Roseberry’s Fried Chicken Revolution

"Mr. Mayor. M-Mayor, sir. We need a Chinese restaurant."

Sssssssssssssss....

It wasn't some grotesque noise. It was the sound of something deep-frying.

July 23rd, 2053.

Roseberry's first chicken shop — a landmark for the ages — threw open its doors, and people lined up for it, tears of pure emotion streaming down their faces as they carried their fried chicken home.

"To think I could eat oil-fried chicken again in this lifetime...!"

"Aaaah... it's so good!"

Of course, the chickens weren't infinite, so the shop was limited to two hundred birds a day. Civic grumbling flared for a moment — then, mercifully, other restaurants began opening one after another, and the complaints died as fast as they'd come.

"Rye bread and egg sandwiches for sale!"

"Catfish and carp, served raw!"

"Stew — potatoes, onions, and carrots diced fine and simmered for twenty-four hours."

Honestly, the quality wouldn't have held a candle to a small-town food alley. But this was a post-apocalyptic world. Quality was secondary; quantity barely existed. Citizens drifted from stall to stall like they'd stumbled into paradise, spending a full day's wages without a second thought.

And what did all of that mean?

"Huh? Where's Daniel? He didn't come in?"

"Ah. He quit. Said he's going to fry chicken at the chicken shop."

"That so?"

It meant a class of people had begun to free themselves from compulsory labor.

Not that they had truly escaped physical work. But for the first time, employment wasn't a one-way personnel order dropped from the Control Tower — it was a matter of individual will: take a job, or don't. That was a watershed. And it was a good thing, never a bad one.

Even "full employment" never means a zero percent unemployment rate — least of all under a free-market system. Under full employment, the usual figure is something like three to five percent. You need that buffer for society and the economy to run smoothly.

Roseberry's economy — if you could call a settlement of mere tens of thousands an economy — had been locked at a near-zero unemployment rate. Now was the time to loosen that rigidity.

Of course, to the minority who lost their minds over numbers this vague, an uncontrolled unemployed population looked like a latent threat — which was why players having meltdowns like the one above were a dime a dozen.

The mere fact that people could work and weren't was, from a leader's perspective, psychologically hard to swallow.

But one thing had to be kept in mind: the players serving as Commanders-in-Chief had no real ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reason to sweat this.

Players had to keep their eyes on the big picture. Unless unemployment was climbing toward ten or twenty percent, a three-to-five-percent rate simply wasn't their problem. And if even that level of unemployment caused real issues, the problem was the players themselves.

Another peaceful day in the gallery.

Once the unemployment debate caught fire, it refused to die. The First Anniversary Grand Offensive was coming up soon, and everyone was already on edge trying to clear the nests near their own zones — that was probably why the fuse was so short.

Huihyeon's own troops had already melted three hundred infantry while purging three nests and needed reinforcements. Players running settlements less developed than Huihyeon's Roseberry were bound to react with hostility toward any population that wasn't working.

But did they understand gallery humor?

The overheating atmosphere got dumped into an ice bath the moment currency-post season two flooded the board.

"Shells? Seriously?"

Even allowing for civilizational collapse, regressing all the way to the Paleolithic was so far beyond Huihyeon's expectations it left him speechless. And right alongside it, the sheer nerve of someone who simply refused to invent currency and ran the whole zone on rations.

"Gallery guys, through and through. Always beyond imagination."

"Approved."

"Approved."

"Approved."

There was a phenomenon called the downhill effect.

Taking the first step was hard. But once you did, things accelerated as if you were already rolling down a slope. Roseberry's startup market was right there now.

If food was fair game, why not clothes? Glasses? Shoes? Nothing was off-limits. Hell, Huihyeon was ready to beg people to open those shops.

A city without a single tailor, a single optician, a single cobbler — what kind of city was that supposed to be?

Market expansion usually demanded matching labor and new demand. On that front, at least, there was nothing to worry about.

"Mm. Yummy."

Whenever the World Union remembered they existed, they ruthlessly dumped hundreds of refugees at a time — securing labor and widening the market in the same stroke. The pie grew on its own even when you did nothing.

Whether you filled that pie with watery filler or packed it with rich pastry was entirely up to the players. Which meant Huihyeon had to keep working without rest.

"When do the new drones arrive?"

"Good. Any report from the recon regiment?"

"Good. Expand the greenhouses and aquaponics. Raise monthly beer production to 100,000 liters."

"And stop expanding the residential blocks. Build new ones at the eight-o'clock position and route the refugees that way. The streets are getting too congested."

"Oh, right. When the drone rockets land, scrap every empty rocket for raw materials and run the maintenance sequence and service protocols."