Chapter 1. The Little Prince in The Ossuary (1)
# Initialize, Registration Number B612
In a dark place, within a black and weightless s.p.a.ce, a boy was curled up, floating as if he were in s.p.a.ce. It was a scene that could only possibly be seen inside a virtual reality. There, one could see the sunset a thousand four hundred and forty times within twenty-four hours. It was a fict.i.tious world that responded to the will of an individual. No other person could exist there.
Just at the boy"s arms reach, something was shining in the darkness. It was a square-shaped screen. The screen was showing the people whom the boy had to perform as—Toni Morrison, Sadako Ogata, Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler…
The boy had watched that screen for so long until everything was engraved in his head. With a heavy snowfall weighing on his heart, he could now easily imitate their words, their accents, and their gestures.
To be an actor, one had to study acting. Thinking of the days he"d spent trying to become adept in acting only made him feel dull and gloomy, but it was an effort that was needed in order to get the star. Only by getting ahold of the star would the rose not wither.
The rose may have thorns, but it was still beautiful. He didn"t want to see the end of a thing of beauty, even if holding it in his hands would cause him to bleed.
"The outside world always tries to turn me into someone that I"m not. I just want to be myself, at least here," the boy thought.
But he had no choice, so once again, the boy decided to tame himself. If he could sometimes make a compromise with his conscience, so that he could find some joy in it, perhaps it wouldn"t be that bad.
"Everything"s ready. It"s time to set off on a boring journey on my 27th attempt at this game."
And the moment the boy thought so, the virtual world of 「Days After Apocalypse」 unfolded in front of him, accompanied by a monologue from an artificial intelligence mimicking the boy"s own voice.
# Journal, Page 2, Camp Roberts
The origin of the apocalypse was China. A disease that turns human beings into some kind of non-human creatures emerged and engulfed the entirety of East Asia in just half a month. They gave this plague the name of「Morgellons」, and I heard it"s currently spreading all across Europe.
I used to be Korean—the reason I say "used to" is that there"s no longer a country I can go back to. I personally think that I was a lucky case because I was studying in America as an exchange student when the epidemic broke out. If not, I would"ve either become one of those walking corpses or been eaten alive by them.
The people who"d lost their countries were taken to refugee camps. I was no exception either. Due to the martial law, I could no longer stay with my host family, therefore, I was taken to Camp Roberts. I heard that it used to be the army base of the National Guard, and was now designated as the first refugee camp. It"s located about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The number of refugees has been increasing day by day. It"s been five months since I first came here and the refugee camp is starting to look more like a city than a camp now. They plan to move the rest of the people to Fort Hunter Liggett, another army base located about 50 kilometers northwest from here, once the population reaches the limit. Apparently, the second camp is surrounded by mountains, so people are saying it might be safer there.
The number of incidents reported has increased due to the increasing number of people in the camp. Some of the refugees have formed factions and began to rob supplies and rations from other refugees. I heard some of them even murder those who resist.
The names of these factions are very frightening. The names of「Heishehui」, the Chinese faction, and 「Sumiyoshi-kai」, the j.a.panese faction, were the names of crime syndicates that used to exist in their respective countries. Some say that the key figures in these factions are actually people from those syndicates.
But surprisingly, the U.S. Army hasn"t taken any measures yet. I mean, it"s not that I can"t understand why. There"s only a single battalion managing a whole camp full of refugees. Wouldn"t they need a middleman or something?
There"s been a rumor floating around the camp about factions bribing the U.S. army commander with s.e.xual favors. It must be true. Yesterday, I saw a man, one of the members of the 「Korean Patriotic Community」, dragging a woman into an obscure alley. She was crying for help. One of the American soldiers tried to stop the man when he witnessed the scene, but after the soldier talked to the man for a minute, the soldier just backed away with his brows creased.
One more thing about the treatment of refugees. According to CNN reports, approximately 60 percent of the world"s population must"ve been turned since the 「Morgellons Outbreak」. Experts say that we must be wary since morality can be quickly replaced by depravity in the face of the crisis that"s humanity"s extinction. I think the best place to witness that change is, sadly, Camp Roberts.
# Journal, Page 5, Camp Roberts
The majority of the refugees here are from countries in Asia and Oceania, and most of them are from China and Korea, countries that have bitter feelings towards the j.a.panese. And as expected, conflict arose between those nationalities. Lots of j.a.panese are ending up dead or wishing they could be. The largest j.a.panese faction, 「Sumiyoshi-kai」, is desperately fighting, but to no avail.
The U.S. military is still turning a blind eye. I noticed that quite a few soldiers creased their brows when they heard the news, but none of them stood up to do anything. I think they might"ve gotten orders from above.
The only thing the U.S. military did was to set up barbed-wire fences. The whole camp has been split into several different sections now, and they"ve put about 200 people of the same nationality in each section.
Though this kind of conflict has risen every once in a while, I"ve been able to stay relatively safe, helping the military as an interpreter. To my surprise, not many Korean refugees are able to speak English. It"s because most of the Koreans here are either those who became stranded in the U.S. while on a trip or those who urgently escaped Korea at the beginning of the Morgellons outbreak. It seems like the latter case is by far the most common.
Those who are fairly fluent in English, like me, are offered positions as middlemen. Those who"ve already taken the job say that they get a lot of benefits from it. What they like the most about it is that they get treated like actual human beings. The soldiers here don"t take refugees as humans. To them, they are more like livestock. But I can understand, it"s hard to maintain one"s humanity in such a hopeless situation.
「AI Advice (Lvl 4 Insight): You can either accept or reject the U.S. military"s offer of a role as a middleman. If you accept, you will gain the U.S. military"s favor, and there will be an upward revision to your reputation within the community. If you refuse, there will not be any foreseeable benefit, but there may be advantages or disadvantages which you cannot yet infer with your current abilities. If you want more detailed advice, you will need to upgrade the level of Insight.」
「Player"s Choice: Accept the offer.」
I can"t believe they offered me, someone underage, to be a middleman. At first, I told them that I might be too young for the job, but the U.S. military officer let out a laugh and said that age didn"t matter, giving me a full story about how the U.S. always gave preference to English speakers.
In the 1980s, the United States sought to support nationalist forces to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. The problem was that the CIA had no Arabic speakers at the time, so they didn"t know whom to provide support to. However, they found an Afghan national leader who could speak English, so, despite knowing his nasty character, they chose to provide the money to that leader, who later created the Taliban and screwed over the U.S.
After finishing the story, the military officer then forced me to take the job, saying I didn"t get a choice.
The area I"ve been a.s.signed to is the solar power plant located across Route 101, opposite to the base. Here, the panels need to be wiped regularly, and some new panels and transformers have to be installed whenever the camp gets more people. My job is to manage the Koreans who are sent to work here. One of my duties is to distribute rations. There"ve been a few adults several times older than me who"ve tried to please me. I get chills just by imagining what they might"ve been thinking behind those smiling faces.
Some factions have contacted me, telling me to join them. Reasonably thinking, it might be safer for me to join one of the factions because, as time goes by, more and more English speakers will appear, and I"m not sure I will be able to keep my job when that happens.
「AI Advice (Lvl 4 Insight): You may decide which faction to join. Based on the faction you join, you will be able to receive various benefits. However, be aware that joining a particular faction can also make you a target of another faction.」
「Player"s Choice: Do not join any of the factions.」
But I didn"t want to belong to any of them. On one occasion, the 「Korean Patriotic Community」 offered me a j.a.panese wh.o.r.e in exchange for joining their faction. To be honest, it was a disgusting offer. They seemed to have thought I was gauging them from their reaction when I refused the offer. The recruiter started shooting off his dirty mouth, suspecting that I was considering taking another faction"s offer and babbling about how I should think about the future of the Korean faction and so on. I was even asked if I liked men.
Maybe I"m just a fool who knows nothing about the ways of the world, but I just didn"t want to throw away my humanity.
# Journal, Page 11, Camp Roberts
We just got a report of an outbreak in San Francisco.
Due to the nature of the camp, being isolated from the outside world, the news is always a few days late. Judging by how fast the plague spread in Asia, the San Francis...o...b..y Area (the region spanning cities such as Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, etc.) might"ve turned into pandemonium by now, no matter how prepared they were.
As if to prove my thoughts true, several transport vehicles with refugees flooded into the camp the next dawn. There were people of several different races, but they were mostly white and black. They seemed to be survivors that managed to escape San Francisco.
Tension showed on the face of the soldiers. It was an obvious reaction as there might"ve been an infected one among the survivors.
A vaccine for Morgellons hasn"t been discovered yet. Once infected, there"s no way to stop it from turning a human into a monster. The refugees clamored to separate the survivors from themselves. But as if they were scared to get kicked out, the survivors decided to give up the place they were originally a.s.signed to, and instead, settled in a temporary tent camp located at the western part of the base, beyond the water tower.
Shortly after evening, when the rationing ended, I heard that some of the refugees were plotting to escape the camp.
「AI Advice (Lvl 4 Insight): You can choose to leave the base along with the refugees, report it to the officers, or stay silent and do nothing. If you leave the base, the tutorial will be immediately terminated. If you report it to the officers, you will gain the U.S. military"s favor, but there will be a downward revision to your relationship with some of the refugees. If you stay silent, there will be a slight downward revision to your willpower.」
「Player"s Choice: Do nothing.」
For a second, I thought about running away with them. To escape from the camp out to the safer central area. But if I did that, I"d then have to worry about surviving out in the wild. Or even before that, I could be shot to death if I were to be found.
Another choice I had was to report it to the officers, but I didn"t feel like doing that either. Because if I did, people would know. In a situation like that, I had to avoid doing things that would provoke others" hatred, or else, I wouldn"t be able to sleep at night. So I just decided to stay silent. I felt a bit guilty for shutting my eyes to it.
「Willpower has been adjusted downward / Unable to identify the specific figure.」
The sound of gunshots cracked across the night sky of Camp Roberts. I tried to shut my ears and force myself to sleep, but I couldn"t fall back asleep.
When I came out at dawn, I found part of the fence splattered with blood. Pieces of torn flesh and tattered clothes were hanging on the fence. Traces of death were laid on the other side of the fence across the barren land. There were some vultures already feasting on them.
I lost my appet.i.te. I had to skip breakfast.
# Journal, Page 16, Camp Roberts
The infection has spread even further across America.
An unknown number of the infected were reported to have slipped through the San Francis...o...b..y blockade, and four days later, another piece of news regarding the fall of Sacramento reached our ears. Despite the ma.s.s deployment of federal and state defense forces, it wasn"t enough to stop the mutated civilians.
According to the report, about 70 percent of the city"s population have turned into walking corpses. If converted to numbers, it was over 300,000 people. Although the mutated people don"t possess the intelligence of humans, their physical ability easily surpa.s.ses that of human beings.
The waves of walking corpses have already swept through several refugee camps in the suburbs. The U.S. military dropped several atomic bombs on the east side of the city after conducting as many rescue operations as possible. It was merely a stopgap measure.
China, the first country that collapsed due to the Morgellons outbreak, was a nuclear nation. When the plague spread out of control even after deploying military forces, China, without the slightest hesitation, used a large number of nuclear weapons in the infected area. People criticized the Chinese government for abandoning their people, but they didn"t seem to care about the criticisms. The infected people are not humans anymore, or that"s what they said, but I"m sure there were people who hadn"t yet evacuated from the bombed area.
Immediately after using nuclear weapons, the number of infected dropped considerably. The government once again deployed their military forces and things appeared to be under control. But after a while, the infection once again spread across China, this time much more rapidly.
Experts claim that it"s highly likely that the material contaminated with the Morgellons pathogen was blown into the sky by the updraft of the nuclear explosions and then sprayed back down to the ground by the prevailing wind along with the nuclear fallout. The use of nuclear weapons only led China down the path of destruction.
And as far as I know, the climate of the West Coast is heavily influenced by the westerly-winds. If they drop a bomb in Sacramento, matter contaminated with plague pathogens will spread to the central part of the U.S. I don"t know whether they realize this or not, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has only ordered the residents of California, Nevada, and Arizona to evacuate their land.
All h.e.l.l broke loose in our refugee camp. People began to run riot because of the evacuation order. And when some of the radical riots knocked down the fences, the U.S. military began to open fire on the crowds. Come to think of it, I bet even the soldiers were dying to escape. Overwhelmed by anxiety, fatigue, and depression, the soldiers must"ve lost their reason when everything happened. Due to this event, more than 700 people were killed in just a few minutes. It was a horrible tragedy.
Only later did I find out that there was also a case of mutation reported in San Miguel when the riot occurred. Both the southern and northern routes are swarming with the infected, which is why the federal government has given up on evacuating the refugees. The U.S. military stationed in the camp is also stranded in Camp Roberts. Some ill-tempered soldiers started to beat up refugees. They must be thinking that the reason they were left to die here was all because of the refugees.