Vice Bunker 25 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 25

-VB-

“You think I am making a mistake?”

Today, I had a personal appointment with one of the people of my bunker. She claimed that she was an architect. After living in my bunker for about a few months now, she told Danny that the current pattern of architecture and zoning would lead to unsafe zones not out of some authoritarian

Seeing how she did seem to have the license for it, I opted to hear her out, and so a week after Amy found my big body, my small body sat in my office with the architect lady sitting across from me.

Her name was Leeda Mi, and she basically lambasted me indirectly without knowing.

Of course, I actually liked that someone wanted to improve the bunker. I wasn’t educated or trained in architecture; one of my powers, the Technology source of power, helped me design the bare bones of architecture so that not only was it functional as all hell, but it was in line with what my power also saw as “efficient,” which reduced my visual stress. Imagine living in a bunker whose rooms were always made in squares with straight corridors, whether all turns looked and felt the same.

“You’re creating dead zones.”

“Dead zones?”

She nodded. “They are areas that become dangerous because there is no one there during certain periods of time, which make them dangerous for anyone to move through since there is no one to see what goes on in those areas.”

“So you’re saying that I should mix things up a little?”

She nodded. “I would suggest that the residential and entertainment areas need to be mixed up a bit so that someone is somewhere all of the time.” Leeda went further on the social psychology of absence, architectural impact on behavior, and more. A lot of it made sense to me. It also explained how parents rearing children in American suburbs always thought their neighborhood wasn’t safe enough for children to play around in while West European and East Asian parents let their kids go to school on their own at seven years old or even younger.

“You want to change how people behave,” I hummed as I leaned back. She paused for a moment to blink before frowning.

“No, that’s not what I want,” she replied firmly. “I don’t want America’s suburban stupidity, the failed experiment, to continue. There are no more interest groups, no more stubborn old landlords raising prices on rent, and -.”

I raised a hand and stopped her before she lost herself to her … passion.

“I appreciate the help you are trying to give,” I began, and the brief crestfallen look on her face was heart-tugging. “I will implement the changes necessary to ensure that my city’s hallways are safe for everyone. Of that, I can promise you.”

She blinked, obviously having expected me to reject her suggestions from how she reacted previously to my ambiguous initial wording. “You … will?”

“Of course,” I smiled. “After all, I am the bunker’s owner. Its lord. If the people who live in it don’t like how I do things, then they can now be kicked out without issue. After all, the PRT will be happy to accept them, right?”

She shivered a little. “Uh… I guess?” And then wisely didn’t add anything else. Or didn’t know what else to say.

“Speaking of which, where are you staying right now?” I asked.

“Ah. I’m staying at the 5th Sublevel.”

“The regular worker level?”

She flushed. “Yes. The dockworkers didn’t care too much about an architect,” she grumbled.

I hummed before pulling out a piece of paper. I wrote out a vague direction, designation, and my signature. I handed it over to her. “From now on, you are the Architectural Consultant of the Marris Bunker. If you want, you can move into 8th Sublevel.”

She blinked and took the paper and read over it. “Oh. Thank you!” she smiled and quickly left after that.

I leaned back into the chair and pondered on two things.

The first was exactly what she talked about: safety.

I knew that my bunker had its own share of problems. While hunger was not an issue for us, entertainment was, which made more than a few people … let’s just say that I have had issues with certain people.

When I fed you, clothed you, kept you warm, and got you a job, I took it personally when you went around shanking someone else in the bunker because you were bored.

Those people who were particularly nasty… well, they got what they deserved when I tossed them out of the bunker and into the cannibal-friendly surface. I always made sure to track them, though they never made it past the fourth day up there.

Oh, sure, the Dockworkers (Bunkerworkers?) did their own patrols and whatnot, but there had been an increase in crimes in certain areas. If a bit of shifting in the designs led to a decrease in crimes, then I didn’t see how I couldn’t try it. It wasn’t as if it cost me anything.

The second thing I began contemplating was the surface.

It grew colder and colder with no end in sight. Sure, the few mathematicians and scientists I managed to snag told me that it should be over within two years at the max, but those had been under assumptions about where their model held true.

I, however, didn’t want to wait that long to expand out of the bunker, because, of course, I would be expanding.

See, I already had a few ideas about what was happening out there.

For one, the Endbringers would not be active. Why would they be? After a certain point, Cauldron would deem this world unusable and move their main operations elsewhere, including the Triumvirate. This world was no longer in a perfect state as they wanted it to produce as many parahumans as possible but in an ever downhill death spiral as people died. I was already half sure that the population of Earth Bet was below 1 billion at this point in time.

(You can’t drill for oils to keep yourself warm if the oil wells are frozen shut.)

My evidence for lack of Endbringer activity?

There hasn’t been Endbringer activity since the bunker doors closed.

Two, PRT ENE right next door acted on their own. If they had contact with the rest of the bunkers used by other PRT branches or the federal government, then they sure would be telling me news of the world (if only to get more food out of me).

But they didn’t.

Possible and probable cause? No communications from higher authority came in for them to take orders from. Considering that pieces of the moon was raining down, there was a very good chance that no-longer-Cauldron-protected-puppets died a horrible but quick death via meteor punch.

AKA?

The moment my people and I left the bunker, what would greet us would be Fallout-Frostpunk Crossover.

Radiation+Cold. Fun. What did this mean for me? What kind of work was ahead of me?

By the time we left the bunker, I needed to have a firm grip on my people lest they decide that their powerless selves were capable of surviving out there by themselves. They were already pretty obedient, but it never hurt to make sure, you know?