Chapter 52: Jeju Island
Translator: ShutDoor
They said a full storehouse made you feel full even without eating.
I felt the same way.
The materials piled up in the raw materials warehouse alone were enough to build an entire additional zone with plenty left over.
That might not sound like much, but it absolutely was.
The facilities that took up the most space in our shelter were, by far, the recreation facilities and research facilities. What if we used that much space purely for residential zones? We could house at least 50,000 people.
After all, the research facilities had an average ceiling height of ten meters, while some of the recreation facilities had ceilings as high as fifty meters.
In any case, a massive titanium vault door stood at the very back of the raw materials warehouse. Beyond it, we stored gold, platinum, and various other valuable metals used for Research.
“Heh heh.”
Did you know? Even a two-ton cube of pure gold is only forty-seven centimeters on each side!
“…Might I suggest showing a little more decorum? A dignified bearing is what gives one authority.”
Ann’s opinion of me had grown a little harsher after the recent ‘strategic redeployment’ incident revealed just how bold I could be.
But so what?
Considering the sheer quantity of supplies we had brought back, I could take a little scolding like that.
I had already started to worry because the research center and water conveyance tunnel were consuming resources faster than expected, but in four days, we had obtained dozens of times as much as they had used.
In other words, we had brought back a truly staggering amount of supplies.
“You must be thrilled.”
Ann was only acting this way because she was worried I might become too fixated on plundering.
But if plundering had been the most profitable thing in human history, everyone would have done nothing but plunder. Why would anyone have quietly farmed the land?
Plundering carried considerable risks and inevitably earned the resentment of others.
Still, whatever else could be said about it, the rush was incredible…
Just look at those materials piled up as far as the eye could see.
‘Mmm.’
The sight alone made me feel full.
Should I send them out again right after the nukes go off?
Four days was hardly a short time, but it had been nowhere near enough considering how many supplies were scattered across the Korean Peninsula.
Even after optimizing our routes, we had only managed to recover supplies from Chungcheong Province, Gyeongsang, and nearby parts of Gyeonggi Province.
Of course, I might have felt guilty if anything truly important had been there. But even when we ‘visited’ the laboratories, all the genuinely important research data had been shredded before they left, so it was safe to assume they had already taken everything critical with them.
“…”
Ann once again looked at me as though I were hopeless, but I paid her no mind.
“They sent special forces to our decoy base in the first place, so we’re even.”
They had even abandoned the Korean Peninsula and fled.
If I had dreamed of becoming a raider, would I have built an underground shelter in the first place? I would have simply filled every available slot with Juggernauts and played warlord in South Korea.
Granted, conquering South Korea with fewer than a thousand troops would have taken ages, and if China or the United States had wagged a finger and said, ‘Bad boy!’ with a nuclear strike, my regime would probably have ended after all of three days.
Shaking off those thoughts, I brushed my protective glove over the construction materials my subordinates had worked so hard to bring back.
Their surfaces had been decontaminated before they were brought into the shelter, but there was no harm in being careful.
That was also why everyone who had returned from hauling materials outside was gathered in this auxiliary warehouse, measuring the radiation levels of every item one by one.
We had selected supplies stored as far inside buildings as possible and kept them sealed as tightly as we could during transport, but even we could not remain completely untouched by a yellow dust storm that violent.
Naturally, no one elsewhere on the Korean Peninsula would be able to venture outdoors for at least a week either.
Japan? The yellow dust storm had only just reached Japan, so they were probably going through hell right about now.
General Kang’s voice came through the communicator by my ear.
[At your service, Administrator. We discovered something unusual concerning one of the twenty-nine civilians rescued when their route overlapped with ours during this strategic redeployment operation. I have an urgent report to make.]
“All right, go ahead.”
While this incident had made Ann look upon me with considerably less warmth, it had inspired an equal measure of goodwill toward me in General Kang, who was a soldier by design.
That aside, what was so remarkable about one of those twenty-nine people that it warranted a separate report?
No sooner had the question occurred to me than General Kang spoke.
[I sent the relevant materials to the Chief Secretary. I thought it would be best if you referred to them while listening.]
Ann promptly returned to her usual impassive expression as though nothing had happened and handed me a tablet.
“Here.”
I immediately checked the materials General Kang had sent.
They contained a photograph of a man I had never seen before, along with a brief personal profile and a long list of unfamiliar audio recordings.
[Kwon Taek-ju, male, age 40]
— Director of the Emergency Preparedness Support Division, Emergency Preparedness Policy Bureau, Ministry of the Interior and Safety
— No known relatives
He appeared to be a civil servant who had managed emergency stockpiles and businesses designated for mobilization in preparation for national emergencies.
But why him?
Was it because he possessed information about government stockpiles?
That alone would not have warranted a separate report to me. Bluntly put, General Kang’s agents could obtain far more information by intercepting military communications than they could from a Grade 4 civil servant.
In other words, he did not seem particularly important to me under the present circumstances.
At forty, he was also definitely older than the average person in our shelter. His administrative skills were probably excellent, but Ann could effectively handle all the administrative work by herself.
Of course, having more people would still be helpful…
Wait. He looked familiar somehow.
It felt like I had seen him somewhere…
[You have indeed seen him before, Administrator.]
General Kang paused for a moment, as if waiting for me to remember.
[One of the androids you designed for espionage was modeled after this man’s appearance.]
Only then did I realize how serious this was. I looked around for somewhere suitable to sit, then simply dropped to the floor.
I waved Ann off when she offered to bring me a chair.
Where on earth had they found this man?
[We found him at the address we identified during our initial investigation. We cannot determine the exact date, but it appears he had remained secluded there since at least before the critical threshold breach.]
That meant he had been holed up in his room for almost two months.
There were not even any notable government facilities near Kwon Taek-ju’s home. In other words, there had been no soldiers nearby to shoot the infected for him.
Even so, Kwon Taek-ju had stayed as quiet and silent as possible, despite the resulting malnutrition. Apparently, he had even left his front door half-open to make the place look as though it had already been looted.
Whether intentional or not, it was an incredibly gutsy survival strategy.
It had allowed him to survive without serious injury, but by the time our agents found and picked him up, his malnutrition was so severe that he was on the verge of starving to death.
But there was another, decisive reason why the infected had not hunted him.
He had already been ‘infected’ by the airborne virus long before the critical threshold breach, which was why the infected who barged into his home had not attacked him.
The signs of intrusion our agents found before entering were evidence of that.
However, because his incubation period was longer than average, Kwon Taek-ju probably still had no idea he was infected even when he collapsed from starvation.
He might even have mistaken the infected who broke into his home for ordinary looters.
[However, a few questions remain.]
“What are they?”
[After restoring Kwon Taek-ju’s call records, we discovered that he had originally been scheduled to make contact with the government and be ‘transported’ one week before the critical threshold breach.]
Apparently, he had been more capable than I thought.
“…And?”
[Immediately after the call, his transport date was abruptly postponed to February 27.]
Had they abandoned him? It would not have been strange. Civil servants of his rank were uncommon, but not exceedingly rare.
I figured his priority might have been lowered while the Jeju Island government gathered only the most elite personnel to minimize the risk of infection.
[I thought so at first as well, but I changed my mind after examining the call record from immediately before his transport was postponed.]
I played the recording General Kang had provided.
—Oh, Taek-ju? You know Daejeon Armed Forces Hospital, right? They say a helicopter will pick you up there tomorrow. So…
Someone else was beside Kwon Taek-ju’s superior during the call.
The person, whose gender I could not determine, whispered so softly that I could barely make out the words even with the amplification turned all the way up.
This man can’t come. He’s already infected.
Immediately after that whisper, the superior’s attitude changed completely.
—…Wait, the schedule was suddenly postponed because of some VIPs. To February 28. Try to understand, Taek-ju. All right?
—What? Director? What are you talking about all of a sudden… Director. Brother. Brother! Don’t hang up. Please explain…!
The call ended there.
“…”
I turned my attention to the list of files General Kang had attached. I had wondered why he had sent so much material, but apparently, they had hacked a telecom company or something and taken every recording related to the incident.
The files contained more recordings of a voice believed to belong to that same ‘someone’.
This person is infected too.
…This person seems fine.
[We also confirmed that everyone in those records who was left behind on the mainland is infected.]
No wonder Jeju Island had been strangely quiet while the entire world went to hell.
“Report to me as soon as Mr. Kwon Taek-ju wakes up.”
[Yes, sir.]
Those bastards knew another way to distinguish infected people from uninfected people.
*****
It was nearly the end of March when Kwon Taek-ju finally regained consciousness.
In the meantime, our shelter had completed the 「Hydroponics Water Consumption Reduction I」 research project. We achieved a reduction greater than the originally projected 7.8 percent, freeing up even more water.
Thanks to that, we could begin full-scale food production in the hydroponics zones that had been set up but were not yet in use.
We had also completed 「Biological Plastic Degradation Efficiency Improvement I」 in the biology research building, allowing us to process plastic and disposable waste produced within the shelter more quickly and recycle more of it.
As for 「Basic Nanomaterials Research」 in the chemistry research building… naturally, it was still nowhere near completion.
Even one nanometer was only the length of a few atoms lined up in a row, so I thought it was only natural for the research to take so long.
Unlike the other projects, it was also the only one with a research difficulty of two stars.
Meanwhile, the number of residents had more than doubled since February, so the personnel office staff under Personnel Office Director Kim Mun-seok had also started bustling about.
It went without saying, but aside from the researchers and their support staff, every employee in our shelter was still an android.
It was not that I did not want to give humans positions of responsibility. The quarantine, education, and adjustment periods combined took almost a month and a half.
Even after their adjustment period ended, they would each have to undergo vocational training. Only then would they be assigned to the area best suited to their aptitudes and begin working in earnest.
Still, perhaps the ‘education’ had been more effective than expected, because everyone quickly accepted the situation and willingly cooperated during vocational training.
At that moment, a quiet announcement echoed throughout the shelter.
[The personnel office has begun issuing ID cards. All settlers currently undergoing adjustment and vocational training are requested to obtain their cards.]
Oh, we had also launched the credit policy I mentioned before.
Once they received those cards, they would be issued differing amounts of credits, the shelter’s exclusive currency, according to their labor contributions, the difficulty of their work, and their performance.
The dining halls, which had initially operated on a completely free-meal system, were also gradually transitioning to credit payments.
Free meals had not disappeared entirely, but the menus were miserly enough to truly deserve the word ‘free’. In other words, they provided only the bare minimum of nutrients.
On the other hand, anyone who wanted a ‘standard meal’ of soy-braised beef, kimchi, brown rice, mallow soup, and even fruit for dessert had to at least pull their own weight in the shelter.
A standard meal cost five credits, so one credit was worth roughly 1,000 won.
Two standard meals a day came to exactly ten credits.
Apprentice settlers undergoing adjustment training earned between fifteen and twenty credits a day, so even after buying two standard meals, they would have five to ten credits left over.
They were free to save the remainder or spend it on recreation facilities such as the PC café and gym on weekends.
Researchers, of course, received a much higher base daily wage and substantial additional credits whenever they unlocked a node in the current 「Research」 tech tree or produced meaningful results. Even so, the wealth gap was not expected to grow too large.
That was because we had designed the prices of high-end luxuries such as freshly roasted coffee, desserts, and whiskey to rise exponentially.
Anyone could enjoy a reasonable, middle-class level of leisure if they wanted to. But moving one step beyond that into true luxury would cost dozens of times more.
We had also introduced various other reasonable rules. Field workers such as miners earned more credits, while office workers, who spent more time sitting down, earned less in exchange for their relative comfort.
—Um, could you exchange the won I have outside for credits?
Some people asked that question on the off chance we might agree, but I refused them flatly. Won or dollars, it had all become worthless paper, so what would we use it for?
We planned to implement the credit system in the shelter first, then extend it to 「SurvivalNet」 later if no problems arose. So I made it clear that only tangible assets such as gold could be exchanged for credits.
That aside.
“You said he’s awake?”
[Yes. We have also completed a preliminary interrogation.]
I wondered what they had discovered.
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