Survival Bunker System Developer

Brownsville Shelter

The start of Caleb’s morning was great. Many things happened while he slept. Firstly, the system accepted his proposal and plan. The first quest was complete and Caleb had his reward. Eager to see if it was real, Caleb checked his inventory and found that he had one free basic bunker ready to be built. The system developer smiled. He already had an idea about where the first bunker was going to be.

The next good news came when he found that the password cracker had finished its task. Helen’s flash drive was now a buffet for Caleb to slowly devour. Everything about PXE22 and her past thesis papers on evolution was in that tiny flash drive. The files dated from over four years ago and Caleb noted how many different projects and works Helen worked on before coming to Project PXE22.

Project PXE22 was two years old, a lot older than Caleb thought it was. Her notes were more detailed than the observation journal submitted to the university. In the flash drive, Caleb was able to find research references, pictures, data log entries and even lab reports that he wasn’t able to get his hands on. Some of them were very technical and Caleb couldn’t understand them but it only proved that Helen was giving him something genuine as a form of trust.

Caleb was not in a rush to try out the new system’s rewards. In fact, there were many other important things to do before Helen contacted him. The divine being up there carefully considered his suggestions for improvement and eased on the restrictions for the system’s interface. Caleb was now able to customise certain functions and even create new functions. He could design features that he wanted to be included with the bunker system and input that. The system would calculate the resources needed and requirements so that Caleb could unlock it.

When Caleb first revisited the system, he was startled by how much improvements were made. Although the user interface was still messy, he was able to find all the functions and descriptions that he wanted in the improved version. Under the options section, Caleb spent a good hour customising the user interface into the best layout he was comfortable with. He also learnt that the system didn’t follow the normal logic. It didn’t have an inventory limit and did not follow the laws of conservation. The input and output could be very different and Caleb wondered if that was alright to take advantage of this. So far, Caleb had been abusing the system and trying to toss different things at it. The system doesn’t discriminate and will accept anything it was offered even if it wasn’t metal. Caleb had been using it as a convenient trash can. The system developer also took the liberty of cleaning the filthy streets while trying to get lucky with finding metal and offered everything he could get his hands on to the system.

To prepare for the upgrades, Caleb decided to work on stocking up on resources before the apocalypse while looking out for any signs of animal ghouls. So far, the animals were behaving more aggressively but they had not turned into ghouls yet. According to Dr Rockmiller’s observations, the self-conscious stage of PXE22 will start to transfer itself to a different body to breed and gather experience. It crossed over from rats to birds but the birds were not able to infect other species so there was still an invisible safety barrier there that Caleb was relying on for now. The longer it took PXE22 to mutate and adapt to its foreign hosts, the better for him.

As if the rubbish that Caleb scavenged wasn’t enough, the system developer kept tabs on all the scrap metal yards and recycling centres. He also tested if other people were able to see the system’s interface but nobody showed any signs of knowing that the blue window existed. With the new information about the system and the limitations, Caleb worked around it to secure enough for ten basic bunkers. He wasn’t ashamed to say that he had resorted to visiting the neighbourhoods with the highest vehicle thefts after the scrap metal yards were picked clean by him. The recycling centre had many empty cans but even after offering everything they had to the system, it wasn’t enough to meet the seventy-five tons of metal needed to build the thirty bunkers. Hence, the easiest way to get metal was to steal cars. Each car, even the smallest and crappiest one, had at least a ton of metal to give. Stealing seventy-five cars was a lot easier than raiding recycling centres and scrap metal yards.

Caleb didn’t do much that day and lazed around visiting different neighbourhoods to scout for a good abandoned building to break into and test his reward. Brownsville was a very good location for that. There were simply too many vandalised houses and broken-into properties that nobody bothered to check. Every day, there will be reports of missing vehicles so the police don’t pay too much attention if a suspicious person needed a hundred square feet of space to test some system reward. Caleb just prayed that the bunker was a fully encased metal pod that stuck out like a sore thumb in the city. Even if the police didn’t mind it, the people will start to question and the last thing Caleb wanted was attention.

After making two rounds in his car, Caleb found a decent spot. He parked his car in a busier street because as much as he wasn’t against recycling cars for the system’s use, he didn’t want his car to be stolen. Having to take public transport and mingle with others made his social anxiety want to jump off a bridge so Caleb avoided that as much as he could.

He walked quickly to the broken townhouse and slipped in from the back. Breaking and entering the abandoned place was easy. The walls inside were covered with graffiti and Caleb saw a few cigarette butts littered on the ground. This place has become a hideout for local thugs who wanted to chill and hide from the police but it had been abandoned for a while. Caleb seized the chance to use it as his testing ground. The townhouse was huge but it was barren. Caleb didn’t know what would happen if he converted only a part of the building into a bunker but he could only try.

Placing the basic bunker was easy after he determined the location. All he had to do was stand in the middle of where he wanted the bunker to be, specify a bunker type and size then click a button to build it.

Caleb did exactly as recommended by the system and decided that he wanted the bunker to be right in the middle of the apartment, away from the door and windows just to see how the system would design a space within a space. According to the system, the basic bunker was merely a marked out area that offers some sort of divine intervention when it sensed ghouls. There was a mysterious high-level security device that kept ghouls out of the bunkers although they could loiter. Also, Caleb’s earlier concern about the awakened ghouls diminished when he realised that ghouls and awakened ghouls would never be able to access these bunkers no matter how powerful or intelligent they became. It was a guarantee that the system gave him.

[Error. Requires a door to coordinate the entry point for the basic bunker.]

Caleb raised a brow. This wasn’t included in the description. Despite his proposal to improve the Survival Bunker System, there were still many bugs that remained like this one. Thankfully, Caleb was testing it out before the actual apocalypse.

The door didn’t look very steady and the lock was broken. In ordinary situations, Caleb wouldn’t trust such the security of a place with broken locks but for the sake of testing the system’s powers, he chose the most battered area. When the door was within the area of the bunker, Caleb hit the create button again. This time, the system accepted it and marked out an area of a hundred square feet with a red ray of light. When the area was marked out, the system prompted Caleb to confirm the area marked out in a new window. Caleb took a look at the space and decided that he should report this as another improvement. Not all bunkers should be square. There should be a way to modify the shape of it but for now, he accepted it.

Caleb thought that the basic bunker would simply build an invisible wall that creates a safe zone when he created it but something earth-shattering happened before his very eyes. The room transformed into a pristine white space that looked like a completely different dimension.

True to the system’s promise, the basic bunker came without furnishing. Still, Caleb could not understand how the system created this in a blink of an eye. He found this very hard to be defined as advanced technology although there might be some theories about quantum science and particle manipulation. For now, the system developer would classify it as buggy magic.

He took his time to explore the bunker and was impressed that he couldn’t hear anything that happened on the other side of the door. Checking his control panel, Caleb now had one basic bunker under his management list. The basic bunker’s capacity was currently 0/0 and Caleb wondered what that meant.

[Capacity refers to the number of people allowed in any bunker at any point of time. The capacity is fixed and only registered occupants may enter the bunker with the exception of the bunker creator. To upgrade the bunker’s maximum capacity, check the Upgrade Panel.]

Caleb nodded. This made more sense. Why would he build a bunker that didn’t allow anyone else apart from him to live in? Still, it was very impressive. Before Caleb checked the Upgrade Panel, he wanted to take a look outside to check if it was different from before. He refused to believe that this bunker was the same space that was the abandoned property even if the door remained.

Caleb stepped out of the bunker and was immediately brought back to the streets, startling some passer-by who didn’t think that anyone lived in such a broken house. Caleb blinked. After leaving the bunker, he felt as if he was finally back to the same world. If he opened that door again, would other people be able to see the bunker interior or would they be unable to see it just like how they were not able to see anything related to his system? Caleb also wanted to know what he could do if he wanted to go back to the building’s original space and not the bunker dimension.

Turning around, Caleb opened the door and was prompted by the system that he was entering a bunker dimension. Caleb chose “no” to cancel entering the bunker for now because he wanted to know if it was still possible to return to the original space.

His question was answered when he stepped through the door and looked at the graffiti walls. The smell of stale tobacco still lingered and Caleb nodded. He exited the place again and wondered what would happen if he destroyed the physical door. Would that mean the bunker would also disappear?

Curious and determined to find all the possible loopholes and bugs about the system before the apocalypse, Caleb waited behind the door and listened to the sounds of the street until he was certain there were no people nearby. Then, with all his might, he kicked the flimsy door. The system developer was half expecting the door to hold steadfast with the system’s protection but he was wrong. The wooden thing flew off the hinges and crashed into the streets, frightening even Caleb. Thankfully, nobody was around so Caleb didn’t have to answer for anything. Quickly he ran to grab the door to chuck it back in place so that it doesn’t attract too much attention.

After placing the door back in place rather clumsily, Caleb wondered if he could still access the bunker. With difficulty, he squeezed his way past the broken door and entered. The system didn’t prompt Caleb anything and the system programmer groaned. This system was way too bugged!

Without much he could do about it, Caleb trudged back to his car and sighed. The road to saving humanity was a long and arduous one.