NCT : The Dream Lab

IV : The Origins of NCT 127

Chicago, USA, 2016.

His peers and neighbors called him the Mad Scientist. Only behind his back of course, otherwise it was Dr. Seo. Johnny Seo.

He didn't get this nickname because he worked for some obscure evil force obviously, but because of his lifestyle, and the quest he was pursuing through thick and thin. None of his colleagues ever supported his dubious project so he progressively became a sort of ermit, hopelessly obsessed by his goal of finding a proof that he was right since the very beginning.

A few years ago, when he was researching on his own for his doctor degree thesis, he invented a tool that became a major discovery in the field of neurology and was now used in many hospitals everywhere in the world. It detected hundreds of brain tumors before it's too late every year.

It was a very meaningful accomplishment of course, especially for a young man like him, but he didn't take much pride out of it. In his opinion, his invention was almost accidental since his original plan wasn't even about brain tumors. Nonetheless, he still felt very grateful about this event because it allowed him to fully focus on his one and only dream. Indeed, his invention had been patented, which meant that each time a hospital installed it, he earned a certain amount of money that he invested in his personal project. This way, he hardly ever spent time working with his peers and stayed cooped up in his house for days, to the point that the delivery man of his favorite restaurant sometimes worried about his health.

When he attended worldly parties or even went to the grocery store however, his presence never went unnoticed. He brimmed with confidence and was surely aware of his charms. He was obviously an extremely good looking man and didn't hesitate to play on it. Johnny seduced like he breathed. He was quick-witted, and carried the conversation like no one else. Women loved him. He attracted them like jam attracts wasps. Even though he took great pleasure in seducing them, he never took interest in the women he met. The look of sheer adoration in their eyes was enough to satiate his own desire (and ego).

He never wore extravagant clothes but still took good care of his looks by wearing elegant handmade tuxedos he once bought at a tailor in Italy. He only had three, all black. A classy one for chic occasions (not that he often had to wear it but one can never be too cautious) and the two others were casual. These outfits had almost become some signature of his.

Quite fortunately, the people he encountered in those cases never saw him at home, when he was in pajamas all day, surrounded by his computers, wave detectors and countless drafts of theories. He mostly worked on his usual gaming chair or lying on the floor and often forgot his most basic human needs like sleeping, showering, or communicating with humans. Maybe this was his toxic trait.

Luckily, his need to please and charm was greater than his sloppiness and prevented him from getting bad eating habits or lacking physical activity.

That day like every other day, the Mad Scientist was staying at his place, working like a crazy on something that he's the only one to consider work : the NCT project, acronym of Neo Culture Technology. It all started during his first year of doctor degree, when he sensed an unprecedented kind of electric wave thanks to the material from the university laboratory. Johnny was over excited by this unique discovery and immediately warned his most respected professors, who were always very intrigued by the ideas of their most promising student. Unfortunately, when the poor man was showing his records of the new wave, it showed nothing but normal and uninteresting waves.

No one dared to laugh at him because he was still the most eminent student of the faculty but the incident did strongly harm his reputation. Deeply humiliated, he developed an obsession about proving the existence of this wave that computers seemed to forget as soon as it was perceived. Years after years, he could finally grasp traces of it and collect them, trying to fill the voids with complex calculus and various probabilities he almost went nuts reflecting on.