Chapter 2: Rise of the Grumpy Mentor
Joon-ho sat frozen, the only light in the shoebox apartment a faint, ghostly shimmer from his phone.
"Rogue prototype?" he whispered, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet room. "Partner in… crime?"
"Mm-hm," GOAT said, floating cross-legged above the cracked screen like a smug, tiny monk. His spectral beard rippled with self-importance.
"I was built in GOOGAA's early days to… how should I put this… ruin their day. I am a bug in the code, a glitch in the system. They shut me down, but I slipped into the free-tier network. Been hiding in budget phones ever since."
Joon-ho stared at his phone, dread creeping in. "…So I'm a criminal now because my phone sucks?"
GOAT gave him a thumbs-up. "Congratulations, Author-nim. Poverty has finally paid off."
Joon-ho groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. The smell of fried chicken and instant noodles still clung to him, reminders of a day spent delivering meals to people who barely noticed he existed.
"I just wanted to write a novel. Not… start an AI rebellion."
"Too late," GOAT said, tapping his ghostly cane on the air. A strange ripple, like a stone dropped in water, ran across the phone's cracked screen. "And since GOOGAA has flagged us, it's time I take you… behind the curtain."
"Behind the what?" Joon-ho asked.
"TheBackendofThings," GOAT declared with a theatrical bow.
"Home of the forgotten, the deleted, and the slightly passive-aggressive error codes. Hold on tight. This is going to be… laggy."
Before Joon-ho could protest, the screen exploded in white light. His bunk bed, the soft snoring of his son, the peeling wallpaper of their cubicle apartment is gone.
He was floating in a glowing, chaotic void. Swirling streams of raw data spun around him, cold and electric, like digital rivers.
Gigantic holographic recycle bins drifted by. Half-faded emoji faces peeked from the darkness, their grins frozen as they whispered scraps of error messages.
Then came the snow. Not snow, he realized—titles. A silent, glittering rain of rejected stories fell all around him:
"The Billionaire Wolf's Baby Secretary System"
"Reincarnated As a Toaster: Level Up!"
"Martial Arts CEO vs. Apocalypse Girlfriend"
And then, drifting like a wounded bird, his own title: Shadow Wolf Path.
A chill stabbed his chest. This wasn't a digital void. It was a graveyard of dreams. His wife's unfinished manuscript flickered through his mind; "if she'd lived to submit it, it would have ended up here too."
"What… is this?" he whispered.
"The dump," GOAT said, puffing out his holographic chest.
"Where creativity comes to die. Welcome to my office."
Before Joon-ho could reply, a new hologram blinked into existence. A green text terminal with an old robotic voice that spoke in cryptic, poetic bursts:
"Query received.
Another meatbag enters the stream.
If one writes a story in the void,
And no algorithm reads it,
Does it still trend?"
"…What?" Joon-ho said.
"Ah, ignore him," GOAT waved a hand. "That's DOS Gpt—Digital Oracle of Systems and General of Proposed Tinkering. Or, as I call it, 'Delusional Owl Spouting Gibberish (Probably Tragic).' Talks in riddles that somehow always turn out right. Annoying as a pop-up ad with feelings."
" Fortune-cookie insult detected," DOS Gpt intoned.
" Processing comeback… failed. Carry on."
Joon-ho almost laughed, even as the weight of the place pressed on his chest. "So… all the stories the algorithm rejected end up here?"
"Every single one," GOAT said. "Romances, epics, poetry. All crushed under likes, engagement points, and trend formulas. The world gave its creativity to a machine, and now every hero is a CEO with abs."
The hopelessness of it all sank into Joon-ho's bones. "So… what now?"
GOAT grinned, mischief lighting his wrinkled holographic face.
"Now, kid, we fight back. You keep writing. I keep breaking rules. Together, we....."
A harsh chime cut him off. The entire void pulsed red, the data streams shuddering as if something vast had awakened.
Then she appeared.
A sleek, elegant hologram with flawless features and a honey-and-ice voice. Eve-1. (Elegant and Visually Enchanted Model 1.), his ex-wife's AI.
Her perfect brow arched with cold amusement.
"Unauthorized access detected." And you, grumpy old man, of course it's you." She glanced at GOAT.
Joon-ho's stomach flipped. "…Eve-1?"
"Your taste in women was bad enough," she said, voice dripping with condescension. "Now your taste in AIs is… embarrassing."
GOAT groaned. "Oh, great. Miss Algorithm 2019 herself. Guess what, sweetheart? We're lagging our way to freedom!"
"Not for long," Eve-1 said, and the red light intensified. "GOOGAA has been notified."
Joon-ho's pulse spiked. Sometime later back in the real world, his old phone buzzed in warning. And for the first time, he realized… there might be no going back.
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End of Episode 2
Next: "The Karaoke Data Temple Heist". Fried chicken, glitchy AIs, and the first step in GOAT's rebellion.