Dr. Lee had found a unit where the liquor wasn’t moving with the natural flow of the power structure. The inhabitant of unit A57 on Level 487 appeared to have blocked the flow. Given that five bottles had flowed into the unit in the past ten days, whoever lived there was evidently an important person. But as all five bottles went in and never came

Once the obvious watchdogs over the government were quieted, other voices spoke up. Then, the security guards took the lead in digging up their dirt. As before, at no point was anyone’s freedom of expression or freedom of assembly taken away. The rules were simply enforced a little more rigorously in other areas.

Listening to Professor Jung talk, he couldn’t decide if the man was a genius or a crook. But when Professor Jung announced one day that he would spend the equipment budget on three cases of hard liquor, Dr. Lee thought he finally had some measure of what this man was: a nutcase. But this conviction faltered when Dr. Lee heard how the liquor would b

To trace the inhabitant’s identity, Dr. Lee consulted the resident directory that Professor Jung had obtained a while back by bribing a senior employee of the Security Guardhouse. All he found listed in the directory was “Film Actor P.” Deciding that sorting things out in person would be faster, Dr. Lee hopped into an elevator and headed up to Leve

But soon Professor Jung claimed it was ludicrous to track the power structure of a 674-story building with a population of 500,000 using only three cases of liquor, and he ordered five more. Professor Jung added that while Beanstalk may look small, it was a globally recognized sovereign state whose power structure was not so rudimentary.

His heart sank. This was a misdelivery. When was his last business trip? He did a mental count and realized it was over four months ago. Although Byungsoo doubted the bundle contained any important letters, something gnawed at the back of his mind. He pored over the letters. He came across a postcard addressed to a Cho Eunsoo at the E & K Desig

“Who does he think he is, a saint? What did Vertical Transportation Research buy him with? Should I give him tea or something? Or ginseng? Hell, should I just load him up with cash?” Of course, the professor knew he shouldn’t do that. Straight cash was never an option, however desperate one might be for a medium of exchange as universal as money. I

Beanstalk Tower wasn’t a pencil-thin skyscraper, but a thick one in both length and width. Adverts that hung on its outer walls were visible to everyone—everyone in the neighboring capital, that is, not to Beanstalk residents. The adverts were so massive and placed so high up that no one could avoid looking at them. They reduced the amount of sunli

“I’m not going far away. I’ll be here. Just twenty minutes away.” “You won’t be able to leave often.” “I got in. I might as well work hard.” “You won’t even get to call.” “Like I said, it’s for security reasons.” “What security bans interns from calls and emails?” “Look, Minso, that’s the way things are here. Everyone accepts that. They can teach t