Agora Nocturna — The Academy of the Black Web

Chapter 2: The Physiognomist Sociologist and the "Red Catalog"

The following evening, Do-yun sat across from a man in a quiet corner booth of a traditional teahouse in Ikseon-dong, Jongno-gu.

The man's name was Baek Seung-hyun. Publicly, he was a tenured professor of sociology at a prestigious private university and a policy advisor to the Ministry of Education—an intellectual who appeared on television debate panels with a gentle smile to preach "closing the education gap and universal welfare." Yet inside the Black Web, his handle was none other than `Phreno_Soc_88`, the very reviewer who had commented on Do-yun's first paper.

"Your tea will get cold, Dr. Han. The jujube tea here is quite good."

Professor Baek offered an affable smile as he slid the teacup across. Behind silver-rimmed glasses, his eyes looked warm and kindly, yet Do-yun knew very well that from the instant Baek had sat down opposite him, the professor had been unconsciously scanning the width of his glabella, the length of his philtrum, the attachment of his earlobes, and even the length ratio between his index and ring fingers gripping the cup (the 2D:4D ratio).

"Professor Baek, I read through the third-stage regression model for 'Project Lombroso-Alpha' that you sent over last time," Do-yun said, lowering his voice. "Did you really extract that entire dataset from the Korea Orphanage Association and an obstetric ultrasound AI diagnostics firm?"

Professor Baek set down his teacup and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief.

"Extract? Come now, Dr. Han. I merely provided 'industry-academia consultation' and briefly borrowed mirroring privileges on a raw training cache server whose anonymization hadn't quite been finished."

There was not a trace of remorse in Baek's voice—only the sharp lucidity of a scholar intoxicated by academic triumph.

"People laugh off Cesare Lombroso's criminal anthropology, phrenology, and physiognomy as nineteenth-century superstitions. Ever since the Nazis, every line of inquiry linking human morphology, heredity, and behavior has been declared taboo. Try submitting a paper titled 'Genetic Correlations Between Facial Morphology, Intelligence, and Propensity for Violence' to any mainstream journal. Before a single peer reviewer lays eyes on it, you'll suffer an instant desk reject, get branded a racist or a fascist, and be driven out of academia."

Professor Baek drew a slim e-ink tablet resembling an e-book reader from his briefcase and laid it on the table. On the display floated three-dimensional geometric diagrams slicing countless children's faces into thousands of triangular polygon meshes, densely annotated beneath with SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) markers and socioeconomic mobility indices.

"Yet, Dr. Han, do you know how many records our `[Anthro-Metrics]` division on the Black Web has amassed over the past seven years alongside sociologists, anthropologists, and computer-vision researchers across fourteen countries? No less than 12.4 million individuals. Beginning from 3D fetal ultrasound scans, tracking craniofacial skeletal shifts at ages one, five, twelve, and eighteen—and binding every single one to academic achievement, credit default, depression incidence, sexual and violent criminal records, even a Submissiveness Index."

Do-yun peered down at the tablet screen. Startling graphs curved across the display.

"You know of neural crest cells, of course. Being a biologist, you know them better than I," Professor Baek continued in a near-whisper. "During early embryonic development, neural crest cells migrate along two divergent paths. One stream forms parts of the central nervous system—such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala—alongside the adrenal medulla, while the other shapes facial cartilage, bone, and teeth. In other words, the architecture of the brain's wiring and the sculpting of the facial skeleton spring from the exact same embryological root."

Professor Baek's finger tapped a three-dimensional facial map of a child on the tablet.

"Look closely. Children whose supraorbital ridge asymmetry index exceeds 0.14, whose maxillary-to-mandibular projection angle falls within a specific band, and who simultaneously test positive for the chromosome 14 methylation marker you discovered. No matter how loving the adoptive parents who raise them, no matter how exemplary the welfare or moral education they receive, the probability that these children will exploit others or exhibit destructive antisocial behavior before age twenty-five converges on 98.2 percent. Conversely, the children in this cluster..."

Professor Baek swiped to the next screen.

"Throw them into the harshest poverty, subject them even to childhood abuse, and they still impose discipline upon themselves, conform to hierarchy, and execute high-level abstract labor. What the physiognomists of ancient East Asia spent millennia cataloging through empirical statistics as 'noble bone,' 'base bone,' and 'murderous visage' was, in truth, the physical shadow cast by neural crest cell migration trajectories and epigenetic expression!"

Do-yun felt a cold chill snake down his spine.

"Professor... you didn't build this model purely out of scholarly curiosity, did you? That anonymous sponsor's tender posted on the `[Cohort Exchange]` board last week... your team won the contract, didn't you?"

The corners of Professor Baek's mouth curved slowly upward.

"Sharp as ever, Dr. Han. Yes. A transnational insurance consortium headquartered in Singapore and Zurich, along with two Silicon Valley HR algorithm firms whose names anyone would recognize, provided the funding. Naturally, we don't hand over the raw algorithm even to them. We simply license weighted outputs via an API. In return, our division receives exclusive ten-year access to prenatal genetic screening and neonatal follow-up data from three hundred maternity clinics across Africa and Southeast Asia."

"Still, you didn't call me here today just to boast about that."

At Do-yun's blunt question, Professor Baek removed his glasses to wipe them, his expression hardening.

"Dr. Han, did you see the auction notice posted on `[Bio-Foundry]` last night—for 'Chimeric Embryonic-Neural Organoid #19'?"

"I saw it. Lot #9941-B, listed by `Dr. Vesalius_Neo`."

"Did you read the auction terms he stipulated in detail?"

"It said he wouldn't accept ordinary cryptocurrency bids—that he would only allocate the specimen to a joint research consortium meeting two requirements. One was 'human embryonic stem cells with an anomalous phenotype or an extreme mutant tumor cell line,' and the other..."

Do-yun trailed off. Professor Baek nodded and finished the sentence for him.

"Precisely. 'Whole-genome, neurophysiological, and longitudinal facial-behavioral datasets spanning three or more generations of lineages exhibiting extreme genius or extreme psychopathy.' That man isn't cultivating a mere brain organoid. He intends to reverse-engineer our human behavioral determinism data and implant it into living tissue—specifically, into a fetal brain growing outside the womb."

"That's madness," Do-yun murmured. "He's talking about performing targeted behavioral gene editing on a twenty-two-week artificial fetal brain that's already generating spontaneous delta and theta waves, well beyond the organoid stage? That's manufacturing a bespoke human personality—or the prototype of a monster—in a laboratory."

"Madness indeed. Which is why it could never be done in the daylight academies outside, and why it's traded on the Black Web instead."

Professor Baek leaned far forward across the table, his voice slipping beneath the teahouse's gentle gayageum background music.

"Let's speak candidly, Dr. Han. Were you sane two years ago when you drew blood from orphanage children to map methylation patterns? And what about the `K-glioma-07` cell line you're secretly hoarding in your third-basement freezer right now?"

Do-yun's fingers froze against the rim of his teacup.

`K-glioma-07`. It was glioblastoma multiforme tissue from an eleven-year-old boy, smuggled out quietly a year ago through a neurosurgery resident who had been Do-yun's junior in university.

The boy had been an uncanny patient. As a malignant tumor consumed his left temporal lobe and part of his frontal lobe, instead of dulling him, the advancing cancer caused his intelligence, spatial reasoning, perfect pitch, and mental arithmetic to surge explosively. Rather than merely destroying healthy neurons, the tumor cells formed bizarre synaptic-like junctions that amplified glutamate signaling dozens of times over—triggering a phenomenon akin to biological overclocking.

The boy died three days after surgery, but Do-yun spirited the excised tumor tissue away in liquid nitrogen. Faster and far more aggressive than ordinary HeLa cells, yet an immortal cancer capable of symbiotically amplifying electrical signals alongside neurons.

In the slang of oncologists and neuroengineers on the Black Web's `[Bio-Foundry]`, it was known as the Promethean Neoplasm.

"Professor Baek, how did you see my lab logs?"

"The Curators of the Black Web monitor who accesses which paper's supplementary data, and who searches for which reagents and culture media, Dr. Han," Baek said with a faint smile. "A subculture of your miracle cancer line `K-glioma-07`, combined with the top 0.001 percent extreme-outlier pedigrees from my 12.4-million-person facial, behavioral, and genomic dataset. Put those two together, and we become the sole qualified bidder in `Dr. Vesalius_Neo`'s auction."

"And if we win the bid and get our hands on that twenty-two-week fetal brain and uterine perfusion system? What do you plan to do next?"

Professor Baek stared straight at Do-yun through his lenses.

"We conduct the ultimate experiment every scholar in the world has imagined in secret yet never dared utter aloud: 'Is destiny 100 percent fixed the moment a fertilized egg implants, or can injecting the chaotic variable of a cancer cell wrench a mind off its predetermined genetic rails?' Aren't you curious too, Dr. Han? To see where the perfection of our predictive model ends?"