Chapter 12: Overgrowth and the Carpark
Chu Guang still couldn’t figure out how to do it even after thinking for a long time. The principle of a generator was simple, so much so that even junior high school students knew that it was nothing more than a conductor cutting across a magnetic field, but it wasn’t easy to turn a theory like that into a ten kilowatt power generator!
If he searched on Google, the first page would probably just recommend the generator to buy. If he could shop online, he wouldn’t need Google to tell him which one was best!
After a lot of work, Chu Guang finally found some reliable tutorials, but considering his lack of materials, none of them were particularly useful.
Soon six o’clock arrived and with the sound of hatches opening, the players woke up.
"I’ll figure it out later." Chu Guang brought his legs down from the table, checked his appearance in the mirror, and walked calmly to the next room. When he entered, the four players were looking at their attributes through the display of the nurturing cabin.
"Sure enough, my genetic sequence is a strength type... My initial value is seven points in strength, but I only have three intelligence points! But… But… I don’t feel stupid!”
"That doesn't sound very clever... By the way, your beard grows way too fast." Old White's beard had grown pretty long. It was just a stubble the day before, but it had already gotten longer.
"I don’t know what the deal is either. I don’t know if I can get a razor here."
"Probably not. How about you try it with an axe?"
"Fuck off."
"Huh, I actually belong to the agile type. I thought I belonged to the intelligence department..." Ample Time pinched his chin and fell into contemplation, seemingly deep in thought.
"I’m an intelligence player!" Gale raised his hand with a wry smile. "But… Isn’t three points of strength a bit too low? Seven points of intelligence... I don't feel smart either."
"I’m a Perception type. What's the use of perceptual attributes? Can I predict the future?" Night Ten was a little depressed. He would have preferred strength or agility rather than the ambiguous attribute.
Even if he couldn’t have those, it wasn’t bad to be a constitution type; he could at least be a tank if push came to shove.
"It should be your crisis intuition. Did you forget how you escaped the sneak attack by that mutant yesterday?" Ample Time said thoughtfully, "If it’s used well, it might be incredible… It's a pity that you have it..."
"Piss off."
"Ahem."
Chu Guang coughed as he entered the room, interrupting the players' conversation. Perhaps it was because he had used his identity as the game designer to chat with them about the favorability setting last night, but the four players’ eyes were different than before.
In order to play to their sense of immersion, Chu Guang decided to continue to maintain his majestic vibe and he continued in a solemn tone, "Time is running out. To make a long story short, the work that needs to be done has piled up, but not much time is left for us to do it. In order not to affect our future plans, we must finish our outpost before winter comes. Food, drinking water, fuel... Everything needs to be gathered and stored. Fortifications and shelters on the surface need to be rebuilt. I have compiled all the work that needs to be done on the schedule board. You can check it at the entrance of the nursing home."
The players' eyes lit up, eager expressions on their faces.
Did the developers already complete the mission system?!
"That's the general outline of what we need to do. If you don’t have any questions, we’ll set off right now.”
"Wait! Wait a minute, Administrator!"
"What is it?"
Night Ten’s face flushed red and raised his hand, "Please, if I may ask, where is the toilet?"
...
The toilet.
This was indeed a problem. Level B1 of Shelter 404 was more like a reception area. Although there was a compartment for the nurturing cabins, there were no living facilities.
Looking at the players who rushed out of the nursing home after arriving on the surface, Chu Guang suddenly realized that with the influx of players, not only was eating and drinking a problem, but shitting would soon become a big issue. There was a public toilet on Baker Street, where human and animal feces would be collected and sold to the nearby Brown Farm.
After coming to the nursing home in the marsh, Chu Guang would always find a safe place in the woods to solve the problem, but he hadn’t considered the problem the feces of one hundred people would create.
Not knowing if they had eaten something bad, all four players came back limping.
"It's so uncomfortable to not have a toilet."
"There’s no paper! Damn it, I wiped with leaves... I almost hurt myself."
"Same..."
"Fuck. Why do I feel like my asshole is burning… Do you feel it?"
"No."
"Did you wipe your butt with nettle leaves?!"
"What? What’s a nettle leaf?"
"It's nothing, you just need to endure it."
"???"
Chu Guang revealed an awkward look when he heard them. He definitely forgot to tell them that they could use a piece of cloth to wipe their asses, which was also a piece of information he learned from the survivors of Baker Street. Whatever it was, they hadn’t given him a chance to speak, so, they would have to endure it. After all, he’d also had the same experience.
"Administrator," Ample Time said respectfully as he limped to Chu Guang, "I propose that we build a toilet."
Night Ten immediately seconded it. "I agree!"
Old White also added, "Yeah! We can dig a big pit for the toilet, collect feces, and mix in compost with plant ash and wood chips. That way, aerobic bacteria and fungi can decompose the organic matter, heat up, and kill any disease-causing microorganisms and pathogens in the feces, allowing us to make fertilizer."
Ample Time continued, "Yes, and not just to make fertilizer. We can also mix and seal off part of the feces and organic residues so that anaerobic bacteria can convert it into combustible methane! This is how the biogas composter in my hometown was built. The biogas produced can be used to generate electricity. "
"This is a good idea, I’ll consider it." Chu Guang nodded approvingly.
Biogas.
He had been worrying about survival before and had completely forgotten about it. Although there was no biogas composter on Baker Street, there was one at Brown Farm.
Seeing approval on the Administrator's face, the four players’ felt even more invigorated and they started to brainstorm. It wasn’t that difficult to build a toilet or even a biogas composter.
The only problem was sealing it and finding the right materials for gas storage. Fortunately, though there was a shortage of pretty much everything in this wasteland, there was no shortage of plastic, especially beverage bottles and garbage bags.
Burning them produced toxic gasses, so few survivors would burn them. At most, they would maybe use them to start fires. If they looked carefully, they should be able to find plenty in the area nearby.
Thus, another task was added to the task board, collecting plastic bags and bottles.
"Administrator, I have an idea for the generator." Gale, who had not spoken before, suddenly declared.
Chu Guang looked at him, "Go ahead."
Gale continued, "Usually cars have built-in generators. I would like to know if there is a road nearby. A parking lot would also be fine. If we can find a car, our problem will be easy to solve.”
Chu Guang said, "Cars are not hard to find. There is a parking lot near where we are, but I‘ve seen all the cars there, and there’s nothing worth recycling."
"I want to give it a try," Gale said, not wanting to give up. "If we find a working generator, we would be able to use electricity at the outpost!"
"Then you can go, but I can't let you go alone," Chu Guang glanced at the players in front of him, his gaze falling on Night Ten. "Go to the parking lot with Gale and take a look."
Night Ten said, with great enthusiasm, "Yes!"
Night Ten had high Perception stats. His crisis intuition could come in handy.
Before they set off, Chu Guang asked them to take two short knives that were originally used for mowing. They would be better than a heavy axe if they encountered mutants. Chu Guang also told them repeatedly that if they encountered mutants they had to avoid fighting and run as fast as they could. Of course, if their opponents already discovered them and showed signs of hostility, they shouldn’t turn their backs to their enemies. That would be tantamount to suicide.
Holding a map of the nearby area and a simple compass, Gale left the nursing home with Night Ten. Old White and Ample Time, who stayed behind, looked at Chu Guang and asked, "Administrator, are we going to keep chopping trees now, or…?"
Chu Guang glanced around and counted the number of unprocessed logs on the ground. "You don’t need to chop trees today, you need to solve the toilet problem first. Go grab a shovel and an axe, I’ll teach you how to do it."
...
The parking lot was southeast of the nursing home. After two hundred years of neglect, nature had completely consumed the area. The roots of the trees pierced through the hard concrete ground; knee-high bushes and weeds were everywhere. The rusty vehicles were covered with vines, and through the broken windows, one could even see moss covering the seats and air-conditioning vents.
Looking at the scene before him, Gale finally understood what the Administrator meant. There really wasn’t anything worth recycling.
Night Ten also looked troubled. If the entire place looked like that, what kind of generator could he possibly find?!
"Do you want to go back?" Night Ten asked.
Gale was silent for a while before stepping forward, not wanting to give up. "We’re already here, after all."
Night Ten shrugged and followed. After knowing him for so many years, the biggest impression he had of his fellow gamer buddy was his stubbornness. Of course, he didn’t know what Gale was like in real life.
Many of the cars in the parking lot had rusty hoods that couldn't be opened at all. Gale had searched many places, only to find the one car that could be opened, if barely. After opening the hood, he was stunned. It was… An engine?
"What's wrong?" Night Ten leaned over and asked.
"It looks like an electric engine... But I’m not sure," Gale said, frowning. "Do you know anything about cars?"
"I don’t even have a driver's license, so I don't understand any of this." Night Ten said helplessly. "Haven’t you been working for many years? You still haven't bought a car?"
"I live in my department’s dormitory. I just ride my bicycle everywhere." Gale unwillingly continued rummaging under the hood, even going around the back of the car and lying under it. Everything that could be checked was checked, but suddenly, he stopped moving.
Noting the expression on his face, Night Ten asked, "What's wrong?"
"It's a bit strange... I can't find the generator." After wiping mud from his face, Gale frowned. He thought for a long time before he continued, "I can probably locate the engine, but I can't find the generator!"
"Has it already been disassembled?" Night Ten suggested a possibility. "After all, it has been two hundred years. It would be normal for survivors to look in this place.”
"It’s possible."
Closing the hood, Gale felt mixed emotions as he stared at the bunch of semi scrapped cars around him. Actually, there was another possibility.
In the game’s background lore, society’s pre-war technological capabilities had been developed to a certain extent. It may have even reached the point where a fixed generator had been replaced by a remote generator. No matter what possibilities there were, it wasn’t going to be a good thing.
It would be impossible to find generators from them…
...
Meanwhile, new progress had been made during the toilet construction.
With Chu Guang commanding them, Old White and Ample Time first dug a two-meter by three-meter pit that could bury one person in the open space outside the nursing home.
Sawed logs were inserted around the pit as a wall, and gravel blocks and leaves were added. Once the cesspit was built, the construction of the toilet itself became a lot easier.
Chu Guang directed the two of them to build two simple sheds along the side of the cesspit, using plastic pipes removed from the outer wall of the nursing home to be connected to the cesspit next to them.
With that, the simple toilets were complete.
"Stool and urine have to be stored separately, and they become viscous when mixed together. Plus urine is sterile and can be directly watered on crops... But that's enough for today." Looking at the results of the two men's morning work, Chu Guang nodded in approval.
Old White and Ample Time panted while leaning on their shovels. They stared at each other helplessly. Although it was advertised as a realistic virtual reality game, was it really necessary for it to be this real?
"There is also the problem of taking a shower. There’s a water source within a kilometer of the shelter, but there are lots of mutants near it. You need to be extra careful when fetching water."
The construction of a bathhouse could be their next mission. Until then, the smell would be a trivial matter, but it could become a big problem if they got sick.
"Administrator." Ample Time raised his hand.
Chu Guang looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I think we should consider security issues," Ample Time said. "Judging by the mutants we met yesterday, this wasteland isn’t safe."
Duh. Isn’t that obvious?
"I know, but you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of hygiene. There isn’t enough medicine in the shelter; the consequences of an infectious disease could be very serious."
The issue of safety wasn’t as urgent. The mutants in the area were not as active as those in the city, since there were no survivors nearby. Even if there was danger, they could hide in the shelter. The hygiene of more than one hundred people was a much bigger problem.
Every household on Baker Street filled iron buckets with water before placing them on the roof to heat and disinfect the water. They would scrub their bodies once every two or three days. It wasn’t a reflection of how hygienic these people were, but because if someone was too smelly, they would be driven out of town.
Ample Time and Old White looked at each other.
Is there a Mysophobia setting in this administrator’s AI?
Looks like I’ll need to keep this in mind for the future.
"Speaking of which... There is one question I have always wanted to ask. Why isn’t there a material reserve for such a large shelter?" Old White interjected, "And we have only been on the first basement floor, what about the other ones?"
"The other floors are not open for now, but they will be in the future." Chu Guang didn’t explain the reason, and just stuck to simply stating the facts.
Though the two players were curious, seeing that they couldn’t get a proper answer, they didn't push it. They treated it as just another part of the game.
Night Ten and Gale, who went out to explore, eventually returned. Looking at Gale, who was covered in mud, Chu Guang asked, "How did it go? Did you find a generator?"
"I didn't find it, but it wasn’t a complete waste." With that, Gale opened the plastic bag that he had picked up from some trash can, revealing it to be full of blue mushrooms. Those mushrooms weren’t big, only the length of an index finger. The surface was covered in small translucent cilia, and one could see a colorful luster along the lines.
Chu Guang glanced at the mushrooms, a surprised expression appearing on his face, "Where did you get these?!"
With a hint of complacency visible on his face, Gale reported truthfully, "There’s a concrete sewer pipe near the parking lot. It is about the height of two people. There were a lot of these mushrooms growing inside. I'm not sure if they’re edible, so I picked a few to bring back." He had wanted to take a bite at first, but the game was so realistic that he hesitated.
"It’s called the Blue Umbrella Mushroom, and its scientific name is 'Ceruleum angelus'. It is said that people who eat it will be able to see a real angel in an hour at most. Don't doubt the claim. Unless you are a mutant and immune to poison, you definitely can't eat these."
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