The Past of Shelter 100

Shelter 100, Level B40. The squad led by I'm the Darkest finally pushed through the mountain of obstacles and metabolic excreta, arriving at the cleanroom warehouse where the black boxes were stored. Seeing the mission coordinates right before their eyes on the map, all the players let out a collective sigh of relief. This straight-line distance of less than two hundred meters had felt longer than a one-kilometer cross-country trek, especially with those bugs darting out from the shadows every now and then to test their sanity. "I'm opening the door." Leaning against one side of the warehouse entrance, I'm the Darkest gave a hand sign to the teammate on the opposite side, then punched the mechanical button for manual hatch release. With a sharp hiss of escaping air, a dry draft blew out through the opening, scattering the dust clinging to the seam. Several gun barrels were instantly shoved inside. Flashlight beams swept rapidly across every corner of the pitch-black room. Once he confirmed there was no threat, a hint of surprise crossed I'm the Darkest's face. He had expected heavy defenses, bracing himself for a grueling battle, yet the reality was the exact opposite of what he had imagined. Trailing behind the group, Bell teased unceremoniously, "Positive pressure sealing is standard specification for any cleanroom workshop. I would have thought you'd realize the moment that draft blew out that nothing filthy could ever have gotten in here." With that, it crawled inside on its own, operating the spider robot to extend a leg and click a switch on the inner wall. White light illuminated the entire chamber. I'm the Darkest clicked off his tactical flashlight in slight embarrassment and lowered his muzzle. Strange... Where had that inexplicable sense of unease come from earlier? However, that odd feeling did not linger long. Almost instantly, it was replaced by surging delight. There, within the vast warehouse beside the freight elevator, square black boxes of varying sizes stood in plain sight. Seeing them, green glints flashed in the eyes of the players behind I'm the Darkest, and exclamations of amazement erupted one after another. "Holy shit! One, two, three... twenty-nine?!" "Awesome!" While the current version didn't allow players to privately own black boxes, every time a new one was recovered, all players across the entire server benefited. Everything novel produced by black boxes could be purchased with silver coins, and items already available would become cheaper or have lower purchase requirements thanks to the newly unlocked units. Even setting aside the impact on the Alliance's overall strength, individual players received generous rewards of silver coins and contribution points for recovering black boxes. The only uncertainty now was how many of these black boxes were still functional. At its peak, Shelter 100's population had surpassed eighty thousand, consuming resources on par with an ordinary settlement. While a cleanroom environment and professionally trained operators could extend a black box's service life, no black box lasted forever. I'm the Darkest could only pray that Shelter 100's residents hadn't completely worn out these pre-war treasures. Otherwise, there'd be nothing left for them to run into the ground! Leaving five teammates to guard the entrance, I'm the Darkest led the remaining four into the warehouse, using the translator on his VM to identify the functions of the black boxes. Even without a translator, it wouldn't have been a problem. The black boxes were designed on the assumption that their operators might be entirely illiterate; even an unlettered gorilla could follow the illustrated diagrams printed on them to put them to proper use. After a thorough inspection of all twenty-nine black boxes, twenty-two were still operational. To their pleasant surprise, the broken ones were merely cheap, replaceable minor items like luminous ceiling panels and ventilation system filter cores. The truly valuable heavy hitters had almost all survived. Among them, what thrilled the players most were undeniably the black boxes that manufactured the Type 5 "Light Cavalry" and Type 6 "Heavy Cavalry" exoskeletons! Both sets of police equipment were not only stylish in design but also boasted exceptional overall performance. While not suited for high-intensity battlefields, that was hardly an issue—just weld a steel plate over the chest and they were good to go! Due to their numerous merits, both sets of equipment had always been limited in availability, with only a small number released during each version update. Currently, the Enlightenment Society was the only faction across the entire wasteland that fielded these two pre-war models on a large scale. I'm the Darkest still remembered that battle in the Great Desert, where the Alliance had captured two hundred Type 5 sets from the Enlightenment Society, delighting the Administrator to no end. If they brought these two black boxes back, wouldn't their favorability with the faction boss shoot straight through the roof?! Let's see who dares call me bad luck after this! Yet the greatest surprise wasn't even the black boxes for the Type 5 and Type 6 exoskeletons, but rather the two massive machines sitting closest to the freight elevator. One produced a high-thrust plasma engine capable of fifty tons of thrust, and the other produced aviation-grade metallic hydrogen batteries with a hydrogen storage capacity of up to ten tons! Finally grasping the functions of these two black boxes, I'm the Darkest beamed and muttered to himself, "Holy crap! This'll really blow Brother Mosquito's mind!" The Alliance had previously recovered the technology for large aircraft from the wreckage of the Enterprise's Orca transport, yet they still hadn't fully digested it. Even after absorbing engineers from Boulder Military Industries, the generational technology gap remained daunting. Under Boulder Military Industries' manufacturing capabilities, a single plasma engine provided a maximum thrust of only around five tons, on par with helicopter rotors from before the Era of Prosperity. As for large aircraft like the Orca transport with a takeoff weight exceeding a hundred tons, one could forget about it—powering it with plasma engines produced by Boulder Military Industries would require stringing twenty of them together! Now, with these two black boxes and the electronic control system recovered from the Orca transport, the Alliance could at least piece together a large plasma aircraft of its own! Without exaggeration, this was the Alliance's most lucrative excavation of pre-war ruins since Shelter 79! "These two black boxes have hardly been used. After all, engines and batteries of this scale had no place in a shelter, nor were there enough surplus materials. My master once optimistically believed that when future humans pried open this coffin, they'd collect them as antiques. But by the look of it... you really weren't joking. Not only do you lack a hundred colony worlds, you haven't even flown past the atmosphere." Seeing I'm the Darkest's starstruck expression, Bell strolled over beside him and delivered a leisurely gibe. Yet I'm the Darkest took no offense at all. Instead, he gave a dry chuckle and shot back, "And what about you lot? You couldn't even leave your front door." Bell clattered in metallic laughter. "That's hard to say." Catching that eerie tone, I'm the Darkest grew slightly wary. "What do you mean?" Unbothered by his wary look, Bell spoke languidly like someone telling a story. "Didn't you say earlier that you saw Crunchers outside? The ones you call ghost-face bugs. That proves they succeeded in the end. Hahaha, what a persevering bunch. No wonder my master admired them so much." Bell seemed to be in a cheerful mood—if such a thing as emotion existed in an AI. I'm the Darkest was taken aback. "Succeeded... what do you mean?" "Exactly what it sounds like," Bell chuckled breezily. "Though they never opened the shelter's blast door, they still succeeded in escaping this prison. What a pity my master has passed away; otherwise, he'd be laughing right along with me." They hadn't opened the shelter's blast door. Yet they had escaped the shelter? I'm the Darkest stared in bewilderment at Bell, whose laughter sounded like grinding metal. Could there be another exit to this shelter? "Is that even possible?" "Why would you even ask that?" Bell chuckled. "They lived in this shelter for over fifty years! Most of them were born right here! They knew every light bulb and every screw. Anyone who could read could recite the shelter's regulations backward... For people like that, finding a loophole in this shelter was easier than breathing." I'm the Darkest was struck dumb. He had assumed a shelter's defenses were absolute, but on second thought, defense and destruction were relative concepts. How could anything in this world be truly indestructible? Even a wall capable of withstanding nuclear strikes could be chiseled through given ten thousand years with an awl. What was more, the people here wielded a weapon far sharper than an awl—knowledge. All of a sudden, realization dawned on him. His Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily, and the hand gripping his rifle gave a faint tremor. "Are you saying those bugs are...?" "If the cell window isn't big enough, saw off your arms. If sawing off your arms isn't enough, just push your head through... The ventilation system? What a 'brilliant' idea." Bell clicked its tongue twice and went on, yet that metallic voice, which had sounded breezy just a second ago, now carried a faint note of loneliness. Or perhaps regret. Listening to its monologue, I'm the Darkest understood everything. Why this fellow had dodged the question and changed the subject when he had asked earlier where all the people had gone... To escape this cage. After outfitting the Crunchers with weapons, they had turned themselves into Crunchers as well. Through relentless effort, they drilled a crevice through the shelter's ventilation system just wide enough to slip through, ultimately staging a successful breakout. They had left this shelter many years ago. The ghost-face bugs roaming outside the shelter were the living proof. Though whether they could still be called "people," and how much of those residents' souls remained within them, was hard to say. At least among the bugs I'm the Darkest had encountered outside, none looked like nuclear engineers or biologists. Recalling the honeycomb tower in the central lightwell formed from molted carapaces, I'm the Darkest forced out a question. "So... did the majority of the shelter's residents win that past conflict?" "Win?" Seeming puzzled by the word, Bell turned its round body to look at him. "Do you think anyone won?" I'm the Darkest took a deep breath and rephrased his question. "Then... what about the Overseers here? Where did they go?" Bell gave a small chuckle and said offhandedly, "Ah, them. Aside from my master, all the Overseers who survived that catastrophe returned to the embrace of the Tree. I never saw them again afterward. Perhaps they're still on some circuit board reminiscing about the past, or perhaps they left this place just like the bugs. Who knows? I'm only a museum tour guide." I'm the Darkest stared blankly at it. "The embrace of the Tree?" Bell replied with a teasing scoff, "Indeed. They believed they came from the Great Tree and should be buried beneath its roots... That might be a bit hard for you to understand. In short, they uploaded their minds into the shelter's server, cast off their physical flesh, and merged with this shelter forever. "Though my master didn't think they succeeded. In his view, they looked more like people committing collective suicide out of guilt after leaving behind a memory record. He, on the other hand, chose to end his life the human way." At this point, Bell opened the floodgates of conversation, recounting everything that had transpired more than a century ago. Due to resource scarcity and unequal distribution, tensions between the Tree People and the Worker Ants had simmered for a long time. Even though the standard of living for both sides steadily declined, the Tree People, serving as part of the Tree's sensor modules, saw their living conditions deteriorate at a slightly slower pace. The fuse of the crisis was the climate recovery event in Year 50 of the Wasteland Era. Just five years after the Post-War Reconstruction Committee dissolved, signs of climate recovery gradually emerged on the wasteland. Driven by enthusiasm for rebuilding the wasteland and longing for a better life, the residents of Shelter 100 revived ideological currents from the Era of Prosperity. While preparing to return to the surface, they formed autonomous occupational committees of workers and engineers, intending to bid farewell to the past upon emerging and bury everything from Shelter 100 in a coffin six feet under. Yet the sixty-three-year mandate had not yet expired, and the Worker Ants' actions terrified the Tree People. The Tree People had spent their entire lives meticulously pruning the branches of this Great Tree, fulfilling their duty as guardians of order, plugging the antholes the Worker Ants bored into the trunk. Even though the tree's ultimate collapse had been pre-programmed from the very beginning—it was meant to conclude the shelter's mission once its sheltering duty was fulfilled, transforming into a vertical foundry shaft to lay another brick for the rebirth of human civilization—the Tree People did not want their mission to collapse along with the Great Tree. They attempted to sound out the Worker Ants, hoping that out of gratitude for the Tree's tireless service over all those years, they would keep it intact. It wasn't difficult; any man-made rule had loopholes, easily found with enough patience. Initiating the dome's self-destruction program required a specific condition: the shelter's detectable population had to remain below a daily average of five thousand for 180 consecutive days, or below three thousand within a 24-hour period. Only under those conditions would the Great Tree judge that the residents of Shelter 100 no longer required its guidance, that they were capable of surviving outside its sensors, and it would use its remaining resources to see its children off on their final leg. Yet this rule could just as easily be exploited in reverse. As long as the Worker Ants stayed behind with them, ensuring that at least five thousand people continued living in Shelter 100 to make the shelter believe its children still needed it, the Tree would never leave them. However, this plea—which reeked of a command—was mercilessly rejected by the jubilant Worker Ants. Nearly every autonomous committee refused to even speak with the Tree People on the matter. That was only natural. The Worker Ants had endured the Tree's cold, callous orders for far too long. Even if they understood in their hearts that such discipline had been necessary for survival, they saw zero reason to preserve it once it was no longer needed. Let it reach a natural death alongside this shelter. Becoming a foundry shaft was part of its destiny all along. A shelter was never meant to be the end point of human civilization; the ultimate fate of any shelter was to be dismantled as raw material for reconstruction. As for the Tree People, if they were so loath to part with it, they could go down with it. Perhaps the Worker Ants' uncompromising stance made the Tree People fear an impending reckoning. The Tree People began meddling with the spontaneous organizations formed by the Worker Ants, including but not limited to cutting off water, electricity, and supplies, and making every possible trouble for their activities within the boundaries permitted by the regulations. Though the friction grew fiercer by the day, both sides remained relatively restrained up to that point. What truly ignited the fuse was an incident outside the shelter. In Year 52 of the Wasteland Era, after two years of climate recovery, the frozen expanse of Xizhou Lake thawed sooner than Shelter 100's blast door would open. Melting snow and rising lake waters flooded into the abandoned urban district of Xizhou City, spilling even into the underground transit tunnels. The high-spirited Worker Ants felt a prick of dread. While climate recovery was a joyous development, if surface ice sheets and snowbanks kept melting at this rate, their shelter might end up submerged in water well before Year 60 of the Wasteland Era. Some believed they should open the doors immediately, letting at least a detachment out to reinforce the areas at risk of flooding. Yet the residents' desires alone were useless; the Tree People had to relay this demand to the shelter's administrator—the AI known as Tree. The Tree People naturally had no intention of doing so. Rather than terrifying them, the lake water flooding the tunnels brought unbridled joy to their furrowed brows. Even though a faction of Overseers believed they ought to cooperate with the residents and plug the glaring breach that anyone with eyes could see, the majority of Overseers acted strictly in their own self-interest—downplaying the crisis that could submerge the shelter into a trifling drizzle. As long as they convinced Tree that its creators had already accounted for the possibility of Xizhou Lake flooding into the tunnels, and that no superfluous additions were needed for rules that were already flawless, the AI would proceed with its original plan according to established protocols. They could even exploit this in reverse, tricking Tree into misjudging that the pace of climate recovery exceeded expectations, thus prompting it to make erroneous decisions based on faulty feedback and extend the lockdown period further. Thus, sixty-three years became seventy. Though a mere seven years, for the first-generation residents who were already in their nineties, it meant their funerals would be held inside the shelter, and they might never see the gear-shaped blast door swing open. And for the shelter's young adults, those seven years meant their prime would be squandered within these walls; all their life plans and preparations to rebuild the wasteland would go up in smoke. For eighty thousand people, the shelter was far too cramped, and Shelter 100's living space was already congested to the limit. The slightest spark of emotion could ignite the powder keg. The first riot erupted soon after, ending with the deaths of 879 ordinary residents and 37 Overseers. The blood brought everyone to a temporary standstill. Every corpse was fed into nutrient recycling units, converted into fertilizer and nutrients for the ecological cycle. While residents who died of natural causes had always been processed by the shelter's ecological recycling system, this was unquestionably the largest batch at one time. So much so that the majority, who had previously preferred not to know, were forced to confront where their food came from. Later, rumors spread that the bodies of Overseers had not been sent into nutrient recycling units, but secretly cremated by their families. No matter how vehemently the Tree People denied it, words had lost all meaning. In an escalation everyone could foresee, the rift between Tree People and Worker Ants widened further. In Year 56 of the Wasteland Era, with the lake water almost submerging the shelter's entrance and the Tree People scheming to drown the shelter beneath the waters forever, the second organized rebellion broke out. Engineers at the biological research station spent three years modifying the Crunchers' genome, while farm staff deliberately broke protocol to release them, drawing the Tree People's attention. While the Tree People scrambled frantically to exterminate the bugs, virtually every workshop across the shelter launched an uprising at the same moment. Because this struggle involved vast amounts of mechanized equipment and even biological weapons, the aftermath of the upheaval exceeded all expectations. Over seventy-seven thousand people went missing or died during the chaos, including 645 Overseers. Only 111 Overseers survived in the end, among them Bell's master—the Overseer named Craig. The battle between the two sides had not been limited to shootouts and grappling in heavy engineering equipment; it also encompassed a range of rule-based weapons. For instance, during the fighting, the Tree People tried to leverage the Tree's power to flood densely populated Worker Ant living quarters with sleeping gas to quell the riot. Yet their plot was uncovered beforehand by Worker Ants servicing the exhaust ducts. Tricking the living quarters' air quality monitors with a few milligrams of ozone, they automatically triggered the shelter's ventilation system, flushing the gas out onto the wasteland. Facing the brink of utter despair, the Worker Ants likewise sought to wield the power of the rules. They moved a group of residents into cold storage facilities meant for food, attempting to fool the shelter's life-sign sensors and satisfy the dome's self-destruction condition of "fewer than three thousand residents in the shelter within 24 hours" without setting foot outside, thereby blowing off the shelter's roof. However, their scheme was quickly detected by the Tree People. Watching the detectable life signs plummet at an unthinkable rate, the Tree People frantically pulled the plug—exploiting an ancient, unpatched vulnerability to deliberately overload and shut down the shelter's fusion reactor. The designers of Shelter 100 likely never imagined that people more than fifty years later would take things to such extremes. Yet thanks to this trump card, Shelter 100 avoided turning into a water reservoir in Year 56 of the Wasteland Era. However, cutting the power was precisely what condemned over fifty thousand residents who had survived the fighting to freeze to death inside the cold storage units. With fewer than three thousand residents surviving in the entire shelter, the Tree People could not restart the reactor; doing so would trigger the complete collapse of the shelter within 24 hours. Nor could the survivors rapidly reproduce to five thousand within 180 days; even if they cast all ethics and morals aside for survival, a newborn still required ten months of gestation. Not to mention that the chemical batteries were barely sufficient to keep the ventilation system running, while the Crunchers spreading throughout the shelter were devouring their few remaining resources. Just as Bell had said, no one won this war; in fact, it had never truly ended. Having suffered catastrophic losses, the Tree People abandoned all reconciliation with the Worker Ants, and the Worker Ants harbored no illusions that the Tree People would sacrifice themselves to help them. Both sides stayed within their controlled sectors, maintaining an armistice in dead silence, licking their wounds and waiting for the other to draw their last breath. Until Year 61 of the Wasteland Era, when the final human life sign in the shelter vanished, leaving the shelter entirely to the world of the Crunchers. And that final life sign was Craig. Bell's master. "...My master entrusted me to deliver this absurd memory to you who have entered the interstellar age, hoping it might be of use. Never, ever foolishly believe that handing problems you can't resolve yourselves over to an AI will make everything right. But alas, you haven't entered the interstellar age, so it appears quite useless." "So... some of the residents here turned themselves into bugs, and the others turned themselves into data?" Standing next to I'm the Darkest, Catching Ghosts at Graves, still reeling from the tale, couldn't help but complain, "How is this a prison? It's a damn asylum!" I'm the Darkest nodded in profound agreement. He thought the same. Everyone here had gone mad. The Overseers disparagingly called the residents "Worker Ants," while those Worker Ants called them "Tree People." To keep the shelter running forever, the Tree People had gone to extreme lengths to buy time for the floodwaters at the front door; and just to catch a glimpse of the world outside, the Worker Ants hadn't hesitated to turn themselves into actual insects, tearing to shreds a future that could have been borne with a little more patience. They had picked every single lunatic option available, leaving not a single intact human being to walk out of this shelter. Just then, a piercing alarm blared outside the warehouse, snapping I'm the Darkest abruptly back to reality. "What's happening?!" Looking at the startled crowd, Bell spoke with nonchalant detachment. "That alarm sounds rather familiar. Seems like it happened before... Ah, I remember now. I think I told you earlier, to foil the Worker Ants' plan, the Tree People shut down the fusion reactor. Didn't you turn it back on? The life-monitoring program and dome self-destruction sequence probably resumed. Nothing to worry about." Hearing this, I'm the Darkest's face turned pale green. *Nothing to worry about, my ass...* This wasn't a century ago! A self-destruction sequence that, back then, had been timed to drop the superstructure into the lightwell—who the hell knew what kind of damage it would cause a hundred-odd years later! If nothing else, that tower the ghost-face bugs had built in the lightwell might collapse with the cascading earth and bury them alive! "Then why didn't anything happen when the reactor first fired up?" Catching Ghosts at Graves immediately caught the flaw in the logic, staring anxiously at Bell. Bell merely chuckled, still bearing that detached air. "What's so strange about that? Once the Tree's mission ended, you gained administrative control over the shelter. Aborting the dome self-destruction sequence with Administrator privileges isn't hard at all—it's as simple as pushing open the shelter door." I'm the Darkest was dumbfounded. "Wait. If control of the shelter has already been handed over to us, why would the self-destruction sequence trigger now?" Bell looked at him with amusement. "Perhaps your superior wants to silence you? Haha, though that's rather unlikely. I'm more inclined to believe you triggered some unpatched bug in this bug-ridden pile of spaghetti code, causing certain settings to roll back to before the rules were altered. That was a favorite trick during the fighting between the Tree People and the Worker Ants—they often needed to blindfold the Tree when settling personal scores." I'm the Darkest immediately ruled out his own squad—after all, they had merely touched a few black boxes. Then it hit him: Ten-Punch Superman, who had speedrun through the Administrator's office on Level B51 and rushed off without stopping to do a side quest on B100. Daring not delay for a single second, he slapped a hand onto his helmet and roared into the comms channel: "Brother Chao! What's your status over there? Brother Chao?!" Static hissed across the comms channel. Not a whisper of a reply! His expression shifting slightly, I'm the Darkest shot a glance at Catching Ghosts at Graves beside him. "I'm logging off for a sec!" "OK." Catching Ghosts at Graves immediately understood his intention and flashed an acknowledging gesture. Without wasting any time, I'm the Darkest clicked his rifle safety on, leaned it against the wall, lay down on the floor, closed his eyes, and logged straight off. Watching this fellow yelling into his communicator one second and dropping onto the floor to fall instantly asleep the next, Bell circled him twice in astonishment. "Impressive. You can fall asleep just like that?" Having already logged off, I'm the Darkest naturally had no response and paid no heed to its words. Looking at the bewildered AI, Catching Ghosts at Graves, who was standing guard nearby, chuckled softly. "That's nothing. Just standard gamer operating procedure."