SF8

In a care home, a mother has been in a coma for 10 years and her carer is exhausted. The nursing robot, which looks after both of them, becomes distressed when it has to decide who it should save. The Prayer foresees a near future in which bedridden patients are looked after by robots and examines frequently unseen or overlooked care work. When a machine programmed for one purpose it becomes closer to the essence of that objective, so it inevitably reaches a realm that includes choice, anguish and obsession beyond the programming. Is it still just a machine then?

An AI fortunetelling service called Manxin boasts a surprisingly high level of accuracy. In a world where most people deify and have blind faith in Manxin, Seon Ho and Ga Ram, who have their own pain and secrets, search for its developer. Contrary to their expectations, they discover the true nature of Manxin. Manxin questions life and the essence of humankind through people who are, ironically, obsessed with the black arts rather than science, and others, who refuse the given path, anxiously seek the truth in a time of advanced AI, which accurately predicts the future to a large extent. Although we don’t know where our time is leading, isn’t it possible for human beings to live out their given time in blissful ignorance?

The world is covered with fine dust, and Cs, who were injected with expensive antibodies at birth, enjoy a life expectancy of 100 years, while Ns, who were not injected, live a completely different life, with a life expectancy of just 30. Having lived her entire life as a C, 26-year-old college student Io finds out that she was not given the antibody injection at birth thanks to a mistake at the hospital. Now, Io begins to wonder about the life of Ns, which held no interest for her before. She’s especially interested in Joan, the only N in the school. What does life look like when we know what’s coming? The fact that the lives of the two young people who meet in the scheduled time are not clear may not be due to only the clouds of fine dust that hit the world. A story of two young people dreaming of a beautiful future with sincerity and love for each other is touching and unfolds beautifully in an opaque future that does not know how to unfold.