Chapter 22: Know Your Audience Before You Humblebrag…
Translator: ShutDoor
The video shown in the breaking news report depicted a remote forest somewhere in Türkiye.
It was impossible to tell from the footage exactly what they were building, but one thing was clear: heavy construction equipment was mercilessly flattening the area along the sole access road to clear the site.
The public speculated that a government-run forest-monitoring research station would be built there, and that prediction was not far off the mark.
Estimated completion time: five years from now.
Considering that a national research facility of that scale would ordinarily take at least seven years to build, the project seemed to be a major priority for the Turkish government.
Perhaps because it was a research facility, security was exceptionally tight.
The blueprints had reportedly been divided by section so that not only the workers but even the mid-level site managers could see only the parts under their own responsibility, preventing them from viewing the complete design.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the media took an interest in a project like that.
One reporter, Hakan Çelik, pitched a tent in the mountains 1.8 kilometers away, overlooking the construction site, and endured an entire month there in pursuit of a scoop.
Unfortunately, his equipment was not powerful enough to capture the site clearly from that distance, leaving him with only a handful of low-resolution photographs reminiscent of the UFO controversies of the eighties and nineties.
The twenty-three photographs documented the supposedly five-year project taking shape at an unbelievable pace.
He had taken the photographs over ten days, and in that brief period, the facility had become a staggering thirty-five percent complete.
Naturally, no modern construction method could account for that figure.
It might have been possible if prefabricated construction had been pushed to its absolute limit, but there was no chance that a nationally important research facility, in a country that was not some impoverished nation in Africa, would be slapped together that way.
That was assuming it was even a research facility in the first place.
The world’s reaction to the scoop went roughly like this.
zenciiiii: Any broadcaster that posts stuff without even checking if it’s AI can go die~
oktaywwork: These kinds of photos always have shit quality
SELTON114: Does Turkey give birth, or is Türkiye better? [TL Note: The first clause misspells the Korean expression for “is better” as the similar-sounding expression for “gives birth.”]
Parksooo: Get over to Probakara.net before this gets deleted. A sweet little playground only insiders know about
FullMetalPrincess: Tits fit to burst?! (Click to see)
Most people dismissed the photographs as AI-generated, while a few Turks defended the reporter, pointing out that he was a former war correspondent who had spent years covering the front lines in Afghanistan and was not the sort of person to fabricate something like this.
FullMetalPrincess: They burst and disappeared. Have a nice day, mwahaha~
“…Administrator?”
“…”
Anyway.
The Turkish government promptly presented routine observation images from a commercial satellite provider, dismissing the controversy by claiming that satellite photographs taken from another angle during the same period showed a perfectly normal rate of construction.
Anonymous: Aren’t the photos posted by the Turkish government doctored?
kemono: ZOMBIE_MAN could’ve told us if he were here.
I did not know which side was telling the truth. AI had become so advanced that while video might be another matter, it was difficult to determine whether a single photograph was genuine without a watermark.
But I was almost certain that the reporter’s photographs were real and that they were using Shelter Builder’s automated construction service.
「Maesan Daily Warned by Korea Communications Commission for Spreading False Rumors About Türkiye…」
「Media Credibility Plummets for Outlets Reporting the Story, Including Maesan Daily, Japan’s Hatsumuru News Agency, and America’s TRS」
Once I became aware of what the government was doing, these attempts to silence the story began to look painfully obvious.
Anyone who, unlike me, did not know about the existence of Shelter Builder would assume those photographs were AI-generated fakes. They would also consider the responses of the government and the Korea Communications Commission perfectly reasonable and appropriate.
—I love our president for,,, punishing those AI-writing pieces of shit,,,,~~~^^
—That brain-dead media outlet,,, needs to be shut down immediately,,, hahaha
Whatever else might be uncertain, one fact was now clear: governments around the world were desperately trying to prevent the existence of Shelter Builder from coming to light.
How many of the thousands of comments there had actually been written by real people? Weren’t most of them probably AI-generated?
“As you predicted, Administrator, over seventy percent are automatically generated AI responses.”
“That’s insane.”
If even Ann could state it that confidently, the situation had to be bad.
I felt the reality of it even more directly in the Telegram chatroom, where only real people were present.
King250: Motherless bastards (whose mother’s missing is a secret)
Anonymous: This is fucking terrifying. If I’d posted on a forum the day I bought the game, are you saying I would’ve been treated like a lunatic and dragged away too? The guy was even nominated for a Pulitzer, and they ruined him overnight…
Anonymous: Dunno about anything else, but it looks like all the idiots who posted without thinking early on really did get taken away;;
Anonymous: But is this place actually safe? Telegram might be a pain in the ass to trace, but if the US and South Korean governments scratch each other’s backs, wouldn’t they crack it in no time?
FurryLover: Telegram’s a Russian company that does whatever the hell it wants even when the Russian president tells it otherwise, so we’re fine~
Cham170: Or use a VPN like me~
Lupin720: This room gets shut down and remade periodically anyway, so it’s fine haha;; It’s already happened a few times before;;
InariSushi1300: The room admin may act like that, but they’re surprisingly thorough about this stuff
Kimo777: Rich people like me have been rerouting our communications from the start anyway, so they couldn’t catch us even if they tried. The phone isn’t even registered in my name, so how are they supposed to track me? LMAOOOOOO
Anonymous: True lolololol
That aside, I was beginning to feel that I needed another staff adviser besides Ann.
“Could you finish designing the communal kitchen for now? I’d appreciate it.”
“Understood.”
Until then, merely copying the blueprints Ann drew had been a struggle in itself, so I had maintained a single-adviser system.
But even Ann could not inspect every facility in the shelter while also keeping abreast of global affairs.
I therefore decided that I needed another adviser dedicated to monitoring the global situation and gathering other intelligence.
Ann seemed too much like a ‘researcher’, so perhaps this adviser should look more like a soldier instead.
I wanted to give him a stereotypically military appearance because the advantages of such an image were so obvious.
Anyone who had served in the military would have noticed at least once that when two people wore the same uniform, the one who already looked like a soldier was far more imposing.
I also needed a convincing figurehead who could serve as the shelter’s public ‘leader’ in my place. A military man would probably make a better leader during the apocalypse phase.
The Enigma model admittedly had relatively limited knowledge of field operations and combat, but after exchanging opinions with Ann over the past few days, I had realized that even its ‘limited’ expertise surpassed that of most officers rather than falling short.
「Appearance settings required.」
Hmm…
What would be best?
‘An older general with years of experience. Intelligent and good-natured, but with the sense that he would be genuinely terrifying if angered.’
The kind of man whose mere appearance inspired confidence that he would have an answer to any question, even before he opened his mouth.
It would be even better if he possessed the distinctive composure and ease of a general who had led people for many years.
And if age had only added to his dignity, giving him an air that made him difficult to approach casually no matter how close one became to him, he would be perfect.
I wondered whether the system could fulfill such abstract and exacting demands, but once again, it did not disappoint me.
The android that appeared shortly afterward looked as though the very word ‘general’ had been sculpted into human form.
A solid, broad-shouldered physique showed beneath his crisply tailored uniform.
“Hmm.”
His posture was impeccable as he stood with his back ramrod straight, and his precise, economical gait carried the discipline of a man who had spent his entire life in the military.
His graying hair and deep wrinkles only emphasized his experience. His gaze was calm rather than sharp, yet when I met his eyes, I felt a strange pressure that made me straighten my posture without realizing it.
If a man like this publicly assumed the role of the shelter’s administrator, who could possibly doubt him?
“It is an honor to meet you.”
His low voice had the rasp of steel, yet carried a deep resonance.
…He certainly made an impression.
I studied him for a moment, then asked whether he had a name.
“Kang Tae-seong. I look forward to serving you.”
*****
I had specifically given Kang Tae-seong, or General Kang from now on, a Korean appearance because I did not think the commander of a shelter intended for South Koreans could be a foreigner.
In a country where school and regional ties ran so deep that Seoul National University was valued above Harvard, would people readily accept a foreigner as their leader?
Of course, someone intimately familiar with the roster of South Korean generals might realize that General Kang was not an actual flag officer, but if that happened, I could simply insist that he was a retired senior military figure.
What mattered was not whether General Kang had truly been a general.
It was whether he looked like one, acted like one, and could properly fulfill the role expected of one.
Anyway.
The moment my staff grew to two advisers, the way I operated changed far more than I had expected.
“Administrator, please review the communal kitchen blueprints. A few changes need to be made to the water supply and drainage pipes.”
No sooner had Ann finished her report than General Kang approached with a stack of documents.
“I have compiled the key developments in South Korea, China, Japan, and North America. I will brief you on the major points first. Please consult the attached documents for the details.”
Not long afterward, Ann held out a phone and spoke.
“Deputy Manager Lee Jun-su has sent over the list of personnel he recruited. Please review this separately as well.”
“…”
Even when Ann had been my only adviser, I had thought I was doing a reasonably good job of acting like an administrator. This was on an entirely different level.
I was beginning to understand why executives became so stressed even when all they seemed to do was sit behind a desk and stamp document after document.
Perhaps Ann had been deliberately slowing herself down out of consideration for me, because she returned with blueprints for a massive dining hall not long after handing over the communal kitchen plans.
Of course, no matter how quickly Ann produced blueprints, I remained the only person capable of using Shelter Builder’s construction function.
Consequently, the shelter itself was not being built dramatically faster.
But now, it felt as though far more was packed into the same stretch of time than before.
If nothing else, I now understood why modern conglomerates operated by having their presidents and chairmen receive reports and issue instructions to executives instead of personally handling everything on-site.
No matter how outstanding a leader might be, no one could personally oversee and manage every field from beginning to end.
And since an ordinary organization could not trust just anyone with a management position, that was probably why those titles ended up being handed out to relatively trustworthy family members.
But in my case, I did not need to worry about that at all.
‘Hmm.’
Even as I built the dining hall and communal kitchen, I constantly considered the advantages and disadvantages of changing my management system.
If I continued working as an on-site manager, I could develop a more detailed understanding of the shelter’s structure. That would let me reduce the number of variables that might arise during construction and fine-tune the interior facilities to my tastes.
On the other hand, if I operated like a chief administrator who received written reports, I could cover far more areas in the same amount of time.
I would inevitably miss more of the finer details than I did now, but my view of the shelter as a whole would become incomparably broader.
“I do not believe you need to concern yourself with that issue just yet, Administrator.”
Ann made the remark while watching the previously designed HVAC facilities and pipes being connected to the dining hall and communal kitchen.
“You can continue working as an on-site manager while the shelter is under construction, then act as chief administrator once all construction is complete. In any event, if you intend to operate as the power behind the throne as you said, you will have to adapt to a chief-administrator system whether you want to or not.”
“…That’s true.”
Ann was right.
Sooner or later, it was something I would have to go through.
‘What do I still have left to build?’
Focusing only on the major facilities, there were the recreation facilities and the infirmary.
Then there was the access control checkpoint leading into the residential zone, the security corridor that would separate the military and residential zones and allow them to be sealed off if necessary, and separate accommodations for the Juggernauts and androids.
On top of that, there was an observation post responsible for internal security, a guardhouse near the shelter entrance, a quarantine station for initially receiving outsiders, communications facilities, and perhaps a hangar to build if I had money left over.
There really was not much left now.
Of course, I might suddenly remember more facilities I had overlooked along the way, but Ann would take care of that.
Afterward, I would use every won remaining to fill the shelter to the brim with androids, artificial satellites, and other supplies.
Just then, my phone chimed.
Something seemed to have happened in the Telegram chatroom.
I had entrusted General Kang with gathering all information related to it, but that did not mean I had handed over my phone as well.
I took out my phone to clear my head and checked what they were talking about this time.
Surprisingly, the notification had not come from the chatroom. One of the users had sent me a private message.
And the sender was one of the prominent users I knew quite well.
Message from InariSushi1300: Hey, friend.
Message from InariSushi1300: You put 330 after your username, but you’ve got more money than that, don’t you?
Message from InariSushi1300: Not as much as me, of course.
Message from InariSushi1300: I’m actually the deputy admin of this chatroom lol
“?”
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