Let the Gallery Burn
???
Let the gallery burn.
The reasons for the gallery to go up in flames had, in truth, been piling up for some time.
The players were stuck in a situation so bizarre that stress kept building with nowhere proper to vent, until all they could do was dump a stream of garbage posts into the gallery. On top of that, far more than anyone had expected, people were under crushing pressure simply from having to take responsibility.
[Title: Honestly, I Can’t Even Curse Civil Servants Anymore...]
Author: Ninth-GradeCivilServant
[image of a frog crying and spraying bullets into the air.jpg]
I’m a civil servant now, for fuck’s sake.
Why do these goddamn citizens keep asking for so much? Do this for them, then they want that. Do that for them, then they want something else. Do that too, and now this other thing is crap, so tear the road back up. Fuck, what am I supposed to do about it...?
— The fact is, a South Korean ninth-grade civil servant has better treatment than we do.
— Well, ninth-grade civil servants can at least quit, lol. We don’t even have that freedom, lol.
— You have to keep working at home? Actually, the whole isolation zone is my home? And the work never ends?
— Seriously, the fatigue is insane. Feels like my hair’s falling out every time someone dies;;
— Maybe your hair’s just falling out.
— You piece of shit.
Posts like that kept appearing. In the past, all they had to do was enjoy the game as players; now they were sovereigns, forced to make decisions that affected the lives of real civilians one by one, with no time to deliberate. That was not something ordinary people could endure easily.
They couldn’t see their families. They couldn’t enjoy most of modern life. The only link to the outside world was this tiny window of a gallery, and so it was only natural that the ignition point had simply been delayed. One day, it would have happened.
[Title: I Used to Be an Elite Gamer, Too]
Author: WhatIsThatSmellAnyway
[image of a depressed frog.jpg]
But not anymore. I guess I’ve gone soft ideologically. Seeing people die with my own eyes made me start looking for gentler methods without even realizing it.
Go ahead and mock me for being the shelter of super cowards or whatever. I didn’t know I was this merciful a person. Back then, every time I saw an event where the civilians were raging, I’d hit the riot-suppression button...
— Now, instead of a game-over screen, you get to see your life flash before your eyes.
— To be fair, “inhumane choice” pretty much means that literally. Humans usually aren’t very good at inhumane choices, which is why the phrase exists.
— Seriously, I had originally planned a speedrun to conquer the colony zone within thirty days, but after seeing the soldiers dying off, I naturally revised it to ninety. No regrets, yeah.
— Good job, bro. The living should live.
Especially the so-called “elite” players—the ones who had spent their time in survival simulators exploiting every bizarre loophole and system exploit to squeeze out advantage to the extreme—were, to put it mildly, in a state halfway to anomie.
People who had been closer to simulation optimizers than actual game players failed to adapt properly to an otherworld where the game had become reality. In the end, they either went completely off the rails and turned dark like some 120-hours-a-week villain, or else they posted their complaints in the gallery and spent each day surviving by inches, unable to quite die.
[Title: Look at This Fucking Gallery Right Now]
Author: Anonymous
[image of a frog trembling with a knife.jpg]
Is this a gallery or the shelter of super cowards, damn it?
No, I get that you’re unmotivated, but fuck, half the regular posts are just whining. What the hell, you bastards. Is this gallery your reunion spot? Let’s have some productive discussion for once. Decent posts are getting buried under complaint spam, for Christ’s sake.
— That’s a solid post.
— Honestly, it is fucking annoying. At the start of this disaster they should’ve just [Deleted User] themselves, so why are they still hanging around and taking over the gallery now? I don’t get it, yep.
— ???: Reality is outside the gallery.
— Seriously, shouldn’t we burn it down once? I thought things had quieted down after they got hit by natural selection once before, but somehow they kept multiplying and were now trying to swallow the gallery whole again. It was outrageous beyond words.
And such a climate inevitably bred rebellion.
Yeah, sure, life was harsh and hopeless and miserable and made you feel like dying—but so what?
They were no longer ordinary citizens like on Earth. They were, however small the zone, the highest administrators of that zone. If it was hard to eat and there was nothing fun to do, that was your own fault. You couldn’t blame others for it.
[Title: Honestly, There Are Way Too Many Fake Old-Timers.]
Author: ShiningBlack
[image of a cityscape with the lights on late into the night and crowds filling the streets.jpg]
[A scene showing a population surpassing 50,000]
Just because you’ve got a long playtime and are good at managing the zone doesn’t make you an old-timer, does it? This is reality now. We need to look at it realistically. I can’t even do a no-death run, but I’m still carving out a decent small city and managing it like my life depends on it.
But what are those bastards doing? Aren’t they the ones who do the bare minimum and just loaf around in bed? Listening to their whining only goes so far. Who doesn’t know they’re just in there socializing among themselves, calling me trash and themselves recyclable trash? That kind of shit is obvious.
You’re the sovereign, for fuck’s sake. Get up, turn off the gallery, and work!!!
— A true hero...!
— Hey, look at how clean that cityscape is. This is prime material for the number-one recruit in the city development corporation.
— As expected, facts are a shining dark-skinned dude, lol.
— Fuck, lol, I had no idea what that meant until now, lol.
— No way, are you insane or what, lol.
— A good smackdown is truly the mark of a great person.
And this time, Huihyeon had no intention of staying neutral either. In plain terms, those whiners were... mentally ill.
Not in the figurative sense, either—he meant it literally. From the beginning, he knew that the situation the players had been thrown into was enough to drive even a normal, healthy person mad within a matter of months.
And so the gallery began to burn.
*
“So, for the time being, stop sending refugees.”
— Couldn’t you just accept the refugees we’re already holding onto?
“How many are there?”
— Around 1,200, sir.
“Good. Send only those, and tell them we won’t be taking in any refugees for the next month.”
— Understood. Ah, and the pigs, sheep, cows, ducks, tilapia, and trout you bought last time will arrive in separate shipments.
“What about the spinach, chives, tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano, buckwheat, mustard, and coffee I requested?”
— Those will be the very first to arrive.
Of course, Huihyeon didn’t go back into the gallery after throwing a match into the complaints and logging out again. He wasn’t some miserable bastard confusing reality with the gallery.
While everyone else was busy finding a sense of belonging in some useless cyber world, Huihyeon—the real-world kind of guy—was temporarily halting refugee intake and preparing a full-scale overhaul of the food facilities, so he could fundamentally overturn the recurring situation where consumption kept outrunning production.
“System.”
[Yes.]
“How many food production facilities are there right now?”
[Counting: 30 greenhouses. 120 aquaponics facilities.]
“Expand the greenhouses to 120 and the aquaponics facilities to 360. We need to make clusters. Move the livestock facilities, and add new barns for pigs, sheep, and cattle. Make the separation between plant-based and animal-based complexes absolutely clear.”
[The order has been reserved.]
“And from now on, all facilities will use a minimum of LV5 as the standard. Don’t build anything below LV5.”
[The order has been inscribed. Apply this standard to reserved orders as well?]
“Of course. Let’s get started.”
[Estimated time: 23 days 11 hours 23 minutes.]
“Good.”
Now it was time to crank food production up exponentially in earnest. Rather than keep spending drones in a fixed drip through endless facility construction, it was better to build and upgrade everything at once over the course of a month.
Of course, he could only offer the citizens, who would have to keep chewing through stockpiled combat rations in the meantime, a thin and miserable apology. But all of this was unavoidable if they wanted a prosperous isolation zone.
Once this food cluster was complete, the isolation zone would become a place with so much food that not fifty thousand, but even five hundred thousand people could be fed there without breaking a sweat.
At that point, they could supply food to cities across the World Union, which was just another way of saying they’d be able to rake in heaps of precious, precious Tokens.
“Idiots... There’s so much to do, and they’re wasting time on the gallery.”
Huihyeon lay on his bed, checking the isolation zone’s various parameters through a data window, and sneered at the gallery’s situation as if it were already burning like a pile of dry kindling.
Let the gallery burn. Wouldn’t it be enough just not to use the gallery at all?
It might seem surprising, but one of the conditions for being a healthy, strong young man was not feeling a sense of belonging to internet communities and social media.
The moment you started feeling attached to an anonymous site, weren’t you ultimately proving that your own value was lower than even your own name?