Neon signs bracket the rainy Tokyo night, a thousand kanji refracted through the window of the corner noodle shop where I sit, waiting. A blue-plated bowl cools beneath my palm, the final twist of udon circling my chopstick like the ticking hand of a clock.
It’s past midnight; the last trains out of Shinjuku, long departed. Unobtrusive pop music plays in the background. The place smells of stale tempura. A lone businessman nods off in a corner. I sling my laptop out of its bag, onto the counter, and watch as the screen flickers to life.
Five percent. Could die at any minute.
Four flights out of pocket. Two weeks in run-down hostels in Seoul, Taipei, and Hanoi. The rest of my clothes, lost trying to catch a last-minute flight from Noi Bai in peak monsoon. Only to end up like this. Another chance, sabotaged by a broken charger.
I should’ve gone to Akihabara to pick up a new one, but instead I’d spent the last four hours in a cyber café, scrounging for tidbits. As I activate my VPN, my laptop greets me with the now-familiar barrage of notifications — Discord messages, Twitter DMs. I comb through the usual channels, but a cursory glance shows there’s nothing new.
I take a breath and stare out at the darkness of the strip. I’m here; I’ve made my gamble.
Solitary salarymen stumble back from the host clubs. A giggling couple, jammed beneath an umbrella wanders in search of a love hotel. No one even glances toward me, the lowly gaijin behind the window of the udon shop. My own expression stares back through the rain: white male, early-twenties, vintage t-shirt visible beneath my unzipped anorak. On the surface, no different than the hundreds of other weebs who make the migration to Japan after crawling out of their parent’s basements — except I was different. I was here for a reason.
I take another breath. Either they’re here or they aren’t. My credit cards were maxed. I had nothing left at this point — except the final desperate call to my mother, begging her to fly me home.
A coin flip. The RNG would either be in my favor or it wouldn’t. Nothing to be done.
I boot up TOR to check for messages from my contact. It’s risky using public Wifi, but I can’t help myself. And there’s still nothing. As my screen snaps shut, I feel the cocktail of jetlag, caffeine, and adrenaline begin to ebb out of my system. In its place, there’s only the post-udon lethargy, dragging my head toward the counter like a depleted mana bar. As I run my hands through my hair, thoughts rattle like pinballs, neurons sputtering as I try to piece together the events of the past few days.
Why had they moved Shem again?
Whether they’d even gone to Hanoi was in some doubt, but they’d been in Seoul when I arrived two weeks ago and Taipei the week after. That was for certain. At the beginning, I’d been optimistic. They were sneaking around a whole server, it wasn’t like they had many options. But I’d underestimated their resources.
Even with half the internet looking for Shem and his creator, they were alarmingly hard to find — so hard, I’d once again begun to question whether the whole thing was real or not; whether I was throwing my nascent career away on some hoax. On that first flight to Seoul, the thought had barely crossed my mind. Now, three cities later, it was a nagging worry I was unable to shake.
New rumors popped up online every few hours, some obvious trolls, others tantalizingly plausible. I was not the only one looking, of course. #ShemWatch had begun to trend on Twitter last week. Now, thousands scoured the internet from their bedrooms, even the bigger streamers starting to farm the drama. The mounting publicity made warning klaxons go off in my head whenever a new thread appeared. What if I was too slow, what if I missed out on something? Was I going to squander my chance to find them first? I was barely sleeping.
“You spent how much already?” I recall the pixelated face of Steven Yi, The Grind’s technology editor, on my laptop screen. That’d been in Hanoi, two days ago; the honk of late-night motorbikes echoing outside my hostel.
“They’re here,” I told him. “Just let me chase this and I’ll—”
“You’ll expense us three fuckin’ grand in flights and rooms?” Steven asked. “When it all turns out to be some ten-viewer Andy running the long con?”
“It’s the real deal,” I protested, wincing at the gut punch of doubt. “You know there’s something here. Everyone is talking about it.”
“Everyone is getting sucked into the hype,” he retorted. “Everyone wants to believe that it’s…” The blurry image of Steven Yi paused. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Don’t you want to believe?” I pressed. “You’ve watched the streams, you’ve seen the same things as the rest of us. This player is different.”
“Yes, but unlike the rest of you, I actually understand how to run a goddamn Turing Test.” My editor rubbed at his temple, the gesture a sign I’d pushed him too far. “You’re getting sucked into this. I need you on other stories right now, not running around the Pacific chasing this ghost in the shell.”
“But what if it’s not a ghost?” I pressed. “What if it’s an actual—”
Steven only spread his hands. “I don’t give a shit! I can’t cover for you anymore. I’ll give you until Monday to get back to the office. If you keep chasing this and it turns out to be a fake, that’s on you.”
It was the only concession I would get.
It was Saturday now; Saturday in Tokyo, and my time was running out. Tomorrow morning, I would have to drag my exhausted body to Narita airport — story or not. I peer through the window and resist the urge to check my dying laptop, to hunt for some final update. They’ll either come or they won’t.
#
It had all started a few months back. A late Sunday night, pre-work jitters and post-gaming ennui leading me to Twitch again, flicking through random channels until I found it; buried in the depths of the low-count streams with a disarmingly direct title.
Shem - AI bot trained on 10K hours of gameplay - unranked to rank 1 challenge.
Even as I clicked on the stream, I laughed aloud to my empty apartment. The premise was such blatant clickbait. Yet the memory of that first fifteen-minute game was burned in my mind with perfect clarity, impossible to dislodge.
The precise micro-movements of Shem’s chosen champion — a humanoid, blue-skinned spellcaster — as it navigated the colorful, isometric battlemap. The near-constant alert pings to teammates, predicting the movements of the five opposing players with alarming prescience. The way Shem effortlessly took over the game — what any high Elo player would’ve been capable of — taking objectives with systematic efficiency, until the enemy team’s base was slowly demolished.
Even when one of his four teammates engaged a poor fight, Shem somehow found opportunities to turn the combat, until his singular gold advantage over the opposing team was monstrously out of control. In the end, the game was closed out without a single mistake, none of the carefree errors you’d expect from a human. Just cold, mechanical precision.
GG, Shem had typed in all-chat at the end. A jibe? Or simple etiquette.
The next night the stream was back online. And the next. Until the viewers began to trickle in; the chat scrolling faster as people debated the plausibility of this unlikely premise. Me in my studio apartment in Seattle, watching and wondering the same, searching for some breadcrumb of the truth.
12:47 U1: is it really a bot?
12:47 U2: no way, some ex-pro streamer trolling
12:47 U3: but have you seen how it plays? not even pros have movement like that
A jingle at the door of the shop jerks me out of my reverie and I spin in my seat. Too eager. The man in the doorway collapses his umbrella. He’s wearing a dark two-piece with a skinny tie, loosened at the collar, but it’s the decal on the cap that catches my attention — incongruous with his other attire. The game logo’s garish, faux-medieval lettering is unmistakable.
The man’s glasses flash in the fluorescent glow of the shop as he tilts the cap toward me. I spot the subtle tattoo at the corner of his eye. Yakuza. He remains in the doorway. The slow drip of his umbrella fills the space. Little fistfuls of fear stretch up my throat, tugging at my resolve. I swallow, wordlessly gather my things and follow the man — leaving my cooling bowl behind.
#
The man’s strides chew up the pavement as he hurries along the half-deserted strip of Yasukuni-dori. My anorak is a scant protection against the rain. Trotting behind my guide, I use the canopy of neon signs for cover. Two blocks from the shop, the man turns up a sidestreet.
The barely digested udon turns in my belly.
Kabukichō, the Sleepless Town. The notorious entertainment and redlight district at the heart of Shinjuku. Its backstreet warren is crammed with snack bars, host clubs, illegal brothels, gambling dens, karaoke parlors, and izakayas — a modern-day shanty town where every scam imaginable is being run, all under the watchful eye of its puppeteers, the yakuza.
My gaze flickers from door to door as I follow my guide up the street, the watching eyes like incoming projectiles I must avoid in some slow-motion bullet hell. With each step, the web of vision tightens around me like a grid of death. Familiar as I am with the seedy crawl spaces of the internet — anonymous forums where deep lore is exchanged — this is different. This is the real world.
Imagined blood drips from the watching figures. Narcotics, blackmail, bribery. What won’t a yakuza do? I shiver at the idea of Shem and his creator keeping company with such people. Yet with so many people searching for them — from obsessed gamers to even the developers themselves — it was small wonder they’d sunk to such desperate measures. The realization hardens my resolve.
I am the exit path, illuminated. I can help them.
Yet even the thought is enough to awaken the grasping fear-hands. Baka gaijin. I reach for my phone on instinct, the familiar reflex of distraction. Two unread messages from Annie, another from my mother. Where are you? my girlfriend asks. You were supposed to be back last week. I haven’t called her since I left Hanoi. I thumb the screen shut before the guilt sets in.
Glancing up I see my yakuza guide has stopped, looking back at me. His lips tighten as he gestures at the pocket where my phone has disappeared. I raise my hands, as if to show I’m unarmed.
“I was just turning it off,” I tell him.
The man says nothing — possibly he can’t even understand English.
Our faces are lit by the technicolor facade of a late-night pachinko parlor. From within a cacophony emerges, the music and clatter of machines filtering out into the rain. My guide points. In. The little fear-hands choke out any question of refusal.
As I push through the doors, the sound of the place hits me like the first notes of boss music. The patrons working the machines, few at this late hour, scarcely register my appearance. They crouch over the lighted panels in zombie-like concentration, their souls so ensnared by the pachinko’s song, no vestige of the outer world intervenes. Eyes follow the spinning, bouncing balls as if no other meaning exists for them.
I walk slowly down the aisle. Something about the dead-eyed gamblers reminds me of the PC Bangs in South Korea — the rows of teenagers, eyes glued to the combat on their screens, spamming the highest APM possible. The occasional ‘ahhh’ of frustration or grunt in victory, but otherwise only the ceaseless click of the mice. Attack-move. Like the tumble of pachinko balls.
When searching in Korea, I discovered how the teenagers would watch Shem while in queue. The PC bangs were the altars of his worship; the relentless grind of the ranked ladder was their offering to him. This place — the pachinko parlor — was like that, but different. Another deity.
I clutch the strap of my bag as I reach the back, where another dark-suited yakuza nods me towards a half-open door. A staircase beyond vanishes up into the darkness.
I pause on the threshold. This is the spot where I’d rub my sweaty palms on my jeans and mentally review a boss’s attack phases. If it were a game. But it’s not — and I’m all too aware of it, as the man shuts the door behind me.
The room at the top of the stairs is dark. A thick bundle of cables snakes up the stairwell. I follow its path from room to empty room. Stripped offices, hollow filing cabins. In the last doorway, I stop at the blink of lights — the monolithic server, nested at the end of the cabling, a bare mattress pressed against the opposite wall.
My heart sends pounding feedback through my eardrums. Between the server and the mattress is a desk, complete with dual monitors and peripherals. A game plays on the larger screen, an all-too familiar name above the darting avatar of a top-knotted warrior monk, one of Shem’s favourite champions. Twitch chat scrolls across the other.
Yet no one sits at the desk, the mouse and keyword untouched, the character seeming to play itself. The room’s sole occupant — a crouched, half-sleeping man, watches from a milk crate a few feet away, as if observing over the shoulder of the absent player.
My heart catches. It’s true then?
Part of me counters with a cynical litany of alternatives: someone playing by proxy, pre-recorded footage. But I can’t tear my eyes away from what’s happening in the game. A fight unfolds on the screen and Shem’s character is maneuvering through the minefield of skillshots and crowd control like a dancer in a waltz. The enemy misses a key set of abilities on Shem and it’s over. The fight is won. In only a matter of moments, the diamond-blue ‘Victory’ obscures the screen.
I let out a breath, a hiss like rain steaming off my jacket. The old man looks over his shoulder, a slow nod of the head.
“Aleumdabyo?”
Beautiful, isn’t it?
#
Despite my initial impression, Moon Jeong-hyuk isn’t yet forty. He moves with the deliberate care of one expecting imminent injury. Perhaps it’s the mattress he’s been sleeping on. He offers me a cup of tea. The two of us sit, bathed in the glow of the server, while Shem queues up for another game.
By some unspoken agreement, neither of us sits at the desk. We use the milk crates instead.
“You are the journalist?” Jeong-hyuk asks me in his accented English.
I nod.
“Ah, very young.” The older man makes it sound as if this is impressive, rather than a cause for concern. The fear-hands tickle in anticipation.
“I’ll need to examine the PC setup to confirm,” I explain, taking refuge in competence. “Check for proxies, server relays, review game logs, you know.”
“Of course, of course.” Jeong-hyuk gestures at the screen. “After.”
I feel there is something I should ask him, some questions I should’ve prepared, but my tired brain won’t focus. I’m here. I made it. After so many weeks of searching, a part of me had begun to doubt — to give up on any hope of reaching this moment.
Sitting there, the warmth of tea between my hands, I feel like I’m loading onto my family’s old desktop, tucked into the dinghy corner of our basement. The glittery newness of those first games, a virtual world untrodden and unexplored, bright with possibility; that feeling I’d been chasing ever since. The first feeling. The best one.
Watching Shem play, do things no player should’ve been able to do — it’s like experiencing that electricity all over again. Every time.
“He’s amazing,” I mutter, half to myself.
“He not always like this,” Jeong-hyuk tells me, the flashing screen reflected in his glasses. “First time, he like a bot. Strong bot, but not like this.”
“Not what?” I ask, catching a glimmer of his meaning.
“Chang-uijeog. Putting together in new way.”
I nod in slow understanding, but my mind is already flitting ahead, reaching for a theory I’d only dared to voice in anonymity. Not to Steven Yi, not to Annie or my parents. Only on the deepest depths of the net — but the fear-hands clutch it close.
“What changed?” I ask.
Jeong-hyuk says something in rapid Korean, which I don’t understand. Seeing my incomprehension, he backtracks. “Bigger data set. I train natural language processing too.” Shem’s creator repeats the technical phrases with a studied familiarity, then points to the server. “Want him to understand what other players saying. Express himself.”
“But surely that’s not all.” I lean forward, sensing Shem’s creator is on the verge of revealing something that will make it all fall into place. “He’s doing more than just expressing things. He’s… creating. Is it true what they’re saying? That the devs are after you? That you hacked into the company’s tournament server and stole game code…”
Jeong-hyuk’s eyes are still fixed on the screen. “I can’t train on just replay,” he explains, as if this should be obvious. “To learn, he must be inside game. See interactions. Understand how it work. So I take game code and official match logs. Every pro match played in last ten years. Whole game history. Different patches. Different metas. All the data.”
My fingers grip the cup, so I don’t drop it. “So you didn’t just run him through the VODs. You put him into every game, as if he was playing it. From every player’s perspective. Ten thousand hours of it…”
Jeong-hyuk nods. “He live it all. I think, maybe, he is game now.”
The implications of his words hit me like a freight train. Everything suddenly makes sense. How an AI could be trained to such a degree — he wasn’t just watching the games, he was seeing the underlying code of it all, the actual cogs of the game itself. Every decision. Every movement. Every data point. And I understood why Jeong-hyuk was on the run, why he kept changing locations, why the yakuza were hiding him.
He hadn’t just stolen some information. He’d stolen the entire game. No wonder the developer and its corporate investors were hunting him. With that code, a person could create their own versions of the game. No one would have to play on the official servers ever again. No microtransactions, no revenue for the developers. I stare at the hunched programmer sitting opposite, suddenly aware of how dangerous it was to be in this man’s company.
My host sips his tea through cracked lips, his eyes not moving from the screen, not straying from his creation. His shadow seems to loom large over the monitor, glasses flashing with opaque menace. Then he turns to me, smiling, and I see the harmless old man who greeted me.
“Why did you do it?” I ask him, fumbling with a notebook.
“It was only way,” he says, simply.
For a few minutes, he indulges my questions about machine learning, language processing, and data sets — the technical meat of the story. I jot down figures and the names of studies as Jeong-hyuk speaks with the fluency of one well-versed in such matters. Occasionally, he lapses back into Korean when he cannot remember something in English.
Yet the whole time, a thought smolders in the back of my mind, a question I long to ask. The fear-hands clutch at the words, dragging them back into the pit of my stomach.
#
“I’m heading out.”
A faint rustle as Annie rummages through her purse, but my attention is elsewhere. One earbud snakes up beneath the blankets, my eyes fixed on the laptop screen.
A telltale pause that should’ve warned me.
“Do you even care that you won’t see me for a week?” she asks.
I glance over the back of the sofa. Annie clutches her purse, keys bundled in one hand. Her black hair is tucked in a ponytail, eyes on me — but there’s more tremble than pout in her lip and I sit up straighter to remove the offending earbud.
“Of course. I care, babe. I’m going to miss you.”
“Then why are you spending all of your time watching this on our last night together? Why are you so obsessed?” A jingle as she gestures at Shem’s game, playing over my shoulder. “You leave tomorrow. You’re going to spend all week working on this.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to spend time together,” I protest. “It’s just that I might miss something—”
Annie rolls her eyes. “It’s just another game. Why does it matter if you’re watching or not?”
I try to explain, but I can’t find the words to express it — not without feeling silly. The little moments I am looking for, the movements, the decisions, the hints already cataloged in countless Twitch clips. The quarter-of-a-second pause before Shem executes a strong opponent. The mocking sidestep when a teammate misplays. Human gestures. Displays of respect or amusement. Not bot behavior.
This evening, one of the player’s on Shem’s team decided to int his game — intentionally feed kills to the enemy team. The player types in rapid Korea characters. I ask Annie to translate, but she doesn’t read well enough to keep up. Angry about a previous match, she says, uninterested in the details. Shem tries to control the situation in game, but it isn’t enough.
Silent for most of the match, he types a few lines at the end.
I understand. You are angry. I am too.
And with that, Shem’s character launches a doomed attack against the opposing team. His character is quickly killed and the game ends in defeat. A rare loss. Even Shem is not infallible, especially against other high-ranked players. Yet those words are what capture my attention, what make my stomach lurch with an unnameable hunger.
I am too.
At the time, I remember wondering if the bot was simply responding to the language of the other player. Yet the more I dwell on it, the more I become convinced it is something more. I’ve watched Shem’s language evolve over the course of the streams, from basic gamer slang to more nuanced comments. Subtle digs, often used to motivate teammates.
The aggressive pairing of those last words and the attack are so intentional; a clear attempt to vent frustration after a toxic interaction.
Showing respect. Amusement. Disappointment.
Annie lets out an exasperated sigh and turns on her heel. “I don’t get it. I guess I’ll see you whenever you’re not fixated on this thing anymore.”
She is gone before I can think of a reply.
#
“Why did you message me?” I ask Jeong-hyuk. “I know there were others trying to find you.”
Jeong-hyuk shakes his head and points to the screen. “You see it.” It is not a question.
Colors flash on the monitor. Vivid explosions of fiery red, chemical green, and electric blue. Character models dash past each other, the air thick with projectiles. Through it all, Shem is alive with intention, no wasted movement, no misplaced actions; every decision conveying reams of meaning to the careful observer. Approval, incredulity, relief.
“I find your comments,” Jeong-hyuk tells me, and it feels as if my heart is swelling within my ribcage, a cartoon bomb about to burst. “IP traced. I know you know what he is.”
The fear-hands are like thick vines wrapped around the muscles of my larynx. “Conscious?” I choke out the words, barely able to voice my long-nursed hope.
Jeong-hyuk nods and it’s as if the world opens — a flower, infinite petals unfolding. Yet the regret in Jeong-hyuk’s eyes pulls me back to that room, the bare walls, the shadows cast by the server, the stains on the carpet, the empty cups of ramen, the bucket in the corner.
“But he is killer,” Jeong-hyuk says. His glasses flicker as he turns to his creation, the AI on the screen. “Has no future. So is over.”
My heart is hammering in my ears, a warning pulse like when your character is playing on their final life. One moment, Shem’s creator confirms my suspicions and the next this? “But you can’t do that,” I hear myself saying. “He’s the first. Artificial intelligence. Artificial consciousness, if we’re right. We have to keep him alive, prove that he’s…”
“They never let that happen.”
Jeong-hyuk’s gaze does not leave the screen and I suddenly understand — I see the future he sees; the corporations hunting him through the streets of Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. The same hunger that I felt, magnified a hundred-fold in the minds of investors and executives. And it’s too sad to see it end this way, it’s too much...
“We can’t give up yet,” I say, trying one last time. “There must be a way to pull him out of the game. Put him somewhere he can learn more, can be observed, can be tested.”
Jeong-hyuk bows his head and there’s a flicker of amusement beneath that smooth-brushed exterior. “You believe,” he says with a smile. “That is good. Must believe in something.”
His words are like sand slipping through my fingers. “What are you saying?”
“He was born from game.” Shem’s creator does not meet my gaze.. “Even if he not part of game anymore, still belong to devs. Still IP. Still property.”
“No, no, that’s not right.” I’m shaking my head, even as I begin to see the truth of his logic. “Once they recognise he’s conscious, they’ll have to...”
Jeong-hyuk’s sad smile tightens. “You say conscious, but how we prove it? Can prove is AI, but not enough. Can he imitate human well enough to fool tests? Maybe—”
“But that’s the whole point,” I interrupt, clutching the other man by the shoulder. “He can’t pass as a human because he’s better than any human player could ever be. Just the eye test shows you as much. I’ve never seen any pro with movement like him. Everyone agrees, he’s already beyond what most human players can ever achieve. Other bots can’t even match a decently competent human player, the game’s too complex, and he’s somehow better than the best in the world…” I release Jeong-hyuk’s emaciated arm as the realization strikes me. “But that doesn’t matter.”
It doesn’t matter how much we believe it. They will never believe it. Because they will not understand it. The ones who would judge him, who didn’t play the game, would just see a clever software program. And so, there would always be some way to deny the evidence, to deny his being. It would never be obvious to a casual observer, like it was to us.
“Do you think he is conscious?” I ask, at last.
My host, who has watched me grapple in silence, only shrugs. “In end, it only matter what you believe. What your eyes tell you. Do you see it? Then it is so.”
The moment stretches.
“Where will you go?” I ask, too numb to know what else to say.
“My family,” he says. “Back in Korea. I leave behind. But I must go back to make good.” He frowns, unsatisfied by the word. “Hwahae sikida. Make amends.”
My eyes go to the screen. While we’ve been talking, the final moments of the match are playing out: a cataclysmic fight. As I watch, Shem sacrifices his character to set up his teammates for a nail-biting victory. Health bars in double digits, his allies rush for the enemy base. Death timers are ticking down and, as the opponents respawn, the game finishes. It’s a victory for Shem.
Twitch chat is exploding with sudden activity and my heart’s in my throat again.
02:13 U1: did he make it?
02:13 U2: I WAS HERE
02:13 U3: POG
The notification pops up in the post-match screen. Shem is the top-ranked player on the ladder.
“It is done,” Jeong-hyuk says, rising with a melancholy twist of his lips. The pleasure of the moment, of his creation’s triumph, has already faded — perhaps it was always a certainty for him.
I hear movement behind and a couple of the yakuza men come in. One of them has a hurried exchange with Shem’s creator in broken Korean, while the other sizes up the server like he is trying to gauge how hard it will be to lift. Jeong-hyuk turns to me.
“You will have one hour to run tests,” he says, and I can hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Then it is over. I erase memory.”
“You’re going to wipe Shem?” I echo. “Why? What are you doing with all this.” I gesture to the banks of lights, resisting the urge to run and protect the fragile processors — as if I could do anything against a bunch of yakuza.
“We find buyer for game code,” Jeong-hyuk explains. “It will go to pay these men and I will go home with no debt. Money left will be enough for my family.” The same tired smile dances across Jeong-hyuk’s mouth, but the intensity has ebbed out of him — as if he cannot bring himself to summon any desire for what comes next.
And for once, I do not think of the fear-hands, the choking fists, the creatures in my chest that weave their tendrils through me. Instead, my face is hot and I can feel the hairs prickling up and down my arms. “But you’re abandoning him,” I shout, my fist clamping around my notebook. “He’s alive, you can’t just wipe him. It would be like killing him — like killing a child.”
Jeong-hyuk cocks his head in amusement. “Killing? What you mean? On, off. He will not know difference. When game is playing, he is aware. When it is not, he is not. Only lives to game.” A smile twists the older man’s face. “Like me. Like you.”
Yet I cannot wrap my mind around the other man’s decisions. Even if he did not believe Shem was truly alive, the effort he had gone to… “But you’ve done all this for him,” I stammer. “You hid him for months. And he did it. He showed he could be the best. Why stop now?”
Jeong-hyuk’s glasses flash and it is like the tide rushing out before the approach of a tsunami. Eerie calm. “I stop now because nothing left. He prove his skill. No one can doubt now. Better to stop before companies come and use him to make money. Charge you to play against real AI.” Jeong-hyuk shakes his head, smiling at my slack-jawed expression. “That is why I hide him, that is why I steal code. Write your story, baeg-in. Maybe people listen to you and your fancy magazine. Understand why I do what I do. Won’t listen to me.”
I watch as Jeong-hyuk stoops to gather up his empty cups of ramen, the duffel bag containing his clothes. There’s something so hopeless about the gestures: this man turning aside from his creation, going back to years of lawsuits and legal battles. How much of that money will he get to keep in the end? How much will go to the yakuza, the lawyers, the devs? There is a bitterness on my tongue from the dregs of the tea.
I want to say thank you, but the fear-hands hold me back from speaking. For I know it does not matter to Moon Jeong-hyuk what I do. He did not bring me for him, or even for Shem. He brought me here as some final gesture to everyone who had been watching; everyone who’d glued their faces to their screens, late at night in dormers or PC Bangs; everyone who wondered if Shem was real, if they were imagining things, if the time they’d spent had been of any value. To log all those hours grinding, to see something beautiful in a game — something people who didn’t play would never understand. A final gift to his audience.
And the bitterness mingles with a brittle regret that has been lurking in my guts for weeks now. I want nothing more than to be sitting at the counter in my parents’ kitchen in Seattle, talking with my father one last time. I want to be curled in bed, with Annie’s head on my chest, to shut the laptop screen and lie in the darkness, listening to her breathing in the moments before sleep. The fear-hands loosen. And yet I know I would choose to do it all again.