Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 287



Only Krnovel

116. Goal (1)

The good thing about having more people is that there is less work to do.

Now it falls to someone else to assign bunkers and guide the new settlers.

“That’s the bathroom. That’s the well. For now, use the electricity on this side. We’ll be doing construction soon.”

Cheon Yeong-jae, whose movements became lighter, perhaps because his mind was freed, took charge of the orientation.

I don’t know if he’s completely in my domain or not, but it’s definitely true that our trust in each other has increased.

Although the amount of work to do inside the bunker has decreased significantly, that doesn’t mean the total amount of work has decreased at all.

I have another, more important mission.

“Lord Skeleton. Finally.”

Valentine tapped the keys of his keyboard briskly.

[ Welcome to the Red Archive Bulletin Board! ]

Finally, Viva! Apocalypse! – The backdoor between Jeju Intranets is complete.

Now we can move freely between the two sites.

“We expanded the breakthrough by infecting vulnerable computers with zombie PCs, and in the process, we found several PCs connected to other satellite systems. Although the specifications are different from Viva! Apocalypse!, there is no particular difference in principle, so it can be used without difficulty. Therefore, there is no problem even if the original PC at your Jeju home is turned off.”

Now Jeju can’t stop us.

“Well, as a last resort, we could shut down the entire intranet. But there, almost all administrative processing is done through the intranet like before the war, so would that be possible? Even if we shut down the entire intranet and conduct a comprehensive investigation, it wouldn’t matter. As long as we don’t format all the PCs, the protocols that have already been planted will quickly restore our passages to their original state.”

After listening to Valentine’s explanation, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and logged onto the Red Archive bulletin board.

[ Please enter your nickname . ]

Same interface as before.

“······.”

Knock knock

[No-paying newbie]

“uh?”

Valentine, who was watching from the side, tilted his head.

“You’re not using the nickname you always use?”

“Yes. For now, we’re just doing reconnaissance work.”

“By the way, what should I say? It seems like a nickname that fits the atmosphere of this bulletin board well. Like ‘no-paying’. Isn’t that a word that we don’t use often on our bulletin board?”

“Yes.”

Not to brag, but this Park Gyu is someone who has easily risen to the level of a semi-named person on the Red Archive bulletin board.

Since I’ve only been on the bulletin board except for the time I’m on duty, I know the bulletin board environment better than anyone else.

however.

Knock knock.

“······.”

My fingers stopped.

Therefore, the input window looks like this:

Non-paying newbie: Is it Skeleton? Or is it Quantum Bomb?

Valentine turned his head towards me, looking at the input window that was still unfinished because he hadn’t pressed the Enter key yet.

“······Mr. Skeleton?”

Tadadadadak

I deleted the message by repeatedly pressing the backspace key.

“Mr. Skeleton?!”

He sighed and answered Valentine’s question.

“After thinking about it carefully, I don’t think this is right.”

“yes?”

“So, it is true that the path between our bulletin board and Jeju Intranet has now opened.”

“yes.”

“Look at the speed at which the posts are uploaded here. Isn’t the regeneration rate incredible?”

“It looks like there are well over 3,000 active users.”

“How active is our bulletin board?”

“At peak times, there are around 120 people, but there are also times when there are less than 10 people.”

That’s it.

What happens if you make a passage?

The number of pages is attached.

Moreover, while the members of the Red Archive bulletin board, which is my target, are energetic teenagers and people in their early twenties, our bulletin board has been a so-called “old man” bulletin board with an average age of 40 since the bulletin board first opened.

If I could turn back the clock to the Renaissance of our bulletin boards or the PaleNet era, I would have a chance, but for now, when I look at my bulletin board friends, they all look old and worn out.

It is said that the energy has declined.

Would this handful of middle-aged men be a match for invading the Red Archive bulletin board?

I’m worried that, contrary to my intentions, our bulletin board will end up being eaten up by the energetic friends of the Red Archive bulletin board.

Well, it’s good that there’s traffic to our bulletin board in this way, but the purpose of this backdoor is revenge on this Park Gyu.

The real reason why this Park Gyu brought Valentine back at the risk of his life is to cook and chase away the sparrow who cooked and chased away the skeleton and then cook and send it on a reverse tour.

“Can we really eat that bulletin board like this?”

I asked honestly.

Valentine, the operator of Palenet, the only large community site after the war, answered my question without much thought.

“There is no choice.”

“······.”

“Well, you can cause annoyance by running a macro 24 hours a day and posting hateful images, but you can’t say that you’ve taken over the bulletin board just because you do such things. After all, isn’t the community also made up of people?”

That is, people are needed.

That’s a lot of people too.

The fact that what passed before my eyes for a moment was my role model reminded me of a giant tree that remains unchanged even in the mighty flow of history.

I looked at Valentine’s Day with a sense of fateful excitement, or perhaps a sense of mission close to reception.

“Valentine.”

“Yes, Mr. Skeleton.”

“we.”

I told him.

“How about creating a second PaleNet?”

*

Inside the mausoleum of John Nae-non, his last legacy, Palenet, is still breathing its last.

But it’s just going back.

“The server had been unmanageable for a long time, and when I last checked, more than 75% of the storage was down. It was essentially a natural death. The direct cause of the death of the failnet was the silence of the communication equipment, but I don’t think that restoring the communication equipment will lead to a good result.”

Palenet is dead.

Cannot be saved.

I think relying on easy and familiar methods is too lazy and complacent and just trying to do things the way I want.

In the end, it is a fierce exploration.

There is a path in fierce exploration.

When I heard the sad news that PaleNet would not be restored, I turned my attention to the North American continent, the home of our bulletin boards and the birthplace of the gift to mankind called the Internet.

There, a Viva! Apocalypse! bulletin board dozens of times larger than ours is running, and a crude new community for ordinary people, like Jonnaenon’s Palenet, is also being created.

It’s the Necropolis.

I tried connecting to Necropolis with Valentine.

The method was quite complicated.

After modifying the Obelisk’s satellite signal in a way similar to a normal satellite transceiver, we searched for transmissions toward North America and connected to a data stream called the Necropolis Current.

After successfully connecting, several texts were printed with a time difference.

[ F. Sawyer, M. O’Connor, and For the Lovely Red One ]

[ Welcome to the noisy city of death . ]

– If you are dead, press enter –

Since the connection tool is the same as the existing Viva! Apocalypse! bulletin board, the translation tool can also be used for the bulletin board, so there will be no difficulties in language communication.

It was a very hot day.

I brought another fan to beat the heat and watched the screen with Valentine, enduring the heat from the computer and electronic equipment in the cramped bunker.

Dead 57351 (MD): The roar of an airplane is heard. Flames are seen rising above the city.

Dead19231 (NY): Get ammo. There is a disinfectant and headache medicine that Grandma made herself.

Dead3413(FL): It’s a lazy afternoon.

Dead83219(IN): Another black guy killed. Yesterday, a Hispanic. Who will he kill tomorrow?

Dead 4214 (NY): To 19231. Location. Type. Quantity. Please check.

Dead5321 (MT): I saw the elk mutation yesterday. There are too many mutations. They are increasing and getting closer.

…

…

A world made up solely of text, without any decoration or embellishment.

The appearance was reminiscent of games made by Fox Games in the past.

It looks simple on the surface.

I had a feeling that it wouldn’t require that much skill to make.

Valentine’s thoughts were different from mine.

He typed a few messages, checked out other messages, and even opened a tool I didn’t know about to check the site.

Soon Valentine shook his head and closed the window.

“This won’t be easy.”

“is it so?”

“This is something I cannot make.”

“Huh? Something like this?”

“Even though it looks crude, it’s almost top-notch even in North America. It was developed by someone who could be called a genius. The algorithm, the idea, the way it works. None of it is something I can imitate.”

The Necropolis, which even made the arrogant Melon Mask nervous, is said to be much more complex and technologically advanced than it appears on the outside.

At first glance, it seems like a P2P method that infinitely expands direct connections between users – like torrents, to borrow Valentine’s words – but when you look at it in detail, it contains a variety of technologies that cannot be characterized as one.

“So, the core technology of Necropolis is to make huge data flow as if there were a server even though there is no actual server. It seems like a copy of grid computing of the past, but comparing it to that is rude. Necropolis has advanced mankind’s network technology by several levels!”

Valentine kept exclaiming in admiration.

To my eyes, it’s at the level of a fox game, but the Necropolis reflected in his eyes must be that great.

“How does it compare to Melon Mask’s Viva! Apocalypse!?”

Valentine answered my question with a big laugh.

“In terms of technology, it’s medieval and modern. Viva! Apocalypse! is medieval and Necropolis is modern. That’s how much of a gap there is. However, Viva! Apocalypse! has a powerful main server and can form a powerful network of its own with many satellites, so it can implement much more than Necropolis.”

“Hmm······. Is that all?”

“Simply put, Viva! Apocalypse!’s servers. What if the headquarters in Florida, Texas, were attacked and the servers were lost? And what if all the small satellites that are falling at a rate of 5% per year were lost? That would be the end of Viva! Apocalypse!. But the Necropolis will not end. Even if all of us humans die and disappear, the voices of the dead will forever be carried along the Earth’s magnetic field.”

Valentine declared.

“I’m not good at reading people’s minds, but that guy with the Melon Mask. He must have been really hurt after seeing Necropolis. I can guarantee that!”

Thus ended Valentine’s visit to the Necropolis with admiration, despair, and the dark conclusion that it was inimitable.

But even if you can’t replicate the Necropolis, there are ways to do it.

“Even though I can’t imitate Necropolis······.”

Valentine, who was momentarily intimidated, sipped the water from the bottle that gave him his nickname and chuckled.

“Viva! Apocalypse! I’m confident in the invasion.”

Valentine’s new plan was simple.

“It’s not Obelisk, it’s a general purpose satellite device that allows you to connect to Viva! Apocalypse!.”

Simply put, it’s not necessarily easy.

Viva! Apocalypse! The network itself is so weak that someone as tough as Jon Nae-non could crack it in a few years, but the hardware security and encryption of the satellite equipment itself are so strong that even government agencies armed with cutting-edge equipment cannot crack it.

Even the confident Valentine soon admitted that his thinking was flawed.

“Oh, this isn’t easy. The lock on the hardware itself is definitely very strong.”

The idea was good, but it wasn’t feasible.

Valentine, who had tasted the bitter taste, came up with the method he was best at and had tried before.

“Is there really no other way than to create a second PaleNet?”

The second PaleNet didn’t come for free either.

It is true that John Nae-non ran a large server powered by powerful nuclear batteries, but the data from his server was supplied to the general public through the well-laid rails of the existing communication system.

Even if we gather together server equipment and build a pseudo-failnet server right now, it is meaningless if we cannot send our messages to others and receive messages that others send to us.

“······I’m sorry. I don’t think this will be easy. This too.”

“No. You’ve already paved the way for Jeju Intranet. It’s just that I wish there were more people because of my greed.”

It has been a long time since the bulletin board’s population decreased significantly, but after the two incidents of Palenet’s silence and the collapse of the Legion faction, the bulletin board’s already small population decreased even more.

Our mascot Emgu has been talking about his house shaking lately and hasn’t been posting much, and my senior Baek Seung-hyun hasn’t been heard from at all since arriving at Scrap Iron Island.

All you see is Fox Games’ endless apologies and the cyber terrorism of users whose quality is getting worse and worse.

As the atmosphere becomes increasingly strange, long-time users who were always there often leave the Korean bulletin board and become active on the English bulletin board.

Even I, a named user who should be taking the lead, have been neglecting the bulletin board activities recently, so I have nothing to say.

I wouldn’t say I lost interest in the bulletin board at some point.

If I leave the bulletin board, then our Viva! Apocalypse! Korean bulletin board may literally become a destroyed world.

bang!

Bang Jae-hyuk’s cheers were heard along with the gunshots.

“Gotcha! You fucking cat!”

I feel like the dog-like cat is different from the dog-like cat I think it is, but it does reduce one territorial issue.

Well, that was all expected when they brought Bang Jae-hyuk.

My concerns are more distant, more high-dimensional.

I was lost in thought, looking at the vast plains below the ridge, the land covered with spider webs, and the faint lights visible here and there.

“······.”

Can I bring some life to the bulletin board like I did?

Could you accomplish the near-impossible task like that man with the immortal will?

It won’t be easy.

It really won’t be easy.

I returned to my bunker, now enveloped in a warm darkness, with a heavy heart.

I sat on the central toilet and crossed my legs and tried to think, but neither the thought nor the poop came out.

I sighed and sat down in front of my laptop for the first time in a while to look at the screen.

“hmm?”

There is a notice.

This is an event that is rarely seen on free bulletin boards.

I opened the notice.

VIVA_BOT014 : Notification of emergency

It’s Vivabot.