Chapter 27: The Search Operation Begins
Translator: ShutDoor
The shielding door slid open to either side with a soft mechanical hum, and the sight of the central control room beyond instantly overwhelmed me.
This was another area I had built myself, but seeing it in a blueprint and seeing it with my own eyes were worlds apart.
If I had to compare it to something, it felt as though an American operations command center from a big-budget blockbuster had been transplanted here wholesale.
“Whoa…”
The space stretching out before me brought together the very best of modern technology in the most futuristic design.
The first thing to seize my attention was the enormous main display covering the entire front wall. The massive wall, a full eight meters high, was packed with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of screens and monitors.
Below that overwhelming spectacle, tiered console desks and monitors formed a semicircle around the command station, allowing numerous operators to sit and control the systems simultaneously.
The smooth matte-metal panels and the faint LED lights scattered across their controls lent the room a cold yet supremely sophisticated atmosphere.
“Is it to your liking?”
It was. I absolutely loved it. So much that I could not stop the corners of my mouth from twitching upward.
I loved it so much that I did not even care that the central control room could not yet perform its intended functions.
The control room had yet to be linked to external satellites; even its basic internal communications network had yet to be fully configured. Consequently, most of the monitors, including the main screen at the front, emitted nothing but the characteristic cold glow of a blue screen.
But in my mind, I was already picturing the future when every screen was operational.
“…”
What kind of spectacle would unfold once I bought satellites and linked this room to the backdoors established by the Enigmas dispatched outside and the surveillance cameras installed aboveground?
The thought that I might then be able to sit safely in this underground control room and survey every corner of the country at a glance sent an exhilarating thrill down the back of my neck.
“I will continue the tour.”
Setting my excitement aside, I left the monitor room.
The corridor leading to the next section likewise had seamlessly finished metal walls and pristine white fluorescent lights.
It felt like walking through the heart of a top-security secret laboratory determined never to admit an outside intruder. It was certainly to my taste.
At the end of the clean, straight corridor, Ann stopped and held a key card to the security panel.
“This is the emergency supplies storeroom you mentioned, Administrator.”
With a hiss of escaping air, the metal door slid lightly aside.
Cool, dry air flowed out of the storeroom, where sturdy metal shelves tall enough to nearly touch the ceiling stood in long, orderly rows.
Neatly arranged on them were premium preserved foods and canned goods for me to eat in an emergency, boxes of MREs sealed in silver packaging, and all manner of survival supplies.
Could there be any sight more reassuring in the face of an apocalypse?
I absolutely loved it, but asked just to be safe.
“…What about drinking water?”
Ann answered without missing a beat.
“You may use this water purification system equipped with a high-performance filter.”
Where she pointed, a compact drinking fountain had been neatly built into the wall.
“Can I drink it right away?”
“May I test it first?”
Ann filled a paper cup that had appeared from who knew where with clear water, then pulled a fountain-pen-shaped water quality tester from her pocket and dipped it into the water.
“It is safe to drink.”
That meant the plumbing and purification system had also been constructed perfectly, without the slightest error. I accepted the paper cup and gulped down the water in one go.
“Ahh.”
Judging by how cold it was, enough to chill me to the bone, the cold-water function appeared to be working properly as well.
Wearing a satisfied smile, I passed through the storeroom and finally entered the passage leading to the living quarters prepared solely for me.
Unlike the austere, heavily secured sections I had passed through, this area had an entirely different look, as though my psychological and emotional well-being had been given top priority.
The artificial skylight and simulated sunlight perfectly replicated a clear day aboveground, while the soaring ceiling made me completely forget that I was roughly a thousand meters below the surface.
‘It feels similar to the recreation facilities.’
Except that if that place felt like a city, then this place was…
More like the countryside, perhaps?
Beneath the dazzling skylight lay a modest garden that doubled as a vegetable patch.
Nothing had been planted yet, but the rich smell of soil gave me the strange certainty that even seeds scattered around at random would thrive here.
I touched it just to make sure, and it really was soil.
Across the garden and yard stood the neat, modern two-story house where I would live from now on. After seeing nothing but hard, cold metal doors, the warm wooden feel of the house was almost jarringly out of place.
Still, in the long run, this would be far better for my mental health.
“Is it because of the yard? This feels bigger than I expected.”
“The other facilities will also feel different from how they appeared in the plans once you see them in person.”
Following Ann’s guidance, I opened the smooth wooden front door and stepped inside.
The interior of the house was literally empty, without so much as a sofa or dining table.
Yet it did not feel desolate. That was thanks to the enormous picture window occupying an entire living-room wall, which offered an unobstructed view of the artificial yard we had just crossed.
Perhaps because the artificial sunlight poured through that window from the ceiling, I felt none of the confinement or stuffiness unique to being deep underground.
I could tell Ann had put a great deal of thought into it.
Was this what it felt like to live in one of those luxury homes in Hannam-dong?
As I looked over the open space rising all the way to the second floor and inspected the empty rooms one by one, an inexplicable rush of pleasure swept over me. It was probably the excitement of being able to decorate this vast space exactly to my own tastes.
I immediately claimed the largest second-floor room with the best view as my bedroom, then purchased an ultra-luxury designer bed costing over 100 million won and sprawled out on it.
“Uuugh…”
The moment I flopped onto the fluffy comforter without a speck of dust on it, a groan escaped my lips of its own accord.
Maybe it really was worth the price, because even the level of comfort was in another league.
Smiling contentedly as though I had reached heaven, I looked at Ann standing in the doorway.
“…Why was I stupid enough to sleep in a tent all this time?”
“I advised you several times from the beginning to sleep inside the shelter.”
Let us just say that spending those nights shivering in that damned tent was by far the stupidest of the many decisions I had made this year.
Well, past hardships aside.
Maybe it was because I had been living in a cramped tent smaller than a single pyeong until recently. Now that I suddenly had this enormous house of well over a hundred pyeong all to myself, I had no idea where to even begin.
‘I should probably just decide what each room will be used for today and go to sleep.’
I sketched out a rough plan in my head. A gaming-café-style room with dim lighting and a top-of-the-line computer, the eternal dream of every man, was already a certainty.
And since I might eventually need to hold meetings with my staff advisers, I had to set aside one large room to serve as both a reception room and a conference room.
I also planned to have advisers like Ann and General Kang stay here from now on, so I would give each of them a room…
Even then, I still had five rooms left.
I could always recruit five more staff advisers and put them in there, but there was no need to rush. I could decide what to do with the remaining rooms later.
Even after completing the shelter, I would still be able to decorate it piece by piece like a game until the demo version ended.
That sounded like it would be quite a bit of fun in its own right.
Since I had already gone this far, I decided to equip the kitchen with every high-end appliance needed to cook virtually any dish.
Of course, the emergency supplies storeroom was already overflowing with mountains of premium preserved foods and canned goods.
But no matter how expensive the MREs and preserved foods were, they could never replace the taste of freshly cooked, steaming rice with golden-brown slices of fried Spam.
Of course, the limit of my cooking ability was tuna kimchi stew or steamed eggs, so there was a good chance I would never make proper use of those expensive appliances…
“Ann, are you any good at cooking?”
“I can perform at a level exceeding your expectations, Administrator.”
“Oh, reeeally?”
With Ann, my 1.8-trillion-won secretary, staff adviser, housekeeper, and master chef, eating whatever kind of food I wanted was no mere dream.
Anyway, it was about time to sleep.
“If you press this button here, you should be able to sleep comfortably right away.”
When I pressed the button on the wall, the artificial skylight that had been shining as brightly as day gently faded to darkness in an instant.
Soft bluish lighting reminiscent of moonlight at midnight soon illuminated the yard, while soothing white noise resembling the chirping of insects began to play.
That night, I slept comfortably for the first time in ages.
****
January 8, 2027. Fifteen days remained until the demo service ended.
“Nngh!”
I rose from the plush bed and stretched long and hard, my body feeling far lighter and more refreshed than usual.
After getting up and making breakfast out of the morning coffee and toast Ann had prepared, I immediately began constructing the infirmary.
In truth, securing medical personnel was one of the surprisingly tricky issues involved in building a shelter for survival.
In the case of a skilled, young, and capable scientist, an eye-popping salary and unimaginably advanced research equipment might be enough to tempt them to take a job in a provincial area.
But the situation was different for a skilled, young doctor.
Even when regional hospitals aboveground offered annual salaries of several hundred million won and practically begged them to come, did they not still try everything they could to remain at major hospitals and in cities within the Seoul Capital Area because of infrastructure problems and other inconveniences?
So if I had tried to recruit a proper specialist to an underground shelter in Gangwon Province, the process would have been far more difficult than recruiting a scientist.
Fortunately, however, there was no need for my shelter to recruit doctors at all.
That was because our 1.8-trillion-won ultra-genius, all-purpose android, the Enigma, could perfectly handle everything from basic medical treatment to complex surgery.
By this point, I was even beginning to harbor the reasonable suspicion that the Enigma’s inability to perform 「Research」 was some kind of balance patch.
Still, Enigmas had plenty of uses outside a hospital ward, so recruiting actual doctors would be preferable if possible.
Anyway.
“I knew you would say that, so I prepared the plans last night.”
“Thanks.”
In any case, there was no need to overthink the infirmary. I decided to copy the layout of an actual university hospital.
If I built it as a small general hospital scaled for a population of seven thousand and something went wrong later, there would be no fixing it.
Since I would not be paying doctors’ salaries anyway, I included every department found in a university hospital, from the emergency room to internal medicine, general surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and adolescent medicine, and more.
However, unlike an ordinary university hospital, it would not need to receive vast numbers of outpatients, so I compromised by reducing the size of the waiting areas and lobby.
The resulting comprehensive medical facility covered approximately 6,000 pyeong, with an average ceiling height of 3.5 meters and a total construction cost of 3.47 trillion won.
On top of that, I purchased every piece of medical equipment that seemed likely to be used even once, including MRI and CT scanners, diagnostic ultrasound scanners, endoscopes, defibrillators, surgical assistance robots, and hemodialysis machines.
I supposed I would feel much more at ease if the facility could provide any medical service available at a decent university hospital aboveground. After all, even I had no idea what illness I might contract.
“The medical equipment and interior facilities total 2.5 trillion won, bringing the combined cost to 5.97 trillion won.”
“That’s fairly cheap, all things considered.”
That brought the amount I had spent so far to roughly 681 trillion won.
Of course, once I added the money needed to purchase around a hundred Juggernauts, satellites, and additional Enigmas for genuine intelligence work, the amount effectively remaining would be far smaller.
Even so, I had more leeway than I had originally expected.
At this level, I could purchase another satellite, expand the recreation facilities, or simply increase my stockpiles of raw materials and food…
“Alternatively, you could stockpile large quantities of unrefined crude oil to secure fuel for military equipment such as helicopters and tanks.”
“Crude oil?”
Ann thought for a moment, then continued casually.
“If stored under suitable conditions, unrefined crude oil can potentially be stockpiled for decades. It would, of course, require a separate oil refining facility, but considering that most modern military equipment requires petroleum-based fuel, it may be worth considering.”
A hundred thousand tons of crude oil, or 700,000 barrels, worked out to roughly 120,000 cubic meters in volume. Apparently, constructing storage tanks of that scale alone would cost around 6 trillion won.
That was reasonable enough to merit consideration, so I decided to think it over once I had more leeway.
In other words, I did not have that leeway now.
A radio transmission came in from General Kang, who had been monitoring the outside.
[Administrator, the search operation in the surrounding area has begun.]
January 8, 2027. The soldiers had arrived one day earlier than expected.
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