Episode 108 — Debugging in the Dark (Part 1)

The moment I closed the study door and turned the key, my "omnipotence" evaporated.

On the desk sat my PC. The pale glow of the LCD screen was a magic mirror filled with the wisdom of the other world, but it was also a cold, impartial judge mocking my current situation.

"…Right. What am I supposed to do with this?"

I sat in a wooden chair—decidedly "work-oriented" compared to my Throne of Laziness—and began tapping away at the keyboard.

The spec Gustav provided was simple: "Distribute the profits of Gara-Mon equally to all citizens." In my world, we called that implementing Universal Basic Income (UBI).

But just imagining the swarm of "fatal bugs" lurking behind that single sentence made a warning beep echo through my skull.

"I promised too much... Two or three days? For a development schedule, this is a total dumpster fire."

I scrolled through a file titled "History of Hyperinflation."

Post-WWI Germany. The final days of Zimbabwe. What struck those countries was a "collapse of value" brought about by reckless currency printing.

"Money doesn't have value in and of itself. It exists through a consensus with the market—'how many of these do I need to give you for one loaf of bread?'"

"Mrrrp. (Talking to yourself again? You’re really backed into a corner, aren't you?)"

Tama looked up at me from my feet, letting out a yawn.

"Right now, the circulating currency in Felsen is stable. But what happens if I take the profits Gara-Mon earns and distribute them to every resident the moment they’re made? The residents go to the tavern in high spirits. The total amount of 'gold' flowing into the market spikes instantly. …And the result?"

I entered the values into the simulator on my screen and hit the Enter key.

A graph spiked vertically. It wasn't a metric for "prosperity," but a red line indicating a "surge" in the price of bread.

"The tavern owner sees that everyone has money, so he raises the price of bread and ale. As prices rise, the relative value of the distributed money drops. In the end, the standard of living doesn't change, and everyone’s savings turn into scrap paper. …It’s just numerical inflation. It’s essentially a DDoS attack crashing the market’s supply capacity."

I scratched my head and shoved an empty Cola can to the edge of the desk.

Even in my old world, UBI was still little more than a "theoretical beta version." A few advanced nations had run experiments, but those were predicated on stable infrastructure and tax systems.

Trying to run that in this medieval "legacy environment"—where resident registration isn't even finished and there are no banks or stock exchanges—is a reckless attempt to run a modern OS on an abacus.

"…And then there’s the other bug: the decline of the will to work. Moral hazard."

I switched screens, looking at failed examples of past social experiments.

Being able to eat without working? That’s my personal ideal, but if the whole society does it, the supply side grinds to a halt. If there’s no one left to bake the bread, no amount of money will keep you fed.

"…Ah, damn it. The more I think about it, the more I can only see a future where the market falls into a deadlock. Gustav, what you’re trying to build isn't an 'autonomous happiness-delivery system.' It’s a 'system-melting virus' that will dissolve the entire country."

I leaned back into my chair and looked at the ceiling. Outside the window, it had grown dark without me noticing. In the silence of the two-story house, only the hum of the PC’s fan echoed hollowly.

"…Maybe I should just throw the bug report back at him and tell him it’s impossible. …No, I can't. Gustav had that look in his eyes. He’s serious. If I refuse, he might try to implement some reckless distribution on his own and actually break Felsen."

It’s the ultimate nightmare scenario: the developer rejects the spec, but the client goes ahead and hot-patches the production environment anyway. If that’s how it’s going to be, then no matter how dirty the source code has to look, I’m the only one who can hardcode the safety failsafes.

"Meow. (You retreated into your shell just so you could be lazy, yet here you are, strangling yourself with work. You brought this on yourself.)"

"…But look, Tama. If... just if I could install an OS in this world that doesn't have the fatal error of 'poverty'... wouldn't that be the ultimate debug? Something no one in the other world ever managed to pull off?"

Tama didn't answer my monologue. She just pressed her belly against the cold floor and watched my agony.

2:00 AM. Armed with massive dark circles under my eyes, my brain was barely overclocking its processing speed on a pure diet of Cola sugar and caffeine.

On the screen floated numerous academic papers that had once been dismissed as "idealistic nonsense" in my old world.

"Wait... maybe because the social level here is what it is, there’s actually something I *can* do?"

Through the haze of my mind, a single logical circuit began to form.

It was an architecture that never fully compiled in my old world... but in this hyper-isolated, "closed economic ecosystem" of Felsen, the code just might run.

"…This is it. If I apply this patch, I can maximize resident happiness while suppressing the inflation spikes…"

I glared at the screen once more. My solitary debugging session—consisting of me, Tama, and a pale, glowing magic mirror—would continue until the sun rose on the third day.

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