Survival Bunker System Developer

Completing the First Quest

Caleb woke up in the evening around dinner to the feeling of something heavy on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He tried to ignore it but immediately woke up when he heard an angry hiss.

When he opened his eyes, Jeremy bared its teeth and hissed at Caleb before digging its claws lightly into the thin fabric. His cat was angry and for Caleb, that wasn’t good news. He must have forgotten to feed Jeremy before he went to sleep last night and frantically apologised before making his way to the kitchen. To make up for his irresponsibility, Caleb opened a can of premium tuna that was usually only given as a treat. Jeremy had to put up with an empty stomach for two days in a row and Caleb felt terrible as a pet owner. He usually didn’t neglect the poor cat and this was a first for both of them.

Deciding that he was overworking and not being able to manage his duty as a pet owner, the man decided to bring out the last resort. He bought the gadget from sss a year back but never had the opportunity to use it because he didn’t think he would forget to feed his cat ever. He loved Jeremy too much to forget but with the apocalypse coming, Caleb wasn’t too confident in his abilities to remember Jeremy’s meals.

The food timer was plugged in and Caleb filled it to the brim with cat food while he cleaned the litter box. Jeremy looked satisfied at last after he finished the entire can of premium tuna and purred when Caleb scratched its chin.

Now that Jeremy was taken care off, Caleb decided to get some food and take a shower before continuing with his quest. The plan was almost finished but Caleb needed to put the few finishing touches to it that he didn’t manage to complete last night. Apart from the marked out locations and estimated cost of materials he intended for the bunkers to be built, Caleb also pulled together a plan for creating a self-sufficient eco-bunker. The city plan to convert the entire New York City into a ghoul-free zone was added but Caleb thought that it was still lacking in details. He would add those in after a shower.

The shower was quick and refreshing. In less than an hour, the system developer was back in good condition to work on the proposal. Listing everything he needed for a good bunker was only the first step. Creating plans and contingency plans for rescuing the survivors and assigning them roles in the bunker system was the second step. Once Caleb was able to see a system of sorts forming in the apocalyptic scenario, he started working on the third stage of the plan to eradicate ghouls in the area to create ‘safe zones’.

The one part that Caleb was stuck at was a good timeline. He didn’t know how much time the Survival Bunker System needed to build a bunker. Caleb also wasn’t sure about the other features that have not been unlocked. If the system was something like a mysterious magic factory that transformed raw materials into finished products with better technology, Caleb would already have a great advantage compared to what he could do in his previous life. However, saving himself was not the same as saving a city of people. He might be able to deal with the intelligent ghoul but the other survivors might not be able to handle that monster.

Caleb remembered clearly the sheer terror he felt when facing such a monster for the very first time. Truthfully, he still didn’t know a lot about that unique ghoul. Was that the only one of its kind like a king or was that another stage of evolution that was still incomplete? PXE22’s information was still in the flash drive that Helen passed him. Caleb simply didn’t have time to look at it. Still, he included plans for a workshop to develop and produce weapons to fight against ghouls after the bunkers were self-sufficient.

The system developer looked through his fifty-page proposal once more. All the technology that he wanted to be included was there. Yet, something still felt incomplete. Caleb lived in the modern world and was very used to having assistants of all kinds from Siri to Alexa to aid him in his life. He wouldn’t be able to coordinate all of these on his own. Surely there had to be a better way to automate some of the less important chores at the later part of his bunker development plans. Somebody had to be in charge of pushing humanity forward to give them the strength they need to continue fighting. Caleb was a system programmer who created solutions for complicated problems. He didn’t know who else he could get on the research and development team other than Helen but Caleb knew he wouldn’t have time to gather resources or kill ghouls in person when he had to focus on creating new water filtration systems, safe zones and coordinated ghoul exterminations to create safe zones.

Hence, he added a part for recommended improvements that he would like to see from the system as part of his proposal after analysing the system and its limitations. Using this as an opportunity, Caleb also slipped in his thought about how the user interface for the system’s window could be better for him as a user. In fact, that section spanned for two full pages included possible bugs that Caleb thought he saw from his first user testing last night.

After six long hours, the final proposal and plan were ready for submission. Caleb backed up a copy just in case something went wrong. He had bad experiences when he was still a student of submitting an assignment without saving a copy separately. Due to the high influx of students submitting their work last minute, the school’s server crashed and Caleb lost his files. Needless to say, he failed that project for not being able to turn it in and it was a painful lesson Caleb learned the hard way. From that day onwards, he never took for granted anything he had to submit including works for he clients. There will always be a copy lying around somewhere, if not multiple.

“Open interface,” he called and the blue window materialised in front of him.

Caleb selected the quest tab and selected the first mission. There was a submit button and Caleb was careful not to have anything else in his hands when he submitted the flash drive that held his research plans and data for a new bunker system. In games, such an action would have immediately completed the quest and Caleb would have received his reward immediately. Sadly, this was reality. Despite the mysterious nature of the Survival Bunker System, it was still realistic and told Caleb that the proposal was received but the system needed time to process it.

Without anything much left to do for the night now that the tough part was over, Caleb relaxed a little. He flipped through the news channels but nothing seemed interesting. The animals have not fully become ghouls and the attacks on humans have not begun. There was still time. For now, Caleb looked at the flash drive that contained information about PXE22 that he wasn’t able to find elsewhere. It’s been two days and Helen should have been able to finish packing by now.

Caleb inserted the flash drive and was met with a prompt for a password. He rolled his eyes. If the scientist thought that something like this would be able to keep him out, she was dead wrong. Cracking a password was annoying because it took a while for the software to decode it or look for a loophole but Caleb had done this a million times. He ran the password cracking program and decided to leave reading up about PXE22 to tomorrow.