I'm Losing My Mind
The commander-general has been entrusted with the authority of the isolation zone. Time: 2053-1-15
"Hah... hah..."
Hyun just sat there on the bed, trying to sort out his thoughts.
He’d turned off the gallery window for now. New posts were still pouring in, nonstop, but they didn’t seem like they’d help him judge the situation. That was the thing about galleries, wasn’t it?
"Okay... no, not okay. Holy fuck. What the hell is going on?"
Hyun actually understood the basics. He knew he’d ended up inside Quarantine City—the game—or some otherworldly version of it built on that game’s setting. But understanding something and accepting it were completely different things.
Even so, remembering what he’d heard earlier—that the emergency power grid had seventy-two hours left—he opened the control system.
Control System.
Displaying current isolation zone information.
The window that appeared in his field of vision showed the current information about the isolation zone. Back in the game, it had been used to check which sector’s durability was low, whether production was running smoothly, whether the power grid was properly connected.
And to Hyun—who was at least not a beginner, not some total newbie in Quarantine City—the current situation looked very, very bad.
"What the hell? The outer wall's been breached?"
Correct. Due to the massive infected assault two months ago, the isolation zone is currently operating at only 12% of its pre-attack efficiency.
"It was already... breached?"
Correct. And the moment the power grid goes out, efficiency will plunge to 3%.
"Fuck!"
Hyun shot to his feet. The moment the power grid went down, it was basically the same as dying. As for the gallery, who knew what would happen to it? At the very least, though, the control system needed electricity to function.
"Hoo... what's the current state of the grid? Is it physically wrecked?"
Checking: substation failure due to overload on the main generator. Main power line short-circuit. Internal equipment performance degraded.
"Ah."
Just from that, Hyun immediately understood why the generator had gone down.
They’d kept the electric fences running non-stop to hold back the infected, and in the end the grid had been pushed beyond its limit. Hyun had seen plenty of districts get wrecked the exact same way after failing to survive the opening rush—because he’d done it himself a few times, too.
"First of all... there aren’t any infected nearby, right?"
Yes. No infected signatures have been detected within a 12-kilometer radius.
"Ping the spare-parts warehouse. I need to fix the power grid first. And there aren't any other people besides me?"
None at present. However, if the power grid is stabilized, the outer wall restored, and the contamination inside removed, a signal can be emitted to gather nearby survivor groups.
"I see... got it."
There was no reason to delay any longer.
Hyun rushed straight to the warehouse marked by the ping, grabbed the spare parts for the power plant—parts that looked exactly like the ones shown in the event window, so he recognized them immediately—replaced the main generator components, swapped out the fuses, and with the help of the control system, spent a full two days replacing the cables laid under the floor.
After that came the outer wall repairs. But once the power grid stabilized, the autonomous drones started fixing the wall on their own, so all Hyun really had to do was activate the purification function from administrator privileges and drive out the spore fog that had begun creeping through the isolation zone.
Three days passed like that.
*
"Damn it... what the hell kind of ordeal is this..."
Thank you for your hard work, Your Excellency, Commander-General. Basic power facilities and outer wall construction have been completed. The present isolation zone is now resistant to external threats.
"Well, that's awfully kind of you..."
Hyun dragged his aching, muscle-ridden body into the shower, washed off the dust and spores, changed into fresh clothes, and flopped back onto the bed. Before that, of course, he’d downed a protein shake to replace the nutrients he’d burned through.
He felt like he was adapting too fast, but if he looked at the absolute trash heap that was the isolation zone, then aching muscles were a lot better than sitting around whining on the gallery.
"Control system."
Yes.
"Deploy all available drones to interior cleanup. I don't want to be working while staring at corpses tomorrow, either."
Understood.
"Huuuuu..."
He could feel his strength draining away little by little, but Hyun turned on the gallery he’d put off for so long.
He had no idea how the hell it was still possible, but the gallery was really working, and posts were still coming in like crazy.
(truncated)
"Hah, seriously..."
It was a total madhouse. Back when it was just a game, people had laughed and joked around in the gallery. But now that it had become something you could actually feel in your own body, anyone who could keep their sanity would be the real oddball.
Hyun had only spent three days grinding away because half his mind was thinking, if I deal with the urgent stuff first, I’ll have time to think later. At heart, he was still just another survivor drowning in extreme confusion.
"...Should I write a post?"
The top posts were a mess of complaints and curses, but when he looked away from them and checked the regular board, there were posts from people who were at least trying to keep their heads on straight.
(Screenshot of the isolation zone)
I get that the situation’s fucked, but we still need to do what needs doing. You all heard the commander-general thing too, right? That basically means we’re kings inside this isolation zone. Get your heads on straight, stabilize your sectors first, then post whatever you want.
"...This is bad."
No wonder that post hadn’t made it to the top—it must have gotten drowned in downvote terrorism. Looking at the comments, too, every single one of them was completely trashed. It seemed most people still hadn’t managed to accept the abrupt change in circumstances, even after three days.
That didn’t mean he could just dismiss them all as troublemakers, either, so the moderators...
"Wait. Are the mods still even here?"
Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t see the report button. Which meant the mods were gone. That probably had something to do with the gallery’s complete transformation into a sea of whiners.
"If that’s the case, then the gallery might be meaningless anyway..."
In reality, the gallery had been half humor-sharing board, half information exchange. But now that it had become actual reality, it was being overrun by enraged guys who couldn’t accept the sudden shift and had lost their shit.
Just looking at how that sincere post about “pull yourselves together and try” had been completely buried under downvotes told him the gallery was going to keep spiraling for at least a few more days. Either way, that wasn’t good news for Hyun.
Surely they hadn’t all fallen into different worlds. That meant all those people were probably each holding down one isolation zone somewhere, and if they all got nasty ideas and rushed in trying to die together, things could go to hell.
Wasn’t it always in stories like this that, under extreme conditions, a person’s true nature finally came out?
"Still, is it really that bad?"
Even so, the gallery’s atmosphere was obviously too heated. Maybe it would’ve been understandable right after the drop. But three days had passed, and they were still wallowing in self-pity like this.
"Control system!"
Yes.
"How much food do we have left?"
Based on a population of 1, approximately 14 months’ worth remain.
"...Fourteen months..."
It might sound like a lot, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was nowhere near enough.
To put it simply, it was enough for one person to survive fourteen months. If you assumed one month’s worth of food was divided up among adult men, that only came to enough food for fourteen adult men for one month. More people were going to need to enter the isolation zone from here on out, too. With the stockpile they currently had, they’d barely manage to avoid outright starvation.
The moment he realized that, all traces of sleep vanished. Being killed by an infected—yeah, that would be disgusting as hell, but it was also the sort of thing you had to accept once you’d fallen into this world. Starving to death, though? That was a completely different story. It wasn’t just disgusting; it ran straight against the human survival instinct.
"Control system. Is there any way to produce food right now?"
Yes. The aquaponics facility is currently dormant. Would you like to activate it?
"Activate it immediately. As for manpower... have a drone manage it."
Understood. Activating the aquaponics facility.
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