Chapter 44: Dazzling Seoul
Translator: ShutDoor
Reducing water consumption was not the only newly unlocked research.
Slight Reduction in Nutrient Solution Consumption, Growing Medium Lifespan Extension, and more. It felt as though the tech tree offered just about everything one would expect to see in this kind of survival simulation game.
On top of that, a whole string of advanced cultivation research had unlocked beyond hydroponics, including technologies that sounded fit for only the most cutting-edge growing facilities, such as 「Artificial Sunlight Chamber」 and 「Closed-Loop Nutrient Solution System」.
Ann, who was beside me, spoke up.
“The Closed-Loop Nutrient Solution System is already in use within our shelter, so there should be no need to research it separately.”
“Really?”
Apparently, pouring an obscene amount of money into the shelter from the very beginning meant we already had systems like that installed.
Money really was the best.
Come to think of it, perhaps already commercialized technologies were included so that users short on initial funds could unlock those projects one by one later, filling the gaps in their equipment as they developed their shelters.
My shelter had cutting-edge equipment across the board, allowing me to go all in on developing a treatment for now, but that would not be true for every user.
For some people, building a hydroponic growing facility might be more important than developing a treatment.
I was about to unlock the water-related research immediately, but first I went through each of the newly opened tech trees.
The reason I wanted to prioritize reducing water consumption over the other research was that water was the scarcest resource in the shelter.
There was no immediate problem. The shelter had a capacity of 6,720, and it was not even a third full yet. Thanks to that, even showers remained unrestricted for the time being.
But it was obvious that more people would arrive in the future. It would be much better to secure a reserve in advance than to scramble to increase the water supply once that happened.
Just like raising the population cap before producing units in an RTS game.
That was not all. If the hydroponic growing facility, currently the shelter’s largest consumer of water, used less of it, the surplus could be diverted elsewhere.
When more people eventually moved in, we would also have much more leeway to operate all kinds of amenities.
Instead of making the decision unilaterally, however, I first asked my capable secretary for her opinion.
“What do you think?”
Ann carefully examined the newly unlocked research list, then calmly nodded.
“Since you have designated securing water resources as our highest priority, Administrator, proceeding with this research appears to be the most rational choice at present.”
With Ann, the expert, in agreement, I pressed the button to begin the research without hesitation.
「Hydroponics Water Consumption Reduction I」
Research difficulty: ☆
「Laboratory requirements: [190% fulfilled]」
「Agricultural engineering equipment and advanced infrastructure: [380% fulfilled]」
「Required research personnel: [790% fulfilled]」
「Researcher morale: [Excellent]」
「 Estimated research time: 30 days → 17 days 」
Unlike the staff in the virology research building, perhaps the agricultural engineering researchers had not yet rescued all their parents. Their morale remained at “Excellent”, one level below the virology research building’s “Outstanding”.
Still, cutting a thirty-day project by thirteen days to just seventeen was a fairly significant improvement.
Considering the other baseline conditions differed from those of the virology research building by no more than forty percentage points, researcher morale seemed to have a much greater effect on reducing research time than I had expected.
With the demo version over, it felt as though the management simulation elements had been greatly expanded to compensate for the reduced emphasis on personally constructing the shelter.
The game was clearly steering users toward group survival rather than individual survival.
Back to the point.
Completing 「Hydroponics Power Efficiency I」 had reduced power consumption by approximately 7.8 percent, so let us assume the water consumption would decrease by roughly the same amount.
The hydroponics room currently consumed approximately 1,080 tons of groundwater per day. Cutting that by 7.8 percent meant… we could save a staggering eighty-four tons or so of water every day.
Moreover, given that 「Hydroponics Power Efficiency II」 had unlocked as soon as the previous project was completed, there was a good chance Water Consumption Reduction would also continue through 「II」 and 「III」.
If so, the final reduction in water consumption would be far greater than this.
“Hmm.”
I did not remember being able to calculate things this quickly before. Perhaps studying with my staff advisers whenever I had the chance really had made me faster at it.
Just as being surrounded by Seoul National University students would make someone study out of sheer self-consciousness, spending all day among androids who did nothing but work made it hard for me to lie in bed watching Netflix.
Of course, that did not mean I had to become an expert in every field like my advisers. As their leader, what mattered was not doing everything myself, but recognizing which tasks were most important and entrusting them to the people best suited to handle them.
In that sense, it was clear what I needed to pursue first as their leader.
Completing SurvivalNet, a massive community that would bring South Korea’s survivors together.
“…Isn’t this simply motivated by your personal interests?”
Absolutely not.
There were solid reasons why I needed to create an independent internet community that only I could control in a world on the verge of destruction, or rather, one that was already halfway destroyed.
Three of them, no less.
“…Let’s hear them, then.”
First reason.
It went without saying that the new SurvivalNet would not attract only the “ideal” survivors I wanted. Infected people might join, and psychopaths or outlaws who killed others simply out of boredom might infiltrate it. Government officials preparing to evacuate to Jeju Island might even sneak in to gather intelligence.
But paradoxically, if those people became active in my community, it also meant that even those troublemakers would be moving within my field of vision.
I would be turning unknown, uncontrollable dangers into known, controllable ones.
At first, it would be nothing more than a place for casual exchanges of information, bartering, idle chatter, and random posts. But as the user base grew, the community would gradually come to replace the functions of the collapsing surface society.
And if I discovered a talented, useful survivor in the process? All I had to do was verify their identity, determine their location, and dispatch a helicopter to bring them to the shelter.
That was the second reason for establishing the community.
The external field team, including Deputy Manager Lee Jun-su, was transporting as many people as possible while evading military and police surveillance. But because secrecy took top priority, they could bring in only three or four people a day at most.
At that rate, there was no chance of filling the shelter’s total capacity of 6,720 before the treatment was completed.
But with SurvivalNet’s help, things would be different. Even after the Korean Peninsula was engulfed in flames and madness, we could remain in constant contact with survivors on the surface, conduct an initial assessment of their identities and character, and recruit suitable candidates.
And finally, the third reason.
I wanted to use the internet too.
“…Then just say that and do it.”
*****
February 22, 2027.
Tomorrow would mark exactly one month since D-Day.
According to the operators led by General Kang, China appeared to have entered the final countdown to using tactical nuclear weapons.
It simply had not been announced by the media yet. Living up to its long-standing disregard for human life, China had begun indiscriminately quarantining not only infected people, but even ordinary citizens it deemed worthless.
We had detected the first signs of it through our reconnaissance satellites approximately five days earlier.
Of course, if China had seriously tried to hide it, even we would not have discovered it so easily…
[Large convoys detected on major roads entering the Sichuan Basin. Includes numerous military transport vehicles and civilian cargo trucks.]
[Estimated number of people being transported: Unable to calculate.]
…But China did not seem to be making even the slightest effort to hide it.
An endless procession of military transport trucks, massive mixer trucks, and transport vehicles whose cargo beds were concealed beneath tarps.
The claim that the Great Wall could be seen with the naked eye from space might have been a myth, but the convoys captured by our satellite cameras were distinct enough to be visible from beyond orbit.
The procession of tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of transport vehicles, their headlights streaming red light day and night, resembled an enormous centipede crawling across the dusty soil of the continent.
The Chinese authorities were herding everyone into a single area, whether they were infected, suspected cases, or civilians who refused to submit to their control.
They were being driven into the very Sichuan Basin where Liu Bei had founded the state of Shu during the Three Kingdoms era.
Heavily armed troops were deployed along every conceivable escape route from the massive basin, including highways, railways, tunnels, and mountain roads.
But because it was physically impossible to seal off the entire vast basin with troops alone, the Chinese military chose a more inhumane approach.
At the slightest sign that the quarantined citizens were trying to take even one step beyond the blockade, they issued a single warning and then opened fire.
Ratatatatat!
Similar atrocities unfolded one after another throughout the Sichuan Basin.
After watching their families and friends shredded into bloody pulp by torrents of machine-gun fire, the civilians were forcibly taught that attempting to escape toward the Chinese heartland meant certain death.
Driven to the very edge, millions of refugees chose their final escape route toward Tibet, where twenty-below-zero cold and treacherous highlands awaited them.
No matter how formidable China’s control over information was, it apparently could not conceal forever the horrific truth that hundreds of millions of its people were being shot dead.
Satellite images showed hundreds of thousands of people gathered throughout Beijing.
The people marching peacefully demanded only one thing.
Give us back our families.
The Chinese government answered their desperate cries with bullets.
Beijing was dyed in the Chinese people’s favorite color.
*****
Only a day had passed since news broke that all domestic and international trade had ceased. As the patience of citizens who had somehow held on to their faith in the government finally reached its limit, a nationwide frenzy of panic buying erupted.
The man owned a gas mask, but deliberately chose not to wear it. With most people barely managing to cover their faces with ordinary masks, wearing a gas mask and advertising how prepared he was would only make him a target.
Naturally, sacks of rice and fresh produce had long since vanished from the supermarket. The same was true of meat and fish, as well as canned goods with long shelf lives.
All that remained were lentils no one would eat even if they were free, coffee grounds, cheese, various seasonings, and a few unpopular snacks.
“…”
But the man, wearing three masks layered over one another, hurriedly swept even those into his shopping basket before someone else could take them. The day would inevitably come when he would have to rely on masks to stay alive.
Old fools who still had not grasped the situation kept insisting day after day that the country could never collapse and everything would be fine. If they still couldn’t wake up after things had come this far, that went beyond stupidity. If that got them killed, you could call it death from natural causes.
The military and police no longer responded to mere outbreaks of violence. There were far too many major incidents requiring their attention for personnel to be diverted to something like that.
“Agh! Aagh! Aaaaaaagh!!!”
Right now, for instance, they had their hands full simply dealing with infected people who had slipped in among the uninfected crowds flocking to supermarkets for survival supplies.
The man glanced toward the source of the scream.
Apparently, someone had hidden a syringe containing the virus up their sleeve, then plunged it deep inside another person’s padded coat.
Nearby military and police personnel immediately rushed in and began beating the infected person mercilessly, but even as telescopic batons rained down, the attacker continued to laugh in a spine-chilling voice.
The surrounding civilians merely flinched a few times as they watched the infected person collapse, bleeding all over. Not one of them told the officers to stop.
That was the kind of world they lived in.
‘Fuck.’
South Korea could never return to the way it had been before the virus spread.
Reminded of that fact once again, the man swallowed his curse but did not forget to keep his distance from everyone around him, ready to draw the jackknife hidden inside his clothes and start swinging at any moment.
Fortunately, nothing happened before he made it home. He had deliberately wandered through a maze of alleys in case someone was following him, but no one ever appeared behind him.
It was probably thanks to following the advice on 〈SurvivalNet〉 and not carrying anything that was obviously food, such as a sack of rice.
“Whew…”
Six in the evening.
The man stared at the elevator, rendered useless by the power outage, then sighed and trudged up the stairs to the thirteenth floor of the apartment building.
As soon as he entered his home, he secured both locks on the front door. Only after meticulously drawing the blackout curtains over the windows to prevent any light or sound from leaking outside did he finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Thanks to the high-capacity camping power bank he had purchased before the crisis, he enjoyed the privilege of being the only person in the apartment complex who could use electricity freely at night.
In the darkened spare room, the man turned on a laptop instead of his desktop computer to conserve power.
He wanted to access <SurvivalNet>, which had generated enormous buzz across countless online communities over the past few days.
Once the infection rate surpassed 55 percent, the government had even abandoned the daily NIV virus briefings it had conducted since the beginning of the crisis.
With the country’s systems effectively giving up, it was perhaps inevitable that SurvivalNet’s sudden appearance would capture the attention of survivalists like the man.
There were rumors that the government had created it to ease public anxiety, but the government had made no response whatsoever, so no one knew for certain.
In any case, there was another reason SurvivalNet had become the center of attention.
The quality of the information posted by one of its administrators, “ADMIN1000”, was extraordinary.
The posts they uploaded were far more accurate than the government’s official data. They routinely released mountains of information no ordinary person could possibly know, so the more keenly someone understood the severity of the situation, the more carefully they read ADMIN1000’s posts.
The man himself had avoided the risk of infection once already thanks to a post ADMIN1000 had uploaded not long ago.
What had ADMIN1000 posted today?
The man scanned the list of recent notices, then suddenly stopped scrolling.
ADMIN1000: (Urgent) Infections surging throughout the Seoul Capital Area and all major cities. Situation uncontrollable.
ADMIN1000: Do not go outside under any circumstances.
Whatever else might be uncertain, it seemed clear that <SurvivalNet> was not a website operated by the South Korean government.
It was noisy outside.
“…”
The man looked out the window and stood there for a long while.
Seoul burned so brightly that it was hard to believe it was nighttime.
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