Thank You for Your Service
By now, there was one question that always seemed to surface.
What was it?
It was this:
Writer: KimchiWarrior
I’ve kept it hidden so far, just in case something happens.
[Recommended: 641 / Not Recommended: 12]
That was how it turned out.
“Shouldn’t we just tell them we’re possession hosts?”
And as the posts above showed, of course they could. It wasn’t like saying it would get them killed on the spot. In fact, early on, plenty of players had already gotten in touch with the World Union and gone, sob sob... please... save me T_T, explaining their injustice and their special circumstances...
“So you’ve already experienced our world from some other world several times, or at least know how to operate the quarantine zone interface, and even if you didn’t do that, you still made a reservation to enter our collapsing world of your own free will?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“And now you’re even running your quarantine zone so stably that you’ve already built a hyperwave communications system?”
“No, that was only the things I absolutely had to build—!”
“And you even know the list of essential facilities and their importance, and you’ve put that knowledge into practice so well that you’re capable of independently contacting the World Union International Command?”
“No, I—! The Gallery! I got help from the Gallery! I’m just a thinking potato, okay!”
“And you even have a supersized wireless network built into your skull that’s immune to spore infection, allowing you to leverage big data and collective intelligence?”
“....”
“thank for your service.”
“No...!! Stop...!!!”
[The connection has been terminated.]
...That was how it ended up.
From the perspective of the World Union International Command, they had no intention of letting go of the players who were, in the words of that one guy, the very definition of “brand-new hires with experience.”
The possession hosts hadn’t sided with the BTs and started tossing spore bombs around. They had simply, quietly—though that varied from person to person—kept rerunning the save, over and over, to turn a quarantined zone into a proper survival city. From the World Union International Command’s perspective, they were basically volunteers signing up for long-term service.
Writer: WhyNot
The Earth return the guys wanted!!!! The kind of irresponsibility you can only feel through a monitor and keyboard!!!! There’s no such thing, man!!!
[Wild frogs freaking out.MP4]
You’re absolutely not going back, man!!!! lololol
[Recommended: 12,143 / Not Recommended: 2]
Yes, that was right.
The players could not return. They had not been let go, and there was no way back.
And when you gathered that all together, what did it become?
Writer: GimmeYoDopamine
[An assortment of indescribably vile images.JPG]
Let’s all just die together.
What the hell can you even do to me?! At worst you can report me and get me suspended for 30 days, can’t you?!
When the first day of every month dawns, look toward the Gallery at sunrise!!!!
I’ll always come baaaack!!!!
[Recommended: 0 / Not Recommended: 32,312]
That was how he became the Gallery’s favorite garbage-posting user—just some lovable no-name asshole cranking out trash like this. At least that troll didn’t dump his stress on the survivors beneath him, so you could call that a shred of conscience, but the other players were survivors too, so in the end it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.
*
[Rocket landing in progress.]
“At last, it begins again... the refugee bombing.”
And then, on October 1, 2053.
Hwi-hyun let out a long sigh as he watched the refugees starting to pour into Roseberry once more. It wasn’t that he didn’t need them. By now, the city had the infrastructure to withstand a sudden population explosion.
— Heh heh heh. I trust you’ve been well, Your Excellency.—
And as he watched the first wave of refugees being led somewhere under the Military Police’s control, a smiling civil servant from the civilized side of things sent a communication his way.
“Yeah. There definitely weren’t any refugees before, but the workload doubled, so I’m even more tired now.”
— We’ve also been watching satellite images, and your zone has developed quite splendidly, Your Excellency. So we’ve been packing the refugees in nice and tight and shipping them to you by rocket.—
Was it really okay to pack people in like that? In this world, that question was a luxury.
Anyway, what they meant underneath it all was, “You’ve improved a lot over the past month. So you can handle the refugees that piled up over that month, right?”
“...”
— We’ll be sending in one hundred thousand refugees over the next week, so please take care of them.—
“You son of a—”
[The connection has ended.]
If you cut the connection before you get cursed out, you won’t get cursed out. A simple, rational solution. That was what a command minister was: a position where you could be treated like a super-underling, but never, ever the superior. You got deference, but you were still lower in the absolute order of priority. After all, quarantine zones were a kind of outpost, a kind of colony, and not a safe zone behind the blockade line.
But as the phrase “super-underling” suggested, each command minister was basically a military governor, so if things really rubbed him the wrong way, he could pick a fight outright.
He had plenty of methods, too. If he wanted, he could even start actively engaging with the World Union by sending rockets their way. Or send missiles instead. Or send live BTs....
Of course, if he did that, the penalties would be enormous, so among users the proper way was to keep friction with the World Union to a minimum—farm the achievements, then reload the save.
[Rocket approach detected. Detected at 3 hours out. 6 hours out. 9 hours out. 12 hours out.]
“Those crazy bastards. They’re not even giving me time to breathe. Should I just launch missiles at them for real?”
[That statement may be detrimental to Command Minister Hwi-hyun.]
“It’s a joke, a joke. Anyway. The infrastructure’s all laid out now, so I guess I’ve done everything I can.”
After saying that, Hwi-hyun stretched, then lay back down on the bed and, for the first time in ages, logged into the Gallery.
“Now then... let’s see how badly the Gallery burned down.”
He grinned as he entered the Gallery. But what greeted him wasn’t the usual WWE chaos—no, this was a full-on UFC.
[This user is blocked for 30 days. Reason: repeated reports. Unblock date: October 4, 2053.]
“Wh... what?”
Since when... had he thought he was allowed to browse the Gallery? The Gallery was... only for users who hadn’t been blocked...
The rules of the Gallery were like that.
He had never imagined he’d get rosied into a suspension like this, and his mental state shattered on the spot.
“No... why!? Why the hell...?!”
If he couldn’t open the Gallery, he couldn’t ask questions. But he was already blocked, so he couldn’t open the Gallery. And yet his mouth was still working, which meant he had no choice but to scream.
The rules of the world were like that.
[You currently have a visit request pending: Colonel Jeremy.]
And so, having had his rest—his “Gallery time”—stripped away, Lee Hwi-hyun could only swallow his tears and accept Colonel Jeremy’s visitation request, deal with a mountain of miscellaneous administrative work, and keep issuing facility upgrade orders and new construction orders as the dynamic labor continued.
The rockets arriving every three hours didn’t care one bit about his mood and kept vomiting out refugees, while the population of the Roseberry Quarantine Zone continued to climb, almost in inverse proportion to his own rising irritation.
But Lee Hwi-hyun, blocked from the Gallery, could do nothing at all. All he could do was sit there helplessly, forced into endless labor until the suspension was lifted.
Command Minister Lee Hwi-hyun.
Always. Thank For Your Service.
---
REMINDER: All system notifications, comments, letters, status windows, and special in-universe content MUST use styled
blocks with inline CSS from the templates. Never output them as plain
text.