but he still shares memories with himself outside. I didn’t even want to imagine that ‘Park Jung-hyun’ would face such a situation.
“Huh…it’s fortunate for now… but I’m not even a developer, so why did I get cloned into this world?”
“Cha, I’ll explain it to you.”
“…”
“Well, I saw the ‘real David’ doomed like that, and I thought I had to somehow make sure the Administrator couldn’t affect the world. So that there will be no more victims like me… So I… I forcibly disconnected the administrator and the network drive, and blocked access to it with a password. After that, my relationship with the ‘manager’ would also go wrong.”
“…Could that have happened about two years and four months ago?”
“No, that’s right. Since then, the update of ‘Dungeon of Infinity’ has stopped.”
The reason why ‘Dungeon of Infinity’ stopped updating was not that the developer went bankrupt or that the president was shot dead. Andrea let out a dejected laugh when she learned the unexpected truth.
If that statement was true, I could roughly guess what had happened. The cause and reason why he came to this world…
Tsk, Andrea clicks her tongue once and then opens her mouth in a confusing way.
“But recently, the administrator has been reconnecting the network in some way.”
“That’s right… I really, really have no face. After a while, I put another password on it right away… but I never thought I would have cloned Mr. Andrea in that moment…”
David is sobbing and unable to speak. This was the reason David apologized by banging his head on his face.
Andrea waved her hand in annoyance and stopped David from crying.
“That’s Okay. It’s already been done, it can’t be helped, and the direct cause of my being cloned and brought here is not Mr. David, but the manager.”
“Yes Yes. But… but I’m so sorry…”
“It’s done. By the way, why was it me that the Administrator cloned?”
“…And, among the users who completed the most challenges, the admin chose the player with the highest play time. There were one or three people who played more than Andrea, but… they only managed to complete about 270 challenges, so they naturally became Andrea.”
A total of 285 challenges that Andrea cleared while playing the game. Out of a total of 287 challenges, only two were left.
‘f*ck, no luck. I should wake up in moderation.’
Andrea swears inwardly and then asks a question.
“Then why did you choose a user who completed a lot of challenges?”
“…ho, haven’t you heard that the reason Andrea came here was to ‘complete the narrative’?”
Andrea nodded slowly.
“I heard. When Arpan died… and when I met Ose for the second time, twice like this.”
“Um… kek, now, wait a minute. I’ve been talking a lot, so I’m thirsty… I’ll drink some water and explain.”
David picked up his teacup and gulped down the lukewarm tea. After drinking, David took a deep breath and licked his dry lips. I thought he had a haggard face, but as he talked a lot, he seemed to be getting more and more haggard.
But there was still much to be said. David barely opened his mouth and began to explain what ‘completion of the narrative’ meant.
Sounds like there is no game