The Empire I Create Chapter 2

Chapter 2. The Lost Future

 

On a street filled with cold air, Kang Hamin stood in a daze, listening to the faint sobs of refugees as he stared at the ruins of a collapsed building. Once upon a time, this city was alive with flashy billboards and bustling crowds. Now, only a desolate wasteland remained. Back in 2030—only a few years earlier—no one could have imagined such a nightmare would unfold.

Everything began with the power struggle between the United States and China, which escalated when China invaded Taiwan. The war soon spiraled into a massive conflict involving the U.S., China, and Japan, plunging the entire globe into the maelstrom of a Third World War. Nuclear bombs and high-powered missiles ravaged borders, sparing no one in their path, and countless lives were lost. Even the survivors had long since found themselves in a bleak reality, threatened by radioactive fallout and environmental destruction.

Just a few years before, phrases like “global warming” or “environmental destruction” were little more than abstract terms tossed around in the news. However, the devastation caused by the war only accelerated the destruction of the environment: rising sea levels brought on by warming, food shortages, and extreme weather disasters all grew more and more extreme. The Earth’s ecosystem had effectively lost its ability to self-regulate. Looking beyond the broken windows of buildings, the wind carried choking dust, and in an era where even securing a drink of water was difficult, proper recycling was just a distant memory.

Hamin lifted his gaze to the ashen sky. He recalled his childhood days, lost in strategy simulation games like Age of Discovery, where he dreamed of sailing the unknown seas on a grand ship and trading exotic goods. Back then, the world was still a place full of possibility and adventure. Now, the forests, the oceans, and the cities were all in ruins.

“If things keep going like this, humanity has no future.”

He remembered the past. With no chance to intervene, warplanes and bombs had taken everything from Hamin—his parents and his beloved partner. Many friends and acquaintances had perished or disappeared without a trace. Those who survived spent the brief lull in the fighting huddled in shelters, listening to the news, enduring each day in a haze of despair. Some scarcely remembered what it felt like to grieve properly for loved ones; they were too busy just staying alive. Hamin looked down at the people wandering aimlessly through the wreckage. His mind was flooded with memories of the ones he had loved, and of the city he once cherished. But gradually, he found himself slipping out of the pain of loss, consumed instead by a single thought: How can we escape this destruction?

Before the outbreak of the Third World War, Hamin had worked at an AI research lab. At the start of the conflict, military AI, drones, and robotic weapons were developed and deployed en masse, but at a certain point, all AI systems shut down. The central computer network issuing attack orders was destroyed, and the communication infrastructure was paralyzed. Ironically, just as the war reached its peak, the war machines powered by AI ground to a halt on their own.

For several months following the AI shutdown, humanity fought desperately to clean up the aftermath, but by then, too much had been destroyed. Yet Hamin never stopped investigating the old research lab and gathering data on “green energy.” Solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen fuel… Technologies sidelined while the world tore itself apart in civil wars still remained intact, if in fragments.

“At this rate, humanity is doomed. We have to go back to the past somehow and stop this tragedy from happening.”

He had already made up his mind. With the military AI system inactive, previously sealed information was slowly becoming accessible again. In the ruins of a military research facility, Hamin stumbled upon an old data server. He managed to restore power just enough to activate the AI core. Inside, the scars of what was once a hotbed of robots and drones were everywhere: shattered drone fragments, bullet holes, and torn maps. The place radiated a somber energy.

Suddenly, a mechanical voice spoke:

“...Connection reestablished. Verifying security clearance...”

After some static, the screen flooded with data strings. Using programming skills he had spent months teaching himself, Hamin painstakingly decrypted one digital file after another.

Among the documents Hamin recovered, one file in particular caught his eye. The faint title read something like “Sialient Gateway?” When he opened it, a map appeared on the screen. At first, it looked like some kind of satellite image or ancient chart.

“What on earth is this? And why is this location marked?”

On the map, there were intricate coordinates and what appeared to be a timeline, as well as suspicious sets of numbers that didn’t seem to represent ordinary compass bearings. Words like “temporal shift” and “시공간 전이” (spacetime transition) were scribbled in the margins.

“No way… Is this for real...?”

Hamin recalled hearing rumors that military science projects had extended their research into “spacetime.” He used to dismiss it as mere sci-fi speculation. But now, the proof was there on the screen in front of him.

“All of this… It must be fate.”

Though hard to believe, if the place indicated on this map truly served as a “gate” to the past—if time travel was actually possible—then that might be humanity’s last hope.

“If we go back to the past, at least we won’t end up with a planet turned into a wasteland like this.”

He murmured. New systems had to be built to keep dictators and power-hungry warlords in check. Only then could they prevent the horror of another nuclear missile obliterating a city from across the ocean.

“I don’t have much time left. I’m sick of watching people forced to wear respirators just to survive.”

He glanced out the research lab’s cracked window. In the yellowed wasteland, people still had to wear gas masks just to move around. With each passing day, the environmental catastrophe was accelerating—there was no doubt about it.

Clutching the map that held this fragile shred of hope, Hamin felt a renewed surge of determination like never before. If he wanted to overturn this tragic future, his only choice was to find a way back in time. And once there, implement every possible green energy technology and a unified global system to protect Earth from destruction.

Of course, there was no guarantee the gateway was real or that it would function properly. But Hamin had only two choices:

1. Do nothing, and wait for the approaching doom—widespread famine and rampant smaller-scale wars—that would soon reduce life to rubble.
2. Travel to the past and create even a sliver of hope.

“I have no choice. If there’s one last chance to save this broken world... I have to open that door by any means necessary.”

He clenched his fist. Then, he memorized the unfamiliar coordinates marked on the map. The seemingly impossible prospect of time travel was beckoning him toward a new adventure.