Chapter 5: The Government Is Watching You
Translator: ShutDoor
[headpats: Review of 「Shelter Builder」, a shitty demo game that isn’t even officially out yet and was forced on me by some roadside hawker.]
There was no way I could simply scroll past a title like that.
Overcome by a strange certainty so intense that my fingertips tingled, I clicked the post as if under a spell.
headpats: It’s a shitty five-dollar game I bought off the street. The UI is archaic and the quality of life is garbage. The map feature is pretty damn impressive, though. It’s also got every construction material you could possibly think of. Lots of bugs, of course. The game tells you to build a shelter, then gives you a measly fifty thousand dollars.
It was the same game!
Everything from the UI to the graphics was identical, with just one difference.
The initial funds displayed in the upper-left corner of the screenshot.
headpats had started with a mere fifty thousand dollars. That was around seventy to eighty million won. It wasn’t nearly enough to build even a single shipping-container shelter, let alone a proper one.
…Could the game have given every user a different amount of initial funds?
The air in the dark room suddenly felt even colder. I sat up in bed, turned on the light, and began reading the user’s post carefully from beginning to end.
headpats: They were doing a survey on Bryant Street in New York on Christmas Eve. Think I answered about three questions. They told me that was enough and stopped there.
headpats: Then they suddenly asked if I’d buy a copy for five dollars. I had nothing better to do over the holidays, so I did.
headpats: Anyway, my main takeaway from playing is that the satellite map is pretty useful. Even the tiny-ass hot dog stand in my neighborhood showed up. Map autists would lose their minds over it.
His post ended there. As befitted a massive community with millions of active users, it was instantly buried beneath a wave of new posts.
But it had given me enough clues. I immediately opened the notes app on my phone and began writing down what I had just learned.
First, 「Shelter Builder」 had most likely run a worldwide sales promotion on Christmas Eve.
Second, both the initial funds and even the purchase price of the game differed from user to user.
Third, unlike me, who had gone through fifty survey questions, he had answered only three before buying the game.
I underlined the words ‘number of survey questions’ on the screen several times.
Did the number of survey questions affect the initial funds? Could what I wrote on the touchpad really have been incorporated into the game that quickly? What were the criteria?
“…”
Amid the silence filling the room, the survey’s first question flashed through my mind. What did I consider the most important thing in an apocalypse?
Of the four choices: trustworthy companions, survival skills, a secure shelter, or personal combat strength.
Just as I was searching my memory and organizing the other questions, headpats posted again.
headpats: This game is kind of weird, though.
headpats: I opened Google Maps to compare them just in case, and that fucking tiny hot dog stand on the game map isn’t on Google?
headpats: Thought that was weird, so I searched for the military base near my house. Why the hell does that show up too??
headpats: Wait, wait. Let me check a little more.
Exactly ten minutes later, he posted one more message.
headpats: I didn’t check Area 51, where they supposedly kidnap aliens for experiments, because I’m scared some government agency will haul me away, but pretty much everything else shows up. No idea who made this, but that bastard isn’t going to die peacefully.
Several screenshots were attached below the post, hastily taken by headpats with his phone pointed at his monitor.
The place was obviously a military facility at a glance. All kinds of bombers and fighter jets stood brazenly arrayed along the runway. It was a classified area normally censored in satellite imagery.
At first, his post seemed destined to be buried beneath the torrent of new posts, but within mere minutes, it caused an enormous uproar.
wicked: Isn’t this fake?
NYTopia: They were selling this in Manhattan on Christmas Eve too. Do you live there?
rokario: Holy shit. That’s a B-21 bomber. Take the post down now. You could be seriously fucked.
It took only three minutes for the view count to soar into the tens of thousands and the comments to exceed a thousand.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Notifications began going berserk as the comments multiplied at a frenzied pace.
And then.
[This post has been deleted by a community administrator.]
The suffocating barrage of noise stopped so abruptly it felt unreal.
“…”
A chill ran through me, as though an enormous invisible hand had descended over the screen. I remained frozen there like a statue for several minutes.
I blinked my dry eyes several times, then tried clicking headpats’s profile, just in case. I had already added him as a friend.
[This user does not exist.]
Ah.
Pokelove: Is this for real?
strivin_slowly: ?
Korg-nar: I’m not the only one who just saw that, right?
kadd155: LOLLOLOLLOLLOL
familirgtp: The government is watching us! Fucking Big Brother is watching us!
CHAT11: Those fucking Chinese bastards!!! It’s another Chinese spy!!!
The moment the original post vanished without a trace, the community erupted like an active volcano.
Internet hyenas who had managed to take screenshots during that brief window began spreading them across every message board and forum they could find.
Even as the pixels degraded through repeated screenshots of screenshots, several armchair military experts dissected the images pixel by pixel.
marchel: Not composited. These aren’t old leaked images or anything previously released to the public, either. I work in the industry, and as far as I can tell, they’re real.
ZOMBIE_MAN: Look at the lens distortion. I estimated the altitude, and this wasn’t taken by a drone. It was shot from an actual satellite. This is insane LOL
navy_lover: It’s definitely the 509th Bomb Wing in Missouri. You can even see the hangar they built a few days ago. This image is extremely recent. Now I kind of want to try the game. Where do you live? Let me have a go too.
Posts and comments raising questions were being recreated several times faster than they could be deleted.
A handful of administrators clearly couldn’t handle it. Stopping the spread seemed impossible unless they forcibly shut down the entire server.
[ZOMBIE_MAN: Buying ‘that’ game for a hundred dollars~ (21023)]
[onisan: Proof that Soviet spies or neo-Nazis were involved (4123)]
[White_hacker123: Looks like the government deleted it (8123)]
.
.
.
It truly lived up to its reputation as North America’s largest community. Every refresh showed the view count climbing by tens of thousands per second and the comments multiplying exponentially. It was enough to send a chill down my spine.
“…”
I trusted the competence of the United States government.
More precisely, I trusted the competence of the top one percent of government staff who did the actual work of keeping an advanced nation like the United States running.
If this game had been created by any particular country, whether the United States, China, or Russia, they would not have responded this incompetently or carelessly.
They would have prevented a situation like this from arising in the first place by ensuring the game never reached civilians. The CIA or FBI would have contacted the seller before anyone had a chance to post about it online.
They would never have allowed the situation to spiral out of control like this.
So what this situation meant was…
Pop!
[Unable to connect to the server. Please try again.]
The instant my thoughts reached that conclusion, I was disconnected.
“…!”
I tried reconnecting, but it was useless. The unresponsive loading icon merely kept spinning in circles.
A server that had never so much as flinched even when tens of millions of people descended on it at once had gone down in an instant.
Only after staring at the faintly trembling screen did I realize that it was my hand shaking.
The dark laptop screen reflected a man with an unfamiliar expression on his face.
Pale and terrified, he reached out and quietly launched the game, desperately praying that his ominous suspicion would prove wrong.
「Demo service ends in: 28 days」
But the moment I faced the cold, mechanical countdown floating in the center of the screen.
I could no longer laugh.
*****
By early morning, the storm stirred up by a North American user had long since crossed the ocean and made landfall in South Korea.
HotGaller: Today’s update on the American game causing a huge uproar.. real (1,220)
Anonymous: What the hell is going on in America? LOL (Pic) (727)
At the very top of the community, where posts could appear only after receiving enough upvotes, the images from the North American community had been translated and compiled into a neatly organized summary.
Anonymous: There are a shitload of other verified posts too. Way more people bought that game than you’d think. It can even capture the middle of the empty ocean down to the pixel, so with the right coordinates, it could probably pinpoint every individual warship in the Pacific Fleet.
ShibaInu: What if I download that and end up getting hauled off by the spooks for a nice bowl of soup—up the nose?
pony: Fuuuck! I posted it first! Why is that bastard’s post the only one that made the front page!!!!
Anonymous: Wasn’t this sold in South Korea too? I’m honestly not sure, but I think I saw a similar promotion while passing through Myeongdong on Christmas Eve.
Anonymous: Myeongdong on Christmas Eve? You bragging bastard…?
Meuhahang1457: Christmas Eve?
Anonymous: Believe in God. Judgment Day will soon be upon us. The sky grows redder with each passing day, and the stars collide ever more frequently…
Every time I refreshed, new posts poured in without pause and filled the screen.
Most were clickbait or attention-seeking troll posts, but amid the chaos, a few stopped me short.
Nyoryong: My review of playing 「Shelter Builder」, bought directly in Busan.
Eomchang-i: Proof of purchase~ Bought it for 3,000 won in Suwon~
When I opened the posts, I found screenshots of a game screen completely identical to the one on my laptop circulating online.
I enlarged the screenshots as far as possible and checked their initial funds first.
Nyoryong had 100 million won, while Eomchang-i had 20 million won.
They were different. That settled it.
From the looks of it, neither of them had been able to properly begin construction because their initial funds were woefully insufficient.
Within moments, hundreds of comments lined up beneath the verification posts.
Anonymous: Does it really show all our military bases too? Does the division near my house show up? Post proof for us.
Anonymous: Die… you… fucking… spies… all… of you…
Anonymous: So what do you actually do in this game? I heard it’s an Asperger simulator made by some map-obsessed freak.
DateWithTheHeadMod: Seems like an apocalypse survival game where you build a bunker. Steam is full of similar indie games.
Nyoryong (OP): But how are you supposed to build a bunker with 100 million won? Seems like burying a few water tanks and containers would wipe out the whole budget.
Anonymous: That’s why they’re calling it a shitty game. Looks like initial funds are assigned completely at random for each user. The amounts are all pretty similar in South Korea, but according to the American communities, the occasional player started with over 10 billion won. Haven’t seen anyone in the hundreds of billions yet.
Nyoryong (OP): Shitty game doesn’t even have microtransactions.
Anonymous: Viral marketing is so fucking obvious these days.
.
.
.
Posts were appearing far faster than I could scroll.
I still hadn’t figured out how initial funds were allocated, but I doubted I was the only one who had received an astronomical sum in the trillions.
“Young man! How many times do I have to tell you? Absolutely no refunds! I gave you a huge discount because you said you were staying long-term. Backing out now just isn’t right!”
“I’m sorry. Something urgent suddenly came up at work. Couldn’t you refund even half of it?”
“Tsk!”
After arguing for a while, I got the motel fee refunded and left the front desk. I doubted I would have much reason to come and go from the motel during the remaining twenty-eight days.
I would be spending most of my time on the mountain from now on. This was a precaution to avoid the troublesome possibility of the owner reporting me to the police because their long-term guest had vanished without a word for several days.
From now on, I would camp in a tent in the mountains, then book a different nearby motel every two or three days whenever I needed a shower.
‘Starlink will take about three days to arrive… And if I’m going to eat and sleep on the mountain from now on, I’ll need to buy a sleeping bag and other supplies too. My schedule is going to be pretty tight.’
With a bag stuffed full of gear slung over my shoulders, I reached the terminal and turned on my laptop. Just in case, I began combing through the game interface again.
I had already set aside time to inspect it several times, but the UI was so archaic and user-hostile that there could still be features hidden away that I had failed to notice.
Despite considering myself fairly good at construction simulation games, I found this game’s interface viciously complicated.
It was like Namuwiki, with pages linking to other pages and still more pages buried within those.
‘Nothing particularly unusual…’
Shaking off the lingering unease, I turned my attention to the food and daily necessities categories I had noticed earlier.
[ ■ Logistics supply depot ]
⦁1 box of combat rations (36 meals)
⦁ Unit price: 180,000 won
⦁ Status: [Available for purchase]
⦁Purified water and emergency water (5 L x 20 packs)
⦁ Unit price: 65,000 won
⦁ Status: [Available for purchase]
⦁NBC gas mask and filter set (CBRN standard)
⦁ Unit price: 450,000 won
⦁ Status: [Available for purchase]
⦁Emergency trauma kit (military grade 1)
⦁ Unit price: 380,000 won
⦁ Status: [Available for purchase]
A question suddenly occurred to me.
If I purchased the items here now, would they fill the warehouse after the demo period ended? Or would they materialize in reality the moment I paid, just like the construction materials?
Let’s test it right away.
「Purchased item: ‘1 box of combat rations (36 meals).’」
With a heavy scraping sound, an ocher cardboard box dropped to the ground with a thump!
I opened it just to be sure, and inside were the exact same combat rations I had seen countless times in the military.
Holy shit.
I immediately tried purchasing Starlink as well.
「Purchased item: ‘Starlink Standard Kit’.」
When I opened the box, I found a satellite antenna and router inside.
I connected it to the smartphone app, entered the serial number, and set up the antenna. Sure enough, I had internet access.
‘…Guess I’ll have to cancel the one I ordered.’
Anyway, I could now use the internet on the mountain.
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