Chapter 49: The One and Only Fireworks Show in Human History
Translator: ShutDoor
The large-scale transport operation proceeded far faster than I had expected.
SurvivalNet had spread among South Korean civilians faster than expected, and people had almost no other source of reliable information.
Naturally, every stage of the transport plan was carried out in secret.
Even if the government devoted precious personnel to staring at reconnaissance satellite feeds during this urgent crisis, could they have identified anything more than the Dodges and deuce-and-a-halfs we used for transport?
Futuristic weapons such as the Juggernauts, which could not yet be revealed or allowed to become known, were operated only in places where thorough security measures and the terrain made them difficult to identify.
At most sites where a Juggernaut was deployed, the situation was resolved within a minute, and the operations took place in enclosed spaces that were difficult to film from outside. Unless someone lived right beside the site, they would have had a hard time identifying what it was.
Even if someone posted about it online, the operators standing by around the clock would delete the post, so there was no need to worry.
In any case, the people brought into the shelter would undergo a month of quarantine while receiving an ‘education’ designed to instill the shelter’s rules and norms. Once that process was complete, they would be able to enter the shelter proper around April, one month from now.
Of course, I did not expect people raised in a modern democratic society to obey our every command without question.
Granted, we assigned them work where they could make the best use of their abilities, provided private living quarters spacious enough for one person, fed them, guaranteed time off, and even gave them access to an intranet, unlike the outside world, where the internet was slowly beginning to fall apart…
…That actually sounded pretty reasonable?
Maybe it was even better than ordinary modern society?
In twenty-first-century South Korea, buying a home in the Seoul Capital Area meant working oneself to the bone for thirty years. Besides, most of the settlers entering the shelter were in their early thirties, an age when they could hardly even dream of owning a home.
But what did we offer? As long as they came in and pulled their weight… we gave them a home of their own!
Strictly speaking, it was a ‘semipermanent lease,’ but still.
In any case, we could not offer such extraordinary benefits to just anyone, so let me simply say that, on my staff advisers’ recommendation, they were undergoing a far more thorough and rigorous education program.
And there was another piece of good news.
It had now been forty days since development of an NIV virus treatment began. After a grueling forced march of more than one hundred hours a week, the research team had finally succeeded in developing the ‘nervous system deception and stabilization treatment,’ the second stage of their three-stage roadmap.
With this nervous system stabilization treatment, infected people could be prevented from self-destructing through high fever and encephalitis even if they failed to infect anyone else.
In other words, the infected no longer had to remain bedridden and dependent on sleeping medication or anesthetics. They could resume normal daily life.
There was, however, one unexpected side effect.
[I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry…!]
What would happen if someone with dementia suddenly recovered all their memories one day?
As the memories from that missing period flooded back all at once, they would be overwhelmed by confusion, shame, and guilt upon confronting the animalistic things they had done.
Patients given the nervous system stabilization treatment displayed a similar pattern.
[Ugh, aaagh…!]
Most of the infected people housed in our shelter were the researchers’ parents. Thanks to their emergency evacuation early in the outbreak, not one of them had infected anyone else.
The worst they had done during the quarantine process was act aggressively and lunge at the team sent out to retrieve them.
And yet, this was how strongly they reacted.
Research Center Director Rachel had been impassively observing the test subjects collapsing under the weight of their guilt through the glass. She flipped to the next page of her chart and spoke.
“Hmm. I thought this might happen, and sure enough.”
Rachel, who had been examining the course of the clinical treatment, murmured without looking up from the chart.
Noting that every patient displayed the same psychological rejection response, she seemed even more convinced of her hypothesis that severely infected patients who had ‘crossed the line’ would never make a full recovery, even if they later received the complete third-stage treatment.
Hospital Director Im A-ram, who oversaw the medical building, supported Rachel’s assessment by presenting detailed analyses of the patients’ brain waves and mental states.
“We’ve detected a range of aftereffects, starting with depersonalization disorder and extending to persecutory delusions, emotional blunting, derealization, and hallucinations. There are individual differences, but overall, the psychological trauma inflicted on their nervous systems is considerable.”
Depersonalization… Was that the psychiatric symptom where someone felt as though their body did not belong to them?
“Yes. They might feel as though they’re observing their own body from a third-person perspective, or deny reality by insisting someone else committed the acts they themselves carried out. It’s a form of dissociation.”
“…”
“Moreover, the patients in our shelter were kept asleep starting right after their transport, so the virus had relatively little time to infiltrate their nervous systems. If their symptoms are this severe despite that…”
“You’re saying that if we bring them in too late, not even the treatment will be able to help them.”
“According to our current data… yes, that is highly likely.”
Hadn’t we expected something like this from the beginning?
There was no way a treatment for the pathogen responsible for an epidemic apocalypse would have a difficulty rating of a mere two and a half stars.
“…”
Thanks to that, I was able to look away without becoming too shaken.
There was something else that needed my immediate attention.
“So, how much of that stabilizer can we produce each day?”
As far as I knew, producing medicine required an enormous number of things, including culture medium prepared with high-purity water, various growth media, raw materials, and purification reagents.
Of course, the precise substances and quantities required would depend on the type of nervous system stabilizer and its manufacturing process, but what ultimately mattered was how much production equipment and raw material we needed.
Our resources might have been abundant, but they were not infinite.
Rachel provided the answer.
“Fortunately, the virology research building has a dedicated automated production line. Once we begin full-scale operation, we can produce around 2,000 injectable doses per day.”
“That’s more than I expected.”
“However, the drug must be administered continuously for at least five days while we monitor the patient’s progress, so in practice, that amounts to enough for 400 people per day.”
“…”
“And since we’ve effectively completed a Phase III clinical trial, we’ll also need to monitor the long-term effects after actual administration.”
As far as I knew, a Phase II clinical trial determined whether a treatment actually worked on patients and established the appropriate dosage, while Phase III was the final large-scale verification of its efficacy and safety.
A functioning country would then subject it to a rigorous approval process, maintain its quality, and track side effects, but with the apocalypse underway, expecting every standard procedure to be followed would have been a luxury.
“Is enough for 400 people the maximum? Can’t we increase production by expanding the facilities?”
“We would like to, but we don’t have enough dedicated reactor equipment. In fact, considering our shelter’s maximum capacity, even this production volume is more than we would ever need.”
Rachel had a point.
Being able to produce enough nervous system stabilizer for 400 people every day meant that, given the shelter’s current population, we could secure enough to treat everyone in just over two weeks and still have some left over.
…Then could we increase production dramatically by sharing the data with governments on the surface?
If we handed the data over to institutions in the United States or Europe, where major pharmaceutical companies were everywhere…
Ann, who had been standing quietly beside us, spoke before I could even finish the thought.
“It would be a pointless endeavor.”
Ann’s dry voice cut my fanciful idea short.
“The United States is in the middle of a civil war, is it not?”
“…”
“The EU also effectively dissolved four days ago.”
“…”
“And since the South Korean government hastily relocated its base to Jeju Island, it likely lacks the capacity to produce the nervous system stabilizer even if we provide the data.”
It was just a thought. That was all.
After all, it would benefit me too if this country remained intact.
Im A-ram, standing beside us, cautiously added a comment.
“It would be wonderful if things worked out as you suggest, Administrator, but administering this nervous system stabilizer isn’t as simple as giving a single injection. The combination and dosage of the drugs have to be adjusted ‘appropriately’ according to how deeply the nervous system has been affected. But…”
‘In other words, even if we gave it to them, they couldn’t use it without us.’
“…”
Then again, this was the result those 1.8-trillion-won androids had barely managed to produce after collecting clinical data around the clock for nearly forty days, starting on D-Day itself.
Even if researchers in the outside world received the data, could they analyze it and reproduce the same results in a day or two?
“If it continues to concern you, once our shelter has secured a sufficient surplus, we could distribute the nervous system stabilizer exclusively to SurvivalNet’s top users.”
“…How?”
“Our shelter has plenty of drones, does it not? With minor modifications to a medium-altitude unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, we could deliver it to any desired coordinates within Northeast Asia without difficulty.”
“!!!”
My grand dream of kick-starting a digital market economy among survivors!
But simply giving it away did not feel right. Wasn’t there anything we could trade it for?
Honestly, there was virtually nothing our shelter lacked ‘right now.’
No matter how hard I tried to think of something we lacked, all I could come up with was real-time information from the field that only outside survivors could provide, or perhaps their labor.
There were, however, things we did not have ‘enough’ of.
Rare metals such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, used in precision equipment, chemical catalysts, semiconductors, batteries, and high-performance motors.
We had stockpiled enough to prevent any immediate problems with research or maintenance, but because those metals were so expensive, our reserves were definitely smaller than those of other, more ordinary supplies.
Bluntly put, the price of a single one-kilogram gold bar could buy a mountain of expensive electronics. Why would anyone buy a lump of gold instead? They would be better off buying the finished products.
“Your shelter is ultimately a closed economy cut off from the outside world, Administrator. It may be worth considering a barter system in which we commission outsiders to procure the rare resources we need.”
Ann’s suggestion matched my thoughts exactly.
A great many of our ongoing 「Research」 projects used rare metals, so it seemed wise to start considering the idea now.
Prominent examples included the Department of Chemical Engineering’s ‘high-activity catalyst’ project and the Department of Energy Engineering’s ‘next-generation high-density energy storage device’ project. Even at that very moment, the research laboratories were consuming large quantities of various rare metals.
If outsiders brought us rare metals and we gave them the treatment in return, wouldn’t that be a win-win exchange? We would have to work out the exact, reasonable exchange rates later, of course.
At that moment, the sound of hurried footsteps broke the silence.
It was General Kang.
His face was uncharacteristically rigid.
This was a man who had not so much as raised an eyebrow when civil war erupted in the United States, saying it was something he had expected. For General Kang to be this shaken?
Sensing that something was seriously wrong, I immediately rose from my seat.
Had the government discovered our shelter’s location? Had one of our external transport teams been spotted? Or had our impersonation of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces been exposed, leading to a clash with the real ground forces?
Every worst-case scenario imaginable flashed through my mind like lightning, but General Kang merely shook his head with a grim expression.
Then what in the world…
“…China has launched nuclear missiles.”
Fuck.
*****
In the past, China had adopted a ‘revolutionary’ solution befitting a socialist nation: forcing hundreds of millions of infected people and suspected cases into the Sichuan Basin, a vast region more than sixteen times the size of Gyeonggi Province, and isolating them there.
But conducting a comprehensive examination of hundreds of millions of people in such a short time was impossible. So the Chinese authorities made the unprecedented blunder of forcibly relocating every resident of an area if even a single suspected case was discovered there.
They had thrown infected and uninfected people together from the outset, so naturally the virus spread exponentially inside the quarantine zone.
Then came the day of the critical threshold breach.
The collapse of the containment line around the Sichuan Basin, which had barely been maintained through indiscriminate gunfire and biological and chemical weapons, was inevitable.
The situation rapidly descended into an uncontrollable hell.
Hundreds of millions of infected people poured out across China, not merely from the Sichuan Basin, and frenzied mobs stabbed one another to death. At the same time, every piece of the nation’s infrastructure began collapsing like dominoes.
The infected dumped bodily fluids into wells, targeted the public security police and medical personnel with acts of sabotage, and burned everything in sight. Then, vowing revenge on the leaders who had shot their families dead, they once again marched on Beijing.
The Chinese leadership, isolated in the capital, could not have had many options left.
We never managed to determine whether China’s president had already been infected or had made the decision while still in his right mind.
But one thing was certain.
Under the pretext of protecting the nation, they made the most irrational, contradictory, and self-destructive decision a nation could make.
They chose to destroy China in order to protect ‘China.’
The moment the infected stormed the leadership compound, hundreds of nuclear missiles soared into the sky.
A few of them truly did, quite ‘coincidentally,’ fly through the airspace over the breakaway states before heading toward regions packed with critical U.S. federal facilities.
The breakaway state governments that had been waiting for their chance also ‘coincidentally’ timed surprise attacks against the federal government for that same moment.
Blinded by rage, the federal government immediately retaliated, mobilizing its entire nuclear force.
Fortunately, none of the missiles had directly targeted the Korean Peninsula.
At least, not yet.
But March was yellow dust season.
ADMIN1000: (Urgent) U.S.-China War Breaks Out
ADMIN1000: Massive yellow dust storm detected over China.
This yellow dust would carry more than just sand and heavy metals.
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