Humans Wait
Humans wait.
According to the Stanford marshmallow experiment, conducted to study delayed gratification, the children who held out longest against the treat's temptation went on, as adults, to post superior numbers across a striking range of measures. Academic performance, of course — but also their capacity to endure frustration and stress. Even their body mass index came out different.
Knowing how to wait is a vital part of living. All the more so now, with the world in ruins. Huddled down, waiting and waiting, shivering through it, enduring and enduring again — in a landscape where you could reasonably say that only those who'd held out for the best possible return had survived, I had to do the same if I wanted to stay alive.
Six months had passed. The tally of slashes on the calendar said so. The catastrophe that had begun in March was still going strong come September, and the calendar was the only thing that could prove I'd lasted this long.
"Oppa, are you up?"
"Yeah."
Which meant it had been nearly two months since I'd last seen Harin.
"Good morning!"
"Not here, it isn't."
The first week after I couldn't see her anymore, I'd lived like a genuine lunatic. But time heals all wounds, or so they say, and I was doing alright now. Hearing her voice at all probably had a lot to do with it.
"Hey."
"Kidding, kidding. Morning."
I sat up to the now-ordinary morning call. Unlike when the radio had first connected, Harin's transmissions now came only at set times. A morning call at dawn or first light, an hour after lunch, and two hours after the day's work was done, right up until we fell asleep.
"I like you."
"Yeah."
"That's it? Seriously?"
"Me too."
"Hmm. Not a fan of having to grovel for it."
And that was unavoidable, given that Harin was steadily preparing her escape. The optimal moment was when the suspicious ones let their guard down, and putting them at ease meant a daily routine she had no choice but to follow. I thought as much, and still I pouted.
"So you've got another function to attend today."
"Mm, yeah. But I won't drink."
The "duties" in question weren't exactly the kind I was happy about, so the complaint stood. My own days rolled on in a loop of farming, maintenance, watch, and surveillance. The work required in an upper-class bunker, on the other hand, was all networking and socializing — the kind of thing you did with an eye on the world after it got put back together.
"If they get handsy, wreck them. You've practiced enough. Nut-shot."
"You think that's going to work?"
"Dunno."
She had the looks to call herself a campus goddess and have nobody argue the point, so feeling a pointless anxiety over things happening somewhere I couldn't reach was only natural.
"I'll make sure there's nothing to worry about, so don't sulk. I'll radio you at lunch."
"Dunno."
"Oppa, I like you."
"Yeah."
Still. What else was there to do but wait it out. The optimal moment hadn't arrived yet. Until it did, we each did our jobs from our respective positions.
And so I was heading to the airport for the first time in a while. Nothing I urgently needed, but every time I looked at the cigarettes a pointless temptation would rise, so I figured I'd trade them for food ahead of time.
"This is 303. Approaching the airport."
"Copy."
After the radio call, I drew near Gimpo Airport Station, and the usual jokester of a man held out a hand, telling me to come on up.
"It's been a while."
"It has, yeah. Definitely been a while."
Park Young-ho. That was the name of the man who guarded the station entrance. Late thirties, the type to crack self-deprecating jokes about how lucky he was he'd never gotten married. We'd gotten familiar enough by now that he didn't bother with any verification signals. Just a look at my face, and I was in.
"So what's the password?"
"I brought cigarettes."
"Aigoo, password confirmed. Head on in."
Park Young-ho tossed out the usual gag about the password, same as always. The only difference was that his expression was a little stiff.
I went inside. And the sense of wrongness I'd picked up from Park Young-ho hung even thicker once I was in the airport proper.
"Huh, the kid from 303's here?"
"...What's with the atmosphere?"
The usual racket had gone distinctly quiet. Park Jinseok was a joker by nature himself, but he greeted me like it was any other day.
"Ah, well... just, yeah. Some of the group got hurt. Some died. They went out farming pretty far and ran into a fight with the faction out that way."
"Casualties bad?"
The numbers didn't look that much thinner. Sure, some of the usual faces were gone, but it felt like they'd been filled in with new people. Besides, in a world like this, people you knew dying was just part of the scenery.
"Headcount's about the same, actually. The real problem's that most of the slaves used the fighting as cover and bolted."
"Ah."
Only then did it register that the Sa-class slaves who'd spent every day getting the shit beaten out of them were almost nowhere to be seen. They were really gone. Last time they'd dropped from twenty to fourteen. This wasn't that. Only three remained.
"Did you kill them?"
"No. They said it was too chaotic. Didn't have the bandwidth to start shooting."
Which meant ten slaves, burning with a hunger for revenge, had escaped alive and intact. Reason enough for the mood to tank. They'd never been treated as human. What came next was anyone's guess. In short, the inverted hierarchy here hadn't quite snapped back to the old world — but it had rolled a good way in that direction.
"I told you not to let your guard down."
"Ha... yeah, I've got nothing. So, the smokes?"
"Brought a pile. This pack's on the house."
"Thanks. Food's ready, go check it."
And maybe it would snap all the way back. Humans were always waiting for the optimal moment. Give them even a sliver of an opening and the whole thing would flip again. The three Sa-class slaves still left had a real fire in their eyes. Hunched over, taking the beatings, and not a single "I'm sorry" out of their mouths.
"...This is genuine advice. You should be careful."
"Hm? Yeah, I suppose."
"I mean it. I'd rather not lose a trading partner."
The atmosphere had definitely changed.
As for what happened next. The real anomaly came after lunch.
"Oppa, oppa!"
"Dad's not asleep."
"I'm not messing around! Right now, th- th... th!"
It was a voice with the same voltage as her morning calls before they'd settled down, and I'd answered it like a joke, but Harin didn't care. She just kept shouting.
"Th- th- th. What, you doing sound effects?"
"No — the radio. The radio! Turn it on right now!"
Turn on the radio. She was saying something that didn't immediately make sense.
"...?"
"The government is broadcasting right now!"
"What...?"
"The government's on the radio, so hurry!"
For six months the thing had answered with nothing but a hiss of static, so it took my head a while to catch up to what she was saying.
Radio.
A government broadcast.
"..."
Like I was spellbound, I slotted batteries into the radio I'd shoved away and switched it on.
Ksshh — ksshhhk —
Noise. Static.
"Switch to 243.0 MHz!"
"..."
I turned the dial the way Harin said, and from a radio that had produced nothing but that ugly crackle, a human voice came through.
The broadcast, as always, opened with a lie.
Honestly, this was a situation where you had to wonder whether that was even really the government. Too much had happened, and too much time had passed, for me to take what I was seeing and hearing at face value.
A woman kept rambling on through the radio. I turned the volume down a little and muttered, staring at nothing.
"That's... some real bullshit."
If they'd just left off that last line, I might've believed them a little. People were dying right now, and they were calling it safe. All it did was pile on the distrust. It felt like they hadn't quite grasped reality yet — the same way the kids living in the PH129 Bunker hadn't.
It pissed me off for no good reason.