Phagocytosis

Undisclosed Location, South Korea — September 2035

Ji Joo-hwan stands out like a sore thumb. In his late thirties, with prematurely greying hair and a faint tan line where a wedding ring once sat, he absently fidgets with the empty space as if the ring were still there. While his colleagues wear white lab coats reminiscent of a high school chemistry class, Ji paces confidently through the aircraft hangar like the ex-ROK Marine he is.

He gives the KF-25 stealth fighter a final tap on the wing—part ritual, part habit—before the cockpit seals shut. Then he joins his team behind a wall of tables cluttered with monitors, tablets, and diagnostic gear, each tracking vital specs and telemetry from the aircraft.

As the massive hangar doors begin to close, Ji yells something in Korean before slipping on his ear protection. The fighter hums to life.

At the controls: a seventh-generation AI pilot, boasting a 46-to-2 kill ratio against human opponents. Tonight's test isn't about weapons,it's about control. Engineers will observe whether the aircraft's structure, its wings, flaps, and ailerons, can withstand the AI's unpredictable but meticulously pre-planned manoeuvres, always thinking twenty to thirty steps ahead.

T he KF-25 begins its subtle dance. The ailerons tilts slightly, then the wings flex with mechanical precision. The flaps extend and retract with a fast, grinding whirr, controlled and deliberate, yet carrying the raw, unforgiving strength that could rip your arms off in an instant if it somehow was caught between metal and wing. The ailerons follow, fluttering along the trailing edges like the wings themselves are alive, producing sharp clicks and hydraulics hissing under pressure.

Where the pilot would normally sit, there is only a sleek black cockpit capsule, an opaque, matte black box embedded with a ring of small, round sensors glowing faintly in a soft red. These sensors constantly scan the surrounding environment, feeding streams of data to the AI mind inside. Despite there being sensors, captors, cameras all around the aircraft, the "black box" in the cockpit as it is called feels more as if it was put there for a sense of aura than anything else.

A few hours later, Ji and I sit inside a fully automated Korean Seven Eleven, the fluorescent lights humming softly overhead. There's no staff, just quiet machines and blinking screens handling every transaction. Ji is eating noodles, the steam curling up in front of him like a fragile veil. He sits facing the large window that looks out onto the dark street, his expression distant and unreadable, as if savoring his last meal on Earth. The city's faint glow reflects in his eyes, but his thoughts seem far away,locked somewhere beyond the here and now.

"You must really like chicken," I say, trying to break the silence. Immediately, I bite my tongue, realizing how lame that sounded.

Ji just stares at me for a moment, then laughs. A soft chuckle escapes him as he takes another bite, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Had a colleague like that when I did an internship in California," he says. "Guy loved chicken so much, he'd go to the supermarket and grab one from the fridge. Then he'd put it all the way in the back, come back a few days later, and move it back again. Then he'd come back the day it expire and ask the store for a discount."

I manage a light chuckle, realizing how lame that guy sounds.

"Tell me what you did during the war while I finish eating," Ji says.

"Infantry," I reply shortly.

"Ten million dead, and that's the best answer you can muster?" he says, chuckling.

"There's not much more to say, honestly," I answer. "Kassel, Dortmund, Eindhoven at the start. Eupen and Elsenborn later on. Got injured in Bremen during the liberation."

"What kind of injury?" he asks.

"Both femurs fractured, and one artery ruptured in my right leg," I add.

"That sounds painful," he says, tossing the empty noodle cup into the trash.

"And you?" I ask, a subtle reminder that I'm the one doing the interviewing tonight.

"Odessa was my first experience, a small contingency back then," Ji begins. "Worked alongside the Americans and the Chinese until that whole operation fell on its ass, and we had to escape on the same boats we landed with. When our northern neighbors landed in Poland, I was in the Romanian Carpathians, working with my dogs. Which I suppose is why you asked to meet me."

"Partly," I reply.

"There's more than enough Rifleman First Class to interview, from Canada to Singapore," he says, leaning back with a tired grin.

"Yes," I nod. "I asked to meet with you to talk about the unmanned ground vehicles you helped design and field."

"Smart ass," he mutters in korean, looking away with a faint smile.

"Neugdae, or 'wolves' as you call them in English, could on paper operate autonomously," he continues. "But even with all the insane shit the brass tried to pull, they weren't about to let six wild dogs with machine guns run loose and hunt on their own."

He pauses, as if picturing it again. "They always needed a handler. A human. Someone who could think when the lines blurred, when the target wasn't just a red box on a screen."

"They looked too much like those yellow robots from Boston Dynamics," Ji says, folding his arms. "You've probably seen the videos when you were a kid. The ones that look like headless robot dogs."

"Now imagine one of those, but bulkier. Reinforced legs. Twice the weight-carrying capacity. Enough to mount an M60 machine gun, carry a few hundred rounds, and still have room for a sensor suite and backup battery."

He leans forward, tapping the table for emphasis.

"Thermal, lidar, motion sensors, comms gear. The works. Each one had its own onboard processing but synced constantly with the handler. You could chill out, depending on the terrain, up to a kilometer away with the conscripts pulling security and carrying extra ammo and batteries while the dogs moved and sprinted, reacted like soldiers, and killed like machines. I'd see it all on my first person goggles. Could over ride commands and shoot and move in their stead, but they knew better how to handles themselves than you ever could with FPV goggles and controllers. I just had to manually pull the trigger, safety that allowed them to fire."

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"Cleared some mountain pass villages that way," Ji says, voice low, almost casual. "We'd sneak in, take position, then send the pack to hunt. Our unit was designated 'Foxhounds.' Had sister companies—'Bloodhounds,' 'Coonhounds.' But we all worked the same way. Hell, we even brought camping chairs to get comfortable."

He smiles faintly, like he's remembering something both absurd and deadly serious.

"Butit always was a thrill when the drone flying overhead spotted the first crab. We'd deploy the dogs maybe two hundred meters out, get them into position. Then we'd broadcast sounds."

"What kind of sounds?" I ask.

"Officially? Recordings of soldiers dismounting, shouting, taking positions, just combat noise without gunfire. But depending on the target, we had other options too. Music. Casual conversation. Kids crying. The crabs would get curious."

He taps a finger on the table, mimicking the rhythm of a marching column.

"The real challenge was baiting a centuria, not just some scattered stragglers. Thirty or forty organized crabs—that was ideal. Four or five starving, exiled ones? Not worth it."

He leans back, eyes narrowing a little.

"One of our dogs would act as bait," Ji continues. "Make the noise, kick around, just enough to look exposed. The rest stayed still, silent, tucked into terrain. They'd form a circle around the spot we knew the crabs would push into. Then it was GG."

He makes a small flicking gesture, like switching a light off.

"The dogs would open up the moment the crabs got too close—five or six M60s firing in unison from nearly every angle. We'd seal off the retreat with our Yearling. It'd lob tear gas canisters behind the crabs as they tried to pull back. Accuracy wasn't great, but it didn't matter. The crabs would panic, not knowing if it was surplus riot control gas or military-grade sarin."

I lean forward. "Why bother with bots? Couldn't five or six men pull that off?"

Ji snorts, shaking his head with a dry chuckle.

"Hah! In your time, would you have wanted to head out alone in the middle of the night, your nearest comrade two hundred meters away, just waiting for a pack of crabs—outnumbering you ten, maybe twenty to one—to walk into the kill zone? And if everything went according to plan, you'd all open fire at once, knowing your overlapping arcs of fire meant your entire squad was shooting toward each other in the dark?"

He lets that hang in the air for a beat.

"No, bots were better. They didn't flinch. They didn't miss. And if they got torn apart? You just built another."

Ji's voice softens slightly, more memory than explanation now.

"I still remember every dog we lost. And every crab we took out. Got four terabytes of recordings stashed away somewhere. But the real fun?" He leans in, eyes glinting. "That was when the terrain allowed it. We'd have the bots run through the mob—one at a time—full sprint, straight through the middle of the confused, panicking crabs. Their stabilized M60s firing the whole way."

He pauses to let the image set in.

"They were fast—damn fast. One would sprint to the opposite side of the formation, crabs firing back with that awful aim of theirs, panicking, shooting in every direction. Sometimes they'd miss. Sometimes they'd hit. Sometimes they'd shoot their own."

He smiles grimly.

"Then, just as the first dog reached cover, another would run the gauntlet. Rinse and repeat. Confusion layered over confusion, and before they even realized what was happening, we'd mopped the whole squad. We weren't supposed to operate solo. Doctrine said artillery or an infantry platoon would follow up, clean out what was left. But we got so damn efficient at it, they started giving us the green light to run independent. As long as we had authorization—and enough ammo—we'd just go."

Ji shrugs, as if to say what else were we going to do?

"Just me, three teenage conscripts addicted to crab powder, and five or six of our dogs. They had their downsides," he admits. "Battery life was shit if you ran them hard. Maintenance was constant—jfoints locking up from mud, dust messing with optics, sensors getting blown out from shrapnel. And maneuverability? Not great in tight quarters or thick forest. You had to plan routes like a goddamn chessboard."

He taps his temple lightly.

"But what they lacked in grace, pure cardio they made up for in sheer brutality."

His voice drops, measured now.

"They didn't hesitate. You give a human a split-second decision—pull the trigger, hold fire, move left, duck right—he's weighing options, instincts, fear. The dogs didn't care. They weren't brave, they weren't scared. They just… executed. Perfectly. Every time."

He looks over at me, eyes steady.

"You ever watch a 140-pound, steel-legged monster sprint full speed through a cornfield and cut down ten crabs with a belt-fed machine gun without missing a step?" Ji says, his tone flat but heavy. "That's not war. That's slaughter. Cold, clean, unblinking. Raptors"

He pauses, then adds, quieter now:

"Robots. As long as the battery held and the circuits stayed dry, they operated. No routing. No ruptured eardrums. No falling asleep on watch. They didn't quit after twenty years. They didn't get tired. They didn't get scared. We didn't call them dogs because they had four legs. We called them dogs because they were our best friends."

"They did their work on the crabs. We knew crabs could rout,idn't happen often against humans—but you drop forty of them in the open, surrounded by six bitches firing M60s, whether it's in a cornfield the size of a football field or an airstrip, they didn't know what the hell to do."

Ji's eyes harden slightly, like he's walking through the memory again.

"Last medal I got? A beetle had breached our lines, about to hit Brigade HQ somehow. Just fifty people back there—officers, engineers, cooks and us. We sent the dogs at it. They couldn't hurt it, not not in a thousand years. But four of them—circling it, darting under it, sprinting in chaos—they disoriented it. I swear the damn thing got dizzy trying to spin and track them."

He chuckles, dryly.

"It fired napalm, got two of ours. Batteries were draining, they started pulling back. Then a Saudi F-15 dropped a beetle-buster straight on its head. Took it out."

He pauses, expression flattening.

"Lost another dog to the explosion. Still pisses me off. But we saved a lot of lives that day."

"Were you ever scared of friendly fire?" I ask.

Ji shrugs, almost too casually.

"The dogs shooting each other? Yeah, sure. Happened. Sometimes a hound would catch a stray round in the crossfire, or misread a target angle. But that's what they were there for."

He leans back, tone hardening.

"Thank God for the factories. Easier to replace one of them than pay off a dead conscript's parents' mortgage."

"And against humans?" I ask.

Ji lets out a short breath,something between a laugh and a sigh.

"Let's just say we had security measures and protocols for a reason. Sure, the whole 45-degree safety angle rule when a soldier fires a rifle—that could be bent. But the dogs? Especially the first-gen models? You didn't mess with their protocols. AI wasn't what it is now. Back then, their whole targeting logic was based on thermal signatures and movement profiles—basically matching the outline of a crab. Worked great, until it didn't."

He pauses.

"Like that one time… my platoon sergeant comes back from taking a dump, strolls up an odd 50 meters in front of one of the dogs we'd just swapped batteries on and hadn't reloaded its weapon yet. Guy's wearing three layers of thermal gear and rain protection, looked like a walking microwave. For the AI, it looked like a crab. Moved like a crab."

Ji gives a grim smile.

"I was grabbing an ammo box when I saw the dog's gun snap toward him, turned 30 degrees in half a second . Bolt spun forward—quick, like it knew what it was doing. Chamber was empty, thank God. All we heard was that loud POP of the firing pin slamming into nothing."

He chuckles once, dryly.

"Saved his life. But he shat himself a second time."

"The dogs were loyal, unbelievably loyal. Followed orders without question, never hesitated. They had no pride, no doubt, no fear. That made them perfect soldiers."

He leans forward, voice low and serious.

"But that loyalty? It was unforgiving. You slipped up, hesitated, or gave a wrong command… the dogs didn't just fail you—they punished you. No second chances. No mercy. AI lacks common sense, , it didn't matter who you were. They aren't like humans, who hesitate or hold back. They executed. Cold. Precise. Without remorse. Thank god it never happened with us, the incident with the platoon sergeant only happened because I forgot to remove rubber band from the trigger safety I told you about. Talk about a fuck up. "