Chapter 24: Building the Recreation Facilities
Translator: ShutDoor
Rather than releasing all one hundred of them into the deserted mountains at once, I chose to purchase them in ten batches of ten.
‘Phew.’
I had blown 180 trillion won in one go, leaving me with roughly 488 trillion won.
I had already spent more than half of my money.
Since specifying the appearance of all one hundred androids in detail would have been a waste of time, I set every one of the new purchases to look literally ‘ordinary’.
Nothing about them stood out. They had the kind of common faces one might see anywhere on the street.
However, I made a third of them foreigners. I doubted anyone would believe ‘South Korea’ was behind the construction and operation of such enormous research facilities.
Even I wouldn’t believe it.
If we passed them off as experts from overseas, wouldn’t the Korean researchers find it fairly easy to accept their extraordinary abilities?
Of course, the foreigners might have difficulty fitting in with the residents, and during the apocalypse phase, even a trivial difference like race could become a pretext for hatred. Still, I decided the Juggernauts would be more than capable of keeping that in check.
Foreigners roaming every corner of the provinces might attract even more attention, though, so I decided to restrict their areas of operation primarily to large urban areas such as the Seoul Capital Area and metropolitan cities.
I left the detailed planning from that point onward to Ann, my secretary and staff adviser.
“For now, I have divided South Korea into one hundred survey sectors.”
“So each person gets one sector?”
“Yes. Since you have assigned such a large force of one hundred units, Administrator, I determined that reorganizing the sectors around the survey’s objectives would be more efficient than simply following the existing administrative boundaries.”
The map Ann had brought up divided the entirety of South Korea into a dense patchwork of sectors.
“Taking population density, road networks, major industrial and power facilities, military installations, and other factors into account, I arranged them to minimize the time required to reach the center of each sector.”
The sectors varied greatly in size.
Dividing sparsely inhabited mountain regions and the densely populated Seoul Capital Area into identically sized sections would have been inefficient.
Accordingly, important and heavily populated urban areas were divided into small, tightly packed sectors for denser coverage, while sparsely populated mountain and rural areas were bundled into single large sectors.
The Enigmas would be dispatched to their respective sectors, where they would set up backdoors and surveillance equipment granting them constant access to municipal integrated control centers, highway traffic information systems, national-highway CCTV networks, and more.
Ordinarily, building a surveillance network of that scale in such a short time would have been nearly impossible, but apparently the operation was feasible because every Enigma was an espionage expert.
Of course, once the apocalypse arrived and the power went out, the road surveillance networks would stop working. When that happened, we could use our separately installed surveillance equipment and the artificial satellites in orbit.
“Then I will plan to install one hundred pieces of surveillance equipment per sector, for a total of ten thousand surveillance nodes.”
We equipped each one with top-of-the-line ultra-low-power day-and-night cameras, vibration sensors, acoustic sensors, compact solar panels, camouflage equipment, thermal imaging sensors, waterproofing, and even eavesdropping and hacking equipment. The result!
“Each surveillance node will cost 47 million won.”
We planned to install ten thousand surveillance nodes, bringing the total cost to 470 billion won.
That should be enough to maintain surveillance over major roads, city access routes, and the areas around industrial facilities even if South Korea’s infrastructure collapsed.
The surveillance equipment would last five years at best and around two at worst, but since its purpose was to observe the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse as vividly as possible, I decided that would be enough.
I distributed the completed equipment evenly among the one-ton box trucks I had purchased in advance.
The surveillance equipment itself was small, but once each vehicle had been loaded with a hundred units, along with all the spare parts, tools, and installation materials, the cargo compartments filled up in no time.
I was glad I had chosen one-ton box trucks with ample cargo capacity for the entire fleet.
Meanwhile, Ann was already assigning everyone where they would be most effective.
“What is your name?”
“Lee Nam-il.”
“Nam-il, you will be going to Sector D-03 in the Jeolla region. Please return within ten days, and use this to make contact in an emergency.”
As soon as Ann finished an assignment, the operative boarded the designated box truck and departed.
Naturally, we had accounted for the possibility that outsiders might spot a hundred box trucks pouring out of the mountains.
That was why we were sending out one vehicle at a time at irregular intervals, using secondhand vehicles of varying colors and designs to attract as little attention as possible.
With General Kang also monitoring the surrounding CCTV feeds in real time, we should at least be able to minimize the chance that outsiders would perceive any suspicious movement.
If this plan succeeded, I would have a broader view than anyone else, watching South Korea from both the ground and the sky.
“Though it could last as little as two years.”
“True.”
I watched until every last member of the hundred-strong force had driven away in a box truck. Only after receiving General Kang’s radio transmission did I return to the tent I had been using.
[Administrator, no anomalies detected.]
For the record, General Kang had apparently established a bypass into the nearby traffic-control network well in advance.
I had no idea how he had done it, but General Kang’s laptop displayed views like those commonly shown on traffic reports.
On those screens, the box trucks driven by the Enigmas were spreading across the entire country.
“Nice.”
After spending the entire day handling one task after another, I found the sun was already setting.
Even so, it was not time to rest yet. I could put off real rest for another sixteen days.
Without hesitation, I began constructing the recreation facilities.
In a situation where people had to endure years inside an enclosed underground space like our shelter, I personally considered recreation facilities every bit as important as survival facilities.
More precisely, I believed the role of ‘recreation’ was important.
During the early stages of a disaster, everyone sought only what was directly tied to survival, such as water, food, safety, and medical care. But once the crisis dragged on for months or years, some means of relieving the tension became essential.
It was not difficult to find accounts from the Bosnian War of survivors bartering playing cards they had drawn by hand for luxuries such as batteries and alcohol, or enduring their circumstances by playing board games like chess and Monopoly.
There were even statistics showing that groups which maintained a sense of ‘ordinary daily life’ through recreation were more likely to overcome psychological problems and survive to the end.
Most importantly, recreation suppressed the conflicts that inevitably arose between people.
The most relatable example was soldiers being allowed to use cell phones in the military these days.
In the old days, soldiers might have spent their free time and excess energy bullying their juniors down the chain of command. By the time I served, everyone was too busy lying on their bunks and staring at their phones. Watching one more YouTube video was far more worthwhile than spending that time harassing someone.
I knew this for certain because I had experienced it myself. Give people something harmless to pour their excess energy into, and friction between them drops sharply.
In short, recreation went beyond merely entertaining the members of a community. It was an essential mechanism for controlling the entire community’s stress and preventing the system from spiraling out of control.
The question was, ‘Exactly which recreational facilities should we prioritize?’
Just as my thoughts reached that point, Ann spoke.
“For an underground living environment, the most efficient approach is to divide the recreation system into three broad categories and develop them in stages. They can be classified as passive recreation, active recreation, and productive recreation.”
“Go on.”
First, passive recreation consisted of solitary activities that required minimal physical and mental energy, such as reading books, listening to music, and watching videos.
“This is highly effective at easing the sense of isolation felt by individual residents drained after hard labor and restoring their basic emotional stability.”
Second, active recreation included not only board games, chess, and cards, but also activities such as table tennis, soccer, and basketball that presupposed interaction with other members.
“These activities provide a safe outlet for the group’s competitive instincts and excess aggression, while forming bonds that suppress unnecessary personal conflicts.”
Finally, the third category was productive recreation, pursuits in which individuals produced tangible results by becoming absorbed in activities such as woodworking, handicrafts, playing musical instruments, and growing plants.
“These can offset the helplessness and sense of worthlessness people are prone to feeling in the oppressive environment unique to an underground shelter, while giving each resident a sense of agency and accomplishment.”
Put like that, it certainly sounded impressive and suitably expert.
“Hmm.”
Good.
However!
I did not think that alone would be enough.
I might not use the other facilities myself, but I intended to make regular use of these recreation facilities too.
That meant this area had to be designed to meet my standards in every respect. It needed to be spacious enough that I would not feel stifled even after decades trapped down here.
Hadn’t New York’s urban planners left behind the famous warning, ‘If there had been no Central Park, they would have built an asylum of the same size’?
“Ann, can we change the route between the residential zone and the recreation zone? Make it like one of those luxury apartment complexes in Seoul, where you open the door and immediately see a park. Then if you follow the path through the park, it leads straight to the recreation facilities.”
“How much of the budget should I use?”
“Don’t hold back.”
At my request, Ann’s eyes darted rapidly as she began recalculating the plans.
Roughly thirty minutes later, Ann finally appeared carrying a tablet.
“As you requested, Administrator, I spared no expense and designed it to provide the greatest possible sense of openness, allowing residents to forget entirely that they are underground.”
I pointed at the 3D rendering Ann showed me and muttered.
“…How tall is this, exactly?”
“Its maximum height is fifty meters.”
“…And the area?”
“It was designed to cover 38,000 pyeong (125,620 m²), one-eighth the size of Yeouido Hangang Park.”
No wonder it looked so damn tall and wide.
The sight filling the entire rendering was nothing short of overwhelming.
The first thing that seized my attention was the sky.
Or, more precisely, the artificial sky created by hundreds of thousands of micro-LED panels.
It mirrored the actual weather outside, so from anywhere in the recreation complex, all one had to do was look up to see blue skies and clouds drifting slowly by.
At the center of the space, an expansive grass-covered square, verdant greenery, and walking paths spread out around a grand, old-fashioned clock tower and an artificial pond.
Perhaps planting fresh young saplings around the pond instead of fully grown trees was Ann’s way of letting the future residents experience the passage of time as they watched the trees grow and spread their branches.
To the left of the central park lay a spacious outdoor athletics area, with a green soccer field, basketball courts, and a red, four-hundred-meter urethane track.
‘W-Why is there so much?’
Along the massive dome’s wall, corridors on three or four levels swept around in a grand curve.
Indoor gymnasiums, woodworking shops, music rooms, libraries, a VR sports zone, and other recreational and cultural facilities lined the corridor, packed together across multiple floors.
Couldn’t we also put amenities there, such as daycare centers, schools, cafés, dining halls, or even a bustling marketplace?
Good. This was good.
The problem, as always, was the cost…
“Constructing it according to the rendering will require 160.2973 trillion won in construction costs alone.”
“Sss…”
It required far more money than I had originally expected.
Even that figure was only possible because we had chosen a hemispherical dome like the LA Sphere. Building it as a rectangular structure like the other facilities would have cost twice as much.
The research laboratory covered 80,000 pyeong, so this sounded far smaller by comparison. However, unlike the research facilities, which had an average height of only five meters, this was an enormous structure with a maximum height of fifty meters.
Even considering volume alone, it provided roughly 2.5 times as much space as the research facilities.
Viewed that way, it seemed like an excessive investment. But divided among the shelter’s planned capacity of 6,720 people, it amounted to only about 5.6 pyeong per person.
“Even the nationwide average for actual urban parks is approximately 3.9 pyeong per person, so this certainly offers far more space per person than most cities do.”
Honestly, it was an excessive investment.
But assuming we would be living in a closed underground world with no way outside for decades, wasn’t this much the bare minimum?
“That is also a valid point.”
Naturally, I had no intention of using the entire space solely for recreation. As I had mentioned before, I planned to place all sorts of auxiliary facilities along the walls, including daycare centers, schools, and a fire station.
I poured more than 3 trillion won into additional sports facilities other than swimming facilities, landscaping, recreational equipment, spare parts for future maintenance, and a specialized long-life lighting system.
For the record, I chose specialized artificial plantings rather than natural vegetation for most of the park, including the grass on the soccer field. We could not afford to pour too much of our limited groundwater into maintaining the recreation facilities.
Still, every sapling planted in the central park was a real tree.
By watching the enormous clock tower in the middle of the central square and the trees spreading their branches a little farther each year, the residents would be able to mark the passage of time even underground.
I quietly pictured the beautiful complex beyond the blueprint, imagining it becoming a landmark of the shelter.
I liked it.
But I was not allowed to savor that satisfaction for long.
“Administrator.”
On the main monitor General Kang indicated, military vehicles could be seen moving swiftly along the road in the dead of night.
So it had finally come.
*****
Author’s Note
The total amount spent so far is 675.4673 trillion won.
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