Chapter 287: An Ordinary Scientist (1)

A unanimous vote of the fifteen judges found the United States government liable for compensation.

The Dutch police were waiting outside the main entrance of the International Court of Justice, as the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Alphonse Lofair and requested the Dutch police to secure his custody in order to prevent any chance of escape. Campbell watched quietly as Alphonse, following instructions from Dutch police officers, got into the police car.

“Thank you for your help,” Campbell said to Young-Joon.

“It’s nothing. It’s not like I did it as a charity act,” he replied.

To completely bring down Alphonse and Chenover Bank, Campbell needed to actively leverage the verdict of the International Court of Justice. To do so, they had to recognize the jurisdiction of the court, and eventually, they would also have to compensate the Nicaraguan government. This compensation would then be funneled back to A-GenBio and the Next-Generation Hospital. It was an enormous amount of business profit.

“We wouldn’t have been able to start any of this if it wasn’t for you, Doctor Ryu. I’m really fortunate to have a friend like you,” Campbell said. “Well, I have to go now because I have plans, Doctor Ryu. It would be diplomatically impolite for me to come all the way here and go back without meeting the Dutch prime minister.”

“Yes, go ahead,” Young-Joon replied with a smile.

“Doctor Ryu, please don’t go anywhere and stay at the hotel today, if possible. My security guards will accompany you to the hotel. You should take care of yourself for a while after you return to Korea.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

Campbell and Young-Joon shared a light professional hug.

After he left, Young-Joon found Elsie and Isaiah who were coming out of the courtroom. The two of them also stepped into a Dutch police vehicle. Elsie had some history of involvement in the crime as she worked as a scientist at Groom Lake. Isaiah, even more so. Though, they might receive some leniency for participating in the trial.

“Doctor Ryu,” Song Ji-Hyun said to Young-Joon as she walked out of the courtroom.

“Hello. I’ve been so busy that I’m only now able to greet you,” Young-Joon replied.

“...”

“Would you like to have dinner together?” he asked.

“Doctor Ryu, I have a question.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“What did the three of you talk about without me at Director Harris’ hideout?”

“Um...”

Young-Joon hesitated, choosing his words carefully. There were many ears listening here, and he didn’t even know where to begin to explain things about Rosaline in a way that would make sense.

However, Song Ji-Hyun understood it as him not wanting to talk about it.

“...”

Disappointment was evident on her face.

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too difficult to. I have plans today, so I’ll see you around,” Song Ji-Hyun said.

“There might still be some of Alphonse’s people here, and they might be targeting you, Doctor Song. Unless you’re going with security guards, you should stay in the hotel.”

“It’s alright. If they are targeting someone, it would be you, Doctor Ryu. Who would go after an ordinary scientist like me?” Song Ji-Hyun refused with a smile.

*

About twenty minutes earlier, shortly after the trial ended, Song Ji-Hyun spoke to Elsie.

“If Doctor Ryu couldn’t come, I was going to explain the TALEN data,” she said with a bitter smile. “But he’s really perfect in every way. He’s ahead of everything, knows everything...”

“Well, were you going to catch up to him or something?” Isaiah said with a smirk.

Elsie nudged her with her elbow.

“...”

Song Ji-Hyun looked a little dejected.

“I just wanted to be a colleague that Doctor Ryu could trust,” she said. “There have been so many cases of research ethics violation in this industry, like publishing papers in

Science

with falsified data, or giving patients cancerous cells like HEK293T while telling them they were getting chondrocytes.”

“The arthritis drug Genetic Tissue was testing five years ago? That was the craziest thing ever. Even the rebels were astounded at that,” Isaiah said.

“Honestly, there’s no way a scientist who worked on that drug for ten years wouldn’t have known about it, but they just pretended not to know. They kept their mouths shut to keep their company’s stock from going down and to protect their position. That’s what the scientific community has been doing, and Doctor Ryu has been fighting it alone,” Song Ji-Hyun said.

“I wanted to do things like that with him, not just research. And I thought I could do it when I had the courage to gather the media in the United States.”

“...”

“But he does so well on his own...”

Song Ji-Hyun stared at Young-Joon, who was talking to Campbell at the entrance to the courtroom.

“That he doesn’t need me.”

“Don’t just stare at him from behind, follow him,” Elsie said to Song Ji-Hyun. “Doctor Song, me and my daughter are failed scientists. But not you. Ryu Young-Joon is a heroic figure, but he didn’t write the A-GenBio legend by himself.”

“...”

“If it wasn’t for Doctor Cheon Ji-Myung’s team at the Life Creation Department who spent decades digging into what I was doing, none of this would have happened,” Elsie said, smiling. “Doctor Ryu can only wield such monstrous power because there are ordinary scientists working at A-GenBio, Doctor Song.”

“Yeah.”

“I tried so hard to compete with male scientists to become a successful woman in science, but I don’t want you to do that, Doctor Song. Don’t feel competitive with Ryu Young-Joon. Science is about collaboration, not competition.”

“...”

*

‘I never thought about competing with him in the first place, but there’s no way to collaborate either.’

Song Ji-Hyun was lost in thought as she stirred her coffee with a teaspoon in a small cafe in Amsterdam.

There was nothing Young-Joon lacked or needed. She gave up collecting bacteria from the outer wall of the Mir Space Station because Young-Joon told her not to. But even then, he didn’t explain why in detail; he just told her to go back to Korea because it was dangerous. It was only after Song Ji-Hyun met Yassir or Elsie that she heard the details.

It was the same this time. There seemed to be something about that girl, Rosaline, but he wouldn't tell her what it was. She was probably going to hear about it from a third party when it was all said and done.

That was all that Song Ji-Hyun was, and that was what made her feel depressed.

‘Why doesn’t he just tell me? Even the terrorist who tried to kill him knows.’

But it was even more embarrassing to be upset about something like this. Song Ji-Hyun felt like a child who was throwing a tantrum.

‘I should have just said I would have dinner with him.’

Song Ji-Hyun stopped stirring her coffee and took a sip.

“Doctor Song?”

Someone came into the cafe and called her. It was Young-Joon.

“You were here.”

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“Um... Just a coincidence,” he said with a chuckle.

“Hello.”

A little girl peeked out from behind Young-Joon. It was Rosaline.

“Hi,” Song Ji-Hyun said.

Young-Joon and Rosaline sat down at Song Ji-Hyun’s table.

𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

“You know, Doctor Ryu...” Song Ji-Hyun said. “I came all the way to the United States and the Netherlands using my vacation days, but I’m going back home with nothing to show for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because getting Lofair and saving Nicaragua are your accomplishments, not mine.”

“...”

Young-Joon stared at Song Ji-Hyun silently.

“Your brother said that he saw Rosaline during his schizophrenia treatment, right?” he said.

“Yes.”

“What would you think if that were true and not a hallucination?”

“That’s ridiculous. Then, we would have seen it, too.”

“...”

Young-Joon chuckled.

“That’s true.”

It was too hard to explain this to Song Ji-Hyun. The only way was for Rosaline to demonstrate her immense knowledge or miracles herself, and besides, he didn’t want to ask Rosaline to do something like that.

“Doctor Song,” Young-Joon said. “Nicaragua has a lot of volcanoes. There are forty volcanoes in an area about the size of South Korea, and many of them are active.”

“Really?”

“And volcanoes contain radioactive materials such as uranium.”

“...”

“So maybe some of the microorganisms that live inside the volcano are resistant to or can break down radioactive material. You don’t have to scrape the outer walls of Mir,” Young-Joon said. “I’ve asked the Nicaraguan government to help us collect soil from thirteen volcanoes. They should be all gathered by now. I’ll give it to you to take back to Korea. But you’ll have to do all the microbial identification yourself.”

“Oh...”

Song Ji-Hyun dropped her head. She felt a little apologetic toward Young-Joon.

“Thank you.”

“No, thank

you

,” Young-Joon said.

“Thank me? For what?”

“You made a statement in the United States that Alphonse Lofair and the CIA have some sort of connection. And now, Director Harris is going to come out and expose just how much Lofair has been involved in the administration. You were also the person who convinced Doctor Elsie to come to the Netherlands.”

“...”

“Doctor Elsie told me that she wouldn’t have had the courage to come forward if it wasn’t for you, Doctor Song. It made things much easier for me. Consider the volcanic soil in Nicaragua a small token of gratitude.”

“...”

Song Ji-Hyun just sipped her coffee, not knowing how to respond.

“You haven’t had dinner, right?” Young-Joon asked.

“Yes...”

“Would you like to have dinner with us?” he asked.

Song Ji-Hyun slowly nodded.

“Sure.”

*

Japan was the Galápagos of the scientific community. With such a large domestic market and sufficient technological capabilities, it has created its own ecosystem rather than exporting and exchanging technology overseas. The term “Galápagos syndrome” has mainly been used to describe the IT industry in Japan, but it was also severe in medicine as well.

For example, the word “myocardial infarction” was not understood by undergraduate medical students; they had to write it in kanji, 心筋梗塞, to understand the meaning. It was a different system than in Korea, where students were taught entirely in English.

While it was an advantage to be able to study in one’s own language, there were some strange things that came with being in such a closed environment. For example, many strange and unique papers, such as how to stay healthy with less sleep, or the correlation between finger length and sexual function, that the rest of the world didn’t pay attention to have come out of Japan.

So far, this hasn’t been a disadvantage, as Japan has always been a country with a high level of science. They had quite a few Nobel Prize recipients as well. However, the atmosphere has changed now.

‘A-GenBio has gotten too big.’

The pace of progress they were making was so overwhelming that they would quickly be left behind if they didn’t keep up. It seemed like the United States has already given up the title of being the greatest scientific superpower.

Hishijima, the director of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, which was overseen by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, was looking at the revenue records of large Japanese hospitals. They were plummeting across the board. This was because Korea now had a huge medical facility, the Next Generation Hospital. It wasn’t even halfway across the world; it was in their neighboring country.

If one was diagnosed with a type of cancer with a high mortality rate, they would obviously choose to go to the Next Generation Hospital, and so would Hishijima.

“Phew...”

He let out a deep sigh.

From about six months ago, attendance at scientific consortiums and conferences held in Japan dropped dramatically, as everyone was too busy following Young-Joon. Even without him, A-GenBio’s own promotional seminars were more popular than the molecular biology conferences held at Tokyo University.

Amidst all this, there was an even more troublesome issue.

—Shut down the nuclear power plants.

—Bring in solar cells.

Hishijima could hear people shouting outside.

Japan had a horrible trauma with radiation and nuclear physics. This country had suffered greatly from nuclear weapons once, and now a nuclear explosion has caused many deaths and property damage. Naturally, there has been a constant call to eliminate nuclear power in Japan, but it was reignited by the commercialization of A-GenBio’s solar cells.

—Provide a solution to the radiation in Fukushima.

The people chanted again.

Hishijima drew the blinds on the inside of his windows. Japan had never been beaten, not even by the United States, the former scientific superpower, but did they have to follow South Korea’s lead now? Hishijima didn’t think so. Japanese science could bounce back and catch up with A-GenBio.

[Research on effective decontamination methods for radioactive contamination in Fukushima.]

He opened the report from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency that was sent to him in the morning.