Agora Nocturna — The Academy of the Black Web

Chapter 5: The Hour for Weighing Children's Souls

Two days later in the morning, summoned by Professor Baek Seung-hyun, Do-yun visited the thirty-fourth floor of a high-rise officetel tower in the heart of Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu.

The nameplate read Korea Child Development Longitudinal Institute (KCDL)—an eminently ordinary, civic-minded title. Inside, six neatly suited researchers sat behind partitions, busily sorting data across dual monitors.

On the walls hung UNICEF donor certificates, a commendation from the Minister of Education, and photographs of brightly smiling children. To any visitor, it looked like an exemplary private think tank dedicated to child welfare and education policy.

"Welcome, Dr. Han. Right this way."

Professor Baek led Do-yun past the director's desk to a bookshelf that slid aside to reveal a soundproof server room doubling as his private inner sanctum.

Unlike the bright, warm outer office, this secret chamber was walled on all sides with black acoustic foam and nine massive OLED monitors, resembling a quantitative trading floor or a military command center.

"Do the researchers out there know what they're actually working on?" Do-yun asked.

"Not a clue," Professor Baek replied evenly while brewing a capsule espresso. "Those folks believe they're merely cleaning and labeling eye-tracking videos, vocal pitch recordings, picture diaries, and saliva samples collected from daycares and elementary schools nationwide under signed consent for an 'AI-Based Personalized Emotional Support Program.' Only the master server inside this room assembles the shattered puzzle pieces."

Do-yun examined the displays across the nine monitors one by one.

Across the first screen flowed real-time preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) results and maternal amniotic cortisol and testosterone concentrations uploaded directly from obstetrics clinics and fertility centers across the nation.

Across the second screen, facial footage of tens of thousands of children aged three to seven was being parsed in real time—micro-expressions lasting four hundredths of a second when a toy was snatched away or a classmate tripped and cried, pupil constriction rates, and facial-bone growth vectors fractured into crimson and cobalt vector lines.

The third monitor was the most unsettling of all. Across the top ran the title `[Socio-Stratification Simulation: 2026-2050]`, while millions of data points rotated inside multidimensional space, partitioned into five vast clusters.

The names of those clusters were chillingly blunt:

- `Cluster Alpha (Architects - 0.4%)`

- `Cluster Beta (Enforcers & Senior Administrators - 4.2%)`

- `Cluster Gamma (Docile Labor - 71.8%)`

- `Cluster Delta (Volatile / Latent Deviants & Expendables - 19.5%)`

- `Cluster Omega (Cull & Quarantine Cohort - 4.1%)`

"Professor... this isn't mere academic taxonomy." Do-yun's voice trembled slightly. "`Cull`? You're assigning cull grades to seven-year-old children?"

Professor Baek handed Do-yun a coffee cup and shrugged.

"Don't be so sensitive to terminology, Dr. Han. It's simply standard vocabulary from population ecology. Besides, let's be honest: every parent, teacher, and state authority in the world mouths the platitude that 'every child is a tabula rasa of infinite potential,' yet do you think even a single person truly believes it?"

Professor Baek clicked a single point inside `Cluster Omega` on the third monitor.

The screen zoomed in, pulling up the profile of a six-year-old boy. His name was masked, yet beneath the unique identifier `KOR-2020-88412-M`, his entire biological and sociological trajectory since gestation lay starkly exposed:

- Gestational Week 28: Maternal serum inflammatory cytokine (IL-6) top 1%; ultrasound prefrontal cortical thickness bottom 3%.

- Genetic Markers: MAOA-L variant positive; CDH13 variant positive; oxytocin receptor (`OXTR`) promoter hypermethylation.

- Facial Anthropometry (Age 5): Facial asymmetry index 0.19; supraorbital-to-mandibular angle deviation +2.8 sigma (σ).

- Behavioral Observation Log: November 2025 daycare surveillance footage — while a peer stacked wooden blocks, subject precisely timed the teacher's average 4.2-second blind spot and stepped on the peer's fingers. Zero heart-rate response to victim's crying (HRV variance under 0.8%).

"Look at this boy," Professor Baek explained in a calm, measured tone. "Ordinary child psychologists would prescribe an 'attachment-building program' or 'art therapy.' Yet do you know what our Black Web `[Anthro-Metrics]` division observed after tracking 140,000 children worldwide with these identical biometric and physiognomic markers into adulthood over twenty years?"

Professor Baek tapped a key, and a blood-red survival curve bloomed across the screen.

"Whether they received art therapy, were adopted by billionaire households, or grew up in religious institutions, 99.1 percent either committed violent felonies before age twenty-two or became high-risk sociopaths who deftly skirted the law to ruin other people's lives. That fairytale about environment conquering genetics only holds true for the ordinary seventy percent clustered near the mean—within plus or minus one sigma. For humans seated at the extreme tails of the distribution, environment is merely stage dressing that alters the style of expression."

Do-yun stared at the expressionless ID photograph of the six-year-old boy.

The boy's eyes smiled toward the camera lens, yet the orbicularis oculi muscles around his eyes showed zero contraction—a textbook learned fake smile, devoid of a true Duchenne marker.

"So... what do you use this list of children for?" Do-yun asked. "Surely you aren't handing it over to the police or the government?"

"The government? Haha—Korean bureaucrats would wet their pants in terror of the Human Rights Commission if I handed them data like this. Why would I give it to them?"

Professor Baek pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a strange smile.

"Its primary purpose is academic papers circulated strictly within the Black Web. Mathematically proving the true origin of inequality and evil within the primate species Homo sapiens—that alone is a lifelong calling for a sociologist like me. Though... I do manufacture a few 'derivative products' for the global partners who bankroll our research."

"Derivative products?"

"For instance, providing blacklist and whitelist hash values to transnational life insurers, private equity funds, or admissions committees at ultra-elite boarding schools in Europe and America. Which child will someday embezzle tens of millions, which will die by suicide at thirty, or which was born with a dangerous charisma capable of upending the established order... They don't ask why. They simply buy the 'Risk Score' we compute. In fact..."

Professor Baek dropped his voice lower still.

"Lately, certain royal households in the Middle East and East Asia, along with Silicon Valley billionaires, have been commissioning joint services from `[Anthro-Metrics]` and `[Bio-Foundry]`. When selecting fertilized embryos to implant in surrogates, they don't just want hereditary diseases screened out—they want us to engineer facial-skeletal gene combinations that physiognomically compel absolute trust and obedience from the masses, paired with a Dark Triad–optimized genome capable of flawlessly performing social empathy while feeling zero guilt."

The coffee cup in Do-yun's hand felt freezing cold.

Criminals on the Dark Web extorted and harmed humans already born; scholars on the Black Web were designing the social caste, the soul, even the angles of the facial bones of humans not yet conceived—and buying and selling them like goods in a general store.

Just then, a crisp chime rang out from Professor Baek's master server.

A green window flashed across the center of the display: `[Inbound Logistics: Diplomatic Pouch #77- Riga to Incheon Cleared]`.

"It's here," Baek said, his eyes gleaming. "Eunomia-19B, dispatched by Vesalius, has just cleared customs at Incheon Airport Cargo Terminal. Traveling under the diplomatic pouch of a certain Baltic republic's embassy in Riga, it won't even have passed through an X-ray scanner. At midnight tonight, it will be delivered to your basement laboratory."