Episode 1: Dimensional Leap Beyond Seoul's Night View (SPACE DRIVE)

At midnight, downtown Seoul was like a gray aquarium with red and blue neon signs spreading across the rain-soaked asphalt. Han Seo-jin (Leo), a freelance sound engineer and space route driver, tired of endless overtime and repetitive daily life, opened the driver's door of his custom airship 'Starrider 88', which was parked in the parking lot of an old underground workshop in Mapo-gu. On the outside, it had the sleek, streamlined, angular body of a 1988 retro sports car, but under the bonnet, a tachyon particle accelerator and a hyperdrive core for dimension jumping were secretly breathing.

Crash. Leo, who was buried in the bucket seat, clicked the analog toggle switches on the dashboard one by one. The green vacuum tube instrument panel crackled and turned on, and when the play button on the cassette deck was pressed, the heavy magnetic tape spun and a funky slap bass and refreshing synthesizer arpeggio rang out. A city pop track with 80s sensibility. The moment I deeply stepped on the accelerator pedal, dazzling pink flames burst out from the dual plasma exhaust ports at the rear. Buaaaaang! The wheels folded on the ground and were stored in the lower part of the fuselage, and Star Rider 88 kicked off the streetlights of Gangbyeonbuk-ro and soared vertically into the night sky.

The silhouette of N Seoul Tower reflected in the waves of the Han River suddenly became smaller beneath my feet. When we reached an altitude of 10,000 meters, a dreamy purple fog rose over the night view of Seoul. The cloud layer split to the left and right, and a huge interstellar portal (Stargate), which was normally invisible due to the Earth's atmosphere, was opened. The entrance to a galaxy where hundreds of billions of stars rotate majestically, forming a purple and magenta nebula. The fluorescent green digital display in the center of the dashboard blinked harshly and displayed English text. [SPACE DRIVE ENGAGED]

[DESTINATION: UNIVERSE NIGHT MARKET]

[WARP FACTOR: 9.8] “Okay, let’s run today again.” Leo turned the volume knob to increase the speaker output. The speaker cone vibrated intensely, shaking the air in time with the heavy kick drum. Star Rider 88 rushed at full speed toward the heart of the purple portal. Seoul's dry forest of buildings has now disappeared behind, and the fantastic galactic drive towards the legendary 'Space Night Market', where only taste, romance, and the vitality of infinite alien life forms is alive and breathing, has begun. Seoul's nights were always shrouded in a gray, fatigued fog.

The second basement floor of an old commercial building in Mapo-gu. Seojin, codenamed Leo, who was sitting in front of the sound mixing console, took off his headphones and stretched for a long time. The computer monitor was filled with an endless stream of edited files for advertising music and unreasonable requests for modifications from clients. The pressure of suffocating deadlines and the lethargy of a standardized life. But his real life began the moment the clock hands passed midnight. When the dusty tarpaulin was removed from the corner of the underground parking lot, the silhouette of a sleek sports car painted in a dark metallic violet color was revealed in the pitch-black darkness.

‘Starrider 88’ maintains the sleek pop-up headlights and angular bonnet lines of the 1988 Japanese retro sports car. However, beneath its classic exterior, it was equipped with a tachyon compression engine from the extraterrestrial Orion Cluster and a dimensional hyperdrive core that could not be explained by Earth's science. Clap, thud. With the sound of the heavy door closing, Leo sank into the bucket seat and flipped the chrome-plated toggle switches on the dashboard one by one with familiar hands. Click, click, click. The old vacuum tube gauges on the dashboard came to life, warming up to a warm orange color, and the analog speedometer needle trembled.

Leo pushed a piece of chrome tape into the cassette deck of the center fascia and clicked the [PLAY] button. Behind the tape's unique analog hiss noise, a cheerful and sophisticated 80's city pop punk track flowed. The cutting rhythm of the glimmering electric guitar, the chewy slap bass, and the sweet brass section that cuts through the night air.

“Let’s go, partner. We should get there before the night market closes.” Leo stepped on the clutch, pushed the gear knob into first gear, and then stepped on the accelerator pedal hard. Kugugoogung! The concrete pillars of the underground parking lot trembled, and vivid magenta-pink flames exploded from the rear dual plasma exhaust ports. Star Rider 88 immediately kicked off the underground ramp and jumped to the ground. The car, which was speeding at 200 kilometers per hour on the empty asphalt of Gangbyeonbuk-ro, folded its wheels and leapt into the air the moment it passed the northern end of Mapo Bridge. The anti-gravity repulsor engine ignited and easily broke the gravity chain on the ground.

The car body rose vertically toward the night sky of the Han River, leaving a fantastic purple reflection on the water of the Han River. Below my feet, the red lights of N Seoul Tower and the skyscrapers of Yeouido receded like a huge jewel box. Altitude 15,000 meters. At the interface between Earth's atmosphere and stratosphere, a miracle occurred. The thick fine dust and dark clouds covering the skies over Seoul split majestically to the left and right, and a thick lavender-colored interstellar fog rose. Beyond the fog, a huge four-dimensional space-time passageway that humans on earth could never see—the vortex of the ‘Galaxy Gateway’—opened.

[SPACE DRIVE ENGAGED]

[HYPER-JUMP COORDINATES LOCKED]

[WARP FACTOR: 9.8] The fluorescent green digital instrument panel blinked harshly. The speaker congee jumped to the explosive drum beat of city pop, creating ripples of sound waves in the air. Leo adjusted his sunglasses and gripped the steering wheel tightly. The moment Star Rider 88's front headlights brightly illuminated the heart of the purple portal, the vehicle was sucked into the tunnel of light at a speed thousands of times the speed of sound. Leaving behind all the frustrating daily life on earth, the legendary Galaxy Drive towards the Space Night Market, where infinite taste and romance awaits, was finally unfolding in splendor.

The cockpit of Star Rider 88 was not just the inside of a car, but Leo's own secret little universe. At the top of the dashboard was a small vintage miniature robot doll obtained from a record shop in Tokyo, Japan in the 1980s, securely secured with double-sided tape. Every time the vehicle accelerated rapidly or made a warp jump, the small plastic robot would bob its spring neck and give a cheering greeting to Leo. Inside the glove box, there were a lot of old cassette tapes. Tatsuro Yamashita, Toshiki Kadomatsu, Anri, and Mariya Takeuchi.

The romance and sophisticated melodies of the future city that musicians of that era dreamed of have become the soul of this interstellar airship that Leo is currently driving, 40 years later. Modern people on Earth dismissed the city pop of that time as just a passing fad or retro sensibility, but for Leo, that music was the most powerful energy catalyst that broke down dimensional boundaries.

“Engine output normal. Tachyon compression ratio 1:400. Warp gate visibility completed.” To the self-talk that flowed from Leo's lips, the analog needles on the dashboard responded as if dancing in unison. The car body, soaring above Seoul, had now completely left the Earth's blue atmosphere and entered the dark blue space of outer space. The night view of the Korean Peninsula spread out beneath my feet sparkled like a huge golden net, and the water of the Han River flowing above it looked like a thin silver line. With that beautiful scenery behind him, Leo sped up towards the huge purple portal ahead.

The surface of the portal was smooth like a calm lake, but at its center, a vortex of space and time was emitting hundreds of millions of terawatts of light per second. The moment the tip of Star Rider 88's bonnet touched the purple curtain, the entire vehicle body was engulfed in a white flash along with a light vibration. The stars outside the car window stretched out and turned into rainbow-colored linear streaks, and the pressure of gravitational acceleration pushed Leo's back deeper into the seat. But the pressure was not painful. It was like the exhilarating sense of liberation I felt as a child when a roller coaster at an amusement park descended from the top.

“Space Night Market, I’m coming!” As Leo cheered, the volume on the cassette deck exploded to its highest level. Each time the speaker's powerful diaphragm struck the air, the purple portal opened wide like a giant flower petal, and Starrider 88 finally completely shook off the gravity of reality and glided dazzlingly onto the rainbow water of the galactic highway. For Leo, the act of escaping the huge gray tank of Seoul and jumping into space was like a baptism of the soul held every night. Although he lived on earth and encountered many people, he always felt a deep sense of isolation.

People who are trapped in their smartphone screens and don't even look at each other's faces, with dry gazes that envy others' success and ridicule their failures. However, the moment it soared through an altitude of 10,000 meters, all the petty shackles on the ground burned white and evaporated along with the frictional heat of the atmosphere. Star Rider 88's body was now in full hyperspace navigation mode. The air scoop on the bonnet sucked in the dark matter of the universe and converted it into pure tachyon energy, and a fine blue-green plasma shield was spread from the side skirts on the left and right sides of the fuselage, completely preventing collisions with space dust.

On the dashboard's cassette deck, Anri's famous song 'Timely!' An upbeat track from the album was playing. Refreshing drum beats and gorgeous brass melody. Leo lightly gripped the steering wheel with one hand and rested his arm on the passenger window frame with the other hand, admiring the nebulae in the night sky. The vortex of the purple portal was like a huge eye of the galaxy. As I was drawn into the center, the boundaries between the past and the future became blurred due to the distortion of space and time, and only the brilliant drive of ‘this moment’ became the absolute reality.

“The beat is particularly good tonight.” A soft smile spread across Leo's lips. The needles on the instrument panel pointed to the perfect green section, and the pink flames spouting from the rear dual exhaust ports were embroidering an indelible romantic contrail in the night sky of Seoul. Finally, the curtain of the portal completely lifted, and the rainbow space highway opened its arms towards him. The moment it completely broke through the stratosphere and escaped the atmosphere, the blue sphere called Earth gradually became smaller in Leo's rearview mirror, shining like a brilliant glass bead.

The cockpit of Star Rider 88 was a hideaway where the analog sensibility of the late 1980s and future high-tech exquisitely coexisted. A three-spoke sports steering wheel wrapped in leather, a center console finished with walnut wood grain, and a green fluorescent vacuum tube (VFD) digital speedometer were softly lighting the dark cockpit. Leo stretched out his right hand and gently squeezed the manual 5-speed short shifter gear knob located at the bottom of the console. snap. A heavy yet accurate mechanical fastening feeling conveyed to your fingertips.

In an era where the latest self-driving spacecraft leave all trajectory calculations to computer artificial intelligence and turn passengers into helpless observers, driving an analog machine that controls the gravitational field using only one's reflexes and clutch operation brings tremendous joy.

"Tachion injection pressure, 4.2 bar. Coolant temperature, normal. Exhaust valve opening rate 85 percent." Leo glanced at the three analog gauges mounted on top of the instrument panel—boost pressure gauge, spacecraft thermometer, and dimensional compression gauge. The needles were trembling slightly like a heartbeat, sending out perfect vital signals. His car, Starrider 88, was originally an ordinary 1988 classic coupe on the ground, but it was a monster created by swapping the legendary 'Cyber-Cosmic V8' engine and dual twin tachyon turbochargers that Leo had obtained from the black market and galactic junkyards over the years.

Inside the dashboard glove box, there were a lot of old cassette tapes. Tatsuro Yamashita's 'Spacy', Toshiki Kadomatsu's 'Sea Breeze', Mariya Takeuchi's 'Variety', and many of Anri's classic albums. The unique warm tape hiss sound made when magnetic tape passes over the magnetic head was the noise that gave Leo the most cozy warmth in the cold vacuum of space.

“Chi-ik-tak.” The Auto Reverse function of the cassette deck activated and the next song started. The heavy and elastic bass line vibrated the floor of the cockpit, sending shivers down Leo's spine from his toes. “Yes, this bass slap is the real fuel for space navigation.” As we entered the center of the dimensional jump portal, the 'star burst' phenomenon, in which space dust stretched into a line of light beyond the front windshield, was spectacular. A fantastic sight as if hundreds of millions of fireflies are dancing at the same time and pouring forward.

Purple, magenta, and emerald aurora wrapped around the car body and led Star Rider 88 onto the fourth-dimensional highway. The frustrating daily life in Seoul, the boring repetition, and all the weight that weighed down my heart became weightless dust and flew away in this tunnel of brilliant light. Leo pressed the accelerator pedal all the way down. From deep in the engine room, the dual Tachyon turbos emitted a fierce high-frequency intake sound, and Star Rider 88 tore open the final curtain of the portal and soared toward the rainbow space highway. Late-night drives were always a strange time where silence and explosive energy coexisted.

It was the same when driving along Gangbyeonbuk-ro or Olympic-daero in Seoul on the ground. At 2 a.m., when everyone was asleep, when the orange sodium streetlights passed over the asphalt, the noise of the world quieted down and only the beating of the engine and the melody flowing from the cassette tape enveloped Leo's whole body. However, no matter how long the Earth's roads are, they are eventually blocked by traffic lights or have to stop in front of the concrete wall of the toll gate. On the other hand, this vast galactic dimensional jumpway had no end. Here, no speed limit or traffic light blocked Leo's path.

As long as the driver's courage and the machine's heart endured, it could infinitely extend to the end of the cosmic horizon. Star Rider 88's body stopped vibrating and entered a smooth gliding mode. As the supercharging pressure of the Tachyon turbocharger stabilized, the harsh mechanical sound coming from under the bonnet changed to a low, deep humming sound, like a cat purring contentedly. Leo turned the equalizer dial on the center fascia clockwise. When the V-shaped sound setting with emphasis on treble and bass was applied, the sparkling arpeggio tone of the synthesizer filled the entire space clearly and elegantly through the cockpit's 4-channel speakers.

"Crackling... Crackling... This is the interstellar pirate radio 'Midnight Odyssey'. I dedicate this track to all the wandering drivers heading to the space night market tonight..." The car audio tuner picked up the unknown galactic pirate radio frequency and carried the DJ's low voice. The music playing was a dreamy dream pop sound typical of the 80s synthwave. Leo reached out the car window and felt the subtle flow of ether flowing through the vacuum with his fingertips. A cold yet tingling dimensional wave that passes by the palm of your hand.

In the rearview mirror, the lights of the Earth had already completely disappeared, and instead, the rainbow-colored aurora was majestically decorating the rear of Star Rider 88. The Milky Way was wide open as if the distant Deep Space was welcoming him.

“Yes, this is the only moment I feel alive.” Leo took a deep breath. The earthly residue and anguish that remained in my heart were completely washed away, and only pure freedom and the vastness of the universe filled the empty space in my soul. Starrider 88's pop-up headlights brightly illuminated the entrance to the Rainbow Expressway and split the night sky. As we reached the final section of the dimensional jump tunnel, the spectrum of light reflected on the bonnet of Star Rider 88 became even more intense and colorful. Leo looked down at his watch.

The time displayed on the 1980s-style angled digital electronic watch screen was 2:45 am. On the ground, it was the time when all the buildings' lights were turned off and there was only silence, but here at the space night market beyond the dimensional tunnel, it was the golden hour when the peak of the day had just begun.

“Engine cooling fins operating normally. Tachyon compression ratio maintained at 12.8:1.” Leo muttered softly and gently stepped on the clutch. As I pushed the gear from 4th to 5th overdrive, the machine gained momentum and glided through the air like a wild horse let loose. The heat emanating from the engine room and the heavy vibration of the car audio speaker resonated perfectly with Leo's heartbeat. Outside the car window, the partition of space and time undulated like waves, and afterimages of the past and present passed by like holograms. Memories of the tiring and boring daytime hours spent on earth, the emotions drying up under the fluorescent lights of the office, and the deep thirst I felt in the forest of cold concrete buildings.

All those gray memories were reduced to mere dust in this rainbow-colored tunnel and scattered. “After all, only running at night brings me back to myself.” Leo opened the window slightly more. The slight etheric wind seeping in cooled the sweat beads on my forehead. Beyond the windshield, the portal's exit finally began to open, emitting a huge white flash. The brilliant rays of the rainbow space highway ‘Route 77’ pouring in from the end of the tunnel. Leo held the steering wheel firmly with both hands and stepped on the accelerator pedal to the floor.

Star Rider 88 finally completely broke the boundaries of dimensions and soared into the arms of a brilliant galaxy. Star Rider 88's body had now completely reached the downstream of the dimensional jumpway. The temperature control system inside the car maintained a constant temperature of 22 degrees Celsius, and the soft neon indirect lighting surrounding the interior created perfect visual harmony with the instrument panels on the dashboard. Leo took a sip of warm barley tea from the thermos next to the console box. The scent of the delicious barley tea my mother made on earth stimulated a strange sense of nostalgia in the cold vacuum of space.

This simple incongruity of sipping barley tea from a thermos while racing through the Milky Way with a state-of-the-art tachyon engine was the secret to Leo not losing his warmth and identity as a human being. “Dimension jump entry angle, zero point correction completed. Freeway interchange ahead identified.” The Route 77 approach interchange was displayed as a distinct green line on the navigation monitor. Leo gently gripped the steering wheel and centered the car. The valves inside the engine room simultaneously made a regular metallic sound and rose to maximum power, and the purest pink flame that decorated the night sky spewed out from the dual mufflers.

This night flight, which escaped the gray daily life of Seoul and jumped into the infinite night of the universe, was not just a hobby for Leo, but a living, breathing life force itself. The machine finally landed smoothly in the first lane of the brilliant rainbow highway. In the silence of space, Starrider 88 finally maintained its cruising speed and settled perfectly in its rainbow-colored orbit. The small compass needle on the dashboard slowly aligned toward the center of the galaxy, and the cassette deck in the car began quietly playing the next song, a sweet city pop ballad.

Leo held the steering wheel comfortably with one hand and gazed out the wide open car window at the endless sea of ​​starlight. A sense of vast freedom and liberation that could never have been imagined in the concrete maze of the narrow basin city of Seoul. It was the purest and most eternal reward that could only be enjoyed by those who ran through the darkness every night in search of a dimensional leap route.

“Okay, it was a perfect flight tonight. Now let’s go enjoy the real galaxy festival.” The smile on Leo's lips glowed softly in the reflected light of the rainbow-colored road surface. Starrider 88 glided smoothly into the night sky, emitting a clear exhaust sound toward the heart of the galaxy. The melody flowing under the starlight echoed faintly beyond the distant horizon. The heartbeat of the analog engine echoing through the vacuum of space was always honest. Leo smiled quietly and tightened his grip on the steering wheel toward the next course.

Beyond the shattering starlight of night, a new adventure beckoned. The infinite universe that unfolded beyond the portal of night was always welcoming him.